conversation from the garden while I was weeding out the grass.
P - "Are you pulling out grass?"
Me - "Yes."
P - "You don't like grass in the garden, do you?"
Me - "No, I don't."
P - "I like grass in the garden."
Me - "Why do you like grass in the garden?"
P - "Because it WANTS to be there."
-----Perhaps I need to rethink my gardening strategy.
We have finished the onion harvest and cured them in the sun. Last night B hung the ones we will keep in old pantyhose (very old as I have not worn pantyhose in at least 15 years) in the basement. Hanging them in pantyhose allows air circulation around them and they seem to last longer. The total tally for onions grown this year is over 300 pounds!
There is still a good bit of fall harvest to do around here. We have lots of pears that are starting to fall from the trees. I never have found a good way to preserve these so we usually just eat a few of them. Does anyone have any good ideas for things to do with pears?
We cut a few of the ripe pumpkins and put them on the back porch to keep the deer from eating them. I am hoping that the rain predicted for this weekend will come and help plump up some of the shriveled looking pumpkins we have in the patches.
I do like the way this pumpkin grew sitting on the old water trough.
Our green beans are producing well now too. We pick them every other day for dinner.
Our raspberries which did very well last year are slow to get started this year. I do hope we have enough for some raspberry ribbon pies before we get a hard frost.
We are planners. We plan for everything. We plan our garden before planting. We make sure that we will be able to move things around and have a yearly garden crop rotation that will work in our space. We plan for our house renovating too. Our current project is the bathrooms. We have to make sure that the pipes will all be able to drain and that the plan will work with the rest of the house. We want to put a small half bath in our entry area because it is currently a large, not very usable space. The room has five doors which make furniture placement almost impossible. We have drawn the plan, then made a scale model out of legos, we now have a full size cardboard bathroom/closet built in the entry area so we can get the feel for where the new walls will be. We think we know what we want... but, there is still hesitation.
Sometimes I think the old farm way may have been better.
This little drawing is carved into the wall of our barn. The cupola barn was originally just the center square. This was apparently the plan for the the side additions. Should they be flat roofed or slanted?
The last few weeks we have been busy with harvest and food preservation. We have frozen (and eaten) many peach and blueberry pies. We didn't grow the peaches but we buy them when they are in season.
We had so many plums on our trees that we tried making plum juice. It turned out a little bitter but that could be because we left the pits in until the juice was squeezed out. It would have taken way too long to take the pits out. The chickens are still feasting on plums and the bugs that are eating the plums when they fall to the ground.
All of our onions have been pulled. This is one of six varieties.
We planted nine varieties and dig the potatoes after the plants die. The potatoes and onions will be stored in our unheated basement. They keep well there while we use them fall, winter, and into the spring. So far we have 145 pounds of potatoes!
We have been harvesting the carrots and eating them too. They are fun because so many of them have a "freakish" look.
It looks like we will be having a lot of potato soup this winter!
We also trade our garden bounty with neighbors. We get goodies like peppers, tomatoes, pesto, cucumbers, and perennial flowers and plants.I like how our diet changes with the seasons. In the summer we eat lotsof pasta and rice with fresh vegetables. We love the fresh fruits too.
We freeze what we can through the summer. At the end of summer we start eating potatoes. At first we use the smallest potatoes and have them boiled or baked. After they have been stored a while and aren't
quite as juicy we have mashed potatoes, and soup, and other potato dishes which are perfect for the winter months.
This morning we are finally getting much needed rain. It is not a five minute downpour like we had the other day, this is a gentle thirst quenching rain. I hope our shriveled pumpkins can rehydrate. And that our grapes get juicy again before we harvest them for juice.
One of the things we like about where we live is the wildlife we see. There are sandhill cranes that summer in our field. We also see lots of deer, wild turkeys, pheasants, and an occasional coyote or fox. We enjoy watching hawks and have even spotted a great horned owl sitting on our power line pole.
The wildlife is also one of the things we DON'T like about where we live. I have yet to grow a decent sunflower. Every year I plant them and every year they are eaten by deer. This year I thought we could just plant LOTS of them as we have the room. We are preparing more land to plant with native prairie plants so we used some of that area for a very large sunflower plot. I thought there would be enough for the deer and still have a few survive. Not so.
We also planted extra pumpkins knowing that the deer and other critters would find them. There are some pumpkins in the weedy area of the garden that have not been nibbled but quite a few have large holes.
Last year we planted corn three times and the cranes walked through the garden eating the sprouts as they came up. We did not get a single plant. This year we treated the seed with something that is supposed to deter the cranes. That worked. Now, we hope the raccoons will leave a few ears for us.
When we returned from our trip this weekend, we saw two red tailed hawks sitting on our power line pole. They were eyeing our chickens. They found out while we were gone that they could get a good chicken dinner here. We lost a couple of our new chickens including the feather footed buff cochin. I wish they had gotten the new roosters instead of the hens. When we are home there must be enough activity around the house to keep the hawks away.I sometimes feel like the wild creatures are invading our little farm place. But, then, I remember it is the other way around.
We have invaded their place.
We are working out a way to coexist on the same land. I do admit that I would rather lose the chickens to a red tailed hawk, coyote, or fox than to a neighborhood dog. We will just continue to plant and grow more than we think we will use and hope to end up with enough to make us happy for the effort.
The middle school time was spent growing fast and working out that pecking order. Sometimes they felt like all the other girls were against them, like they were always getting picked on. It was a difficult time for them. Each seems to be comfortable with her place now and they are moving on.
They are big girls now. Big enough to run loose with the older girls. They are ready for the move to high school.
Yeah, they have more freedom. They can go wherever they want but they have a curfew. They must be in bed by dark.
They are feeling more relaxed.
They are more daring like the older girls.
They try new things and different personalities just like the high school girls.
They make new friends.
Soon they will be picking up bad habits from the older girls. They will be crossing the driveway and digging in the gardens. I just know it. I have seen it all before.
It might sound weird but I find pumpkin plants fascinating. I am enjoying having them a little closer to the house this year. They are right behind the barn instead of down in the field. I see them each time I go tend the chickens or to the vegetable garden.They burst out of the ground so fast that some of them still held their seed hulls.
They grow and grow and then start making flowers that look like little gnomes.
The stamens look like cheetos.
Then they curl.
They are good at making curls.
They just keep growing.
And they make pumpkins.
Keep us in mind in October. We planted 94 hills of pumpkin plants!
Last weekend we harvested one patch of our rye.
We do things on a fairly small scale so we don't have any fancy equipment. Our method is the same as in many of my versions of "The Little Red Hen." We use a sickle. As we work together cutting, carrying, and bundling we talk about why we do some of the things we do here.
We like the idea of being able to grow things that we will use. We will save a bit of the rye for our own use in the kitchen and some will be saved for next years seed. The rest will be fed to the chickens. The straw will go into the chicken barn. It will all get shoveled out in the early spring and put back onto the garden.
It is fun to try new things in the garden and research a bit on how things were done in the past.
For me, the "Little Red Hen" lesson is more than just "everyone does their share of the work." It says that it is important to know all of the steps associated in the creation of something. It is about taking simple steps toward something meaningful.
We think that the actual purchase price on many items that are sold is artificially low because that price does not include the environmental cost associated with their production. Growing some of our own crops and doing all the steps by hand makes us think more about the things we consume. We can more easily evaluate the effort put into the production of an item. We can also see how the mechanization process evolved, because we think of things that would make it easier as we work.
I thought it was about time for a check in with the girlers.
P has learned that they will eat grass from her hand.
The chicks have grown a lot and are used to running around. They are much harder to catch these days. I even have a hard time catching them with the camera. I think P dreams that she will go out to the pen and sit down and the hens will just come up to her and sit in her lap for a rest. That does not happen. Maybe if there were fewer of them there would be a chance of them becoming that tame. Maybe when she is a little older and can go out on her own and spend more time with them. Maybe.
This is our free "rare bird" that came with the order. The fluffy feathers on her legs make her look a bit like she is wearing bell bottom pants. We have looked through the Murray McMurray catalog and think she(or he) is a buff cochin.
She looked like this when we got her.
Our little chicks have grown fast. They are mostly feathered, so we moved them out to the barn about a week ago. They like having the room to run and flap around and have quickly learned how to scratch in the dirt and eat grass. They are separated from the older hens and can get out to the fenced area.
The big chickens can watch them through the fence.
In the craft room, I have made some progress on Kim's little quilt. The embroidery is finished and the quilt is ready for quilting and binding up.
Sometimes tending the chickens gets to be mundane. Give them food, give them water, collect the eggs, shoo them out of the flower gardens, let them out in the morning, close them up at night. Some days, however, there are fun little surprises for us. The other day, P and I were out in the yard and stopped by the chicken barn on our way back to the house. There were eggs in the nests and we gathered them in P's hat. There was one egg that was much smaller than the rest.
Another day we went in the barn and saw three hens sitting in the same nest. There were a couple of empty nests but for some reason they all wanted to be in that one.
I am easily amused.
It is hard to believe how busy we are these days. The boys were scheduled to perform at an outdoor event with the Chelsea House Orchestra Saturday evening. We had a hail storm that afternoon and then rain. The festival coordinators canceled the event at the last minute. The sun came out again so we took advantage of our evening at home and the wet ground and set to work weeding our raspberry row. With all of us working we were able to get finished fairly quickly. We then came in and played cards.
Last night P. and I took a walk around and surveyed the garden areas. We saw little pears,
and our freshly weeded, 250 foot raspberry row along the side of the path.
We had the idea this year that we would stop mowing some of the areas that we usually mow. Since pumpkins are supposed to grow well where there was previously lawn, we decided to plant them in these areas. Here are some of our over 90 hills of pumpkins. I am not sure what we will plant in these areas next year. I would like to find something that the chickens can eat that requires relatively low labor.
We saw a little hail damage on our onions.
Not so much on the potatoes. Maybe it is the rye... We planted our potatoes in rows within the garden plot of rye. The rye was there already and was, of course, not ready to harvest. We left the rye and dug the rows for the potatoes. We have carried mulch down the rows. We have noticed that they are growing very well in this environment. The potato beetles have not found them there. I think that the tall rye protects them a bit.
Sometimes it is nice to list out the good things in life.
We have our electricity back. We are all scrubbed and clean. The house has been vacuumed.
Also, I said I would let you know about the banana bread. Well, it turns out you CAN bake banana bread batter that has been in the fridge for two days. And it still tasted good.
We may have a great crop of plums this year. I guess our frost prevention plan worked.
Yesterday was also the last day of school!I reached the "100 sales" milepost on etsy.
The weather today is supposed to be beautiful.
It is funny, you grow up and hear the same family stories over and over. You think you have heard them all. Then, something happens to open up a flood of new stories from family members.
For us, it was getting chickens. Once we had our own chickens it was like we were members of a family club and could be let in on more of the family tales. Either that, or family members were just reminded of things from their past.
From my maternal grandmother I learned many new things. She shared the story of when she got married and her friends and neighbors threw a shower for her. It was a "chicken shower" and each guest brought a chicken to start the chicken flock at her new home. She said that one of the chickens was not very friendly and did not get along with the others. It was not long until that chicken went in the stew pot. My grandmother guessed that enough time had passed that she could share that part of the story. She never wanted the original owner to know she had done that.
She also shared stories of her mother's chicken flock such as which breeds were her favorites. My great grandmother apparently had very tame hens. I learned from my grandmother how her mother would put a hen in a sleep-like trance by turning it on its back and rubbing her chest and stomach. That is what I have done to this chick.
Doing this before taking the hen to the chopping block supposedly results in more tender meat. At least, it seems more humane.
My father grew up on a farm too, although they did live in town for a short time when he was very young (about 5 years old). While in town, they raised chickens in their garage. It was his job to tend to them and collect eggs. He told me that one time he when he put his hand in the nest to gather the eggs that there was a snake curled up in the nest. He also delivered chickens to customers in the neighborhood. He said he would put one in a cage and transport it to the customer in his wagon. After delivery to the kitchen door, the neighbor would kill it, pluck it and cook it for dinner. How is that for fresh food?
I think it is interesting that I had never heard these stories before.
I am left wondering what other stories I never heard. What if I had gotten pigs?
We have been enjoying the baby chicks. These chicks are getting handled a lot. I hope this means that they will be tame adult hens. Our first chickens were very tame because the boys spent a lot of time with them; they would even sit on M's head.
We also named our first chickens. There were three Rhode Island Reds that were named Cinnamon, Nutmeg, and Ginger - the "Spice Girls." A white hen was named Hedwig and our regal rooster was Dumbledore. Hedwig was somewhat of a genius as far as chickens go. She was very inquisitive. That is Hedwig up on M's head.
We have learned that naming farm animals is not the wisest thing to do. We get new chickens each year so that we continue to get fresh eggs. Well, when those old hens quit laying they become expensive to feed so we make soup.... I am sure you can see the problem here. Those first hens lived much longer than any others. P is not aware of how it all works yet- that circle of life on the farm. I think just calling the chickens the girlers is a good start there.
B and P returned yesterday with our new laptop. All of our files have been transferred from the old laptop and I am back in business! I am still figuring out the new system but it is nice not to have to go to the library every day to check my mail.
P was eager to get home to see the new baby chicks. Some years they get delivered on Sunday but this year they came Monday. The post office called this morning at 7:30 to let me know they had the box. I heard them peeping in the background and didn't want them to have to be in the delivery car all morning so I drove to the post office to pick them up before P was awake. I took the peeping box up to her room to wake her. She said, "I have chicks. I am three." Well, I don't know why she thought both of those things were going to happen on the same day. It is still a few days before she is three. But, yes. We have chicks.
There are twenty seven little chicks in that box. There are 9 cuckoo maran, 9 araucana, 8 silver laced wyandotte, and one free mystery chick.
This was almost too much excitement before breakfast.
They are settled in a dog crate in the basement. They will stay there until they are a little older and the nights are warm enough for them to stay in the barn with the big girls. We will take them for outings in the sun every day.
They will be getting a lot of attention.
Today was the Chelsea Garden Club's annual plant sale. I try to get to this sale every year. I like that the plants are all taken from local gardens so they will not have "culture shock" when I plant them in my gardens. By supporting the local Garden Club I get beautiful flowers and plants for my yard and beautiful gardens in town. There is also the added bonus of visiting with friends while I shop and knowing which gardens my plants originally grew in.
I got a few plants for our white garden- white daylilly, a few ferns, some white astilbe, sweet woodruff, silver edge ivy, and jack in the pulpits.
The plants for the white garden are in the ground. But, I had to deal with the "gardening creep" phenomenon. This is when one simple gardening task leads to many others. Those star-of-bethlehem bulbs that have multiplied to bunches so thick that they won't even bloom had to be divided and planted around the white tulips. The iris that had grown so close to the chicken barn that the leaves are growing up behind the siding had to be moved too. Actually, that one was on my list for several years. Then, I noticed that the tree by the herb garden has grown so much that the area is not as sunny as it used to be so I moved the lovage and sage from the shade to the sunny side of the garden. I also weeded lots around the yard. It was such a beautiful day that I stayed out working all morning and afternoon.
I still have a bunch of plants to put in the other gardens in the yard. I should have done it today.
Tomorrow it is supposed to rain.
We have been enjoying the warmer weather lately. I have been sitting out on our back porch to knit and read during P's naps. I even ended up taking my own nap out there one day.
This afternoon, P and I were out enjoying the scents and colors of the flowers. We ended up, as usually happens, weeding on one of the flower beds. I was discouraged by the amount of grass and weeds in the garden. I also had to keep reminding P to keep her feet on the grass and not in the garden. She would respond with, "It's a gard'n, honey." I guess she was trying to correct my pronunciation! After several reminders to keep her feet out of the garden, gard'n, I explained that different people say it different ways. That seemed to satisfy her and she busied herself pulling the yellow (dandelions) out of the white (all the flowers are white in the garden we were working on) garden. A little while later she stood up and said, "You can believe it's a garden if you want," and then walked away.
I will keep believing it is a garden. Maybe one day it will be free of weeds and grass. Maybe I will see that it is lush with foliage and flowers. Maybe I will see it as it was in our minds when we planted it. I just have to believe that it is a garden.
The chickens are not the only obstacle to getting plums from our trees. Last night we had a hard frost. We went out in the dark and put tarps over the trees.
B also put an old coal burning stove under the larger tree. He got up several times in the night to add some wood to the fire.
Let's hope it worked.
About fifteen years ago we planted two areas of native prairie grasses in our fields. We burn a portion of the prairie occasionally, primarily to discourage invasive plants such as the autumn olive. Yesterday was burn day. The weather was beautiful and there was not much wind.
We start the fire so that it burns into the wind, this way it does not burn too fast. When everything goes as planned, there isn't much to do...
I am often mesmerized by the flames while we watch the fire and listen to the popping and crackling sounds it makes.
This area of prairie is below the barns. There is a cluster of locust here that we are trying to kill. It is also an aggressive invader in the prairie areas and is sending up saplings in our raspberry row. We cut the larger trunks of the locust for fire wood.
There are bursts of tall flames when there is a gust of wind or the fire comes to an area of thick tall grass. Some of the big bluestem grass can be eight feet tall.
Burned locust.
Now we watch the regrowth of grasses and flowers. The native prairie plants make great landscaping because once established they can endure long periods with no rain. According to some references, some of the native grasses can have a foot of root for each inch of plant above ground.
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