Real Snow

Here we are, the day before Thanksgiving, and it's snowing. We previously had one little snowfall, but it mostly didn't last. This is the real deal, and it's got me thinking about a few things.

 I'm really grateful that we have such a short driveway. I don't have a snowblower, nor do I really want another gas-sucking machine. I hopefully can handle the workload with just a shovel. While out earlier, I realized that this is the first time that I've ever been solely responsible for snow shoveling. I was also thinking back on the last five years at our apartment and how it was nice that the landlord came with machinery to remove the snow, but how that also left me on the hook to move the cars all the time which always seemed to be a problem for some reason or another. One such occurrence led to the final push for us to get out and get our own house. I'm glad to leave all that behind.

I was really anxious about driving in the snow to/from work considering we're in a snowier part of the state, and my commute is so hilly. I managed to get home without incident today, but I noticed that most other vehicles, including some really large trucks tackled the hills by going 5 mph both up and down them.

Finally, I decided to take a nap earlier. When I was just waking up, Naomi told me that the chicken run was collapsing under the weight of the snow. As I was scrambling to get my boots and wet coat back on, I looked out the back door, and the whole thing came down. 

After we shook all the snow off, we tried to pop the PVC sections back together. I don't think they're going to hold. A lot of the connectors cracked. When we relocated the run, a lot of the parts didn't fit back together nicely, which contributed to the weakening of the whole structure. Let's see what happens going forward.

Composting Changes

In about as many days this week, we changed our composting system 3 times. First, I had wanted to turn my pile, and decided that I would try turning it on the Berkeley method despite not having the right ratio and construction. It supposedly makes a very nice compost. Four days later, when I should have turned the pile again, I worked late and didn't do it.

So then I thought I'd forget that in favor of going full-in on letting the chickens turn it. So I emptied out the bins, carted all the material over near the chicken run, made a new pile, and popped one of my hoophouse tractors over it. I let the chickens in on it two separate afternoons. They seemed happy, and I thought this would be much easier than turning the pile every few days myself.

Then I hurt my knee. I hurt my knee because the chickens weren't cooperating with their frequent transfer, and I dove to catch one, landing on the frozen ground knee-first. It still hurts, and the birds got all frazzled. The conclusion was to then move all the compost material straight into the chicken run- no moving, no turning.

Only a few days after that, we got some really strong rain. I was worried about leaching out all the best stuff from the compost, so today I piled it up again- still inside the run, and walled it off with cinderblocks. I fully expect that the chickens will scratch the pile down, and I plan every so often to go in and pile it back up. We'll see how this goes for a while.

Getting Colder

I've been cold all of my adult life, and I'm sure Naomi would say the same. It seems that I can't afford to stay warm in the houses built by my grandparents' generation and heated by the systems and cheap fuel of my parents' generation. One of the reasons behind wanting to own our own home was so we could begin to deal with this problem, but there is an overwhelming number of things to consider.

How badly does our house leak? What are the most cost- effective and environmentally-friendly things to do to mitagate that? What do we replace our stupid oil-burning furnace with- geothermal heat pump, super high-efficiency bottled gas, heat only with wood? Heating with wood was another issue because we need an additional chimney, which I wasn't about to start dealing with as it was already getting cold. So I signed up for a home energy audit.

I hope that the energy audit folks will at least show us the low-hanging fruit, give us cost analysis, and set us up with some rebates. I also hope that I can talk them into not taking away all our incandescent lightbulbs so we can still use them as heat lamps in the chick brooder.

Earth Care

Yesterday morning, a friend had shared a story from NPR about a school program in DC or somewhere that was getting kids excited about eating kale. The basic idea was something like "kids don't like vegetables, but these kids do!" It went on to describe the program, the school gardens, and how the kids were excited to be growing, cooking and eating vegetables. I like to hear stories like this, and I liked when Naomi and I would take a walk to the school garden at the elementary school up the hill from our apartment. All of these things are fine and great, but the part of the article that stuck out to me was something that the director of this school program had said, and it was something to the effect of teaching kids to eat well and care for the earth.

These types of programs or events tend to focus on teaching kids to eat healthy, or how to grow vegetables, or where their food comes from, but caring for the earth is at the heart of it.  It's also frequently overlooked it seems, at least from the articles that cover these types of things, but it's the most important part. Naomi and I discussed this idea over breakfast that morning and came to a consensus that if caring for the earth is the basis of our actions, then we will eat healthier food, be more active in our lives, and care for other people more, but if we just focus on one of those things, then we don't also necessarily care for the earth.

I do believe that caring for the earth is the core of our beliefs, especially care for its soils, animals and each other. It's what compels me to continue doing what I do.

Autumn Encounters

 If I had been asked, my mantra of last year's deer season would probably have been something like "watch and wait." Shortly into this year's season, opening day in fact, I found myself in that same mindset. It's not a bad thing. I'm in a totally different environment and I put in very little scouting prep to this year's season.

The downside of this is analysis paralysis, which is exactly what happened on opening day. That had been my first, and up until last Wednesday, my last encounter with a deer in 2014. I kicked myself in subsequent sits for not even trying to act on opening day when a doe walked into what could have been the perfect shot- broadside 15 yards on a calm animal. The result was talking myself into a different attitude- one of purposefully entering the woods as a predator, not as just an observer- reminding myself of all of the practice and hard work I put in during the summer to make sure that my shooting is accurate and reminding myself of previous seasons' hard lessons.

Last Wednesday, I headed out for what would be a really short sit. After work that afternoon, I calmly took my time and headed out to my tree on a cool grey afternoon.  There was rain in the forecast, but only a slim chance. I put on my rain gear, but because the temperature was hovering around 60, didn't put on any insulating layer underneath. I didn't get into my treestand til after 4:00, with a 5:55 sunset time. By about 10 after 5, the rain had started, along with a steady wind. I started to feel cold, and it didn't take much for me to talk myself into climbing down early. It was the middle of the workweek, and I didn't want to end up sick. So I climbed down and got about 5 steps from the base of my tree when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I instantly knew what was going on, because as my dad says, Murphy has a law. Luckily for me, I had this new mental attitude that prepared me for such an occasion. With a degree of deft that I had previously lacked, I stepped behind some cover in the form of a clump of birch trees and nocked an arrow.

At this point, I started to make some mental notes of nearby trees and their approximate distance. In previous years, I spent a lot of time estimating yardages and pacing them out, but I had stopped doing that in favor of just measuring a ring around my tree when hanging a stand. I did the best I could. I had a plan for which way one of the 4 deer- 2 does and 2 skippers (last year's fawns) could approach and how I'd take a shot, all the while reminding myself that "there are no mistakes, and I'm here to kill a deer." I should add the caveat that there are no mistakes as long as I've done my best to practice and prepare, and I'm not going to do anything careless or make any stupid decisions that would result in another lost deer. My fear last year was being spotted, busted, or spooking deer because all I wanted was to observe, observe, observe. Now I figure if I spook one, at least I tried. I believe that I can actually get away with more than I think I can in regards to movements and whatnot related to attempting to take a shot.

Moments later, a doe was in front of me. It all came down to this moment.I had peeked at the watch strapped to my safety harness, and it was 5:15- plenty of time before the end of legal shooting hours. My 20-yard guesstimate tree was in front of said doe. I can shoot alright out to 30 yards, but greatly prefer 20 or under, but this was it. I was already at full draw, what felt to be about 5 minutes, but had to be much much less. With the deer's eyes hidden by another tree trunk, I raised my bow. She took another step in the direction she was facing, and remained broadside. When I was certain that my form was good, and I had a clear shot, I released and tried my absolute hardest to follow through and not try to take my eye off the arrow in favor of glancing at the deer. She took off like a crack of lightning, along with the other 3 deer. It was really grey and raining steadily, plus I had a rain hood up and it was difficult to hear. I did not see my arrow shaft sticking out of her side, nor any blood as she bounded off. That was a relief, because at least I had not made a poor shot, or so it seemed. Again, summoning every ounce of calm and patience left in me, I reminded myself not to move. Stay put, wait, don't rush things. I tried to call Naomi to let her know what was going on. She didn't answer- that's ok, I don't want to be talking in the woods right now.

After about 5 minutes (I wanted to wait longer, but I HAD to know at that point) from exactly where I had been standing, I started pacing out to the marker tree the deer had been standing by when I shot. I had aimed at 30 yards, and she had been looking in my direction- not great. I got to the marker tree- 25 yards- not good. I looked and looked but no blood. No arrow either. At that point, I was second-guessing myself, and I was REALLY cold. Then I found a bit of hope in the form of a tiny tuft of hair where the doe had been standing. I took my practice arrow out of my quiver, the one with just a field point, and stuck it in the ground to mark the spot. Then I decided to sneak back to the house, get Naomi and her good eyes, and a flashlight with a strong beam to trace from where I shot in the direction the deer had been standing in hopes of finding a clue. The arrow that I had stuck in the ground was really helpful- there's one to remember for the future. Naomi finally found my arrow, about another 40 yards past the hair clump. I was still looking for blood, but finding nothing. When I met up with Naomi and the now-found arrow, I inspected it for blood- definitely none, but also for the whitish goopy fat that is sometimes on there when shooting straight through a squirrel. The only thing stuck to that arrow was a few stray hairs, and lots of mud and wet leaves.

At that point, I felt confident enough that I had done nothing but give that doe a haircut. As she was running away, she had also been blowing at me as if to say "what are you?" I'm not sure, but I think they don't do that when injured. As Naomi and I walked back to the house, I felt very relieved that I didn't hurt that doe, but also really satisfied with myself that I didn't just sit back and let another opportunity slip by as I had done so many times in 2013. As of yet, I haven't seen any evidence of any rutting activity, but it finally started getting actually cold this weekend. I'm eager to get out again. I feel like I'm out of a slump I was in.

 P.S.- I'm not the only hunter in these woods. We had another visit from a bobcat today. I was in the garage reorganizing some things, when I heard the chickens making a huge racket, so I went out to see what was going on. The bobcat was right next to the chicken run, and it turned to walk away as it saw me. I managed to catch a few pictures with my phone. My presence wasn't enough to deter it from sticking its head into the gut bucket from yesterday's chicken harvest. It walked away with more of a "guess the party's over" sort of attitude than a "get me out of here!" one. Only time will tell about this, too. Naomi was out earlier this evening and said she saw not one but two dead bobcats on the exit ramp down the street. I wish our infrequent visitor no harm, especially not from a moving vehicle. I will definitely be sad if that was our visitor, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

100 posts!

I just happened to notice as I was sitting down here that this will be our 100th post!  I can only imagine how many more posts we'd have if I had a chance to post as often as I'd like. I'll mostly be using pictures to recount the events of the past few weeks and months.

Yesterday was our chicken harvest day, which we've been referring to as "the chop" for a few years despite the fact that we don't "chop" our birds.  The name just seemed to stick. It went well I'd say.  We put 6 birds in the freezer, and Naomi roasted one for dinner, as we usually do on harvest day. I made a ton of schmaltz and put it in the freezer.  I've been trying to use it to make tortillas, which come out much nicer than with coconut oil.

I also managed to successfully save all the blood, which didn't really work out last year.  This morning I cooked a slice with my eggs and it was really good- sort of like organ meat.  It had the mineraly taste of liver, but with a different consistency.  It was really chewy.   There's enough left that I'll probably eat it every morning this week.  I'm sure I'd prefer it stuffed in a sausage casing, if only I had a good source of casings. The cracklins from the rendering process tasted really good just out of the pan, but I ate some this evening (I also accidentally burned them) and didn't enjoy them as much.  I'll have to see how I feel about them next time without burning them.

I spent a good chunk of time a few weeks ago reglazing some of the windows in the house. They were in pretty bad shape, and were really drafty. I focused on the worst ones first. Now I want to do more of them, because it was so easy! It's just time-consuming, and I have to have an open window while I'm working on them. I fixed some of the cracked panes as well, which was also way easier than I expected. I really want to do some more of the upstairs windows so they don't rattle when we have band practice. Around the same time that I did the first few windows, we turned the heat on.  That was sometime around the first week of October. I also want to add weatherstripping to the doors, but that is turning into a bigger project than I expected.

one of my favorite visitors!

Fall came really quickly here, the bright red maple up above was from September 23. The summer had been really dry, and once the rain came back hard in October, all kinds of fungi popped up all over the place, especially in the lawn, and on the dead apple tree. I realized a few weeks ago that I now live with the most beautiful fall foliage in the world. I never really understood most people's fascination with fall foliage, until I was driving home one warm clear afternoon.  I found myself in total awe. The only tree in the yard of my childhood home was a Norway maple, and it never did seem to be too vibrantly-colored in the fall.  The leaves sort of fizzled out and finally dropped. All of the sugar maples up here are spectacular. The oaks are a little later than the maples, and go to a bronzy golden brown after most of the maples are done, and the yellows in the birch leaves are amazing.

Naomi and I used the leaves from a couple big maples in the yard to mulch our garlic beds. We planted a lot less garlic than we ever had. We always end up with too much, and it's too much to keep up with the scapes, mulching it, and weeding it during the growing season. With a smaller patch, we should be able to nurture it a little more and have better quality and less quantity- which also means less curing and storing. After our first attempt at mulching the beds with leaves, they all blew away on a 30+ mph-gust day. The second time I mulched them, I used some orange construction fence that I usually use for cucumber trellis to fence them in. Only time will tell if this is a good method or not.

First Frost 2014

I woke up to a really cold morning.  I've been letting the birds out after dawn, and when I stepped out this morning, I discovered a white tint across the yard.

Beginning of Autumn

This is often a hard time of year for me, emotionally. I am so active, and mostly outside during the summer months, that once it starts to cool down and the days get shorter, I start to go into a withdrawal. It also doesn't help that this is the time of year that Will is hunting, and I often end up sitting inside on a cool evening, fretting that he has fallen out of a tree and now I'm a widow.

So far, he has not fallen out of a tree, and so far, I am not a widow. Let's hope it stays that way.

This year seems to be especially hard for me, but maybe I say that every year. There are some family things going on that I am taking supremely personally, even though they really have nothing to do with me. I had a rough summer with that annoying problem of having too much free time (and therefore, getting nothing done).

Despite having to battle my own brain everyday, I am outrageously happy with my life. The little moments pull me through. Like, for instance, this morning. Today was a beautiful, sunny day for the first time in many days. Knowing that I would have to spend the afternoon inside because I had to go to work, I stood out in the sun for a bit, admiring the view and brushing my hair. Everything was still wet, and the sun was just creeping up over the tree line and then BAM! All of a sudden, there was sun and warmth. For a moment, I thought the house was on fire, but then logic took over and I realized that the water drops that were still on the roof were evaporating off into a thick steam, billowing down onto the lawn.

And for a moment, I forgot about my own brain and was happy and awestruck.

A little history

In 2010, we had our first garden together.  It was about 9'x30', and in the shade of 3 or 4 mature oak trees.  We grew some OK greens.  I especially remember the swiss chard.  We had some tomatoes, and a couple cucumbers.  We had broccoli that actually made little heads.  We grew about 6 softball-sized cabbages and I made sauerkraut from them.  We tried growing onions and potatoes for the first time, at least for me.  Both of those were total failures. I  remember getting less than a dozen marble-sized potatoes.  We then proceeded to tell the landlords that we wanted to tear out the whole lawn the next spring.

In 2011, the landlords granted us access to "the big garden."  We were fully unprepared to deal with this.  I bought far, faaaar too many seeds, laid out a plan that tried to stretch a tiny garden over a large garden plot.  Everything was way too close together, and we ended up with large fallow areas because we had no idea about spacing.  And it was unbelievably weedy, partially due to having laid fallow for well over 5 years.  We learned what mugwart was, and started to loathe it.  We grew lots of tomatoes, really good squash (mostly by accident, as most people tend to do with squash) and some really fantastic corn.  The corn was also a total accident.  There were some cucumbers in there, and we failed miserably at keeping track of greens.  The woodchucks also totally ravaged everything.  I started killing them, but just buried their bodies under the crops.  On the suggestion from a friend that I teach her how to shoot a bow so she could bowhunt (which predictably never happened- her fault, not mine) I signed up for a bowhunter safety course, since I had been looking for a reason to start shooting again.  I hadn't touched a bow in about a decade at that point.  At that point, we dipped into eating meat again, both of us for the first time in a really long time.  The neighbors were very generous with sharing venison with us.

In 2012, we got married, and Naomi claims that I put all my wedding stress into the garden.  This may or may not be true, however.  I started to get some ideas, understood how environmental forces acted on the garden site, and read some books.  I read some garden basics stuff, since I had never previously done that.  I also got accidentally turned on to permaculture, and read a couple of permaculture-related books.  I staked out beds in the big garden, and did my best at a very amateur attempt at hugelkultur. I mostly used moldy waste hay, and a bunch of small branches.  I made my mounds something like 8-12" high- which turned out to be enough to keep the beds from flooding, which had happened frequently prior to that.  We grew garlic for the first time.  We had our first success with potatoes, which we stopped trying to grow in a trench in heavy soil!!!  I experimented with growing mushrooms, was baking bread in full swing, and finally found some wild edibles, mainly fiddleheads and ramps.  We got chickens!  I build the first hoophouses, and experimented with season extension to some degree of success.  I successfully grew onions and spinach for the first time.  We had parsnips, beets, and celebrated the first official Harvest Night as a reflection on the previous year's experience.  To date, 2012 was our most successful and bountiful year across the board. 

2013 was a hard year, but also a good one.  Penelope came to us in the spring, along with many more chickens than we had expected.  I got cocky with my garden that year.  After the wild success of 2012, I thought I was an expert.  It turned out that I didn't quite do things the way I should have.  This was a year of further experimentation too.  I tried growing tomatoes in a weave for the second time, but planted them out much later than usual.  It was an attempt to push off harvest closer to cool weather in order to get maximum storage.  Also in an attempt to further protect the soil, we mulched EVERYTHING, which brought on a mice/vole problem that we didn't expect.  In spite of all the mulch, we didn't mulch the potatoes as much, and the harvest suffered there as well.  At this point, we weren't certain of the future of our garden there.  We began taking steps to get out.  I think this contributed to the way we put effort into the garden as well, letting perfect be the enemy of the good.

Now in 2014, we are finally in a place of our own.  It's been a hard road thus far, and our growing season was mostly a loss.  We did get a good potato yield, some OK garlic, a bunch of rye (yay! finally a grain success) and some other smaller stuff from "the big garden."  We've managed to create a few garden beds here so far, although much smaller (8'x6') which seems much more manageable so far.  I got all new seed stock for garlic, and we're already back to eating our own salads almost every night.  

And I think 2015 is going to be a good year.  We have a lot to learn here, but we have more experience than ever to deal with the new conditions.  I also have some great plans for the spring.  The chickens will be moving out of the static run and hopefully into a mobile coop of sorts.  I'm working toward getting some lambs to raise on our excessive lawn.  I really hope Penelope can get some friends finally, and I'm going to get some rabbits hopefully.  All of this will be in addition to getting back to our normal schedule of vegetables and fruits, plus our newly-acquired apple and pear trees, plus a handful of blueberry bushes and wild grapes.  As this year's growing season is winding down, our gears are already turning to launch into an even better year next year. 

Opening Day

Tomorrow is opening day of the deer archery season.  I've been more excited in previous years, but with all the things going on this year like moving, new (ish) job, weddings,  etc I don't feel prepared enough to have high hopes.   I'm in a totally new spot,  I didn't scout much,  and I don't have a great entry/exit strategy. 

I do, however, know that deer are present here, and with reasonable certainty,  I know that there isn't much pressure here.  I also feel quite confident with my shooting.  I started practicing later in the year than I usually like, but without a huge garden and the convenience of walking out the back door to shoot, I logged many more shooting hours than usual.

Another interesting twist is that there is new competition here, and by that I mean bears and bobcats.  Naomi and I SAW a bobcat walk through the backyard today around noon, carrying a bigger fish than either of us has caught this year.  I also checked my trail camera today while hanging my stand, and had some pictures of a black bear. This will cut down on my morning sits, as I don't wish to encounter either animal in the pre-dawn dark. 

I'm also relieved because I won't have the pressure of my landlord and friends whom I had to face upon the return of each (unsuccessful) hunt.  That got to me, especially as none of them were bowhunters, and didn't seem to grasp the additional challenges involved in the craft. I don't have to answer to my permission - granter about the perceived quality of the deer I choose to take.  I answer only to myself and the animals with which I choose to interact.  Naomi will not judge me based on the size, sex, or antler size of the deer I choose to return with, if I so choose, and am lucky and skillful enough to do so.  Finally, I am on my own terms.  In this regard,  I have high hopes.  I don't want to forget the lessons I learned last year, nor do I want to repeat the mistakes of seasons past.  I wish only to commune with the natural world so that it will sustain me; physically,  mentally, and spiritually.  Here's to the start of a completely new season!

First weekly walkaround

I decided today that it would be nice to spend some time each week just walking and observing the plants,  animals, and activity around the house.  I'm realizing while writing this that I used to do that at the big garden too, just every so often. 

I seem to come up with more questions than answers most of the time.  At least I can keep track of them this way.  So here are my observations

- there are some caterpillars deflating the milkweed plants on the bank by the road.  I wonder if they're monarchs.  I don't know what else would be eating milkweed.  

-we had a hard rain yesterday evening.   The water levels are back up.  There are also a lot of little fish in the brook now, and some of them are starting to look kind of big.  I want to get a net so I can check them out really closely since they really like to dart away when I approach the water. 

-The knotweed is really starting to resprout from my slashing project, more so where it's not impeded by piled of slashed canes.  Where it was heavily mulched with dumpings of old canes, it's having a hard time coming up. 

-there are some plants I'm really curious about:
     -one with stems that come off the main stalk at 45° angles, has a reddish tint, and starting to have small yellow flowers.

     -a succulent groundcover growing in the lawn with opposite roundish leaves of a beautiful soft green color. 

-I always find dead crayfish parts both in the brook and up in the lawn near the brook, but I've yet to see a live one.

Hopefully I can keep up with both the weekly walkaround and the corresponding posts.  I'm hoping to go back and add photos too. 

Potatoes

One week ago from today, we dug our potatoes.  Finally, we had some success!  The yields are as follows:

Yukon Gold-
11 lbs.  actually dug these a week or so earlier.  Mostly fist-sized tubers, slight red/pink blush, directly under main vines of the plants.  Yield was from about 1 dozen plants.

King Harry-
48 lb. 8 oz.  good yield, maybe 2 dozen plants.  heavy tubers, growing mostly in top layer of soil that was hilled in early spring.  tubers didn't grow in the clay layer below that.

All-Blue
28 lb. 14 oz.  these grew a little deeper, within the clay layer.  12-18 plants

Carola-
28 lb. 5 oz.  again, maybe 1 dozen plants.

Butte-
6 lb. 6.5 oz.  low number of plants started resulted in low yield. this was previously our favorite variety.


Also, after a late start, we got our first cucumber on August 6. 

Mad Scientist Log Pt. 1

 

Sorry for the intermission! Will stopped me so he could take a cute picture of Penelope!

Can't Believe It's August

Time's been flying faster than I ever imagined possible over here, and there are so many things I want to put down before they're gone forever.

Fabio and his harem

I assisted Naomi in digging some potatoes at the big garden at our old apartment a week ago today.  That would've been the 5th of August.  The potatoes in question were Yukon Gold.  From about a dozen plants, we got just over 11 lbs!  The vines were already dead, and Naomi wanted some potatoes, so we dug 'em up!  The potatoes were fist-sized, yellow with a slight red blush, and were mostly concentrated right under the vine, and not spread out from the plant.  They're delicious.  I had previously thought that this particular variety hadn't been performing that well, but they're probably just an early- maturing variety.  I could look it up, but haven't.  The first potatoes of summer is a joyous occasion!

Boily, our only senior chicken

We also dug up our garlic about 3 weeks ago now.  Most of it was growing under a canopy of jewelweed, was mulched too lightly, and just overall didn't perform well.  Due to the weed canopy, we didn't do an effective job of picking the scapes, and the bulbs just couldn't compete in reduced sun/ nutrient scavenging.  We didn't separate the varieties at harvest, or weigh the crop.  I'm going to order all new seed to plant this fall and start over.  Some of the varieties we had been growing were never great producers or storers, so we'll try again, but with less varieties this time.  We had about 12 different varieties until now.

We've been putting the chickens to work, as well as ourselves.  I think I speak for us both when I say that we really want a lot of this grass gone, or at least transformed into something more useful.  We especially need more garden beds for next spring, when I hope to have a lot of our favorite foods back in action in our lives and our landscape.  There are at least 3 brush/ wood piles on the property that we've found, and we've been mining one for it's accumulated leaf litter, and subsequent black gold that's resulted as a by-product of its buildup under a pile of brush.  The tricky part is that japanese knotweed has managed to begin colonizing the pile, so we sift carefully before transferring this basically free organic matter to our newly- turned beds.  So far, we've got two beds in addition to our tomato garden.  One is a nursery, where we're overwintering various plants until we find more suitable locations for them next year.  The other one has been seeded with fall greens, which have already begun to germinate!

Naomi's been mad-scientisting some sort of budding duckponics system.  We bought some (not cheap!) native waterplants to act as a biofilter for Penelope's duck pond.  We need a more reliable pumping system, but the whole thing has some promise to it. 

Our brother-in-law, Roger, has been helping us with a variety of tasks lately.  If Mr. Rogers had the woodworking skills of Ron Swanson, you'd have a Roger.  He came by while we weren't home to drop off a bridge that he made for us in order to cross the smaller stream in back.  This happened to come just in time, because I started slashing lots and lots of japanese knotweed, which is starting to flower.  I definitely don't want that setting seed around here.  The bridge now leads to an area we call "the goat pen."  It's a formerly fenced-in area across the little stream that looks like it might once have been a vegetable garden.  I say formerly because the fence is still there, but has mostly been knocked down or otherwise interred by leaves and debris from who-knows how many years of dead knotweed parts.  We thought it'd be a great place for goats- assuming the fence is goat-proofed because they could eat all the knotweed they want, and hopefully suppress it's devil's-dick shoots in the spring by trampling and nibbling.

inside the Goat Pen.  I still have a lot to clear out!

Roger also helped us make the cutting board shown above.  It's the slide-out type that fits right into the cabinet face.  The old one, along with all the other cabinets and hardware, was nasty.  Naomi did most of the work, under the guidance of Roger.  I helped out here and there.  It came out really nice, and I learned a lot about woodworking, although it probably doesn't scratch the surface of what there is to know.

Over the weekend, while attempting to transplant some root crowns of comfrey, my shovel was impeded by something metallic under the soil surface.  With the help of Naomi, I finally unearthed what was the iron frame of an old piano.  It looks like I was digging in Ted's old burn pile.  The piano frame is now leaning up against the pile of old cinderblocks on the bank of the brook.

Knotweed-slashing progress

and finally, a picture of Ms. Penelope!

A Quiet Morning

Today was the first morning in weeks that I didn't wake up to Rambo's crowing.  Yesterday saw the inevitable, yet unpredicted elimination of one of our two cockerels.  As a result of our move and subsequent chaos, we were even more hands-off with this batch of young birds as we were with last year's. Having two boys in the mix exacerbated the effects of minimal human interaction.  That means we have a flock of nine practically feral chickens on our hands.

I wasn't home at the time, but Naomi was inside the chicken run, getting ready to herd some chickens around out to one of the tractors to prepare another garden bed (I can't wait til we have less lawn and more edibles!) when Rambo slipped between an open gate and started attacking our other birds.  That was the last straw.  He was too vicious to stick around.  We were already in Fabio's corner when it came to who would stay and who would go.  We had just been waiting for some sign that having two roosters was too much, or Rambo did something like what he ultimately did yesterday.

I've been wondering if given the chance, Fabio would step up to the top of the pecking order, and let his soft, undemanding, and pleasant crow be heard.  Today wasn't the day.  I'll be listening over the next few mornings to see if he pipes up more than usual.

Rambo was a beautiful bird, but as I told him a week ago or so, looks aren't everything and he needed a nice personality, too.  Regrettably, I don't have any photos of him.  Next spring I'm sure there will be other contenders, and until then, we'll see what kind of man Fabio turns into.

Updates and Observations

It rained HARD today.  It was the first time it rained in weeks.  The sky was really ominous for a bit, and we saw over two dozen birds of prey of some sort circling around too high up for us to identify them.  We put out every water-holding vessel we had and hoped for the best.  Our collection exceeded our expectations!  It only took about a half hour to fill all our tubs and trash cans.

Our only source of outside water has been straight from the brook.  That's not really a problem, but it's not convenient.  It requires walking all the way down to "the point," squatting down, and filling the buckets with silty water, and occasionally, minnows.  I only seem to be able to get the buckets half full because the water's been so low.  It's also been hell trying to get anything to regrow where they dug the yard out to put the new septic tank in.  The clover and buckwheat I put down shouldn't have any trouble germinating now.  I'd really like to have more than just grass. 

We're making progress on putting in the permanent chicken run.  I want to move the coops and the tractors out of the way temporarily while we finish.  I can't wait to be able to get those birds into the tractors and move them around.  It's amazing how much grass (clover etc etc) they've eaten, trampled, and matted down.

I figured out where and how the seepage in the basement happens.  It runs off the little roof of the hatch door, dribbles down and leaks between where the block and the stone foundation meet.  This can be easily fixed with some catchment, well placed plants, and a little back-filling.  Also, I couldn't believe the amount of water that pooled up off the left side of the front door.  Definitely need to do something there.  The driveway also totally filled up to an incredible level, cascaded over the side yard, around the back of the garage, and into the wetland soil, totally recharging the water level in the wetland area.  Where the brook and the little stream meet up (the point,)  the water level was all the way up to the grass.  I got soaked every time I walked out the back door from the sheet of water coming off the roof.  The carpet in the breezeway seemed to stay dry, so I'm still not sure why it has water stains.  Also, the chickens seemed to be happy with their tarps covering their runs, because they were all outside during the storm and weren't miserably huddled up like the used to do.

In the end, everything was back to normal.  The brook is filled up again, and gurgling away happily outside.  And a tiny bit of sun even peeked back out around the clouds.