Plans for 2015

Things are always in flux, and I really like to think out loud. It especially helps me while planning, because I can easily see the flaws in my ideas once I tell someone else about them. With that being said, some of the things that Naomi and I were planning for 2015 as of a couple of months ago have changed somewhat. We're also trying to focus on what we can do based on time, money and resources in the coming year. The following are some of the things Naomi and I have been discussing as of late. Naomi may have a few more, but this is what's on my mind:

• Geese, not sheep
• rabbits
• mobile chicken coop
• worm bin
• refine duckponics
• gutters on the house
• attempt to replace one rotten windowsill

Geese- I had been talking about getting lambs in the spring because we have SO much lawn. Mowing it takes time, gas, and mower maintenance. Sheep would turn that grass into something productive- meat.  Well, the summer was very dry, and when October rains came, I realized just how wet some of that backyard lawn really is, which makes it totally not suitable for sheep.

I had also been interested in getting some geese, but thought I'd save it for a later year. Once I decided sheep were out, geese seemed like an easy decision. They're much much cheaper to obtain, I can stock them in a higher density, they also eat grass, and they would love it when the backyard gets a little wet. Pretty sure that's a done deal. I'm going to try to figure out how to still use the polydome I got from our neighbor to house the geese in. They might need a little ramp and some ramp training like Penelope got when she was a baby.

Rabbits- Rabbit might be one of my absolute favorite foods in the world. They existed in such abundance at our apartment that it seemed silly to try to raise domesticated rabbits. While we saw a few here in the end of summer/ early fall, they certainly weren't in abundance. Aside from shelling out for some infrastructure and stock costs, rabbits don't seem too tough to pull off this year. I had originally planned to knock this out during the end of winter, but I've sort of hit a design flaw and I'm focusing on some other stuff at the moment, mainly music. Rabbits are reasonably easy to take care of, not cost-prohibitive in regards to feed and care, and can add a significant amount of extra lean protein to our diets. Plus, they're cute and fluffy.

Mobile Chicken Coop- I've been talking about this quite a bit lately. I want to build another coop similar to our existing one, but on a trailer platform and be able to move it around the property. I want to fence the chickens into small paddocks with electronet, or even just non-electrified fence in the beginning so that I can focus their efforts where it will do the most good, and spread them across the landscape rather than keeping them in a fixed location- which usually turns into a mudhole. Again, this is a moderate expense, but if done right, should last a long time and its benefits will outweight the cost long term.

Worm Bin- A few years back I had wanted to start a worm bin, but couldn't find an appropriate place to site the bin while living in our apartment. Our basement now seems to have a very consistent temperature, and would be a great location for a worm bin. What little amount of food scraps we've been generating have been going straight into the chicken run, but it's never enough volume all at once to get some good aerobic compost going. A big part of our tiny volume of food scraps is that with the ordeal of moving, we didn't produce nearly the amount of veggies from our garden as in previous years. We just can't afford to buy the kind of produce we're used to producing ourselves. Just this morning we were debating over the best use of our shredded paper, and it hit me again- WORM BIN. So, this is a relatively new idea, but seems easy enough to get going, especially considering we have most or all of the parts needed. We just need for the ground to thaw a bit and find some appropriate worms.

Duckponics- This is Naomi's area of expertise, but she mentioned some adjustments and upgrades she's planning on for this year. I'll let her tackle that when she sees fit.

Gutters- We dearly need gutters on our house. They would fix so many issues that we're having like basement infiltration, exterior rot on the house (see windowsills), foundation stuff, and water supply issues. I'm really hoping I can slam this one out before next fall. I haven't even begun to research the cost of this, but we've got so many water issues I can't NOT get them.

Windowsills- Most, if not all of the windowsills on our house are rotten. Like sponge-soft. It's easy to see where water sheets off the roof, hits the house, and then hits the windowsills. I need to do a lot of work on the windows other than the sills, too, (reglazing, new storm windows) but it doesn't make sense until the water issue is resolved. I am, however, planning to try replacing one windowsill and see how it goes. If it isn't too much of a nightmare, I will then plan on doing the others. I'm hoping to replace the sills, eventually get new storm windows, and otherwise rehabilitate the existing wooden-sash, double-hung windows because they're beautiful and fit the style of our home very well.

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.

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.

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.

Adjusting to Life at New House

A week has passed since we moved into New House, and we're adjusting (me slowly, Naomi is probably fine) to life here.  Some things are drastically different, some things are drastically more awesome, and some things are going to take time to adjust to (for me since I'm apparently bad at change according to Naomi).

I'm gonna start off with some of the bad things so I can move on from them into the awesome.  For starters, my commute is an hour long, but at least I've traded the rat race on the interstate for a pleasant bob along a two-lane road through beautiful country, at least until I have to cross the river.  For the first week, we didn't have any internet access (not really a big deal on its own) but the part that sucks about it is that I'm in a totally new place in a region where I've never lived before, and I don't know where absolutely anything is.  I learned really quickly where Home Depot is because I've been there every single day, sometimes twice.  Without internet access, I was very productive.  I can guarantee I wouldn't have gotten half the work done around the house had I been able to look at non-essential stuff for as long as I pleased.  I went to bed before 9:00 every night except the first one, when we went to a party.

We were also here for the first week without our chickens, and of course, Penelope too.  That was hard, because it didn't feel like home without our birds.  My dad graciously took care of them at our old place.  He even said he would miss them when they moved here!  I spent every waking moment that I wasn't at work preparing for their arrival by making new hoophouses that they could live in while I put in their more permanent fence.  On Friday, with the help of a friend (and his trailer!) we moved the coops here and set up the new hoop/tractors.  The birds seemed happy to be on nice fresh grass and have tons of bugs to eat.  Some downsides are that they're in the direct sun now, whereas they've always been under a canopy of oaks.  As a result, they've been hot.  We rigged up some high tech (lean something against the fence) shade panels for them today, and they liked that.  I improved the door on the little coop so it pulls up like the big coop, and attached the wire to the coops a little better than I had previously with staples.  On Saturday, with the help of our brother-in-law and his son, we took down the old run and brought it here to be reinstalled. 

old run's worth of wire

New people-sized gate posts

the Tweeters flopped out.  Notice Fabio in the front

the Big Birds, and the old gate! I'm thinking about adding it to the end of the tractor for easier access

The week before we moved here was spent putting in some 4x4 gate posts for the big-sized gate I'm going to put in.  No more tiny gate! Yay!  I'll have to bend at the neck slightly to walk through instead of crouching all the way down to go through the waist-high gate we used to have.  I can't wait to have everything permanently set up.  That will be awesome.  I have dreams of rain water collection with a gravity feed so I don't have to haul buckets every morning.

Our new little kingdom

The topic of hauling buckets leads me to my next point-  our well failed the potability test.  We had already been drinking only bottled water just until we found out, but we're stuck on it for a few more days.  We had been showering and washing our dishes in the well water anyway, just not drinking it.  This morning we shock chlorinated the water, and it has to sit for a bunch of hours.  I've been hauling water up to the house from the brook.  It seems I can never escape hauling water!  It makes me wish I had some buckets with plastic handles rather than just the metal wire one.  It'd be so much more comfortable.  Tomorrow I'll be bucket-bathing in brook water before work.  Hopefully the shock treatment will be enough, and things will be back to normal in another week.

I think I will miss our old floodplain place in that I don't have an endless source of drift gifts like we used to have.  All our buckets, trash cans, tubs, and wood came from occasional floods that would carry stuff downstream to us.  I guess the upside to that is that if I need something, buying whatever it is will give me a better quality, just not free.  Maybe I'll upgrade to some buckets with handles. 

On to the good-  I love this house!  I've been sleeping like a baby, thanks to the babbling brook directly outside our bedroom window and the cool air coming down off the hill in the evening.  Things are progressing slowly, mostly because I was preparing for the arrival of our birds, and that left Naomi stuck inside unpacking by herself.  I hope to make it a two-person effort this week and get the kitchen locked down and move on to the other rooms.  The ancient dishwasher didn't drain on its trial run, and then on every subsequent run, so I bought a new one.  It'll be coming this week, as well as a new washer, which we've never had.  I'm excited!!!

We got our little garden of tomatoes, peppers and strawberries started.  I started them all from seed about two months ago in preparation for spring planting, and once the house deal started coming together, we decided to hold off planting them.  Now, it's really late to be planting them, but at least its done!  That area of the yard gets great sun exposure, and I think they're going to take off.  I'm hoping to get some cucumbers in for Naomi this week, and maybe some beans.  That's probably all I'm going to try to plant here this year, so I can focus on the mountain of projects that need to get done, like rewiring the electrical outlets in the whole house. 

I forgot the rest of the tomato stakes back at the Big Garden

already- established blueberries doing their thing

So, things are coming together.  There is more to talk about, but those are the big things.  Now that we're back online, I hope to get back to more regular updates.  The Big Garden is taking off!  I picked a billion fava beans today, and lots of other stuff is going well over there, but I'll save that for a future post. 

Chickens

About a week and a half ago, we got chickens.  Well, not chickens exactly, but 6 Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks.  For the past week and a half, they've been in a box in the kitchen peeping away every second of the day and night.  I worked like a madman to construct a coop (which happens to be the best carpentry project I've ever successfully completed).

We've talked about getting chickens for a bit now, probably ever since we started to stray from veganism.  We were trying to figure out what to do with the small garden by the house that we neglected last summer, when I came up with the idea to turn it into a chicken run.  The biggest step was getting permission from the landlord, which was a piece of cake.  Then I began with the coop.  I had an idea of how I wanted to coop construction, but needed some real plans so I didn't waste a lot of materials and time making it work.  I found some good free plans through Purina Mills.  I set out to building it, and finished in 3 days.  I'm really proud of that thing!  I kept thinking that I was going to modify the plans to suit our setup, and after much deliberation, I realized that everything in the plans was just fine. 

The coop is now done, except for the nest box, and a close-able door for the chickens to use.  Luckily, they're still too small to be outside, so I have time to finish it.  I also need to finish closing off the run on the top, but that should be easy to do as well.  The only thing that has been stopping me from finishing is trying to catch up on planting in the garden. 


Below are two photos for comparison.  The first is the little garden, taken on 5/28/10.  The second was taken today, 5/29/12 of the same garden, looking through the chicken run.  What a different place! 

I started off small with the part of the run that will be enclosed.  I designed it so that I can extend it easily and cheaply.  I will do so as the summer goes on, especially if we get more chickens (which I'd love to do!).  Finally, here's a video of the little peepies playing with a piece of lettuce: