Crop Mob

So after a trip to the hardware store we now have the materials to make garden 2.0 a reality. 200 ft of 6' high fence to keep the critters out of the garden. 27 -8ft 2x8 to make 9 4x8 raised beds. 8 10ft 4x4 for the espalier fruit trees. We have the soil for the beds lined up and should be able to order it in a week or so. 13 cubic yards.

Now for those of you that need a visual, imagine a box made of yardsticks.... now imagine 13 of them..... in our front yard.

SO we are having a work day here at the farm. In exchange for help getting the soil from the front yard to the back, and in the raised beds, we will provide BBQ pulled pork, beer and good fellowship.

The self sufficientlymovment is kind of ironic in that to get anything large done you need the help of others. Whole town used to turn out to help raise a barn, haymaking used to take many people instead of the machinery we use today. Many hands make light work. So in that spirit come to the farm on march 20th.

Now it being march in Missouri we can expect either beautiful spring day, 6inches of snow ,or nasty rain. in the case of any precipitation forget the work and come over for BBQ anyway. rsvp so we know how many to expect and how much pig to make.

Getting There.

Lots going on right now. We have had enough egg customers that we ran out of the cartons that our friends and family had saved for us. A quick visit to http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/ and we were in business. (We might have accidentally also ordered 25 more chickens )

And speaking of Business, I give you.....

It might be a little premature, only having one product (eggs), but we got a good deal on them.

We also got the first part of shipment of garden fodder.

Raspberries, Blackberries, horseradish, asparagus, salad greens, and herb seeds.

In the upper right hand corner on the box you will notice a packet without a picture.

Now I know raising chickens ( and a goat come May) , having a huge garden , and wanting bees in the middle of the city seems a little loony.

That little packet might be crossing the line into insane.

We had a volunteer pumpkin come up last year and let it sprawl in the backyard just for fun. we got 2 pumpkins out of the deal and the chickens enjoyed the shade from the leaves. You might notice the possible weight of the pumpkin variety we are growing this year. Enter the spousal patience part of this endeavor.

Now if it will just quit snowing we can get this party started.

Adventures of the silicon worm.

Today we had another episode of a very amusing occurrence that had been lovingly referred to as "The adventure of the silicon worm "

Our house is completely surrounded by concrete and the previous owners of the house, in a vain attempt to keep water out of the basement, had run a bead of silicon caulk around the entire perimeter of the house between the foundation and the slab. This did Nothing to keep water out of the basement. It did however create a 1200sq ft "worm" that we are constantly pulling out from between the house and the slab. I have disposed of it as best as possible but I have been known to miss a piece or two.

Not a big deal, right? Well this summer we noticed one of the chickens had found a piece and had determined it was a huge bug to be consumed.

The term "bird brain" comes to mind.

Well the other chickens wanted a piece of the action so to speak so they would then chase the chicken with the "worm" until she would drop it' then another chicken would pick it up , and so on and so on.

Since silicon isn't part of a healthy diet we would attempt to get it from the bird in question, adding yet another being chasing for the worm.

after the last time this summer I did a circuit of the yard to attempt to get all of the pieces.

I guess I missed one.

This is Queenie, expressing her displeasure, at me being the winner of the game once again.

Ahh, the joys of chickens.

Puff's timeout. Plus a shot of summer.

We have had a small problem with our banty hens going broody. Broody hens want to do nothing but sit on eggs to hatch them. This means they will stop laying their own eggs and sometimes not take the time to eat or drink. Since we are a rooster less flock, Puff could sit on those eggs for an eternity and they would never hatch.

Not only this but she is preventing the other chickens from using the nesting boxes.

Pidge had a small problem a month or so ago but we were able to break her of that pretty quickly by keeping the eggs collected so she had nothing to sit on.

Puff, not so much.

To break a hen of broodiness, the traditional wisdom is to make them uncomfortable. If the chickens have nothing to nest in they will eventually stop trying to hatch eggs. So I give you... THE TIMEOUT BOX. (cue dramatic music)Needless to say she was not happy to be somewhere where there is a constant draft up her tail feathers.

Hopefully after a couple of days in this Puff will get back in line.

And for all of you that are good and sick of the snow and cold weather.

Enjoy.

We're not from around here. I know you see us all the time, but trust me, we're from someplace else. We may have lived our whole lives right next door to you, but we left quite some time ago. We found another place and it suits us just fine. It's not far or hard to get to. Chances are you pass it all the time when you're driving too fast to work or throwing another frozen dinner in the shopping cart. You can't get to us that way. We aren't there. We're the ones in the next aisle buying yeast, flour, sugar, and coffee. We buy provisions, not groceries. We learned that food tastes better when you grow it yourself. We started with just a few recipes then learned to chew at a trot and now the idea of Lunchables and drive-thru hamburgers makes us tilt our heads a little. We're not above them, not by a long shot, we just don't have those where we're from. Or maybe we did and forgot about them? I can't remember. It's easy to forget about such things when you hop the fence to go where we went. There just isn't a lot of shrink-wrapped circular ham there. We're from another place. It's just like yours but the naps are better. We came for a bunch of different reasons but we sort of set up shop in the same community. It's not a physical location, of course. (It's much better than that.) It's a place in our actions, our decisions, our conversations, our hope. It's a place in our hobbies, our skills, our secret desire to know what a warm egg feels like in lanolin-wet palms. It doesn't matter where we came from or who we were before, this new place kinda took us all in and showed us how to calm the hell down. What? You're confused? Oh, well, you probably saw us there and just didn't realize it. Remember when we didn't pick up the phone (even after twenty rings) because we were in the garden? Or that time we gave up a weekend to make a chicken coop? Or last Saturday when we spent the whole day at that indoor farmer's market talking to the people at the wool booth we'd never met before, but felt like we knew while you kept telling us the movie was starting in thirty minutes... That's where we left to go. Sorry we missed the previews, we were talking to our neighbors.

You can spot us pretty easy. Our men aren't afraid of facial hair and our women have been known to grab goats by the horns. Our children go barefoot, so do we. We're the quieter ones, in the corner, feet propped up on a second-hand coffee table in a fourth-hand wool sweater. That's one of us, right ober there, see him? The one with the guitar slung over his back, and the black dog following his bike? See him now? He's the one with the saddle bags on the back wheel overflowing with a half bushel of tomatoes. No, he's not a tomatoes fetishist, he's canning today. He'll be eating fresh organic marinara in January pulled off the larder shelf. He'll let the black dog lick his plate when he's done. Yes, I'm sure. He's from where I'm from. We know our own. See, where we come from people aren't scared of dirt—not even mildly abashed by it. My people will spend an entire August morning with a potato patch. We'll also spend an entire October night in front of a bonfire with some home brew and guitars. My people know how to darn a sock and bake a loaf of bread. They know how to cast on and be cast away. Sure, we'll join you for dinner in a restaurant, but we'll probably opt for pasta. Where we come from food animals know what sunlight feels like and have felt grass under their hooves. We don't eat the animals from your place. We saw what they saw before they died.

We're not from around here, but you'll see us everywhere. We're walking down the streets of Montreal, Chicago, Seattle, and L.A. We're waiting for a Taxi on the Lower East Side. We're mucking out the chicken coop, chatting at the farm stand, jumping on the back of our horses and riding the L. We're everywhere and right next to you all the time, but we left that place and now we're gone. None of us are going back. We thought about it. It passed.HOOOO! You should see this place. Man, it's so beautiful. I mean a Wednesday afternoon at 3:47 is fall-down-the-stairs stunning. We learned to see this. We watched the fireflies come out on the porch and missed the new CSI. Truthfully, we barely look at the television anymore. It's a side effect of the new place—there's just so much to do and we're scared if we let ourselves get distracted we'll miss the fireflies. We can only take so much tragedy, you see.And hey, this place we went to—it's yours too. To be perfectly honest we're getting a little tired waiting for you to show up. Yeah, what you heard is true. The work is hard and the hours long, but I promise it's the best quiche you'll ever taste and the coffee is wicked good. When you're ready we'll show you how to hop the fence like we did. It starts with a mason jar or a day-old chick in your palm and the road map kinda unfolds from there. Somewhere past the cloth diapers and the raw milk we're hanging out, yes there, over past the used trucks and beat tractors. See the bikes and carts along the barn? Keep going and you'll find us. We know when you start coming to our place you'll get it. You won't want to go either. And hey, we'll wait, because we've got another saddle in the barn. We planted an extra row of beans. We put aside a few spare jars of tomato sauce and let the hens know there's more breakfasts on the way. We'll make room. There's always a place for you at the table. (And just between you and me, If you want to get on the black dog's good side, let him lick your plate...)

I would love to claim this as my own. This is a post from a really good blog called http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com/. It would be a entire post to properly praise this blog. do yourself a favor and check it out.

There is not a whole lot going on here. The chickens are laying a ridiculous amount of eggs, but past that we are just waiting for spring.

Eggs!

We came home from vacation to find the nesting boxes had been used. Since then we have been getting 2-3 eggs a day. Sweet. With this comes the question that until now has been hypothetical.

"What the hell are we going to do with nearly 2 dozen eggs a week?"

The answer is, of course, egg based meals. I tried my hand at a quiche tonight and was pleasantly surprised when I cracked one open. Sweet.

Home grown eggs really are all they are cracked (no pun intended) up to be. The yolks on these things are nearly orange. The one thing I was not prepared for was the shells. These things are TOUGH. Anyway, dinner was delicious and we are excited about having a ready supply of farm fresh eggs.

Four Seasons Harvest

After a disappointing year in the garden I was ready to throw in the towel. It had been too cool , my soil was less than optimal, and my bed placement could have better. However I had talking to a friend who had set up a "square foot garden" raised bed in his backyard, but not gotten it done until July. I suggested trying a fall/winter planting. I did this last year with a VERY simple cold frame setup and had fairly good success. As I was talking to him I felt the spark of the gardener flare up.

Year round gardening is nothing new but has fallen out of favor in a society where you can get any produce regardless of season. Elliot Coleman has written several books on the subject. Four Seasons Harvest is the only one I have but it is a wealth of knowledge on the subject. The premise is, that with a simple covering, crops can survive in winter, allowing you to have fresh lettuce in January. Last year all I used was some polyethylene painters plastic draped over a support. With this I was able to grow a nice crop of lettuce, leeks, carrots ,and garlic. Crops will take longer to mature because of the shortened days but it works.

This is my latest, upgraded cold frame. I was once again blessed by the goddess Refusa with some double hung windows destined for the landfill. With the push to upgrade the windows in most homes you can get these anywhere. Check curbs and you can score big. I added hinges and some leftover clothes line to make harvesting a snap.

Don't be afraid to try a winter garden. It can be a lot of fun.