Homestead Happiness April Week 3

7:09 AM in 3, april, Aqua, happiness, homestead, week

More fresh veggies, an archeological discovery, and grass-craving chickens made us happy this week.

Our onion sets from last year that didnt produce bulbs, are just the right size for eating as green onions right now.  And since we want to use that garden space for other veggies this year, its a perfect storm for green onion-themed cuisine. Yum!

While digging up a garden bed, we hit a buried brick.  Further digging revealed that it was actually a line of bricks, two wide, and about six inches underground.  We havent had a chance to chat with the neighbors yet to see if they know what its from, but clearly some sort of man-made thing used to exist here.  Could it be a clue about our absurdly high selenium levels?

Weve also been finding pockets of dirt where the soil particles are held together by some sort of white material.  It looks slightly filamentous, but is very crumbly at the same time.  Some kind of good fungus, we hope?

We had a few inches of snow last Thursday, but the chickens could see green grass under the picnic table and freshly turned dirt out in the yard.  When we got home from work, we could tell they had a case of coop fever.  It makes us happy that the chickens arent content to just hang out in the coop all day.

What made you happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness April Week 4

11:54 PM in 4, april, Aqua, happiness, homestead, week

Plenty of bee-related news has us kind of giddy this week.

Our new bee package arrived on Saturday.  The local distributor sold more than 1,500 packages, which meant it was a total zoo for picking them up, and that our bees will have some competition for the neighborhood flowers.  Still, its nice to see such an interest in beekeeping, and theyll definitely have first dibs on the dandelions in our yard!

The new bees are already taking full advantage of the pollen in our dandy-filled yard.  Keep up the good work, ladies!

As a side note, in preparing the hive for the new package, we ended up finding the old queen.  Turns out she didnt die in the great yellow jacket war of 2014, and we can rule out that they absconded last fall.  That leaves either CCD, or too heavy of losses from the yellow jackets to make it through the winter.  Should we start a portrait collection of our queens for future colonies to look back on and remember their storied history?  This was Elizabeth I.  Right now we have Elizabeth II.

The bees came just in time, too, because our strawberries are starting to bloom!  Weve got the squirrel cage set...now if we can just get all the mice trapped out of the adjacent shed before the berries ripen, we might actually get some to eat this year!  Also, to the fruit trees waiting to flower: ready, go!

We also realized that swarm season and hunting season are complementary.  So, if we put a ladder stand in one of our trees now as a support for a swarm trap, we can turn it back into a hunting stand later when we either catch a swarm, or when swarm season is over in July.  Either way, it will be ready in time for deer season! (Although we probably wont be able to hunt deer from the stand in its current location.)

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness February Week 3

8:50 AM in 3, Aqua, february, happiness, homestead, week

Were still fine-tuning some of the experimental details on our eggshell leavening, but it was otherwise a productive week around the homestead (thanks to some unseasonably warm weather!).  Heres what made us happy this week.

We got another batch of wine started, this one from frozen black raspberries.  They had been in the freezer since July of 2004!  They say a fine wine improves with age, guess well find out if that applies to aging before fermentation, too.  At least, the berries still tasted good!  Also, starting the wine meant Jake could clean up the mess that the berries made in the fridge while they were thawing.  That made Katie extra happy.

Outside, highs in the 50s and 60s (°F) made for happy playing in the dirt, including playing musical berries.  We transplanted dormant strawberries out to the garden where we can protect them with the motion detector sprinklers, and dormant raspberries to the place vacated by the strawberries since they werent thriving in their original location.  Also, Musical Berries is going to be the name of our new family band.

Also on the yard work list was chopping out the remaining stump from the tree of heaven, filling the hole with dirt, and planting another tree in its place.  Some of the old stump pieces had termites, which the chickens liked a lot.  In fact, they were willing to brave a battlefield of flying wood chips to get to them, and with 100% survival rate.  Weve got ninja chickens! (Never mind, were going to call our band Ninja Chickens.)

In the process of our eggshell leavening experiments, we also made a big pile of wood ashes, which well use in a future set of leavening experiments.  The connection between these two will become apparent in the near future.

The rhubarb is alive!

The chives are also alive!  Its always nice to know the plants are starting to think springly thoughts, too.  The weather, on the other hand, is very ambivalent--after highs in the 60s on Saturday, we got a nice blanket of snow last night!

The chickens are also revving up their egg production--four eggs in four of the last five days.  Keep up the good work, ladies!

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness May Week 3

10:16 AM in 3, Aqua, happiness, homestead, may, week

We skipped a couple weeks of our HAP posts, in part because we were busy with non-homesteading-related stuff, and in part because weve been doing a bit of twiddling our thumbs waiting for the dirt to dry out enough to plant the garden.  But theres still plenty to be happy about!

First off, the wild greens in the yard are loving all the rain.  We havent planted any greens in the garden yet, but we sure havent had to leave the yard for our vegetables!  You may have guessed from the last couple posts that weve been eating a lot of dandelion greens and sorrel (and youd be correct), but the mallow (in the picture) has also been a valuable addition to our plates.

The hops plant came back!  And its already as big as it got last year!  Hopefully it will help the bees battle varroa, although we dont have too strong of hopes that the bees will self-treat.

One leaf on our rhubarb was almost completely eaten by slugs (we think), and the stalk had come partially disconnected.  So we picked it the rest of the way, making this little 4" morsel is the first rhubarb weve harvested from the plant.  It made one bowl of oatmeal very awesome.

Judging by the number of volunteer potatoes that came up this spring, we need to do a better job harvesting next year (although volunteer veggies that made it through the winter are always kind of fun) .  They got knocked back a bit by a Mothers Day snowstorm, but theyre pushing on now.  We pulled out a couple that were in this years garden beds, but the ones that came up in what are now aisles will get to do what they want for the summer.  For the ones we had to move, we dug the best specimens into the compost bin to see what theyd do, since last year we had a regular old russet potato from the store sprout in the compost and survive the summer to actually produce a pound or two of potatoes.  That was a nice surprise!

One nice thing about all this rain is that its made it really easy to pull weeds.  The strawberries needed it bad, and we happily removed all the quack grass in there.

We did take the risk of turning over a couple beds to get the onions and sweet potatoes planted since they really needed to get in the ground.  Hope they do ok!

Some of the first wildflowers (not including dandelions) are also starting to bloom.  These guys are in with some roses that are looking a little deficient in iron or nitrogen.  We havent seen any bees on these blooms yet...

...but they are working on the chives that got ahead of us!  This little gal was so into it, she started probing the next flower while she was still standing on the first one!  Good work, ladies.

What made you happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness June Week 4

1:09 PM in 4, Aqua, happiness, homestead, june, week

Lots of developments on fruits, vegetables, and wildflowers this week made us happy.

The creeping bellflower, which is kindly filling in our less-maintained areas with purple June/July flowers, is in full bloom.

Its an invasive species, but other than being an aggressive spreader and difficult to eradicate, its not as bad as some invasives.  For example, this patch s a hotspot for bee activity.

The squirrels won round two also, picking 90% of our strawberries while they were still green, even with the quick and dirty strawberry cage in place.  So either the woven wire fencing has too large of holes, or were battling mice instead of squirrels.  (Or were battling jedi squirrels that can pick the strawberries using The Force...we know they exist.)  We made our quick and dirty strawberry cage slightly less quick but even more dirty by covering it with 1/2" hardware cloth.

Weve got an especially delicious-looking strawberry that no squirrel could possibly resist as a test probe.  If it gets picked, our problem is definitely mice.

It looks like we might actually get some raspberries in year two.  Only a handful, but hey!  You gotta start somewhere.

We were thinking we would get skunked on apples, plums, and sour cherries this year since there were only a few flowers on the plums (none on the apples and cherries) and we couldnt find fruit on anything.  But behold!  There are a few plums we had missed.  Were going to have four of them come September.  Quadruplets would normally be very exciting, but its a good thing we made so much jam last year!

Similarly, the Nanking cherries seem to have survived the winter ok and will be ripening soon.  Our likely-bird-planted versions compete with other shrubs and weeds in the shady areas of our yard, so we dont usually get enough of these to do anything with but make a light snack.  But theyre really good, so maybe we should do some plant propagation experiments to give them a chance to reach their full permaculture potential.

Finally, the corn is definitely going to be "knee high by the fourth of July" since its already thigh-high now!  Were currently devising squirrel-deterring plans for when the ears start to ripen.

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness November Week 2

9:08 PM in 2, Aqua, happiness, homestead, november, week

Its been a while since we posted a HAP post, but with our schedule finally settling back to normal after several crazy months, its time to get back on track.  Here are a few things that made our week.

The chard and kale, protected by the row cover chicken tractor, survived the first couple snows of the winter.  The temps only dipped down into the upper 20s (°F), so the real test will come later.  But so far, so good!

Some of the unprotected dandelions survived, too, including this audacious specimen!  The last few days its been warm enough for the bees to fly, too, and this little guy has very little competition for their pollination services.  Well played, dandelion.

We finally got the broilers their own setup in the shed, with some pasture space outside.  Better for them with more space, better for us because theyre easier to take care of than when theyre inside the brooder box.  This batch of broilers, although almost 20% had to be terminated early for various reasons, was a lot cleaner and more rambunctious than previous batches.  They even wandered away from the feeder to explore the pasture at times!  They all went in the freezer on Saturday, which means were about ready to close the books on them and write up the stats.

Did you know that the bottom grate of a Smokey Joe grill fits perfectly inside a Lodge 12", 8-quart dutch oven?  Thats an important discovery considering how many chickens we now have available to roast.

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness for March Week 2

2:47 AM in 2, Aqua, for, happiness, homestead, march, week

We skipped our HAP post last week because there wasnt too much to report on, other than the potato starch experiment.  We mostly did that, played in the snow, and tried to figure out why our bees died (more on that in a few days).  But there were a few snippets of progress this week.  Heres how we entertained ourselves:

We had collected our soil samples back in early February, when the ground was unfrozen and dry from a warm and sunny January.  But we finally got the dirt fully dry and broke up all the chunks.

That meant it was ready to bag it up and send to Massachusetts for nutrient and heavy metal testing!  Hopefully we only have to do the metal testing once, since its expensive.

Saturday was Pi Day.  Were trying to cut down on our sugar consumption, but on a nerdy holiday that celebrates with dessert, we didnt stand a chance.  The recipe was essentially this.

Free composting/mulching materials.  Thanks, Craigslist!

REUBENS!!!!

Ok, the real St. Patricks Day isnt until Tuesday, but Sunday was the start of Irish Food Week here at the Lab.  Plus, we couldnt wait until Tuesday to cook up our corned beast because weve got pesky obligations that last all day, e.g., off-homestead work.

What made you happy this week?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Homestead Happiness and Progress HAP This Week

11:56 PM in and, Aqua, hap, happiness, homestead, progress, this, week

Weve noticed in past years that we start to develop some symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), of a sort.  The weird thing is, it seems to be out of phase with the time of year that its supposed to crop up, that being the winter doldrums when sunshine is in short supply.  For us, and we wonder if also for many other part-time homesteaders, the winter isnt so bad because theres not a ton of stuff to do homesteading-wise (except dream and plan), so our off-farm responsibilities dont really get in the way of anything.

But then,  the air starts to get warmer, the ground starts to dry out, and the days start to get longer, but are still short enough that daylight hours are in precious short supply.  Thats when it hits us--when we want to get out in the yard and do stuff, but its already dark (or nearly so) when we get home from work.  So, to combat the worst effects of our out-of-phase SAD, were starting a new (hopefully weekly) series featuring simple things that made our day around the homestead. Itll remind us that even if we cant spend as much time on homesteady stuff as wed like, theres still plenty to be happy about and progress is still being made.  That is, were going to combat SAD with HAP.

This is a schematic representation of our out-of-phase SAD.  For full-time homesteaders, we imagine a flat line right at the top.  Another way to interpret the graph is to imagine the red line as homestead responsibilities and the blue line as how caught up with them we are.

Happy thing #1: The bees are still alive!  Even after adding a big ol candy board, we hadnt seen the cluster for a few weeks and couldnt hear much buzzing in the hive.  But on warm days, theres plenty of activity and usually a few dead bees pushed out the bottom entrance (which is good because it means there are still housekeeping activities going on inside).

The Meyer lemon tree finally has flowers again!  It had struggled through several years, and not even put out flowers the last couple, so hopefully well actually get some lemons this year!  Maybe we should put it out by the bees and hope they pollinate it!

Rapidly growing avocado tree.  Its now taller than an avocado!  If we can keep it alive, we might even start to see fruit in a mere 5-13+ years.

The Swiss chard is still alive and starting to pick up again.  We didnt have much insulation on it, just a closed in row cover, and hit -10 °F multiple times.  But the chard is a real trooper!

A new bag-drying configuration.  We finally figured out what to do with that kitchen window opening, those two eyelet hooks, and that piece of string we didnt want to throw out!  [Katie rolls her eyes.]  They dry way faster here than standing inverted on the counter or in the dishwasher Murphy-style drying rack.

Right now they drip dry into a couple plant pots...water conservation at its finest!  In the future well put in a planter there that looks like it actually fits there.  With the bags hung symmetrically, and the light coming through the window just right, this setup looks almost...decorative. [Katie rolls her eyes again.]

What made you happy on your homestead this week?

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Homestead Happiness and Progress February Week 4

8:22 PM in 4, and, Aqua, february, happiness, homestead, progress, week

Winter returned with a vengeance this week, dumping two 8+" storms on us, and never really stopping in between.  Its sunny today, but were supposed to get another couple inches overnight and tomorrow.

As a result, the homestead looks like this, and most of our time was spent getting to and from work.  However...

On Friday, a large round of robins descended upon our boxelder tree, probably to discuss why they were in such a hurry to head north.  Theres at least two dozen of them there, and probably more hiding behind the snowy branches.

Look at em all in there!

It sure doesnt look like spring, but theyre here!  A tell-tale sign that the actual spring is not far behind, which is good enough for this week.

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