Autumn on the homestead

Mint in the garden

I can't begin to explain how insane the last few months have been. It's not been BAD per se, just... hectic. I also reached a point where I was so heavy and so out of shape that working in the garden was miserable. I planted quite a few things, and got a good start on the garden, and then... wasn't able to follow through. I went on my diet, and today was the last day of the restrictive part of it. I went in at the start weighing 220 lbs (at 5'1"), grossly overweight. Today I weighed in at 196 lbs or so. I feel like I can move mountains.

I made one of those fatal mistakes: I ate like a farmer but didn't work like one. If you want to enjoy a lot of home baked breads and pastas, you have to work your rear off - literally. It's been a long time coming, but the pain and unhappiness finally pushed me to do the drastic diet that we did, and the world feels a lot better now.

I missed out on a lot of the green bean harvest, but we did get enough for part of the winter. We froze some and canned some, so that is a good thing. What's left out there on the bushes is rapidly drying out, withered by the frost and freezing temperatures. Soon I'll pick the last of them, let the seeds dry out, and put some up as soup beans and the rest as seed for next year.

The tomato bed has been put to bed, as has DD's garden bed. I'm covering each bed with cardboard and some with black plastic as well, depending on the severity of the weeds in them. A bit of wood or brick on top to keep it all secure, and the beds are all ready for the snow to fly. Over the cold months, the worms will come and munch on the cardboard, the weed seeds will bake to death and smother, and the soil will be happier than we left it. In the spring we'll put on a nice dose of compost and maybe some manure, and we'll be good to go.

While not everything went perfect this year, we're definitely ahead when it comes to next spring. The only things I really regret are that I didn't get in the asparagus or strawberries. Add another year to the wait for those... they take so long to establish. Still, the results are long lasting and delicious, so I suppose it's completely worth it.

How did your garden go this summer?

Guest Post: Ready Nutrition

I've been following Ready Nutrition for a couple of weeks now after seeing an interesting post on how to become prepared over 52 weeks. Then they had a contest. Write a blog post, they said, and if we feature it you'll be entered to win! So I wrote. And mine happens to be one of the first ones to be posted! So I'm very excited. I wrote about preparing for storms and about the Rule of Threes. Have a peek over at the article and see what you think.

Guest Blog - Everythingfarm.com

Check out my latest guest blog at Everythingfarm.com! I talk about canning and preserving the harvest, and some basic safety rules. A teeny preview:

"It’s always great to see those lovely, full jars with their gleaming lids and multi-colored contents neatly stacked on their shelf in the pantry. From jams and jellies to stewed meats and broth, canning is a noble pursuit. With the summer’s vegetables arriving fast and furious, it’s time to haul out the canning jars and start preserving your harvest for use throughout the winter. The poor, the frugal, and those who like to live simply will find much pleasure in the process of putting up food for the winter."

Victory gardening - guest blog at Everythingfarm.com

We live in a world where food prices are rising and natural disasters are happening more and more often. Our farming infrastructure is starting to crumble because of the Big Ag practices of mono-cropping and chemical usage. Our cities have become food deserts and even our rural areas are overly dependent upon trucking in food from far away.

(Read the rest of this article over at Everythingfarm.com!)

Check back often for information on canning, preserving, general homesteading and more. If you have questions or comments, please write to me below. I love to answer questions! You can follow the blog via Network Blogs and Google Friend Connect (see the left hand column for the button). If you purchase items I have linked through Amazon or the ads on my site, I receive an affiliate portion of the sale. If you find the items are useful, please purchase from my site! 
 
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The coop has arrived!
Guest post - Food deserts and changing weather patterns
Guest post: Dollars or sense?
The promised update
June in the garden

The coop has arrived!

Our new coop - the long view

Well, though the wait was long, we have determined that it was worth it. Our chicken coop arrived from The Chicken Saloon at the beginning of the month, and this weekend we put it together. I don't have pictures of the process of assembling it, but think of it as Ikea for chickens - the pieces were pre-assembled, and we just had to put the various bits together. It took two of us a bit over an hour and a half to build, I think, not including the run.

Side view of the coop and run

We purchased The Ranch coop, both because it was the largest coop available and because it came with a detachable run. Our goal is to have about 12 or 15 hens and a rooster, so we needed something large enough to happily hold such a flock. The Ranch is rated for up to 15 hens, and so seemed ideal. The attached run is a total of 12 feet long by 3.3 feet wide (making it just shy of 40 square feet of run space), and the coop itself is 3x3.5 feet. It has three roosting poles inside, and a removable litter tray that you're supposed to be able to just slide out, clean, and return.  It has two ventilation windows, and two bump-outs that are nesting boxes (basically giving you 3 boxes on each side). I have decided that this coop and run will comfortably hold up to 10 chickens, no more, no matter what the paperwork says. I'm actually okay with that, though.

Removable litter tray

The coop is made of cedar, and is untreated. The smell is lovely, natural, and at the moment, very strong. Time will dull that scent, but for now, it should repel bugs just by its very nature. There's a reason we use cedar wood in our wardrobes and dressers! The pieces went together easily, and each pre-drilled hole was in the right place. The only real difficulty we had was that the instructions for putting together the run (which arrives in large fenced sections) were lacking. We had no idea which pieces went where, and had to do the jigsaw puzzle thing for a half hour before figuring it all out. It was easy to put together, just a bit complex to maneuver into place.

Litter tray (mostly) closed

The instructions have you screw the run to the coop, and we'll be doing that to start with, but we eventually expect that we'll follow the lead of someone I saw on Pinterest a while back, and use hook and eye closures (heavy duty ones) to hold the run against the body of the coop. That should make it considerably easier to take on and off. The run itself has a human door in the side, allowing we two-legs in to clean, feed, and retrieve eggs from our birds.

The coop itself is raised up off the ground, with a small run area underneath. To either side of the coop is a handle, allowing four people to easily lift and move the whole coop (run NOT attached) from place to place, even with chickens inside. This is something I think will come in handy, as we'll be able to shift the coop for cleaning and to allow the hens access to fresh grass and weeds.

Ventilation window

I was surprised at how quickly it all went together, and how well the walls, run, and roof all fit together. We'll see how it does during our next rainstorm, which is likely to happen before our hens arrive. If it doesn't leak, I'll be thrilled. If it does, we'll have to do some caulking or perhaps pick up a tarp, but I'm hopeful that it'll just work.

We've situated the coop and run right beside our compost bin. The general idea is that throughout the year we'll be able to clean the coop out and dump the dirty litter into the compost directly. Come spring we can turn it, and by the following year it should be transformed into some pretty beautiful soil!

Nesting boxes with latch

The nesting boxes are actually a pretty amazing design. While the bump-out isn't removable, the separation slats and the bottom do pop out easily. Chickens can be shoo'd out to the run and locked out of the coop for cleaning purposes, allowing you all the time you need to pull out dirty litter, pop out the pieces, clean them, then return them with fresh litter. I'm happy with this set-up. I'll be picking up some wooden eggs to help our new hens figure out where to lay, and hopefully it'll be a relatively painless process.

The back of the coop comes off for easy access to the interior.

We've decided to put food and water inside the coop itself, because it will help keep the water from freezing in the winter. We're picking up something called an Aqua Miser, which will allow us to turn a 5 gallon bucket into a waterer that will always be free of chicken poop. We'll be mounting our bucket from the roof, hanging by a chain but still supported at the wall to keep it from spinning or moving too much. The feeder will be set up in a similar way. We'll be wrapping heating tape around the winter water bucket, then insulation over that. This will hopefully keep the water within from freezing even during the worst of weather.

I admit, I'm really looking forward to getting my chickens, now. The children will each get to name one hen, thereby saving that hen from later inclusion in the stew pot (we don't eat pets or friends). I'll be getting a couple of expanding bands so that we can tell the named chickens from the others easily. Kids will have the chore of hunting eggs each day, and bringing them in.

I can't wait ... the flavor of truly fresh eggs is so different from store-bought!

Check back often for information on canning, preserving, general homesteading and more. If you have questions or comments, please write to me below. I love to answer questions! You can follow the blog via Network Blogs and Google Friend Connect (see the left hand column for the button). If you purchase items I have linked through Amazon or the ads on my site, I receive an affiliate portion of the sale. If you find the items are useful, please purchase from my site! 
 
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Guest post - Food deserts and changing weather patterns
Guest post: Dollars or sense?
The promised update
June in the garden
Busy, busy!

Guest post on Everythingfarm.com - Food deserts and changing weather patterns are making farming difficult

I'm writing quite a lot over at Everythingfarm, and I'm hoping you'll take a peek at what I have to share there. :) If you'd like to read today's post, you can find it here!

Sneak peek:

It’s no surprise to most farmers in New England that big cities have become large food deserts, with only a day or two worth of food storage on hand at the best of times. When disasters strike, such as Superstorm Sandy in New Jersey and New York, places like Hoboken and New York City were in dire straits. Food stores ran out long before emergency rations could be brought in, and looting was endemic.

I am hoping to be guest blogging for them quite frequently, so do keep an eye out here, FaceBook, G+, and StumbleUpon for my posts. If there's anything you'd like to see, drop me a line!

Check back often for information on canning, preserving, general homesteading and more. If you have questions or comments, please write to me below. I love to answer questions! You can follow the blog via Network Blogs and Google Friend Connect (see the left hand column for the button). If you purchase items I have linked through Amazon or the ads on my site, I receive an affiliate portion of the sale. If you find the items are useful, please purchase from my site! 
 
You may also be interested in:

Guest post: Dollars or sense?
The promised update
June in the garden
Busy, busy!
Insanity in the garden 

Guest post on EverythingFarm.com - Dollars or sense?

Please go have a peek at the guest blog I've written over on EverythingFarm.com's blog! Here's a quick teaser:

GMOs are getting a bad rap, and there’s good reason for it. Big Ag’s policies about distribution, seed saving, and health studies have been more about dollars than sense, leaving farmers and consumers alike in the dust. The question is, what do farmers do if they can’t plant GMO seeds, and how do they address the depleted soil left in the wake of chemical toxins?

 I am hoping to be guest blogging for them quite frequently, so do keep an eye out here, FaceBook, G+, and StumbleUpon for my posts. If there's anything you'd like to see, drop me a line!

Check back often for information on canning, preserving, general homesteading and more. If you have questions or comments, please write to me below. I love to answer questions! You can follow the blog via Network Blogs and Google Friend Connect (see the left hand column for the button). If you purchase items I have linked through Amazon or the ads on my site, I receive an affiliate portion of the sale. If you find the items are useful, please purchase from my site! 
 
You may also be interested in:

The promised update
June in the garden
Busy, busy!
Insanity in the garden
Garden update and my contest win

The promised update

The greens bed

I've promised this update for a while, but I've let other responsibilities call me away from it. So here it is! My garden is both a source of joy and disappointment this year. The vegetables that I have planted are doing exceptionally well despite the extra rain and very hot temperatures, but I did not get some of my normal stuff planted in time (cucumbers and corn, notably). So it's a bittersweet update, I suppose.

Greens - side view

The greens are doing phenomenally in their new raised bed. Closest to us in the picture is "cut and come again" lettuce mix, and behind that are my collards, kale, and broccoli. The broccoli didn't do as well as I had hoped, coming up very slowly and then bolting quickly because of the temperatures. We did get a meal out of it, but after planting 12 seedlings, I expected a bit more. Ah well. We might yet get some side shoots. And yes, there ARE a lot of weeds in there. Between the rain and being on medication that forces me to stay out of the sun, I haven't made the time to go weeding.

Potatoes

The potatoes appear to be doing really well, but I admit it's taking all my will power not to shove my hands in there and see if there are any actual spuds forming. There are five tire stacks and seven plants in total, and they are growing just as they should. If all goes well, when the greens die back and we tip over those tires, we should find several pounds of potatoes in each. Considering these are grown from the potatoes we put away last year (the ones that went to seed), and are therefore 100% free, I think any harvest at all is a clear win.

Main tomato bed

This is the tomato bed, and is mostly cherry and grape tomatoes. I need to get in there and do a tiny bit of weeding and stake up the tomatoes. Several have fallen over. We're getting a ton of blossoms, though, and the plants look very healthy. I'm not seeing the lushness of greenery that I did last year, which is a good thing since last year we got beautiful greens and no fruit! I'm feeling very positive about these tomato plants. I feel a pot of gazpacho soup coming on...

Zucchini plants

Most large families plant one or two zucchini seedlings and count themselves lucky not to be over-run. We, on the other hand, put in six, and hope they all produce lots of zucchinis! So far, so good. These plants are coming up beautifully, and are just beginning to form a few flowers down in the shaded innards below the leaves. With any luck, we'll start seeing some zucchini in about two weeks. I can't wait, because we like zucchini boats, and zucchini bread, and zucchini with tomatoes and cheese, and zucchini lasagna and...

Hot and sweet peppers

Though you can't see it, there are baby peppers on many of those plants! All of the round pots you see have peppers in them. Some have one or two types, and others have a variety. They definitely need to be weeded, but other than that I'm happy with their progress. This weekend when the sun comes out, these pepper plants (and some of the other plants) will be getting a spray of water and epsom salt, upping their magnesium content.  This is said to create some really beautiful and large green peppers, so I'm more than willing to give it a try.

Pole beans, three types

I have three types of pole beans growing this year, in nine tires. Sis picked me up Kentucky Wonder pole beans for my birthday, and there are four tires growing them. The closest tire to us in this picture contains "unnamed pole beans" that I won in a contest last year from Adventures of a Thrifty Mama on a City 'Stead. Of the three types, hers are the most vigorous (and are a good foot taller than all the others so far!). The four tires farthest from us in this picture are Rattlesnake pole beans, a favorite of our family for some time. All the beans are doing really well, growing up their trellises.

Pole beans

Each tower is built inside a tire that has had the sidewall cut off. The tires were filled with well rotted compost, and planted. I put 12 to 14 beans in each tire, in a circle around the edge. My original plan was to put cabbages in the center of each tower, but I never got to it. The towers themselves are made out of green fiberglass poles that are about 8 feet tall. There are three poles to each tire, around which we've wound a good, coarse hemp twine in a spiral. The beans are quite happily growing up both poles and twine, grabbing on with their little suckers and pulling themselves up. With all the rain we've had, it's impressive watching the amount of growth these plants are going through. They're climbing up the poles much faster than I thought they might!

Bush beans

Speaking of beans, I ran across a handful of beans I'd saved from last year's organic green bush beans. I planted them at the end of the squash bed, figuring they'd probably do alright there. I was correct! They're growing apace, and they're already getting flowers! The only major challenge I have is keeping the squash vines from invading the bean area. I don't mind, though. It's worth it!

Acorn squash

The acorn and butternut squash are doing great. They're vining appropriately and are already putting out flowers. We've seen tons of pollinators (and our peas have proven that there's no lack of them here) so I know that fairly soon we'll see the first budding squash plants. We like to eat our acorn squash with brown sugar and lots of butter!

Beets and carrots

The beets and carrots are coming along well. I'm impressed with the beets, to be honest. They're very large, well spaced, and I'm hoping that the lush greens are a reflection of the developing beet roots beneath the soil. The carrots are in a variety of stages of growth. Some of them are large enough that they should head up soon, and others are still quite tiny. Hopefully they'll even out as the season progresses. I just found a new recipe for making beets, and I'm dying to try it. I might have to go buy some from the farmer's market...

The herbs

My herbs are doing quite well, but are also a bit on the weedy side. The actual tires need to be weeded, and I need to take the weed whacker over and clean up around the tires. Still, we have basil, cilantro, rosemary, dill, thyme, sage, parsley, several types of oregano and mint... There are very few herbs I will need to buy this autumn, which makes me a very happy critter indeed.

Despite not getting the corn and cucumbers in, I'm proud of what we do have. We'll have a year's worth of squash and herbs to harvest in the fall, and maybe enough beets to can some up as Harvard beets. We won't have enough tomatoes, but only because we use so many of them. The ones that are coming look amazing, though! Our peas are going to town, putting out huge amounts. I need to go pick them or they'll start to die back!

How is your garden doing? What favorite vegetable are you growing this summer?

Check back often for information on canning, preserving, general homesteading and more. If you have questions or comments, please write to me below. I love to answer questions! You can follow the blog via Network Blogs and Google Friend Connect (see the left hand column for the button). If you purchase items I have linked through Amazon or the ads on my site, I receive an affiliate portion of the sale. If you find the items are useful, please purchase from my site! 
 
You may also be interested in:

June in the garden
Busy, busy!
Insanity in the garden
Garden update and my contest win
It doesn't have to be expensive

Updates soon!

Wow, I just realized it's been almost a month since I updated this! I apologize, dear readers. I've been busy with so many things, and the blog just sort of fell out the bottom of the list. I can say that we have peas galore right now, and lots of lettuce. Collards and kale are doing well, too. The broccoli is starting to head! Both the pole beans and the bush beans are getting big. I didn't get corn in, and I'm disappointed about it, but oh well.

My cucumbers aren't in the ground yet, either, so I'm not sure whether to start them or not. I think it'd be okay... They are 70 days to maturity, and if I get them in this week that'd be into the beginning of September. It looks like a long autumn, so... maybe?

I need to start posting up some recipes, too, among other things. So be patient and garden info and how-to articles WILL return!

June in the garden

The garden, June 2013

There's a lot to be happy about right now in my life. The garden is coming together beautifully, if a bit slower than intended. My tomatoes, peas, radishes, carrots, beets, broccoli, kale, collards, salad greens, and lots of other yummy things are coming up gangbusters. Our new sprinkler makes rainbows, too, which puts a lovely hue on everything!

The tomatoes

I have about 40 tomato plants, all told. Half are meaty, slicing tomatoes (Purple Cherokee, Roma, MarketMore, etc), and the other half, pictured here, are cherry tomatoes. I had issues with my meat tomatoes because I planted them to get them outside on Memorial Day or thereabouts, then we had that heavy freeze. Everything had to stay inside the house, and they got a bit root bound. They also got bumped around a lot, and quite a few got broken or squished in the process. The cherry toms fared much better. All of them but one survived, and they're perky as all get-out. I have no idea how I'll be caging them!

The 'broken bed'

The cherries are planted in the "broken bed", the one that was in pieces in the last picture. Because of how it was put together last year, we needed to raise it up higher for this season, and add more (and better quality) soil. After adding a big of height and dirt to it, it looked much better. We also replaced the end pieces, as the original birch logs I used had begun to rot in place.

Green onions lurking

Down the other side of the broken bed we used these bricks, which we filled with dirt and then planted our green onions into. I'm hoping they'll do well, and really spring up, as our family loves green onions in many dishes. If they don't make it, I'll replace them with marigolds to help keep bugs and predators away from my cherry tomatoes. Around the outside of this bed, I also planted nasturtiums, which are both pretty and edible. When they come up, they will add a gorgeous yellow to the dark red and green of the plants.

Squash bed

At the other end of the cherry tomato bed, I planted my zucchini. I ran into a problem when I discovered that it wasn't my two types of winter squash that I had to worry about cross pollinating... it was one of them and my zucchini and pumpkins! It turns out that all these plants are part of a large family, cucurbita. Some of the family will intermix with other parts, and some won't. It took me a bit of research, but I finally came to the conclusion that I could easily plant my butternut squash next to my acorn squash, but putting the zucchini in that bed would bring disaster (at least if I wanted to save seeds, which I most definitely do!). The zucchini has now been planted on the far side of the pea bed, so that there is a physical barrier between it and the offending acorn squash, as well as a bit of space. I will hope that whatever pollinators visit my plants don't hit up both sides of the pea fencing!

Beets and radishes

The radishes are taking over the tire, although there are quite a few weeds hiding inside that leafy canopy as well. The beets are faring rather well, and I have high hopes for them. I'll plant a second crop of them once these ones are grown, in the hopes that we'll get a very late fall/early winter harvest from them. In amongst the radishes are the carrots, and they're looking fantastic! Most are an inch high, and are now easily distinguishable from the surrounding weeds. That makes weeding MUCH easier!

Peas and tomatoes

We doubled up our pea fence this year by zip tying two of the green metal stakes together to make one very tall stake. Last year's peas grew up and over the short fence I had, and ended up breaking in several places because of lack of support. Not so this year! I'm looking forward to collecting delicious, fresh peas from the vines currently growing like wild. Compared to this time last year, our peas are thicker, greener, and much more vigorous, so I think we'll be harvesting a good amount.

I planted some bush beans as well, this year, from the seeds I saved from last year's beans. They're tucked in at the end of the squash bed, two 4-foot rows. It's not a lot, but I wanted to grow enough for a couple of meals, as well as to save the seed for next year. This year, we're going more for pole beans, though, with Scarlet Runners, Rattlesnake Pole, and Kentucky Wonders. They'll be planted (very soon, I expect!) in tires, with a tripod of poles and rough hemp twine wound around. I can't wait for the delicious flavor of the beans, and both the Scarlet Runners and the Rattlesnakes are excellent when dried, for use in soups and baked beans!

The greens bed

Last but definitely not least, the greens bed is doing phenomenally well. There are a few weeds but not overpowering. All but the Great Lakes lettuce came up, and I'm not sure if it just didn't germinate or if the weeds ate it. The cold snap did all the greens well, but especially my broccoli and kale, which are both reaching for the sky happily. I expect to see some broccoli forming in the next couple of weeks, and I might have to start harvesting kale soon as well.

So what's growing in your garden this month? I've yet to put my cucumbers in, and my swiss chard and corn as well. All are going into containers that can be moved around (although the cukes will be stationary once they begin to vine, as the trellis will go on and hold it in place), making it convenient to mow and weed whack.

Listed at the Homeacre Hop #22!

Check back often for information on canning, preserving, general homesteading and more. If you have questions or comments, please write to me below. I love to answer questions! You can follow the blog via Network Blogs and Google Friend Connect (see the left hand column for the button). If you purchase items I have linked through Amazon or the ads on my site, I receive an affiliate portion of the sale. If you find the items are useful, please purchase from my site! 
 
You may also be interested in:

Busy, busy!
Insanity in the garden
Garden update and my contest win
It doesn't have to be expensive
Making maple syrup