The Ladies Have Arrived

We now are the proud parents of four Rhode Island Red hybrid pullets courtesy of Rufus Martin (who's farm is down by the battlefield). They are still in a bit of a cultural shock, being taken today  from a flock of several hundred free range birds, crammed into a crate, driven down Sharpsburg pike in the back of an open truck, and then plopped down into a chicken tractor; all on a cold rainy day. Not to mention all of the sounds of being close to a major state road. Rufus' farm is on the back side of the battlefield and the quintessential bucolic country farm. Hopefully some old strawberries and some mixed grain will help ease them into our backyard hobby farm experiment.

These ladies were hatched out in mid-December and apparently are starting to lay. It will be interesting to see when we get the first egg.

The Chicken Tractor is Finished!!!

This damn project has taken about two years off of my life. But after about a year of planning and engineering it is finally finished. I was able to complete the run enclosure by adding an end gate for when we need to let the ladies our into the yard or a larger fenced-in area like the garden, a top hatch to access the water and food bins (square white buckets), the ramp up to the pop door, and the rest of the wire to round it all out. Needless to say, I've had enough carpentry for a while.

Now its time for a whiskey sour, the last of a bottle of Blood of Ragnar (raspberry mead), and some high volume Demon Hunter!

Hard to believe this is how it all started last summer.

Chicken Tractor Update (wheel and handle assembly)

 Spent the afternoon adding on the wheels and lift handles to the chicken tractor. Like all the other parts of this project it was engineering on the fly, not really knowing whether it would work out until it was built. There were several contraptions on the web with rather elaborate mechanisms for raising and lowering the wheels. I decided to go with a simpler approach that turns the whole thing into a giant wheelbarrow. Is this project overbuilt? Yes! But I wanted something a little bigger that would give our girls more space to get out and graze. That is the whole reason for this project in the first place; healthier-happier hens theoretically should lay healthier eggs or so the story goes. And to get back to the concept of backyard eggs; something that was common place a generation ago.

I scratched my head for most of the winter trying to decide how best to attach the wheels. The coop portion is fairly heavy. I settled on a 4X4 wood axle with the wheels being attached with 10-inch lag bolts. Now all that is left to do is to finish the run enclosure. This also will require some careful planning as I will need to be able to access the water and feed bins so that they can be removed easily. I am thinking of some kind of top hatch. It also will need an end hatch so that the hens can be let out in the garden when conditions allow.

First Turn Over for 2014

I finally was able to get into the garden for an initial turn-over. It was still a bit too wet on the lower half but I did have time to remove the straw from the strawberry beds and take down the winter tunnel. If it would have been a mild winter, we would have had some nice greens. Unfortunately that didn't work out. We even lost our entire rosemary bush. Surprisingly the Red Russian kale did partially survive so I left it in place to see how it develops over the next few weeks. At least now I have some real estate to get in some of the seedlings that have been stacking up due to the extended cold spell.

Two months and counting to strawberries !

And the chicken tractor is nearing completion in time for the May arrival  of the pullets. Here is the completed pop door.

And So It Begins

We are hunkered down here today under a winter storm watch with a clipper forecasted to dump up to ten inches of dry powder by evening. Tomorrow is supposed to be clear but in single digits with wind chills below zero. What better time to dream of spring and the vegetable garden. Unlike last year where I waited too long to start the onion seeds and then had to go with sets from the local feed store (useful but in no way optimal), I started red and white onion seeds last weekend making sure not to crowd them. This way I hope to have some well formed seedlings that I can set out in March. However, I still cannot bring myself to pull up the plant light just yet from the basement. It seems like we just packed it up a few short weeks ago. Onions are a little more forgiving so I think we will go with natural windowsill light until its time to start the others.

End of Season Wrap-up (2013)

2013 has turned out to be probably the most productive year ever for the Food Patch. Much of this was due to taking up the Paleo lifestyle in 2012 necessitating the planting of more leafy vegetables and brassicas. This also was the very first year we were able to succession plant lettuce so that we were totally supplied from Memorial Day well into November. We even have some lettuce left under one of the tunnels that we are saving for later this winter.

Yesterday was an unusually warm day and with the melting of all of our earlier snow pack from the last two weeks we took the opportunity to clean off the plots.This is a chore that I usually have done by mid-October in year's past but with a lot of late season brassicas and lettuce it just didn't get done until now. We still have an open row of spinach and a fabric low tunnel that we are saving for later in the winter. This tunnel contains Russian red kale, arugula, chard, beets, and regular curly kale. The small plastic tunnel still has the last of the fall lettuce that even though it hasn't gotten much bigger has somehow managed to survive several major freezes.

We also got the leaf pile off of the strawberries where they had gotten completely packed down from the snow. They were spread over the open areas and will be worked in during the first till of the spring. The last chore will be to spread a little straw over the strawberries. Even that was off schedule because the bales got water logged and were still frozen in places.

The 2013 Apple Harvest

The apple orchards here in western Maryland had an excellent season in 2013. Having skipped the last few seasons and after much nagging from the number one daughter, Miss Rock, I resumed my yearly apple sauce production. In the past I've usually done a small batch (6-8 quarts) just to get us through the holidays but since she can practically eat an entire jar at one sitting I figured we would make a day of it and go back to a large batch production that would get us through the winter. It was definitely easier this time around with a second set of hands helping out.

We began with 1.5 bushels of so-called "seconds" which if you buy from the Ivy Hill Orchard in Smithsburg actually look more like regular apples (they are very high quality and take their apples and cider very seriously). This year's blend was 1/3 Yellow Delicious (for body), 1/3 Stayman Winesap and 1/3 Rome (both for flavor). I always follow the basic Rodale Stocking Up recipe that calls only for lemon juice and honey as additives (we leave out the spices for adding in later if desired). The honey was Hays Apiary unfiltered wild flower also from Smithsburg.

Processing one and a half bushels is an all day project especially since our largest canner can only process seven quarts at a time. We broke the apples down into two separate batches since we don't have anything large enough to hold that volume of sauce before we can get it into the jars. All and all it was a hectic and exhausting day but well worth the effort.

The other news this apple season was running a batch of hard cider. Ivy Hills cider is always first rate and they use UV light for Pasteurization so there is no heat effect on taste or chemical preservative after-taste like you get with the supermarket crap; and no need to worry about preservatives inhibiting your yeast (this batch is fermenting with White Labs English Cider Yeast). It is still in the primary fermenter but should be ready to rack to the secondary just before Thanksgiving. If all goes to plan I hope to bottle some for carbonation and some as a still apple wine. I'm hoping at least some of it will be ready in time for Christmas merriment and carrying on the age old colonial tradition where cider was the drink of the day.