Moose IV

I'm still around. I've been incredibly busy on things that aren't very exciting. Check out finished Miss Moose. YAY!

Crocus are blooming, chickens are getting frisky and I'm getting the bug to do some gardening. Check out Sharon's blog. Independence days are back up and rolling for the season. I just kind of petered out last year along with the growing plants. Stay tuned for ID2010... coming soon!

I Have a Farm

Jump over and read Sharon Astyk's post "Is it a farm yet?" So true, why do we minimize what we do and the food we grow?

While I'm talking about Sharon, her new book Independence Days is coming out soon. I've enjoyed Sharon's other books as they are well balanced between the hard reality of the future and the positive attitude that what we do makes a difference. Buy a copy, I'm sure you won't regret it.

Canoeing...

What a fab week away. We lucked out and managed to park ourselves right in the sunny bubble that the storms (mostly) went around. I am tanned, relaxed and motivated to get back to work.

The Match Factory is open again and ready for business. Bring it on!

Independance Days

Plant Something: nuthin'

Harvest Something: eggs, PYO strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, beet greens, radishes

Preserve Something: frozen strawberries, zuchinni chips

Reduce Waste: scraps to the chickens

Preparations and Storage: does saving two chicks and raising them in the kitchen count?

Build Community Food Systems: Showed my neighbours around the chicken pen, mostly to entertain their little girl but maybe they will be a little more understanding of Charlie crowing "every hour, on the hour." ;o)

Eat the Food: mmmmm... lots of lovely fruit. I must get back out and see if I can get enough raspberries for over the winter.

More late night Adventures

Please, someone tell me that having chickens is worth this kind of stress. Both of the chickens in the below pic are gone. Victims of racoons. I have now the adorable (and loud) little guy in the above pic hanging out in a box in the kitchen. One other chick hatched and didn't make it. The other 12 eggs have heat on them but I'm not feeling hopeful there. It's 2 am and I really should be sleeping. Damn. I was hours, hours away from happy healthy hatch. The damn rooster wouldn't go back to his roost so I left the door open for him. Damn.

Independence Days

I didn't post my Independence Days last week. It really didn't feel like I did much around here but the weeks seemed to whiz by.

I did get some help and nabbed the non-broody chickens one evening moving them into the chicken tractor. This has solved the problem of them dumping more eggs on the sitting hen. However, everyone is incredibly unhappy with the the set up, with the exception of the one broody hen who never notices anything! The two hens are laying a lot less in the tractor and squawking like mad, Charlie, the rooster is unhappy to be no able to get to the two hens. When they squawk, he gets stressed. It's a lot more work for me as well. They are a lot less self-sufficient in the tractor with a smaller water reservoir, smaller food and having to move the tractor every couple of days. I'm on chick watch this week though so maybe this will end soon.

In other chicken news, I lost the Chantecler to a predator last week. Fox? Coyote? I'd gotten lazy not closing everyone in for the night and the culprit got right into the coop. Completely my fault. This is the other reason Charlie is unhappy, he's shut in at night and kept in the run when I'm not around.


Plant Something: nothing new, I'm afraid I've over planted the front bed. The squash seeds I gave up on and planted over sprouted. Now, do I just pull them out as it's too late in the season or just let them go and see what happens?

Harvest Something: eggs, grass clippings for bedding and mulch

Preserve Something: I got nothing...

Reduce Waste: I've started being the crazy lady that gets sent home from the cottage with all the iffy leftovers for the chickens. Free food for the girls, who can complain?

Preparations and Storage: did some chicken tractor renos and upkeep

Build Community Food Systems: share, share, share

Eat the Food: The usual eggs, meat, jellies.

Independence Days

Well, I'm working on a new computer and using some new software. Typing that title took two options changes and a help check. It's not a big deal really but sometimes it's just a little easier to stall than work on something.

What a crazy week. I started back to work Monday after narrowing avoiding having to call in sick for my first day back! I was hit by a nasty but short lived flu Saturday. I recovered fast enough to lay around in the sun a bit Sunday while it lasted.

Things did get done in the garden as well. On top of that I have two broody hens sitting on clutches right now. Does anyone have any idea of how to stop the other hens from sitting on top of them and adding to the clutch short of isolating the broody hens?

Also, does anyone have any ideas about what could be happening to my apricot tree? Second year running the fruit looks like it's coming along well and then all molds off and shrivels up to nothing before it even begins to ripen. Damn disappointing. I'm thinking this is why no one realized it was a fruit tree, a harvest is a freak occurrence.

Plant something: beets, carrots and bush beans. The planting happened in compost that I spread thickly in rows on top of the composting chicken bedding that is composting. I think it's generating some heat so we'll see if things will grow there.

Harvest something: basil

Preserve something: basil

Waste not: nothing out of the ordinary I think. Right now I'm cooking dinner completely from stuff around the house.

Prep/want not: Finally got the crab apples all pruned. I know, it's out of season but I didn't do it this winter and there was quite a bit of dead stuff to come out. One small one was mostly under the snow line and the mice had a winter feast. I may have to prune it more but the branches that appear to be girdled have some great little apples on them so for now they stay. The big crab I'm a bit concerned about. I should look back in my grandparent's records and see if I can see how old it is. It had lots of blooms but the foliage seems awfully sparse. I also draped some vapour barrier over the tomato cages. It's been so cool I got inspired to create a bit of a micro climate for them. It's open at both ends so it won't get hot but should help a bit.

Have a great week everyone. Hopefully the sun will peek out a while this week and I can get some pictures.

Independence Days

This week’s post is a little sparse as was the week. I spent three days on the road to Ottawa for a specialist appointment. The good news is that my leg is looking good and unless I have any problems I’m good to go. I’ll get a hold of him in a year or so to get the plate taken out. YAY! Less road trips for me. I’m still not 100%, this is the first trip down by my self and wow, it took it out of me. I’m happy to be home and playing in the garden.

I do have a question. There are loads of mushrooms appearing in the composting bedding from the chicken coop. They appear overnight and are gone in the sunshine. Today is rainy and cool so I actually saw them while they still had caps. Any ideas what these guys are?

So on to the weekly update:

Plant Something: Yarrow, Thyme

Harvest Something: Rhubarb, eggs

Preserve Something: Rhubarb Marmalade

Reduce Waste: Fed some neglected fridge leftovers to the chickens.

Preparations and Storage: Does thinking about it count? I did use some of my water storage for ice packs from the freezer and replaced them with fresh water.

Build Community Food Systems: Not so much.

Eat the Food: Moose burgers….mmmm…

Solar Oven

I found these instructions for a cheap and cheerful set up that I had to try. The windshield shade cost me $12 at Canadian Tire. A little more that what was mentioned in the article but hardly prohibitive. My pot is brown (with some funky 60's white detailing), hopefully dark enough to soak up the rays. While I was setting it up I had my hand on it contemplating the wind issue and immediately noticed how hot my hand and wrist got. This should work!



0900

The oven is set up and hopefully starting to work.

I soak some chick peas overnight. They are in there with lots of water, a dash of salt and a bay leaf to keep it interesting.

1000

Well, I don't know that the thermometer is going to work. It's a meat thermometer and may not work for ambient temperatures. Everything is heating up for sure though, the pot lid is too hot to hold and the water is pretty warm.

1100

Not much has changed. The thermometer wasn't working so it's inside the pot now.

1300

The temperature is sitting just over 40 degrees. It may cook those beans by this afternoon at this rate, maybe not. I don't think this is the solution for world hunger!?

Well, 1700 and I give up. The temps inside never made it above 50 C. That's not even boiling.Today was quite warm reaching at least 25 outside. I wonder if I need another layer? The article talked about a 'cooking bag' but I'm not comfortable with the idea of plastic reaching those sorts of temperatures. More research is needed.

I finished up the chick peas inside on the stove. Later tonight, hummous. Yay!

Independance Days

Independence Days is a call to action I read about on Sharon Astyk’s blog and is an effort to get people thinking about their food sources and working towards independence from the (more and more) unreliable factory food system. You should read her thoughts on the subject. She is far more eloquent than I.

A major factor for me was the car accident I was in late February. I didn’t live at home for almost three months. Currently I’m home and thrilled to be here. I’m getting around with a cane (except when I stubbornly leave it behind to try and carry more stuff!) So things are behind, getting things done takes way longer to do that it used to and I’m trying to be ok with that.

So on to the weekly update:

Plant Something: I potted up the basil and rosemary (purchased), put some pumpkin and squash seeds in the newly mulched bed (not hopeful there, the chicken manure hasn’t mellowed enough), expanded the asparagus bed by 18 plants.

Harvest Something: Rhubarb, asparagus, eggs

Preserve Something: Rhubarb pickles

Reduce Waste: This is a day to day thing for me, can’t think of anything extraordinary.

Preparations and Storage: Does expanding the front veg garden count? I had to finish cleaning out the chicken coop from the winter’s deep litter system and had way more ‘stuff’ to deal with than compost space. So I sheet mulched with newpaper and dumped the straw/manure there. I did throw some seeds in it but it’s too fresh to grow anything this year I would think. Tried out an idea for a solar oven. Not a huge success there but I learned things and I will try again there. Also I taught myself to spin! That's worthy of an entire post on it's own.

Build Community Food Systems: gave away the excess eggs, shared the pickles so others could try the recipe. Seriously, what to do with all of this rhubarb is a community issue?!

Eat the Food: Finished off another jar of Apricot Jam from two seasons ago, had lots of eggs. Snacked on the last of the asparagus. Made rhubarb crisp. Baked and ate lots of bread.