ready or not, here we go!

even though it's only the middle of January (already!) one of our buff orpington hens has gone broody.

yesterday when the girls collected the eggs, Dave noticed that this hen was broody. we took her eggs yesterday, but today she was sitting on 7 more! even though we had some broody hens last year, we were not able to successfully hatch out any peeps. (A and B still think that chickens come from the post office...) the failure was partly because we did not move the hen out from the flock soon enough. one broody hen we let sit on her eggs too long before moving her, and then she would not set back. another hen successfully hatched out (only) one peep, but it was soon trampled and muddy in the chicken tractor.

perhaps the key is in several things: removing the hen shortly after she begins to set, and putting her somewhere safe that she can care for her chicks after they hatch out, until they are old enough to fend for themselves. buff orpingtons are known for their broody nature and good mothering, so it seems that the success of hatching out our own peeps lies in the management of the flock.

today i took this hen from the chicken tractor and put her in the high tunnel. she has a little corner with lots of hay, and also fresh water and feed close by. the temperature in there will keep her adequately warm and she'll also be able to scratch around in the greens that are still there from last year. (we never harvested the abundant crop of broccoli and cauliflower that i was hoping for...)

when i checked on her this evening, she seemed very content. i gave her 7 more eggs for a total of 14. we'll see how she does.

I'll keep you posted.

Thursday's Livestock and Garden Report ~ Week 27

although we still have just a few things going on in the gardens, i will reluctantly call this the last L&G post for 2009. it's been a busy growing season for us, but not nearly as busy as it could have been. we'll remember all the things that we've learned this year, and by doing better next year, we'll be busier~ and have more of a harvest. but all-in-all, it's been a good year.

here's a view of the upper garden from the duck puddle. you can see the buckwheat and pole bean cover crop. the soil is not that great, as evidenced by the stunted buckwheat, but we're still working on it!

we did finally pick the beans, and i got enough to freeze for 3 meals. the yield was disappointing, but I'm thankful for what we did get.

note to self: although i did plant these beans (back in July) as a cover crop, i was certainly hoping to harvest a fair amount of beans, both to eat and to sell. however, all that was available at Agway were pole beans. i wasn't able to stake all the beans, so we just let them crawl over the ground. they did their main job of shading out the weeds in an area of the garden that had just been tilled up. (we decided halfway through the summer that we wanted less yard and more garden) however, pole beans apparently really do need to climb. (go figure) consequently, the beans were in all stages of maturity- from blossoms to tiny beans to nicely edible to cigar size. i sorted them out for people consumption and animal consumption and just called it a lesson learned.

we pulled all the beans out, and tilled the green stuff under,


including the buckwheat. already we have a winter cover crop of annual rye and oats in. with the rain that we've received in the last few days, the shoots are already peeking through the soil. both of these crops are not winter hardy, so at some point we'll roll out some of our mulch hay.


last week we butchered our 2nd crop of chickens. that was the batch that we had such a miserable time with, having only 21 chickens to butcher! (out of the 50 that we started with!) 15 were sold, and the remaining 6 i put in our own freezer.

the chickens are winding down as well, with our final batch of 50 4 weeks old today, giving them another 6-8 weeks to get pleasingly plump.



the first crop of green beans that i planted is still growing! we left them on the tomato cages and just planted the rye around them. the girls love to go out and pick beans for the chickens.

the chickens are always eager for something green, and B is quite adept at poking the beans through the wire without getting pecked by a greedy hen.



we are getting almost a dozen eggs nearly every day, and it's hard to keep up with that production rate! i freely share with some friends from church~ but still...


soon the older hens will be destined for the pot. it seems such a shame (disloyal, even) but they're getting ragged looking and old. from the 5 older hens, we're only getting 2 or 3 eggs a day now, so there's definitely some slackers in there!


B is still enjoying some of our fresh peppers- what's left of them. i forgot all about them down in the lower garden, so we definitely could have had more for the freezer if i had remembered!


the big red pig was ready to butcher, and i was able to sell him at the last minute to someone we found through our butcher! Dave still wants to try our hand at butchering our own pig, and since it's still too warm to do that, i was so glad to not be stuck with this gigantic pig!


we got him all crated up and i drove him on his final journey to the butcher shop. we got a call later in the week that he hung at 223lb! that's some pig!


we found this praying mantis while working down in the lower garden


and had a fascinating time looking at him. a praying mantis is a cool looking bug~ in a freaky sort of way!





but the really big news is~ we bought a potato plow! with 5+ rows of potatoes to dig, any help we can get is appreciated!


it's actually a horse drawn walking plow (close-up pictures later, hopefully) but easily adaptable to our horses Massey and Ferguson. i was elected to drive, while Dave wrestled with the plow behind. the idea is to run the tip of the plow right down the middle of the potato hill, and all the potatoes just pop up and out, neatly laying in the row for the happy helpers to gather up.



*ahem*


there's definitely a technique for using this implement, and we're still learning. but even with several stops and starts, we were able to dig a whole row rather quickly.

we filled the wagon with Red Pontiac and kennebec, plus a few renegade pumpkins.

next year perhaps I'll grow all my veggies like we did these pumpkins- benign neglect. (and come to think of it, the whole gardening thing would be so much easier!) we did not plant one. single. pumpkin. seed. and at the beginning of the season, i was even pulling the baby pumpkin shoots like weeds! but still~ we got a respectable showing of pumpkins, did we not?

however, i can say that the philosophy of benign neglect does not work for flower beds! i really need to get out and weed before we close everything down for the winter.

i also have bulbs to plant- garlic and spring flower bulbs. i ordered some bulbs from gurney's and Dave got me tons of tulips and daffodils for my birthday so i can see another gardening day in my near future!

I've never planted garlic before, so I'm looking forward to trying it. i still haven't decided where in the garden to put them- i don't want to forget about them and accidentally till them under in the spring!

our freezing and canning is also winding to a close- just some grape jelly (today) and applesauce (next week) to do yet.

we also need to put the cover back on the high tunnel. it's getting chilly here at night (no frost) and the broccoli and cauliflower are doing well. hopefully well enough to actually produce something!

I'd also like to get a planing of lettuce and spinach in the high tunnel and cold frames. i should have done that a few weeks ago, but never got to it... i have noticed, in all my second plantings, that the plants do well, but take longer to mature and produce.

so- i guess that's it! we learned alot, and had a good time with our gardens this year. before you know it, the seed catalogs will be pourning in again, encouraging us to dream and plan for next year.

whatever happened to that sporadic blogger, anyway?

i figured since I'm starting to get e-mails, phone calls and other frantic inquiries from people that i know in real life, i better at least post something up here, so my hundreds of faithful readers MIL won't wonder if I'm sick or dead.

ever since M and N went to college and G started school again, I've lost a bunch of people to boss around help out, it seems as if I'm too busy to post about my exciting life.

but- i haven't forgotten about all of you, my dear and faithful readers, and i have a few posts up my sleeve that I'd like to share with you.

soon.

but until then- here's a sneak preview of coming attractions:

* the final Livestock and Garden Report for 2009

* chores and the getting of them done (happily)

* my first ever giveaway!

* a quilting tutorial

* another quilting tutorial

* more pictures from our trip to SC

* general profound ramblings about evangelical Anabaptists

* another giveaway that i'll be participating in at weareTHATfamily

* a new feature of my blog: QUILT gallery

so- since nap time is officially over, and can not be stretched out any longer (and believe me, I've tried!) i need to get off the computer.

but I'll try to be back soon.

promise!

just a little bloggy love!

a beautiful northern PA fall day was even more delightful when i received a package in the mail from my "bloggy friend" Milah. inside was a handmade in Indiana pottery bowl:

(notice the zucchini and summer squash? my late planting is really, finally producing!)

AND... this wonderful pebble-ware-surfaced 9X9 baking dish! it's aluminum, and i can tell already that it's going to be my new favorite baking dish. (especially since my family is so much smaller now)


i got right to work making apple crisp- so much easier than apple pie, and every bit as good! (although, the topping is much darker than it normally is. i didn't have any brown sugar, and had to make a substitution involving white sugar and molasses. because, since when do i ever follow a recipe exactly?)

here's the finished yummyness- and the baking dish was great! if you finally won a bloggy giveaway after entering about 87 of them don't have a great baking dish like this, you can still make this apple crisp for your family. now that the weather is finally getting cooler, it's a great dessert for a autumn night!

this in an authentic, old~fashioned country recipe given to me by a dear friend, ages and ages ago. i hope your family enjoys it as much as our family has!

Apple Crisp Recipe

peel and slice apples, filling your dish to slightly mounded. drizzle with maple syrup, and dot with butter if you wish.

crumb topping:

1 cup oats (i use old~fashioned)

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup flour

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

combine in bowl, and work together like pastry until crumbly. (this will make enough topping for a 9X9 pan; but often i quadruple the recipe and freeze the rest, making it even easier to throw together at the last minute!) bake at 350 until apples are soft, and your whole kitchen starts to smell wonderful. serve with ice cream as a special treat!

Thursday's Livestock and Garden Report ~ Week 23

can you believe that it's week 23 already? almost half of the year, and I've been posting these weekly sporadic L&G reports! are you as tired of reading them as i am of posting them? could anybody possibly still be interested in the weekly blow-by-blow of our garden? most likely not- but thanks for being polite and reading anyway! the garden is winding down, so this should be near the end.

did i hear a big internets sigh of relief from all my readers?

yesterday we got our last 50 peeps, bringing our grand total for the year to 175 chickens. (25 buff orpingtons and 150 cornish cross cockerels.) we are still on a learning curve as far as the meat birds go. our last batch of 50 had the shocking and disappointing mortality rate of 50%!!!! hopefully this batch will not be so. some of this batch is for selling, and some for us to eat.

the pigs are growing well- as of this morning the larger of the 2 weighs approximately 250 pounds. come the cooler weather, i guess we'll be butchering! we've already eaten nearly all of the pig that we had butchered last April. just a few pounds of bacon and miscellaneous roasts floating about in the freezer. with that consumption rate, we're guessing that our family will eat about 3 pigs a year. (in addition to the 100 chickens that we butcher and freeze for ourselves)

I've finally and officially given up on the tomatoes. this meager spread is all the beefsteak that G and i were able to salvage. (although there may be a few more out there that we'll find when we pull up the remaining 2 rows of tomatoes this afternoon, this is truly the end.) all in all, a very disappointing year for tomatoes. however, we cannot count the tomatoes as a total loss, since we "harvested" well over six 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes to feed the pigs. at least we got some food value out of all that work!

next year the tomatoes will be planted in the lower garden, so we don't have to worry about the spores of the blight hibernating in the soil to attack again.

the cauliflower and broccoli is doing very well in the high tunnel- perhaps I'll actually harvest some?

the beans are very lush and green, and they are all flowering, leading me to believe (hope?) that we'll get more beans for the freezer. the buckwheat cover is doing well, too, here in the upper garden.

many of the potatoes are still in the ground down in the lower garden. we've still been steadily selling them in the produce stand, as well as giving some away. we're hoping to borrow a potato digger for the tractor~ there is probably over 500 feet of potato rows, between the kennebec, red Pontiac and yukon gold. neither G or i look forward to that much manual labor, so I'll try to nail down the rumor of a potato digger for the tractor.

we bought 4 more bales of hay for mulch, and between the hay, buckwheat and annual rye, we'll make sure that both gardens have an adequate cover of mulch/green manure for the winter. additionally, we'll have soil samples from both gardens tested to make sure that we're on the right track as far as the soil nutrients go. i have no problem trying to address the deficiencies in our soil's nutrients organically with mulch and green manure cover, but i am not opposed to some synthetic fertilizer, either.

so, except for some beans, cauliflower and broccoli, and a ton of potatoes, we're done! it's hard to imagine that it's been almost 6 months that we've been working at our garden! I'm tired just thinking about it, and i look forward to those long winter days to just relax. i can read to the girls, sew and maybe even knit something.

won't that be nice!

Thursday's Livestock and Garden Report ~ Week 21

it's been a busy week, with the garden finally starting to produce. i can brag about an impressive list of veggies that we've been harvesting: onions, peppers, summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes, beans and of course the old stand by, potatoes.

we've picked green beans several times this week, being diligent to stay current on the picking. the beans are of course much better that way. when the green beans/ground cover ripens in the UG, there will be tones of beans! probably way too many~ but we'll just sell the extra, and feed the extra of the extra to the pigs.

the ducks have fallen out of favor this week. although we enjoy watching them wander through the yard and play in the puddle, they did a very naughty thing. (as A would say!) i had planted my second crop of peas, counting on the cooler weather and delayed frost to harvest my own instead of buying. they (the peas) were coming up nicely, and all 6 of the double rows were about 3" high. one afternoon soon after i let them out, the ducks were observed eating straight down the rows of tender pea shoots! they were quite happy, wiggling their tail and muttering among themselves. almost as if they were saying thank-you! thank you for planting a row for each of us. thank you for putting them in such a neat and straight line. grrrr! well, fortunately for me and my family, the local grocery store had a sale on this week: Bird's Eye peas ~ 1 pound, 1 dollar. so my freezer is stocked with peas, and since that's what i set about to do, i guess i don't have much to complain about.

it was a rough week for the meat birds, too. we lost 13 or so, which was quite a blow. it's a combination of heat, water, crowding and stupidity. (of the birds, i mean!) that just reinforces to Dave and i that we need to take a much more active role in supervising the livestock and instructing in proper care. but we can console ourselves with a pithy little nugget that a farmer friend shared with me after church on Sunday: "if you have livestock, you're going to have deadstock." how true, how true...

we are harvesting tomatoes, although the plants are quickly dying off. they look really terrible in the garden, but as long as I'm getting some tomatoes, I'll let them suffer through. we've been eating fresh garden salsa and i even made some spaghetti sauce. I'll be able to make many more quarts of sauce, just not in the big quantities that i prefer.

N, G, A and B helped me transplant, mulch and water all the cauliflower and broccoli that we put into the high tunnel. I'm holding out hope that we'll be able to harvest these veggies, too! (we will not put the new plastic on the high tunnel until it gets much cooler, as the cauliflower and broccoli prefers the cool weather.)

this week we purchased 8 of the big round bales of hay for mulch. today G and Dave were working at spreading a layer of hay over the parts of the LG that are done. the LG is pretty much done producing, but alot of the potatoes are still in the ground, so of course we can't mulch there yet. the plan with the hay is to improve the soil for next year. some portions of the LG have had 2 rounds of buckwheat, and now the hay. hopefully next year we will see an improvement in the soil fertility.

which leads me to think that maybe, just maybe, we can work our way up to being a CSA, providing food for 10-12 other families besides ourselves. somewhere between Dave's pessimism and my optimism lies the reality. as we continue to work together to improve our little spot of soil, we learn and grow together. we've been inspired by this blog this week, and keep thinking, maybe we can do this after all! (and we cant' whine about living in zone 5, because they do, too!)

I'll leave you with a few recipes, so you can enjoy your own garden's bounty!

Spaghetti Sauce

½ bushel tomatoes (roma is best)

3 lb. onions

4 red peppers

2 green peppers

1 stalk celery

1-2 T parsley

2 T sweet basil

2 T oregano

1 ½ c. sugar

process tomatoes. (wash, cut out bad spots, boil and run through the squeezo) put onions, peppers and celery through food processor. combine with tomatoes and sugar and bring to gentle boil on stove. BE CAREFUL not to over boil, or your sauce will get dark and bitter. (don't ask me how i know this, just trust me.) if you're using dried herbs, you can add them at the beginning, but wait until the end if you're using fresh.

prep your jars and lids, and have your hot water canner already boiling. into each quart jar add 1 T lemon juice. hot water bath 30 minutes.

(this sauce is thinner than the store bought that has all sorts of nasty thickening chemicals added to it, but i often add 1 can of tomato paste, especially when I'm making spaghetti)

Garden Fresh Salsa

chop up a bunch of tomatoes. (about 2 cups) if you're using beef steak toms, squeeze out some of the juicy stuff in the middle. salt semi-generously, and set aside.

now cut up equal amounts of green peppers, purple onions, cucumbers and even summer squash if you're feeling particularly brave (or healthy)

drain the tomatoes and combine all the chopped veggies. add lime juice and chopped fresh cilantro. serve immediately with tortilla chips. yummy!

Thursday's Livestock and Garden Report ~ Week 20

Glory Be and hallelujah! my garden is finally starting to produce something other than potatoes!

my very optimistic late planting of summer squash is flowering! and look: there's even a baby squash gestating. we're doing a little happy dance up and down the garden rows!

the onion sets from Gurney's are done growing, and this week G and the little girls helped me pull them. we got about a bushel.

some were very small; hardly bigger than when we planted them back in April. makes me wonder what they've been doing with themselves these last 4 months!

we ordered and planted 6 bunches. hopefully next year we will have better fixed the fertility issues in the lower garden. I'll still plant more onions next year, but this is a good start!

the potatoes are growing like gangbusters! these are some big ones that i pulled out to show off, but i should have put something (like a coffee mug) next to them to show how big they really are. the biggest one on the right is bigger than 2 fists!

we dig fresh potatoes pretty regularly, and pack them in bags that i make from our multitude of feed sacks. 10lb. for $5.

the produce stand is bringing in some small, but steady income. red Pontiac potatoes definitely seem to be the favorite, so next year i plan on planting more than 50 pounds of that variety.

the honour system works pretty well in our rural county, and we've not had too many issues with stolen potatoes. (with the exception of one day last week when someone took 20 pounds of potatoes and left me 29 cents!)

the peppers are doing nicely as well. dare i say that we're being inundated with fresh produce?

the 5 ducks are quite happy. (the 6th died unexpectedly a few weeks back) every afternoon we let them out to free range, and they are quite comical to watch as they waddle (all in a row) where ever they go.

the morning glories right outside the back door have finally grown taller than the cherry tomatoes (it was a neck-and-neck race for the sunlight) and are cheerily blooming every morning.

A is quite proud of these sunflowers that she planted with the nasturtiums.

the chipmunks planted all the rest of the sunflowers. all over the flower gardens there are little sunflowers randomly and eclectically coming up. the goldfinches are enjoying them, and we like to see the diversity of birds that comes for a snack.

the cherry tomatoes are almost prolific~ A and B really like to go out to see if any are ready, and beg for someone to pick them a fresh 'mater. i really like having the cherry tomatoes right outside the back door, and plan on putting them there again next year. once they start producing, it's really hard to keep up with them. having the plants in such a convenient spot makes that task almost effortless.

we're getting a few tomatoes from the upper garden as well. it's really a horrible year for tomatoes, so the yield is disappointing.

again, A and B enjoy eating a fresh tomato just like you would an apple. (all my kids have done that)

the tomato plants themselves look horrible. they are all brown and dead from the bottom up, and the Florida staking system fell over after a recent heavy rain. we were busy cooking for the roofers, and i never got out to fix it.

that being said, i really like the Florida staking system and plan on using it again next year, just implementing the things that i learned from experience this year: taller and stronger stakes.

the broccoli and cauliflower in the cold frame is doing very well, and i plan on transplanting the seedlings to the high tunnel in the next few days.

due to the tomato blight, the tomatoes in the high tunnel were a total flop this year. nevertheless, we plan on trying again next year, applying the things that we learned: only 2 rows of tomatoes, plant indeterminate and train them up string, or longer and stronger stakes for the Florida staking. I'd also like to grow some cherry tomatoes in hanging pots, to better utilize the upper space.

our second planting/cover crop of beans is growing nicely. (lots of "growing nicely" in this post! but then again, it's about time for some good news!)

these are the beans that i planted around the tomato cages. they are training themselves right up, and are even taller than i am now. i really like having them on the tomato cages, and plan on doing that again next year, as well. (i thought up that idea myself, and I'm quite proud of it!)

these are the cover crop beans, and even though they are pole beans, i don't plan on staking them. they'll just have to produce despite the benign neglect, or just be tilled under!

look closely- you'll see the baby beans! Dave "took care" of the groundhog problem in the upper garden, so these beans actually had a chance to do their beany thing!


and look~ real, live beans! from our very own garden! we'll have some for lunch, and I'll freeze some, too. there should be another picking in a few days.

we still have lettuce, too. since it's been such a cool summer, that has extended far longer than we thought it would. i have the 4th planting in the second cold frame, and this time planted spinach, too.

we planted 10 pounds of onion sets, and while most of them did not get exceedingly big, they made a respectable showing.

next year I'll definitely plant more purple onions, maybe as much as 7+ pounds. i like to use them in recipes, just for the extra color.

the beets were a disappointment, but that was for several reasons. the lower garden is not very fertile, and compound that with the fact that i could just not bring myself to thin out the beets, (it feels so wasteful!) they did not get very big.

before bringing the beets to the house, we stopped off at the pigs and gave them the too small beets, as well as the tops of the beets we were canning.

we managed to eke out 12 pints of pickled beets. not too bad, considering that i don't' even like pickled beets! (the jar that i entered in the county fair won second place!)

I'll end this lengthy post with my recipe for pickled beets- just in case you want to preserve some of your own summer bounty to dislike on a cold winters day!

Pickled Beets

harvest whatever beets you've managed to grow and that haven't been eaten by the deer, woodchucks or rabbits. top them all, and scrub clean. put beets in large pot, covering with water. boil until tender. drain, reserving beet juice. cut off tops and root tap, and slip off skins. pack hot into pint jars. cover with pickled juice.

pickled juice:

2 cups sugar

2 sticks cinnamon

1 T whole allspice

3 ½ cups vinegar

1 ½ water ( use your drained beet juice)

simmer this for 15 minutes, and then ladle over your beets in jar, leaving 1/4" head space. remove air bubbles. process pints (and quarts) 30 minutes in boiling water canner.