Things Are Jumpin'

There are some pretty mundane and even unpleasant chores on the farm. Cleaning the chicken coops, or arks is certainly one of them.  But it's actually more pleasant to clean them out with the bedding of straw or pine shavings than to clean the ground.  The plant matter bedding absorbs most of the moisture and limits the amount of contact my hands have to have directly with the feces.

I move the arks around the yard by lifting an end and putting the axle under it, and then picking up the handles and rolling it onto a fresh area of grass and clover.  But after a days worth of scratchin' and poopin'. I've got an area that's rich in fertilizer.  Since we've only been here just over a year, I'm still dealing with a lot of stuff left over from the previous owners.  One being what originally was a circular driveway of granite gravel, or what is known in the building trade in these parts as "crushed run."  But you see, I didn't know it was there  until this spring.  It was laid down years ago when the black walnut I cut down was just a sapling, I would guess.  When I cut down the walnut, which, last year was over a foot in diameter, there was grass and weeds blanketing the entire yard and the chickens had not had months of free-ranging over the area to scratch it all up.

Before chicken ark sat over it . . . . . . . . . . . After chicken ark sat over it

Then the heavy rains came and eroded down the scant soil that had collected at the base of the heartier weeds and subsequently covered over the gravel.  I had previously placed all the blame on the enzymes emitted by the black walnut for why nothing of value could grow in that area.  It was only part of the problem.  Now I have to deal with all that gravel.  So I park the arks over the areas where there are some decent weeds for the chickens to eat and when they have scratched through it all and loosened up the rocks, I move the arks to new spots and then pick through the poop and soil and unedible weeds and get the rocks out and dump them in the driveway.

Eventually, over a couple or three years, I will have eliminated most of the rocks and the soil will slowly have been reconditioned to grow some decent clover and grass and maybe even some grains.  After I've picked out the rocks, I rake up what's left of the organic remains and the blended chicken feces and either dump it in the compost bin or put it directly on certain plants as mulch.  Some plants can handle it, such as tomatoes.  Other plants might be too tender for it.

This morning, I had moved the arks, fed them cracked corn, and filled the water containers and was proceeding to pick rocks.  There I was, squatting down, focused on sifting and picking. I'm squatting because I'm wearing shorts that stop well above my knees and I really don't care to put my bare skinned knees in dirt that has chicken feces in it.  So there I am, balancing on the balls of my feet, even though it can get tiring pretty quick.  Out of the corner of my right eye, I see the mighty hunter, B'wana (a.k.a. "Pickles") trotting toward me with what seems to be a limp chipmunk in his mouth, as if to say, "Daddy, look whut I brung ya!"  Then he drops it in front of me.

A previous kill 

Chipmunk wasn't dead.  Chipmunk figures this is a good time to run for cover.  The only thing that seems like cover is the farmer squatting in the middle of the yard, barely one foot from where he'd been unceremoniously dumped by the cruel feline.  By the time he was coming across my shoe, I was moving to the erect position so fast I think most of the blood in my brain was pulling G's to my abdomen.  I think the chipmunk then realized that moving cover is no cover at all and headed for the nearest maple tree, and the cat thought, "Oh goody, play time isn't quite over!"

It's not that I'm all that scared of rodents of any kind.  But they do have sharp little incisors and their little jaws are powerful enough to open up walnuts.  The idea of that little critter having found his way into the leg opening of my shorts is something that my brain processed in about one tenth of one second at the moment his little paws touched my shoe.

So, that's the fun moment of the day.

Shalom Y'all

Pest Control

Maybe you can relate, or maybe you can't, but there is no joy like walking out to your garden, picking some big green leaves of Romaine or Butter crunch, or some of the lower leaves of the head lettuce and knowing that they only need a little bit of rinsing to get some soil off the bottom of the stems and then you can munch away on them.  No need to worry if I'm ingesting some sort of dangerous chemical into my body.  Such is the way of organic gardening.

Please don't get me wrong.  Don't lump me in with the crazies.  I have absolutely no tolerance for the Earthfirst, or PETA people, unless PETA stands for People Eating Tasty Animals.  I also think that the Enviro-Whackos who helped get DDT banned are responsible for mass murder in the millions.  Sometimes chemicals are necessary.  Indiscriminate use of chemicals is stupid and wrong.  Wisdom involves knowing what, when, and how to use things properly.

I didn't spray insecticides last year and so far haven't needed to this year.  Did I have problems?  Of course.  We also raise chickens.  Some of my veggie seedlings weren't caged or protected well enough and they ate a couple of my cabbage plants, severely damaged one of my broccoli plants and totally destroyed my bed of mustard greens.   The chickens aren't free-ranging right now.  Not unless some huge windfall of money allows me to put adequate fencing around all my veggies.  We don't have enough space to grow enough veggies for the chickens to eat what they want and leave us the rest.


 Not long ago, a single cut worm (that's all I could find) destroyed five out of six of my Swiss Chard plants, until I sifted through the soil and found him.  Cut worms really make me angry because they don't eat the whole plant.  They just cruise along in the half inch of soil, just below the surface and when they get to a juicy vegetable plant, they eat just the part that's convenient and the next day you come out to find the rest of the plant that was standing four to twelve inches in beauty now lying dead.

Now maybe some of you are thinking that it would have been smart to use plastic cups or half a tin can or toilet paper roll centers as ring barriers around each little plant.  You'd be right, but I hate having to do any more work than necessary, and if I didn't have cutworms last year, I wasn't expecting them this year.  I have only found two worms and there isn't any more evidence of them now.  We only have a few plants that are in the ground in well amended soil.  All the stuff in straw bales is not in danger of cutworms.  Another big plus for using this technique.

The plants could still be in danger from all sorts of other pests, but I've learned a wonderful thing.  Except for Biblical scale, wiping-everything-out plagues, most infestations are minor and can be dealt with without panicking.  Most of my insect problems are being dealt with even while I am unaware of it, and it's mostly because I haven't used any chemical pesticides.  It's very hard to engineer a chemical that kills only certain insects and leaves others alone, and the ones that make such a claim can end up having other effects years or months later that could be even worse.  Maybe we are just overly blessed by God letting us live in this place; for God leading Twyla to buy this particular property.  I just know that I don't want to mess it up.

A friend from last year on the strawberries

Last year, I seemed to come across a praying mantis  every time I turned around in the yard.  Praying mantids are indiscriminate predators.  By that, I mean that they will kill and eat any and all other insects, including their own species if they are hungry and the opportunity is there.  If you read the stuff at the link I provided you might keep yourself from missing out on them.

Ladybug larvae

Other insects, such as ladybugs, Coccinella septempunctata eat only the bad bugs, such as aphids.  We must live in the Mecca of the ladybug world.  When they first come out, you can see thousands of them in a square yard, but now I just see them here and there.  Ladybugs have a penchant for crawling into warm homes in order to winter over and then come out in a vengeance when the weather starts to warm up a little bit.  Some people are quite vexed by this development and will express their ire most loudly.

 Ladybugs even eat the bad bugs when they are still in the larval stage, not looking anything like adult ladybugs.

I don't know much about them and haven't seen any yet, but green lacewing larvae are also supposed to be great predators of plant harming insects. The adult lacewing flies are harmless to plants, only eating pollen and nectar.  Since they are so small they probably pollinate plants that bees are too big to get into.

Ground Beetle

I actually saw a ground beetle today when I was planting some flox on the back slope.  I'm glad that they are so pretty and easy to spot, since these guys actually kill the darned cutworms that I hate so much.  The one I saw was more on the cobalt blue side.  It was barely big enough to sit on a nickel.

I don't see the variety of birds up here that I used to see further south and to the west of Atlanta.  The bird we see the most is the ruby throated hummingbird.  In case you didn't know, hummingbirds get all their protein from eating small insects, such as mosquitoes and other pests.  They don't just suck nectar from flowers or the sugar water from my feeders.  The other great mosquito controllers around here are the dragonflies, which can eat up to fifty times their weight in mosquitoes a day and catch them on the fly, er, in the air.  But that's why you primarily see dragonflies where there are bodies of standing water, since that's what's required for mosquitoes to breed.

There is also the actual benefit of having some insects breeding and creating larva on the farm.  When I'm out digging up composted soil or trying to create a new bed for something. I will find grubs from time to time and they are probably of the Japanese beetle or June bug variety.  To my chickens they are candy.  Same thing goes for fly larva that I find in the compost sometimes.  The chickens get to free-range during the winter months and scratch such treats out of the soil on their own.  What a benefit for us.

Hey!  How do I get in here?

Some people may think I'm crazy for not taking a preventative stance by spraying or dusting, but I figure if I'm willing to lose just a little of my produce to keep the predators around and healthy, we will be rewarded for it down the road when there won't be any commercial chemical poisons around to do my killin' for me.  I try to look over everything growing on the farm every day and keep my eye out for any signs that there is a problem.  And because we believe in prayer, obedience to Torah, and the mercies of Adonai, we'll stick with this method until or unless we get hit with some kind of massive infestation.  And then I only have the natural pyrethrin stuff to mix up, in order to keep the damage minimal.  It is there only as a last resort.  I much prefer to be able to reach down and pick a leaf of lettuce or a pea pod, or a really nice, ripe strawberry and just pop it in my mouth.

I don't think I can ride like this.

 Twyla thinks that the reason I haven't seen any praying mantids this year is because of Pickles.  Pickles has killed numerous tiger swallowtail butterflies and just loves to hunt. He's still a kitten and I don't think he'd pay any attention to me if I scolded him for pouncing on a mantis.  Sometimes you just have to accept things the way they are.  I have to look on the bright side.  I seriously doubt that we will ever have a problem with mice or moles.  There are always trade-offs.  I could worry about how much it costs to feed the dogs, but that night a couple of weeks ago when Moxie and Beau chased a full grown bear out of the yard reminded me that they are worth more than just the companionship.

Oh, come on!  I wanna go!

Pickles likes to play hard all day long, follow me around the garden and supervise, and then sleep around my head or on Twyla's hair all night.  He is quite a lovable cat.


To see some other beneficial bugs, go to this site.

Spring Planting

Feeling good.  Feeling fine.  Spring is here and I get to get some sun.  I spent most of the day yesterday in shorts and no shirt, running around the yard doing various things.  We had 100 straw bales delivered two weeks ago and they are ready for planting.  We have our tomato starts and some more Swiss chard and other cruciferous types.  I've got some more strawberries; six more plants.  Most of the ones we had from last year wintered over nicely

Straw bales arranged for planting

I even got a couple of grape vines from the feed store and I'm going to plant them along the driveway.  I will need to put up a fence rail there for them. I got the only two vines left at the store.  One is Concord and the other is Fredonia.  Fredonia. Reminds me of the Marx brothers movie, "Duck Soup," and the mythical country of  Freedonia.

This time we doubled the straw bales side by side to achieve more stability.  Only one little row at the back is still single.  I also kept a couple of bales for the backyard for more herbs.  Then two more bales went under the porch for alternate bedding for the chickens.  Speaking of chickens, there are dandelions and other wild edible greens that are busting out all over and the chickens are loving it.  I will snatch up handfuls of dandelion and feed them through the wire.  I wish I could still let them free to eat what they wanted to, but I have to protect my plants, so we are back to bringing the food to them.  As I was digging out my corn and bean area I must have gathered a dozen or more grubs which I fed to the chickens and, of course, that is like candy to a little kid.

Leafy walkways that will smother the weeds

This season I am doing much better with the walk areas by piling on the leaves in a very thick fashion.  They will smother the grass and other weeds and as they decompose they will help hold in even more moisture between the bales and further condition the soil for next year.  The other advantage in doubling the bales is that we can do more of the companion gardening.  Twyla has been reading up on it and we will be planting marigolds with the tomatoes. I'll post more about that after we get more things planted.

I also plan to get some good things done along the steep slope in the back yard to have more things planted in the next few days.  I still have a couple of berry plants that were given to us by an English woman in North Carolina.  I planted a McIntosh and a Gala apple tree in the two front corners of the property and it is so nice to see the little green buds starting to sprout.

Even though it means lots of hard work for the coming days, I'm really excited about getting it done and seeing all of these things growing.  We went out to dinner with some local folks who are also big into gardening and we were talking about how there just is no comparison between the stuff you pick fresh out of your own garden versus the stuff from the supermarket. You have no idea how many days or even weeks that produce has been in transit or sitting in a warehouse or distribution center somewhere.  I wish I had a dollar for every time I've shared one of my own homegrown tomatoes with someone who claimed to not like tomatoes, only to hear them say with surprise, "You mean THAT's what a tomato is supposed to taste like?!  Wow!"  And the same is true for lettuce, spinach, cabbage, peas, beans, and corn.

Snug At Home

I want to hit on several things.  There is no single theme to this post.  It's kind of a "what-I've-been-up-to-the-past-twenty-four-hours-and-I-need-practice-hitting-the-hyphen-key-with-my-ring-finger" post.

Had to brave it down the mountain yesterday in spite of all the ice, because Twyla's prescriptions were in and she was out of one of them. Yes, we slid a couple of times and it was scary.  But the positive side was the fact that we got a couple of great shots.  To wit:

Near the road on the way in to our part of the mountain they built a little decorative water wheel.
It left no doubt that it was cold.

We do have to venture outside to feed and water the chickens, and I have to spend a bit of time out there collecting more wood for the stove.

This is a great time to be experimenting with cooking exclusively with the wood stove.  The other morning we baked potatoes inside it. Wrapped in aluminum foil and nestled just above the coals. They were done to perfection in about 45 minutes.

Twyla got a craving for corn bread, so she mixed up a batch and poured it into the cast iron skillet and set it atop the stove.  There's a cast iron lid that fits both the skillet and the dutch oven that she put on top.  It cooked through well enough, but the top didn't get very brown.  That's just fine.  I suppose had we pre-heated the lid on top of the stove first, it might have been different, but the cornbread came out with a fluffy, cake-like texture that was awesome, with darker brown crispier bottom.  It was delicious.

If you are a follower of Twyla's blog, you may remember her writing about our great frugality and regular visits to the various thrift stores around here.  You just never know what you might find.  About a week or two ago, I spotted an ice cream maker for $6 at the Humane Society thrift store.  Had to get it.  There's just something about homemade ice cream.  Besides that, I just love experimenting with recipes.  So, I made a batch, but it was more like ice milk, even though I did add some whipping cream to it.  We went through that pretty quick with both cranberry relish and blackberry cordial.

This morning, I woke up at 02:00.  The fire had gone out and so I had to rebuild it.  Of course, by the time I did all that, I was wide awake.  What to do.  What to do.  Make more ice cream.  I bought more heavy whipping cream yesterday, so why not?  Let's improve the recipe.  Less milk and more cream in the ratio.  Two extra tablespoons of sugar compared to the first batch.  Three fresh egg yolks.  The high lecithin content is a fantastically smooth emulsifier.  I thoroughly pureed all the ingredients with the stick blender (that is one of my all time favorite kitchen tools!) put it in the maker and put it outside to run.  Hey, it was 14° F out there at 02:45, so I figure I can just put the inner container in the bucket and let it run. No ice, no salt.  Makes sense, right?

Moxie tries to herd Brewster

Meanwhile, I decided to take some store bought, whole wheat flour that somebody gave us for the dog, and make up some dog treats.  Old leftover chicken bouillon cubes, left over saved chicken fat (yes, we really don't waste anything) little salt, enough sugar to feed some yeast and I've got my basic dough.

Time to check the ice cream.  All that had happened was the liquid mixture had gotten pretty cold, but it was still very much liquid after 40 minutes.  Fail.  You apparently do need the ice and salt slush to supercool the ingredients while the paddle scrapes the sides. I go grab the spatula and the rock salt and fill the bucket.  Back to the biscuits.  What's a quick easy way to cut or shape them?  Hmmm.

By the time I had the first batch of dog treats ready to come out of the oven, Twyla is up and had come out to the fire to have her first cup of coffee.  She opens the oven to see what I'm cooking and starts laughing.

Yum, yum.  Moxie treats.

"They look like little turds!"

"I thought that it was quite appropriate for Moxie.  After all, she likes chicken poop."

More laughter.  Yep.  Doesn't matter how many times I scold her, when I move the chicken arks, Moxie is right there looking for a choice morsel.  This is why I think people who are lured into spending incredible amounts of money on "gourmet" or special blends of dog food have more money than sense.  How discriminating of taste can one be when one licks its own butt?

These little gems for the dog have a texture kind of like a scone.  Maybe we could call them "scurds?"

I only made one tray like that out of three, because it's much easier to roll out a flat ball of dough and then cut it into strips and then cross cut into little rectangles.  I didn't want to spend all morning on this project.

"I know how to be a lady!  Psst! Got any scurds?"

From looking at the weather forecast, we have most of this day's light to secure lots of firewood to a covered location, but then after dark we are due to get a lot of snow.  I just hope that the temperature stays well below freezing so that it does fall as snow and not as rain to then become a glaze of ice.

If we get snowed in again tonight, I'll have to come up with something else really clever to do.  Maybe it's time that I tried baking a loaf of bread on top of the wood stove with a makeshift aluminum foil tent.

I really am hoping for that six inches of snow so I can slide down the driveway.

Before I go, Twyla has created a new page on her blog to showcase her beautiful watercolors.  So make sure you head over to Green Acres and check them out.  It's in the sidebar titled Twyla's Watercolor Gallery.  In addition, Twyla has decided to create a second blog that has to do with her little fun experiment in Bible study.  Go check out My 316 Notes.  You might find it interesting.

Thank you for stopping by my blog, especially the persons in Moscow, Russia, and Stuttgart, Germany; whoever you are.

Cool and Clear

After two dreary, gray days of rain, it was nice to work out in the sunshine. But I'm pretty sure there won't be any more days of doing it without at least a tee shirt on.  Twyla told me that last year when everyone came for Thanksgiving, the colors were beautiful.  Right now, only the most sheltered of trees have any foliage left, as you can see from my first photo. That one is looking south from the top of the driveway.  Pretty much nothing but bare, gray-barked trees of the deciduous variety between here and the next creek. The only green is that lone pine on the left.  The sun is going down to my right; about 16:30.

I had meant to get more pictures of the more beautiful fall scenery a couple of weeks ago, but I let it get away from me.  Today as I was transversing the yard, I spot these two lone leaves, out of what would otherwise be some ugly winter ground.

I am so impressed by the plants that defy the frost. I thank Adonai that he created so many varieties of edible plants that can tolerate temperatures down to 22° F and continue to thrive.  Especially all the varieties of dandelion. I was clearing a new bed in which to plant more garlic and onion yesterday, and in order to do that, I uprooted, cleaned, and chopped up three bowls of such plants and fed them to the chickens.  Around dinner time ("lunch" for you Yankees), I picked a bunch of the yellowing bottom leaves from the broccoli and lettuce plants and chopped them up along with the celery dregs and carrot peels that Twyla had left for me to give to the chickens.  I made a couple of comments to Twyla while doing so.  "Never thought I'd be a salad chef to chickens." and, "You know, it occurs to me that chickens are basically pigs with feathers."  That one really made her laugh. It's because, like pigs, chickens will eat almost anything, and they really like the disgusting stuff.

Oh, before I forget, I've updated the last post about the focaccia bread, with some additional photos.  That was some scrumptious supper last night. The only reason we didn't have salad with it last night was because I had worked hard cutting a lot of wood and we had a lot of salad for the past three days.  I just didn't feel like going back outside and picking a mess of greens and having to strip and chop them. Back to chickens.

Brewster

I was a bit surprised, but in a good way, that the chickens don't like earthworms.  They love grubs and flies and grasshoppers. Isn't that just like Adonai to program their DNA to not want to eat something that is so beneficial to the farm, and to want to eat the stuff that is detrimental.  I was further surprised to find that they eat their own feathers.  Not the flight, or wing feathers, just the downy body feathers.  I suppose there are a couple of reasons for that; being almost pure protein it makes sense in the winter when bugs and other fauna are extremely rare.  Secondly, it's a good idea not to leave a scent trail for predators.  But notice I said, "idea," meaning it had to come from intelligent design. Observing chicken behavior in general makes it pretty clear that cognitive thought does not exist there.  Brewster the Rooster is proof of that, since after three days he forgets that I'm the one who feeds them every day and decides to attack me for trying to take out the feeder for cleaning.  I can usually ignore the first couple of events, but then I have to show him who's boss.  This is tricky.  His spurs are not well developed yet, but his talons can still draw blood easily, as my arms will attest.  So, in a very fast, arcing motion,  I fake up to the right and when he goes for my hand I sweep up to his neck. The crucial part is snatching him down to the ground so he can't rear back and get his talons up.  Think of it as making a lightning fast "question mark" in the air.  Then I have to hold him for a count of five and then I let him go, to which he squawks to the other end of the ark and doesn't attempt to attack me for at least three days.

In a way, I'm pretty glad he's that way.  It makes me think that if a predator tried to nose into that ark, it would be a very unpleasant experience and the chickens would be fine.  Well, time to feed the dog.

Shalom.

Old Butch

Farmer John was in the fertilized egg business.
He had several hundred young layers (hens), called ‘pullets,’ and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.
He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced. This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.
Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
John’s favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all! When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
To John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring. He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
Farmer John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Saint Lawrence County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the “No Bell Piece Prize,” but they also awarded him the “Pulletsurprise” as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention?



Vote carefully, the bells are not always audible.


Hat tip to Barking Moonbat Early Warning System


If you go to BMEWS, be sure to read the next posting, about how Obama is taking a 10 day 2 BILLION dollar tour of the Far East. 

Eventful Day on A Tiny Farm

In our little spot on the mountain, things that probably seem "ho-hum, *yawn*" to others, make us laugh, shake our heads, and be thankful for such a seemingly mundane life.  We like it that way.  We've had enough drama in our life.  When we want more drama, we can go to Netflix.com and watch "24."

We prefer to have days like yesterday, when we marvel at the little things Adonai does in our life.  It's the things and even the timing.  I don't believe in coincidences.  I have a lifetime of events to convince me otherwise.

Yesterday, we cleaned out the storage shed again.  This was a little more painful for Twyla than most.  The things we were getting rid of represent thousands of hours of painting and care.  You see, becoming true disciples of the Messiah can mean having to make very difficult choices. Choosing to live according to God's appointed calendar and observing His appointed celebrations, rather than going along with man-made traditions is not easy. These are choices that friends and family may not understand.  Giving up the pagan holiday of Christmas is just such a thing.  Maybe when we get to Channukah, I'll take the time to post more in depth on why we just can't celebrate Christmas anymore.  But I digress.

"Oh Daddy, can I keep them?!!?"

Twyla had decided last Christmas that it would be the last time to be a part of that.  Mixing the Holy and the profane was no longer an option for her or us.  Now came the time to get rid of the things that were a part of that, and so, we needed to take all of that stuff to the Humane Society Thrift Store and be done with it all.  This is where the fun really began.

Our neighbor across the street, our only full-time neighbor, happened to also be at the thrift store at the same time, and while I was unloading boxes of ornaments, the Christmas tree, and all of Twyla's winter village artistry, the neighbor was asking Twyla if we wanted the baby chicks she had discovered at her daughter's house.  She had seven of them.  "Of course," I said.

So, the neighbor brought them over a couple of hours later, took a tour of the house and spent a good while in friendly conversation with Twyla, while I worked hard to finish organizing and getting all the stuff back in the shed while I had daylight.  Of course, they talked about pets quite a bit, and the neighbor had Twyla just about ready to go over and adopt a little Siamese kitten.  Then Casspurr came up in the conversation, and Mary said that she'd seen Casspurr with the neighbor next to us.  In explanation; this neighbor has a small RV parked next door that he has visited maybe two weeks out of the year.

"Where's my tuna ceviche?"

You can go read Twyla's description of that event by clicking here. 

Now Casspurr is back. At first he was freaking out a little as I carried him inside.  He was doing that kind of meow that cats do when their stressed out, like going to the vet in a pet carrier.  The house must seem very different with all the changes, and the smell of a dog. (Don't get any ideas; Moxie gets a bath about every five days.  "Stinking dogs?!?  We don't need no stinking dogs!!!"  - Treasured Perros of the Sierra Madres.)  But after about five minutes he was acting like, "Oh, I remember this place."  He seemed to just settle in as though he had been here yesterday.

He seems completely unconcerned about Moxie.  He found his spot on the bed and everything is just hunky-dory.

As you can see from the picture above, Mary brought us the seven little chicks in a bird cage.  We needed to wait until well after dark, so that Pretty Face could settle into that trance-like sleep state that chickens go into so that we could insert the chicks under her.  In order to keep the chicks comfortable we put the cage on the bathroom counter and turned on a space heater to get the temperature in the room up sufficiently.

Twyla once suffered a broken neck from being rear-ended in her car, and so we have to make accommodations for that.  We do like to watch "24" through Netflix.  In case anyone forgot, we don't subscribe to cable or have an antenna and the vast majority of TV is a wasteland anyway.  But to watch a movie on Netflix without actually receiving a DVD in the mail, we have to watch it in the office on the computer.  I set up the flat panel screen at an angle facing the floor and we put down a blanket and pillows and watch that way.  Moxie thinks this is paradise, since she's not allowed on the bed.

But last night, the poor thing was so torn.  Every time the chicks would peep a bit loud, she would have to jump up and go check them out and make sure they were okay.  Back and forth.  And now there is this strange cat that hasn't been around for almost a month.  Casspurr came and climbed up on my chest to get some attention and Moxie got a bit too jealous and snapped at him, so I had to administer some swift correction.  This morning everything seems to be peaceful between them.

The new chicks seem to be at least three or four days younger than our own two.  I base that on the overall size and the size of the flight pinions.  One of the new chick just seems so obviously to be a male to both Twyla and myself.  He has the white crown common to male black sexlinks

The fun never stops.

Just too cute.

Yep. It's official.  There's no way Twyla's going to let us eat these chickens come Channukah in December.  I have to admit that it makes a lot more sense to keep hatching out more baby chicks before we reach the point where we would need to eat any of them.

They are just too cute and there are only two of them.  She named them Peep and Bo-Peep.  She has this unexplainable hunch that the "blonde" is male.  I actually hope she is right.

After some thought, I realize that this would be a great thing.  A second rooster to fertilize more eggs. If you are a newcomer to this blog, you might not know that there are two arks of chickens but only one rooster.  Please go check the archive to see past postings on this subject.

If "Pretty Face" keeps her broody nature, we could have her sitting on a dozen or more eggs, hatching out both a supply of new laying hens and pullets for the dinner table.  May Adonai help me with my plans to build new shelters for them.

The only thing we need now is a pair of pygmy goats.  I'd love to have some homemade, fresh goat cheese and yogurt.  We are starting from modest beginnings and expand at a slow and careful pace.

I have to admit that I am a sucker for those cute little fuzzy critters.  I suppose I will need some time to get over the "aaawwwwwwwww-some" feelings.  Thank goodness I can look at the beauty and grace of a deer and have no problem sending a carbon fiber shaft with a razor broadhead downrange forthwith to provide some delicious venison to the table. Harvesting deer is something that demands responsibility and respect.  Use everything with gratitude and waste nothing.   I also hope some wild turkeys venture into my area this fall as well.

Over the years it has angered me tremendously that I have seen dozens and dozens of deer lay waste on the side of the highways because there are not enough hunters managing this resource.  There are too many people who have no clue about managing wildlife who think that hunting is bad.  I find it ironic that federal fish and wildlife officers who are out there monitoring the situation complain that we don't have enough hunters and that the deer populations are getting out of control.

Warm Fuzzies

Bo-Peep only 24 hours old.

If you read my post below, you know that I was gone from before sunrise until well after sunset.  My wife called me yesterday sometime after sunrise while I was still about an hour away from my destination to tell me that one of the chicks had hatched.

I'll pretend to be a manly man and say that I'm not going to post on this subject and instead direct your attention over to her blog, so you can read all about it.

As I write this, she has posted to her blog, and already called her parents.  I'm writing this without even knowing what she's said.  Yes. I'm the one who took the photos and transferred them to a jump drive for her computer.  But I'm going to write my own post and then go see what she had to say.

She's already named them.  Somehow I don't think I'm going to be eating some home grown chicken this December.  One of them better be a rooster.  There is still a third egg under Pretty Face, and I'm going to wait until Tuesday before deciding whether or not it needs to be removed.

I have so much more I could say about all this.  Have I mentioned that I feel extremely blessed to be where I am?

To Do List Overload

Busy, busy, busy.

Wow, it can be hard to keep up with this blog during the high Holidays.  Here it is yom chamishi (Thursday) and I haven't posted since yom rishon (Sunday).  My apologies if you've come by every day looking for something new.  I'll try to do better, and it should get a lot better after this week.  You see, last night at sundown began the Holy week of Sukkot (Feast of Booths or Tabernacles) and we are expecting guests on Shabbat.  There has been so much to do in preparation.  Lots of cleaning and re-decorating and such.

Add to that the stuff that suddenly HAD to be done that wasn't planned for.  Like installing the new panel and dog door on the porch that also doubles as our Sukkah for the week.  Well, um, then Moxie couldn't quite comprehend the concept of a doggie door just yet and because she wanted in to the porch so badly, proceeded to tear through the screen on the other side of the door on the deck side.   Oh sure, I can chuckle about it now, but at the time I wanted to kill that dog.  So, I temporarily nailed scrap panels up all along that side of the porch to protect the remaining screen and went on to other things.

Add caption

Other things included dealing with the broody hen, "Pretty Face."  She needed a private nursery in which to set on the eggs.  Twyla blogged about this here.  -- Oh! A very cool thing is that, according to Sitemeter, Twyla's blog had a visitor from Lithuania.  Wow!

Anyway, I took the old corner cabinet that we had bought from the thrift store in the spring and had used for the original set of chicks as a temporary shelter before I built Arks I & II, and made this little nursery.  I already had all the materials left over; the screen, boards, paneling, and the foam board from the dehydrator project.  The only thing I had to buy was a pair of small brass hinges for the top door.  This whole project took about two hours out of the day.  On Tuesday night, well after dark I transferred the hen and the three eggs to the nursery.  It really is amazing how trance-like they are after dark.  But Moxie got too excited about what was going on.  After I had gone all the way back up to the porch, she raced back down the yard and stuck her nose up under the lid and stuck her head inside.  Not that I think she meant any harm, but she needed to learn very quickly that such behavior was not going to be tolerated.

It is also interesting to observe first-hand the patience and dedication of a broody hen.  You would think they would die of thirst and hunger for all the time they spend sitting on those eggs.  Fortunately in the hottest part of the day yesterday, I looked back down to the front yard from the porch to see the hen out getting water and scratching a bit.  She seems more than relieved to not have to share space with the other hens, even though they are in close proximity in their movable arks.

You probably noticed that the header of this blog has changed once again.  I want to keep it fresh and current with the season and what's going on at Beit Ben-David.  So, what you see up there is one of the little islands of crops in well decayed straw bales.  I set out cabbage, swiss chard, brussel sprouts (yes, I really do like them), romaine lettuce, butter crunch lettuce, and spinach.  I also planted a bunch of radishes in the back with more spinach. Then there are all the additional seedlings that are about a month behind the current plants that will need to be planted soon.

What has really eaten up a lot of time, and I do mean that in a good way, is the dramatic changes that we have done inside the house.  We have spent two pretty full days of just cleaning and re-decorating for this Holiday week.  And I was supposed to have moved the wood stove into position and installed the exhaust pipe by now.  May Adonai richly bless me to accomplish this before yom shishi (Friday) noon.  Other than having that done, the rest of the house is incredibly different and incredibly beautiful.  Twyla and I keep looking at it and each other and commenting on how great it is.  Of course, she gets most of the credit, being the real artist. I'm just the skilled handyman who can make it happen.  Not that I don't have a good sense for decorating, but I like what she does and she's so much better at it.

A view from the deck

Some of the trees are shedding their leaves now and it won't be long before I'll be struggling to keep up with gathering them for compost. I've still got screens to frame for the dehydrator.  There is always something to do and never enough time to do it.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll try to have a fresh post up for you tomorrow.

B'rakhot Adonai!

Moshe

Soft Shell Eggs

There are things that you get to experience in farming that you just never can when you live the urban or suburban or faux country life. There are people who have their summer vacation get-aways up here in the mountains, but that's nothing like living here full time and trying to create a place that can survive if "the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it" (TEOTWAWKI) takes place.  When you've always gotten your milk from the grocery store, you've never experienced milking a cow or goat and the immense difference in taste of raw, unpasteurized milk. I've had people tell me they didn't like tomatoes and then after I got them to try one of my home-grown, vine ripened tomatoes, they said, "OMG! That's what they're supposed to taste like?!?"

Golden Comet Hen with egg

You probably didn't know that from the moment they are picked, many vegetables, especially peas and corn, begin to deteriorate in flavor.  This is because the delicate sugars and the enzymes start to break down. That's why eating peas right off the vine in my garden is like candy. After they've set around in transit from some farm in California or Chile or Peru, or wherever, they just aren't going to taste as good.  I bring this up because not only do most people never experience how food ought to taste, they also don't experience a lot of the challenges that come with growing their own food.  When you get that burger or that fried chicken, or whatever, it is extremely far removed from all the steps it took to get it to your stomach. Those pretty white eggs come in a nice little carton after having been dropped by chickens fed a factory produced feed out of a machine, the chickens themselves fed by automated feeders, and the eggs are automatically sorted by size. You never get to see what happens when things don't go perfectly.

In reality, about 1 in 30 or so eggs fail.  You might get a longer streak with no problems, or you might have several in a row where the shells fail. Most of these cases, the parts that you eat are perfectly fine if handled carefully. A complete failure is when you open the door and there's just a busted egg laying in the bedding material. If the shell is all gone, this is a bad thing, because it means the chicken(s) ate the shell, which means they need calcium and aren't getting enough.  Time for crushed oyster shell.(BTW, humans can only assimilate decent amounts of calcium from vegetable sources, so don't waste your money on supplements from non plant sources). Otherwise, you can occasionally get an egg that is soft, as if the shell were made of thin leather.  Such an egg will be quite translucent, as the photo shows.

Translucent Egg

One of the problems with taking pictures is that they can't always relate to the viewer certain aspects. It is very hard to tell that there really is an egg between my forefinger and thumb in this picture.  I even turned the dimmer switch down on the halogen light to improve the view, but it didn't help as much as I hoped.

When you get such eggs, there is nothing wrong with the contents. You simply snip the end with scissors and empty the shell.  The resulting collapsed shell looks like the third pic.

It is fairly common for the first eggs from the chickens to come out soft like this.  Since they've begun laying, we've had about a gross (144) of eggs, and in the last half of that group there have only been about two or three softies.  What has really been amazing is how many huge JUMBO eggs and double yolk eggs we get.  I will try to remember sometime in the near future to buy a dozen eggs from the grocery store and  post a picture that shows a side by side comparison of our eggs versus theirs.

When we went to Asheville, NC to get rhubarb from Pauline, she showed off her chickens, and she also had some Golden Comets and some Black Sexlinks. She told us she had given some eggs to somebody and when she offered them more, they refused them.  Their reason?  "They were too rich."  Now THAT's rich!

Chicken Arks

A beloved reader of this blog wanted more info on the chicken arks.  I also know of a dear lady friend who wants chickens, but her hubby is against the idea, ostensibly due to predators.  So herein, I will give some more detail about the arks and why they are working so well for us.  I will also give some basic instruction on the construction of said these movable coops.

Being very limited on capital resources, the goal was to make these arks in the cheapest possible manner while still meeting the requirements of A) not losing any chickens the the various predators, B) providing the highest nutritional standards of fresh vegetation and "other" natural foods besides the cracked corn and laying pellets, C) being able to move the chickens around the yard which both provides the fresh greenery and fertilizes future planting ground.

Most of the wood that went into the construction of these arks was salvage wood that I merely asked for and received from somebody down the road who had it laying out near a barn.  There are lots of such places in the area, and we have many more ideas for the use of such wood, but that's a subject for another post.  The point is: you can get a lot of stuff for free if you are just willing to ask.  The lumber was old pressure treated decking, well-weathered.  This is important, because you would never want to use fresh PT wood as something that the critters would be in constant contact with, due to the chemicals involved.  I think it is safe to say that this wood has since had most of the bad stuff leached out of it.  Of course, it is only the wood that is used for framing of the arks.  We had to buy some 1/4 inch oriented strand board (OSB) for the bottom and sides.  A  4' x 8' sheet costs about $8 (your price may vary).  I got the basic plan by googling "raising chickens" and came across http://www.raising-chickens.org/chicken-tractor.html which has a series of somewhat detailed photos to show you the basic design.  The size of their ark was too small for my tastes.  I wanted a design that would hold six chickens comfortably and provide at least a day's worth of grazing space.

I started with the idea that I wanted the base to be 4 feet by 8 feet for each ark holding six chickens a piece. That provides 5.33 square feet per chicken.  Now, if you are thinking  that seems like a tiny amount of space per chicken, just keep in mind that the chickens that lay your store bought eggs just sit in a cubical just big enough to lay their eggs and are just fed and watered by some machinery.  Our chickens get fresh air, sunshine, stray bugs, our personal attention and petting.  We pay attention to how much fresh vegetation they get.  And my next post will probably gross most of you out when it comes to feeding chickens.

We bought a hundred foot roll of the 48" rectangular wire fencing material.  I still have enough left to do a couple of more arks or to create cages of some other sort. The reason for using this instead of chicken wire is because it seems more open, but it is much stronger against predators than chicken wire. We have too many cats around here right now for snakes to be an issue.

There is enough space in the "loft" for a dozen chickens to roost, but there are only six, so they have plenty of room.  There is an opening in the middle of the floor with a ramp attached with hinges underneath. There is a rope and a pulley that I use to draw the ramp up to the floor when I need to move the ark. I attached a standard rope cleat on the end to secure the rope.  The pulley is hard to see in the photo.Ark One is about 40 percent heavier than Ark II because I was experimenting with design and what I learned from the first model, I applied to the second. To move the arks I made a single axle to place under one end of an ark when I want to move it.  It's very simple. Just a 2 x 4 with a couple of utility wheels fastened on with "shoulder" type lag screws; 3/8" diameter by 3" long, with flat washers. You should know that Twyla doesn't have the strength to move either of these arks.  I think most healthy men and some women could, but you need enough strength to pick up one end and use your foot to position the axle and then pick up and move the ark with the fixed handles at the other end.  If you are going to build one of these contraptions, you need to size it accordingly.

Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.  Thanks for stopping by the farm.

Incredible Edible Eggs

We raise chickens. This is the first of two "arks" that I built so that our chickens could be as close to "free" range as possible.

You see, there are lots of predators here in the mountains. We have coyotes, bears, owls, snakes, mountains lions, bobcats, hawks, etc. I haven't met anyone who has chickens in this area who has not also lost some chickens to predators. So I built these movable cages. I have six hens in one and 5 hens and a rooster in the other. If I get enough comments or requests, I'll post more pictures with details about how they work.

The chickens can go up the ramp at night and roost up there, and that's where they lay their eggs. As of this writing, we are averaging 8 eggs a day. There is no comparison between these eggs and what you buy in a regular grocery store. These chickens get to eat cracked corn, a special laying pellet formula, plus insects and grub worms and lots of green vegetation. The yolks of the eggs are a deep orange and have a "heartier" flavor as best as I can describe it. Some of the chickens consistently lay double yoke eggs.

We discovered that of the vegetation available, chickens love two things most of all. Dandelions and radish tops. Chickens love grubs and caterpillars, but don't care at all for earthworms, (which I think is very cool, and not at all a coincidence).