Mowing in April- Awww Nuts!

 

This time last year we still had a pretty good bit of snow on the ground. Last year wasn't normal and this year is proving to be equally odd. Here it is, April, and I had to mow the big yard today. We call this area in the center of our circle drive the 'Big Yard' because it is, well, big. It takes over an hour on a John Deer Riding mower and that is only one of the lawns. The other is inside the fence, around the house. That is the one I am currently trying to convert into flower beds and less lawn. I love how this space looks in the spring. As the summer wears on and I have emptied the lower pond trying to flood irrigate it, I like it less. It does all seem worth it when just one person compliments our efforts. It takes a lot of effort. Last year we began killing off the lawn around the trees and that made our mowing job 348% easier. That is a lot easier! As everything begins to leaf out you can hardly tell my husband is a chainsaw pruning addict. 

 

This is a Flicker hole that the Flicker or Flickers have been madly preparing. There is actually one equal in size on the opposite side of this same tree. You can't seem to kill a willow so I like to have the birds around. Magpies are a whole other story. We have watched this bird getting mouthfuls of sawdust material and spitting it out of the hole. Fun to watch. What does that tell you about our lives? We might need to get out more.

Planted In the Garden So Far

 

Well, so far I have most of my cool season crops planted. A few of this years plantings are new to me. This list is as follows:

• Swiss Chard - Mixed Color
• Swiss Chard - Fordhook Giant
• Lettuce - Butter Crunch
• Lettuce - Simpson Elite
• Lettuce - Rouge d'Hiver
• Lettuce - Red Salad Bowl
• Spinach
• Beets - Detroit Dark Red
• Peas - Maestro (shelling)
• Peas - Green Arrow (shelling)
• Strawberries (already growing)
• Onion - Lisbon, White Bunching
• Onion - Red
• Onion - Yellow
• Leeks
• Asparagus
• Brocolli
• Brussel Sprouts

I only have one of the smaller raised beds left and was waiting on another type of beet for canning to show but Park Seed has failed me once again. I may plant Sugar Snap peas in that spot. Funny how we just expanded the raised beds last year and this year I am out of space. Good thing the new Intimidating Row Garden is under construction or I wouldn't have a place to put everything else I plan to grow. 

Intimidating New Garden in Beginning Phase

 

Have you ever wondered how to get help on the big projects you want done? Well, in or around our home it means renting heavy equipment and letting my husband play on it. Big boy toys, I guess you would say. His friend owns this pretty little mini excavator and he was more than happy to let Doyle play on it to begin construction on the new Intimidating Row Garden. I happily call it that as I can't imagine how I will keep up with it all when it is done. 

 

After digging up all the field sod growing in this area, Doyle began tilling it. By hand.... well, with a very old tiller he borrowed and never returned to his mom and dad. It is officially dead now that it has tilled this spot. The actual garden turned out to be 91 x 27 feet and I say that is more than enough to weed.  I guess we will be buying a new bigger, healthier tiller after the chicken house is constructed. We decided the family that lived here before us and erected the milking barn, must have fed their cows in this space in the winter. There were thousands, and I am not exaggerating, of bale strings that wrapped around the tines of the tiller and had to be burnt off dozens of times during this process. We also unearthed tons of old metal things, and who knows what else in this spot. Sometimes I wonder what people were thinking back in the old days. The dump must have been way too far an old farm truck.  Doyle tilled in the nasty old wind we had last week and got all of the area tilled twice. Now the Super Highway pathways and the side road paths can go in. We have that started but then get overwhelmed with the sheer size of this project.

More on the layout in an upcoming post. I would like to plant onions and a few other cool items in here soon as the raised bed garden is full to the brim. I know I really was out of room in the raised beds, it just seems all so big to me. Hope we can keep up with it.

You Say Potato, I Say Potato

I planted my potatoes in fabric pots the other day. The pots themselves are Potato Bins from Gardener's Supply but they can also be purchased directly from the manufacturer, Smart Pots. These bins are 15 gallons and should hold 10-13 pounds of potatoes by season's end. We will see. This is my first year growing potatoes and I was unable to get the ones I wanted. No one ships to Idaho, funny as this is often called the potato state. But apparently Idaho doesn't want any new diseases for their main crop. I guess I can't blame them, it just puts a crimp in my ordering plans.

I planted:

• Red LaSoda
• Yukon Gold
• Red Norland

I will keep you all posted as to how well these grow. I haven't moved them outside yet but plan to today or tomorrow. For now, they reside in the new garden shed/room. Love that space! I put 5 seed potatoes in each bin, mine didn't have tons of eyes so I left them whole. The wind has finally ceased today so we are out to work on the new huge garden area, (intimidating garden area). My husband is a saint as he has tilled even in the wind. I would not even go outside in those conditions.

She Said, He Said

SHE SAID: Could you please fire up the saw and clean up the weedy growth on all the willows in the big yard? I will pick up all the limbs and twigs if you will do that for me. Please, pretty please?

HE SAID: No problem! They looked a little crowded anyway.

SHE SAID: No, just clean the trunks up and I will put all the little twigs and small limbs in the 'to be shredded' pile. What do you mean they look crowded?

HE SAID: There, don't they look a little better?

Moral of the Story~ Be careful what you ask for.

My husband falls timber for a living. Big timber. He is very good at his job but in Idaho, log cutters get layed off for a while in the winter until it dries out a little. He misses his saw and he is bored. He likes to prune with a Stihl. I should have known better and been standing there when he started. This isn't the first time he's thinned the trees. You would think I would have learned 10 trees ago. But no, I thought we were clear on these points now. Nope, I guess I still have a lot to learn. But they do look better, not so crowded. Some were (are) leaning just trying to get to their part of the sunshine. Willows have a life span and I am pretty sure ours have exceeded their time on earth. But for now they will do. Our plan is to add trees to this big area so when the old willows need to be removed there are others ready to take their place. They look pretty sad before they leaf out but OK once they do.

Meat Chicken Room

I promised to show pictures of our new meat chicken room so here they are. I think the room turned out very nicely. We only used 10 2x4's, which a friend gave us for free, and some old 3/4in. 12" wide boards that were rotting in the loft of the barn. They weren't good for anything but this purpose, but they made dandy walls. We have rectangular wire fencing coming from another friend and that will complete the walls above the wood wall partitions up to the ceiling. I am pretty happy with how it all turned out. We are saving our pennies to build the big new laying chicken house so the meat chicken room needed to be a thrifty project. Mission accomplished.

This took up about 1/6 th of the old milking barn. The goats have another room we walled off in the opposite corner. They will keep the meat chickens company. Ollie, the pygmy goat, was actually living inside a chicken house with the chickens when we got him. He liked the birds and they apparently liked him too. Maybe he will feel right at home with the chickens.

This is a view with the door open. It also has a large door to the outside barnyard on the opposite end. This room may serve several purposes in the future. Doyle thinks it would be the perfect pygmy goat kidding room. I say we are full up with pygmy goats for now. We still need to put plexiglass over the old windows as they are not very draft proof. They should provide nice daylight for the birds. There are two windows in this room.

This view is looking out from inside the new room. Notice all the fishing poles against the wall. Doyle had started buying new poles saying his were all broken. I found at least double that amount in a massive pile with fishing lines securing them all together. I started cutting and amazingly none of them were actually broken, just tangled to the point he wasn't able to use them so he bought new. I fixed that for him and he is tickled pink that he has so many usable poles now.

And finally this will be their home when they first get here. It will still get cold at night when the chicks arrive on May 8th so the metal bar across the top will hang two heat lamps. This feeder/waterer is actually 5 ft. across, it just looks small in this picture.

That completes the tour of the new meat chicken room. I am happy with how it turned out. I like the barn a lot better now that it isn't full of crap scattered and piled up every where. It just about killed my husband to clean it with me but he did and I must say we did a good job. It didn't even take long once we buckled down and got it done. I love neat and tidy. Oh, I almost forgot...... my in-laws gave us a large old freezer that did not work anymore. It was cleaned when it broke and has just been stored for years. We will store a huge quantity of chicken feed in it. That way it is air tight and rodent proof. Now all I need are the chicks and I am all set!

In For A Dime, In For A Dollar

We ordered our laying chicks a week and half ago only to find out that most hatcheries in America are out or seriously backlogged with orders. That was the Run On Chickens post and I must admit I was truly surprised. I have thought a lot about our nation coming to it's food senses and starting to get back to the basics, I just didn't think it would all happen this year. I decided that since I could not control everyone else, I would make my family healthier and raise our own chickens for eggs. It took a long time to convince my husband. The tour to my friend Brenda's beautiful coop finally did the trick. Her chickens are happy, healthy, clean and friendly. All the traits he was sure weren't possible. So we ordered 30 of own and plan to supply eggs to all of our family. I was so excited to finally find a hachery that had most of the breeds I wanted and ordered quickly so they would not run out while I gazed at the pretty pictures. They told me to call in a week to get my ship date. June. What? Yep, June. Boy was I mad! But as they quickly explained, I feel fortunate I am getting them at all. Lots and lots of people aren't. So that leads me to the next topic.

My husband thinks if we are going to feed animals every day, like pygmy goats and laying chickens, we might as well raise meat chickens too! I must say I was not on board with this plan in the beginning. I am still not sure I am. See, I move worms out of the way and let spiders go when I find them inside. I don't fish or hunt. I will eat it. I just don't want to get to know it first. But all that comes back to my plan to know my food before I feed it to my family. I don't mean know it's name and the color of it's eyes, but to know how it ate and what it was exposed to before it made it to my dinner plate. Meat chickens are most commonly the Cornish Cross shown in the picture above. There are others varieties and all have good traits but this is the fastest growing, plumpest bird. To me, the longer I "know" it, the harder it will be to eat it. This plan may go totally wrong but I have researched this all winter. The pros and the cons of this particular breed and the hundreds of reasons I will wish I had chosen another. But I want it over with quickly. We will use a processor to harvest our birds for dinner. You take them live and pick them up hours later in a sack for the freezer. Quick, clean and humane. As humane as eating your pal can be. I believe their life will be infinitely better in my care than that of the large raisers like Foster Farms. Even though it will still be short. This breed is considered a terminal bird, and comes to you as a chick with a short life expectancy. This means even if I become attached, which I doubt will happen, it would be cruel not to process and will likely die of some other ailment like growing too fast for it's systems to keep up.

I guess it took me a long time to get to the point here. I ordered 50 this morning. We built a permanent room in the barn, I will show pics of that later today. That room may become the pygmy goat kidding room if this goes badly. I hope I will still be able to eat chicken after all this. We ordered enough to jump right in with both feet and feed several to each of our family members. Wish me luck. I think I will need it.