Upwelling Ice

In December it is rare to have a sunny day around here. It is even less common to have below freezing temperatures day and night for such a long duration (5 days now).



I have been reporting back to the chickens around 1:00 each day in order to remove any ice from the waterers. Yesterday I walked past one of the wet spots on the property to check for any drainage and I saw an interesting texture to the ground.



I picked up one of these chunks of ice crystals to inspect it closely. From a distance I thought maybe it was a group of frozen mushrooms, after all it was the right height and color.



Upon further inspection it was an ice formation unlike anything I have ever seen. What I thought could have been shriveled and frozen mushroom tops was soil that has been lifted by these inverted icicles as they pushed upward from the field.






The ground here really is excellent, we can grow just about anything.

snow!

We woke up to a winter wonderland this morning and the sunrise over the mountains was beautiful. The bitter wind and cold made chores more difficult, though. The chicken's water was frozen and we are not sure how to keep it from freezing, since it may be a reoccurring problem this winter. We added some canning salt to the water to lower the freezing point but we did not want to overdo the salt so we do not know if it will have any effect. I think in the mornings we may have to bring warm water down there. It is a lot of work to change out the water every day. The chickens were not happy, to say the least, and only ventured as far as the eaves of the coop covered so they wouldn't have to put their feet in the snow. We moved the coops so they had a little grass to scratch, but will have to keep battling the icy waterers until it warms up a little.

Evening Chores

The winter months are a bit slower as far as farm work is concerned. The shorter days and winter rains here in western Washington are to blame for a lack of "productive farm work". We still manage to fit in weekend projects on Saturdays and Sundays but all of my other chores are done with a headlamp and barn boots.

When I get home from work I put on the headlamp and head down to the chicken coops to put food away. In an attempt to keep mice out of the food, I hang it up in the hen house and keep the bulk feed in a garbage can. I still see some droppings around the coop on occasion. In the daylight a mouse doesn't stand a chance, we have seen the flock battling over a mouse, chickens are meat eaters too.

After I hang up the food, I gather any eggs in the nest boxes. I have found that clean bedding helps keep the eggs clean from the dirty chicken feet. I have seen nice plans for a coop with a droppings board. The board is suspended under the roosts and the chickens can pass under the roosts on their way to the nests without having to step on their own waste which is caught on the board above them.



On my way back to the house I usually stop by the garden site to hunt insects. We still have carrots, leeks and peppers. The leeks do not seem to have many enemies and the peppers are lasting a surprisingly long time under the hoop house plastic. It is in the carrots where I have the most success catching insects. The pests come out under the protection of nightfall to do their feeding. I think the caterpillars are cutworms, they are fleshy and curl up when they are disturbed. The caterpillars are stripping the carrot tops and are easy to see feeding with the headlamp. I also kill any slugs I find, I hate slugs.

painted black

The PVC hoops let off a gas which can deteriorate the plastic covering on the hoop house. The solution is to seal the PVC with a layer of paint. We noticed when the plastic would rip it would break apart directly over a PVC support. I remember reading about this but I did not think it would affect the plastic so quickly. We will compare the longevity of the same plastic next spring.

first egg

I had a nice surprise when I fed the chickens this morning. The chicks we bought this summer have finally laid their first egg. It is normal for young hens to lay eggs with thin shells or no shells at all. The first eggs are often times small or misshapen.
We have built up a small clientele for our eggs but with the coyote problem earlier and the shorter days, the 2 year old hens have been producing a lot less. These new layers will help us fill more orders. I think of my excitement this morning, that must have been a fraction of the surprise that hen must have experienced.

Chicken stew

We have only two roosters now. The hens are a little bit happier as there is one less rooster harassing them. There is a zero tolerance policy here at Caruso's Hillside Farm and I am just waiting to build up a file with enough evidence to fire another Barred Rock Rooster.

an almost finished shed

We have been working on the shed since last spring and now, with a fresh coat of paint, we can finally say that it is almost finished. As with everything else, there are wishes for a window and a porch, but for now, save painting the trim, it is finished. We gathered two different green paints for free and mixed and stirred until this third green shade emerged. On Sunday we divided plants from our friends' well-landscaped yard and planted in front of our shed. Now it looks a little like a cottage rather than a shed.

more blackberries

I took my tractor to the shop and had the steering and tire toe-in adjusted, welded a few cracks on the fender moved the front wheels in closer and freed up the brake pedals (both pedals were seized to the shaft so I could not brake only the left or only the right tire). The Kubota drives much easier and the tin rattling from the fender is repaired and then I damaged the fender again while backing into a heavy thicket of blackberry vines.
I decided that since the soil dried out temporarily I would try to mow more blackberries. The patch that I was about to tackle was even more difficult because somewhere in that thorny mess a woven wire fence was tangled by vines. I carefully lifted the loader high above head, drove into the berries as to not poke a rigid cane through the radiator and then lowered the bucket onto the thorns and pulled them down and back as I went in reverse. This pushed the blackberries low to the ground so that I could then back over them with the brush cutter mounted to the back of the tractor. I repeated this process until I could see the fence through the debris on both sides of the fence line.
I then attached a chain to the front of the bucket and lifted the old bent and rusted T-posts out of the muck by attaching the other end of the chain to the post and lifting the loader straight up above the fence line. It worked perfectly and with all of the posts removed I safely pushed the fence with the tractor until I was dragging enough wire on either side of the machine that my tires were about to get tangled. I put it in reverse and repeat the procedure fifty feet down the line.
Now with that cross fence removed and the brush mowed I will be able to acess the bottom of the field wherever it is the driest. I will constantly be mapping where the field becomes the wettest and where it dries out the quickest. This will determine where future crops, animals and structures go.

not so flooded

Everyone who is not a neighbor has been asking and worried about our new house on the floodplain this past week. Our house was far from the flooding, and our land, although a bit soggy, was untouched by the rising river. Unfortunately, the fields to the north of us offer a distant waterfront view, but the most we have to show is a puddle from a spring right where we were thinking about building a barn. That rules out that location. Now that we have all of the blackberries out of the way, we will be able to see how wet the fields get this winter.

Fall clean up

The consistent fall rain is inspiration to clean up for the winter. We took down the garden fence and cleaned up the beds. There are still rows of leeks, carrots and greens in addition to the peppers in the hoop house. We will take those houses down too, when the peppers are finished. Planning has begun for placement of the garden next year now that we have a better idea of necessary space as well as plans for more permanent structures. In the meantime, we are trying to use as much of the surplus produce as possible. We compost vines and other materials and supplement the chickens' diet with ripe vegetables. In this picture my mom and dad are freezing a few of the many now frozen peppers. All of this clean up is now done quickly in the precious daylight, because the early nights and dark mornings cut down on outdoor work time. Those projects that can't be done by headlamp (and there aren't many) are saved for the weekend...or brought inside. I never thought my living room would be used as a workspace in which to build a pvc-chicken wire door frame. I don't have a picture of this project because it was as big as the living room itself.

tomato clean-up

The plastic on the hoop house blew apart weeks ago and now the heavy rains have started. It is the first of November and we still have not had a hard frost, but the tomatoes are falling prey to the wet conditions which are causing late blight and anthracnose. The sweet peppers are holding on in the other hoop house but some are starting to loose quality; turning soft or developing tough skin. The material that I am picking up will go into the compost and I will cover the bare ground with peas and rye. I am looking foward to removing all of the plastic from the landscape. I will put the hoop houses further away from the house and a bit more out of sight next spring.

compost update

The compost in its new location is doing very well. I use the loader on the Kubota to turn and aerate the compost. In the above picture you can see the steam rolling off of the pile as I stir it. The compost should be about 150 degrees in the center of the pile. The Pallets we use allow us to stack the manure and garden debris in at least a 3'x3' heap. If a compost pile is much smaller it is difficult to reach hot enough temperatures for a long enough time to kill weed seeds and disease. The compost to the right is ready for the garden. When I stir the finished compost there is very little heat, it has an earthy smell and the compost is a good crumbly texture, I need to cover it from leaching, winter rains.

fence line

Himalayan blackberries take over fence lines everywhere in the county. They can grow 7 ft in a season and are difficult to remove due to their large thorns and tangled growth. We started mowing them down along our neglected fences and used a gas powered hedge clipper and a line trimmer with a circular saw blade to remove canes close to the wire. With heavy welding gloves we are able to pull the tangled canes through the wire. After all of that work we only cleared a small section and now we will be sure to keep them under control.

Planting Garlic

This weekend we started to plant our garlic with the help of our cousins Bob, Christopher and Vesta. With their help we flew through planting two rows of about 150 plants each. We saved the best of our garlic from this season and replanted it this year. Anna and I are separating the head of garlic into individual cloves to be planted, only the largest cloves from the best heads are used. We will plant Chesnok Red, Inchelium Red, Red Janice Asian Purple and Asian Tempest.
In the top picture we are getting ready to plant a clove of garlic under the weed barrier in each cut-out. Pointed side up and deep enough to cover with soil. We had some good conversation, we love getting extra help, especially from people as enthusiastic and insightful as Christopher and Vesta. After we finished feeding chickens, collecting eggs and planting garlic we had some of Bob's chicken curry (They brought dinner too!).

covercrop

The cover crop was planted 4 weeks ago and has now germinated. A mix of rye and peas should provide plenty of coverage. The rye should smother any weed. Rye grows quite fast in our cool wet weather and can compete for light and shade out weeds. When rye is established it also releases a chemical that prevents other seeds from sprouting. The peas are mixed in because they also grow fast this time of year and they will provide nitrogen for plants in the spring. Peas are a legume and plants in this family have the ability to take nitrogen that is present in the air and store them in their root system. When the peas are plowed under in the spring, they will release this nitrogen as the break down in the soil. Any crops that are planted following peas will have some nitrogen available to absorb.

Mobile Homes

The chicken coops became even more portable this weekend. We built completely enclosed runs out of pvc pipes we aquired from a friend and after much glueing and twisting and lining things up, we surrounded them with chicken wire and attached them to the coops.

Now when we drag the coops, the runs will come with them instead of moving fences every time we move the coop. Because of the smaller spaces, we will have to move them more frequently to keep them on fresh ground, but the chickens will not be able to escape.

Our motivation came from losing now 7 chickens in the past few days because they were getting out of their fence and immediately gobbled up by waiting coyotes. The hunt is still on for the coyotes, but at least the chickens are more secure. Here they are lined up awaiting their trip up and down the fresh grass.

Coyote trouble

Chickens hiding eggs has taken second priority to keeping chickens alive. We have lost 6 chickens in the last 3 days to coyotes. They are patrolling the field and attacking chickens that have escaped and are roaming outside of the fence. Every chicken lost has been in broad daylight and we return home to feathers scattered around the field. So far they have not broken in the fenced in area, but it is only a matter of time before they become desperate to get at the chickens smart enough to stay in the enclosed area. Our plan of attack is to send Vince out in hunting gear in the early morning and late evening. Our more permanent plan of defense is to build totally enclosed runs attached to the coop and move them more often than we move the current fences. Here is a picture of the feathers left of one chicken...

Potato harvest

We harvested all of the potatoes but discovered a large number of damaged ones. We grew them on top of the dirt under a thick layer of straw, which we continually hilled up as the plants grew. Common practice says that growing potatoes on new soil can attract wire worms, but we did not have that experience. Most of the potatoes that were damaged were rotten or were chewed on by rather sharp teeth, presumably mice. Some of the potatoes developed very interesting shapes as well.

More Fall Harvesting

The cooler weather hasn't hindered the peppers. They are finally turning red and taste very sweet.

Chicken Vent

I am finding it more and more difficult to live in harmony with the chickens. In fact, I am ready to wage war with the ladies. Our mother-daughter relationship is strained because they are deceiving me and hiding their eggs. Even though I am paying to feed them, they are not feeding me. Each afternoon is like Easter morning around here. I troop off to the coop to collect my expected 8-9 eggs and gather 3. Then I have to survey the perimiter weeds and the garden for the remaining eggs, carrying around my half-empty egg carton. All the while they are cackling and chiding me; just daring me to find the latest nest. There are about 4 chickens that have figured out how to consistently get out of the fence surrounding their coop and have declared themselves free-range chickens. This is not as much of a problem now that they can't cause much harm to the mature vegetables, if only they would lay their eggs in the coop. Their nest boxes are clean, dry and sufficiently dark , but aparently it's not good enough. I placed golf balls in the nest to fool them into thinking I wasn't stealing their eggs and that has not worked. I wouldn't mind as much if they laid them outside in the same place every day, but as soon as I find a nest, they make another one the next day. I do not feel safe about selling or eating these eggs, for I can never be sure how long they have been out there; if they have been in the wet fog or bushes for a day, are they still safe to eat? Although we move the coop and fence often, we are looking into electric net fencing and other ways to keep them in. Their wings are already clipped so they aren't going over the fence, but on our uneven surface, they find plenty of room to go under the current fence. It would take a lot of egg-selling to make electric fencing kind of money.

The finer things

Fall is officially here. The weather is changing, the days are getting much shorter, the house is getting colder, and there is a lot more mud. Despite everything going on, it is such an escape to enjoy the finer things nature has to offer (aside from fall produce). This was the view from our porch one morning last week. Sometimes we just stop and take in the beauty that surrounds us. It keeps us going and reminds us who we are.

Curing onions

The destructive winds have encouraged me to perform a few tasks that I have put off and one of them is storing the onions. The tops are mostly dry and after three weeks under the hoop house I think it is time to clean them up for storage. I brushed off dirt and unsightly sections of the papery covering then trimmed off the tops and roots. I will sack them up and hang them in the shed to allow air circulation.

Fall Winds

We had high winds on Saturday that lifted the weed barrier for the garlic and damaged the plastic covering on one hoop house. We need to use more than the few stakes to hold the fabric down, maybe pull some soil over the edge or pile rocks on the fabric.
The ripped plastic on the hoop house will leave the tomatoes exposed to the wet weather we are having. The positive side to this wet weather is that the cover crop that we planted on Sunday should thrive. We seeded austrian field peas with winter rye. Soon after sowing seed, the chickens moved into the field to help themselves.

Compost: great dirt, less flies

We create quite a bit of compost with vegetable matter. Our neighbor also empties his goat, horse and sheep stalls on our pile. One summer of this and "the pile" grew quite large. Vince put old french drain pipes in it to create air circulation so it took on a rather alien appearance. Then when he would turn it with the tractor, the smell was assaulting. The big problem with our pile was that it was down wind and right between our back door and the garden.

It took a couple of months, but "the pile" is now true compost. Vince moved it below the gardens so it is easily accessed and we do not have to walk right by it. It is contained by large pallets and is tidy in comparison to the sprawling pile that used to be. We used it to dress the tops of the new garlic beds and the rest will be used in upcoming plantings. The second pile is now "cooking" and we will keep adding to it. Now hopefully the fly population in our kitchen will diminish.

Backyard Wildlife

No pictures for this post. Perhaps we need a night-vision camera set up outside. Last night the howling of coyotes woke us up. The howling was not unusual, but the proximity to the house was out of the ordinary. We peered through the window in time to see a coyote, startled by the reflection, bound off across the yard just feet from the house. The kittens hadn't come in for the evening yet, and I feared the worst. This morning, peering out the window again, this time to see any sign of the kittens, we spied three deer grazing in the exact same spot of the yard. They were 2 and 1 points and were sampling the flowers and trees under the cover of a heavy fog. When they meandered back down the hill to the thicket they call home, the kittens could finally come out of their overnight hiding spot. This balance between farm and wildlife will be a delicate one.

Fall Preparation

There is something satisfying about breaking new soil for a garden. I am not sure if it is creating order out of the chaos of weeds, the anticipation of discovering what kind of success one might have growing plants, or it might be part of the fun of planning before the hardships of implementing the grand scheme. I have heard that one of the reasons a farmer plows a field is for the satisfaction of creating straight furrows. I have not been able to do that, but I find the challenge causing me to be persistent.
We broke the sod and flipped the soil over four weeks ago. This week we shaped some raised beds with the plow, rake and shovel. We are going to plant garlic in four beds this fall. The others will be ready for early spring planting; they should be drier than the surrounding field and we will be able to work them sooner. We have visions of strawberries on a couple beds and radishes along with leafy greens on another.
After shaping the beds, we spread lime and compost on the surface before covering it with a weed barrier. We planted garlic through a weed barrier last year and it worked out great. We cut an "X" every six inches and planted each clove through the cut. We had to assist a few garlic leaves through the hole, but a lot of the work stopped there and we did not have to weed. The initial investment of time was considerable; we had to make 600 cuts through heavy material, but we lifted the material during harvest and now can reuse it this fall and hopefully a few more seasons.

Little Mousers

An entry on an animal other than chickens! Our other girls, the kittens, are 5 months old now and our parenting plan for them is to become expert outdoor mousers. But, seeing as we live in coyote and hawk territory and close to the road, they still get to come inside at night. So far they have brought us three baby mice right up to the door. The first mouse was still alive and ran right inside. That caused a little chaos, but it was quickly caught by deft hands and disposed of outside, much to the kittens' dismay. Good thing Vince's welding gloves were close at hand. The second mouse was pronouced dead at the scene without a scratch on it, and the third was left as a gift for us to find right under the door when we arrived home yesterday evening. Their names are Coughball (yes, that's right) and Smudge. They go everywhere together and their mischievious ways make them the big entertainment of the farm lately.

nest boxes

Our 24 chicks turned out to be 21 hens and 3 roosters. We are going to keep one or two roosters so that we can raise our own chicks in the spring. The 23 hens now have a place to lay eggs. These are community style nest boxes that should give the girls plenty of nest space. Anna is excited to have a lid on the nest boxes so that we can retrieve eggs from the outside of the coop.

The hens that are laying right now are constantly "flying the coop" and we are finding eggs in the grass along the fence line instead of in the nest boxes. Maybe they are looking for a safer place to lay eggs where we will not steal them. I need to do some reading to find out what a good solution would be.

Fruit

Our fruit trees are finally laden with fruit! When we moved in April, we could only guess which types of fruit trees we had aquired. When a new septic was put in just prior to our move, many of the roots were damaged and we weren't sure the trees would make it. We were even warned by our friend Joe, "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear." (They appeared in bad shape.) But...after picking the cherries in the spring, we were looking forward to more fruit. About 3 weeks ago, we drastically pruned the branches of the cherry trees and trimmed the water shoots off of the others. The trees have not been maintained in a long time and so have grown unruly and too large. Despite all of these hardships, our little "orchard" is producing well; we have plenty of Italian Prunes, and Asian Pears and Apples are set, but not quite ready yet.

A farm: one building at a time

We are truly "building" a farm here. We purchased the land without any out-buildings, barns or sheds and quickly ran into a storage problem. After the hoop houses in the spring, the storage project this summer was a small shed. Vince purchased it off of craigslist, tore it down, and with two friends, put the full walls, trusses and floor on a trailer with ends hanging out over the road, and drove it down the street to our house. Putting it back up required making it our own, including new door cut-outs, siding, a new metal roof, extended eaves and artistic pieces to hide unsightly mistakes. All construction was done in between other jobs and farm chores. After much help from our fathers and their construction "expertise," it is finally in a close-to-completed state but is already filled to capacity. Visions of a barn, equipment shed, market stand and garage dance in our heads, but the cost of materials slows down construction considerably. So for now, our curing garlic shares a space with the bikes while chicken feed hides among tools, lawnmowers, and other odds and ends that belong in a storage shed.

deer rub

Our neighbor is in the process of restoring a ditch that ran through the base of the hill. He was walking through the adjacent properties to survey the old ditch and found some markings on an alder at the property line. He told me that there was a bear in the area. Anna and I were excited so we went down last night to inspect the tree that had been clawed. I was a little disappointed to find this deer rub. Despite my dismay, the chickens were relieved to hear the news.
The top picture is a close-up where you can see the hair left on the tree from the deer's head. Maybe he is marking territory or perhaps alleviating a severe itch.

The ditch restoration has been a pleasant surprise. There is an area of wet ground at the base of the hill on our property and it must stay wet down there all through the winter. Apparently there is an old ditch that has fallen in due to lack of maintenance over the years. The neighbor is retired and he has the ear of some old timers in the area. One of these people is on the ditch commission. In his extra time and influential way, he has convinced the powers that be to restore the old ditch and they are to dig it back out next year. This should allow me to access the bottom portion of the property year round and make it feasible to raise some livestock in the back of the property.

onion harvest

We started onions from seed in February and we lifted onions this week, a little over seven months total. We are happy with the size of the onions; they seem a little larger than the onions we have planted in past gardens from sets (immature onion bulbs). After half of the tops died back, we bent over all of the onion tops and lifted the bulbs a week later. We have been having dry sunny days, something like 20 days without rain, good onion curing weather. Here is a picture of some onions drying in the hoop house which offers protection from morning dew. Later in the week we will hang the onions in the shed to allow them to finish curing. If we do a good job curing they should store all winter, if not we always have the leeks to harvest.

Preserving: Now what do we do with all of this stuff?

Added to the list of "things learned" is preserving. We are trying various ways to preserve some of the produce that is either surplus or too big to sell. We blanched and froze broccoli and cauliflower until our freezer was stuffed. We pickled garlic and beans, made blackberry and rasberry jam, and juiced carrots. All of this jarring is being done in an ancient pressure cooker that was given to us. Thus the pickling as opposed to canning because we have been warned multiple times about the seal and have heard too many horror stories of canning-gone-wrong to try to use the pressure cooker part. So, our pressure cooker with the art-deco gauge has served us well as a boiling-water canner. I think we have finally got the timing down a little better now, can pull the jars out of the water without burning ourselves, and only spatter a little berry juice on the walls. After all, as one experienced canner told us, "you don't just can, you learn to can." And for that, we are grateful for recipies with step-by-step instructions and the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. Now, if only we had a place to store all of these jars...