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...