7/27/2017 1 Comment Good morning, Elinor...It sounds like you are enjoying chickenhood for the most part! I am still so on the fence about chickens- especially since my two smallest dogs are tiny murderers of moles, baby bunnies and the like. As far as selling produce, I do believe we almost grew enough to do that this year, but we went the canning route instead. Brandon has been busy canning pickles and tomatoes on the weekends! And I think we have some garden fatigue, sadly. Getting tired of fighting the super hot southern days that are scorching our plants. We picked two eggplants that already felt "cooked" if you know what I mean. Next year, we plan on expanding the garden a bit and purchasing some shade cloths to protect our plants during our brutal July weather. The bees! Oh, the bees have been an interesting drama all unto themselves. We are not bee keepers, as you know. So our friend who is has been keeping a hive on our property. I do believe they've done some wonderful pollinating in our garden and that we owe much of its fruitfulness to them. I highly recommend this arrangement if you want the benefit of bees without the hassle. The hive started out strong but seem to be suffering from what we have surmised may have been a hive take over. That's when another hive of bees comes and kicks your hive our of their box and steals their honey and kills their queen! Very dramatic, but it does occasionally happen to newer, weaker hives. This week I am finding country life a little isolating, Elinor. It's hard to make friends with other families when those other families seem so spread out and you don't quite know where to look. In suburbia, there are always tons of parks, play groups, etc. to hit up during the summer. Here, it's just us and our two acres. There might be one other kid on our street, but we never see him out playing. I have to admit that I am looking forward to school starting so that The Bean can meet other kids his age. Although, we are still unsure if he will end up at the charter school or the regular public school. I'm sure that will be answered in the coming weeks. Don't die of shock, but I've even considered dropping in on some VBS activities at one of the local churches with The Bean just so he might meet some kids his age. The liberal church with two female pastors, of course! How are homeschooling plans coming for you? Any country parenting tips for this newbie? What has been your biggest money saver when it comes to raising three boys? Yours, Marianne
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7/18/2017 0 Comments My dear Marianne,Reading your ongoing hose saga made me feel better about Edward and I and the debacle of 20 wheelbarrow loads of topsoil moved uphill! I wish we lived closer because we supposedly have 450 feet of hose that came with our new place. Yup, we could water one and a half football fields. The supposedly being that it's ancient hose and who genuinely ever measured it? I do know there's a buttload of it that I have to navigate over every time I go into our shed. We've eaten one jalapeno out of our garden compared to your cornucopia! The pleasures of living in the frozen north! But I can dream for next year at least (which realistically is probably a ten year plan). Raised beds, raised beds, raised beds. I stuck some golden beets in the ground and they just look pitiful. Didn't help that the boys trampled them inadvertently either. Maybe they were hoping to kill them so they wouldn't have to eat them? But yes, raised beds. Stone walled raised beds, about 24 inches high. Someday it will happen that I'll actually sell some paintings so that I can turn my incredible stone mason husband loose on that project for a summer. I like the size and relative placement of our garden but I want the whole thing to have a very nice and high fence. And beds of Roma tomatoes and some heirloom ones for eating. A bed of hot peppers too. And if we're dreaming here, beds for carrots, potatoes, golden beets and onions. So as to not buy root vegetables. Herbs in the corner near a bed if garlic too. Along the fence I'd have beans so they could climb that too. AND I want river rock paths in between each bed or flagstones. See the diagram at the end for my extravagant dreams that could keep poor Edward busy for five summers in a row. I was actually daydreaming about gardens yesterday as I was herding my delinquent poultry out of my peppers and tomatoes. The little buggers looked guilty when I found them making a dust bath the size of Texas in my raised bed of peppers! Absolutely honest that they looked guilty!! I walked in and they started clucking nervously and looking for an escape route. So after gloating to you that my peppers were doing well the chickens have brought humility. So, yes, we made the leap into poultry parenthood! I literally put two hens and a rooster in the back of my car to get them from Mrs. Tweedy's to my house. It was an odd moment to have three kids and three chickens in a small sedan. The other five hens had the comparative luxury of being transported via truck bed. Altogether we have one rooster and seven hens. The matriarch is Puffy an ancient gigantic Light Brahma who continues to live out her days because of her willingness to be tortured by my small children. Then there are the Three Sisters, Australorps who look exactly alike and function as a unit. There is one leader whose main goal in life is to put the rooster, Rocky, in his place. She's gotten tired of him doing his rooster thing to her every five minutes so she's now taking sadistic pleasure in beating the tar out of him! I admit, I've been cheering her on because it was a little excessive! And then there's Goldenrod and Cinnamon Bear, two hopelessly clueless but pleasant Rohde Island Red hens. Mugsy, our oldest boy got to name the rooster so we let our middle boy, Thorin, name the ancient Australorp hen who is Puffy's counterpart. Thorin choose "Beakus" and we've discovered it to be an amazing moniker for a chicken. Beakus is also still laying eggs at five years old!!! This is why I believe in the Australorps. Oh the blueberries... That will have to be a whole other letter! What an adventure! But for now, I'm definitely going to look into those traps for our blueberry bushes! I do not have the courage my mom, Mrs. Tweedy, has in smashing them with bare hands (what a woman!) and always hoped for a non contact solution. I loathe them but it's the crunching exoskeleton I can't handle. I've even wimped out to the extent that I've promised my boys a chocolate chip for each Japanese Water Beetle they kill. In the meantime, any more thoughts on adopting some chickens? I know I seem obsessed with poultry (Edward reminds me of this tendency often...but then he never grew up believing a hen could return love) but once you make the leap it is so satisfying. Also, would you and the Colonel ever sell produce? Oh! And how are your bees doing? Sincerely, Elinor 7/16/2017 0 Comments Oh, Elinor...The things we will change about our garden next year! We are already planning to move our raised beds to in front of the shed and directly behind our well spigot so that we don't have to traipse two watering cans half an acre multiple times just to water our garden. And yes, we did think of a hose, but it would have to be so impossibly long it would be ridiculous! Almost as ridiculous as making several trips with two watering cans. Ha! We will also be spacing out our seedlings more- a crowded bed is hard to work in. My dream garden has a hose for watering, a fence to keep the puppies out, and slightly higher raised beds. Hint, hint, Colonel Brandon! We have harvested several things from our garden: Enough cucumbers to can some pickles, a million cherry and Roma tomatoes, romaine, blackberries, zucchini, squash, herbs, cayenne and jalapeño peppers, eggplant, and a sad batch of baby spinach. Not to mention, the beautiful wildflower bed I have been feverishly defending against a Japanese Water Beetle invasion. I can't say enough good things about my Tanglefoot beetle trap! What a fabulous pesticide-free way of dealing with this invasive species. They simply attract them with scent, and then the stupid little buggers just fall into the trap. While the Spectracide beetle bags work well, too, I don't love buying replacement bags for them every week. The Tanglefoot trap is re-usable. I just empty the beetles into one of the many shameful grocery bags taking up space in my pantry. Someday I will consistently remember to bring reusable shopping bags with me to the store, but as of right now I have enough plastic bags to last a lifetime of dead beetle and dog poop collection! Now, there's a mental image I'm sure you'll enjoy. You're welcome. Two other things I would like to have in the garden next year are a couple beds with hoop house coverings and some shade cloths. Southern summer temps have been frying some of my more delicate plants- like baby spinach. It would also keep the moths from eating my kale next year. Thanks, moths! What's in your dream garden? What would you change for next year? How is the organic berry farming getting along? Yours, Marianne 7/3/2017 0 Comments My dear MarianneRaised beds... why is that such an enormously complicated thing??? Seriously, I had heart palpitations when I tired typing it in on google. And compost??? How can people be that vicious about dead organic material? And somehow Edward and I made it even more complicated. More about that later. We are now in our new home and every morning as the sun rises and bathes everything in a golden glow, I feel like those magical mornings on vacation. When you think that it is just about perfect and why, O, why do you ever have to go home? We don't... I still can hardly wrap my mind around it every morning. We are settling in and having mild to severe panic attacks about paying a mortgage but still enjoying it overall. We are in a cabin on top of a mountain with hundreds of blueberry bushes. If I can't somehow enjoy that, I need to be locked up now. Ok, I apologize but I still can't let the chicken thing go yet because I'm going to make the leap very soon and I need someone to commiserate with. Or at least to give you a playbook of what does not work. When we bought the place we got a coop along with it. I never ever thought I'd have a coop this nice. Converted shed would have seemed palatial to me and this little chicken bungalow is the quintessence of cute. BUT as I cleaned out the coop today, I thought of you. Not that half rotten chicken crap evokes thoughts of you. But the thought was how vital a pair of TALL rubber boots is. I think they might make the top of the homesteading needs list. The TALL rubber boots makes the whole chicken adventure more romantic and less like wading through piles of rotten crap. Also, a square bladed shovel for removing said refuse. Peels it right off! This plus two things I might consider indispensable for chicken housing: EASY to clean flooring and the ability to hose out your structure. Our coop has a glass board floor and the manure, after sitting for 6 MONTHS, slid right off! And then I got a little crazy and hosed the whole thing down. We had put the coop on a slight incline and all the dirty water trickled right out the front door. It was a downright pleasurable experience to wield the hose with such magnificent results. Not to bring it up again but after my child hood job of mucking out the dirt floor of the huuuuuuge shed we had converted into poultry quarters, this was a pleasant experience! Not so pleasant experience? Raised beds... we now have them in and things are growing like crazy but getting there was difficult. We got mushroom soil but were not thinking and wheelbarrowed 20 plus loads of topsoil, 100 yds uphill to complete the beds. Praise the Lord we weren't totally insane and only did a 2 large raised beds... Not saying we weren't stupid, just not certifiable. We realized afterwards that we probably could have just used the topsoil from the garden... or Edward's truck... Sometimes the college degree doesn't help much with the common sense stuff. We had a good laugh after we recovered from the day. And why in the world are my peppers growing and yours not??? That makes no sense!! Are your beds not draining? That's about the only thing we did do right! And I have a confession.. I want to try the Colonels recipe so badly but I can not bring myself to buy a zucchini... we decided not to do them this year, tomatoes and a few peppers about broke us. And also, during the summer, you always lock your car at church so no one will "bless" you with their excess of zucchinis. Not making this stuff up!! So, I can't buy any yet (I am that cheap... but really a whole dollar for something that people can't give away??) and we're still a few weeks away from being "blessed" by others. So, we wait... And I languish in jealousy that you can grow eggplants. What else have you planted? Have you been able to harvest anything yet? 7/1/2017 0 Comments Dear Elinor,As promised, here is the recipe! It was honestly the best zucchini bread I have ever had and a great way to use up some of the many zucchinis we have. Despite having crowded the bed (beginner's mistake), the plants are thriving! I'm going to thank my homemade compost for that. However, even Brandon had to admit that his gluten free loaves tasted even better than the original loaves he made. To make this recipe gluten free for The Bean and myself, he simply traded out the flour for Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 blend gluten free flour and added 1/4 tsp of extra xanthan gum per cup of gf flour so that it could hold up to the moisture of our melting Enjoy Life gluten and dairy free chocolate chips. I'm secretly glad that you had to hop on the gluten free train as well. Misery loves company!
Ok, I have to ask- is that Barred Rock Hen with the spiked collar really a cartoon of college me? haha I'm so sad that you've had a bad experience with them. They are so cool looking with their black and white feathers! And that Cornish Game Rooster totally looks like the kind of guy I would have gone for... you know me too well. Haha! Ah well, maybe next spring I will finally jump on the chicken train. We eat so many eggs in this house that it would probably be a good move for us. How are your raised garden beds doing? What's your luckiest crop this year? Have you had any failures- like my poor bell pepper plants? Oh, remind me to give you my recipe for all natural weed killer! Yours, Marianne |
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