Chicken Pretties

As I lay here in bed, I have the melodious sound of Trouble our cat happily crunching away on another defenseless rodent who foolishly attempted to eat some of our produce. ... The other day at work a lady told me that with any luck the doctor would put me on bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy, I think she was trying to be nice but I felt like saying, "Why on earth would you wish that on anyone?" Stuck in bed without being able to do anything is not really my idea of fun. Working on the farm is the only thing that keeps me sane(ish) and to take that away is just pure torture. Although I must admit that I have seed catalogs at the moment to keep me company the thought of ordering anything just to have it sit there staring at me is not really that fun either. So as not to dwell on the suckage.... lets look at one of the pretties we made this year:

Front view, although the pistachio and the fence slightly obscure it.

Side of the coop as if you walked out into the orchard area: Size: About 9ft wide by 17ft long by about 13 ft tall.

Bottom section of the blue opens up to allow easy cleaning of the straw on the upper story.

Top section of the coop is designated for roosting animals: Chickens and Turkeys. There are also 11 nesting boxes for them to use with hinged doors to allow for easy extraction of eggs.

Plenty of ventilation on both stories so that it will promote a healthy living environment.

Most of the material we used on it was purchased at Restore or we used from bits left over from previous projects. The birds like it just fine but I've found that the cycle of straw is the best thing ever! Cycle goes something like this: Add bale or two of straw to second story. This allows the chickens and turkeys to scatter it about a bit and to allow them to poop in it while roosting. For cleaning I first take out all the straw at the bottom and scatter it on crops or sectioned off garden areas. I then drop the straw from the top section into the bottom section. The ducks and geese go through the straw, but the best part is that the bulls still fit into the bottom section and they roll in the straw, kick it around, and poop in it as well. The chickens then come back in and scatter everything about leaving amazing compost to spread on the crops come cleaning time. Also, Jed gave me a garden hoe for Mother's day and it's one of the best presents ever!! I used it to clean up the coop, along with my pitchfork... I'm only lucky person to have found a husband who knows me so well. =) Love you Jed!!!

Stagnation and Growth

I find myself 19 weeks pregnant, extremely dizzy, exhausted, nauseous, paranoid about my pregnancy, and pretty much bedridden for the sake of our child. This means that I have not gone outside to visit the trees or the garden since about August. This Autumn was very warm (126 F was the highest it got) and very dry so most of the plants died because Jed is an awesome blacksmith, but sadly his gardener genes were all burned up by the forge. Some of the more hardy plants survived and that's what we want, the hardiest plants to survive extreme weather fluctuation. (6 degree to 131 degrees F so far) And since I can't go outside, I'll see about updating our blog.

As it happens, right before I got pregnant I had made a list of items which I wished to finish before winter set in and as it so happens, two major projects were finished: the chicken coop and the gate to the orchard area. The rest of the homestead continues to grow. The fruit garden seems to be doing well but the animals got wind of the Stevia plant and consumed it essence until nothing but its memory was left. Did you know that comfrey could actually die? Normally our comfrey grows and propagates like mad but this one was subjected to one too many feedings from the geese and it gave up the ghost. (I was about to write "Gave up the goat," which is an awesome statement on its own.) With any luck I'll add clovers and other edibles, including flowers to that garden so that it can continue to grow.



The side garden is pretty much set. The quinces gave us fruit, the strawberry spinach provided fabulous greens, the currants, gooseberries, and pineapple guavas grew, the tomatoes and parsley flourished providing tons of edibles to the birds, the valerian thrived, the raspberries, grapes, and blackberries might actually provide enough fruit for the birds and us next year, and the sage, comfrey, fennel, horseradish, and thyme expanded. Other than occasional annuals, I think that area is set in regards to perennials.

 This year we added a few more tropical plants because you can take the Mexican out of Mexico, but we still want our fruit no matter where we might be living. My lovely friends from work gave me a guayaba (guava for all the English speakers) and a yellow mango. I'll see about adding other types of mangos and guayabas s the years progress but I'll made do with those for now. It's currently sugar cane season in the US (for some odd reason they only provide it during Xmas, probably because of the Posadas) and I was going to see if I could propagate some for next year. But as Jed and others will have to do the planting for me... I might just wait and see.

Things I'm falling behind on: Fall planting: Garlic. =( I normally plant around Oct 31st/Nov 2nd because there is no better time to plant garlic than when the barriers between the land of the living and the land of the dead are at their weakest point. I was able to pick up some plants/trees in July for planting.. but as I can't be outside for that long... mind you I can't really be standing up for that long, I'll have to wait to see when I can organize people to help me with those chores. Which is a pity since garlic is so fabulous and it's one of those crops that we look forward to every year. I'll see if anyone is interested in exchanging garlic in pounds for helping me plant. We'll also have to see how pruning will go this year as I'm pretty sure I won't be able to climb the almond tree. I'll have to see if I can do many little batches and then propagate in little batches as well. 

Living off of 2 inches of rain a year...

We haven't posted in a while, mostly because we're usually super busy and my work does not allow me to access this site from that location and by the time I get home I'm not thinking about going online. Interesting updates:

We have mini bulls and are looking forward to mini cows:

Enough time has passed so that it looks like if we have an actual tree in the back yard, smallish yes, but tree like none the less:

We received our first real rain in 4 years last night. =) I'm hoping that it continues.
We're still planting everything in the world as well as trying to do too much. We'll post up our current and upcoming projects soon.

Walking

I've been going for walks during my break and my lunch hour. I find that the noise and bustle of Paso contrasts drastically to the sound of out at home. At our house we do have vehicles passing, the noise of the airport, and the highway off in the distance, but sometimes there aren't cars/trailers/motorcycles/atvs passing by the house or airplanes/helicopters overhead. Sometimes it just gets really quiet and you can hear the frogs, crickets, livestock just going about their day or night. Sometimes you're just outside and you can hear the sound of the wind in the trees. I think that is something that I really appreciate out where we live. I can see the stars and I can hear the wind; two things that I really can't do while I walk in town. I find my walks, although refreshing, especially on days like today where I end up walking while it's raining, lack the mellow sounds of my home. It's nice having a home to look forward to at the end of the day.

Continuing with the edible landscaping

I've made most of the front an edible landscape with raised beds, but I hope to make all the fence line be more of an edible hedge/barrier.

Pathway into the house. From the gate to the door: Lamb's ear, oregano, winter savory, chard, sage, comfrey, mint, horseradish, and some more chard. Ultra dwarf lemons and limes in pots.

One of our raised beds: Softneck garlic with lettuce and an heirloom tomato in the center. Yes, we were watering it because we hadn't received enough rain. =) Luckily, it's rained the last couple of days.

Fence line along the driveway, Along the fence: Mint, grapes, lemon balm, rosemary, grapes, thyme, feverfew, rue, grapes, pomegranate. Sharon's strawberry bed right in front of that. It's no longer a bed as we've let them spread out and are letting them grow as ground cover along that whole side of the yard.

Looking at nothing

I sometimes find myself amused at what Jed might think I actually do when I get my "garden" time; I seem to walk around and look at the ground, plants, trees, grasses, seeds, and sometimes I just seem to be looking at nothing. I was thinking about this yesterday as I walked around the homestead. I was lucky enough at my work to be stationed really close to home and thus there are some nights that I actually arrive home fairly early (around 5:15pm) and so I get to play while there is sunlight.

Yesterday I was able to check on all the trees to see how they are all doing. I find that one of the female pistachios has a ton of potential nuts while the other (closest to the coop) is just barely waking up. Pistachios have a tendency to fruit biannually and so I'm checking to see if my calculations for the previous years will show that we have fruit from the trees on alternating years so that we have pistachios every year rather than a huge harvest one year and none on the next. I check to make sure none of the birds have gotten into any of the new trees and that there aren't any nests in the new plants. I touch the ground to see how much moisture it has, how warm it is, if there are active worms in there, if the seeds are germinating, if I need to add additional mulch, and many other things.

Yesterday I walked around with a turkey egg in my hand while looking at the trees. The feel let me know that they had enough calcium and maybe just a little extra. The shell was hard with extra little calcium deposits on it. The coloring is nice and the shape is fair. It tells me that I might need to provide a little more water for the birds to drink. It also tells me that the turkeys are laying a little later than previous years, which makes me want to add a tom to our flock as soon as possible.

I look out at the grasses to see where bacteria is active the most (around the trees) and where I need to let the sheep roam. It tells me where we have a tendency to walk and where I could use a little bit more help with the soil.

I stare out at nothing to get the feel of the whole place, to see the cows and sheep interacting and how the place will look in another 5 years when the trees are all in production. How the sheep and cows will move around the trees and what I can do to keep the animals from devistating the orchard while enjoying its benefits. I imagine the tall canopies of the trees and the grape vines all along the borded, the berry bushes covering some trouble spots and the stream just a little bit deeper, the strawberries flourishing in the back and the fruit production all around. I guess I look into my perception of the future of the homestead as well as the present and compare it with the past. All those images amaze me and fill me with joy to think of what the future holds.

The mist that we call rain

California has had one of its driest years in record and so it seems that we have no respite from the drought. We've had a couple of showers in Feb that did bring in a couple of inches of rain, but that accounts for all the rain we've received since July of 2013. I just took a walk around the block during my work lunch break and there is water outside. The sky is gracing us with a steady mist that we Californians like to call "rain." I'm hoping that the rain continues as we planted the corn (Wapsi Valley) a week ago. All the trees are blooming and leafing out, which makes me happy. I'm hoping that if we do end up getting an El Nino summer that the rain will allow all my trees to grow well this year and hopefully we'll have a good harvest next year. So far it looks like if we'll have an all right harvest of apples, peaches, and almonds. The pistachios are letting me know that I do not have a say on whether they provide nuts or not, so we'll see how this year goes for our pistachio production. We're adding another type of potatoes (Purple Vikings) as we've grown those before and they worked well for us. This year I was able to propagate a bunch more grapes and managed to plant about a dozen two nights ago, just in time for our rain. I'm hoping they do well. The types that propagated well were the flame and the Red Globe, both would be used for home eating, jam, juice, and raisin production so it's not like if they will go to waste. The chickens will also have dandy time jumping and eating those. I think they greatly enjoy it when they are able to feast on the elderberries throughout the summer. A couple of new grape additions to the house were the concord, champagne, black manuka, and crimson. The champagne and crimson are not looking so good, we'll see if they leaf out at all. The rest of the grapes are happy and thriving. So far all of the grapes out front seem to be growing well. The different types that we now have on the farm include: Red Globe, thompson, perlette, flame, crimson, concord, black manuka, champagne, and crimson. We seem to have the full range of colors going on, but we'll see what this year brings with quantity and quality. If it turns in to a not so hot year we might end up with a poor quality harvest, but the plants might grow very well. As I always end up having left over propagated grapes (a couple dozen went up north yesterday with Jen and John - Thank you guys!!) I was playing around with the idea of offering the grape plants for a dollar on craigslist next year just in case if people were interested. I'll have to think about it a bit more before then, but it's an idea. Raspberries were added to the mix again this winter. I found a brandywine purple raspberry to add to the fall golds, indian summer, heritage, and cumberland. We'll see how this summer treats them but if they all survive and thrive then we'll also have the full range of colors for our raspberry selection. We're hoping to have raspberries for fresh eating as well as jams as they seem to disappear just as quickly as they appear. I have another small order of strawberries coming in to help with the Ivan quota of strawberries. If all goes well I'll also get to add yellow and white strawberries this year (at latest late fall 2014 or early spring 2015) so that we can mix up the variety of strawberries on the farm. Boysenberries continue to thrive and grow. I pulled up another 31 runners from one plant this year and was able to hand off some to my classmates. This is another plant I'm thinking about selling next winter if all goes well. I was able to plant many along the north border and they are still driving so hopefully we'll have a couple of good growing years and then the third will allow for production. Blackberries continue to drive and we have many growing in the front yard along the northern border. I'll have to be very vigilant with these so that they do not take over the whole northern part of the property. The currants have turned out to be very vigorous and hardy, which is exactly what we need on the property. The gooseberries seem to be coming back stronger and the blueberries are waking up. The asparagus is growing and I have a few more to add to our mix so that the whole family can have tons of asparagus to eat every year. We're hoping to add a few more different types of perennials so that we won't ever have a (hopefully) bad year; if one thing fails we'll still have many other veg/fruit varieties to fall back on. I'm also leaning more towards the perennials because I find them easier to take care of. The pineapple guavas are growing well and I'm thinking about adding a few more to the property. Our Patterson apricot seems to have died due to borrers. I cleaned, painted, and protected, but I don't think it was enough. I'll have to be that much more vigilant with our trees. I was able to protect the Ranger peach and another one of the small apples, but that one just didn't make it. We did get a few more apricots to the property this year, so hopefully that will help us with the apricot productions. The sad part was that they would have been in production this year as the tree was of adequate height and growth. As you can tell, I (Rosie) tend to focus a lot on the vegetative part of the homestead. There is something so peaceful, relaxing, and productive about working with the plants that I have a tendency to focus on them. I'll leave it here for now, but I'll keep updating the plant list as the year progresses.