A Pic A Day

For a while in 2008/2009 I was recording a picture a day.  Then I got terminated, and lost all my April pics in the transfer from the laptop.  And panic and depression (mild) set in.  So I quit!!!  Yesterday, I went back and retrieved a few pictures from each of the intervening months (May – December 2009) and posted them on the pic a day site.  I am starting again to post a daily photo as of January 1, 2010.  Check it out.   http://www.flickr.com/photos/32939001@N08/sets/72157611498122565/    (Link also posted in side bar for future reference).

Let it Snow!!!

I used to like snow ~ a lot!  Now, I am less inclined.  Maybe it’s because I spend so many hours moving it after it blows into the walkways and driveways.  Maybe it’s because I drive alot in less than ideal conditions.  And maybe it’s just because as I get older I feel the cold ALOT more!!!  It seems like my feet are never warm these days (although the slippers I knit just before Christmas do help alot).  And wearing three layers of clothing in the house…. well, you can see how I might come to enjoy snow less.  Although I must say, I prefer cold WITH snow, to just cold, damp and mushy.  There’s a lot to do in the snow.  Here are just a few pics of recent “snow” activity around here.

Memories of Christmas Past

So… Christmas is gone and New Years’ is upon us.  How quickly it all passes.  We will soon be taking down all the decorations and putting everything away for another year (and maybe another move??)

In spite of all the circumstances facing us,  Christmas this year turned out quite good.  Mom and Dad bought Alex one of the “large” bionicles that he was wanting and we managed to get the game he really wanted.  And others chipped in with other gifts that he felt quite happy about.   And… I managed to find a mandolin on kijiji for a great price.  It is gratifying to see the grin on Mark’s face as he plays along to some of his “rock” favorites.   So all in all, more good memories to hold when things get tough.

I thought I’d add a few pics here.

Decorating for Christmas

Last night we put up the ceiling decorations.  Does anyone else do this??? This is something my mother used to do (she doesn’t any longer) with us when we were kids and beyond.  (I guess it just isn’t such a big deal when you no longer have children at home).  Anyways… here are a couple of pics.

This can be done a couple of different ways.  I recall helping to tie thread (either white or clear nylon) around safety pins and then handing them to Mom to be pushed into the tile ceiling.  Since I’ve been married we’ve only had painted ceilings, so tape is the way to go.   Last night we discovered that clear hockey tape works better than scotch tape.  (We had our first casualty tonight, a small white glass ornament that smashed on the floor).  The decorations include small glass and styrofoam ornaments (very light weight), home-made tinfoil stars, tinsel and clear plastic “icicles” and snowflakes.  The small coloured globes add colour and the tinsel and tinfoil blows around in the warm air currents, reflecting light from the Christmas LED’s onto the ceiling and around the room….. very atmospheric!!

Of course… when we were done we had to lay on the floor and examine our handiwork.

First Snowman

This week we had our first good winter storm.   We had snow a couple of days ago and Alex and I went out and built a snowman.  Then, this morning, we awoke to a real “blizzard”.  I was glad I didn’t have to go anywhere.  It got up to about 4°C ~ wet, sloppy and very heavy.  But we are supposed to have more snow tonight.  So glad that my garden is tucked away for the winter and I got everything dug that I wanted!!

Here are a couple of snow pics.

Dec 6 ~ First brown egg

This morning I found my first brown egg on the floor in the coop. I think Daisy didn’t realize that she was supposed to stay in the nest box until the egg was out.  ( She was digging a hole to China in there earlier).  Anyways… it was a beautiful egg (and got eaten for lunch).   Here is a pic with 2 sage green Easter Egger eggs and a white store-bought large egg for size comparison.  I now have 4 out of 8 hens laying…. and am getting an average of 2 eggs per day.

What Now?

I haven’t written for a long time.  It’s hard to share about homesteading when you don’t know whether you are taking down or building, digging up or planting.  I am still unemployed and as time drags on we are questioning the future more and more.

However, animals must still be fed, and gardens cared for and the season still turns.  So I thought I’d take some time and bring things up to date, pictorally and in writing.

August, the chickens grew, the garden grew.  My biggest “surprise” was finding four rattlesnakes in the yard.  The first was a small one in the south garden.  The chickens were free-ranging at that p0int, and I was out sitting, just meditating and watching them.  Several of them walked up to a plant in the lawn, gave it a funny cackle and quickly walked away.  I finally decided to get up and see what they were fussing about and discovered a small rattler under the plant.   (I had just moved the coop and likely stepped right over that spot IN MY BARE FEET!!)   Anyways… into the bucket it went and I drove it 5 miles up the road and released it in a wilderness area.   The next day, the cat discovered another small one beneath the apple tree on the west lawn.  Again…. bucket, drive, release.   Then less than a week later I was watering my garden beds.  The grass between them was quite tall as I did not place them far enough apart to mow between.  Anyways…. I set two milk crates down and put the sprinkler on top of the “tower”.  I thought for a moment that I had put the crate on a bumble bee.   Then I took a closer look and realized that it was a pair of large, adult rattlers.  So…. another bucket, drive and release.   Thankfully they are quite docile, reluctant to strike and slow, and no-one was injured.  AND, thankfully, I didn’t find any more.

September, and the garden still grows.  Here’s a few pics.  The first is my annuals: tomatoes, chard, pumpkins, onions, beets and carrots.  The others are my perennials (with a few self-seeding annuals thrown in ~ including the HUGE pink touch-me-nots) which need to be separated, weeded and moved to more suitable lodgings.

I picked and prepared my calendula flowers into a tincture.  I use it for a cream/salve for healing.  It was all Alex ever got for diaper rash and he never had an problems with it.  And I was out of the tincture, so I needed more.  Here’s the process.   Chop up flower petals (and whole plants if there aren’t enough flowers) to fill the jar.  Cover with boiling water.  Leave in the sun for several days, shaking and turning regularly, while the active ingredient is extracted from the plant.   Do up another jar of plant material, only this time fill the jar with vodka.  (Get the strongest proof you can).  Leave in a dark place (agitating regularly) for about two weeks, again giving the alchohol time to pull out the active ingredients.  There are a variety of active ingredients in the calendula, some of which are alchohol soluable and others which are water soluable.  Hence the need for both.  At the end of the process, strain out all the plant material and bottle the resulting mixture.   I also ended up straining a second time through a coffee filter to remove all the sediment from the tincture.

The chickens were given free range priviledges on into September, until they became a threat to the perennial beds I was trying to fix up.   Here they are in the yard, next to their “improved” chicken tractor,  and then settled in for the night.

October was mild, although there were a lot of grey days.  I continued to harvest from the garden.  We did get a light frost but I was able to cover the tomatoes up.  We never did get very many ripe tomatoes this year, due to the coolish, overcast summer, so I had to check out a whole bunch of green tomato recipes when I finally did pull the tomatoes.  I pulled the whole plants and brought them inside to hang from the rafters (hoping that the tomatoes would continue to ripen).  It seemed to work for the cherry tomatoes (I picked a whole bunch in the basement at the end of November), but the larger tomatoes just went wrinkly and I finally harvested all of them and made green tomato preserves with them.

November, still no snow and fairly mild with some sunny warm days.   I got two of three of the garden beds emptied (and most of my perennials cleaned, sorted and bedded for the winter ~ and a possible move ~ who knows??  Anyways…  they survived a couple of winters in these containers, crowded in with the quack grass, so I think they should be OK now that they’ve been freed to grow even more.   I even managed to get suckers from all the lilacs growing around, so that I can take the variety of colours with me.  My front flower bed is completely fixed up ~ either we will enjoy it come next spring or someone else will.  I’m very happy to leave it in a good state.   The three garden beds are also in good shape.  I do have a bit to clean out of the far one yet, but very little.  And who knows, there may be some warm days yet??

I was able to get a pile of slabwood picked up, cleanup and cut up.  Now it just needs to be split into kindling for the winter fire.

The chickens got moved into their winter quarters on Nov 1, when the front steering structure on the movable coop finally gave out.  It is a nice large space and will be warmer for them, not to mention allowing them the maximum light possible.   I have fixed up the tractor outside so they can go out when the weather is nicer.

On Nov. 9 we went away for the day.   Before we left, I noticed that Vesper was in the nest box. 

Sure enough, when we got home there was a nice sage green egg in the box….. OUR FIRST EGG!!!!

Of course, we had to compare with a store bought egg for breakfast the next morning.

December 1, our first “real” snow.    Wood for the winter…..

The ponds all prepped and ready for winter…..

The gardens (almost) all put to bed……

And the chickens???  Well, I’ve fussed with the nest boxes and fixed them up to their satisfaction.  There are now three Easter Egger chickens giving us sage green eggs.  I get three every two days.  And today one of the barnevelders was in the litter box nest box fussing around so I suspect brown eggs will also be here soon!  Yeah!!!

We’re just NOT SO SURE about this snow!!!

A Different Arrangement

So… here is another arrangement of the chicken tractor/coop in action.  It gets moved every two days and then I mow the grass underneath it down.  (The wheels on the coop aren’t big enough to roll through the taller grass.  I’d like to “refine” the design by replacing them with the big pneumatic tires you see on special garden wagons).

It has been a coolish summer and so things haven’t been growing awfully fast.  Here is my garden as of a week ago.  The tomatoes are coming.  In the front are carrots and calendula (for some herbal creams, etc.)  Under the screen are beets and swiss chard (the screen has since been removed and everything is up nicely).

I haven’t planted too much due to not knowing whether/when we will be moving (I assume once I get another job).   The pumpkins are coming nicely.  The rhubarb that you see to the side is in one of those big tote tubs with the rope handles (has been since summer 2006).  Amazing that it has survived this long.  I was planning to plant it in the ground this spring (until I found out that I had lost my job).

However…. I have worked on a new flowerbed in front of the porch.  Here is the pic.   The grey pot (on top) has rosemary (will need to be inside for the winter) and the one on the left has parsley.  The one at the back (in front of my goldfish pond) has a creeping thyme in it.  There is also chives in the flowerbed.  The bed that you see to the right of the porch (see all those HUGE weeds) has since been completely cleaned out (I made a temporary bed to keep anything of value… peonies, hostas, etc) and I am in the process of boosting it up with peat moss (right now it has rocky, gravelly, barely soil) before putting back some of the plants I took from there and other points around the property.

Finished Coop

I finally got the roof painted yesterday….. here it is, in use!!

And here’s Mick (not very clear except his head)……  he’s a Barnevelder cock…. I’m hoping he’ll develop a little more colour as he matures.

My Chicken Tractor/Coop

I thought I’d give you the “play-by-play” on the construction of my chicken tractor.

First it was the chicken tractor itself… constructed from cedar that I bought as slabwood from the mill.  (A huge flatbed load for $15 happened to include a number of rough 2×2’s… so they were well utilized.)

Here it is…. easy to pick up and move around the yard.

Then it was time to build a chicken coop (on wheels also ~ I used the steering mechanism from an old wagon that the floor rotted off).  My first thought was that the screen floor would mean no clean-up, but I have since covered it with black paper and put wood chips into it.  It is still loose and fluffy (after 3 – 4 weeks of use) and not smelly at all.   It’s warmer and more comfortable for the chickens and they seem to like being in there (they go in and out through the day).

So… framed, with wheels and window inserted.

With roof on and painted…..

All walls and doors on and pushed up into place with the chicken tractor …. I moved the chickens from their temporary home in the shed into this new home today!

While the chickens were out one sunny day I closed the door, took off the short side wall and cut out the nest box holes. Then I tacked chicken wire over them for the night (until I could get the nest boxes completed).

Then I finished up the nest boxes (put the lid on and took the chicken wire off the holes.)  Also, I attempted to seal the seam with rubber (and silicone sealant).  So far it seems to be working.

It’s been raining a lot lately, so I haven’t been able to finish painting the roof of the nest boxes.  That is all that is left to complete it.

The chickens happily go in in the evening and I go out and close the door (just in case there’s a weasel or coon or fisher around.)  I think with the dogs around (they are in at night, but their scent is definitely everywhere) there won’t be too much trouble with critters, but I don’t want to take any chances.  When I go out in the morning, they literally run to get out as fast as they can!!  I keep them in one location for a couple of days and then move them when they are in at night.  I’ve still had to mow after they were done, but they definitely eat alot of grass and seem to relish bugs whenever they can catch them.  They are on pullet grower now also…. no eggs yet, but we are really looking forward to the first ones!!

I find it very relaxing to sit and watch them and talk to them as they scratch around in the grass.  They also seem to like it when I come next to the cage and they come over to see if I have anything for them.

And here they are…. the four Americaunas (Esmerelda, Miranda, DayGlo, Vesper) with Blossom in the background.

They will lay blue and green shelled eggs….. don’t know which ones, which yet!

And then there’s Rusty and Edelweiss, two of the four barnevelder hens.  They will lay coppery brown eggs.

And there’s Blossom in the background again.   I don’t have a good picture of Mick (he’s the cock) yet.  I’ll try to post one soon….. no cockadoodle doo’s yet either!!