Category: Homesteading

Pens, Dogs, and Chooks

Yesterday the sky grayed and the wind picked up, cooling the afternoon enough to tackle the outdoor chores. We had purchased a 50 foot roll of welded wire fencing on our way home from errands. One of our only town businesses is a hardware store. When we moved here, it was really aimed at farmers and was more a farm store. The owner sold it to return to farming and the new owner changed the focus to a more traditional hardware store, I guess to compete with Lowes and Home Depot two towns over in Genericia (our eldest son’s name for it). Unfortunately, he couldn’t complete and as he no longer drew the farmers, they went to Tractor Supply or Southern States two smaller towns over the opposite direction, he is going out of business. We got the fencing for a discount.

Once the day cooled, I pounded in the remainder of the T posts, strung the welded wire fence, securing the meat/cull chick pen. The chicken tractor still needs repair. I started installing the T post insulators to string the electric fence, but realized that the welded wire fencing wasn’t tight enough and the 2″ insulators were not long enough to hold the electric wire away from the welded wire fence. This morning, we bought a bag of 5″ insulators but as soon as we got home, the rains started so the installation will have to wait for another day. The rain was very necessary, so I can’t complain. We have had a high percentage chance of rain for weeks, but have gotten almost no rain.

Hopefully these measures will make the chooks secure from the 4 legged predator that got the 3 birds last week. With the freezer camp event on Friday, our egg production is way down, getting only one or two eggs a day until the new girls start laying.

A pen beside a pen and real gates. “Got treats?”

July 9, 2014
The Dentist

Not too many folks are fond of dental visits, unless you are the Bill Murray character in Little Shop of Horrors. My dentist isn’t like Orin Scrivello, actually he is a pleasant young man, but I still don’t like the visits.

My first day in Northern Virginia last week, I broke my left maxillary cuspid. The back of the tooth and the old metal filling stayed in place, the entire front of the tooth broke off. I wasn’t even eating something hard. I called my dentist and since I wasn’t getting home until very late Thursday night and since it was a holiday weekend, I couldn’t get an appointment until this morning. I called my son’s dentist in Vienna, but they suggested that if the tooth wasn’t bothering me, that it would be best for me to wait to see my own dentist as I would have to follow up with him anyway and that would incur double cost. I waited. Bright and early this morning I had my visit, left with a numb top lip, a hefty bill, a tooth that has had the metal filling removed, a tooth colored filling applied and built up to approximate a tooth and an appointment in August to have a crown, my 6th.

I was not blessed with hard tooth genes and unfortunately have passed the soft enamel on to all three of my children. Hubby on the other hand has granite teeth, but none of the our children got his tooth gene.

Since I didn’t eat breakfast due to morning farm chores and the early hour of the appointment, I could eat the couch right now, but I’m afraid I will have to wait a bit more time for the numbing to wear off so I don’t bite myself. I’m not a cannibal afterall.

On a more positive note, our first full day with grandson was full and rewarding. We got him a library card, signed him up for the summer reading club (he is a voracious reader at a level well above his 9 years, going in 4th grade level), we did his summer writing and math practice assignments, he practiced his guitar and kung fu without a fuss. His granddad let him watch part of a movie, they played baseball in the front yard, and they shot off some of the fireworks that were purchased prior to the 4th.

Today’s practices have been completed and we are going to go do some errands. We need a basketball for him to play with, a book in the Seven Wonders series is not in the local library chain so we will buy it for him and the pups need some supplies.

At some point soon, the fencing for the meat chicken run needs to be completed, the chicken tractor repaired from the dog damage and the electric fence extended around all of that. Today it is going up to 90ºf, too hot for outdoor labor. I will tackle some of it after it cools off this evening and work on it some in the morning before it gets too hot. Brown Dog hasn’t been back for more free chicken in a few days, or hasn’t been seen. Either they have him secured or our reinforcements, gates, and taller fence have discouraged him.

July 8, 2014
Sunday Thankfulness and Fun

After two days of hard work with eldest son, as a family we decided that today was going to be a fun day before they caught a 3 p.m. bus back to Vienna, VA, leaving their son, our eldest grandson, now 9 years old to spend most of the summer with us. Summer care for him was both expensive and hard to come by but also difficult to fit with their schedule as our daughter in law leaves for her Art Camp teaching gig at 6:50 a.m. and returns to the house at about 5 p.m., our son leaves on his bicycle to ride to campus at 7 a.m. so that he can make the 45 minute bike commute and get a shower at the Aquatic Center to be at his desk by 8:30 and he doesn’t get off until 5 p.m. and has to make the 45 minute bike commute home. We adore having grand-kids with us and love that we are trusted to keep him until mid August when the Art Camps are over and he and his mom will travel to Virginia Beach to spend a week or so with the other grandparents prior to school resuming for everyone.

For our fun day, we decided to hike to the Cascade Falls, a 2 mile uphill hike to a beautiful view followed by the return 2 mile hike back down to the car. The hike included a swim in the icy water by son and grandson and an extensive trash pick up by all of us that we carried back down in my bag. There were about 45 incoming freshmen from a local university that had hiked up and they seemed to be mostly responsibly for the trash. I gently confronted the group about what we had collected and was met with denial that it wasn’t them, but when they got up and left, they failed to pick up several GatorAde bottles, a gallon water bottle and 25 zip lock bags along with granola bar wrappers, candy wrappers and other debris. We collected all of that also and hauled it back down the trail to the trash cans at the parking lot, collecting additional wrappers on the way down. It baffles me that they could be so inconsiderate and wonder where they thought their plastic, cellophane, and mylar was going to go.

Rhododendron season, these are traditional pink, but most of the ones we saw today were white.

The pile of debris we hauled down from that beautiful falls and stream.

While hiking down, I got a call from our neighbor asking if we saw his big brown dog, the chicken killer down here again. Fortunately, I was a bad chicken keeper today and had left them cooped up when we left for our hike. He apparently walked down looking for the dog and couldn’t find him. Later he texted that the dog was in the house and we let the chickens out.

This afternoon, we put our son and his wife on a bus home and we brought our grandson home with us. He helped me extend the 4 foot fence up to 6 feet by putting a lighter weight garden fence secured with fiberglass poles to the top. This will prevent the youngs from flying out and hopefully will discourage Brown Dog from getting in.

July 6, 2014
Tough week for the chooks

This has been a tough couple of days for my flock. Yesterday morning, a neighbor’s dog who is generally chained up slipped his chain and caused enough damage to the chicken tractor where the culls were for them to escape after which he caught and killed two of them. This necessitated a change of day’s plan and eldest son and I went to work to make the coop pen more secure, start the work to make a more secure cull/meat bird pen with the chicken tractor inside of it, and to start planting posts to run the electric fence not just around the garden, but also around the two chicken pens.

Today was the day we had planned to kill and clean the cull birds, now down from 8 to the 6 we did get in the freezer. They were the original chickens I bought last year before I settled on the Buff Orpingtons and I called them my U.N. flock as there were 6 different breeds represented. We put 18.75 lbs of chicken away today.

After clean up and dinner, we decided to go into town for ice cream and while we were gone, the same dog again got loose and got one of my young Buff Orpingtons. This is now a problem as the dog has discovered he likes chicken and they are easy to catch. I don’t see any damage to the pen, so he can either jump a 4 foot fence or one of the young buffs got out and he caught it on the outside. We hadn’t finished setting the posts for the electric fence yet, so that barrier wasn’t there to deter the dog. The dog’s young owner is upset that his dog has killed 3 chickens in 2 day and I am perturbed about it but only to the extent that the dog isn’t secured well enough to not wander down the country road to our farm and get the chickens. I had thought about some free range time, but can’t do that with the dog in the area.

I don’t know what to do now. Son and I will see if we can figure out whether the dog can get in the pen and I guess I will have to cover more of the top with netting to try to keep the young buffs from flying over the top until they get too heavy to escape.

In our freezer camp event today, we also killed my rooster as he had gotten too aggressive with us and with the hens. This also presents a dilemma as I wanted a self sustaining flock and though the hens lay eggs without a rooster, they obviously won’t hatch, so I will either have to buy another rooster and hope that he is less aggressive or buy fertilized eggs when a hen gets broody to let her sit to hatch. I don’t want to have to keep buying chicks every few years and raise them in the brooder. We already have to deal with the brooder for the meat birds once or twice a year.

We currently have only two mature birds to provide us with eggs. Hopefully the 17 and 19 week old pullets will start laying soon, assuming I can keep Brown Dog out of their territory.

July 5, 2014
Independence Day

Today the USA will celebrate with cookouts and fireworks. Today would be my Mom’s 90th birthday, though she died 27 years ago. She celebrated on that date and always said that was her birth date, but she wasn’t really sure. She was adopted as an infant after the death of her parents in a time where records weren’t kept as a they are now. She knew she was born in Pennsylvania and knew her birth name, but when she went to get a birth certificate for a
Passport, there were no records. Her baptismal certificate said July 4, so that is when she celebrated.

One of our neighbors was a Greek immigrant who had become fairly successful upon coming to America and he too celebrated his birthday on July 4th as he had no idea when his real birthdate was and he wanted to celebrate with the country that took him in and made him a successful businessman. His sons held a huge neighborhood cookout with a spitted lamb, burgers, hotdogs, pot luck side dishes. They had a pool and we spent the day swimming and eating then shooting fireworks over the river.

Last night, I brought eldest son and his family home with me for the weekend and eldest grandson will be spending most of the summer with us. We had some fencing to do, 2 gates to hang, a small wall to construct around the top of the culvert and tomorrow to put 8 chickens in freezer camp.

Plans changed some this morning when a neighbor’s dog got in the cull pen and killed 2 of the hens. We spent a good portion of today reconfiguring pens, hanging two gates and setting poles for more electric fencing around the chickens and the garden. Tomorrow we will have 2 less hens to kill.

Tonight we feasted on steak, corn and peas and came into town to watch fireworks.

Happy birthday Mom, Papu, & USA.

July 4, 2014
Olio – June 27, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

The Raspberry jam salvage was a success. It is spoonable, spreadable, and isn’t so sweet it makes me gag. A win. The wild Blackberries are so thick with fruit this year, I have a dilemma. I don’t need any more jam. My daughter who LOVES blackberry jam made a pantry full of Strawberry Jam when the berries were ripe in Florida, so she doesn’t need jam either, but I can’t resist foraging for blackberries on the farm. I can freeze them and use them in smoothies, cakes, and cobblers, but we aren’t dessert eaters unless we have guests and then hubby would rather I make apple, lemon or pumpkin pie rather than cobbler. What’s a girl to do?

The rain held off long enough for me to get everything that wasn’t hayed, mowed. Jeff is coming a few times a day and hauling off 9 bales of hay at a time on his lowboy trailer pulled by the behemoth tractor. There are still 45 bales to go. The mowing was a priority as I am off to babysit for 5 days then bring RT and L back here with me on July 3. We will send 8 chickens to freezer camp, hang a gate, watch fireworks, and feast for the two days RT is here, then he will catch a bus back home to be back at work on Monday. L will stay with us for about 7 weeks of his summer vacation.

The teenager chicks are looking like I may not have to wait until August to get eggs from them. Many of the girls combs and waddles are growing and turning red. It won’t be long before I start seeing wind eggs in the coop and then pullet eggs in the nesting boxes as they figure the process out.

They are hiding from the heat, the culls are dustbathing to keep cool.

I dragged the chicken tractor to a new spot to give the culls something fresh for their last week. Jim will be in charge while I’m gone.

The last of the spoiled bale of hay needs to be moved over to the garden and some areas remulched. We had a chicken escape and they got in the vegetable garden and the new flower bed and made quite a mess. Between that, some thin areas that are starting to show weeds, tomatoes and peppers tall enough to mulch around, I need to get that task done before I leave also. I might actually welcome a rain shower while that is being done to cool things off a bit. The garden is thriving, the kale is winning.

The sink is full, the chickens got at least this much and there is plenty to take to Northern Virginia for them when I go up.

First Tomatillo. Can’t wait for a crop of them.

The peas are almost done. If I cool off enough from working out there, I will pick a meal’s worth for tonight.

It amazing me how quickly the raspberries ripen. I picked the bushes clean yesterday and treated myself to a hand full while I was weeding. I save a hand full to have with my yogurt tomorrow.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

June 27, 2014
Salvage

Each evening as I harvested the day’s produce and eggs, bringing in a half to a full cup of raspberries, I got more frustrated with the results of my batch of jam. The new berries were put in a wide mouthed pint jar and frozen, new ones added each night. The original batch so sweet and so gummy that it didn’t even work well in a smoothie without melting it first. Today’s harvest of berries filled the jar plus a half a cup or so. After some research from various cookbooks, homesteading books, and the internet, I decided to see if I could salvage the batch. Again, down came the pots, the jars and lids. The original 6 jars were warmed slightly to thin the sickly sweet goo. The new fresh and frozen berries crushed in the bottom of the jam making pot with the potato masher. Once they were beginning to cook, the first batch was added back to the pot with a quarter cup of water and a good splash of lemon juice and cooked til a gel test on a spoon showed a product that jelled but didn’t clump. The re-canning in clean jars with new lids has been done. The now 7 jars have all given the satisfying pop as they cool, so they are all sealed. The new process was less frothy looking and the foam easier to skim, so the jars are a pretty ruby color throughout. After they cool and I can do a tip test, I will see if I have 7 jars of jam or 7 cups of raspberry syrup. Hopefully, when I open one, I will have a jam that is spreadable. It tasted better when I checked it. When my peach jam didn’t jell (my fault for using old pectin), I bought liquid pectin and it seems to give a thicker consistency jam which I don’t like.

If any of my readers out there have jam recipes for low sugar (not artificial sweetener, I can’t use that stuff), or have found a good source of recipes for low sugar jams, I would love to have it. It is counter intuitive to me that most jam recipes call for sugar equal to or more than the amount of fruit. That takes a healthy product and makes it unhealthy.

June 26, 2014
It begins

I love this time of year. The garden is producing, giving us goodness for dinner and extra to put away for the winter. Today, the bulk of the peas were harvested. Two hours of shelling, a meal enjoyed with some and after dinner, blanching, chilling, and freezing. I would like to have at least twice what was harvested put away, but at least there are 10 meals worth of fresh frozen peas out of our garden to enjoy when the cold winds blow and the snows fall.

I opened one of the jars of raspberry jam and I am so disappointed. The jam is too sweet and somewhat gummy. Hopefully, I will be able to harvest another quart or so and can try again using a low sugar recipe and get a product that I am happier with. The jars I have can be used in smoothies or stirred into oatmeal, but there is no way I would spread it on homemade bread or biscuits.

I am lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

June 24, 2014
Wins and Losses

No, I’m not talking about FIFA Soccer, though that is on every public television in every place in town, including the grocer.

Ten months ago, we needed new phones and instead of dealing with the provider I had been with since moving to the mountains with no contract, we switched. That was an epic fail. Since our switch, my phone has had to be replaced because it wouldn’t hold a charge and would get so hot that I couldn’t put it in my pocket and we have had spotty to no service on our property and in our house. About 3/4 of all calls do not ring, and we may or may not get a voicemail eventually. To have any success making a call, we have to stand on our back deck. We have had two incidents in recent weeks where one of us tried to call the other from our land to our house or from the top of our driveway to the yard and the calls haven’t gone through. Both times were emergency situations, not life threatening, but situations that required the other immediately. We picked this service because of their advertisement about coverage. This is what we have most of the time.

Zero service, no bars, just the universal symbol for NO. Today we decided we had had enough and returned to the place we bought the phones and signed the contract to complain and possibly get out of the two year contract 14 months early. After dealing with a testy young man who finally after about 15 minutes of automated attempts to connect with a service tech, put Jim on the phone with the tech. We don’t know if we got anywhere or not, but allegedly they are going to work on it. As we don’t have a land line and as we are seniors working a small farm, and Jim riding a motorcycle and me traveling to babysit a few times a year, we need reliable cell service. If they can’t make this right, we may have to take the hit and cancel the contract early to go back to the provider that works on this mountain. This may be a loss.

The win is the soap. It isn’t pretty, sure couldn’t sell it at a fair or the Farmers’ Market, but it lathers nicely and smells good. There are 25 bars in two essential oil scents curing in the spare bedroom.

We will have plenty of soap for our use for a while, and to share with any of our children that want some bars. The two batches reinforced some lessons from my mentor. I reformulated the lye solution concentrate for the preferred of the two recipes to make it more superfatted using a lye calculator and wrote the recipe down where I can find it again, along with reminders about measuring everything by weight next time. I consider this a win.

June 23, 2014
Suds and Sweets

Nope, not beer, though I have been known to make it too. I realized that my homecrafted soap was nearly gone and as it takes 3 to 4 weeks to cure, I knew that I was going to have to get brave and make a batch or two on my own without my mentor’s help. I have made two batches in her kitchen and only one here alone. I have been procrastinating but realized that if I didn’t get over my reluctance and accept that I am still a novice and it might not be perfect, we were going to run out. Summer is not a good time to run out of soap. Sure, I could go to the grocery or the Farmers’ Market and buy some, but that goes against my nature.

Yesterday, the soap making box was hauled out. I quickly realized that I didn’t have the exact oils that the recipe I selected called for, but know that you can substitute some. I quickly forgot rule #1, that in soap making, everything is weighed and I measured out the water for the lye mix in liquid ounces. I measured the oils by weight though. The recipe that I selected only filled my good mold about halfway, but I covered it, wrapped it in old towels and put it aside to saponify. Today, when I pulled it out, it was a bit softer than the soap I made with my mentor, but the 6 bars are curing for use in a month. Since the recipe only made 6 bars, I resupplied on the oils that I was missing yesterday so that I wouldn’t substitute and followed a new recipe to the letter. When I added the essential oils to scent it, the soap seized and it is crammed and packed in the molds, covered to saponify. It won’t be pretty, but it will be soap.

Batch one curing.

Batch two about to go under cover to saponify.

Today’s raspberry harvest brought me up to the 4 cups I needed to make jam. Mind you, I don’t need any more jam, still having blueberry and blackberry left from last year, peach that I made a week ago, but I grew these raspberries and I want to savor them all winter. So down came the pots and jars, the berries mashed, the sugar added and jam making round two for the season begun.

Jam cooking while the jars heat beside it.

Six one cup jars ready to for canning.

Six jars cooling on the counter, as I listen to the satisfying pop as they cool and seal.

The rest of this year’s harvest of raspberries can be eaten as I pick, put in yogurt, and frozen for treats during the winter.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

June 22, 2014