Apple Jack Creek

Things you can do with baling twine

2008-11-23T17:45:00.003-07:00

Just about anyone who feeds round bales to their stock is familiar with baling twine. It's true that some people use netting to wrap their bales, but I have a deep dislike for that stuff - it freezes to the ground in the winter, as well as to the bale, and it always seems to shred rather than peel off nicely. Luckily for me, the people I get my hay from feel the same way, and they use plain old orange baling twine.

Now, plain old orange baling twine has it's challenges too - you do need a knife to cut it (you can't break it with your hands), sometimes it gets rather embedded in the hay of the bale and it's hard to pull it off, and it will eventually shred into frayed bits if pieces of it are left out for too long. Everyone gets into the habit of picking up any pieces that are lying around - animals can get it caught around their feet, and some will even eat it, although I have no idea why it would seem appetizing.

Still, it is useful stuff. You can use it to tie a gate shut, fasten the ends of rolls of fencing wire so they don't unroll, even weave a patch for a hole in the fence.

This week, though, I discovered you can knit with the stuff. It seemed to me that this fairly stiff plastic twine would make good raw material for a boot mat. So, I cast on 75 stitches on some 6.5 mm needles, and off I went in garter stitch. I haven't got very much completed yet, but it is working out just as I had envisioned. I found some comments online from people who have had similar ideas, so it's not exactly a novel thought ... but, it seems to be working.

I'll post a picture when it's done.

The Reluctant Farmer becomes a Fireman

2008-11-23T17:29:00.002-07:00

The Reluctant Farmer has joined our local volunteer fire department!

I'm so proud of him.

Every week he goes to a meeting at the fire hall and learns something new - last week they tried out all the small equipment like chain saws, generators, and gasoline powered cutting tools. He even has a set of equipment hanging on pegs in the hall, just waiting for him to complete enough training to be able to go with everyone else when a call comes in.

Most of his training will be accomplished in the weekly sessions at the fire hall, but there are some 'bigger' things to be done as well. Last week, The Reluctant Farmer took two days off of work and attended First Aid training, and now has his CPR and standard first aid certification. He's been looking at all the different courses available and trying to figure out when he can fit them into his very busy schedule, so that he can start answering calls.

He says that all he really wants is to drive the fire truck ... but I know he wants to be a part of something important and do something for the community as a whole.

I can't wait to see him on the big red truck in the annual parade! :)

Learning

2008-11-11T19:28:00.002-07:00

Today I made two batches of broth. In my previous life, I didn't eat a lot of meat and what meat we did cook generally came in some kind of bone-free configuration. Now, however, dealing directly with the butchers, we tend to get more bone-in stuff ... and those bones are still a good source of nutrition and shouldn't be allowed to go to waste.

So ... I'm learning to make broth.

The Reluctant Farmer picked up a really big stock pot at Princess Auto (for oh, $14 or something) and we just put two additional filters in the British Berkefeld water filter (meaning it runs water through twice as fast, so it's not such a big deal to use up the water that is there). First two hurdles overcome: pot and water. Check.

Next, bones. I have been putting the bones from our meals (with whatever meat is still attached) in The Bone Bowl in the freezer, and then when it's time to make broth, I grab the bones and dump them in the stock pot with some water. Today I did two batches: one of ham broth (half of which subsequently became the base for a pot of pea soup), and one of lamb (and possibly some beef, I can't remember what all those bones were from). The Green Cookbook provided the list of spices to add to the broth, and somewhere or other I gathered the information that a shot of vinegar helps pull out the calcium from the bones. Since we were all home today (and it was cold), the fireplace was on all day, and the stock pot just sat there on top of the wood stove, burbling away. I peeled potatoes for the dinner stew (cooking in the slow cooker on the counter) and tossed the peels in with the simmering broth to add a bit more nutrition and flavour. I also added a shot of the dehydrated garden greens I put up this summer (mostly beet tops, but some carrot and radish greens are in the mix as well).

When the whole batch was done cooking, the broth was scooped out and poured through a filter, then set to cool. Any fat that congeals on the surface will be scooped off with a spoon and put in a different jar to be rendered into clean lard or tallow later on (or potentially just added to dog food in the winter to help them through the cold days). The clean broth can then go into the freezer for use in stews and soups over the winter. The leftover bits of meat and such are fed to the outside critters (after all the smaller bones are removed, to avoid having anyone choke).

It's really not all that time consuming, and it's certainly more cost effective than buying canned broth or even bullion cubes ... and when you know what all the ingredients are and exactly how it was prepared, somehow, that just seems like a good thing.

I do feel tired sometimes, thinking that I don't really "take a break" anywhere near as often as I would like - there is always something else to do. Sometimes I want to whine about that, it's true. Still, I try to remind myself that a big part of what I am doing is practicing new skills: if I didn't have a well-paying job to go to, I wouldn't mind doing these things ... mostly because I wouldn't be squeezing them in on weekends and days off, they'd just be part of my every day work. However, should these kinds of tasks become my every day work (because I no longer have my well-paying job, for instance) ... well, that wouldn't really be the moment to stop and learn how to do these things. If you need to be sure that if you had to, you could make broth from scratch or put in a successful garden or properly put up the harvest from said garden, well, you'd better have practiced those things earlier, back when you had other options in case your experiments didn't turn out as well as you might have hoped. This year, for instance, I'm really glad we can buy tomatoes at the store - our crop didn't mature before the frost hit. (Next year, I'm going to try some earlier varieties.)

Options. Alternatives. It's nice to have them.

When I bow my head to say grace at dinner after a long day at work, I try to remember to be thankful for the job that has made me weary, because even though I might have rather spent the day doing other things, my tiredness means I have a good paycheque coming and the bills will be paid. On days when I have worked hard on farm jobs or gardening or preserving and my body aches all over and I think I might just be too tired to lift my spoon, I try to remember to be thankful for the opportunity to have worked to exhaustion, because it means I have been making good use of the skills and the land that we have been blessed with.

We really are very fortunate. I could still be living in my little suburban duplex, trudging the long hour and a half commute to a soulless Dilbert job that left me drained and miserable, with bass stero rhythms pounding from teenager's cars outside my window every night. I still have a long commute, but it's a fairly pleasant country drive, and I work with great people doing reasonably interesting things. When I come home, I can look out the window and see the animals munching on hay, and I rest my head against the flank of my lovely cow every morning and hear the sound of milk streaming into the steel bucket between my feet. I look in the potato bin and the pantry and see the results of this year's garden, and I know that next year we can do even more.

Blessed indeed.

The Green Cookbook

2008-11-08T20:07:00.003-07:00

One of my most precious posessions is The Green Cookbook.

It's actual title is "Cooking for American Homemakers", and it was published by the Culinary Arts Institute of Chicago in 1965.

My mom received it as a gift from her mother, and she gave it to me. It has instructions for all sorts of basic things that people take for granted - like how to cook eggs in their shells, or how to cut fresh bread easily (use a hot knife). It has recipes for things we wouldn't consider 'regular food', like roasted squirrels and calf's brains (I'm serious). However, it also has information about everything basic to cooking ... like what "heated to the hard-crack stage" means when you're talking about candymaking.

I found an online recipe for mullein cough drops, and, since I grew mullein in the garden this year, I wanted to try it. I was stumped, however, by the directions. "Heat to the hard crack stage" means .. what?

Well, the Green Cookbook had the answer. The hard crack stage means the sugar mixture has been heated to 300 degrees Farenheit, or, when dropped into very cold water it separates into threads which are hard and brittle.

I did manage to make mullein cough candy today - it tastes a lot like molasses, and even if I did make a rather large mess of the kitchen, it was a good practice run.

Today's jobs...

2008-11-08T19:21:00.002-07:00

Today was 'clean out the barn' day. On the weekends I try to give the barn stalls a good thorough mucking out - The Boy does the quick-and-dirty cleanup daily (there's probably a pun in there somewhere), and then on the weekend I try to get the big cleanup done.

The Reluctant Farmer was off doing errands in town this afternoon, so I fired up the bobcat and managed to move a bale of straw to a more convenient location. I took one of the windows out of the barn (they are held in place by moveable latches so that it's easy to get them out if need be), then unrolled part of the bale and forked it into the already-mucked-out barn through the window opening. From there, it was easy to distribute the straw to the previously cleared out stalls, and now everyone has lots of nice clean bedding to lie on at night. One of the sheep stalls is ready for use, and the other is serving as temporary straw storage. If we had to put someone in that stall in a hurry, it'd be a simple matter to remove the excess, but having it right there means it's easy to freshen up the cow's stalls with clean straw on a day to day basis. Lambing is still a ways off, so this seems workable.

I also noticed that we had gotten down to the last bit of the hay bale, so while the bobcat was running, I managed to pick up a new bale and position it in the hay feeding area. This was not as easy as it sounds: I had to use the new 'baby bobcat' (we sold the great big one, as it was more machine than we needed, and I'm not used to the new one yet). We have a set of forks that attach to the bobcat bucket, and it was a bit of a challenge to get everything set up and ready to go. Still, I managed. The Reluctant Farmer is way better at bobcat work than I am, but I try to be at least basically competent with all the machinery and tools we use, just in case I have to do things when he is not around. If he's here, I let him do it ... but it's good to be able to take care of things yourself, too.

I must say that our feeding strategy seems to be working quite well: having the sheep locked out while we lay the hay on the ground keeps them at least mostly clean, and they aren't wasting as much as I feared they might. Putting one bale at a time into the 'storage area' makes feeding everyone a matter of forking hay from bale to feed area (for both sheep and cows), with very few steps required. Efficiency is a good thing! Of course this past week the sheep managed to work around the previous fencing that surrounded the bale storage area ... so The Reluctant Farmer built a solid panel that has been highly effective at keeping the sheep away from the bale.

Other jobs today included relocating "chickenville" (the three chicken tractor houses) to a new location that is more level, brushing Mackenzie (who had some really nasty matted fur that had to be cut off, and very long dew claws that had to be trimmed), and scraping the feed pen clean with the bobcat.

Just another Saturday at Apple Jack Creek.

We are wired for wind

2008-11-01T16:25:00.006-07:00

The wind tower went up today!

Our neighbours came by to help with the installation, and the whole process went quite smoothly. We had perfect weather: no wind to push the tower around while we were putting it up, the sun was out and it was a beautifully warm day.

The tower is a telescoping style device: it starts off at about 12 feet high, and has two more pieces nested inside the base. You turn a winch to extend it upwards, and fully extended it's about 40 feet tall. The turbine is mounted on the top and a long wire extends from it's generator down the inside of the tower, through a piece of rubber conduit to the power centre used by the solar panels. At the power centre it is connected to one of the many wires in the heavy duty cable that runs from the solar panels to the house, and at the house, it is connected directly to the batteries. As Solar Neighbour explained it to me, the power from the wind generator goes directly to the batteries, and the power from the solar panels goes to the charge controller which feeds the batteries until they are full, and will shunt any excess power elsewhere if it becomes necessary. Since the wind generator will never produce enough power to overload the batteries, it can 'go first in line', and the solar panels can be managed to fill up the rest of the power capacity.

We have three guy wires attached to hold the tower steady, and there are three more backup lines to go up as well. If the tower ever collapsed, it would most likely take the solar panels with it so we are putting in some extra backup lines just to be sure.

So far the blades are still, as the wind is pretty much non-existent today... but it won't be long! It'll be really exciting to know that when the wind howls around the house in the middle of the night we're making power.

Solar Neighbour has more pictures ... check back for updates later!

almost winter

2008-10-27T18:52:00.002-07:00

Winter is getting closer every day - when I go out to milk the cow in the mornings, I see a skiff of snow on the ground, and in the shadowy areas of the yard, sometimes there's a trace of white on the grass even late in the morning.

It is a relief to have most of the 'must be done before winter' tasks completed. There is still more to do, of course, there always is, but we have a lot accomplished already, and it is good to stop and take note of what we have managed to get done.

We have fencing in place to hold everyone for the winter. This was a big job, and it's taken some time to figure out the best layout that keeps the animals close enough to manage in the cold weather and yet still gives them access to the shelter and the space they need to be comfortable. The sheep feeding pen is in place, and working well so far (there's a fair bit of wasted hay, but we're working on that), and the cows have a big hay feeder and a comfy barn. The gates are sturdier than they've ever been, and we have moveable panels that we can configure in a variety of ways, giving us more flexibility.

The addition of the cows did require some careful planning: the cows move in and out of the barn every day, but the sheep only need to get in the barn if there is a problem. This meant we needed easy barn access for cows and reasonably easy barn access for sheep. We ended up dividing the winter pasture into two sections, with the one directly in front of the barn doors designated for the cows, and putting a small gate from the sheep feed pen into the barn 'courtyard', which we can use to move a sheep into the barn if the need arises.

Winter also means worrying about frozen water troughs and plugging in tank heaters. To simplify our chores and ease our electrical bill, we made an opening under the fence between the sheep and cow pastures that is sized to hold a water trough. The trough slides under the fence and the sheep drink from one side and the cows drink from the other. This way we need only one tank heater in play, and we have only one trough to fill. It's a bit of a hassle to pull it out to empty it, but the animals don't seem to mind sharing, so that's good at least. While the weather is cold but not downright freezing we have been using two heavy duty bubblers (sort of like the kind you put in an aquarium) to keep the water moving. So far, this has kept the water from icing over. It won't work in the deep cold of full winter, but the bubblers use much less energy than a heater, so we'll use them for as long as we can.

The Reluctant Farmer got the chimney swept (a messy dirty job, but one we very much appreciate), and we have had fires going the last few nights. Tonight we'll burn a special chemical log that helps keep the creosote on the chimney to a minimum. We have a good bit of wood cut and stacked, although The Reluctant Farmer plans to go cut some more, as it's hard to have too much stocked up.

This morning we woke up to find the grid power was out - the Boy and The Reluctant Farmer got laptops fired up in the 'original house' (which runs on solar power) and with a fire going in the wood stove they were comfortable and able to work. During the winter they'll probably work near the fire more often, so it'll be even more important to have a good store of wood set by. The wood is nearly free (this stuff costs time, of course, and the fuel for the chainsaw, but the trees are ones that had to be cut down anyway to bring the power lines through), so it makes sense to heat with wood when we can.

Oh, and the cement is in place for the base of the wind tower: it's had time to cure now, and we should be raising the tower and hooking up the wind generator in another few days. We had a huge windstorm on the weekend that knocked down trees and caused some substantial damage around us (none here, thankfully - an old tree did come down but it didn't hit anything on the way to the ground) ... capturing all that energy would be a good thing, but we'll certainly want plenty of guy wires in place to stabilize the tower!

I'm so glad we are able to have power and heat even when the grid is down. Mornings like today make me realize just how good it is that we have alternatives to the 'usual way'. Then again, mornings like today also make me realize that if I didn't have to follow the artificial schedule set by the office workday schedule, I could follow the schedule set by nature and not even try to get started until the sun comes up!

How to save on your heating bill this winter, without spending a fortune

2008-10-19T20:41:00.003-07:00

We have a lot of glass in this house. We like having all those south facing windows as they give us light and warmth, however, once the sun goes down, all that glass is a rapid heat-transfer system, swapping the heat from indoors with the bone chilling cold of an Alberta winter night.

Last year, when we had the really long, really awful cold snap I did make some window quilts and they made a huge difference. The trouble is, hanging them is a real hassle, and on cold days, although we'd like the sunshine, the window panes are still very cold to the touch ... meaning if we uncover them, we're losing precious indoor heat through the glass.

We did purchase some Energy Film at Home Depot last year and tried it on one of the windows: the stuff actually works really well! There is a bit of distortion when you look out the window, but it's not significant, we can still see the sheep and chickens and cats and cows, and the odd little warble in the view is of no consequence. A very simple test proved the effectiveness of the plastic film: just touch the uncoated glass with one finger, and the coated glass with another. The difference in temperature is dramatic.

The downside, of course, is that this stuff is expensive. It's around $30 (perhaps a bit more, I can't quite recall) for a 24"x48" piece. Now, we do need to see out of some of the windows, so it's worth it to pay the extra so we have 'viewports' that are not covered by heavy drapes or other cold blocking techniques, but we certainly can't afford to cover every window with this stuff.

This is where the bubblewrap comes in. You've probably seen this suggested somewhere or other and thought it was too weird to be true ... but it really does work, and it really is both cheap and easy.

We picked up three 20'x24" rolls of bubble wrap at Staples for about $12 per roll (yes, that is twenty feet of bubble wrap), and covered almost all of the remaining windows in the house. We'll need another few rolls (and a ladder) to finish the high front windows, but this morning's chill temperatures gave me the opportunity to try the 'finger test' on the bubblewrap as well: yup, it works.

There's still a chilly space between the curtains and the window, and we use fairly heavy draperies that go all the way to the floor wherever we can. This provides a space for that 'cool air pocket' to sit, further slowing the transfer of heat to outside and cold to inside.

If you want to try this, here's what to do:

Get your hands on some bubblewrap. The stuff with the tiny bubbles worked better for me than the stuff with the medium sized bubbles, and I didn't even want to attempt using the stuff with the great big bubbles, but use whatever you can find.
Get a spray bottle and a pair of scissors.
Go to the window you want to cover, and unroll the bubblewrap. Hold one edge against the bottom of the window, stretch up to the top, and mark the place where you need to cut. It's really easy to cut straight lines on bubble wrap: the bubbles act as built in guidelines.
Cut the bubblewrap to fit inside the window, without much overlap onto the frame, and ideally, without much open glass. Lots of our window panes are just a bit over 24", so we just leave the edges uncovered, or, if we need to see out some of the time, snug the bubblewrap right up against one edge and leave an open space where you can peer out at the world.
Get your spray bottle (filled with water or vinegar and water, or whatever you clean windows with) and spray the entire window, generously.
Push the bubble wrap against the wet window and squish it into place, smoothing from the middle out so that the whole thing is smushed into the water and against the glass. I tried some with the bubble-side-in and some with the smooth-side-in, and I think I've settled on bubble-side-in as being a better stick. Some of your bubble wrap may flop over and peel itself off after a day or two, don't lose heart: just respray and restick. Eventually it'll decide to stay put. I think some of it needs a bit of time to adjust to an unrolled position.
Voila: you have now started on the road to saving a bunch of money on your heating bill, you have improved the comfort level of humans who must sit near these windows, and you are still getting sunshine into the room!

If you want to try the Energy Film, you might want to consider what we did on the patio door as a cost-saving measure: we have a large, three-pane door. We do need to see out of this door, as it looks out over one of the pastures. We hung one piece of Energy Film on the centre panel, and all the rest of the glass (including the bottom portion of the center panel which the Energy Film didn't cover) is coated in bubble wrap. Lots of light, some restriction of the view, but we can still see outside. Also, it turns out that the bubble wrap with tiny bubbles will fit behind the patio door when it is slid open, so you can even put bubble wrap on the 'underneath' panel of your door, and still get the door open.

Here's to keeping warm and using less fuel to do it!

For more energy saving ideas, check out Solar Gary's excellent site: here's his article on bubble wrap insulation, it includes a calculation of the payback period, too ... which is very short!

The Boy's Experiment, or, the Wonders of Compost

2008-10-19T20:17:00.004-07:00

The Boy had an assignment to do for Science class: he had to take two jars, plant seeds in each, and then add compostable materials and a worm (if he could find one) to one jar, and leave the other as a control.

Here are his observations:

(Describe what you smell and see, measure the height of the plant, count the number of leaves and describe their shape and colour.)
Week 1
Jar 1 is the one without compost, jar 2 has compost. Jar 1 has 2 small sprouts and smells like dirt. Its 2 plants are 13mm and 2mm. Jar 2 has 3 small sprouts and smells like apples as I added left over apple skins to it. Jar 2’s plants are 13mm, 2mm, and 1mm. Jar 2 also has a worm.
Week 2
Jar 1 has 1 plant now which is 11mm tall and it still smells like dirt. Jar 2 has 2 plants and they are 30mm and 27mm tall and smells like compost. All of the plants have three leaves that look pretty green (see Jar 2 week 3 for best leaf picture). Jar 2 also now has some eggshells.
Week 3
Jar 1 smells like plain old dirt and now has 6 leaves and grew to 20mm tall. But the other two in jar 1 are far ahead at 60 and 50mm tall with 10 leaves each. It smells like compost still and all the leaves are very green. We also found out we are growing carrots.
Week 4
Jar 1’s sprout grew to 35mm and it still smells like dirt and has 6 leaves. Jar 2’s are 90 and 120mm tall with 13 and 18 leaves. It smells like fresh dirt and plants and the leaves are not purple; they're still green.

The pictures tell an amazing story of their own:

Compost works!

The barn has a door!

2008-10-19T20:07:00.003-07:00

The barn now has a door!

With the cold weather coming, we decided that a door for the barn would be very welcome. It's not really necessary for the cows and sheep, they would be warm enough inside with straw bedding and walls to keep out the wind, but when it's time to get milk in the mornings or assist with lambing, we humans would definitely appreciate four solid walls!

The Reluctant Farmer stopped at UFA and picked up the necessary hardware to hang a sliding door. There's a long tube with a slot on the bottom, special hangers to suspend it from the barn wall, and two rollers that move smoothly along the tracks to slide the door back and forth. if you look really closely, you can see a small metal piece at the bottom left of the door opening: that's a catch to hold the door when it slides shut, so that it doesn't bang in the wind but is held tight against the building.

The door will be painted in the next few days (the weather is looking reasonable for this sort of thing) and then we'll be all ready for winter!

I suppose saying something like that pretty much guarantees an early snowfall, doesn't it? Maybe I'd better be quiet.

The Reluctant Farmer and his Chickens

2008-10-19T19:05:00.002-07:00

As you can see from the photo, the Reluctant Farmer is anything but reluctant when it comes to his chickens. :)

The new junior hens that he purchased are doing really well outside, the gray and white ones are Barred Rocks, and there's an Ameraucana hen who is very friendly and has the oddest looking green legs. There were three lovely Isa Brown hens, but we have only been able to locate one recently ... although we have had sightings of a hen that could possibly be the second one.

Egg production has been very low of late, which is normal come winter, especially with older chickens. The new junior hens are just about ready to start laying, and the Reluctant Farmer has rigged lights in the coops, so we are hopeful this will improve the rate of production.

The Reluctant Farmer is most interested in two breeds: the Ameraucana and the Barred Rock. We have 18 barred rock chicks still inside and doing well (we lost one to a bad case of 'eye guck', but everyone else is growing like crazy), but we've only got the one Ameraucana hen. We had talked about finding a rooster, as well, and in doing our research, we found a photo of an Ameraucana rooster in the colour pattern called wheaten brown ... and it looks just like our Sherman, and our other unnamed rooster (Sherman Junior?).

You tell me: here's the link to the Ameraucana website, and here's our two roosters:

Independence Days Update

2008-10-14T19:05:00.002-07:00

Well, it's definitely fall. There has been hard frost for several nights, and I didn't manage to rescue most of the tomatoes . We are in the mad rush to prepare for winter, and thanks to the recent Thanksgiving weekend, we have had time to do that last push of outside stuff so that if the snow came tomorrow, we'd be ready. Well, almost: the wind tower still needs to go in. We meant to do that on Monday, but it rained, and the concrete won't set if it's raining.

Okay, on to the update.

Planted
I did get soil into three little pots on the windowsill, and I put a few calendula seeds into one of them. Yes, I should get some lettuce going, but the calendula seeds were handy so I stuck them in the dirt. One has already poked it's little head out!

Harvested
We emptied out the garden this weekend. All the potatoes are in, sorted and stored, and the tomatoes (green though they were), the mullein (dehydrating to be made into tea for coughs and other ailments this winter), milk thistle (nasty, horrible plants that I will never again attempt to grow ... but I did harvest the seeds, they are good for your liver), the last two carrots (which we ate raw), the beets (the leaves are drying for winter chicken feed and the beets are going to be eaten this week), and more calendula (and there's still more out there). Seeds from some of the lettuce plants and a few of the beans have been harvested for next year.

Preserved
As noted: mullein is dehydrating, milk thistle seeds soaking in vodka (yes, you soak the seeds in alcohol to make a tincture that helps your liver: weird, but the active ingredient is not water soluble, so whatcha gonna do?), beet greens are drying for chicken feed, egg shells have been baked and crushed for chicken feed, and more calendula blossoms are soaking in oil to make ointment.

Prepped
My sister sent a parcel with some bubblewrap in it, and that was cut and stuck to several of the bedroom windows with a spray bottle of vinegar and water (it took a few tries to get it to stick, but it's on there now). We sorted more clothes and put them in the bins, and brought out the winter gear as the cold has arrived.
We did a bunch of outside work, preparing for winter: there's a proper gate to the cow pasture, the sheep have a feed pen, and the hay's been delivered (well, half of it anyway).

Managed Reserves
The potatoes were sorted into 'eat now, eat soon, and pack for later' piles. The 'pack for later' pile was stowed in a big plastic bucket filled with sawdust carefully saved from construction: a layer of sawdust, some potatoes, another layer of sawdust, more potatoes ... the bucket is now sitting in the hallway, which is the coolest spot in the house.
Some bulk things were found at good prices so a few big bags of alphabet soup noodles (the kids LOVE having these in the soup, they'll eat any kind of broth if it has alphabet noodles in it), black pepper, and onion soup mix came home and have been put into jars in the pantry. There are also some jars of raisins, cornmeal, and elbow macaroni put away.

Cooked something new
All those green tomatoes meant it was time to try some recipes: I made fake raspberry jam (which isn't too bad), fake raspberry fruit leather (the jam, done in the dehydrator ... which is very sweet, and okay, but not great), and a green tomato soup (which I really didn't like). In the end, I have decided that by far the best use of green tomatoes is as yeast food: all the tomatoes were dumped into a large bucket with a sliced orange, some yeast nutrient, a few raisins and a lot of sugar, then drowned in water and ignored for a few days. Last night I filtered the mush through my strainer and the remaining liquid (and the orange slices and some whole green tomatoes) is happily fermenting in the living room. It has a lovely citrus and yeast smell, with no real tomato scent at all ... so hopefully green tomato wine is drinkable. I hear it needs to age for a whole year or more ... I'm thinking it'll probably make a nice summer wine for July of 2010.

Reduced Waste
We used up some more lumber from the pile of barn board we have out in the pasture where an old shed was knocked down, and we continue to do our usual routines for composting and such. We are rescuing as much as possible to dehydrate for chicken feed, both to reduce the waste (we have plenty of compostables thanks to the livestock) and to reduce the feed bills. And, it's good for the chickens!

Worked on local food systems
Well, we have a bunch of chicks growing like crazy, meaning we will be able to eat some of the surplus chickens out in our yard before long ... that's pretty local. We tried out a new butcher for the last batch of lambs that went in, I'll be picking up the meat tomorrow and we'll see how that is. We have another very local butcher we also want to try, as well. Oh, we got our listing up on EatWild, although we've had no contacts yet, still, it's a good place to start.

Eat Wild!

2008-10-08T19:06:00.002-07:00

The Eat Wild website is one of the major listings for grass-fed producers.

We are now listed!

Check out the whole site for more details ... there are benefits for animals, for farmers, and for your health!

This is why we prefer to eat the critters we have fed ... we know what went into them, we know they had good, low-stress lives ... and as a result, we know that what ends up on our plates is good for us!

Milk Progress

2008-10-07T18:33:00.002-07:00

Okay, I know, you're probably tired of hearing me rhapsodize about milking the cow. But really, it's exciting. Honest. It is.

This morning, I milked for 15 minutes, two handed, into the bucket held between my feet ... and I got nearly a litre of milk. And, I got most of it into the bucket (the first few days of milking, I had soaked knees).

Progress, I tell you, progress!

The Great Chicken Venture

2008-10-05T16:47:00.002-07:00

The Reluctant Farmer has decided that he really likes chickens. They are great fun to watch, poking around the yard and scratching at the dirt to get to the bugs, and as long as we provide them with basic shelter, access to water, and a scoopful of feed now and then, they are perfectly happy.

Our current flock of chickens is made up of hens we acquired from friends who were downsizing for one reason or another, and we really aren't sure how old most of them are. As chickens get older, they lay fewer and fewer eggs ... so although we have around 15 or 20 hens outside, we have only been getting one or two eggs a day. That's nowhere near enough to meet our own needs, never mind the few regular customers we have managed to acquire.

This is what got The Reluctant Farmer looking for chickens: we need more layers. Now, when you start looking for chickens, you are confronted with a huge variety of choices: there are so many different breeds, and they're all good for different purposes. The Reluctant Farmer found all this really interesting, and he's been researching different heritage breeds, and watching for someone in our area with the types he likes.

Last week, he picked up three lovely Isa Brown hens who are in prime egg laying condition, as well as several almost-old-enough-to-lay chickens of a few different breeds: Barred Rocks, an Ameraucana (they lay green eggs), and a couple of cross-breeds. They look so very tiny next to the full grown hens, but in another few weeks they, too, should be big enough to start laying eggs.

The core of the Great Chicken Venture, however, is the batch of nineteen Barred Rock chicks that were picked up on Saturday. These tiny little peeping creatures are presently housed in a large cardboard box under a heat lamp, eating chick starter like there's no tomorrow and making a constant happy racket. The Reluctant Farmer is hoping to raise purebred Barred Rocks, and sell them to other people who want to have chickens of their very own.

The whole Chicken Venture seems to be a 'guy thing' in this house: The Reluctant Farmer is the ringleader, and both of the boys are crazy about chickens too. I think it's just great ... they have so much fun looking for eggs and watching them grow, all the rest is "just jam on toast", as my kid would put it. :)

Milking Routine

2008-10-02T20:24:00.004-07:00

We're on our way with an actual morning milking routine!

Sasha and Darth are penned up in the evening ... I put hay in their stalls, and they agonize over going into the stall, knowing that I'll close the gate behind them. Eventually their desire for hay overrides their desire for freedom, and in they go.

The Reluctant Farmer has made some changes to the milking stanchion for me, so I can reach in and get to the business end of the cow more comfortably. There's also a very clever 'tailgate' at the back: a bar can be raised up to let Sasha in, and in the 'up' position, the bar latches into a regular gate latch, so you can push the bar up and latch it into place. When you need to drop it down, you just reach up and press the latch release, and down it comes. Very slick! This keeps Sasha from backing out of the stall, and keeps her positioned so I can easily reach the udder.

At the moment she still moves her feet around a fair bit while I'm milking, so I'm milking one handed into a bucket that I hold in place with my other hand. I figure eventually we'll get to where the bucket can be set down and I can milk with two hands, but this is working and that's exciting enough for now. :)

Yesterday was the first 'milk into the bucket' day, and we got about a cup of milk. This morning I got at least twice that amount, with only 15 minutes in the barn. Sasha is really quite cooperative about the whole thing. Even the washing that has to be done before milking commences doesn't seem to annoy her in the least.

Once I come back inside, the milk is poured through a cloth filter into a clean glass canning jar and put in the fridge for the day. We tasted our first fresh milk last night - and it was amazing! It tastes like ... well ... like milk! Very fresh, clean and creamy (we didn't separate the cream out ... most of the cream comes at the end of the milking, and I didn't milk long enough to get to the rich stuff). Yes, we do know how to pasteurize the milk, but given that our cow is healthy, grass-fed, and free from mastitis, and that none of us have compromised immune systems, we're choosing to drink the whole fresh milk. It sure tastes good, and there are many advantages to raw milk (when it comes from healthy cows milked in a sanitary environment, of course).

There it is... the first bottle of milk!

The whole process is just so amazing. I mean, sure, it's nothing earth shattering or stunningly scientific, but when you wrap your hand around the teat and feel it fill up with milk, then hear that stream of milk rushing into the steel pail ... there's something really incredible about being involved in that.

A cow of my own. Fresh milk in a pail.

That, for me, is a dream come true.

The angels came

2008-09-30T18:38:00.002-07:00

Today, the angels came for my Uncle Jim.

The brain tumor that was found earlier in the year wasn't going to go away, although the surgery and radiation did buy him some additional time with his family. I'm really glad we went to visit in the early summer, and got to see him (and everyone else) while we could.

His passing was peaceful, for which we are immensely grateful. He had been struggling with chest congestion for some time, but today there was no trouble breathing, just ... quiet ... then more quiet ... then gone.

He was a good man, with a big loving heart. He will be very much missed.

Milk!

2008-09-30T18:35:00.003-07:00

This morning, Sasha was in her milking stanchion eating the morning ration of hay, and I figured I should try again with the 'get used to me handling you' stuff.

Sure enough, she didn't flinch at all.

So ... I wrapped my hand around a teat. No reaction. Well, no guts no glory ... so I bumped up, wrapped my fingers around the teat, and voila! Milk squirted out!

Yay! I milked a cow!

I pulled off a few squirts of milk, just to get her used to the idea, and left her alone. Soon, we'll be able to gather that milk in a pail and then ...

Does that make us real homesteaders? :)

Dairy Cow Breakthrough

2008-09-29T20:37:00.002-07:00

The cows are in the barn!

We got the fences in place so that we can bring the cows up to the barn at night. We have them in a shared pen for now, and will separate them as soon as we put another row of bars between the two pens (the calf can jump over at the moment, it's too low).

Tonight Sasha was in her milking stanchion eating hay, and let me rub her sides and her belly, and even touch her udder. She didn't even change the rate of her chewing.

We are one step closer to milk!

Black Gold

2008-09-21T19:49:00.002-07:00

Remember this?

Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin crude.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

The Beverly Hillbillies found black gold on their land ... and so have we!

Okay, ours isn't oil. :)

Our black gold is piled up in the most beautiful compost heap you've ever seen, which is right now cooking away beside the garden generating heat and breaking down manure and hay into beautiful organic compost.

The Reluctant Farmer scraped the winter pasture clean a few times last winter and again in the spring, and piled all the manure and waste hay into a big heap. It's been sitting there undisturbed all summer, and today he moved it over near the garden so that we'd have a clear spot to put our hay when it arrives. As he dug into the pile with the bobcat shovel, steam came out and it was clear that we were well into the process of building some nice dirt!

Next year's plans include a greatly expanded garden, but of course, to do that we'll need more soil to plant things in. Looks like there'll be no need to buy bags of peat moss planting soil from Canadian Tire next year ... we've got two big piles of dirt under construction out there, and come spring, they should be in lovely shape.

More infrastructure

2008-09-21T18:57:00.002-07:00

Some days it seems like we spend way too much money trying to do this whole farm thing. Actually, most days it seems like that. Well, I suppose we're in good company with every other farmer ... like the old joke goes: When the farmer won the lottery, and was asked what he'd do now, he shrugged and said "Keep on farmin' till the money runs out!"

The latest acquisition/investment is a little two-horse trailer. While we do have a little landscape trailer that has been modified with raised sides and a gate at the back, and it does indeed work for hauling up to 5-6 sheep at a time, it isn't very sturdy, and has shown signs that it is unlikely to survive sheep hauling for more than another couple of years without need for repair. It's going to be reallocated to trash and lumber hauling, which is what it was meant for in the first place.

The Reluctant Farmer is the King of Kijiji Shopping - and he has been watching for a good deal on a trailer for some time now. This one came up recently, and was newer than most he'd seen in our price range ... and was cheaper as well! With some logistical headaches, he managed to pick it up this weekend, and it'll do exactly what we need.

See, with a cow/calf pair in addition to the sheep, we have to think about getting the calf to butcher next fall, and although we could probably prevail upon someone we know who has a trailer, that's not a favour I really want to call in every year. If the cow ever needs the vet, being able to take her there would be cheaper than having the vet come here. Also, when taking sheep to the butcher or the auction, there are some real advantages to being able to take more than just 5 at a go. And then there's Cherub, who always tries to jump out of the little sheep trailer and has to be tied when she's in there for fear of losing her overboard!

Last but not least, The Reluctant Farmer has been working on a plan to take the sheep on school visits. He and Dinosaur Boy's teachers are working out the details, but the trailer would be a really nice feature for this project: the kids can come outside and go into the trailer to visit the sheep, rather than taking the sheep into the school. This reminds me of something I saw when I was very little ... Elsie the Borden Cow was at the local grocery store, outside in her trailer in the parking lot. I vividly remember going into the trailer and seeing this lovely placid cow sitting there chewing her cud ... and I couldn't have been more than five at the time. The little girl I was then would never have guessed that she'd grow up into someone with a real cow of her own!

Deciding where to spend and where to save is always a tough call ... we very much want to get the debts under control and that means not spending on things that can wait, but then again, we are trying to build up our very little farm into something that at least supplements our income somewhat, or something that has the capacity to be expanded so that it could supplement our income, and to do that means getting the infrastructure in place.

It's a hard decision. We know that our jobs are fragile - if the economy goes south, the kind of work we do could evaporate, leaving one or both of us with limited options for standard employment. We love working on the farm, and so we are trying to ensure that if the time ever comes that we want to make this an actual revenue builder, we have the necessary infrastructure to allow us to expand without needing huge infusions of startup cash.

What we are aiming for is that things as they are become easier to manage, and that if we want to expand in the future, we have what we need for a bit more livestock. In the short term, if things are easier to manage, we are freed up to do our paid jobs, because the 'farm stuff' takes less time. Sure we have to fix fences in the spring, but when the cross-fencing is in place and the gates are all where they need to be, moving sheep from one pasture to another is a matter of a few minutes for one person, rather than two or three of us chasing sheep around a huge pasture trying to get them where we want them. As for expansion, if we leased some nearby land we could carry a few more animals without needing more significant infrastructure than what we already have. The heritage breeds that we prefer don't need big barns or huge grain bins or anything like that, but they do need what we already have (or are working on) - fencing, feeders, water troughs, and a barn with room for a few at a time, rather than everyone all at once.

We'll see where it all leads - maybe we'll never be more than 'hobby farmers' who have a few sheep, some chickens, and a dairy cow. Then again, maybe we'll find our way into the local grass-fed meat market, be supplying local handspinners with premium wool and enjoying the food we grow in our own garden.

It's nice to have a dream, anyway. And who knows? If the little girl who was so awed by Elsie the Borden Cow could grow up to have a dairy cow of her very own ... maybe some day this woman with the little acreage will find that she's grown up and become a real farmer, too.

Independence Days Update

2008-09-21T18:17:00.003-07:00

Oh my, this is a belated post. We've been too busy doing stuff to sit down and write!

Planted
Umm ... no. Frosts are here, it's not planting time. :)
However, seeing this on the list makes me think again about finding something to grow lettuce in on the windowsill.

Harvested
Lots of calendula blossoms (more on that below). I also have started gathering calendula seeds from the flowers that I left too long (umm ... I did that on purpose! I did mean to save seeds ... just not quite yet. Still, it works.) We had beets from the garden, and the last carrots, and every so often we get potatoes. The tomatoes are actually ripening on the frost bitten vines, so there is still hope of tomato paste for winter! The Boy has harvested more rose hips for me, and I gathered some more, along with yarrow and clover blossoms, the other day.

Preserved
I dehydrated the last batch of apples, and have cooked up more juice and syrup. The most recent batch of flowers and rose hips are in the dehydrator. The earlier rose hips have been cooked down into juice, and the calendula blossoms that are already dry are soaking in olive oil.

Prepped
We went to a farm auction and I scored several boxes of canning jars for $15. I've been using them to store bulk purchases of pasta, baking supplies and the dehydrated apple bits I've been putting up.
I consider all our infrastructure work to fall into this category as well, and we've done a lot here: we have a completed hay feeder for the sheep, of a design that ought to reduce waste and keep at least some of the hay out of their neck wool (which in turn increases the value of the wool). The Boy stained the feeder with leftover stain from the house, so it is protected from the elements and should last a good while. We have the barn up and in use: this will help us to avoid frozen lambs for early births, gives us a place to milk the cow, and the whole thing generally makes it possible for us to improve our livestock management. We won't ever make a living from just 6 acres ... but we want to have options, and we want to take the best possible care of the animals we do have.

Managed Reserves
The pantry is getting very full! We need to do an inventory very soon, but that can wait for cooler weather when the outside jobs are done. We continue to watch for our 'staple products' to show up on sale - flour, oil, pasta, canned tomatoes (we are nowhere near self sufficient on that yet), beans and spices. Any time these things are on sale, we pick up a few spares, and into the pantry they go. We never shop for "what we will eat this week" - we just keep the pantry stocked, and eat from there.

Cooked Something New
We must surely have cooked something new since the last time I posted, but I'm not sure what it might have been. Ah yes, The Reluctant Farmer has reminded me ... we had Lambili (chili made with ground lamb). It was awesome!
I did make something new that isn't edible but did involve cooking, so I'll put that here. I made calendula ointment, and it is lovely! Dried calendula blossoms are soaked in olive oil for a good long while (like, a few weeks) until the oil has absorbed the flower essence. This oil is then filtered into a pot and some beeswax is added ... the whole thing is heated until the wax melts, then the finished compound is put into jars and cooled. The wax and flowers give the finished product a lovely smell, and the oil and wax together give a good consistency for ointment. Calendula is used for skin irritations like rashes and scrapes, and mixed with the oil and beeswax it makes a lovely soothing ointment.

Reduced Waste
We continue to use up scrap lumber and building materials wherever we can: The Reluctant Farmer built a new dog self-feeding station out of an old wooden walkway/pallet thing that was lying around and some scrap plywood. The dogs need to be able to eat whenever they are hungry (and the cats and chickens help themselves as well, so we like the food to be out all the time). The eating area needs to be out of the rain and snow, though, or the food gets soggy. We had an old feeder that was repurposed from our generator house ... but the wood caught the water and the feed had gotten mouldy, so it was burned today (in a rather more stunning conflagration than we expected) and the new feeder was put in place. We will be adding a food dispenser to this one, although it's not done yet - most likely the dispenser will be made from an old garbage can.

Worked on Local Food Systems
Can't think of anything in particular to add to this category ... unless hatching out chicks the natural way in your own yard (so that you can eat the eggs they produce - if they are hens - or the chickens themselves - if they are roosters) counts.

Chicks

2008-09-21T18:02:00.002-07:00

We had two hens go broody awhile back, and so they were put in cages to sit on their eggs undisturbed for a few weeks. A little while back, the first hen hatched out a single chick from the two eggs we'd given her to set on, and a week later, the other hen hatched out all three of the eggs she had!

We have four little peeping black chicks out roaming around and pecking at the ground in their mama's wake.

The Boy did notice today that the first hen had been in some sort of fight - perhaps the other mama thought she'd stolen her chick or something. Whatever the cause of the altercation, she came out somewhat the worse for wear: she had some damage to her head and her eyes were stuck shut! We caught her and rinsed her head off, and her eyes opened up just fine once the guck was washed away. She and her baby are back in isolation with food and water ... and peace and quiet. She doesn't seem to have sustained any serious injury, we'll keep an eye on her for infection but I think she'll be okay. Good thing The Boy is observant!

A finished barn!

2008-09-21T17:45:00.002-07:00

We have a finished barn!

There is white trim around the edges, and around the windows ... all the red paint is on, and the interior is stained with the 'mistint' that I found (which turned out to be way more purple than it seemed, but, well, the price was right and it seals the wood even if it is a weird colour). The stalls inside have all been built and have hinged gates that latch shut, there are hooks on the wall to hang things, and the sheep halters and the newly purchased cow halter and lead rope are hanging up, waiting for use. The dirt floor has been brought up to the right height and levelled (the Boy stomped it down to pack it a bit), and today we put the last bit of straw we had into the stalls.

We made an effort this afternoon to split the sheep into their breeding groups, but we were foiled by the loose cross fencing (translation: the sheep we wanted to keep separated just pushed their way under the fence and joined their buddies in the other pasture). However, four of the sheep stayed behind - and all four of them happen to be headed to the Big Pasture in the Sky in another week. That was convenient! We rounded them up and took them into the barn, where they are now being guarded by Bob. They have hay and water, and are out of the rain that just started, so I think it's a good way to spend their last week here! They seem quite comfortable, and it's a good test of the barn layout. So far, so good!

Introducing Gracie

2008-09-07T20:07:00.002-07:00

Last week, Dinosaur Boy asked for a Family Meeting. After dinner, he announced that he would like to get a bunny of his own. We talked about the responsibilities of pet ownership, and had a lot of questions for him. How would he pay for the feed? (he will do chores here to help pay for his bunny's share) Who will clean the bunny cage when he is not here? (Dad already agreed to do that job) Is he willing to get a girl bunny, since Charlie is already here and opposite gender bunny pairs tend to do better together? (yes, that's fine)

So, The Reluctant Farmer started looking for a bunny. A very nice lady had some bunnies she wanted to give to good homes and offered one to Dinosaur Boy. I went out after work and picked up Gracie - who is HUGE compared to Charlie! Gracie is part French Lop, and will weigh in at about 10 pounds or more when full grown (Charlie is already full grown and is about six pounds). At four months, she is already bigger than Charlie ... but she is very loveable and happy to be held and cuddled.

We've had the two bunnies in cages next to each other, allowing them to get used to being together. They've been out a few times and there has been a little bit of fur flying as they get used to sharing the house, but overall, it seems to be going very well. Gracie herself is so gentle and loving (with the people anyway, she's still not quite sure what she thinks of Charlie), we are glad she's joined us!