Busy Birds

In the past 10 days we've collected over 40 eggs from our 8 hens.

They're coming in all sizes. The large one here is so big we can't close the egg carton properly.

Now we just need to find a souffle pan!

Happy 2010!

Another new year is upon us, and with it comes the usual thoughts of resolutions. Unlike diet or exercise resolutions, gardening and homesteading plans come naturally this time of year, when everything is gray and cold and we're looking so forward to longer, warmer days and the green of new sprouts.

Looking back on 2009 for a moment, we accomplished so much and so little all at the same time. Most importantly we got through the six month ordeal that was buying our new house, which not only made us homeowners for the first time, but also land owners at last! Unfortunately, the timing of it all made it very difficult for us to do much gardening at all. In the spring our garden was miles from home, which meant we didn't get to give it the attention it deserved, and in the fall we were faced with the prospect of starting all new veggie beds. But we did have some other projects to keep us busy, the greatest of which were our chickens, which are proving to be a very rewarding addition! We managed to get 41 eggs in the second half of December alone! We also got to go foraging in our little woods on the back of our lot, where we collected raspberries, wineberries, mulberries, hickory nuts, walnuts, and firewood.

This coming year will be bringing us many new joys, as well as challenges! Just as spring is arriving, so will be our first baby! We're hoping to be able to power through the sleepless nights and find the time and energy to put up fencing, get some baby lambs, plant fruit trees and other perennials, and grow the majority of our own produce, just to name a few!

For me personally, my goals this year will be to learn to simplify, establish routines, and be better prepared. The key, I think, is going to be practicing things like canning, baking bread, brewing and knitting until they become like second nature, so that I can better fit them into a busy schedule without feeling like I have too many chores to do. I also need to be willing to do fewer things if it means they can be done better, particularly in the garden. As much as I love looking through the seed catalogs and reading about all the rare and interesting varieties of everything, I'm going to be choosing fewer plants and basing my decisions on hardiness, reliability, and how well they store or take to processing. And, I'm not going to plant all of my seedlings at once!! Having gone through a late frost which devastated most of our carefully grown veggies this past spring, I've learned my lesson!

As for the Gardener, his main goals are to do more with what we have by nurturing our best trees, wild berry bushes and our neglected hops. Composting more and working harder at amending the soil in our garden are also on his list. Our sleep schedules are going to be a struggle when the little one arrives but he's hopeful that it will help him learn to manage his time better. Collecting sap for syrup, building native bee houses and bird houses, setting up our rain barrels, lumber-jacking and learning more about native useful plants and fungi, round out his resolutions.

2010 stands to be a very exciting year, and we look forward to sharing it all with you!

Pea Pod Crunk Juice

At last we've found the time to make a small batch of wine. This is our first attempt at making wine, so we're really optimistic!

We've mentioned before our love for the British sitcom The Good Neighbors (aka The Good Life) and their hilarious adventures in sustainability. One of the recurring jokes of the series is their high test home made wine that they call Peapod Burgundy.

Inspired by their antics we froze pea pods from our garden this summer. Sadly we didn't have quite enough so we had to pick up additional peas from the store but here is our improvised recipe pulled together from several wine sites.

3 lbs. pea pods (about half from our garden)
3 tiny limes (from our sad little lime tree probably equal to 1 full lime)
5 cups sugar
1 black English breakfast tea bag
1 gram Red Star Premier Cuvee dry white wine yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 gallon water

We boiled the pea pods and lime peel for 30 minutes. We then strained the hot must into another container with the sugar, nutrient, lime juice and tea bag. Once all the sugar had dissolved, we funneled it into a 1 gallon jug and pitched the yeast. Since then the air lock has been bubbling away in a dark corner. We tasted the must before pitching the yeast and it has a surprisingly sweet but earthy fruity flavor something like a very sweet herbal tea.

Upon the recommendation of our good friend Pragmatiste we've christened the wine "Lady Lydia Peapod's Royal Holiday Wine" after our bulldog Lydia. It's only fitting since Peapod is her actual middle name.

Sadly the fermentation and clarification process will take a full year so we won't be able to raise a glass until the next holiday season. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait!

An Early Christmas Present

This morning I was awoken by the Gardeness showing me our first gift of the holiday season.

One of the feathered ones laid this cute little egg last night. This is the first of what we hope to be a plentiful bounty. It's so exciting!

Oh, Christmas Tree!

Ahh, the smell of pine really makes the Christmas season! This weekend we made our yearly trip out to our local tree farm to cut down a yuletide pine to decorate the living room. We know there is some controversy surrounding the environmental ethics of cutting live trees, so we wanted to point out a few facts. We won't even bother arguing live vs. artificial, because buying a tree from China, which is made of petroleum products, and which will one day sit in a landfill is not even an option. We could buy a tree with a root ball and plant it, but we already have lots of pine trees and need the pasture space for our sheep instead. Besides, did you know that for every Christmas tree cut, 3 are replanted? What other reasons do we have for cutting a live tree? Our tree was grown on a local family farm that has been in operation for 39 years, and which grows 25 acres of trees. That's 25 acres of farmland being preserved from development. Land that most likely would not be suitable for other crops is being protected from erosion and creating lots of oxygen. It also provides a habitat for small wildlife creatures, which is disturbed only minimally when the time comes to harvest. When the season ends and it's time to dispose of the tree, many municipalities will pick it up and chip it, and then it's used for public works projects or it's composted. So, we get to support the local economy, support open space and agriculture, and minimize pollution all at the same time! Plus, it doesn't get much better than hiking out in the snow with saw in hand to pick out just the right tree to bring home!

Keeping Busy

A few weeks ago we had some amazing 70 degree weather, which we put to good use by finally getting out to the garden. We planted about 80 cloves of the Romanian Red garlic that we harvested this summer, and about 50 cloves of German Extra Hardy, which we ordered from Seed Savers Exchange, and which had some of the biggest cloves I have ever seen! I hope we can grow ours just as big! We also planted eight blueberry bushes which were a gift from our amazing real estate agent. Unfortunately, we haven't had a chance to do a soil test, so we didn't add any amendments when we planted them, but we did mulch them very heavily with pine needles.

On the chicken front, we're still waiting for our first eggs. We kept hearing that 20 weeks of age is the magic time when hens start to lay, and right now we're at 25 weeks and still no sign. Upon doing some further research, it seems that we may have to wait until at least the end of December. You see, if you get your chickens late, and they don't start laying before fall when the nights come earlier, there may be a delay until at least the winter solstice when the days start getting longer again. So we'll either be getting eggs any day now, or we won't have anything until closer to spring. Either way, we've located a supplier of straw from Craigslist, and got a delivery of 10 bales. With it we've made a nice nest inside the coop for laying eggs, and spread a layer of it on the ground to keep things clean now that the grass is no longer growing. We're also thinking about ordering some scratch feed for the winter, because it will help them gain weight and give them something to occupy themselves with. We're still trying to figure out some solar solution to keeping their water from freezing.

We're also in the middle of a batch of beer. We had a lovely afternoon where we invited friends over to spend time, eat, chat, and help us brew a batch of British Farmhouse Ale. We improvised an all-grain recipe made with Maris Otter barley, Fuggles and Kent Goldings hops, and Whitbread yeast. Saturday we racked it over to the secondary fermenter and it looks and smells quite tasty. We pretty much have no idea what it will be like when it's done, but hopefully it'll be a pleasant surprise. Our next alcohol experiment is going to be a holiday pea pod wine!

A New Season

Oh my goodness, where has the time gone? I can't believe it's been two months since our last post! Since then the summer bounty has given way to a decidedly colder and less lazy season.

Unfortunately, the chaos of moving meant that we never really got a fall garden going, but we did manage to find a small harvest at the borrowed summer garden. The biggest success was the fact that we had several ears of corn make it to maturity, which is more than we could manage last year. We planted two kinds, a red heirloom field variety which has been kept in The Gardener's family for generations, and a Native American sweet corn. We got some nice specimens of the red corn to replant on a larger scale next year, and some interesting crosses. One ear is bright yellow interspersed with purple, and another is red with orange swirls.



The cool weather has also inspired us to explore the small woods in our backyard. We've been foraging for whatever goodies we can find, and a big part of that has been firewood. We've decided to put off using our oil heater for a while, and right now we're attempting to heat the house with just the fireplace and a space heater in the bedroom. It's hard work chopping and splitting wood, and tending to the fire, but we've managed to keep the temperature in the house in the mid-60s, which is plenty warm. Plus, it's super cozy to snuggle up and watch the flames!


In the next couple of weeks, our projects will be to plant the garlic and a cover crop of winter barley, knit some socks and holiday gifts, and make some beer and wine!