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!

Fresh Movie Screening!

We are co-hosting a free screening of the movie Fresh this Saturday, August 22nd and we'd like to invite everyone to come! Fresh is a documentary by Ana Sofia Joanes which features interviews with Michael Pollan and a tour of Joel Salatin's farm, as well as highlighting the work of other farmers and business people who are creating a more healthy and sustainable way of growing food that is accessible to everyone.



Unlike some other recently released food documentaries, Fresh isn't about scaring us with the gory details of why the current industrial system is making us and the planet sick. Rather, it's a hopeful and inspiring collection of tales about people who are already making positive changes and proving that it can be done.

There will also be a few local growers, such as North Star Orchard, who will be in attendance to help answer questions and be a voice for the sustainable farming community in southeastern Pennsylvania. Buy Fresh Buy Local will be providing listings of local food producers.

Please join us this Saturday, August 22nd, 7:00 pm at the London Grove Friends Meetinghouse, 500 West Street Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348.

Where Eggs Come From

It's only been two months since the little baby chicks showed up at the post office but it might as well have been two years (in chicken time). The fuzzy little chicks have been growing almost faster than the weeds in our garden and now are fully feathered grass mowing machines. Despite their appetites we still have two months left until we can start to expect eggs.



Speaking of grub, we recently found a great source for organic chicken feed practically in our backyard. After a few phone calls, a kind gentleman from McGeary Organics offered to meet us halfway to their mill in Lancaster with a bag of organic layer developer feed. The feed is top notch and we really feel fortunate to have such a local source for affordable organic feed. In addition to various organic livestock feeds they also mill organic flour.



But the biggest news on the chicken front has been that the chickens we able to finally move into their new house! We built our Eglu Cube on the day we went to settlement and the soon-to-be-egg-machines have been scracthing up the grass and eating pretty much everything in sight ever since. We make sure to move the Cube to new grass every night after the girls have snuggled up in the coop for bed. Now we just need to pick out a few good omlette recipes.

Where Do We Start?

At long last, the saga of our quest for land has come to a conclusion, but that also means that the real work is just beginning! The Gardener and I have purchased a new home about 12 miles from our old abode, and with it comes plenty of space for creating a real homestead. We now have almost 4 acres! About 1/3 of that is currently wooded, but it leaves at least an acre for sheep pasture, and more than enough space for growing tons of vegetables and fruits.

The chickens are already loving their new Eglu and have really taken to scratching around in the grass and looking for bugs. There's a lot of overgrowth that needs to be cleared, but we have found some raspberries, wineberries, and a mulberry tree that we'll definitely be leaving. We also have a huge old neglected apple tree that we're going to try to prune back into shape. This weekend we're going to be renting a sod cutter and getting our garden beds ready. We're planning on having 5 separate beds, which should be just right for rotating crops and having one permanent one. We'll probably only use one or two for Fall crops and plant the rest with cover crops. The first thing we need to do is plant our pumpkins so that they're ready for Halloween! I'm also really excited about planting more peas since our spring crop did so well and were so easy to grow.

Meanwhile, over at the borrowed veggie plot, we have plenty of kale, bunches of green tomatoes, some baby peppers and eggplants, and squash galore. Our Yukon Gold potatoes should be ready to harvest in the next couple of weeks, and the Yellow Finn and German Butterball to follow shortly. Our corn is also starting to tassel. I know our garden is suffering from our inability to tend it on a daily basis, but I'm confident we'll still end up getting plenty of goodies!

Now that life has settled down enough for us to start getting some real work done, we'll be posting up a storm about all of our new projects. The only question now is where do we start?

The Summer Harvests Have Begun!

This June has been one of the rainiest I can remember, but the rains have finally let up and it seems like summer is now in full swing. The veggies in the garden are growing fast, and so are the weeds, which we're struggling to catch up with. We're also getting to harvest the first crops of the season. We pulled all of our spinach and got three bags worth to freeze. We have peas coming on, and we have bunches of kale to be picked. And today we harvested the garlic. All of our softneck garlic rotted out over the winter, but the Romanian Red hardnecks grew pretty well. For some reason, some of them grew large scapes, which we cut only two weeks ago and made pesto out of, and some of them did not. When we dug the heads up today, the ones which had had scapes turned out to be very small, with apparently only two or three cloves each. But most of them grew to a respectable size, and they're all hanging in the kitchen to cure. I can't wait to taste them!

We've been meaning to put up some photos of the garden, but we keep forgetting to take the camera. It's been great having our big 20' x 40' plot to grow in this year, but it's also difficult to find the time to tend it since we can't just walk out the back door to it when we have a few extra minutes. Since it's also difficult to grab a few leaves of kale or a few pea pods for dinner, it's making more sense for us to harvest as much as we can when we're there and then preserve it.

Our good friend Pragmatiste surprised us this weekend with the awesome gift of this classic book on preserving, which is a complete reference on everything you need to know to can, freeze, cure, dry, and cellar, with plenty of scientific rationale. Now we should have no trouble keeping all of our veggies delicious and nutritious!

Just Hatched!

At 7:10 this morning the phone rang, just as we had been hoping it would. The lady at the post office was calling to let us know that our little baby chicks had arrived! We got there before they opened, but they were more than happy to let us in to claim our box of fluffy peepers. The Gardener got to take them home (as I grumpily had to go to the office) and he was given the responsibility of introducing them to their new digs, feeding and watering them.


We spent the day thinking up names for our eight little layers, and settled on Lorraine, Benedictina, Florentine, Frittata, Tikka, Pot Pie, Buck Buck, and Begok. All of them seem to be doing quite well, even though Frittata gave the Gardener a bit of a scare at first. Now she's even pushing the bigger ones around. The lighter colored ones (Flo, Lo, Bennie, and Fritta) are Rhode Island Reds. They get the fancy names because they behave more like ladies. The dark ones are Barred Plymouth Rocks, and they are plucky to say the least.

The coop should be arriving this week as well. It's travelling by boat from England and then into Philadelphia via Greyhound where we'll have to pick it up at the station. Kind of ridiculous, I know, but we've chosen the Omlet brand because their coops are particularly suburban friendly in their Ikea-like design, and we're hoping to stay on our neighbors' good sides.

In the meantime they'll stay warm, cozy, and safe in their custom built brooder. We've even rigged up a "chickam" so that we can keep an eye on them from our computers at work!