On Tuesday, Monty and I learned a great deal about raising baby ducks. They've been in a little pen inside the garden fence with a wooden top on it for shade and protection - the 15 of them. Monty gave them their water early Tuesday morning when the temps were in the mid-60s (unheard of in July in Alabama BTW!!). They drank it so fast, Monty gave them another jar of water and filled a little extra bowl of water for them! I went into the garden a few minutes later to pick and looked over and a duck was keeled over and kicking in the cage. I started over to look, and another duck keeled over and the rest were staggering around the cage and tripping and acting drunk!! I said, "Monty! Get over here! The ducks are dropping like flies!!"A third duck fell over and began kicking, and the first was already dead. Monty took the second one and I took the third one and began holding it at our necks to warm them. We took the rest and sat them in a very sunny spot in the garden to heat them up quickly. Well, we lost 2. Number 3 warmed up and started acting OK, and the rest began to calm down with the morning sun heating them up. They had drunk so much water, they were in shock. Comforted that they'd be OK, we finished our animal and garden chores and left for a brief trip to the feed and seed store. 3 HOURS later (my husband has a way of allowing time to just slip away) we came back having forgotten to put the cover back on the ducks' cage or to put them in the shade again. It was noon and the sun was BROILING hot. 4 ducks were lying their dead as doornails, and 2 more were panting and weak. We quickly got them more water and put them in the shade, but we lost those 2. SO, we lost 8 ducks on Tuesday. The remaining 7 were brought back into the garage, and we know EXACTLY how much water to give them, and how fragile they really are. YIKES, that was just awful.
ALSO, Delilah the Great Pyrenees dog has to go.
Remember the new pygmy triplet goats? Nellie, Josie, and Billy? They are all about the same size as baby Spencer - the size of a goodly adult cat. Well, Delilah had been chewing on little Josie. She had done some mouthing on Spencer when they were first together and they were about the same size, we'd come out to the goat fence, and Spencer would have messy, slobbery spots on him where Delilah would be "playing rough" with him. No injuries, though. Josie, however, has hairless scrapes on her ears and legs where Delilah has been CHEWING on her!! We caught her in the act several times and administered a swift spanking each time. However, her habit seems too ingrained and she keeps doing it.
We moved her from the main goat pen where little Nellie and Josie are to the boy pen with Spencer, Billy, and Freddie the larger goat are. She got Spencer's ear! He has chew marks on it!
Fortunately, a man came to buy Sam and Freddie yesterday, and his wife LOVED Delilah. Freddie and Sam aren't pygmy goats, and they aren't small enough for Delilah to have her way with them. They just give her a good head butt when she tries. Those folks are coming back for Delilah today, and we are SO glad. Delilah has been with them since they all arrived, so this should ease the transition for everyone. The children are SO glad we've found good people to take care of Delilah, but we will be SO sad to see her go.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Using everything from the garden . . . .
My friend Rachel sent me the www.cooks.com recipe below:
---------------------
PURPLE HULL PEA JELLY
---------------------
1 gallon pea hulls
2 pkgs. Sure-Jell
8 c. sugar
Wash pea hulls thoroughly, at least twice, then bring to
boil in a heavy pan with enough water to cover hulls. Boil
over low heat 8 to 10 minutes. Save the juice,
approximately 8 cups, and discard hulls. Combine juice and
Sure-Jell in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 2
minutes. Add sugar and boil an additional minute. Pour
mixture into glass jars and seal. Purple hull peas produce
grape flavored jelly. White crowder peas produce honey
flavored jelly. Lady peas make apple jelly; and by
combining the hulls of crowder, purple, whippoorwill and
lady peas a plum tasting jelly results.
Is this for real??? Sounds GREAT! I absolutely love the idea of wasting NOTHING and putting only the minimum stuff in the compost pile. These boiled, spent pea hulls could even go into the worm bin!
I made another batch of veggie burgers last night with a combination of sauteed squash, green beans purple beans, onions, carrots, and leftover cooked rice, and they turned out MUCH better. I added some reconstituted TVP and a packet of onion soup mix, eggs, and rice flour to the pureed mush, and the patties baked up nicely. I froze 24 of them.
I made salsa last night to use the bounty of tomatoes I had from the garden. I pureed whole tomatoes, an onion, a huge garlic clove, a small can of fire-roasted jalapeno peppers, and then added kosher salt, pepper, cilantro, and cumin until I got the right mix. Ohhhhhhhh, yes! I took half and put it into a Tupperware container and left the remainder in the food processor and added about half a can of pineapple and chunked that up some more. AYayayayay! SO good. I ate chips and salsa, veggie burgers and salsa, and salsa on a spoon! So good. It will probably be even better today!
I love using everything that comes from the garden. I'm getting tired of the Contender green beans, though. They taste fantastic, and the plants are producing LOADS, but they have this peach-fuzz type thing on the bean that makes it so you basically have to scrub each bean individually!! Too much work. I've begun to wipe each bean with a paper towel before washing, and that's actually easier, but geez. I don't have THAT kind of time.
I have to get my canning shelves built and installed so I can put UP some of that salsa, and I need to be making some peach jam and some jellies, too. My freezer over-floweth, and I prefer using that real estate for meat and certain veggies, although frozen peaches and strawberries make the BEST toppies and pies. So many decisions.
---------------------
PURPLE HULL PEA JELLY
---------------------
1 gallon pea hulls
2 pkgs. Sure-Jell
8 c. sugar
Wash pea hulls thoroughly, at least twice, then bring to
boil in a heavy pan with enough water to cover hulls. Boil
over low heat 8 to 10 minutes. Save the juice,
approximately 8 cups, and discard hulls. Combine juice and
Sure-Jell in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 2
minutes. Add sugar and boil an additional minute. Pour
mixture into glass jars and seal. Purple hull peas produce
grape flavored jelly. White crowder peas produce honey
flavored jelly. Lady peas make apple jelly; and by
combining the hulls of crowder, purple, whippoorwill and
lady peas a plum tasting jelly results.
Is this for real??? Sounds GREAT! I absolutely love the idea of wasting NOTHING and putting only the minimum stuff in the compost pile. These boiled, spent pea hulls could even go into the worm bin!
I made another batch of veggie burgers last night with a combination of sauteed squash, green beans purple beans, onions, carrots, and leftover cooked rice, and they turned out MUCH better. I added some reconstituted TVP and a packet of onion soup mix, eggs, and rice flour to the pureed mush, and the patties baked up nicely. I froze 24 of them.
I made salsa last night to use the bounty of tomatoes I had from the garden. I pureed whole tomatoes, an onion, a huge garlic clove, a small can of fire-roasted jalapeno peppers, and then added kosher salt, pepper, cilantro, and cumin until I got the right mix. Ohhhhhhhh, yes! I took half and put it into a Tupperware container and left the remainder in the food processor and added about half a can of pineapple and chunked that up some more. AYayayayay! SO good. I ate chips and salsa, veggie burgers and salsa, and salsa on a spoon! So good. It will probably be even better today!
I love using everything that comes from the garden. I'm getting tired of the Contender green beans, though. They taste fantastic, and the plants are producing LOADS, but they have this peach-fuzz type thing on the bean that makes it so you basically have to scrub each bean individually!! Too much work. I've begun to wipe each bean with a paper towel before washing, and that's actually easier, but geez. I don't have THAT kind of time.
I have to get my canning shelves built and installed so I can put UP some of that salsa, and I need to be making some peach jam and some jellies, too. My freezer over-floweth, and I prefer using that real estate for meat and certain veggies, although frozen peaches and strawberries make the BEST toppies and pies. So many decisions.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
8 new bunnies born this past weekend!
I had a phone call early Sunday morning, and while I was on the phone, I looked out over the bunny hutch and WOW!! I could see new, naked, pink baby bunnies!!! I yelled to the family, and we all ran out to see the new arrivals. Nine bunnies had been born overnight, one was a preemie and one was still born, but 7 babies were doing GREAT! These newbies join the single baby from last weeks' small litter of 2 born to a first-time mom. We believe these 7 are the second litter from this momma. We've separated all the bunnies into a new 4-part hutch beside the old 3-part one. So each mom has her own apartment with her babies, and all the others have their own place except when honeymooning. Pics to come later.
New Quail Babies!
On Saturday, the quail eggs placed in the incubator on July 1 began to hatch! By 3pm, we had 4 hatchlings. By 10pm, we had 11 hatched babies and one pecking and chirping in the egg. By Sunday afternoon, the 11 babies were dry and fluffy and we moved them from incubator to brooder. The children and we decided to issue names according to themes like Star Trek, Star Wars, Wizard of Oz, and others.
We chose Star Trek TOS for this group and gave character names replacing the initial consonant sound with the QU sound. So, our quails were (captain) Quirk, Quock, Quoola, Queckov, Quo'hura, Quottie, Quones, Quike (remember Captain Pike from the first episode?), Quibbles (remember Tribbles?), Quingon, and Quomulan.
We lost 2 babies Sunday night, and #12 never made it out of the incubator. Another baby weakened during the day yesterday, and it was gone this morning. We treated the remaining 8 with Tetracycline, and everyone looks strong and happy this morning. Out of 21 eggs, 6 were infertile, 2 never hatched, 1 hatched and never stood up, and 11 hatched and made it 24 hours. 9 have survived 48 hours and are looking great. We are at just under 50% on our first try with incubating eggs. We began collecting for a new group for the incubator yesterday, and we'll collect through Saturday. I'm going to attempt to post a PhotoStory series of photos of the hatching quail. It was fascinating to watch, and I'll never get over the miracle of new life!
The PhotoStory series didn't upload correctly. I'll keep trying.
We chose Star Trek TOS for this group and gave character names replacing the initial consonant sound with the QU sound. So, our quails were (captain) Quirk, Quock, Quoola, Queckov, Quo'hura, Quottie, Quones, Quike (remember Captain Pike from the first episode?), Quibbles (remember Tribbles?), Quingon, and Quomulan.
We lost 2 babies Sunday night, and #12 never made it out of the incubator. Another baby weakened during the day yesterday, and it was gone this morning. We treated the remaining 8 with Tetracycline, and everyone looks strong and happy this morning. Out of 21 eggs, 6 were infertile, 2 never hatched, 1 hatched and never stood up, and 11 hatched and made it 24 hours. 9 have survived 48 hours and are looking great. We are at just under 50% on our first try with incubating eggs. We began collecting for a new group for the incubator yesterday, and we'll collect through Saturday. I'm going to attempt to post a PhotoStory series of photos of the hatching quail. It was fascinating to watch, and I'll never get over the miracle of new life!
The PhotoStory series didn't upload correctly. I'll keep trying.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Duckling arrived!!!
We picked up our baby ducks yesterday at the post office!! I ordered 15 Khaki Campbell ducks (straight run - some male, some female), and they shipped 17, but one died en route.
We got them home by 10am and had them in a plastic bin with a light on them for heat within minutes. They are cute brown fuzzballs with black legs and feet. I put a full bowl of water in every hour or two and they go NUTS dipping heads and jumping in and out and the water is empty in minutes!! They've slung it all over the bottom and sides of the plastic tub. Then they go over to the sides and get the water droplets there.
The feed and seed was about to throw out a bunch of garden plants that were looking like they'd seen better days, and they offered them to us. We brought home a trailer full of plant flats on Wednesday. I was planning on planting everything out early yesterday, but the Post Office called and we had to pick up and deal with the ducks. We did get time to harvest half of the potatoes yesterday before I had to stop and go to piano with the girls.
We started back in the garden about 4 with thunder in the distance. My friend Rachel showed up with trowel in hand and began helping us!! Monty dug holes, and Rachel, Annie, Lizzy and I planted. We put in 23 Roma tomatoes, 17 various heirloom tomatoes, 9 hot banana peppers, 2 sweet yellow bell peppers, 20 eggplants - some ichiban and some black beauty, 7 clemson spineless okra, and then I put in rows of Swiss Chard beside the eggplants. It got late and we stopped there.
This morning, I went back in and interplanted marigolds between the tomatoes, planted rattlesnake beans, purple hull cowpeas, and swiss chard in the emptied portion of the potato mound, and some yard long green bean that I'd let dry for seed. I plan to plan some onions from seed, garlic chives, and more basil later today.
We got them home by 10am and had them in a plastic bin with a light on them for heat within minutes. They are cute brown fuzzballs with black legs and feet. I put a full bowl of water in every hour or two and they go NUTS dipping heads and jumping in and out and the water is empty in minutes!! They've slung it all over the bottom and sides of the plastic tub. Then they go over to the sides and get the water droplets there.
The feed and seed was about to throw out a bunch of garden plants that were looking like they'd seen better days, and they offered them to us. We brought home a trailer full of plant flats on Wednesday. I was planning on planting everything out early yesterday, but the Post Office called and we had to pick up and deal with the ducks. We did get time to harvest half of the potatoes yesterday before I had to stop and go to piano with the girls.
We started back in the garden about 4 with thunder in the distance. My friend Rachel showed up with trowel in hand and began helping us!! Monty dug holes, and Rachel, Annie, Lizzy and I planted. We put in 23 Roma tomatoes, 17 various heirloom tomatoes, 9 hot banana peppers, 2 sweet yellow bell peppers, 20 eggplants - some ichiban and some black beauty, 7 clemson spineless okra, and then I put in rows of Swiss Chard beside the eggplants. It got late and we stopped there.
This morning, I went back in and interplanted marigolds between the tomatoes, planted rattlesnake beans, purple hull cowpeas, and swiss chard in the emptied portion of the potato mound, and some yard long green bean that I'd let dry for seed. I plan to plan some onions from seed, garlic chives, and more basil later today.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Potty-training the Pooches
We are really excited about getting ducks and seeing how well they work in the garden.
Although we have over 200 animals, these last two are more work than the first 200! HONESTLY! OK, I admit it! I had forgotten the amount of work that goes into potty training a puppy and we took on two at once!
Yikes! I'm so glad we've bought the hardwoods to replace the carpet with in this house, because by the time these dogs are trained, we'll be SO ready for that change.
As for critters, today is the expected shipping date for our 15 Khaki Campbell ducks! They should arrive just in time for Monty's birthday! We have to do a bit of reading to get ready, and we'll make any necessary additions or changes to the brooder pen that are needed. Here's a pic of the babies we'll be getting:
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Production in the Garden
The garden is producing beautifully - both veggies and weeds! Monty has constructed a chicken run for me to place in between rows in the garden. I'll put 2 or 3 chickens under the bottomless structure out there and let them scratch and peck freely within the 4-ft by 2-ft area. This should take care of some bugs and lots of weeds.
I'm getting 1/2 to a full pound of yard-long green beans every day! They are delicious and SO tender. I'm going to have to begin freezing them now that they are getting ahead of our daily eating.
Contender green beans are petering out, but I'm doing some succession planting and we'll see how they do this late in the season.
I've pulled enough purple-hull cowpeas to (shelled) fill a 2-cup mixing bowl, but I'm combining those with the quarts we're shelling out of the free pea-hulls from the feed store and there'll be enough to eat and freeze. I've planted more peas between the first ones and around the old cabbage where I finally gave up on cabbage and planted Swiss chard.
Yellow squash production is slowing down to maybe 2 - 3 pounds a week with only the rare zucchini, so I've done an additional planting of squash seeds between the plants that are slowing down. There is plenty of space, and I'll pull these older vines when the new ones need room.
I harvested 2 acorn squash and 3 butternuts last night. They are smallish, but the color was right and I didn't want them dangling around to possibly rot in the heat. I baked them last night and the KIDS like them!! Shocks me to no end what they'll eat from the garden that they'd never eat from the store.
I'm going to plant some Egyptian walking onions from my MIL, more Swiss Chard (wish I had bed after bed full of that stuff) in the next couple of days.
Tomatoes? I've got tons of big lucious tomatoes that aren't turning red yet. I have lots of cherry tomatoes, too. My first planting of romas got choked by an untimely liberal application of leaf-mold mulch, but the most recent planting is doing well with little shoots about 2 inches up now. I think we'll be making lots of salsa and sauce in July and August. I'm going to find a source for dead-ripe peaches (this is Clanton after all) and try a peach salsa recipe.
So far, we've harvested 44.25 lbs of produce and that doesn't include the 10 or so cucumbers that have come in one at a time or the little cherry tomatoes that we wash and eat without bringing in the house.
I'm getting 1/2 to a full pound of yard-long green beans every day! They are delicious and SO tender. I'm going to have to begin freezing them now that they are getting ahead of our daily eating.
Contender green beans are petering out, but I'm doing some succession planting and we'll see how they do this late in the season.
I've pulled enough purple-hull cowpeas to (shelled) fill a 2-cup mixing bowl, but I'm combining those with the quarts we're shelling out of the free pea-hulls from the feed store and there'll be enough to eat and freeze. I've planted more peas between the first ones and around the old cabbage where I finally gave up on cabbage and planted Swiss chard.
Yellow squash production is slowing down to maybe 2 - 3 pounds a week with only the rare zucchini, so I've done an additional planting of squash seeds between the plants that are slowing down. There is plenty of space, and I'll pull these older vines when the new ones need room.
I harvested 2 acorn squash and 3 butternuts last night. They are smallish, but the color was right and I didn't want them dangling around to possibly rot in the heat. I baked them last night and the KIDS like them!! Shocks me to no end what they'll eat from the garden that they'd never eat from the store.
I'm going to plant some Egyptian walking onions from my MIL, more Swiss Chard (wish I had bed after bed full of that stuff) in the next couple of days.
Tomatoes? I've got tons of big lucious tomatoes that aren't turning red yet. I have lots of cherry tomatoes, too. My first planting of romas got choked by an untimely liberal application of leaf-mold mulch, but the most recent planting is doing well with little shoots about 2 inches up now. I think we'll be making lots of salsa and sauce in July and August. I'm going to find a source for dead-ripe peaches (this is Clanton after all) and try a peach salsa recipe.
So far, we've harvested 44.25 lbs of produce and that doesn't include the 10 or so cucumbers that have come in one at a time or the little cherry tomatoes that we wash and eat without bringing in the house.
This past week on the farm . . . .
was WILD! After adding just a few more baby chicks (Thanks, Duane! [hic]), and triplet baby pygmy goats at the cattle sale, we left for South Carolina on Saturday and picked up a male standard chocolate poodle in Gadsden and a female just across the SC state line on I-85.
These two puppies have been much more work than the 200 other critters on the property so far! Our boy, Prince Eduard du Chocolat (Eddy), is twice as big as the girl and he's like an awkward giant! He looks so much older and it seems ridiculous that he knows so little. He is beautiful with a milk-chocolate color and greenish eyes. Eddy is our big, goofy, handsome baby boy.
The little girl, Princess Vianne de Coco (Vianne), is a dainty little (standard) poodle with a penchant for pooping on my carpet. Blech. She is a deeper, dark chocolate color with thinner, daintier features. They seem to get along well together with the typical sparky moments sharing a food bowl and certain toys.
Tuesday, I remembered reading about a possible business venture for the children in the Mule Trader (www.themuletrader.com) and checked out the ad online. It was a set of 7 Chinese dwarf hamsters with all cages and acutrements for $35. I called the lady and asked her why whe was selling. She said her kids didn't play with them anymore. We discussed it as a family and Noah and the 2 littles decided they wanted to start their hamster business. They pooled their leftover report card money and we headed out the door.
We bought 7 tiny hamsters, a 10-gallon aquarium with a wire-mesh retro-fit lid, a Hartz hamster playyard, a 3-story gleaming, translucent habitrail kind of thing, a roll-around-the-house-encased-in-a-plastic-ball thing, a bag of hamster food, and a partial bag of pine shavings for that price. Noah paid the lady, and we took home our new enterprise. We combined them all in the aquarium and gave the plastic cages a good washing (she was a smoker). We will combine all seven hamsters into the 3-story unit, use the Hartz cage for quail, and use the aquarium as a quail-baby-brooder box.
We put 18 quail eggs into the incubator last night. In 17 to 18 days, we should have quail babies that are the size of "popcorn with legs"!! We are very excited about this, and the kids can't wait.
So, the menagerie continues to grow in scope and quantity. I've sold 17 of the 104 chicks I ordered from the hatchery. I've run the ad again in the Mule Trader, and also in the Bulletin Board (www.bulletinboard.com) out of Montgomery. We'll see how they do.
We are having fun and learning SO much about creatures and ourselves!
These two puppies have been much more work than the 200 other critters on the property so far! Our boy, Prince Eduard du Chocolat (Eddy), is twice as big as the girl and he's like an awkward giant! He looks so much older and it seems ridiculous that he knows so little. He is beautiful with a milk-chocolate color and greenish eyes. Eddy is our big, goofy, handsome baby boy.
The little girl, Princess Vianne de Coco (Vianne), is a dainty little (standard) poodle with a penchant for pooping on my carpet. Blech. She is a deeper, dark chocolate color with thinner, daintier features. They seem to get along well together with the typical sparky moments sharing a food bowl and certain toys.
Tuesday, I remembered reading about a possible business venture for the children in the Mule Trader (www.themuletrader.com) and checked out the ad online. It was a set of 7 Chinese dwarf hamsters with all cages and acutrements for $35. I called the lady and asked her why whe was selling. She said her kids didn't play with them anymore. We discussed it as a family and Noah and the 2 littles decided they wanted to start their hamster business. They pooled their leftover report card money and we headed out the door.
We bought 7 tiny hamsters, a 10-gallon aquarium with a wire-mesh retro-fit lid, a Hartz hamster playyard, a 3-story gleaming, translucent habitrail kind of thing, a roll-around-the-house-encased-in-a-plastic-ball thing, a bag of hamster food, and a partial bag of pine shavings for that price. Noah paid the lady, and we took home our new enterprise. We combined them all in the aquarium and gave the plastic cages a good washing (she was a smoker). We will combine all seven hamsters into the 3-story unit, use the Hartz cage for quail, and use the aquarium as a quail-baby-brooder box.
We put 18 quail eggs into the incubator last night. In 17 to 18 days, we should have quail babies that are the size of "popcorn with legs"!! We are very excited about this, and the kids can't wait.
So, the menagerie continues to grow in scope and quantity. I've sold 17 of the 104 chicks I ordered from the hatchery. I've run the ad again in the Mule Trader, and also in the Bulletin Board (www.bulletinboard.com) out of Montgomery. We'll see how they do.
We are having fun and learning SO much about creatures and ourselves!
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