Letting the Chickens "Roam If You Want To"

Today we tried a little experiment with the "almost laying" hens. We let three of them out to scratch around outside their pen. Now that we have a goat fence up that encloses Coop 1 and the Brooder Coop (and future Coop 2), and we have the goats and a dog to help ward off predators, I want the chickens to have free range within that area. However, we haven't clipped their wings and they could fly out to unsafe places. We stood around while they explored for about 15 minutes and then herded them back in the pen.

The next experiment will be when Monty (hubby - Chris Montalbano) makes some bottomless cages for me to put in the walkways of the veggie garden. The cages will keep the chickens from eating my veggies and keep hawks from eating my hens. The hens will be able to forage for bugs, weeds, and other goodies.

The worm bin is coming along nicely, and we added another bin yesterday after Monty cleaned out under the bunny cages. He found HUGE, juicy worms with lots of little baby worms and started another bin (see http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol18/?pg=83) with the contents of that heap! We'll be having black gold (worm poo) for our garden in NO time!

Watermelon Rind Pickles. Yes, watermelon rind. Mom made some of these delicious, cinnamon and clove spiced pickles when I was growing up. I just think it cool to find SOME way to use EVERYTHING!! I cut up a watermelon after lunch and we ate half of it. I cut all the pink and all the dark green off every piece of rind and made half inch wide strips that are soaking in water until I cut up the other half tonight. I'll keep you posted.

Squash Pickles. Well, you've got to find interesting new ways to use the produce of that FANTASTIC garden, and here's one. Squash pickles. I'll be using yellow and zucchini squash and maybe some baby carrots. Rachel (who sent me the recipe) uses peppers, eggplant, or whatever else she has too many of. I wonder if this would work for beets???? Rachel? I don't have quite enough squash for this today, but by tomorrow or Saturday, I will have plenty.

Monty is out right now running our old push mower over some of the leaf mold under the trees and bagging it for use as mulch in the garden. I fertilized earlier with the last box of 9-13-13 I intend to buy this summer. Next month, I'm using chicken poo that will have been in the compost bin for weeks working off the ammonia and rotting into pure, rich, beautiful compost.

How many chickens???

Today I went to the cattle sale with hubby and we got an enamel-metal bowl I plan to use for lye part of soaping (3 or 4 qt size) and a cute little coffee grinder/coffee jar for $5, 2 big seedless watermelons for $5, hubby got 2 WWII metal ammo boxes for $8, and my BIG score was sugar in 25lb bags for $9 (I got 2 – that’s $0.36 per lb when I usually pay almost $0.50). 50 lbs of sugar should make a LOT of jam!

Then we went to Jones’ Feed and Seed to get chick starter food, bunny food, and goat food (50 lb each). When we got there, Duane was running bushels of Lima beans through the pea sheller. I asked him what he does with the spent shells and he said some folks get them for their cows. He said I could have ‘em for the compost pile, too. Then he started shelling pink-eye purple hull peas. He said those would be great for the goats. I got 3 bushels worth of spent hulls. Duane said there should be lots of peas still in there because some of them were too green to shell properly. We brought home a trailer full of spent hulls and got the kids outside in the trailer with us in the shade and began sorting through to find peas. We got that enameled bowl FULL of peas from that stack of free pea hulls!! We’ll be eating fresh, delicious peas tonight with risotto rice (cooked with a bit of schmaltz), and lots of squash fresh from the garden – all accompanied by home-made hot pepper sauce, corn bread and freshly brewed sweet tea, of course.

We fed the hulls to the bunnies who LOVED them, and then to the goats. They loved them, too. Oh, yeah. While I was at Jones’, I met Paula who just started working there. We were chatting when she told me about the baby girl pygmy goat she got at the humane society!!!! It was Spencer’s little sister!!! She has no intention of keeping her, but has become so attached; she is having a hard time THINKING about giving her away. She was so glad to find out about us and what we’re doing with our animals and Spencer. She thinks she wants to let Flossie come live with Spencer!! We are so excited about that possibility!

Also, Duane had 12 little 3-day-old golden buff pullets leftover from an order that wasn’t picked up by the customer. I couldn’t let those little orphans stay at the feed store!!!! They are in my chick brooder now with the week-old babies! Now I have 126 chicks between 3 days and 3 weeks old. YAY!!!!

On the way home, I checked the cell phone which I’d left in the car, and I missed PIANO lessons for the girls!!! YIKES! I called and apologized profusely about my scattered-ness, but I definitely have amends to make.

The afternoon was peaceful and quiet under the shade trees shelling peas with my family and chatting about the animals. The children all remarked about how “fun” it was to shell peas!! They really enjoyed it! Of course it wasn’t the actual shelling of peas, but the sitting with each other, contributing to the family’s enterprise, and having conversation where everyone could speak and be listened to (not just heard.)

The thunder started just about an hour ago, and I rushed out to pick whatever I could in the garden before the monsoon hits again. I got about 8 more squash (es?). Then, the thunder stopped and the sun hasn’t stopped shining yet. Hmmmmmmph!

My first cat at age 44 . . .

I finally decided to get a cat - O.K. two cats, and they are kittens - just 6 weeks old! They've been here a week now, so I guess they're 7 weeks old, and the kids have really been enjoying them.

Today, I didn't feel well and I slept a LOT. The great thing was, the kittens piled up on me and slept, too! The purring little cuties were just so cuddly and warm! I'm having kitten love!

I remember my whole childhood wanting a cat SO badly, but Mom was allergic and didn't like cats. I'm allergic, too, especially when there are more than one cat in a house. I decided that it would be alright to keep them in the house for a couple of weeks until they were big enough to dodge any predators that might get after them. I'm very wheezy, but I think I have a bit of a cold.

Ok, so I've got a few scratches. I'm loving it though!

100 Baby Chicks (continued)

Now there are 103 baby chicks. We suspect trampling was the cause of the fuzzball's demise. 1 out of 104 isn't a bad loss, I guess.

They are all just eating, drinking, chirping and crapping away! The storage tubs are getting REALLY crowded. Monty has everything he needs to build the new baby chicken coop with brooder (thingy with warming lamps) to go in it. Now all he needs is a couple more days without rain!

Mamma goats are doing well as is the baby girl and little Spencer. Billy kid however has the scours really BAD.We are medicating him and watching him closely. I have to give him a liquid medicine and an injection today.

Today . . . .

Went to the Cattle Sale this morning and bought a regular size pressure cooker ($12 T-Fal no-stick with the instructions & recipes, almost new!), an old used crock pot for soap-making ($4), and LOTS of fresh veggies including green beans, little yellow squash, tiny red potatoes, a bunch of Bermuda onions, 2 big containers of broccoli, a big fresh rutabaga, 2 small watermelons, and a basket of small, early Chilton County peaches (all those for $18). Here’s what I looked at and did NOT buy:
a Tibetan sword for $15 (yeah, a Tibetan sword!)
a tin “purse” container that I would’ve hung on the wall of my deck with other tin “things” for $2 – no she’d take $1
a HUGE bourbon tom turkey $50
a half-dozen guinea chicks $3 each
a $4 bolt for the tractor
a $10 used crockpot
a $5 used crockpot
a $5 roll of window screen
a chicken-catching net – didn’t ask the price
and many other little critters and junque.

NOW I have everything I can possibly need to make soap. I’m going to use the old used crockpot for melt & pour and for heating the oils for the soaps.

Last week we went to Bham and stopped into the Golden Temple on Southside to get some “exotic” ingredients for soap and cosmetics. I bought 16 oz. of Shea Butter, 2 little cakes of beeswax, some vitamin E oil, a large container of Bentonite clay and two different essential oils – lemongrass and clove. I already had cinnamon. Golden Temple is such an experience, it's a wonder they don't charge a cover to let you in. The sights, smells, and people-watching there are priceless.

At Whole Foods, I found a LARGE container of grapeseed oil, some palm oil, and coconut oil. The family sampled EVERY flavored olive oil there. We spent about 20-30 minutes in the cheese area sampling and having delightful conversation with the cheese man about mites, goats, sheep, and mold. Wonderful!! The children and hubby all got a single slice of pizza from the deli area. I got gluten-free pretzels (kind of anti-climactic, huh?). We saw, we sampled, and we bought.

At Hobby Lobby, I bought a couple of molds and some lotion containers. Jessica got a block of clay to try sculpting with, Noah bought some models, and the girls got a stuffed animal. I walked through the store with hands cupped around eyes to keep me focused on my list.

I have found great online sources for containers for lip balms and other cosmetics, but I want to do some testing first. ALSO, I am trying to keep track of what each item costs so that I can figure the actual cost of anything I end up making.

If I actually end up making the soap (instead of buying the inexpensive plain melt & pour blocks and rebatching it with my creative stuff added) I want to get the simplest possible ingredients leaning towards stuff I have in my garden, goat’s milk which I hope to be getting from my goats, and stuff I can get at this Wal Mart. Dollar Tree (of all places!!) had a package of beautiful handmade papers that I got to try as wrap for the soap. I hope I can get a couple of days of rain now to give me the excuse to concentrate and really DO this thing!!!

I’ll keep you posted how it goes and the recipes I try. Wish me luck.

We lost a baby chick . . .

This happened last week:
I'm so ANGRY!!! We lost a baby chick tonight.

Today, I moved those week-old nasty buzzards out of my dining room where those warm lamps were making their little chicken smells waft all through the kitchen. I took them and put them in the garage after carefully running an extension cord just right so I could keep their little butts warm. It was great. The garage is about 10 degrees warmer than my house and about 5 degrees hotter than outside.

Well, tonight we got home from Bham and the garage stunk to the high heavens!! So, smart folks that we are, we left the garage door open for a "few minutes" to let it air out a little. Well, about an hour later, we're sitting together in the living room watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons, and Monty hears the chicks all making a ruckus. He jumps up and runs out to the garage where he sees the neighborhood roaming German Shepherd "Baby" toting off a sweet little yellow fuzzball!!!! He scolds her and she drops the chick and slinks off into the night.

Monty grabs the chick and there's no blood, but he has a dangling leg. Awww, crap. We closed the garage door and checked all the other animals just to be sure. Then we had to take the little chick and Monty had to finish him off - he was fading fast anyway. It was AWFUL!!! I felt SO badly that we'd been careless. The good news is that this is the little 11 chicks I got for $20 last week that have taught us many things in preparation for the big shipment that's coming any day now. Oh, well. Such is life on the farm????

Describing the Garden

The following post is an email (letter) I wrote to a friend today describing the garden. I'm including it in this blog, because I like it.

Dear Kathleen:

I’ve taken classes at the county extension for gardening and at Petals from the Past, and we have the most humongous garden I’ve ever attempted this year.

I’ve got 3 tomato areas: the main “eating” tomatoes area has 5 bamboo tepees under which there are 5 plants each and the tepees alternate between big slicing tomatoes and grape tomatoes. Between the tepees are planted purple, red, and green basils, and marigolds line the walking path in front of the tomatoes. To play off the height of the tepees, I planted mixed sunflowers between each tepee along the “wall” of the garden. I’m very excited to see this all filling in as the plants continue to grow. The 2nd tomato area is a bed of only roma tomato plants for sauce. I have 17 roma plants out, 9 in the center of those round metal cages, and 8 beside these weird metal poles the previous owner left. That’s going to be pretty, too. I only planted those from seed this past weekend, and I’m going back to interplant green basil with them today. The third tomato area will be heirlooms, and I’m just doing those for fun. They have great flavor, I’m growing them from seed, and they are SO pretty. I’m (hopefully) putting those out today, and interplanting them with onion and parsley.

Other than tomatoes, I have a bed with decorative Indian corn interplanted with cantaloupes and honeydews, pumpkins, and decorative gourds including birdhouse gourds. I also have wildly successful pumpkin plants growing in the compost heap!

I have a cabbage patch interplanted with chamomile, clary sage, and dill. Impatient as I am, I’ve decided that only chumps wait for cabbage to head! I just snip the leaves and use them in stir fries and this new recipe for this weird (delicious) patty thing.

I have a 50 ft wire fence inside supporting pole beans called gita – yard-long green beans. I’ve grown them the past three years very successfully, and they are so fine and delicious that you only have to just let them hit the sauté pan for a few seconds and they taste fabulous! At each support pole of that fence is a cucumber plant, and at every foot or so is a buttercrunch lettuce, and all this is interplanted with scarlet nasturtiums.

The squash bed contains zucchini, yellow squash, butternut, and acorn squash. It has red clover between the squash hills to keep weeds down and to nitrify the soil supporting the growth of the squash. Petunias line that bed – mixed colors.

A stubborn old stump has been heaped up with dirt and has become the strawberry hill. It looks GREAT!

The bush beans are planted in 3 rows beside the strawberry hill, and I’ve just planted 3 rows of swiss chard (mixed ruby and neon lights) beside those plants. I’m going to put in some more lettuces in that bed, too, including arugula and some thyme.

I went crazy at Petals from the Past buying seed packets for their gorgeous art, and I ended up with 6 varieties of peppers to plant. Got them in the ground this weekend, too, and there are 6 rows with a wide variety of colors, sweet and heat plants, and shapes.

The last two areas are a garlic/onion bed which is doing GREAT and the long row of potatoes against the fence – white and red – both of which were planted back in February. The white potatoes are doing great, but the foliage came in on the trees and is blocking most of the sun over the red potatoes and they look puny.

There is also a row of purple hull cowpeas coming along nicely. I laid drip hoses for every area of the garden and constructed this series of connectors that I basically have to manually hook up the hose to one receiver to water the entire outside area of the garden, and another one to water all the inside beds. That was quite a bit of engineering for my brain, but I managed. Outside the garden we have blueberries and raspberries and fruit trees planted including peaches, pears, plums, apples, and plums. I just saw a pomegranate tree at a friend’s house with those fiery orange blossoms and HAD to get one. The little fruit tree man that comes to the “cattle sale” every Wednesday morning had them, and I got one. I haven’t planted it yet.

Landscaping? I’ve done nothing. The priority this year is the garden and the animals. We haven’t done nearly enough to the inside of the house yet either, but the plan is to make a 4th bedroom in the basement with a full bath. We moved in August, so I didn’t try to get a teaching job this year, and what I don’t understand is this: How did my family ever have clean clothes to wear or a hot meal to eat when I was working outside the home????? It seems like they need me more now that they’re older than they did when they were babies, but I really like that.

I’d love to meet you in Bham or Alabaster for lunch, or you could have a day in the country down here. We could do lunch and visit Petals from the Past in Jemison (just hide your checkbook and debit card!!!). It is a lovely place to spend HOURS and HOURS gawking at beautiful plants and chatting. Let me know what you’d like to do. Hope to see you soon.

Love, Rebecca