The Farm is Growing!

The chickens are almost full grown now and we've acquired a few new additions to the homestead. We borrowed a goat from Abe's work (we hope to get a few pygmy goats of our own eventually) to help with a noxious weed problem. We have 2 patches of a particularly difficult to eradicate perennial weed called Russian Knapweed. I'm sure I'll post more on that as I've made it my personal crusade to prove to the Home Owners Association that it can be taken care of without using toxic chemicals. Kensi and Salem have their birthday next week and Salem has been asking for a dog. We're not ready to spend the time necessary to train a dog yet but we were able to get him a bunny for free off of KSL with cage, bedding, feed, and waterer all included. We gave it to him early and he has been carrying it around like a baby all day today. So sweet! Its the cutest lop ear and he named it Frosting. Just a little tid-bit you might not have known--one of the great things about rabbit manure is that it can be applied fresh as a plant fertilizer and will not burn the plants like most other fresh manures which tend to be very high in nitrogen. The goat manure will be helpful as well in building the deficient soil here. And in addition to our imported animals we also have the native populations in full summer swing. Lots of grasshoppers that I know are going to be a challenge in the garden and these cool lizards that are everywhere. I am now thouroughly convinced of the benefit of raising animals--its good for the children and its therapeutic for me as well. Seriously, watching the chickens peck in the dirt is as entertaining as any cable TV and much more relaxing and contemplative.

Field Trip

So our 3 week old chickies spent their first night in the new coop last night and had their first outdoor excursion this morning. It was fun to watch them chase the flies and gobble up the ants. We need to train them to go out the chicken hatch in the back. The goal is to keep them mostly in the wild areas of the property (that will later hopefully be pasture) instead of in the area closest to the house that will eventually be a large deck and small lawn and play area. I'm still trying to decide whether to keep their food and water in the coop or just put it out for them in the mornings when I let them out. The kids are really enjoying them and think the coop is a playhouse for them as well. Of course, the wood shavings are new so I'm sure they'll change their minds about that as the litter gets "used" a bit more. Although I have started putting garlic powder in their feed so we'll have to see how well that works.

The Coop

The coop in progress. One side will be a shed and the other for the chickens. If we get really ambitious and need more room we could knock out the wall and use all of it for chickens. As it is, its much bigger than needed for 8 hens so that won't be for awhile. We still need to put in the windows and the porch and finish the nesting boxes. The roof and siding match the main house so it blends in well.

Chickens!

The first day we brought the chickies home.
What they look like today.

We took the plunge and on my sons 3rd birthday bought 8 Rhode Island Red chickies from the feed store. That is a dual-purpose breed and will be great laying hens but they are also meaty enough to be good for eating as well. They are supposed to be mild-mannered, hardy, and good foragers. They are now a little over 2 weeks old, have more than doubled in size, and are almost fully feathered. They should begin laying somewhere around 18-20 weeks which will be in September sometime. My husband is building the coop as we speak. We are building it much larger than necessary as we have a tendency to expand :-). I'd also like to try my hand at some meat birds next year.

For those of you not familiar with meat birds, virtually all commercially raised chicken is some kind of a Cornish Cross. They are bred to gain weight extremely fast, so fast in fact that the rest of their body systems can't keep up and they are prone to heart failure and other illnesses. They are also bred to be lazy and thus are not good for free ranging. I recently learned about some meat birds from European stock (used for most ranging systems all over France) that mature just a week or two later than the Cornish Crosses but are much more healthy and active and good for ranging. I'm planning on trying some of these next year (although, the coop is almost finished, I might be able to squeeze some in this summer...don't tell my husband :-) )Here is a link to a hatchery that offers them--J.M Hatchery. They are called Colored Range Broilers.

We will be starting our hens just on the bagged layer pellets from the feed store supplemented with the multitude of bugs, worms, crickets, and greens they will harvest themselves along with some kitchen scraps. I am interested in becoming more self-sufficient regarding their feed to economize and approach a more natural diet. I have been reading interesting articles about how to breed worms, maggots, mealworms, and crickets. I'm sure I'll have more info on that down the road and can provide some links.

Another interesting article I came across mentioned a study where they added 3% garlic powder to the chicken feed. Supposedly, it virtually eliminated any manure odor and made the coop smell like a pizzeria! Also, in taste tests, testers preferred the eggs from the garlic fed hens. Garlic is also immunity boosting and insecticidal. I will definitely be trying that one out!

The Asparagus Today

Here is the asparagus bed today. The spear that we eat is the very first part that peeks above the earth. You can't harvest any the first two years because it will exhaust the root system. After that, you can still only harvest over several weeks because you need to let some develop into asparagus ferns (the third photo is starting to fern out but will eventually grow to over 5 feet tall-its so skinny I couldn't get the camera to focus on it so its a bit blurry) to regenerate the roots so you will continue to have a harvest every year. The spears will get bigger as the root system develops. Another added bonus is that I've heard asparagus is somewhat deer-proof. (crossing my fingers on that one!)

Asparagus Bed

The trench, notice our solid clay soil--we're going to have to work hard on amending the soil.

The layer of horse manure.

The layer of compost.

The asparagus crown.

After planting--I let my crowns sit out for too long before planting and they had already sprouted. I ended up having to cut off the first stalk, but the new stems and ferns are developing beautifully. I'll get some current photos tomorrow.

I put the asparagus bed in a few weeks ago. I LOVE asparagus and all of my kids will eat it, it is a perennial and requires very little work once established, it is one of the first vegetables to harvest in the spring, it is very hardy and should do really well in this climate. The only draw back is that it takes a few years to get going so I wanted to make sure and get it planted this year. I planted 20 1-year old crowns in a 30 foot trench/row about 18 inches apart.
First we (well, my husband mostly :-) dug a trench about 8-10 inches deep and about 18-24 inches wide. In the bottom of the trench I put several inches of horse manure, topped with several more inches of good compost, topped with a bit of soil. Then I planted the spidery looking crowns, topped with more soil, and mulched with some old straw. In our case, we planted 20 crowns in a 30 foot row. It seems like a lot but that will still only give us about 10 lbs. of asparagus per year when it reaches maximum production. That is why asparagus is so expensive--it takes a lot of space and time to grow.

Antique Kitchen Stove...so cool!

I really love how my kitchen is turning out. My antique stove/cooktop is one of my favorite parts. The inspiration for it came from this article from the Good Time Stove Company. If you have the funds, by all means utilize a company like this to fully restore and update an old stove. If you just like the look but don't care much about reusing antiques you can get really awesome reproductions from several companies, one being Elmira Stove Works. If you're like me, however, which means you have virtually no budget and you are interested in treading lightly on the Earth, go with the following method:

Find an old antique stove that you think looks really cool and that your budget can afford. I found our awesome 1930's antique gas stove for $25 on our local classifieds website, KSL. If you aren't in Utah check craigslist and your local classifieds. You can also check at salvage yards and antique stores. For this method, it doesn't need to work. In fact, its better if it doesn't work because you can probably get it for cheaper. It can be gas, electric, or even a woodburning stove. Take a look at it to see how easy it would be to alter it in someway to fit a modern cooktop. With ours, all we had to do was remove some metal plates and it was the perfect size to fit a 2 burner, electric, smooth surface cooktop (also purchased off of KSL for $100). I can't give really specific details here because each stove will be different. Some you may have to cut some metal or figure out a way to fill in gaps. We just used a little bit of sheet metal, spray-painted black, and screwed around the edges to fill in the small gaps we encountered. Basically, think of the stove as cabinetry. If you purchased a standard kitchen cabinet and a cooktop you would have to make a cutout in the countertop to fit the cooktop anyway. Make sure there is some kind of opening in the back for the wiring.

That's it! Connect the electical and then use the cooktop for all of your surface cooking. Use the baking oven compartments as storage cabinets. I use one of mine for spices (nice and accessible right where I cook), one for my bread drawer, and the other for storing my plastic wrap, baggies, and such. I have a separate wall oven for baking (see earlier blog entry).

I'd also like to point out a few more details from the photo. The pot rack was purchased at an antique shop for $12. Notice I only use stainless steel or cast iron cookware; none of that nasty Teflon for me, thank you very much. The open shelving consists of Tryggve shelving from IKEA, cut to size and finished with pure tung oil, and Hall brackets, also from IKEA. By using unfinished shelves, metal brackets, and the pot rack I was able to avoid VOC's completely for my upper not-cabinetry. The lights attached to the bottom of the shelf are from, you guessed it, IKEA! (notice I haven't hidden the wires yet). The small white cabinet and butcher block top are also from IKEA, with legs instead of a toe-kick to make it look like a freestanding piece. The blue table in the middle with the matching chair is another antique. I purchased the table and 4 chairs for $30 off of craigslist. It is in need of some serious stripping and refinishing which will be the subject of another blog entry sometime in the future.

And for fun, since we just finished the holidays--when I watched "A Christmas Story" this year I noticed that Ralphie's mom cooks on a stove almost identical to this one. Take a look! I thought it was pretty exciting.

A Tile Tale

This is my kitchen floor and I absolutely love it! We installed it ourselves a few months ago using a crate of miscellaneous tiles purchased from a tile store for $25. (They were selling them individually for $.20 a piece for crafts--you know, those cutesy sayings people put on them with vinyl letters?) Most of these tiles were large, high quality, porcelain tiles, typically in the range of $5-$8 a square foot. We didn't have quite enough for all 200 plus square feet so we purchased 2 boxes of new tile from Home Depot for $50 to round it all out. So $75 dollars for 214 sq. ft. of tiles comes out to about $.35 a square foot. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Be warned, this is VERY labor intensive. I spent the large part of 2 whole days working out the design scheme. As the pattern is random, it all has to be laid out dry to make sure it will fit and look the way you want it too. As we had many different tile sizes, we had to cut a lot of pieces to fill in the various sized gaps created. Caveat: try and make sure all of your tiles are the same thickness or you'll end up with some uneven places in the finished floor (we learned this the hard way).

If you have the time, you could do this even cheaper. I called around to a few tile installers asking for scraps. Most of them said that when finished with a job, they would have several buckets of tile cuts and remnants destined for the landfill. They were more than willing to have me come and haul their garbage away after them. I would imagine that it wouldn't take too long to collect enough for even a very large area. Of course, now you're dealing with even smaller fragments and would really have to create almost a mosaic. Could be very cool. I may try this in the basement bathroom and will, of course, let you know how it turns out.

Think Spring, Not Snow!

So, after a rather long hiatus due to having a baby the end of October, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Years', well, you know how it goes. My resolution is to blog more this year and since I received a new camera for Christmas I should be able to do a much better job of it.

As I sit in my nice warm cabin, heated by our amazing geothermal heat pump, with several feet of snow outside I am browsing through my Seeds of Change catalog I received in the mail today and thinking of spring! We have much to do to get our virgin land ready for cultivation. The Rocky Mountain soil needs a lot of amending to make it ideal for gardening. Particularly, it needs LOTS of organic matter. Many of our neighbors have horses and I'm hoping to beg lots of manure from them. I'm planning on getting a pig in the spring as well, provided I can get some kind of shelter in place by then. I've read that their rooting instinct makes them great at clearing land while spreading their own manure at the same time. The only problem with that is that I'm so anxious to get things growing, I don't know if I can wait another season. I want to do things properly though. Not like my strawberry patch at my last house. I put it in quickly without clearing the plot thoroughly and the grass grew back between all of my strawberry plants and eventually choked them out.

And deer. I'm pretty sure I need a deer fence out here if I actually want to keep anything growing. And I may need a windbreak too. Such a challenge this is going to be but I'm excited to take it on.

Here is a recent photo out my front door. I think it is just beautiful here!