Market Day

So Limey went to the market today. It was predictably slow but he did well enough despite the lack o traffic. He had a lot of fun and will be attending the Friday market in Middleton.

Here's the spread.

To Market! To Market!

All I have for you today is a photo of my freshly bloomed clematis. Limey is going to take some stuff to the Bridgetown market tomorrow. It's our first market day so that's exciting. In addition to fresh greens, I'll be sending some baking, candy and jam.

Hope to see some of you there!

I Love Poo

In the fall, Limey dug out a little bed for my garlic and amended it heavily with rabbit manure.

This is how the patch looked the other day.

 

 

I've never had success with garlic or onions so the lush foliage on this garlic is so exciting! I hope the result is going to be beautiful, large garlic bulbs.

A Walk and an Owie

Limey mowed a path along the perimeter of the property so we could take a walk and snap some pictures.

There's a large section of this along the side of the barn. What is it?

Jayne and Kayley looking for bugs.

The grass is getting high!

We still need a lot of fence.

From the furthest corner.

A mystery bite.

Whenever I go to the back of the property I'm surprised by how much space is still left unfenced.  Because of the lay of the land, it looks a lot smaller from the house. 

Limey doesn't know what bit him as he didn't feel it bite.  It swelled up pretty badly and I'll admit that I snickered as he left for work. 

In other news, we found someone to dig the paths out and till the beds to the size we need.  It's going to cost us money we don't really have but it needs to be done.  With another week of rain in the forecast it would be fall before the beds would dug up if Limey continued by hand.   Hopefully now I can look forward to not buying produce from the store soon!

Ack! No!

Something evil has been brewing at the end of my driveway.

I hate tent caterpillars (aka army worms).  I remember back in the 80's when they'd get so bad that entire buildings were covered in them.  As you passed by they'd fall off and land in your hair.  They decimate trees by eating all their leaves.  As I have just planted a bunch of trees, the last thing I want is for a ravenous hoard of caterpillars to sit down to dinner on them.  So I did what any good tree keeper would do...I set them afire!

Gaggle of Geese

Now that the weather is warm I've moved the geese outside. They've made friends with our lone Brahma and seem to be enjoying their little paddock.

When they are older we'll let them out to eat up all our "lawn". With all the rain and recent warm weather it's a jungle out there.

Some Pics and a Question

Playing in the new sandbox.

Our first green egg!

Sharing mothering duties.

Going for a little swim.

What tree is this?

Around the Garden

My favourite flower; columbine

Another variety of columbine.

What is this?

"Endless Summer" hydrangea.  Please be blue, please be blue!

Flowering crab.

NTWRRB

For our food gardens, we are doing a no-till, wide row, raised bed method.  It's pretty unanimous that yearly plowing and tilling is bad for the soil.  Soil is not just dirt.  It's full of air space, water, minerals, plant roots, insects, worms, fungi, bacteria and other mircoorganisms.  These things make the soil healthy. When you do a deep till, it destroys the structure of the soil that was allowing these organisms to thrive.  It kills the worms and the little bugs and ruins the aeration and drainage. This isn't a good thing.

If you want a better explanation than I can provide, there is a great documentary called "Dirt!"  Google it and you can find a couple of places to watch it online.

So with no-till gardening, you only till (if you have to) once at the very beginning of bed-building. You also can't walk on your beds because this compacts them and mucks up the structure.  Once your beds are in place you maintain the soil with amendments (rock dust, manure, cover crops..etc).

So that takes care of the no-till.  Next is wide row.  Wide row beds with narrow paths in between is the opposite of industrial farming.  With wide rows you get more planting space.  With single rows you get more paths.  Single rows are good if you are mechanically planting and harvesting your crops.  You need the wide paths to drive your machinery through.  But that brings us back to plowing, tilling and compacting the soil.  You need way more space to garden the industrial way.

The only downside to wide row gardening is that as far as we can see, you have to build them manually.  With a shovel.  This wasn't a problem back at the old house with our friable soil and little garden.  With heavy clay it's a right pain in the ass.  But as Limey keeps saying, it will only be done once.  When the beds are up, they will be up forever. 

Raised beds are well-known in the square foot gardening method.  What is often overlooked is that you don't need a physical barrier like wood to keep the soil up.  You can hoe them up and they will stay just fine.  For clay soil, raised beds is a must.  They drain better and faster than beds that aren't raised and I find them easier to reach into.

In addition to the NTWRRB method, we're going to be interplanting crops for better use of space and for companion benefits.  We've already got this going on in the hoophouse along with a square foot spacing.  The greens were broadcast in and when it was time, Limey made a space in each square foot of lettuce to plant either a tomato, pepper or eggplant.  By the time the hot season plants are getting really big, the lettuce should be done.

Succession planting is also a great way to use less space.  There are lots of vegetables that grow better in the cool seasons.  For example, plant a space with peas and lettuce long before your last frost date.  By the time they are harvested it's warm enough to plant your peppers in the same space.  When the peppers are cleared out you can plant your winter crops like kale.  Or if you don't want a winter crop, plant a cover crop to grow out and chop down for amending the soil. 

People always seem shocked when we tell them our plans.  How can we fit so much onto 4 acres?  This method of gardening is how.  Just the wide row gives me twice the amount of planting space as single row gardening would.  Raised bed square foot spacing gives me more space.  Interplanting crops gives us even more.

If your interested in reading more about more sustainable gardening methods, some terms to search for at your library or on Google are;

• French biointensive
• No till gardening
• Lasagna or sheet mulching
• Permaculture
• Double digging
• Wide row gardening
• Companion planting
• Succession planting

The United Nations recently stated that eco-farming would double the world's food production in 10 years.  These are the methods to get there.

Groundbreaking

Limey's finally breaking ground on the garden.  What a pain in the ass this soil is.  It took all day to get one 2x100' path  dug out.  He hasn't smoothed the actual 4' wide bed yet.  It's so clumpy I can't see how anything is going to get planted in it.

Nice and straight.

He also planted our 4 apricots and 2 pears.

Lining the driveway.

And of course it's a jungle in the hoophouse.

Lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, radishes, kale, chard, mustard, peppers, artichokes...phew!

I'm hoping to get 400 potatoes and 600 onions/shallots in the first row.  I can't believe it's almost June and I'm just planting potatoes now.  I've always planted them in April!

Necking

I ordered a dozen Buff American geese but only received three. They just might be the cutest things I've ever seen.  I asked Limey to bring one in for photos and it spent the entire shoot necking with him.  Too cute.

Giggling like a school girl.

Culture

My order from Glengarry came in so now I can have a go at making cultured cheeses.  I started out with chevre and OMG did it turn out lovely.   It's the same texture as the goat cheese that you buy in rolls. 

The sea salt and cracked pepper cheese was to die for.

Chevre

4 liter goat milk
1/4 teaspoon mesophilic culture
1 drop of liquid rennet dissolved in 1tablespoon cool water
salt and other herbs/seasonings

*It's recommended that you pasteurize (I do) the milk and sterilize (I don't) your equipment beforehand.

In a large pot, warm milk over med-low to 77F.  Remove from heat and gently stir in the culture.  Let stand for 5 minutes. 

Add the diluted rennet and stir some more.  Cover and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. 

Drain off the whey through a cheesecloth lined colander.  Let drain for a minimum of 7 hours to get that nice thick chevre texture.  Season with salt as needed and roll in herbs and/or spices if you want to be fancy.  Throw a cheese party and invite me.

It should store in the fridge for two weeks but I guarantee it'll gone after two days. 

The Duck They Called Jayne

He may not be the hero of Canton but he's a hit with the ladies here at the farm.  After being a bit grumpy and standoffish for the past couple of months Jayne has won himself another fan.

Writing Curriculum

Last year I wrote dd1's history curriculum.  It was pretty easy because I just used some free samples of an existing curriculum as a guide for the rest.  This year I'm going to write all of the curriculum for both girls.  Actually I'm lying.  We're going to continue doing the K-2 science curriculum we started in the fall.  Everything else, I'm writing. 

This is not as daunting as it sounds.  For one, I have a couple of months to finish it.  Also, dd2 is only 3 and we're only doing "school" because she sees her sister doing it.  For her I'm writing a Five in a Row style curriculum.  Basically you get a bunch of age appropriate story books and do activities inspired by whatever you read.  Really basic.

For dd1 it's much more eclectic.  Here's the plan so far for grade 1.

*I can pretty much guarantee this will change before September as dd1 continues to learn through the summer.

Math:  I was going to purchase RightStart Math Beta but I don't want to spend the money. Lol no, it's just that now that she has the basics down it's really easy to teach her without the formal stuff.  It would be a pointless expense. Instead we'll teach her from life as well as read some fun math books from the library like; A Dollar For Penny, Sir Cumference and Mummy Math.  She also likes the Khan Academy videos.

LA: We're going to delve into writing stories and poems this year.  I purchased this book from Amazon as a jumping off point for my poetry plan.  For the writing part, we'll go over parts of speech, how to write a sentence, paragraph etc.  I've also started a list of writing prompts for her to work with.

Shakespeare:  It's never to early to start them on the Bard.  We're going to read three plays from this series of books and watch the corresponding BBC Animated Tale.  I'm going to find some related activities to do and maybe a short performance or two.

Reading:  I started a book list for dd1 to read next year but she blew through it in the past couple of weeks.  Instead I'm going to stock up on novels and get her to keep a list of what she's read.  I need recommendations for books though.  She's currently reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. 

Science:  We're going to finish up the rest of Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding and read related books from the library.

History:  History was our big subject last year.  We used my writeup of History Odyssey: Ancients.  This year we're going to continue learning about the subjects we covered by watching documentaries and the millions of books the library has. As an offshoot of the Ancient Greek portion of our studies, we're also going to read D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths.

Geography:  Did I mention that I love the library?  What I've been doing with all these subjects is searching the library for related books.  I'll put them all on hold in September and read them as they come in.  Our main spine for Geography is going to be The Usborne Geography Encyclopedia with Complete World Atlas.  This book has yet to arrive and I'm hoping it'll be suitable.  I'll write out our lesson plans when it comes in.

French:  Dd1 has already started on Rosetta Stone for French.  I think it's (learning French) a tad bit pointless myself.  If at some point we have to put the kids in school (hopefully never) at least she
won't be behind in it.

Art:  I'm excited about this subject.  We're still playing around with Creativity Express but I've been eying up Meet the Masters and Artistic Pursuits.  This is another of those boxed curriculum that I look at and think "I could totally write that myself".  So that's what I'm doing.  We're going to study three artists, read about them with some lovely books like this one and do a bit of painting.

Health and PE:  We really don't need to do much here.  I am going to purchase this book as well as this one.  Both kids want to take dance classes in the fall.

Logic: She'll be doing Logic Safari.

Cursive:  I've picked up a couple of workbooks for this.  When she's perfected her printing we'll start cursive.

It looks like a lot when it's all typed out doesn't it?  It's not really though.  We'll do a little bit of art here, a little bit of math there.   When you have one kid to teach instead of thirty, learning happens much more quickly.

DD2's curriculum is super relaxed and fun.  For each book I have a list of questions to ask/discuss and a list of activities to do.  I'm going to write the lists on an index card and place the card in an envelope taped to each book.  Each book's list can be stretched out over a week. 

The reading list for her is as follows;

Goodnight Moon
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
Stella Queen of the Snow
Katy No Pocket
Very Hungry Caterpillar
Blueberries for Sal 

The Colour Kittens 

Ruby’s Tea Party
Big Pumpkin
The Going to Bed Book
It’s Me, Hippo!
The Paper Bag Princess
The Year at Maple Hill Farm
Angelo
Jesse Bear What Will You Wear?
Story About Ping
The Little Rabbit
Corduroy
Albert

That's it.  I'm working on a word document for each child with the year's curriculum written out in detail.  I'll print everything out, put it into binders and work from there.

So, reading recommendations for dd1.  Do you have any?

Good Fences

Make good neighbours. Or in my case a good fence will keep me from ringing Jayne's (our male duck) neck. He has the annoying habit of wandering into my newly planted flower beds and chewing on the leaves.

We won't be staining this fence as I'm going for a weathered wood look.  Hopefully it'll be gray in a couple of years.  As soon as Limey has finished building the fence I can take the floating row cover off and take some pics of my flower garden.  I've been working hard at it!

Cream Cheese

I'm running through the easy stuff before I have a go at more solid cheeses. Here's how I made cream cheese.

1 quart heavy cream
2 Tbsp. cultured buttermilk
1 drop rennet dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water
1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat the cream to 70° F.  Add the buttermilk, and mix thoroughly. Stir in the rennet and water mixture.

Cover and let sit for 24 hours at room temperature. Whisk in the salt.

Strain the cream through a cheese cloth lined colander. Let drain for about 12 hours.  Add flavourings or use plain. 


Now I just need to learn how to make bagels.

The Steam Room

Things in the hoophouse are growing along nicely.  At the moment we have several varieties of lettuce, kale, spinach, mustard and chard planted.  It was a little difficult to take photos in there.  As soon as I stepped in, my camera and glasses fogged up.

My first bite of hoophouse salad should be soon!

Naughty Piggies

This morning Limey interrupted a game of chase the duck.  When he stepped outside, 6 pigs turned away from their prey and came running up to the house to get the slop bucket he was holding.  The gate was open.  Limey blames the ducks but it's more likely that he just left it open last night.

When I went outside this afternoon, nobody was out running loose.  Instead they were lazing around in the sun.

Enjoy it piggies. We're expecting yet another week of rain.

Kneading Some Dough

We seem to be renewing viruses every couple of weeks because just as we're starting to feel better, someone gets hit with another cold/flu/whatever.

With the kids sick again today and the weather continuing to be horrible, I thought I'd be nice and let them play with their Playdoh.  We pulled out the bin only to discover that the dough hadn't been put away properly and was all dried up.  As our vehicle is at the shop being fixed (again) and we are broke from paying for repairs I couldn't run out to buy new doh so I decided to make some.

All you need for playdough is

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
2 tablespoons oil

Mix all the ingredients together in a pot and heat on low. Stir until it forms a ball that pulls away from the pot. It shouldn't be sticky when it's done. Cool and knead until smooth. Knead in food colouring.

You can tell by the streaks, that I got a bit bored with the process by the third colour.  The kids liked it and soon mixed it all into one large multicoloured lump.

It's Alive!

We went back and forth on the issue of raising Cornish X chickens for meat before we decided to give it a go.

There are several issues of contention here;

• Frankenchickens as they are often called, are hybrids.  This means that I can't take two Cornish crosses and mate them to produce a new CX.  Decades of breeding have made this chicken and I can't just take two other breeds to make this chicken either.  So, if I want to raise meat chickens I have to buy new chicks every time.
• They can be disturbingly non-chickeny.  They've been bred to grow fast (8 weeks to butcher) so all they do is sit in front of their food bowls and eat. 
• Fast growth has a downside.  Chickens can die of heart failure before you get a chance to butcher them yourself.  They also suffer from leg issues which result in limping, leg dragging birds.

So why would we raise these birds for meat?

• Expense.  They are in and out in 8 weeks.  The feed to meat ratio is higher than for heritage birds which can take 6+ months to reach a decent size.  At the butcher date the heritage bird is still going to be smaller than an 8 week old CX.
• Customer demand.  People have a bit of a thing for big boobs.  Your grocery store chicken is a CX and they have giant breasts.  Heritage birds make up for their A cups with larger thighs. CX are also going to be more tender because they are so young.

We reluctantly put in an order for 50 chicks which arrived today.  Some farmers have been free-ranging their CX with success so we are going to attempt the same.  In the next couple of weeks Limey is going to build a chicken tractor which will house the birds and allow us to move them around the yard.  By removing feed for 12 hours of each day, hopefully they will look elsewhere (the ground) for food.

Here are some pics in black and white because I suck at taking photos with the heat lamp on.

Eventually we're hoping to breed a decent sized dual purpose bird (Orpingtons). For now we'll give Frankenchicken a try.

Propagation: Quince

I have a badly situated flowering quince in my backyard.  Before I remove it I'm going to attempt to make new babies from it.

For some plants, propagation can be a complicated process but for quince it's pretty easy.

First off you need a quince that is in flower.  Take as many 6" cuttings as you want from it.  Make sure each cutting has several leaves.

With a vegetable peeler or a paring knife, scale away the outer bark from the bottom 2" of the cutting.

Dip the exposed area in rooting hormone.
 

Insert the cutting into a 4" pot filled with potting soil.  Water.

Place the pot in a greenhouse or inside a clear plastic bag in the house.  After 6 weeks, remove the bag (if used) and repot in a larger container.

I'm going to plant the quince outside around the end of June if the cutting has taken hold and the weather is warm.

That's it.  Easy peasy.

Join the Barn Hop!

Where Were We?

It's been a crazy week.  Here's what happened;

• Limey injured his back at work.  I have no idea how we are going to get the market beds in as it's all shovel work.
• We sold the baby goats!  The kids (mine) were sad but they all went to the same home and none of the goats seemed to be particularly bothered by the situation.
• We still have lots of bunnies for sale.  Both New Zealand/Californian crosses and pure New Zealands.  
• I did lots of gardening this weekend.  Put in a section of my flower garden as well as a flowering crab. 
• My attempt at making quark failed.  I blame the grocery store buttermilk.
• My cream cheese was a success.  Will post the recipe later.
• Limey keeps asking me what I did with his wife.  It's not just the new haircut that is prompting this question.
• The van is clearly a lemon.  No end to the stress that vehicle causes.
• Barred Rocks should be hatching next week.  Will be selling the entire lot.
• Planted some blueberries along the house.
• DD1 read several novels this week.  She's a speedy reader. 
• DD2 is clearly going to be a lawyer when she grows up.  She likes to argue.
• The baby is cruising along getting into everything.
• Barney is going. 

The Cuteness

Two cat photos in a row.  I can't help myself, he is just so freakin adorable!  I can't believe I thought I was done with cats.  There's just something so lovely about having a sweet, playful little kitten around.

We all love him.

Look at that face.  Who wouldn't want to snuggle with him?

Sneaky Sneaky

Our cat Pippin died back in September. I have had cats for about 17 years now and have dealt with several deaths.  So after Pippin died I was done. No more cats.

A couple of weeks ago dd2 started talking about how much she missed Pippin and how she wanted to get another cat. We all started getting wishy washy about it but still I was reluctant. Yesterday Limey sent me a link to an ad for kittens on Kijiji. He had been planning on getting me a kitten for Mother's Day but decided it would be better for me to pick one out myself. Of course I caved and today we brought home a beautiful flame point Siamese.

Getting ready to pounce!

On the way to pick him up we ran through names with the kids. Several names were suggested, everything from Dandelion (dd1) to Kai (dd2). Nothing sounded right until I started giggling and managed to blurt out "Tootsie Noodles". If you haven't seen the new Starkid musical "Starship" you can watch it online here. We're thinking of adding a female and calling her MegaGirl.

The Ham

A week before Bunny Day, I took out the ham that came from our pig.  Using the recipe in Charcuterie, I cured the ham in the fridge.  We don't have a smoker yet, so I skipped that part and just baked it in the oven.  I added a last minute glaze and here's how it looked.

It was fabulous.  Definitely the tastiest ham I've ever eaten.  Limey moaned through the entire meal and he has never liked ham.  I really hope we can have a big luau this summer so everyone can try the roast pig.  Heritage pork is so good and you really need to taste it to understand.

The other thing I made that was super tasty was a rosemary potato strudel.  So good and impressive looking with little effort.

 

These photos are making me hungry. I may just have to take out another ham.