Greenhouse Milk Jugs and Seedlings

I ran across a blog about using milk jugs as mini greenhouse's and winter sowing. The website is called WinterSown.org. After paroozing the information I decided to give it a go. Most of these milk jugs were started the first week of March which around here is still very cold. I know you can start mid winter or whenever you get the hankering for hands in dirt.

I even started things like tomatoes that have no business being outside before late May. Some things have already started popping up. The early spring reliable's like cabbages, kale, spinage, swiss chard, you know the cold weather guys.

I've even started different flowers that I would like to get a head start on like marigolds, nasturtiums, and zinnia.

 Above: Pak Choi   Below: Mixed Lettuce's and Spinage.

This will be my first year attempting the wintersown method. I didn't want this to be my only source for veggies, so I've also done the inside under grow lights method. Since it's warm in there they are understandably way ahead of anything in the milk jugs.

Tomatoes!

Peppers!

We'll see how the milk jugs pan out. The advantage being the plant is already hardened off. So the inside outside, in the sun, in the shade dance that I do every spring would be eliminated. That would be cool!

Rabbit Update

I made a video for the youTube followers who keep up with me there. Most of them don't know about how I feed my rabbits a natural diet and don't use pellets. I made just a general update about them and posted it. I link it here too so everyone can see the bunz.

March 26th Homestead Update

We had nice weather this weekend and much outside work was done. Our to-be espalier trees are all in the ground, they are 2 year old trees which isn't ideal for for espalier but such is the way of gardening most of the time. I also planted the 4 red current bushes I intend to cordon on our east side yard that is sun/shade mix, but currents can be understory plants so I'm not worried about the lack of sun. I was also given by my neighbor a branch of black currents, and told to propagate them by sticking whips of them in the ground, leaving about a foot above and 6" below ground. With luck a few of them will root out and I'll have some black current bushes.

I put the first round of baby chickens outside in the rabbit tractor for the first time on Sunday. They were pretty freaked out, the world is a lot bigger than the broody box as it turns out.  I snapped a rare picture of all three out in the sun, most of the time they stayed in the back huddled together for safety.  I let the two remaining adults chickens loose in the garden to "help" me spread the manure around.

Once I got the ground rototilled, Jake helped me stake out the new garden bed locations. Then I worked away at shoveling the walkway soil into the garden bed area. It's amazing how much soil is in the garden bed area. We had so much pathway in our garden layout before that the growing beds seem really tall. Which is good because it'll give the roots deeper growing space. I know the soil will compact with the rain but it seems huge right now.

Jacob meanwhile was working on finishing up our woodshed and transferring the wood into it's permanent home. We had built a makeshift wood pile and covered it with a tarp, since we got the wood and stove in December it was too late to actually build something. The shed is a pretty simple lean-to using two sides of the fence as walls and only covering one side with plywood. This leaves the east side open for access, since our prevailing wind/rain come from the southwest the wood should stay nice and dry.

 Before:

After: Without one plywood wall.

Since the woodshed is over in the "bee hive" corner, Jacob got a video of the girls flying. The Stripes hive we were sure would die had so little bee's going into winter, they are still weak but getting stronger as spring progresses. It's hard to see on the video but they are bringing in orange and pale yellow almost white pollen, likely from dandelions and crocus plants.

And then there were two.... sort of

On Saturday Jake and I reduced our "laying" flock down to two. One grandma and one layer, that term being used very loosely. Curious (grandma/pet) and Oh Shiny (layer) were spared from Camp Freezer. Oh Shiny will end up there of course, but I couldn't leave Curious without a companion. Chickens begin to wander around and talk to themselves very loudly if left totally alone. We opted to reduce the flock size because egg production dropped off to nothing again.

The babies in the brooder box inside are getting nice and big, about the size of a small Flicker or a big Robin. It's still too soon for them to go outside as they aren't fully feathered. If it were warmer outside and the nights didn't dip below freezing they would be fine to be outside.



It's official, one of our babies is a rooster. Ugh! Which is fine really we'll just raise him until he starts crowing. Since one of our replacement layer birds has the audacity to be male, I opted to start more chicks and then take the best personalities for egg layers and the rest will go to Camp Freezer. The rooster is the black one speckled with white. Since they are sexlinked chickens the color does matter. Males tend to be grey/white/black, and females black/red.

Yesterday I went to our farm store and got 6 babies. 3 Wyandottes (the black and white ones) and 3 Red Star Sexlinks (the egg yolk ones). Coupled with the original brood box of 2 Black Sexlinks and 1 Buff Orpington, we seem to be over run with babies! It's all good though, I appreciate the meat they'll give us in the end, plus it saves me from breeding the rabbits as intensively.

The Bee's

We managed (so far) to bring both hives through winter. The hive out on a friends property the "Snow hive" is Kicking Ass!! They are strong in number coming into spring which means likely they will swarm. But that could be a good thing because we'd split the hive and then have 3 separate hives. WOOT! The only downside to the Snow hive, they might have Nosema which is like bee dysentery. It can weaken them and eventually kill them. We won't know for sure until they can be tested, and in order to test the hive we have to take a sample, but to take a sample the hive has to be opened and we can't do that until the temperatures are above 60*. But they seem strong, strong enough anyway to last until the temps warm up. The brown streaks are.... what you're thinking. As soon as we have them tested we'll treat with a combination of essential oils. 

This is Jake scraping out the dead bees that collect on the bottom of the hive. The girls take care of this in the summer time when they are able to fly. In the winter the dead just pile in the bottom, blocking air flow and thus disease can reign.

The hive at our house is doing good too. We thought for sure they would die off due to such small numbers. But yesterday in the warm sun tons of bee's were flying, so they look promising. I still think we'll have to combine them with another hive just to give them a chance at long term survival.  But we'll see. With any luck we'll get honey this year.

Progress of garden redux

Over the last few weeks we've been tearing down the wood, removing the watering system and raking up the mulch in the walkways. Now that the ground is starting to thaw we'll be able (provided we don't get a ton of rain) to rototill the ground and re-shape the raised beds. This is tricky, if we use the rototiller to soon the wet mud will make the ground very compact later in the season. But we can't wait too long because I'll need to plant things quickly. I just might have a late start this season, but the soil health must come first since that's the foundation of everything.

The watering system is low priority since watering by hand won't be an issue until late May. But with any luck we won't need it until June provided we actually get spring rains... who knows anymore?

Anyway here are some destruction pictures:

well crap...

When I went to pick out the chicks I selected the sex-linked Black Star pullet/girl box. They should be all black, well one of them is developing a white crown on the head. It's a roo...

UGH!

Drop Manager

My Azure Standard drop managers asked me to take a drop point.  Tim & Laura who manage our AS drop are taking care of a friend with cancer, the bi-monthly AS order has become a bit too much for them, so I agreed to handle one of the routes. We have two routes that come through town, the I-1 and I-2 routes. We have what's called an open drop where anyone in the area can order and have it delivered to a drop point (me or Tim & Laura) then they come and collect there stuff. It's a nice way to save on gas so the truck driver doesn't deliver to everyone's house it all just goes to your drop manager. A closed drop would be you and several of your friends only, as long as you make the minimum $500 order. It's riskier with an open drop because you might not make that $500 but this way everyone gets a chance to play. In our area we are one of AS's biggest drop routes. The goods for tomorrow's drop are in the $800 area, but usually they are nearing $1,600. That's a lot of buying power!

Tomorrow during a snowstorm will be my first ever drop. The truck driver will show up, hand me a stack of invoices and start unloading the truck. I'll run inside and start calling everyone to let them know the truck and goods have arrived. Then they'll show up and collect stuff, viola done!

It's pretty straight forward and according to Tim & Laura everyone is pretty good about coming to get stuff. I'm looking forward too it, maybe I'll post some pictures tomorrow?

New Girls in Town

Since we've had nothing but broody from the Sussex girls we've decided to refresh the flock. I opted to go with black star, (I have tried red star in the past) and buff Orpington. One of our Sussex girls will get to remain, I'd like it to be "ooh shiny" (yes that's her name) but she's a roo in a hens body and we might get some major bullying if I allow her to stay. At this point I'm not sure which sussie will get a pass, but it's a real game of survival now. This way I'll have 'curious' our grandma buff orpington who has a permanent freezer pass, one sussie, and the new black star's and BO.

So with that said it's baby chick time:

I do intend to put the Sussies up for sale on Craigslist just in case anyone in my area is looking for broody hens. Since most people use an incubator to hatch chicks, I doubt I'll be able to sell them all. We'll see.

Garden Redux

Our garden layout looks like this:


The raised beds were spaced this far apart to accommodate the garden cart which has two very wide wheels. The thought of all that pathway now is unthinkable! In this state our growing square footage for the ENTIRE garden is 640 square feet. When we go to row gardens we'll be roughly up to 1,400 square feet! AHH!!!! That's so much more growing space! This means more potatoes and finally I'll have room to grow squash and cukes! But with the decision to row garden comes an entire garden redux. Actually it will be much easier. The drip line and watering will be the same just extended to longer garden beds. The raised bed wood has plans too... it's going to become the bones for our wood shed. Because currently we have a giant pile of firewood right in the middle of the garden.

Slowly on nice days we've been dismantling the raised beds, and organizing the drip lines. With tree's to plant and espalier and a garden to reorganize it's gonna be a busy spring. I love this time of year, it's full of possibilities!

Heeling in fruit trees

Jake and I have been evaluating our major food purchases from last year. Aside from grain which we can't grow in quantity, we spent most of our money on fruit. We can grow soft fruits like straw-,rasp- and blueberries. Our freak show (5 graft) apple has started to produce some fruit but other than that we purchase most stone fruit, like peaches and cherries. So with that said I made a pretty impressive purchase of fruit trees that we intend to espalier along all fences. If we allow 8' for each tree we can roughly get 20 trees on site! I just purchased 10 trees and 4 current bushes. In other fruit tree news, our neighbors got a shipment of fruit trees last year and by shipment I mean over 100 trees! It helps to know orchard people... anyway they've agreed to give us our pick once they see what survives this winter. They were hoping to get 15 full size trees and had a jaw dropping moment when several packages with TONS of trees arrived. Being slightly overwhelmed they just trenched them in and were going to prep the ground for their orchard this spring. Long story short, we'll get some leftovers!

So my list of newly purchased fruities goes like this: All are on dwarfing root stocks.

Current- Red Lake- 4 bushes
Apple- Honey Crisp
Plum- Japanese Elephant Heart
Cherry- Craig's Crimson
Lapins
Stella
Peach- Redhaven
Red Baron
Nectarine- White Arctic Jay
Pear- European Comice
European Bosc

I know the neighbors for sure have an excess of plums and apricots, so I decided to purchase the trees I know I love and crap shoot with the free trees. Here they are being "heeled in" in our garage. The trees are still dormant so I raised a pot off the ground so the cement wouldn't cool the roots too much and basically planted 5 trees to a pot until the ground thaws. They should keep just fine for a month until the ground thaws enough to dig holes. *Fingers crossed*

I do want to purchase some blackberries which is one soft fruit we don't have growing yet. But I think I'll try and find a type I like at a nursery locally, maybe thornless? We do have a grape growing called Himrod but with a late frost last year all it's top growth was killed and it had to come back from the roots. We'll see if it had enough time to bulk up before winter, I do hope it survives.

Sprouting Wheat for Flour

Many people with more eloquence and a lot better pictures have touched on this topic before. But here's my take on it. We started grinding our own flour, because grain stores longer than flour, plus it makes better bread.  Having done some research on sprouting it's generally accepted that sprouting the wheat berries makes it more digestible. It unlocks more nutrients and is assimilated better into our bodies.

First off I start with white wheat berries, I intend to try spelt, and emmer in the future. I don't measure exact amounts when sprouting I just roughly fill each 1/2 gallon mason jar to the 2 pints line. Then I fill each jar to rinse off the grain a few times. I use the handy green sprouting lid so I don't lose any grain when dumping out the water. I've also used cheesecloth and a rubber band, whatever works right? After the grain is rinsed, fill the jar with water and let it sit overnight 8+ hours. I usually go in the neighborhood of 12-15 hours soaking, it depends on when I fill the jar and when I remember to dump it out, it's a pretty forgiving process. The grain should've swelled to almost filling the jar, which is why I leave so much room at the top!



The next morning dump out the water and begin sprouting. It's exactly the same as all other sprouting at this point, rinse grain and keep it moist by rinsing twice a day am/pm. Until it sprouts tiny tails like above right.

Now comes the drying part. I layer the grain into 2 electric dehydrators using the fruit leather trays so the grain doesn't just fall through. Then I plug in and dry it all day. One of my dehydrators is faster so I just monitor it. You could also build one of these to avoid the electricity, which I do intend to build now... a pellet stove dehydrator. The grain should feel just as it did before sprouting, meaning it can't be crushed by a fingernail and it looks similar to this.

To grind it I use either my country living grain mill or my vitamix dry blender. I know the country living grain mill can grind it to the powdered flour consistency I'd need for bread, but it's really difficult. But grinding it to a "cornmeal" feel is rather easy (and a good arm work out). To get it the rest of the way I'll use the vitamix. But for this demo I use the blender the whole way because picture taking is just easier that way.

Before I grind I put the grain in the freezer, this keeps it from over heating during milling and having the oils go rancid. The risk is low for only grinding for a short time. In the blender it takes just over 1 minute to grind 2 cups of grain into flour. But I'd rather be safe than sorry.



Here's some links for more sprouting info. GNOWFGLINS and sprouted bread wiki style.

Now go make some bread! Any leftover flour I freeze, because flour with the bran inside it, like this has, will go bad much faster. Plus it's not "fortified" with anything to keep it's shelf life. So leftover flour --> freezer!

Awesomely Ugly Bookshelf

Garden used 2x4's split to make 2x2's and leftovers from our flooring project 2 years ago. Re-purposed bookshelf!