Category Archives: Homestead

Sprouting

You would think it was spring around here – except for the temps that are supposed to drop into the teens. I think I’ve had enough of winter already. This is Florida, after all.

I’m a little concerned about some of the babies in the flats, since they’re a little leggy. The benefit of starting early, though, is that there’s time to start more flats before things really get rolling.

What’s for dinner? The heart of some animal.

Kidding! No organ meats for me, as I think they are supremely disgusting. Cranberry sauce, made at Thanksgiving in a huge batch and frozen in smaller batches, for those nights when it’s chilly – or downright cold – and you have a hankering for a nice warming dinner.

Some roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing. Just the thing to fuel someone up before heading out to turn on the various taps so the pipes don’t freeze and burst (or heave up, although that’s unlikely since the trenches we dug are two feet down).

Reading the colors

The forecast was for 30-ish. We’d already had the peas and broccoli under cover for the past couple of nights, but tonight and tomorrow will see a true hard freeze for us here, so the smaller trees, not yet hardy enough to withstand that cold, had to be covered. Fortunately, with a number of five foot trellises previously used to brace al sorts of vegetables in the summer, we had plenty to useas suppotrs for the plastic we used to cover the trees to get them through the cold snap. I’m not a huge fan of cold weather. I am, however, a huge fan of being able to see large swaths of the sky as the colors change when we move from day to night (or night to day).

Winter has arrived…finally

Our winter has finally arrived, starting tomorrow night: an entire week of freezing temperatures. I’m not terribly thrilled about it, since I don’t tolerate the cold very well, but it is good practice for the garden area and a time for experimenting. Leaving a few herbs uncovered, for instance – the sage is supposed to be incredibly cold hardy, so how will it react to temps in the 20s? The garlic should be able to survive, although we will be putting some straw down around it. The peas I know will not take hard freezes, so they will get teepees of plastic to carry them through each night. We’re building a cover for the wellhead and bladder, to keep them from freezing and knocking out the water when we get up in the mornings. And, we’re rigging a heat lamp in the coop to keep the sole chicken from freezing her tailfeathers off during the overnights.

I’m just happy I don’t live someplace like this:

The things you find

We had a cool front blow through very quickly yesterday, dropping five minutes of heavy rain and leaving behind a lot of wind. Perfect time to get out and plant a long line of peas and snap beans – 30 feet of each – and start getting the frames in shape for the coming transplants. That means leveling out the dirst, pulling miscellaneous weeds and crap out of the frames, but also finding a few surprises here and there.

Like an unwelcome slumbering pest.

This would have been a hornworm had it survived the cleanup. It didn’t.

Nor did this visitor.

That one went to the chicken as a snack.

On the plus side, I also found a stray peanut in one of the frames, happily sprouting in the temperate weather we’ve had. I put that back in the frame, and we’ll have others joining it. I also found these volunteers, which should give a fairly good idea of just how warm it’s been.

Yes, those are watermelon seedlings. They probably all died from the surprise freeze last night, but it was nice to see them out there, going about the only business they know.

Begun, the tomato trials have

Why thank you, Yoda: you are absolutely correct.

Yesterday, I started a couple of flats almost entirely of tomatoes.

Varieties:

  • Ibsen’s gold
  • Toas
  • Koralik
  • Porter’s pride
  • Ildi
  • Peacevine cherry
  • Gold currant
  • Isis candy
  • Amish paste
  • Arkansas traveler
  • stakebreaker
  • Gardener’s delight
  • Imperial
  • Brandywine OTV
  • Italian tree
  • Mrs. Maxwell’s italian
  • Anahu
  • Sungold

I had a few cells left, so I also started some jalapeno, cayenne, and datil pepper seed as well.

First round of flats
First round of flats

These are sitting on some black plastic on the table to keep the heat levels up. This means, of course, that they also need more than regular monitoring to make sure they don’t dry out.

I’m hoping we’ll see the first seedlings pop up by the weekend. The trick will be babying them through the next month or so and then getting them transplanted successfully.

Last year, we had some frames that remained empty as we never got anything in them due to the bugs, the wacky weather, and general busy-ness with other things. This year, I intend to fill it all. And by “all” I mean…

The hoop supports were where the doomed tomato and peppers resided before being evicted to the compost pile. I’m hoping to try something under cover over the next month and a half before spring arrives and turns rapidly into summer.

What’s growing right now? Lots.

Parsnips, rounds one and two, to be followed in the next few days by another round. Parsnips take awhile, and are better in cooler weather, so the third will probably be the last until late summer unless I can rig a way to keep them cooler than 100+ degrees in summer without using any electricity or excessive watering.

The corn frames, relocated to the front. The first frame has hard red winter wheat, which should be able to be pulled by the time I want to start the corn in March. The second has alfalfa, for sprouts.

Carrots, four varieties. We should be able to begin pulling these in a couple of weeks.  I’ll be starting another round of the little finger variety in the smaller frames.

That spot there where the water head is and the perfect circle of no carrots is where a cat got into the frame before the fences went up. The bunnies also munched around the edges of the frames, taking the tops of some of the carrots down, but after I got the fence in place, everything bounced right back. Good thing, too, or there would be pictures of rabbit stew on this blog.

Peas: sugar snaps and oregon sugar pod.

We’ve had some of these already – remember, picking makes for productive plants! – and according to those who have eaten them, they’re mighty tasty. Peas can stand a light frost, and these were not covered even during the hard freeze we had a couple weeks ago, so they appear to be winners all around.

Here we have a couple of cabbages, a round of spinach and lettuce, and onions at the far side. The frames to the left and at the end are empty except for the weeds that need to be pulled.

The smaller frames up front have some things in production. This is the only row with anything, and four of these are taken up by four different varieties of garlic. We loves our garlic.

We don’t love the weeds, but they’ve invaded that first frame and need to be removed. Just another job on the farm.

One batch of the garlic I almost deemed a dud, as it did not spring up very quickly. Once it started, though, it turned out to be just as healthy as the other batches.

Healthy, icky brussels sprouts. Three varieties. There are some leeks in the front, and the ones that didn’t totally die off when the bunnies ate down the greens have come back strong.

I will note for the record that the bunnies did not touch the brussels, at all. Can’t blame them for that.

Finally, broccoli and another variety of peas – shelling peas, piccolo (small) from an Italian seed.

The broccoli is coming along nicely.

When I was keping track last year of the harvest – between 5 Jun and 7 Aug – even with all the issues we had, we harvested 132 pounds of food from the frames we had in place. This year, I’m going to keep better track and we’ll see how much we can produce on our own here.

Planning

Venus and Jupiter at dusk, December 12, 2008.

‘Tis the season for spring planning. Admittedly, around here, winter is fairly spring-like, with only random frosts and freezes – including one surprise soft freeze last week that not a single weather forecast indicated. This is not to say it doesn’t get chilly here. Yours truly gets chilled when it drops into the 70s, and when the lows are in the 30s, I have to focus very diligently on reminding myself that it won’t last as long as it would were we living elsewhere, like the frozen hinterlands up north. My lack of bodyfat does not help matters, and all of this is usually a great source of amusement to everyone else when they are complaining about how hot it is and I have my heater under my desk warming my feet.

Those random freezes also serve to remind me that I need to deal better with them. Example: I had started nine tomato seeds (trust F1) and nine sweet bells (seven made it). They survived their transplant after almost two months in the flat. What they did not survive was an overnight freeze, under plastic and some agribon. The main issue was the thickness of the plastic – unfortunately, my brother had gotten pretty thin stuff, and although we doubled it, it was clearly not enough. The thicker stuff at 7 mil should be plenty, though, in the event another freeze comes along and we have to cover overnight. I even set up hoops and figured out that half inch conduit clips would work just fine to keep everything in place. At this point, what is out in the frames is hardy enough to survive without covering since the tomatoes and peppers keeled over. Even the peas, growing like gangbusters, will survive a light frost. Like these peas, freshly shelled, then cooked up for dinner when everyone was here the other night.

But these chillier days also serve another purpose: planning for spring. And as it happens, this is when the seed companies send out their catalogs, so I am awash in the wonder of what’s available, much like the thrall in which we were held many years ago when the Sears catalog would arrive.

In order to decide what you want, what’s doable, and what you need, the first thing you have to do is take stock. There are 222 lines on the spreadsheet I made, and that doesn’t include the box of flower seeds I have. That’s quite a bit of seed, and means that I don’t need all that much. The things I want to try that I don’t have, though, are becoming quite the list. There is also the tree situation: we definitely want a couple of almond trees, and a few mature citrus. Maybe an olive, for those around here who like them – not me. Oil, yes. Fruit, no.

So, as ordering goes, there probably won’t be a ton of things on my list beyond seed for corn and a few odds and ends. But since I have all this seed, and most things should be started in flats 6-8 weeks before the last frost, I made myself busy and got some things started today. Typical last frost around here is February 14, and that really puts us at about six weeks about now, so this is the time. Today I started seed for:

Tomatoes: big beef, Marianna’s peace, Cherokee purple, Sausalito, Abe Lincoln, Trust F1, Manitoba, Stupice, Early girl

Peppers: Socrates X3R, mild jalapeno, quadrato d’asti, sweet bell mix

Broccoli (calabrese), warm weather cauliflower (why not?)

Herbs: sweet basil, lime basil, lemon basil, sweet thai basil, Greek oregano, rosemary, mint, lavender

Others: marigold (petite doubles), pyrethrum, phacelia tanacetifolia (good composter, beneficial nematodes)

I plan to start another flat or so in the coming week, with more fun stuff. Including what rapidly became everyone’s favorite last year: sungold tomatoes. The sungolds are very early, at only 57 days, so I don’t want to start them too early and not be able to liberate them from their flat – or worse, transplant them and then lose them to a weather quirk.

Tomorrow: pictures of the front – and now, main – garden as a bit of a tour to what’s going on around here.

Poor girls

We lost another chicken last week. Those of you following our chicken story know we had three at the beginning. One flew the coop, we believe, and got taken or run over. Last week, mom came back inside after heading out to the coop to let the two remaining girls out, and said, “One of the girls is dead.”

I headed out to the coop (with some disposable gloves) and sure enough, one of the girls was dead just inside the door of the coop where the wood has warped and there is an open space. Inside was clear evidence that something had gotten in and a terrific fight had gone on. There were feathers everywhere in the coop, and the poor girl had part of her back end shewed away. I think it likely the orange and white male cat I’ve seen around the property was the culprit, and he could not get the rather large chicken through the rather small gap through which he entered, eventually leaving her behind.

I buried the poor chicken out near the treeline, and we rigged a temporary additional fencing to use to cover the gaps until we build a real coop. We’ve decided to get another five or six layers, and we really do need a sturdy house-like structure for them to go into at night, given all the critters roaming around the country here (raccoon poo on the porch, anyone?) that will happily snack on a chicken head if one is unwise enough to poke out.

Gobble gobble

We decided, earlier this year, to find a local (or semi-local) provider for a pasture raised turkey for our Thanksgiving meal. Fortunately for us, the same woman who provides, from time to time, our milk, and who provides eggs when we’re out also raised chickens for meat as well as turkeys. Did we want one or the other – or both?

Absolutely.

A few Saturdays ago, we headed down to pick up the chickens. Silly me, I didn’t take my camera. I should have, to capture the process, and I didn’t make that mistake when we went to pick up the turkey.

The folks at the farm were slaughtering about 35 turkeys that day, including those fellows there. If you’re squeamish, or you think the food you eat just comes naturally wrapped up in plastic at the store, you should probably skip the rest.

The processing for the turkeys was about the same as the processing of the chickens we’d witnessed a couple weeks earlier. They chickens were taken four at a time, and the turkeys two at a time – the latter, of course, being larger and involved a bit more in the way of control.

First step: well, the real first step was catching them in the pen, but the second first step was the actual killing of the bird.

The turkeys were put head down into the cones and held there (the chickens were also put head down into these cones, but because they were much smaller, fit down into the cones, and Tom – the guy slicing the neck there – folded down a set of blocks over them to keep them still).

The turkeys, like the chickens, were allowed to bleed out into the buckets. We learned that this, like the feathers and the innards, is composted – buried with hay over it, to keep the animals out.

Once the turkeys were dead, Tom pulled out the largest tail feathers, and then put into the scalder. While the chickens had been done in groups of three, the turkeys, larger, were done one at a time.

After a spin in the spa, it was off to the plucker. I’ve seen these on blogs from time to time, and up close it really does look like a washtub with rubber fingers. The chickens had gone in to the plucker in batches, to create more friction as they spun around. The turkeys went in alone.

Once out, the turkey went to the table for dressing.

The girls had buckets for the innards and basins for the gizzards and necks.

Our turkey weighed in at about 21 pounds. As I looked down the sheet they were keeping, I noticed that the turkeys were averaging about 18 pounds from the birds that had been processed thus far.

On our chicken run, we had picked up ten chickens, averaging about six pounds or so per bird. Then, as now, the bird went from live in the pen to home in the span of two hours, including travel time.

That turkey was the tastiest we’d ever had – some of the folks at dinner said the same thing. We only ordered one this year, but next year, I think two are in order: one for Thanksgiving dinner, one for Christmas dinner. Especially now that we know exactly how they’ve been raised, how they’ve been treated, and how they’re slaughtered, there’s no particular reason not to order more next time.

When the moon hits your eye

A thin slice of one, with Venus and Jupiter thrown in for good measure, that is.

Been busy around here, what with the election (babysitting the servers and network), regular work (the usual), the holiday (Thanksgiving done and moving onto Christmas), and the homestead (the first couple of freezes, with another due right now and all the other things that need to be done).

We had a fantastic free-range, organic turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Came from a farm not too far from here, and went from live, walking around to chilling in the fridge in the span of a couple of hours, including drive time. Pics of the slaughtering process, for those interested – I’ll be sure to post those below the jump in the next post.