We have had a warmup lately, and most of our snow is now gone. We still have some swaths of it in the yard, and the snowbanks are still there, but it’s mostly melted. It is only March, so we could still get a huge snowstorm, but it feels like Spring. Temps have been at least in the 30s during the day for the last week, and today it’s currently 63 degrees and sunny. Today was a good day to clean out animal housing. I cleaned out the rabbit cages and the chicken coop. Here are some pictures of our melty, muddy yard, and of the chickens enjoying the warm weather.
Our side yard. It’s hard to tell here but it’s very wet. It will turn to mud for awhile as the ground thaws and we start getting rain.Some of our remaining snowbanks.Our back yard. We are starting to see the garden here on the right.The chickens out scratching in the yard.Here they are scratching through their old bedding that I put out in the yard. They have to check out any piles to make sure they didn’t miss anything yummy.Here they are taking a dust bath in the old bedding pile. They were taking a dust bath in it when it was inside as well, before I could shovel it outside.I had most of their coop stuff outside here, while I was cleaning inside. The big stick is a perch, and the sawhorse is another one that is usually inside the coop. They are enjoying hanging around outside.The rooster right in front here is Splash, my Splash Maran.Here is Splash crowing at me for taking pictures.Here is Dorko, my Dorking rooster. (You can tell I’m not the best at coming up with names for them). He is now larger than the other two roosters. Very handsome.
I don’t know if this warm weather will stick around for good yet, but I’m going to enjoy it while it’s here.
We raise our rabbits for meat. We have three adults, and I got them this past fall so that we can have meat for our family. One small step towards our greater goal of being food independent. Although I would have preferred to wait until spring to breed our rabbits, one of the does was pregnant when I got them in late October. That left us with 7 kits ready for harvest at the beginning of January.
The second week of January, I harvested four of the kits. They were 9 weeks old at that point. I had been looking into what the most humane way of killing them would be – my parents raised rabbits when I was a kid, and my mom told me that they had always used a .22 pistol – it’s fast, easy on the rabbit since they feel nothing – it’s over in an instant. That’s what we ended up doing. A shot in the back of the head, and it’s over. It was a lot easier than I thought. It’s never easy to take an animal’s life, but I feel we did it in the most humane way. I also thanked them each for their sacrifice to us before taking them.
The first four took me a couple of hours from start to finish – from culling to having meat ready. I’m not going to go into detail here, but they are pretty easy to process – especially compared to chickens. It is still quite a bit of work, and it was cold out that day, so I decided to wait to take the other three at a later date. For the first four, we got about 6.5 lbs of meat – I weighed one beforehand, and it was about 4 lbs live weight. I got 1.5 to 1.75 lbs of meat from each kit.
A couple weeks later I culled the other three. I again got about 6 lbs of meat – they had grown a little more – one produced about 2 lbs of meat and the other two were just shy of 2 lbs each. I’d heard that you want to harvest them from 8-10 weeks old, because beyond that you are losing out on efficiency in terms of a meat harvested to food spent ratio. Also older rabbits tend to have a tougher meat texture. The first four we did at 9 weeks, the other three were 11 weeks.
One thing that made this whole thing easier was that we had not handled the babies a lot – they weren’t very friendly. They saw us as food and water providers. We try to pet the adults, our breeding stock, when we go out to feed them. But our plans are not to cull them – someday when they aren’t good breeding stock we may have to rethink that. I think in the summer the babies would get more handling, since it will be nice out and I’m sure my son will want to play with some. It may get a little harder then. But it’s kind of the same with our chickens. I’ve culled roosters that I really liked – I had reasons that they needed to be culled though – some were aggressive, or aggressive to hens. It’s all part of farming, and processing your own food. My son was interested in watching the harvest a bit, but did not participate at all. I always try to impart this lesson to him – “This is where our food comes from. If you buy a chicken or other meat at the store, it had a life once, and someone else killed it. At least we know our animals had the best life we could give them when they were alive.”
We are going to wait to breed the adults again until spring. We aren’t planning on having any rabbit kits during the winter anymore. Winter makes it harder to take care of everyone – water freezing, and me being worried they are cold – I don’t feel it’s fair to the does to make them have litters in the winter. I’ve planned out a breeding schedule for summer, so we should be able to get about 3 litters from each of the two does throughout the warmer months. I have an uncle that keeps saying we should get more. I think that the adults we have are plenty for now.
I’m a little late with this post. This November has been a little strange, with warmer temps than normal… that is, until a few days ago. I took some pictures last week, before we got snow, when we were in the 50s temperature wise. The snow started a couple days ago. We only have about an inch on the ground right now. We’ve had some flurries here and there, and now our temperatures are in the 20s. Brrr… Here are some pictures of our pre-snow November.
I was out on our porch, and saw what I thought was a white rose on our already-done, pink rosebush…On closer inspection, I realized it’s a white clematis. We have purple clematis growing here, but not nearly this tall – this is up about 8 to 9 feet in the rosebush. And it’s bloomed in November.I haven’t pulled the plants out of the garden yet, and noticed my artichoke plants still looked alive after hard frosts and one day with a dusting of snow. (I have not seen them since we got our current snow).My Brussels sprouts. Update on these – since this picture, we dropped into the 20s. These plants were dead as of yesterday, and the sprouts never got bigger than about dime sized. The plants were completely frozen. I gave them to the chickens, they seemed to like them even though they were frozen.Our yard – all the trees have lost their leaves.The chicken coop with the leafless forest behind it.The chickens enjoying the sunshine on one of our last nice warmish days.The chickens in the sunAnother pic of the chickens.
I’ll get some new pics soon to show you what our snow looks like. I’ll also update on the baby bunnies – they have grown a lot in 2 weeks.
Fall is definitely here. We’ve had lower temps – 50s and 60s. We got a touch of frost – I saw some on the grass one morning. But I think my house is in a bit of a microclimate – in our town there was a hard frost at the end of September, where you had to scrape frost off your windows. We didn’t get that here – I’m only about 12 miles outside of town, but the way our property is situated we sometimes are spared from the frost. I was worried things would die, so when we got the hard-frost warnings, I harvested everything in the gardens that was anywhere near being ready. I didn’t worry about things that can deal with frost, like Kale. And then nothing happened, my plants that were left out there are all still doing fine. Here’s a photo tour of how things are looking lately.
Here’s what my garden looks like – a tangled mess with not much left for picking.
I’m debating on whether to pick everything out, and cover it all with compost now, or wait and do that all in the spring. Either way, the soil will have a layer of plants between it and the snow; I’ve read that is better for any mycelium networks (which are very helpful for your plants) – if you leave bare soil any beneficial mycelium that may be there can die, and you are depleting your soil. That is why people plant cover crops – I don’t really want to do that because we really don’t have time. Last year, we got snow at the beginning of November. I don’t think a cover crop would have time to sprout and grow. So I may just use my already-there crops as “cover crops”; then in spring, I’ll pile on compost, and till it all in. (I’ll still have to pull big stems out, like the old corn and sunflowers).
Our trees are very colorful – they had just started changing last week and then suddenly everything’s orange, red, and yellow (with a touch of green).
Here are some of the trees in our yard.Another picture of those trees.Here are the maple trees that we get sap from in the spring.
Most of my plants in the garden are on their way out for the winter. Most of my sunflowers are spent, and have seeds that the chickadees have been enjoying. I found this one that is a late bloomer. It’s really tall but it fell over so it’s laying on the ground:
My maybe-last sunflower for the year.
My marigolds are still going strong. They are so pretty, I love the orange color of these:
My marigolds.
Our apple trees are doing well. The biggest problem is that most of the good looking apples are way up on the tree. I’m planning on picking a bunch more this weekend. I picked a few several weeks ago and made apple butter. I’m planning on making some more (since it’s delicious) and also drying some apples for snacks.
One of the apple trees.A closer view of those yummy apples.
One thing I planted this year, just to try, was Amaranth. I found out you can cook the seeds up kind of like rice. I would like to try it but they are not ready yet. The “flowers” are supposed to drop their seeds – you can test it by running the flowers in your hands, and if the seeds drop into your hand they are ready to pick. Mine are not there yet. But they look like they are on their way:
Here’s one of my Amaranth, it is a good 8-9 feet tall.Here is the same plant, I leaned it over so I could get a detail of the flower.
I got my hens some “chicken aprons” – they can wear them and it’s supposed to protect their backs from the roosters’ shenanigans. I had the roosters separated but it’s getting colder, and I was worried that if the roosters are separate, they can’t actually do their job of protecting the hens. So they are all together now. Most of my barer backed ladies are now wearing these aprons:
Here is one of my australorp hens wearing her apron. It doesn’t help her wing “elbows”, as you can see here, but her back is protected.
I also thought the aprons would help keep the hens a little warmer this winter. Some of my hens still have completely bare backs, and I was worried about winter because with no feathers there, they would be too exposed to the cold. They work pretty well, I do have a few hens that these seem a bit too big for. I ordered some standard size aprons from someone on Amazon. They do have some smaller ones, I may have to get some of those. Mine are all “standard” breeds but some are on the smallish side. I have a barred rock hen that these didn’t fit – it’s like the middle bit of the apron is too wide to fit between her shoulders, so she just kept getting tangled up in it. I only tried it on her for an hour or two, and then I had to take it off.
My escape artist chicken decided to pose today for me, I got some really nice pictures of her:
Here she is.Here’s another picture.
She doesn’t have a name except “Escape artist” because if anyone gets out, it is usually her. And she gets out almost every other day. She must fly out, but then she can’t fly back in for some reason so I have to catch her and put her back in the run. She sleeps in the rafters of the coop now, and she’s actually gotten one of her friends (my Cornish hen) to sleep up there with her.
Thanks for checking out my Fall farm pics. I do like fall, but it always leads to winter, which I’m not really looking forward to.
I have been growing Artichokes this year. I love artichokes – especially whole ones steamed/boiled with Italian dressing, where you pull off the leaves and dip them in butter. Yum. I tried to grow them several years ago living in L.A., but with my work schedule they didn’t get watered enough and they didn’t do so well. I’d read that they can grow as annuals in northern climates, so I planted 9 plants. Two have produced fruit! (Actually a thistle, not a fruit). They are pretty small, but I’m still very excited.
Here’s the nicest one of my two that I’ve gotten. You can see how small it is – my hands are not very big either.Here’s the second artichoke – it’s a little skinny but still will be delicious.
I noticed that one of my plants is now growing another thistle off the stem where one of the above fruits was cut off.
I think one reason that only two of my nine plants produced fruit was that they ended up getting overcrowded by my nearby tomatillo plants. The tomatillo plants are very large and leggy, almost growing like an indeterminant tomato plant. My tomatillos got fruit this year also. Last year I planted some very late in the year, and didn’t get any fruits. This year I got them in early and I have a decent sized crop – some of them are a little small, but they were ready to pick. Here they are in a pot boiling up for Salsa Verde:
Tomatillos in a big soup pot – getting ready to be made into Salsa Verde.
I will definitely be growing more artichokes next year (and giving them more space), and more tomatillos.
I’ve gotten a lot of vegetables so far this year. I’m still waiting on my tomatoes to ripen, but they are coming along. I’ve been picking suckers and new flowers left and right, and I can see the tomatoes are starting to get a pinkish tint to them. We’ve had 80-90 degree temps this week, and it’s expected to continue – I think that will help with the ripening.
In the winter we were buying a lot of kale, so I grew a bunch of it, and we haven’t used a whole lot yet. So this weekend I decided to pick as much as I could, and freeze it. I left the plants, with new baby leaves in the centers, so I will still have fresh kale until we have snow (it supposedly can survive frost, and gets better after a frost, so we’ll see how that goes). I ended up with a giant basket of kale:
My big basket of kale. This basket is about 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and just under a foot tall. That’s a whole lot of kale.
I took the leaves off the stems, blanched them for 2 minutes, and then froze them up. I ended up with about 10 cups of frozen kale.
This year I decided to grow lemon balm. I picked some to dry for tea. It smells so good!
Lemon balm.
I have had tons of zucchini and yellow squash, and I have frozen a lot of it. I read online that you can get away with not blanching it first, so I am trying that this year. Last year I blanched it, and it worked fine but it was more labor intensive; Also, since it was wet when I put it in freezer bags, I ended up with blocks of frozen zucchini. I don’t know if the slice/freeze method will still produce this result; I’ll have to wait and see.
I also grew acorn squash for the first time this year. I had four plants; most produced only one fruit – I did have two forming on one plant, but when I went out this weekend I realized that one of the fruits was rotting on the vine. The other four seemed ready to pick. The plants still have flowers so it may produce more, I will have to wait and find out.
Acorn squash. Yum! We love eating them roasted with cinnamon sugar and butter.
My corn is getting close to being ready. The silks are turning brown on the cobs. Last year I read that you wait 10 days after the silks turn brown – I checked a few cobs and I think by this next weekend they may be ready. I noticed today though that I must have raccoons or something attacking the corn. It must be raccoons – they are notorious for getting into corn in this area – I found a half eaten cob in my garden on the ground. I hope they give me time to get at least a few ears before they get them all. I’m not sure how to deter them – they climbed my fence. I’ll have to figure out some kind of raccoon deterrent – maybe putting a lip on the top of the fence so they can’t come over the top of the fence.
This is my favorite time of year. I love when I can just go to the garden to pick dinner. My vegetable plants are really starting to produce for me. I had some chard and kale already this season, but the last few days my zucchini and yellow squash have started to have large enough squashes to pick. Yum. I have a lot of plants so I know I will eventually be overrun.
Yellow squash and zucchini, waiting to be sliced. I sauteed these two up with some onion. These were about 6 inches long each (the cutting board under them is very tiny, in case it makes these look gigantic).
This year I have 5 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, and I think 4 acorn squash plants. Last year I had 3 or 4 zucchini plants, and by mid September I was very tired of zucchini. I froze what we had left and didn’t eat any for a couple months. They were very delicious in the middle of winter when I wasn’t sick of zucchini any more. This year I received a pressure canner for my birthday, so I’m planning on using that to can a lot of our harvest. I also plan on freezing some things.
I have gotten some pea pods, but not enough to do more than just eat the peas straight out of the pods. My son has been enjoying that. I worried my peas wouldn’t like the heat we’ve been having but they are doing well. Next year I will have to have more plants.
My beans have been producing well. I actually got enough from my first harvesting of them to use for a side dish for tonight’s dinner:
Yummy beans.
I started with some green bean plants, but they didn’t do very well at first. I wanted more plants, so I bought a packet of purple beans. They really took off, and I’ve been getting more purple beans so far than green. The green plants are growing taller than the purple, and I can tell they are going to produce well – there are a lot of flowers and baby beans growing along the vine where they’ve climbed up my string support system. They are even climbing one of my sunflowers. Last year I had a few bean plants, but I never got enough beans at one time to cook on their own; it was always just enough to cook up with something else. I’m hoping to can or freeze some this year – hopefully I have enough to do that.
I have a lot of green tomatoes forming. I’m growing three varieties of indeterminate tomatoes, and the plants are going crazy. I have been consistently pulling off suckers from the plants, and now because there are so many baby tomatoes, I’m pulling off extra flowers too, in an effort to let the forming tomatoes get bigger faster, and possibly ripen on the vine. I worry that they may take too long if I don’t do that – last year I had to let my tomatoes ripen in the house. Our growing season isn’t very long – we may get frost by mid September.
For the last couple of months I’ve been planning on adding a second run to our chicken coop. Here’s the way it was:
A view of our old chicken run – we had the babies in a chicken-wire fence away from the adults.
For the last few weeks, my five “teenage” roosters have been terrorizing my hens. They actually gang up on them – one mounts a hen and another runs up and bites her head while the first one mounts her – once it’s over she runs away and is chased by another one who was waiting for his turn. It’s gotten so ridiculous the last few days that some of my hens have been hiding in their nest boxes. Just hiding in there, all day long.
Today, we fixed the problem. We added a new fenced run, but partitioned it so that the roosters are separated from the hens. We also are going to separate them inside the coop – The back part was the hens and teenagers (roosters and one hen), and the front was my chicks (3 months old now). Since we have to separate the roosters, they will have the back room of the coop, and the ladies and chicks will have the front part. We are integrating the babies in with the hens – I figure everything is new for everyone, so it may cut back on the drama as they get to know each other. I have at least a couple roosters in the chick batch, so if I see any mounting they will get moved in with the roosters.
Our new fenceAnother view of the new fence
We made a fence “door” that closes off either the rooster or hen side for when we are moving them in and out – this means that the roosters will be stuck outside during the day, so we made them a makeshift shelter in case it rains or they want some cover. The hens / chicks can get in the coop if they want.
The hens enjoying their new run. (The babies are hiding inside for now)The roosters are a bit upset that they can’t get to the hens.We used some sawhorses and boards to make the shelter for the roosters.
The rooster’s shelter should protect them from rain for the most part, but it’s a little flimsy on top, which is good – I’m hoping that because it is, they won’t jump on top and try to fly over to the hens. We’ll have to see how this all works out.
the old dirt run
My next step is to plant some chicken forage into the old run – I have some organic chicken forage mix seed ready to go.
Hopefully everyone likes their new run. The roosters probably aren’t so happy, but they get nice grass to wander through/peck at. My hens seem a lot happier already.
I LOVE garlic. I had never grown it before, and last year I decided to give it a try. In the early fall, I bought some organic garlic heads at the grocery store, pulled the bulbs out and put them into the garden. This spring I saw them growing, and they’ve grown really well. I read that you dig the garlic heads up when the leaves start yellowing. I noticed the last few days that they were yellowing, so I pulled them up today.
My garlic fresh out of the ground.
They were a decent size, I believe most of them were the same size as the heads I grew them from. I cleaned off the dirt with a paper towel:
My garlic after brushing off most of the dirt.
I read that you should leave them to cure for a few weeks with the roots and stems still attached. I put them all together in a bunch and they are sitting outside in a shady spot on my porch, where they’ll get good airflow but not get any sun at all. I have them hung up; I wasn’t sure if my friendly neighborhood squirrels and chipmunks would try to eat them. I’ll have to keep an eye out and make sure nobody tries to steal them. Once the leaves dry out completely you can cut the leaves and roots off. Then you can store them for later use, and save more of the bulbs to grow new garlic for next year. That’s my plan, at least right now. We’ll have to wait a few weeks to see how they taste. If they are good, I’ll grow them again. The original heads I bought had a good flavor, so hopefully these will too.
Here’s my young Buckeye rooster
One of my young roosters is very goofy – he’s kind of aggressive. More in-your-face every time we’re in the coop. He has been very friendly since he was small, but now he’s always underfoot. It’s like he always needs to follow me to see what I’m up to – as if he’s worried I’ll do something to hurt the hens or him. He likes to peck my pant legs. He bit me the other day, but that was because I was trying to pick him up, because he wouldn’t go in the coop at night. He seemed to be helping me round up everyone else to get them in, but then he wanted to stay outside. I went to grab him and he bit my hand. I got mad and just picked him up and put him inside. I’m not sure what we’ll do with him yet. I need to let him mature a bit and see how this personality of his develops. If he gets more aggressive, he’ll have to go.
For a while I was hoping he was just a very assertive hen, but he’s massive, and the other day he started mounting some of the hens, so it’s now confirmed. I believe he’s a Buckeye, and they are a rare breed from Ohio. We’ll see. I just have so many roosters! I have confirmed that three of my six “teenage” chickens are roosters. There are two more that I’m pretty sure are but they haven’t mounted anyone yet – they are just starting to get long tail feathers now though, so I’m 99% sure. I have one hen out of that batch, my little Speckled Sussex. Then in the smaller chicks I have at least one, possibly 3 or 4 roosters (out of 8 chicks). We are planning on keeping 2 or three roosters through the winter, and we’ll have to decide what to do with the rest. We haven’t picked the keepers yet; I want to see them in all their pretty rooster glory first, once all their feathers have come.
Lupines – we have these growing near our mailbox, and they are growing across the street as well. When I was a kid, there were some at only one tiny spot in the area I live in. Now they are in ditches along the road all over the place.Here’s a new flower – I don’t remember these from last year. I don’t know what it is but it’s pretty.A purple flower. It reminds me of a balloon flower (maybe that is what this is.)Our pink peonies. My parents planted these years ago and they are still going strong.These barrels are on our porch. Last year I tried to grow beets and carrots here, and nasturtiums. The Nasturtiums did ok, but my son found out they were edible and kept eating them. I planted a bunch of different flowers in them this year, along with some herbs.Here are some more barrels, just off our porch. My mom planted lilies in them, and they’ve slowly stopped producing. We got one nice lily last year. I divided them and put the big bulbs in only one barrel (the right one here) – there is also a yarrow growing in it; the left barrel has other flowers: Echinacea and black eyed susan and others.Here is some lemon balm growing in one of the barrels on the porch. It smells so good.Here is our back yard. The leaves have filled out on the trees.Our side yard with the rose bush. The roses are blooming now. At the nearest post, I have a wisteria planted. It’s about 5 inches tall, and doing well. It’s inside the little round cage you can see at the base of the post. I don’t know if deer eat wisteria, and don’t want to chance it.Some pretty flowers along our house. Wild Daisies and some kind of yellow flower – not sure if that was planted or if it’s wild. The white/green variegated leaf plants are “snow on the mountain” – they have taken over a lot of the flower beds and we are trying to eradicate it. It’s even growing at the edge of the woods now in spots.Here is my son’s tiny garden. He wanted his own space, so I gave him some seedlings to plant. He’s got tomatoes, brussel sprouts, and flowers. And Mint. He’s excited about the mint because he can eat it right from the garden.Here are my chickens in their muddy nasty run. I’m going to have to fix that, possibly sooner than I was planning. It’s driving me bananas.Hello! Here is one of my Brahma chicks.This is my tiny rooster. As he is growing, his comb is getting wonkier. The back portion is attached to his head off-center, which adds even more to the floppiness of it. He’s been really mean to the other chicks lately. Maybe they make fun of his goofy comb.Here is my white brahma, which I actually think is a “Splash Brahma” – I love his/her coloring.Here’s one of the blue spruce I planted this spring. It’s about 5 inches tall. It’s going to take a really, really, really long time to get as big as I want it – I have it in the front yard as a screen to give us privacy. It’s not doing its job very well. Someday…Here is one of my elderberry trees. I have two (you need two to get fruit so they can cross pollinate). I have put this near my blue spruce so that I actually get the screen I want in a more timely fashion. These are fast-growing.Here are some of the remaining forget-me-nots. We had tons of these earlier in the year, as splashes of blue all around the woods and the edges of the yard. When I was a child, these only were growing at a camp two houses behind our house. I moved back and discovered they grow all over our yard now.Here is a giant mullein plant growing in our supposed-to-be asparagus patch. Mullein is a great medicinal plant so I’m letting it stay. This thing is about 3 feet tall right now. The big leaves are 1 ft long.
I hope you enjoyed my photo tour. I like my yard, and watching the changes it goes through during the warm months.
My tiny u.p. farm 