Winter – My tiny u.p. farm

The garden begins again

February 1, 2022February 1, 2022Jen Powell1 Comment

I started some onion seeds this weekend. I’ve been planning out the garden, even though we have tons of snow on the ground (or maybe because of the snow). I like growing onions from seed – you get more choices than if you buy sets, and it’s cheaper. I like to start them usually at the beginning of February, but figured it was close enough.

I’m growing 5 types of onion this year:

*The 5 onion varieties. I’ve grown three of these before, but the middle (Red of Florence) and right side (Yellow of Parma) are new kinds.*

I like to start seeds in leftover mushroom containers (that the mushrooms come in at the store) – I poke holes in the bottom and put the mushroom containers on trays,or in a peat pellet tray so I can use a lid at first).

They say onion seeds are only good for a season but I have not found that to be the case. I have had good sprouting a few years later.

*Here are the mushroom containers. I labeled seeds with the type. I can fit about 25 seeds in each of these.*

The idea with these is that they’ll grow and be big enough to set out in April or May (depending on our weather). I have space for two beds of onions in my garden. I also read that you can put onions in around other things where you want to deter groundhogs and stuff and they will stay away.

As I do each spring, I came up with a whole seed starting schedule and made a spreadsheet to track when to start, where they are starting (inside or right in the ground), and how many I started. I am growing about 70 different varieties of things this year (3 kinds of tomatoes, 5 onions, etc), so it’s really helpful to make a chart. I cut it down to 70 – I have to restrain myself from growing ALL the types of seeds I have.

*My seed starting table – it will get more full in April when I start some other things. I have grow lights and enough space for 3 or 4 trays of things.*

It’s always exciting starting the gardening season, even if there is not a whole lot of work I can do yet.

Garden Planning 2021

February 28, 2021Jen Powell2 Comments

It’s the middle of winter here in the U.P. We have a bunch of snow, and more on the way today. Typically this time of year I am planning my garden, but I was way ahead of the game this time, and actually drew up plans in the late summer/early fall of last year. I was taking a look at what had worked, what I was tired of picking, what things we didn’t want to grow again this coming year. Because last year was such a mess trying to get seeds (with Covid lockdowns, and everyone wanting to grow a garden suddenly, seed companies were out of things – I had to order from 5 different places to get all the varieties I wanted), I just stocked up in the fall. So I really don’t need to get any new seeds this year. I might add a couple things as spring gets here. We’ll see.

Here you can see my snowy cottage garden as it looked this morning: (We are getting a bunch more snow as I type this).

I started my onions in January – they are doing pretty well. I am growing a large yellow variety called Ailsa Craig. I am on an ongoing quest to get really big onions. Last year I had some get to a decent size, like a small baseball size, but not the full size they could have gotten. We just recently used up the end of my saved onion stash, and we were down to a lot of tiny 1-inch onions at the end. I am hoping to increase the amount of large onions I grow, and hopefully get less smaller ones. Even if that means growing less onions, so be it. Besides those large onions, I’m also growing leeks, green onions, and shallots from seeds. I also started some red onions – the seeds are from year before last, so they are not as viable as I’d like, but I got some to sprout. Onion seeds only last about a year or so – a lot of other seeds are viable for longer. I have been fertilizing my onion sprouts this year – something I read about this winter. I’m hoping that I will have close to pencil-width onions ready to go into the ground by April or May (probably May but a girl can hope for an April warm-up).

I planned this year’s gardens last fall, just drawing up a plan on a couple pieces of paper. I did go through all my seeds this fall, and I made a big spreadsheet so I know what I have to work with. I then had to decide what to NOT grow this year. I tend to want to just grow it all – I am using some restraint and only using about half my seed varieties for this coming year. Below are my plans I drew up:

As you can see, I’ve changed things a little bit here and there – there are some scribbles where I made revisions, but going in I knew a few things we’d do differently this year. We had too many winter squash last year, and I have frozen a lot of them. I fed extras to the deer before they could go bad on us (and because we got really sick of squash). I won’t be growing any winter squash. I’m growing 2 plants of cucumbers (2 varieties, one plant of each). I’m only growing 12 tomato plants total! (I had over 24 last year). We still have a lot of frozen tomatoes. They are good but we were a bit overrun in the fall and I got really tired of harvesting them. The only problem with planning is you never know what the weather in the summer will be like. I hope we have a nice hot summer and those 12 tomato plants actually produce as well as they did last year.

I took the seeds that I decided to grow this year, and set up groups (all rubber-banded together) in terms of when they get started and where – so I have a big group of “start inside in March” that will get started around the first official day of spring. I have a few types of seeds in the fridge cold-stratifying, those all will get started in March – those include two types of Milkweed/butterfly weed. I’d like to get some established in my yard for the Monarch butterflies. I also have some sets of “Start outside” for as soon as the snow is gone and I can get into the soil, and “start outside May/June” for after the last frost (mid-late may, depending on who you ask). I ordered a couple of things that should be coming this spring – Ginger for sprouting (probably coming late March) and also more Strawberry plants – I think those come in April or May.

I’m excited for this year’s upcoming garden. For now I am just looking out the window at our snowy yard and dreaming of spring.

Tons of snow, and a tiny bit of green.

February 17, 2019April 29, 2019Jen Powell3 Comments

I have been pretty busy this winter, but haven’t had much to post about. We had a somewhat mild winter for most of November and December, but then got pummeled by the Polar Vortex and a bunch of snow the last few months. Here are some updates of our farm:

late december snow — Here was the snow in late December. You can see how the garden was covered. This was pretty mild for us and temperatures were not bad. They went down right in time for the new year.

snow feb — Here it is today. (same view). We have about 2-3 feet on the ground at the moment. We’ve gotten most of this the last few weeks.

snow now — Here you can see our snowbank next to the chicken coop. The chickens are not enjoying this – they mostly stay inside right now. The ducks mostly stay inside too.

digging snow fort — Here is my son, in the trench he dug between the snowbank and the chicken coop. He’s building a fort back there.

d snow fort — Here he is inside the snowfort.

seed starting — I started some Seeds! Onions (Yellow Spanish on the left and some Red onions on the right), and Black Gogi berries in the middle. I’ll start other stuff way later, but the onions needed to be started now. The Gogi berries will be bushes so I figured they could start now too.

onions — A closer view of the onion seeds. These sprouted within 2 days of planting. I was very surprised at their speed.

onions 3 — Another view of the onions. I decided to start with seeds this year instead of onion sets because I could pick exact varieties instead of just “red” or “yellow” – these are a Yellow Sweet Spanish and a Weatherfield Red. I got my seeds from Baker Creek.

onions 2 — More onions. So exciting! There are tons! I love onions and we ran out of our grown supply at the end of December – I’d like to have enough to get us through the whole winter next year.

gogi berries — Here my Gogi berries are sprouting – just came out of the soil today, I planted them last Saturday (so just over a week). I have 10 or so that I planted so I expect to see more come up soon.

We have a lot going on here, and I’m dreaming of spring; Doing a lot of planning for this year’s garden, and planning to order some new hens in the next few months. Right now we’re just trying to keep ahead of all this snow.

“It’s Spring! April Fools!” – Winter

April 1, 2018Jen Powell1 Comment

We got more snow yesterday. Which happens here in the U.P. We got an end-of-March storm, which only gave us about 4-5 inches of snow, but it came with a little cold snap. Our maple sap collecting has gone awry because the temperatures dipped. We went to get sap the other night before the snow started, and there were little icicles from the taps into our buckets. Tomorrow is supposed to be warm enough for the sap to flow, but otherwise the next week is not supposed to get much above freezing during the day. Ideally you want temps in the 40s during the day and 20s at night for optimal sap production. When I looked at the weather, it said those temperatures should come back around April 10th. I decided to cook up what I had today – we had just over 2 gallons collected so far. We’ll still leave the buckets up for now and see what happens.

Here are some new pictures from today:

boiling sap — Here is the sap pot. I had to boil down a bit before adding the rest of our sap – this pot didn’t hold all 2 gallons at once. We won’t end up with much syrup, but it should be delicious anyway.

Here is our driveway/side yard, which was grassy and chicken-y in my last post. The chickens were not happy that we got more snow.

more snow 2 — Here is my car with snow on it – we really didn’t get a whole lot, but when you are waiting for it all to melt, getting any snow is a let-down.

buddy — My bunnies didn’t care about the snow, since they live inside. Here is my buck, Buddy.

marigold — Here is Marigold. I bred the two does last weekend, so hopefully we’ll have baby bunnies by the end of the month. Marigold was not happy about being bred. (She’s pretty skittish anyway).

Here is Petunia. She seemed excited about mating, luckily.

wizard 1 — I was taking pictures of the rabbits, and my cat Wizard started coming down stairs. He’s been hanging out more downstairs since we got him a cat tree. I’ve even found him sneaking around in the kitchen, which means he may start actually catching mice downstairs.

wizard 2 — A close up of our Wizard. He is a great mouser upstairs, so we are hoping he’ll do his job downstairs too.

nova — Our Nova was curious why I was taking pictures, so I took one of her too.

Coming out of winter into spring

March 29, 2018Jen Powell1 Comment

It’s officially spring, but here in the U.P. we are just starting to come out of winter. We still have a lot of snow, although this week we’ve had decent temperatures during the day (above freezing) so the snow is melting and turning driveways into mud. They freeze at night, luckily, so I was able to go to work this morning – my car wasn’t stuck in my muddy driveway. We are supposed to get a little bit of snow this week (3 inches, I heard) which is typical. Spring is usually like this.

This winter has been really hard – we lost both roosters. Big Red died in January, and The General died just a couple days ago. They both got really bad frostbite this winter – Red had it so bad his waddles got really swollen. General’s toes got it really bad. I’m not sure if they eventually both died because of frostbite complications, but it’s possible. They both seemed to recover (and be feeling better) before they died, so I’m not sure. With chickens it’s sometimes hard to tell. The frostbite came when we had a really bad cold spell in January. The ducks sometimes make it hard to keep the moisture out of the coop as well, which can contribute to frostbite in the chickens. Roosters with larger combs/waddles are really susceptible, and both of our boys had them. We are very sad about losing our roosters. Now we have 19 chickens (all hens), and three ducks.

chickens_dorko and brown hen resized — Here is General on the right, with one of our hens a couple years ago.

copper-maran-roo — Big Red – our Black Copper Maran rooster, this picture was from last year.

Today we let the chickens out into the yard for the first time this year – there is actually a bit of grass/muddy driveway for them to hang out in, instead of just snow. The ducks found a big icy puddle to dabble in – they loved that. Here are a few pictures from today:

happy hens — Here are some of the hens out in the yard today.

chickens spring — There was really only a little bit of yard and the driveway for them to go in, but they enjoyed it.

chickens driveway 2 — Another picture of hens in the driveway.

remaining pile — This is what remains of our snowbank in front of the coop.

ducks heading home — Here are the ducks heading back home.

sap buckets — We also tapped trees this week! Usually maple syrup time is earlier in March, but we didn’t have the necessary warm daytime temperatures till this week.

sap buckets 2 — We’ve been getting just under a gallon a day of sap, with 8 buckets out.

Spring is on its way, luckily. I’m glad to see this winter mostly behind us.

December on the farm…

December 16, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

I haven’t posted in awhile – we’ve been really busy this fall. Here are some updates:

002 — Here is our snowy yard today. It took awhile to get this much – most of November we didn’t have any snow. The chickens haven’t been coming out of the coop building much. I left the run open on days I was home until we got snow. Now the chickens don’t want to come outside anyway, and our white ducks might get lost if we let them out! They like the snow though.

006 — Here is Marigold, one of our female bunnies.

008 — Here is Petunia, Marigold’s sister. They were born this year in March.

010 — The garden in winter. bleh. I’m already starting to plan next year’s garden!

011 — The back yard. The snow is pretty, but it gets to be tiresome after awhile. It’s nice through the Holidays and then I wish it would leave (it won’t for several months after, though).

015 — Our bird feeder is up, so the chickadees are happy. We kept it down in the summer, to prevent bears coming to our porch. The bears should be hibernating now.

specs resized — We lost our hen Specks a week or so ago. I thought she was egg bound or something (she was lethargic but still eating), so I treated her for that, but it didn’t seem to matter. We were very sad to lose her. She was a big personality in the flock. Very vocal about us coming in to get eggs. And very friendly -she liked being petted. We’ll miss her.

024 — This is a little older – here are a couple of pumpkins I ended up roasting. I made some pumpkin bread with the flesh, and froze some for later this winter.

025 — Here are all the tomatoes I canned this fall.

Oodles and oodles of eggs

January 25, 2017January 24, 2017Jen Powell5 Comments

We are now getting tons of eggs. With winter we are somewhat over-run. We are currently getting at least 15-20 chicken eggs a day from our 35 hens. That doesn’t count the 5-6 duck eggs per day we get from the 6 ducks. In the fall we started selling the eggs at the local farmers’ market, but that only runs June-October. So for now, I sell what I can but we still have a LOT. So we eat a lot of eggs. The chickens are possibly laying less because it’s wintertime – in the spring their production may even go up. But the eggs are very pretty – we get all sorts of shades of browns, some almost pinks, some white eggs, and varying shades of greens. Here are some cool pictures of the eggs:

005 — The various shades of brown, from dark to white.

007 — Here are the green eggs – they come in khaki, and light green, and someone even lays khaki with dark spots.

Wintertime in the snow

January 4, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

We’ve been really busy this winter with the holidays and other stuff, so I haven’t had a chance to post anything in a while. We’re in the middle of a typical U.P. Snowy winter. We get a lot of lake effect snow from Lake Superior. Here are some pictures of the past several weeks.

front-yard-storm — The view from our front porch during a blizzard a few weeks ago.

006 — Here are our cars during that same blizzard.

finch-on-a-flower-stalk — My husband took this picture of a finch, hanging onto a old evening primrose stalk.

overhanging-snow-curtain — We have a metal roof. When we have warm-ups, we get curtains like this hanging down. We were wondering how long these would get – they didn’t get much longer than this before breaking.

overhanging-snow-curtain-feeder — Our bird feeder next to a snow-curtain. This did not deter the birds from coming to eat.

snowy-trees — Here are our apple trees covered in snow.

Duck Updates

April 10, 2016April 10, 2016Jen Powell2 Comments

Our ducks are getting huge. We’ve had them for three weeks already. I swear they have quadrupled in size. We have gone through I think 5 brooder boxes. The ducks ruin the boxes after awhile, so they have had to have replacements. Here is the last box we made for them:

Here is my son posing in a weird pose, and Downey checking out the box, so you can get a sense of scale:

silly d and duck box — The duck box with my son, Daniel, and Downey

We had the ducks in a spare bedroom, and then that got too much. They are slobs, as I’ve said before. We want to get them outside, but the weather is not cooperating yet. Here is what our yard looks like today:

So the ducks are in our shed, which has a cement floor and is on the way outside, anyway. Instead of making them another box, my husband created a duck corral of sorts:

newest setup2 — The duck corral. The baby gate is to keep Atat from putting his face in the duck corral.

newest setup — The ducks enjoying all the room they now have to move around.

The ducks get really messy – they play with their water and then they stay wet and then they poop, and they stink. So we like to give them a bath (plus they LOVE the bath). We started in this little tub (which is actually a cat litter pan):

duck bath

We had a leak in our bathtub so we had to use the pan the first time. We now use our actual bathtub – they all fit in at once, and we have been making the water a little deeper. They will dive under and swim around and splash – they love it. The last time, instead of trying to dry them just with a towel, I put them on a pile of towels after the bath and then ran a hair dryer over them. They loved that. I was dealing with a pile of ducks upstairs without a camera, so unfortunately I don’t have pictures of that.

Today I gave them some pine shavings – we’ve been just using paper towels over the cardboard floor of their corral, and we are changing it every 2 hours or so, it seems. I thought at the very least, the pine shavings will keep the smell down a little.

ducks with pine — You can see the pine shavings on the right in the corral here. On the left, the brown floor is their paper towel bedding after about 20 minutes. A bunch of slobs.

We are supposed to have warmer weather this next week – they are calling for temps in the 60s next weekend. So we will be able to get them outside then. We have an old dog shed, that was actually being converted to a clubhouse for my son. Our plan is to use that for temporary duck housing until we can get them something built of their own. We have a heat lamp we can set up if needed for if we get colder temps. The ducks are getting white feathers growing in under their yellow fuzz, so they should be ready to go out soon. That is the plan as of now – we will have to see what happens on the weekend. Our weather has been so schizophrenic this spring that you never know…

Oh, and we have chicks due to hatch on Tuesday! So bird-in-the-house season is in full swing.

St. Patty’s Day Pummelling

March 17, 2016March 18, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

All of our snow was gone… I knew that we could still get snow, since it’s only March. We got pummeled with snow last night. This morning we woke up to a huge mess. The weather people said that we were expecting 8-10 inches. Today when I went out to feed the rabbits and chickens (who are NOT happy about this turn of events), the snow came over my boots. So I took a stick and measured it. At 8 am we had received 13.5 inches of snow. And it was still coming down. Luckily I don’t think we got much more.

In the night we knew we were getting some snow – we have a metal roof, and while we were in bed we kept waking up to strange noises. We realized that it was snow falling off the roof – snow that had piled up on the roof was falling off of the roof in little avalanches, since it wasn’t very cold outside. We didn’t realize just how much snow we had gotten till we got up this morning.

Because there was so much snow, the trees were weighed down – which means that we lost power for most of today. It’s back on now (which is why I can finally post this). We dug the cars out and parked them across the street so my husband could plow the driveway. The problem is that under this snow, we had mud since it had been so warm. Our truck is currently stuck in the mud at the back of the driveway. So that’s another thing we have to do in the next few days – get someone to come pull the truck out of the mud. Here are some photos of our big St. Patty’s day snow.