Fall Catch Up

Greetings again from NC.  Life as always has been busy and that has resulted in quite the dry run here. But fall, and soon winter is here, and I am hoping that means we can take a breather from the unending projects down here on the farm. This entry is really a "catch up" of some of things that have been going on down here over the last couple months
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The garden is pretty much put to sleep for the winter with the exception of this hoop house, which is a poor man's version of a green house. It gets covereed in plastic for the winter. It is 11/24/2012 and we are still harvesting broccoli, chard, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cilantro, lettuce, and carrots from it. It will be interesting to see how long it works until things finally freeze out. We managed to get seven fruit trees in this fall. Plum, pear, apple, and peach. The two fig trees planted this spring have quadrupled in size. We should have a good crop next summer!

These two bear plots are being prepped for blackberries and raspberries. The blackberry plants are actually already in. I also got the cedar posts in already for the future support trellis for both of them,

This is a bench I made from a Black Walnut tree we salvaged from the neighbor last fall , it is pretty permanently installed near our outdoor fire pit.


 A good part of our past few weekends this fall was used making firewood. We had to take down one big dead oak tree as well as split a lot of the bigger pieces of wood from last fall's wood pile, which seemed to have toppled over from our novice wood stacking skills.



Remnants of last fall's wood pile

New wood 2012

We ended up renting a log splitter for a weekend and with Ethan's help the thing ran for 8 hours each day. By Sunday night we were all exhausetd and finally had to throw in the towel as the sunlight dwindled.

I think Dad would be proud of my obcessively and neatly stacked new wood pile this year!

To make life easier this winter we built this wood shelter for closer to the house. The main wood pile is quite distance from the house. Shalo helped build this, and the following weekend Ethan and I knocked the rack below out in less than two hours. It is on the side porch that conveniently opens up right into the living room with the fireplace.

The spring chickens have finally reached maturity and we are averaging about 12-14 eggs a day now, with a nice variety of colors!

This fall Karen volunteered to try her hand at mowing the field, she took to it fast and I welcomed the help! There is something enjoyable and almost mesmerizing about coursing up and down the field on the tractor...

After some recent yard work,  routine "farm" equipment maintainance, and generally a long summer of hard work we took a weekend  off up to a cabin in Virgina for some R and R .....

Dog Days...

Summer seems to be winding down here, with some mildly cooler temperatures, and not quite the seemingly constant pressing need to get something else done. Though my "to-do" list never seems to be any shorter. 

 The latest big accomplishment has been a little more progress on the barn restoration project. Finally we have gotten the front side of the barn resided. The project took a good month of weekends because there were only a few hours I could work on it in the morning before the sun started shining on the work area making it unbearable to work there. This fall I hope to get the North side finished as well. Then I can focus on some minor floor repairs in the loft area. Then we hope to have some simple furniture up there to hang out, read , or  watch over the field as the sun sets and the deer move in for their evening grazing ritual, hopefully some day they will be replaced by some sheep or a couple beef cows ! 

Before: Summer 2010

After: Summer 2012

The poultry flock has been blessed with little problems from predators this summer. This improved a lot after one neighbor with a chicken killing dog moved away, and the other completed a deer fence around their entire property. We also have been trapping and "relocating" occasional opossums and coons. Toby also recently treed a coon who likely killed three of the neighbors chickens recently. He made for an interesting evening of front yard coon hunting that was eventually successful. Unfortunately the carcass got wedged in a crook,... fortunately the vultures found him w/in 48 hours and took care of him.

One of our broody hens successfully hatched and raised three chicks and four guinea keets, one of them now thinks he is a chicken and continues to follow her around. Also, we successfully hatched a clutch of guinea eggs in an incubator and now have 11 young keets we need to sell. Our spring flock of layer chicks should be putting out eggs any day now. I think we have about 26 of them in addition to our other 7-8 adults. That will be a lot of omelets and quiche!

Incubator keets , 4 weeks old

Mother hen with babies, (photo a month old)

The chicks that hatched were from some cross breed eggs from a friend who had a rooster, as we did not. And of course, as you all know,  you need a rooster to fertilize the eggs if they are going to hatch. We ended up with one very interestingly feathered and colored charcoal gray bird that we think was aptly named Bruno, after the singer Bruno Mars... what do you think....

The garden blessed us with a bountiful harvest of  veggies this first year. We canned a lot salsa, spaghetti sauce, whole tomatoes, chutney, barbecue sauce, some pickles, green beans, froze a lot of peppers, zucchini, summer squash, beans,  snow peas, pesto sauce, jalapenos. Also a lot blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries in the freezer. This past week I have been tilling in  some cover crops and will replant an over winter cover crop in most boxes. Currently tomato plants and generally cleaning things up. Will try to get fall garden in this weekend. It should supply carrots, turnips, salad greens (most of winter), radishes, arugula, collards, etc. This winter and early spring plan to plant some of our own raspberry plants, blackberries, and some fruit trees. That should about fill in the space remaining.

Until next time...

HOT, again....

 Don't let the pretty flowers fool you, it has been HOT down here in NC!  Temps in the low 100's and upper 90's. Which I guess is close to the norm, but after fall, winter, spring, it seems I always manage to "forget" how miserable July and August are down here.

Despite the weather things are going well. The garden has been providing a good supply of fresh vegetable, and we have put up enough beans, pickles, squash, peppers to see us through the winter already. the tomatoes should be coming in any time now. We have gotten very little in the way of rain lately and have been watering parts of the garden every night. I feel we are just managing to keep things from burning up.

I completed the walkway from the garage to the house. That was a major project I will gladly cross off the "To Do" list.  The rocks were watered for the picture and to clean them off., they are not that shiny.

This is an evenings quick picking of summer squash, peppers, and a few stray early tomatoes. 

These are some of our 26 teenage chickens, should start producing eggs by October. I am pretty sure I heard a young rooster crow the other morning! We will see.

And this is Momma Buff who went "broody" this spring and hatched out these four chicks from a friends fertile eggs(well her chickens' eggs!) She has been a good mother to these. She also hatched out five of our own guinnia eggs a few days after these, unfortunately she did not want anything to do with them,and killed one. At that point I had to seperate them. They are alive and well under an intermittent heat lamp.

Our guinna hen went broody on a nest of  20 eggs out in our field, but that might be a whole 'nother  story....

                            Toby continues to grow and has been an excellent "farm dog " to date!

Springtime Happenings...

Greetings from the yet to be named farmstead...

Spring has been very busy down here, thus the lull in activity here. This is a hodgepodge posting of just a few happenings, seems I never have the camera available when I'd like it. There's one New Years' resolution out the window! 

So that friendly turtle face is just a passer by I noticed walking by my stone pile that has been waiting for a couple months to be turned into a path. I noticed this girl(?) wedged between two stacks of rocks. Hopefully she wasn't there too long. I think she came up from the big pond across our yard to lay eggs, or eat chickens?...Anyway we released her and found her walking up the driveway a couple days later, this time heading out to our field. We have not seen her since. 

Also encountered, captured, and relocated lately but not pictured (darn it!)  was a five foot black snake, and  a  big possum and raccoon that had been repeatedly climbing up the chicken coop wall and crawling in between the rafters(pushing in hardware cloth put there to keep them out!) and eating the cat food. It took me a while to figure that out, but I was wondering why the cat food dish was empty the mornings after I put it in the cat section of the coop at night when the cats were not even in there sometimes. Luckily they did not get the baby chickens that were right next door and accessible. 

The baby layers have done well. (pictures coming soon) we started out with about 45 and only lost one runt. One got an injured leg, but we managed to nurse her back. After giving and selling some we still have about 25 left.  

The garden has been doing awesome, this is a picture of some general growth a few weeks ago. The tomato plants are now four to five feet tall and with many baby tomatoes and blossoms. If no plague strikes we will have plenty to eat fresh, can, freeze, and share. Same it appears,  for the cukes, cantaloupe, green beans, peppers, and squash. 

This is an average picking of lettuce and arugula over the past few weeks, but now dwindling with warmer weather. 

The radishes were beautiful with no worms or pithiness, but like the lettuce, we planted way more than we could consume. Need to work on that next year. 

I never get the dill to be ready with the pickles! 

We planted a lot of herbs that have done very well so far. Planted this sage, and thyme in the foreground from seeds indoors. Also rosemary, chives, and basil that have done well too. 

For the first time our herb barrel has done well. The secret?- a sunny location and lots of water. 

Speaking of growth Toby is quickly becoming a big dog, and Shalo has really taken to being his primary young caretaker.

The kids are all growing  as well, yes they are all standing! 

And this is my next BIG project, these are just some of the stones,...still waiting for me to make them into a nice walkway from he garage to the house! More pictures of that coming soon!  But Jacob is in no hurry, he finds they make a nice warm perch at the end of the day.

Spring is in the Air!

Busy days at the little farm. After a fall and winter without the beef cows across the way we are excited to see the return of a new herd of about 30 black and red Angus cows. I suspect some of the previous herd is in freezers across NC.  As  usual the days have been busy around here as we continue to work at revitalizing the old buildings and getting the garden started.

We have gotten the new metal roof on the garage and replaced the two front support posts that were rotten and termite ridden. That job was hired out, as we just can't do it all. Though I think we could have if we had the time. This fall I am hoping to get it resided. The framing is actually pretty sound. I dream of adding rain a water collection system at the back which would probably catch enough water to water the garden. There are two "lean too"  sections behind the main "garage buildings.

Friend Andrew tilling new plot

Karen working the Broad fork

The garden plots are all prepped for what we will plant this spring and summer. That was one of the most laborious and time consuming tasks so far. The ground was hard as a rock(almost) and after the tiller broke up the top inch or two of sod, the rest of the deep soil loosening was done by hand, and foot. The broad fork is my new favorite hand tool. With some effort it will loosen the most compacted soil to about 12 inches deep. It took about 6-7 hours of work to prep each 5 x20 foot bed. We have 10 beds...

Tomato and peppers heading to garden

Our tomatoes,  not a vineyard...

 We have the tomatoes and peppers  in and a raised bed of various salad greens that will soon be harvest-able.  We had to cover them up a couple nights this past week after a cold front brought some frost this week. It looks like we dodged that bullet. I lost a little sleep over that. After raising the plants from seed, and planting over 40 of them it would have been a tremendous loss. Hopefully no more temps in the 30's at night.  When it warms up a little more we will plant the beans, summer squashes, cukes, and melons. Strawberries are ripe and and Karen and the kids picked several small pails and we have been eating them all weekend. Karen and Ethan also made some jam to enjoy over the rest of the year.



After the garden is in, the next big project is going to be laying the five tons of flagstone for our walkway from the garage to the house, about 115 feet. Surely that will be a piece of cake! :)  I think we are looking at several weekends of hard labor there.On a brighter note, our new chicks(45) to replenish and build our laying flock arrived in the mail this morning just as scheduled. We will keep about 20 and sell the rest to friends and neighbors. I forgot to get a picture of them. Next time.





 And last but not least an introduction to the newest member of our family... just arrived last Friday, semi spontaneously, and we have yet to come up with a name that suits him. He is part American bulldog, part shepherd, and only God knows what else, but we like the final package. If I do say so myself I have never seen a cuter puppy! 

                                                             As the kids say...OMG!




                                              Until next time....the view from the back four.....