Sunflower Bummer

August 2007 All the lovely lovely sunflowers were ready to shine...then the rains came and wiped them all out. Plant away from direct water flow from eaves, and provide support.

aug 8

major sadness here on the farm....our sweet dog louis either ran away or was stolen, we arent sure. he's been missing since last tuesday, july 30th. we made up lost dog posters and knocked on doors etc., but no louis. we'd finally kind of accepted that he's gone when yesterday we got a call saying they saw him, right at the end of our (very long) driveway! looking very lost and sad. but hours of searching and calling have so far yielded nothing. we'll keep trying though.

another chicken, the big rooster, 'broke' the other day, and sherm processed him all by himself. pretty impressive! i notice another is down but dont think i'll be taking it upon myself to take care of it. i did clean out the 'coop' all by myself the other day. felt like quite the authentic farm woman out there in my wellies and overalls, shovelling shit in the 90 degree heat. i do my part.

our new floors are gorgeous, and the new 'temporary' walls look great too. as sherm says, no fabulous or anything, just normal. like normal people live here.

its aug 8th and i am putting in the seeds for our autumn crop today. chinese cabbage, radishes, beets and cucumbers. our current crop of cukes are lousy. if they arent bitter, they are bizarrely large or misshapen.

Babies

Little Lena had 3 kittens Sunday, July 25th. The day before we found a nest of baby bunnies in the middle of our snap pea bed.

"Off With Her Head!" - Processing Chickens is Totally Gross

Yesterday sherm and i "processed" our first chicken. apparently the variety that we have, the cornish cross, is simply bred to be very fast meat producers so you dont have to keep/feed them for more that about 8-10 weeks. sometimes, for whatever reason, they "break" which i guess means they lose the ability to stand. we know this because about a week ago we pointed out this chicken that suddenly would not stand/walk to his step-father, who said, "oh yeah, it broke." and said we needed to process it asap because it wouldnt get better. we were not able to bring ourselves to do this until last nite, so we went about a week having to move the bird by hand so it had access to water and food.

i researched processing techniques on the net, and we had lots of advice from family, so we had a pretty decent idea of what we were up to. however, as neither of us had actually killed anything (on purpose) before, we were both pretty nervous about the whole thing. the poor bird was pretty complacent. she just sat there next to the cutting block, unable to walk, while i shoo-ed away our 3 layer hens because i didnt want them to see us kill a chicken. we had a kettle of boiling water on hand for dunking to open the pores and release the feathers. i held the body and looked away while sherm stretched the neck over the block and whopped off the head with one chop. then i had to hold the body neck down to let it bleed out. letting the body run about without a head is apparently not the right way to do it, from what i read online. this part was pretty horrible. soon as he chopped i looked over at sherm and saw him staring at the head on the ground with a weird look on his face. then i felt the body start to quiver and the legs were kicking pretty hard. i continued looking away and gagged pretty good a few times, but did not throw up. then i kind of started to cry but pulled it together because, as sherm said, this whole thing was my idea in the first place. i couldnt bring myself to look at it to see if it was done bleeding, so sherm let me know when it stopped. then we dunked it in the hot water for about 30 seconds or so, and started pulling off the feathers. they came off really easy, we were both surprised about that. then i used a set of kitchen scissors to cut open the body for the 'evisceration' process. that was gross. i did not set aside to later put into a baggie and freeze inside the body the liver, neck and gizzard as suggested in one of my research articles. the bird is pretty scrawny, but i think thats cuz it was not 'well' there at the end. sherm is supposed to grill it later tonite.

our cucumber crop sucks, the ones we picked so far have been so bitter they are inedible. i used organic seeds this year, as opposed to buying seedlings at menards last year. these are not the 'bush' variety either, and their shape is also very disappointing. large and not uniform. i thought maybe the bitterness was also a result of the organic seeds, but i guess it's some kind of chemical found naturally in the plants and effected by moisture and temperature. this is a drag because i opened a jar of last year's pickles the other day and they are really really good. i think i will go ahead a try to make a batch or two of pickles anyways.

we have about a gazillion sunflowers, planted from seeds from last years flowers. we are so happy that they actually grew! this year we are going to collect seeds from everything to grow next year. we even have some tomato plants this year that just came up i guess from fruit left on the ground at the end of last season.

we bought a big chest freezer and hope to be eating our chickens and frozen garden veg all winter. i'm planning to go with freezing and drying over canning for most of our storage this year.

Questions questions questions

RE: the chickens. We are at 20 and holding, barring any catastrophe, looks like 20 will be processed. (We are down to 3 layers/pets. Lou, newest dog member of our family, killed the lovely Vesslamay about a week ago. We mourn her loss deeply, she was the prettiest, and her eggs were a beautiful sky blue.)
I am in process of researching how to kill a chicken. We plan to slaughter, with the help of my parents, around the 2nd week of August. I am trying hard not to become attached to the chickens, who have become quite cute and friendly. We picked up the chicks May 26, I think they were only a few days old then. The man at the local feed co-op said we should process them at about 8-10 weeks. After that time they just eat and eat until they drop of heart attack or something. Thus far we have spent the initial $1.09 per 25 chicks, 5 bags of feed @ $10 each, $12 and $5 for feeders..(unecessary) and $35 for waterer. A few weeks ago, my mom paid $15 each for 4 organic chickens, so I think we are doing pretty well on our investment.
We are in the scary process of choosing heating systems and contractors etc for our total-renovation-of-farmhouse project. Finances dictate that our immediate investment goes into roof, foundation and heat source. We currently heat with a wood stove in middle of the house. Ambient heat, meaning, only warm right up near the stove. Also, very very very messy. We are looking into corn/wood pellet stove, maybe with gas as a supplement.

Chickens

started process of becoming potential organic chicken farmers. wednesday, picked up 25 adorable baby chicks from farm-n-fleet. setting up brood area, put water dish directly under heat light. thursday morning, 1 deaddrown chick, 2 verging on death. move water dish. at school, students place bets on how many live chicks kaaren will have by last day of school- june 7th. not too many votes of confidence. bets hover around 12-15. thursday afternoon, remove dead chick #2, pray over borderline dead chickie gasping for breath. all others look pretty good.
meanwhile, the 4 hens: vessie, polla, tyrina and odette are in hen house on lock-down due to bad behavior in the gardens. our challenge- find way to house all these damned chickens in humane fashion.
expediture so far, approx 25$ for chicks, 10$ for chick feed, 3$ for feed tray.

Winter Hell

Winter was hell.....sole source of heat the iron wood-stove with crazy old unlined chimney that crackled with creosote due to our burning green wood. Cant count how many panicky nites we had, with Kaaren running outside to check if there were flames shooting from the chimney while Shermen listened for fire in the walls. Kaaren resorted to showering at Mom and Dad's when the chill got to her. Shermen the trooper, still enjoying the novelty of hot water in a shower vs standing at the kitchen sink in a cooler with a cup the year before.
Still getting too late of a start...with the planting, all the seedlings we started with a grow lite in the cellar were wiped out by ladybeetles. Mint and dill need to be planted in containers so they don't take over whole bed.

2006 Garden Notes

2006 Garden Notes need good staking system for Tom's...rain and wind knock them over when heavy with fruit. Prune the crazy beautiful foliage off tom's so the energy goes into fruit. Stagger plant so you don't get entire harvest at same time = a lot of waste. Plant snow peas and onions earlier. Add sand to soil for root veg. Turnip greens and spinach attract flea beetles like crazy. Even pretty weeds are still weeds, they take over the beds.