Week #45 & #46: First Snow, Trail Maintenance & Yet ANOTHER Upgrade to the Chicken Run?!

We recently had our first little dusting of snow this fall which melted away in a day.  In fact, as I type this blog, we may break a record high for November 17th with severe thunderstorms in the forecast!

After testing out our new and improved chicken run, some of the chickens have still managed to escape.  There is a little space between the top of the door and the horizontal wooden beam above the door that they can go through, while the rooster can fly up and land on the actual beam!  After seeing two dogs in the yard one Saturday morning (and chasing them off the property) we added more wire above the door and above the wooden beam so hopefully no more chickens escape.  We shall see.....

Unrelated to a blog about trying to live a more self sustaining life,  for awhile we have been itching to place up trail signs at the entryways to the small trail that runs through the bush beside the property.  A few years back we bought little markers at the Algonquin Outfitters and now we finally got the chance to use them.  Aaron drilled them onto 4x4x10 posts and with the help a post hole digger, we placed trail signs at three different locations.  There's also a little separate trail in the bush which was perfect for a privy so Aaron built one.  We even have a little sign on the trail to show it's location as well.

The original length of the pole with the little trail marker sign

 

Finished sign at the beginning of the trail.  Not a good photo as it was a dark cloudy day.

 

Call it what you like: A privy, a treasure chest or a thunderbox, this is a luxury when you are back country camping in the woods!

WEEK #43 & #44: Chicken Run Upgrade

The chickens have had it kinda rough the past few weeks.  Everyday while at work we would keep them shut up in the coop and when we got home they only had maybe an hour max (sunset is now just after 5:00pm!) to be outside before having to go back in again for the night.  It was time to fix up their run so they can no longer fly out, and that they can actually be outside and go back in when they please while we are away at work.

We first raised up the height of the door, made a doorway for support, nailed a few more pieces of wood for support, and lastly attached more chicken wire on these supports around the run.  The run is now around 6 feet tall so hopefully they won't figure out (there are ways) how to get out.

Chicken "Fortress"

Everything outside is pretty much done for the year.  Our oats, peas and barley cover crop is coming up now in the garden plots which will be turned in next spring.  We are still eating the bounty of our garden and will be into 2014.  The latest thing that Aaron pressure canned was our potatoes into a potato leek soup.  For Marianne, having acorn squash cut in half and cooked in the oven with some butter and brown sugar makes for the best dessert in the world right now! :D  Along the pea trellis Aaron planted garlic bulbs.

Cover crops of various heights in the gardens

Marianne got a little creative and made a centrepiece for the table from various tree branches, flowers, and grasses from the property. The only thing that isn't real are the yellow flowers to add some colour.

 A fall centrepiece

WEEK #41 & #42:Thanksgiving & No More Garden

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving with their friends and loved ones here in Canada.  We hosted Thanksgiving this year and, of course, our garden took centre stage.  As mentioned in our previous post, we were originally thinking about having one of our chickens instead of the traditional turkey as a meat this year, but with our busy schedules, plus losing four individuals earlier this year, we decided to just have some turkey and ham instead.  Here is a list of what was on the spread on Saturday October 12th. One thing we can't believe we forgot to do was take pictures of the meal for the blog!! ARGHH!!

MADE WITH INGREDIENTS FROM OUR GARDEN:

Pickled Green and Yellow Beans
Pickled Beets
Green beans with garlic and mushrooms (minus the mushrooms and garlic)
Cooked Carrots (minus the butter and salt added)
Chips with salsa and sweet pickled cabbage (minus the chips)
Butternut squash pie (only the butternut squash and eggs were ours)
Garlic Potatoes (minus the garlic)
Sauerkraut for the ham

COMPLETELY NOT MADE FROM OUR GARDEN:

Ham
Turkey
Blueberry Cream Pie (made by Marianne's mom)
Apple sauce (made by Marianne's mom)
Whole wheat Apple Pie (made by Aaron's sister)
Cranberries
Homemade bread
Red and white wine
Beer

There was more than enough food for everyone with a few leftovers to boot!

Our remaining carrots and rutabaga finally got harvested and pressure canned. Our garden is now finished for the year 2013! Yeah!!

Our rutabaga harvest this year.  So many!

Our carrots all picked and pressure canned.

With the garden cleared, it was time to turn in some chicken manure from the local mushroom farm and plant some cover crop (peas, oats and winter rye).  So the chickens wouldn't go out and eat it all, we locked them in the coop for a week.  Needless to say, they were not impressed. One project we are going to have to do before the ground freezes is to raise the fence up higher so they can no longer fly out while we are away at work.  We have been leaving them inside the coop for so long now that we can tell they don't appreciate it and would rather be outside while the weather is still comfortable.

With some spare time on our hands now with the garden completely done, the following weekend after Thanksgiving we went away on a little road trip which included camping a night at The Pinery Provincial Park where we got to meet up with Marianne's sister and brother in law. It was definitely a chilly weekend though with temperatures just hovering a few degrees above freezing at night.  Frost is for sure a reality now as the days are getting shorter with sunrise just before 8:00 am and sunset around 6:30pm.  YIKES!!

Besides the canned jams and pears, everything on these shelves and in the crates are ours from our garden.  Hopefully next year it will be even better!!

Week #38, #39 and #40: Camping and Cleanup

It is finally Fall and everything seems to being slowing down rapidly here on the farm.  During the last three weeks we ripped out the rest of our corn and fed it to the chickens, rototilled and planted a cover crop of peas and oats in another garden plot, and actually managed to get away for a week of backcountry camping and canoeing in Algonquin Provincial Park. 

Campsite at Philip Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park.  We left from the Brent launch onto Cedar Lake on September 22nd and spent the nights on Catfish Lake, Burntroot Lake, Hogan Lake, Philip Lake, Radiant Lake and Cedar Lake. The trip was a lot of fun!

Our chickens are now laying 10 per day no problem.  Aaron knows a few people at his work place that will buy them so hopefully that will cover the cost of their food.

With our last remaining peppers (habaneros and Hungarian Hot Wax) we made hot sauce, along with a hot pepper powder. The habaneros are very very hot!  We also saved the seeds for next year.  Aaron also acquired some ghost peppers complete with seeds for next year.   Ghost peppers are 500% hotter than habeneros!  It will not take much to spice our meals next year if we can grow these crazy ghost peppers.

After skimming the skins and seeds from the top of the pot that we made our hot sauce in, we dehydrated it and used a Mortar and Pestel to crush the habanero/Hungarian wax pepper remains into a fine powder that is in this shaker.



We have a few remaining projects to hopefully get to in the last 12 weeks of the year which includes harvesting our last carrots and rutabaga, finishing the rest of the cover crop, making the fencing around the chicken run higher, and maybe building a cold store in the basement.

Next weekend we are celebrating our harvest by hosting Thanksgiving dinner that will feature many of the delectable delights that we have been blessed with this year from our hard work.  We were thinking about having one of our chickens instead of Turkey, but we decided with our busy schedules there wouldn't be enough time.  We just bought a large precooked ham instead. 

Week #36 & #37: Squash & Sweet Corn & Sauerkraut...YEAH!

Happy Fall everyone! Well, according to the calendar, fall doesn't start for another week, but in nature the season is well underway with birds migrating south, while in our area wagons full of field tomatoes are a common sight as they make their way to Heinz and other processing plants.  Elsewhere in the county, apples are now weighing down their trees, and grapes are ready to be picked for wine along the Lake Erie north shore.

Here at home we cut all of our Acorn and Butternut Squash off the vines.  Some of the Butternut Squash we discovered had gummy stem blight, while some of the Acorn Squash had a lot of squash bugs on them.  The squash bugs are just a nuisance and we brush then off, however the gummy stem blight gives our butternut squash reptilian like skin. The blight can be carried over in the seed and our squash seeds are from last year when Marianne's Gramma and Mom had squash, but they said there was no sign of blight.  Perhaps, like the late blight in the tomatoes, the wet summer created the perfect conditions.

Some of this year's harvest of Acorn and Butternut Squash.

 



Gummy Stem Blight on Butternut Squash

 



Speaking of the late blight, we removed the old tomato vines and burned them as it is not recommended to turn them over in the soil as the blight can survive overwinter.  Regardless, we will not be planting tomatoes or potatoes in that plot anyway in 2014.

We picked some sweet corn and BBQ it.  The texture is dense but it tastes very good. It probably would have tasted better a week ago when it was younger, but we were hoping the corn would keep growing bigger as the ears were really small.  This was not the case.

 Nothing says "SUMMER" better than sweet corn with salt and butter. YUMMY!

We finally ate some eggs this week.  They taste absolutely incredible and are a lot better than store bought eggs. We are starting to get seven a day now! 

The sauerkraut that has been sitting in the basement for over a month now has now been placed in jars and pressure canned.  It is a nice side to have with sausages.

Things are starting to slow down more as we approach the middle of September.  Once the corn is done, we just have the rutabaga, along with the occasional pepper and carrots left to pick.  Oh, wait...There is one more thing out there that we forgot to mention for the last few weeks. At the beginning of the season we planted edename (edible soybean)plants and we noticed that out of the 25 seeds we planted, only 3 plants came up.  What ever happened to those plants?

Week #34 and #35: The Good and the Bad...But mostly good :)

We always thought it might happen in the back of our minds, disease or predation, with our chickens being able to fly out over their fence and into the yard, but it was just that, a"what if". However, when Aaron came home one day and found a chicken that appeared to have been shaken by the neck, there was no doubt that something got it.  Three other chickens were MIA, just three conspicuous piles of feathers, and never found.  Even when we leave the gate closed, the height of the fence isn't enough to keep them in.  We stapled some wire to raise the fence up a little bit, but they jump up, land on the flimsy wire and hop out.  So for now, we are locking them up in the coop during the day while we are at work, and let them out when we are home, and on weekends.  With four chickens gone, we lost a quarter of our flock.

One of the chickens found dead outside the run.  The other three were never found, just the occasional pile of feathers around the property were located.

There is a little bit of a silver lining to this tragedy, as the remaining hens are beginning to lay eggs.  Not necessarily where we want them to in the coop (not in the nest box, but in a corner near their waterer) but at least they are laying them in the coop and not outside under bushes and trees.  The eggs are all different sizes and different shades of brown.

Eggs from our chickens. Notice the that they are not washed.  It is recommended that you do not wash them as the eggshell is permeable. Not sure how they taste yet.  We haven't had the chance to try one!

Aaron also decided to run electricity to the shed and the chicken coop so they can stay warm when it eventually gets too cold.

We also grabbed Gramma's sink and some old recycled picnic tables and plan to hook it up to the rain barrels later.

Chicken coop is now wired with two 100 watt incandescent bulbs. Two thirds of the glass has been painted over black, so they still radiate heat but not be so glaring to the chickens.

 

Reclaimed sink next to the rain barrels.  When eventually hooked up to the barrels, the small amounts of water draining out of the sink will land on the pine cones that act as a filter where the water will catch and evaporate.

With our tomatoes getting blight, we picked the best ones and tomato sauce and soup was created and pressure canned.  the tomatoes were lacking some of their natural sweetness this year, probably due to that blight.  Hot water baths are not recommended for canning tomatoes with blight  as the ph might bot be as low as it needs to be for safe water bath canning, which runs the risk of botulism.  That's enough of a reason to use our pressure canner as a fail safe.

The only crops left in the gardens are tomatoes with blight, rutabaga, carrots, acorn and butternut squash, a second planting of peas, our peppers, and our sweet corn.  Our sweet corn is getting corn smut, and although it is apparently edible for human consumption, we just give it to our chickens who love it.

Corn Smut is......yummy?

Our onions are now drying in the garage.

Aaron braided the dried leaves together and hung them in the garage.

Next week we are already into the month of September.  The nights are noticeably cooler now, and though we still have the occasional hot and humid day, the winds of autumn are definitely upon us.

WEEK #32 & #33: Blight & Butterflies, Salsa and Sauerkraut, Removing and Rototilling

It's been a busy couple of weeks with harvest in full swing, however as we approach the middle of August, many of our crops in the past week have been completely removed, and the plots turned over with compost. Here's a few tidbits of what has been going on crop by crop:

Zucchini: After making four loafs of bread, chopping it up for the freezer, making a dozen jars of relish, having the occasional zucchini with our meals, and even giving it away, we finally ripped up the crop as we were done with it before it was done with us.  HOORAY!

Acorn Squash: So far we have had two sliced in half with butter and brown sugar fresh out of the oven. YUMMY!  The rest continue to ripen in the field.

A couple of acorn squash ready to be picked in the weeks ahead

Butternut Squash: Continues to grow. Another bumper crop this year for sure.

Green & Yellow Beans: The crop is now ripped up and in the composter after getting one last big pick.  There is enough beans canned to last us a year in the basement. Not sure if we need to plant so many next year as we had way more than enough.

Cabbage: The last of the cabbage is now picked.  Aaron made a sauerkraut which has been lacto fermenting for the past two weeks.  The cabbage shared the same field as the beans, which is now rototilled with spent mushroom substrate, from the local mushroom farm.  Phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium and calcium are also in the manure which will add to the soil for the squash that will be planted in that plot next year after we plant a cover crop.

Sauerkraut lacto-fermenting in one of Marianne's Grandmothers sauerkraut crock.

 

 Aaron skimming off the floaties at the top of the water in the sauerkraut mix



Tomatoes: With a soaking summer, followed by a dry spell, our tomatoes ended up getting blight. Fearful that we might loose the whole crop we decided to pick some of the green tomatoes, some of our hot Hungarian wax peppers, some of our onions, add some lemon juice, salt, pepper and basil, and made 16 jars of salsa verde.  In the end, we actually didn't loose the whole crop and with the romas and beef tomatoes that are now red, plus some of our peppers and onions, we made 18 jars of a more traditional salsa.  The last little round of rain we had made our cherry tomatoes split, so we just go out occasionally and pick them to eat off the vine. They are also a favourite treat of our chickens :D

 Blight in our tomatoes

Peppers: We used our bell peppers for ingredients in salsa, and salad. The Hungarian wax peppers which are ridiculously stupid hot to eat, are also a great addition to salsa. The habaneros, which are even more nuclear, will probably be used for ingredients or dried.

 Hungarian yellow hot wax peppers.  They are not hot they are painful!!!!

Sweet Corn: Continues to grow.  Definitely behind the local harvest this year.  Hopefully they will be ready in a few weeks, as we haven't even had the pleasure of the local stuff yet!

Sweet Corn

Potatoes: The small ones are all canned and the rest are sitting in the basement.  The section of the garden they were in is now rototilled with spent mushroom substrate.

Potatoes are no more

Lettuce, and Radish Mix: The last of the radishes have been picked and are now added to the occasional meal.  This section of the garden has since been rototilled with poultry manure as well.

Rutabagas: They are at the right size now to be harvested, however it is recommended that you leave them until after the first couple of frosts so that the sugars from the leaves gets forced into the root we eat to give it some sweetness.  We are now wondering if we planted them too early.

Don't let this photo fool you, this rutabaga is almost the size of a volleyball!

Carrots: We planted two rounds of carrots this year.  The first round has been picked and is being eaten occasionally while the second round will probably be ready in a few weeks.

Onions: All the onions have now been picked, and will be added to salsa, while the rest will be hung in the garage for future recipes.

Our onions, along with the last of this year's cabbage

Besides the garden, our chickens continue to explore the yard and all it's treasures of bugs and grasses.  The rooster has been crowing for the last couple of weeks and is now courting the hens.  None of the hens have laid any eggs yet. Hopefully in the next few weeks.

Our handsome cock



"What's supposed to come out of my bum?"

 



We left the milkweed in the back field for the monarch butterflies this year as we have a bumper crop of milkweed, and being classified as a noxious weed, there are not many milkweeds to begin with around the area.  This is the only food source of the Monarch Butterfly.  Unfortunately, there is not a good population of Monarchs this year.  It has been speculated that a late winter in the southern states put a huge dent in their population as they make their way north from Mexico, across the states and into Ontario.  We have only had a handful of Monarchs in our yard this year. 

A worn female Monarch Butterfly.  We saw her a few days after this photo was taken mating with a male.  Hopefully another generation of Monarchs will be added to this year's very low population.

With all the goldenrod in the backfield as well, we decided to mow it all down in hopes that only the grass will return.  Perhaps having less weeds will deter the ever present Japanese Beetles from having such a massive population in our yard.  We placed out three traps, and they have been really efficient at capturing these invasive insects.  For the most part, they have left our crops alone this year which is a relief.

Japanese Beetle Trap at the edge of the field.  The trap is basically a bag which you can open from the bottom to empty the beetles.  On the top of the bag is a pheromone lure to attract them.

Close up of a Japanese Beetle on the side of the trap.