September on the homestead

[LeatherneckPA]

Well, here it is the 5th of September already and nobody picked up the ball. So I will.

Within the next week or so I expect to reduce my feed costs by approximately 50%. Yep, time to put the roosters in the freezer. My DW is dreading the time because she is very attached to Seymour, "her" rooster. I haven't told her yet that I am going to allow her to keep Seymour, despite the fact that he serves no useful purpose.

I just mail ordered my copy of The Whizbang Chicken Plucker Book (http://whizbangbooks.blogspot.com/2007/12/wb30.html) and expect it to take about a week to get here and a week to build. Then I'm going to cull the flock from 27 birds down to 12 hens plus Seymour.

[bee_pipes]

Seymour serves no purpose? He can fertilize eggs for an incubator so you don't have to buy chicks next year. We kept two roosters - one dominant and one backup. I was trying to be careful, but we lost both of them within a week. Still, we had 2 good years from Sluggo.

We hatched out a bunch of chicks in June, the cockerels are headed fro the freezer, but one will land a good position as the new flock roo. Sluggo's bloodline.

We have 11 turkey eggs cooking in the incubator right now. Late for turkeys, but we had a disappointing turnout from the last hatch and decided we had time.

Regards,
Pat

[sbemt456]

Well here in Kentucky we need rain so the late crops will grow. I got about 40 cabbage plants transplanted today, sowed mustard and turnips, also sowed more lettuce and put out some onion set for late green onions. The peas I planted a few seeks ago are looking good. But every body needs a drink.
My tomato vines are putting on more blooms and I thought they were mostly dead. Hubby helped me pick the Boone County white corn last evening to dry for cornmeal. Just picked the popcorn last evening too.
I have ordered 50 more cornish cross chicks that should be ready to butcher by the last week of October. They are due to arrive at my chicken house on September 17.
A friend gave me a bunch of winter onions and multiplying onions that I need to plant, but first I have to con some boys into helping me build a bed for them so they can be left there permanently.
I did get a chance to get on the 4-wheeler today and drive over the farm that I hadnt been on in a while and found my self a wild plum tree. Made a bee line for the house to get a bucket to go pick some plums for jelly. Guess plum jelly is my project for tomorrow. ;D
Any thing else that comes through my kitchen thats needs to be canned might be bound for the freezer, I have 3 dozen jars left and those are to can pears in, so for all practicle purposes I am done canning. Unless I buy more jars.

Happy Fall gardening to all!

stella

[MNMOM]

Stella,
Lucky you that you get to have a fall garden, we here in the north only get one.

However, I am still preserving that garden, I finally finished on the beans, had great production this year, I planted Blue Lake variety and will again next year. I froze and dehydrated a couple bushels. Right now, I'm working on tomatoes, dehydrating all the plum tomatoes. I will be freezing and dehydrating sweet corn this coming week. Look's like I will have a lot of brussel sprouts. Very few squash, never had a year like this for squash.

Making sure all my preps are in order for winter, going through all of them to make sure the oldest of these are in the front of the pantry and cold storage where they should be. Remember, rotation is very important.

[bee_pipes]

9/3
We picked up old guinea eggs around the place. We have found a number of nests with eggs of questionable age. Each old egg is a potential bomb – heat, fermentation and other processes happening inside the shell can make them pretty touchy after they have aged an appropriate amount of time. My neices and a friend did a bang-up job on collecting them all and there were no mishaps.

Tony came by with Charlene, a lady from New Orleans that is staying with them during the evacuation. We had a chance to hear about conditions in New Orleans from someone that is a life-long resident. She attended a Catholic grade school as a child, grew up and raised a family. The rebuilding process in New Orleans is progressing much like Iraq – lots of money spent and little to show for it, without the excuse of IEDs or insurgents. I think Regan was right – government is the problem – not the solution. Charlene lives in a one-room apartment and is not exactly leading a life of privilege – just your average working person. She came up here with her daughter and two granddaughters. The storm turned out to be relatively mild, when compared to Katrina, and they are now waiting for word that they can return. Power and sewage seem to be the hold up.

Tuesday vet visit for Zak. We spent a wad on worm and flea/tick meds. Four dogs really add up. He got a rabies shot and was given a clean bill of health – the actual vet visit was inexpensive, the medications were the bulk of the bill. While out in town we dropped off a trailer tire to get repaired at the CoOp. Typically something like that is a nuisance that you put off. It has a slow leak but has progressed from the point of refilling the tire every week or two to refilling it every day. Once the nuisance of maintaining it outweighs the nuisance of pulling the tire and taking it out to town… The CoOp charged me the princely sum of $8 to patch the tire – well worth the expense. We also stocked up on feed for poultry.

The meat birds are increasing the rate at which they consume feed. It is getting difficult to put a feeder into their pen – they stampede the feeder and make it impossible to load the trough into the shelter. It takes a little effort in creating diversions to draw their attention elsewhere. The small pen is getting crowded, causing Karen and I to discuss moving them to the chicken house. We are considering roofing in the guinea pen to hold the meat birds because we have to keep them separated. The meat birds eat a higher protein feed than the chickens do. The guineas could get along with the higher protein, though it could get expensive feeding them too, but the regular layers would get fat as ticks on such a premium, meat-building feed.

Karen starting on pickling peppers very early this morning. She has diced jalapenos and a variety called a salsa pepper. She was surprised at the heat of the salsa pepper. Diced hot peppers are my favorite. I have gotten into the habit of using them in the place of diced pickles in chicken, tuna and egg salads. They have a dill taste from the pickling process and bring a little zip to a sandwich. Once all was done, she diced a large pile of peppers and only got three pint jars. We also have a number of strings of peppers drying around the house. When these are dry she breaks them up into flakes and uses them for cooking. We don’t eat a lot of hot food but both enjoy a little heat in most meals.

I met Tony at the salvage job today. We removed what appears to be the last of the salvage. All that’s left is to clean up the job site and prepare the trailer for removal. We started on removing the fiberglass skirt around the trailer and hit a spot with a wasp nest. That brought things to a halt for the day. Underbrush was removed from around the trailer and the area dosed with a wasp/hornet spray. I don’t know if I got the nest with the spray – we may have to dose it again when we resume – but it should reduce the number of wasps to deal with when next we resume work. Tony and I dropped off the salvaged wood at our place then Karen and I followed him to his place for lunch. Charlene, Tony’s refugee houseguest, put on a fine lunch of jambalaya (sp?) prepared by herself and her two granddaughters. I had two helpings and by the time the meal was done we were all thinking of naps.

9/5
Yesterday was bread baking day. Rain most of the day too – a perfect set of conditions. Drier air and temperatures in the 80’s are supposed to result from a cold front pushing the remnants of the hurricane northeast. We received 1 ¾ inches, a welcomed amount of rain. With the weather not encouraging outdoor activity, bread making was a good chore to take advantage of the time inside.

The meat chicks are too big for the small pen and turkeys are due to hatch this week. Karen and I have discussed the matter and decided to build a small, roofed pen within the open pen. We examined a number of ways that we could do this, and this may be the simplest way to go. Thanks to the salvage job we have a number of old landscaping timbers with which to build a frame and tin roofing to cover the area. The amount of manure they produce is a problem, but straw on the ground can get a composting process started, making the soil rich and well worth harvesting for the compost bins. Isolation from the other poultry is necessary. The high protein feed these chicks are eating would look like filet mignon to the other birds. The sedentary nature of these birds has me in doubt if they could defend themselves against the guineas, which seem to bully all other birds. We had discussed roofing in the entire pen with wire, giving us two completely enclosed pens, but the presence of trees – a favorite roosting place for the guineas – makes this impractical. The guineas would put in many miles across a wire roof, as they do on the roofed pen we now have, and the droppings from these trees really pile up at the bottom and could be a nuisance. Add to that the fact that it would be difficult and costly to make the roof adequately high to stand up under and it just seems like there would be no net benefit in this approach. If we do decide to fence in the top, netting may be a more cost effective solution and could be accomplished with the support of the trees and chicken house.

The meat chicks huddle together in a corner of the pen for the night. These masses of huddled chicks get quite warm and could result in loss from suffocation if one or more wind up on the bottom of a huddle. They seem to have no real interest in perching – perches have been provided for them. They actually spend a lot of time lying down. I’d like to let them out to graze, but don’t know if they would have any interest in it. Their behavior seems similar to the descriptions I have heard of dark Cornish crosses, another meat bird. Broad breasted turkeys have this behavior to some extent – I don’t know if it is a matter of voracious appetite for feed or they are physically inclined towards this behavior. While they don’t spend every waking moment with their heads buried in feed, the feeders seem to have a steady trade in consumers. Karen and I have debated over whether their feathers are thin or plumage appears thin because it is white. We have provided them with shade to prevent sunburn and will have to trust their comfort will motivate them to seek shade or bask in the sun.

9/6
Today Karen and I started working on a new pen for the meat chickens. It took a week or two of pondering the arrangement to arrive at a vague plan. The new pen will be contained within the open top pen, requiring only that two new sides be constructed. The pen will enclose the chicken door, allowing us to control whether or not other birds are allowed in the guinea side of the house. Rather than a wire roof, we will be using scraps of metal roof. This will permit keeping food and water outside in the pen while protecting it from the weather. The new pen has possibilities for all sorts of arrangements in the future and between the two of us I think we have found a most flexible structure. The floor space freed up by moving feed and water outside has me considering a similar arrangement for the chicken side. We have scraps of roofing and it would be a simple matter, with all the scrap wood we have, to make a simple stand with a scrap of metal roofing to protect a feeder hanging within the stand. Space is at a premium in the chicken house and moving feeders and waterers outside would do much to fix this shortcoming. We have also discussed the idea of moving all the nesting boxes over to the chicken side of the house. It would be impossibly crowded with the feeder occupying the middle of the floor, but without the feeder there would be ample space.

We have had rain the last two days. Before the rain we were working at pulling nails from our salvaged lumber. When the rains came they soaked all the wood we had not gotten cleaned up, so most of the wood used for today’s construction was wet. We deliberately picked the worst pieces for the new chicken pen – no use using the best stuff. Some of the 2x6 had one rotten edge where it had been exposed to the weather before we salvaged it. We also had an abundance of landscape timbers. The fellow that owned the trailer was using them as anchors for the bottom of the skirt. They are in fair shape, considering they have been on the ground for at least a decade. The last owner used some large nails to anchor these timbers to the ground. I have found these large nails to be quite useful when building with landscape timbers or cedar poles, but I wasn’t able to pull them out. They seem to be well anchored to the wood and any attempts to drive them back out resulted in badly bending the nail. These nails sell for $1.09/ln. at the hardware store, so any that can be reused are a real find.

Today I saw what I believe may have been a fox. The guineas were squawking out by the ponds and I went back to see what the ruckus was about. Something slipped down into the brush around one of the ponds and disappeared. It moved like a cat, but was too small. Possums move much slower than that and raccoons have more of a waddling gate – whatever the creature was, its movements were almost fluid. A fox is the only critter I know of that approximate size that can move like that. The trap was put out by the ponds tonight – bologna and cheese. I have had a lot of luck with this bait. It gets pretty aromatic when it warms up and starts to turn.

Chiggers seem to be in season again. I have been wading through brush waist high at the salvage hob and my legs are covered with bites all the way up to my crotch. About 1 AM this morning I was awakened by itching and couldn’t stand it another second. I got up and painted all the bites with clear fingernail polish – a considerable number of bites by this time. That brought some relief. The fall season for chiggers is much shorter than the spring season – this will be an unpleasant memory in a few weeks.

Regards,
Pat

[WileyCoyote]

Watch those wasps, Pat! We had a neighbor that was taking out an old trailer much as you describe, and the wasps had built an underground nest that was 50 feet wide, 10 feet long, and - when they finally burned it out - dug down four feet deep!


We've been busy, too - took two truckloads of completely unusable stuff to the Dump Wednesday the fifth. Canned another 12 quarts of pickles, dried a dehydrator full of apples, then tomatoes, and bake five more loaves of bread. Got a wedge so we can schmack the larger logs down to size, and gathered up all of the wood for the woodpile, separating the pieces by size, lined up down the east side of the garage. Then tarped the woodpile. We stacked up metal sheeting, ironwork, and fencing - all types of fencing, from chicken wire thru barbed thru hog - all against the north side of the old garage, tying everything together so it is secure (winds here are pretty fierce). We cleaned up the back garden and got all of the old garbage, carpet, and trash up. Hubby made new feed troughs for every stall in the pole barns. We rented the pasture to three horses til the snow flies, so we wanted the stalls fixed in case they need fall shelter - so we filled in holes and nailed up slats that were pulled loose between the stalls and on the fences and gates for the corrals.

Today we pretty much goofed off.... except for a little housecleaning! It is supposed to rain off and on all weekend, but so far nothing but clouds... I got out my fall decorations and towels and housewares and changed everything out; now the house smells all cinnamony from the potpourri they have been sitting in, in the bags and storage boxes, all winter and summer... All I have to do now is make my fancy scarecrow for the front porch and I'm done... til I harvest the sunflower seeds and basil and marjoram... grin. Waiting for the first frost to come (it already happened in the valley next to us) so I can harvest the horseradish. Even with the grasshoppers, there is a bumper crop this year. And I am waiting for my walking onions to come in to get them in the ground, and working on the compost pile...

[sbemt456]

The way we are all hustling about you would think fall was upon us. :o Be dang it is!
I got my plum jelly made this morning and it is a beautiful rosey mauve color. And taste good too. Hubby and I had biscuits and plum jelly for dinner tonight. And to think I used to fuse at my boys when they wanted sweets instead of real food.
The weather was great here today, not too hot, good working outside weather. Got the hen house cleaned out today, totally freaked the hens out. Also got the other chicken house cleaned out for the arrival of my babies on the 17th.
Weeded my herb bed again to get ready to cut down and mulch after I get the horseradish dug in a week or so.
In my plundering about today I spotted several wild grapevines. Here in Kentucky we call them possum grapes. Make good jelly though. Got to keep an eye on them and fetch them before the critters do.
I think it rained every where but on our farm today. My mother came for a short visit today and she lives about 3 mile away in town and she said it rained there this morning and not a drop here. Maybe tomorrow.

stella

[mom]

We brought home a small wood stove'heater yesterday. We only needed something for a little boost in our heat and this one is said to heat 800 sq ft I have enough limbs dropping off the pecan trees to feed it almost entirely through the winter. We actually got it at Tractor Supply for $149.00 and it fit in the back of my car. We had been swinging back and forth between a wood stove and another non-ven natural gas heater - when we saw this stove (if the power goes off I can make coffee and cook on the top of it - got to get your priorities in line and coffee is a priority ) and this one fit the price, amount of heat, etc. If you are looking for a small wood stove you might check out the site.

[bookwormom]

looks like everybody is really busy. I canned a bunch of raspberry muffins, froze 'fruitcups' with melon, grapes, peaches and raspberries. Rather than just putting it all in freezer bags I used some oversize muffin tins, lined them with plastic, filled with chopped fruit and wrapped, then when they are frozen I will put them in gallon freezerbags and take out as needed.
we are grazing the calves, mommas and our yearling heifer on the lawn, which has not been mowed in a long time. there is some good forage on there for them. we cleaned up the barn, put lumber in the loft, stacked cement blocks and I got the taters dug. I need to till the patch and seed it in winter wheat next. I resowed lettuce, endive, radishes in the hope to get some fall garden. the heat killed my first planting. who was it who said that the simple life aint simple. there is truth to that. we have 3 foot lengths of firewood stacked and drying all summer, but not cut up and put in the woodshed.

[Suzy]

wow! You are all an inspiration to me!!!

I have to get a timer for a light for early morning for the chicken house....never used a light before but going to try one this year because I have so many egg customers...So buying that is a priority for me this week...

I've been making jelly like crazy lately because I sell that in my tiny farm store here on the farm....yesterday I made persimmon jelly, and recently I've made tomato jelly, mint jelly, and then the usual apple and blackberry....Next year I'll make way more honeysuckle jelly because that sold out as quickly as I made it!

I have to get the pears canned this week because too many of them are falling off the trees! The majority of the pears will go in my stash because they are great with biscuits in the winter, or with cottage cheese any time!

The twin pgymy goats were born August 28th and they have really livened up the homestead....they are so cute playing with the two-month old Muscovey ducks....the little goats will bounce around and chase the ducks, then the ducks will turn and one will chase them! It's usually one of the two silver-colored ducks that plays the most (all the other ducks are black like their parents except for one brown one....don't know where these other colors came from!)...

Trying to decide which Angora rabbits to breed this fall...they do so much better with cold weather births around here!

really need to go ahead and can up some "granny soup." This was vegetable soup my granny used to can....throwing in whatever vegetables she had at the time but GRATING her potatoes instead of putting them in there in chunks and then grating cabbage if she had that too...makes wonderful vegetable soup....so I may try to get to that this week too!!!

Got two baby quilts to finish for my farm store as well...usually quilt while husband watches the news at night and whenever else I am still in my chair!
Trying to get some writing one on the side to get some money to pay bills as well! So that's been the last couple of weeks so far at Old Field Farm!

[LeatherneckPA]

I have found these large nails to be quite useful when building with landscape timbers or cedar poles, but I wasn’t able to pull them out. They seem to be well anchored to the wood and any attempts to drive them back out resulted in badly bending the nail. These nails sell for $1.09/ln. at the hardware store, so any that can be reused are a real find. -Pat
Pat, my father made a useful tool back in the early '90's when he was trying to recycle timbers left in the trailer park when they bought it. He took a piece of pipe with about the right ID and used it as a sleeve for a piece of re-bar as a punch. Drove them right out, without bending them into uselessness.

Yesterday, I finally built/installed the nesting boxes on the outside of Cluckingham Palace. Nothing special, nothing fancy; just 1x12's and some cutting and nailing. My wife however, is completely ga-ga over the door latches. Since I couldn't put the nesting boxes inside the fence like I wanted to I decided that only one box at a time should be opened, which meant three separate doors. No biggie. But I didn't want to trust to hook-n-eyes. So I made wooden door turns. Just pieces of wood, 3/4" x 1" x 3" long. Pre-drilled for easy turning of the screw shank in the hole, chamfered the ends and sanded round overs on all the edges. Think true Colonial cabinet doors and you'll get the idea. Sometimes it takes SO little to amuse her. (Guess that's a good thing for me.)

[bee_pipes]

Karen did a little research on the web about Cornish crosses, a bird very similar to the meat birds we have. The news is not great. We discussed repeating this experience in the future and decided to go with a meat bird that is not quite so prone to fast growth and the health problems these kinds of birds are susceptible to. This winter will be spent researching breeds to find the best compromise we can come up with. The last thing we want to turn loose in the yard is an aggressive meat bird to terrorize our docile little flock.
http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Cornish-Cross.html

9/9
The last three days have been spent working on the new chicken coop. Karen and I got the basic lay-out done, the base in place and two of the posts up on Saturday. On Sunday Tony came over and helped. We really got a lot done with Tony’s experience. His knee is giving him problems, so he’s not at 100% at the moment, but even with that working against him he really saved the day. I am grossly inexperienced when it comes to basic construction, though I seem to be able to muddle through. It’s a matter of solving one problem after another, making decisions as they come up to reach the basic idea I had in mind. Comparing my meager skills to Tony is like comparing a chess novice to a chess master – he’s about 10 moves ahead of me at all times. I always learn a lot from him in just one afternoon’s work. By the end of the day we had the structure completed and the door framed. When I look at the coop it’s hard to understand why such a simple structure should take so long, but I can’t argue with the results. We wanted to go simple, building it into the fence of an existing pen so that we would only need to construct two sides of the coop. The remaining two sides are provided by the chicken house and the fence of the original coop. With the exception of three pieces of 2x4 left from previous projects, the new coop was built entirely from salvaged materials.

Since it was only a chicken coop, we used the roughest stuff we had – wood that was in bad shape. We have de-nailed and cleaned up the nicest pieces of wood already, so our construction materials came from the pile of stuff “yet to be done”. This lumber, with nails poking out of it in every direction, was not covered during the two days of rain we received recently – it would have shredded any tarp you tried to cover it with. Pulling a piece of wood to use involved de-nailing and general appraisal to determine how much of the piece was usable and if it would fit the present need. We have tons of 2x6 and 2x8, but framing the door was best done by 2x4. There was 2x4 in the pile, though much of it in extremely rough shape. Between the new pieces lying around and this rough stuff, we managed to frame the doorway and build a door. Fortunately, most of the salvages stuff was in lengths of 10-12 foot, so we could trim splintered and rotted ends off. The slickest part, in my opinion, was the roof Tony came up with. My approach would have been to put up eaves made from 2x6 and put down nailers across the eves. Tony came up with eves that fit flush within the frame and put lengths of 2x6 between those eves, also flush with the frame. This added substantially to the strength of the structure and nicely sidestepped the problem of gaps between the frame and the roofing. Usually this gap has to be filled with chicken wire or some other screening to prevent varmints from getting into the house through the roof. It does provide ventilation, but with the sides of the coop being wire already, I don’t think that will be much of a problem. The metal roofing will fit flush with the frame of the structure and have ample support from the roof underneath. Rather than 1x4 nailers holding the roof down, we now have a grid of 2x6 that can support the weight of an adult.

Yesterday Karen and I wired the outside of the coop and built the door. I did a little reinforcing of the doorway to provide a good surface for hinges and attaching the wire around the door. We started working on the door after the wiring, following a pattern we came up with while building the chicken house. It is a simple frame of 2x4 attached to each other edge to edge. The longest screw we have is 3 inches. To get good penetration we drilled a large hole in the edge of the 2x4 two inches deep so the screws could be sunk into the adjoining board. A basic 4 sided frame with a fifth piece in the center for reinforcement and we have a door. Hinges were salvaged and we had enough for three to give the door ample support.

The only job left was roofing. We had a good supply of metal roofing from the salvage job and needed to trim it into lengths of 96 inches. Here again Tony saved the day. Cutting metal roofing can be frustrating with only tools found around the house. Tin snips are tedious, a jigsaw is insane, and a dremmel with a cutting wheel is like using a teaspoon to dig a hole. Tony suggested putting the blade of a circular saw in backwards and using that. Genius! It worked like a charm! Though I would recommend using hearing protection when cutting metal roofing this way – my ears are still ringing. I also had the presence of mind to put the blade in correctly after we were done to prevent cutting wood in the future with a backwards blade (I could see me forgetting we had reversed the blade and wondering what was wrong with the saw). Tony suggested a paneling blade. We didn’t have one, but the regular blade worked quite well and made quick work of the job. Some of the roofing was in bad shape – bent and dinged – so we straightened it with a small length of wood and a rubber mallet. The wooden straight edge worked nicely in corners, pounding the metal to its original flat shape against a flat surface, and even worked on the corrugated parts of the roof. There are a number of holes in the roofing from old screws and nails, but these will be sealed with silicone caulk as the panels go up. We ran out of time yesterday and had to settle for roofing panels cut to size and staged on the roof, ready for installation on the next day.

The weatherman predicted dry weather for today, so we left things ready for work this morning. As usual, the weatherman was just as reliable as he always is (when will I learn?) and it is raining. I did get tools and such picked up and put on the porch, but we have 3 piles of lumber uncovered and they are getting a nice soaking. We had hoped to get the meat chickens moved into their new quarters by lunchtime, but now it looks like we will be lucky to have them moved in by bed time. The only consolation is that the metal roofing was laid in place on the coop roof, so most of the lumber the roofing will be screwed into is still dry. The ground underneath will also be relatively dry. The meat birds, as mentioned, produce an incredible amount of manure. All of our chicken yards are turning to gravel as the chickens scratch dirt out from around the resident rocks. Yesterday, before knocking off for the day, I took a garden rake to the ground inside the pen and got up the bulk of the gravel. We will cover the ground with straw and have a more sanitary arrangement for litter in this new pen. Even with the rainy surprise, it is hard to complain about any rainfall.

We finished the chicken coop around 1 PM. When we filled the feeder we emptied the second bag of game bird food. A quick run to the CoOp for feed and the new birds were put in their new quarters. This will probably be their last bag of food before slaughter. I was surprised at how big they have gotten in the last two weeks – they are as big as birds that hatched two months earlier. I can see the attraction of this breed.
(mozilla/firefox users right-click view image for larger picture)
http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk217/patandkaren/chickencoop.jpg
all salvage materials except for (3) eight foot 2x4

Regards,
Pat

[WileyCoyote]

That is AWESOME!!! Kudos to the hard work, Pat!!!

I think we'll be going with Barred Rocks come spring. I like the interesting color patterns, and they are a contributor gene to the Cornish, but without all of the leg and weight problems. Plus they are good layers, and supposedly will withstand cold weather.

[LeatherneckPA]

Pat, looks like a nice coop.

Wiley those are a lot of the same reasons why I have such a mixed flock. Mine includes Barred Rocks, Black Australorps, NH Reds, and Gold Laced Wyandottes. I believe the BR's, NHR's, and BA's should weather the winter well. Which is good, because out of 6 GLW's I only got 1 hen.

Tomorrow morning we park "The Palace" in the back corner and the birds become more or less captives, albeit with generously appointed quarters.

I surmised I would be more satisfied with dual-purpose breeds than exclusive meat or GE breeds. Hence all the old stock. Unfortunately I wasn't set up for processing them early enough. I suspect that I could probably have put my roos in the freezer somewhere between 12 and 16 weeks, somewhere around 50% longer growing out than Cornish X.

[bookwormom]

Yesterday, I finally built/installed the nesting boxes on the outside of Cluckingham Palace. Nothing special, nothing fancy; just 1x12's and some cutting and nailing. My wife however, is completely ga-ga over the door latches. Since I couldn't put the nesting boxes inside the fence like I wanted to I decided that only one box at a time should be opened, which meant three separate doors. No biggie. But I didn't want to trust to hook-n-eyes. So I made wooden door turns. Just pieces of wood, 3/4" x 1" x 3" long. Pre-drilled for easy turning of the screw shank in the hole, chamfered the ends and sanded round overs on all the edges. Think true Colonial cabinet doors and you'll get the idea. Sometimes it takes SO little to amuse her. (Guess that's a good thing for me.)

??? ??? doors on nesting boxes? I hope the hens get a key. ;) my hens are quite eccentric when it comes to nesting boxes. Usually there is one nest they all want to use, so they stand in line and no use putting them on a perfectly good nest that is not "in".

stella, I am wondering where you got cabbage plants, I planted some in the shade, they all came up but then died from heat exaustian. I have one endive plant left. But I see the turnips are up and standing, and we are supposed to get cooler weather and some rain. hope it is true.

If you are just dreaming about homesteading, remember, you have to work your butt off for everything. I just got in and it is dark. got the wheat planted, a new strawberry bed started but not all the plants transplanted. since I let the cows graze on the lawn I have to keep an eye on them and then get them back to their pasture, but not let the calves out, as they are to be trained and have their own paddock where I let the mommas in to nurse them. It is all a lot of song and dance. Keeps me running, otherwise I would put on weight. my sister in law was here and wondered how I could eat so much. Huh? and I thought she did not like my food.
The red raspberries are still bearing and I picked six quarts yesterday morning. They are jam now. Got bread for the next two weeks baked, hay was delivered today, sweet hubbies shoulder will hurt him tonight. It is really nice alfalfa hay, five bucks a bale. How much is hay in your area?

[sbemt456]

Bookwormom I had seed left over from the spring planting and potting soil so I just filled up my seed flat about 3 weeks before planting them in the garden. They were about 4" tall when I put them in the garden but they are doing great. No one here in East Ky that has greenhouses start cabbage in the fall so I did my own. Most people around this area are old school and believe in planting the garden by April 15th and get it harvested in early fall, very few except some of us adventurous ones plant fall crops. Now my little broccoli is a whole different animal. They are still about 3" tall and stuck there.
I have canned a ton of tomatoes and a friend has brought me more for the past week. I had mentioned to him that I was out of canning jars and he brought those too. So as long as there are tomatoes I will can them till the cows come home.
We got a little rain here this morning and some today, which will help the things that are left in the garden.
We did dig into the sweet potatoes this evening and they are looking like they will be awesome. Got enough out for dinner tomorrow.
So far this year I have canned 586 jars of stuff. We are out of pantry and storage space so the next big project is to build a root cellar to store all the canned food in. ;D I cant wait.
Any one who has built their own root cellar and is willing to share their ups and downs and should haves please send me a PM. All advice is appreciated.

Have a great day!

stella

[bookwormom]

I am still not clear on those cabbage plants stella. You mean you started them in the greenhouse? last year I started broccoli and c abbage on the windowsill in my studio where it is more comfortable temp wise. but the moment I transplanted them outside they all died. I attributed it to the heat as I watered them.
it looks like asparagus will do well here. I have a lot of new plants, some in pots (doing fine) some in the row, also fine.
well, just got back from the fleamarket in Leitchfield and need to catch up with my work. I did get a red toolbox for sweet hubby to put his critter equipment in. Last time he needed the gizmo to castrate little bucks he looked high and low for it. I hope he will not misplace his new toolbox.

[sbemt456]

Bookwormom, sorry if I confused ya a little, I used trays like you would use in a green house filled with potting soil and put in seeds, watered well, covered with saran wrap and put them out on the back deck in the shade. They sprouted in just a few days and grew. I always store my seed in the freezer and they were cold when I put them in the seed flats which were very warm from being outdoors so they sprouted quickly. When I could see little green things under the saran wrap it was removed. Just water when needed and they do fine. I have learned from a friend with several greenhouses that if you let the plants wilt a little between waterings they develope fatter stems, and it worked for me and tomatoes in the spring.
I dont have a green house yet but a friend of mine has a business with about 4 big greenhouses, and she is the one who told me that there was no demand for fall crops in our area. Even the farm stores and other places that usually have plants in the spring dont do fall crops. So around here you start your own or you dont grow them.
Is aspargus hard to grow? I would like to see if I could grow some. I guess I am just on a kick to try to grow a little of everything. I even planted horseradish this year, now just got to read up on it and see when I should dig it. If the size of the plants is any indication of the roots I should have a bunch. Then I can start looking for recipes. Hubby says he dont like horseradish, but we will just see how much he eats. Same with the plum jelly, said he didnt like plums, and then he ate the most.
Bookwormom how far are you from Murray? I think I am going to be in that area in the next couple of weeks.

I have wasted this entire day, havent done a thing on the farm or canned any thing. Gathered the eggs and that was it. Maybe tomorrow will be different.

Have a great day!

stella

[WileyCoyote]

oooooh, sbemt456, I just moved to our new place, and what should come up in the middle of the garden but a HUGE patch of horseradish! It has got to be 25 feet long by 4 feet wide!

They say you should not dig it til after the first killing frost, when the leaves are 'bitten'. *I am going to be doing a lot of digging... for one thing it is invasive and the plot needs to be cut down (old horseradish root is too tough to be chopped up), for another thing, I am thinking about ways to use it!
Here's what some of my research has turned up:

"Wasabi" for sushi can be made from horseradish; many restaurants actually use it plus green food coloring instead of the wasabi hot sauce. I don't get much sushi where I live any more, but for my sushi-eating friends, this might be fun!

You can't really can it and expect it to keep its heat, from everything I've read, the ground or chopped root loses its heat in a few weeks.

You should probably wear gloves or wash hands frequently while handling it so you don't inadvertently touch your mucous membranes, especially your eyes.

The sooner you add water/vinegar/oil after processing - preferably WHILE processing - the less hot it will be.

You can mix H-root with mineral oil, let it set, then strain it - and have a rub for sore muscles and arthritis.

You can keep the unpeeled root in a cellar or cool place for several months. I'm thinking canning jars in the basement until use.

I've found many interesting recipes on the internet, but I've been pondering quietly to myself. If you can mix capascin (hot pepper) oil for an insect/animal repellant in the garden, why couldn't you use horseradish the same way? *I'm going to try it! After all, thanks to the previous owners, I've got a LOT.

Also, thanks to the previous owners, there is an asparagus bed. They harvested before we moved here in May, but it is hilled up very nicely against a north fence, and kept right on growing. The owner said she planted it five years ago and it has spread slowly. The soil is sandy, but she said she watered it and fertilized it every spring and got quite a bit. I love asparagus but no one else in the family does... more for ME! LOL

Today we glazed some windows, drove to 'town' 40 miles one way to get a prescription and horse feed, and discovered that 25 lb bags of sugar were $5 off; I made a full size scarecrow for the front porch and dug up some blackeyed susans to put in a pot to keep him company. I also decimated some old shirts for quilt squares. Someone abandoned a red retriever near a ranch north of us and she has made our way to the farm. She is very sweet and smart. I'm beginning to think I am a Stray Magnet! *::)

Tomorrow I will be digging the field for my walking onions, baking more bread and working on my quilt squares. It is supposed to rain... at least I won't have to water my new plants!

[bookwormom]

in my sandy soil here asparagus is not hard to grow at all. We love horseradisch, I planted some the first year we were here and I froze it. it worked fine. if you put it in a sterlilzed twist off jar it will keep a long time in the refrigerator. Horseradish has so many health benefits. I have to look in my l notebook where I write unusual recipies and such. In spring you can use the leaves for stuffing like stuffed cabbage. Our very favorite is a recipe from Austria, 'Tafelspitz' which is long simmered beef, preferably from the shoulder, although the original uses a different cut. It should be very tender. then you make a light brown reoux (hope I spelled that right) add some of the broth to make gravy and flavor it heavily with grated horseradisch, salt and pepper of course. slice the meat and cover with the gravy, some people like it with potatoe dumplings, but it is just fine with boiled potatoes, and some steamed vegetables like green beans. You are lucky Wily that all those goodies are established already. the only thing established here are really tough weeds.

walking onions, can you elaborate some on that? (I have never seen an onion walk, just could not resist that) Is it the same as Egyptian onions and winter onions? I was given some and have no idea how to deal with them.
Boy you ladies sure are busy. I am not even thinking of things like quilts. I finally got my wheel and a friend from church is supposed to do some electrical work so we can hook up a kiln. I would have liked to build my own gas kiln, but I am so busy I have lost courage. it is nothing I can do on the side. I got too many quart jars and not enough pints. just bought another four boxes. Most of my jars are second hand and there just were not many pints. I used to have over 400 and filled them every year, then when we moved overseas I put them in the attic. when we sold our house up in Indiana the jars were all gone. Nothing I could do. the people who had rented our house left six months of unpaid rent.

well, just picked three quarts of raspberries, they are winding down now. I am trading some, pound for pound, for blueberries. It looked like rain but was just fooling. the inch we got theother day has been used up.
today I cleaned out the sunflower patch, tilled it and am ready to plant it in crimson clover the moment it rains. One hen gets out all the time and nobody knows how. she got into the potatoe patch, now wheat patch and had a good time. while I had the tiller running I tilled two more rows for strawberries and got them transplanted. well, I better go and gargle with hydorgen peroxyde. feels like a sore throat is coming on. I have been feeling like I was put through a wringer.
You all have a really good day. May all your endeavors work out like planned.
:)

[jen_in_southtexas]

Well I cant seem to get my cabin project started. We have had lots of good rain these last coupla weeks on and off. On Labor Day weekend, I was going to start on the floor of my cabin project but when i got there on Friday afternoon, it was raining hard and a friend of mine said that it had been raining over there for 3days straight. The ground was soaked and the skeeters were so so bad. I was very disappointed because i was really looking forward to start on my project.

When i left there I called my good friend in East Texas and told him about my plans being ruined. Needless to say, I ended up in the East Texas Piney Woods for the entire Labor Day weekend. I had so much fun over there. On Saturday morning we hitched the trailer up to the ATV and went into their woods to gather/cut some wood. While there he introduced me to muskie-dines. We found only a handful but they were delicious! Everytime I go there I dont want to come home. It is beautiful there. We ended up BBQ-ing a brisket Saturday night, went swimming at night, drove around Sunday early PM and went catfishing in their pond. It was good to see him and his family and I cant hardly wait to visit again.

Yesterday(Wednesday) my boss told us to take Thursday and Friday off to prepare for Hurricane Ike. Things were still up in the air about where it might be landing. As it stands right now it looks like it is going to hit hard in the Houston/Galveston area. Of course we will still get lots of rain and wind in my area and should still take precautions because it is a HUGE storm. Yesterday after work, I went to my property to tie down some loose material. I dont have much too much there as far as belongings. It will be a while yet before i can check on things. I had just put up some fencing last weekend and i hope it holds.

I have been having riding lawn mower issues. I posted it under "Tractors" section. Any advice is appreciated.

It is nice reading everyones projects going on on your homesteads. Until then.

-j

[bookwormom]

sounds like you had a wonderful labor day weekend. :) we did labor all day long.

[bookwormom]

did I say hallelujah it is raining? well I take it back. It rained one inch and I don't know what made me think it would break the drought. that inch has been used up and I am back to watering things to keep them alive.
we were hoping that we would get at least some rain from Ike but nothing. Not enough to settle the dust. at least right now it is not so hot anymore. I transplanted more strawberries and unlaoded a laod of manure where I want to make garden number six.
we got a new kitten. what we need is a barncat or two, the mice were carrying the place away. I guess Oscar will do. he has caught a few mice, little ashe is, and is learning that he is supposed to stay at the barn and has the two GPs charmed. He takes turns eating with them out of their bowl and I have to take a picture, it is too cute, the little black cat and the big white dog eating together.

[sbemt456]

Bookwormom we didnt get as much rain as you. We just got enough wind to create a nice breeze and make working out side comfortable. I am not complaining about not getting the wind mind you. It was nice enough that I stood on the back deck and cleaned a bunch of canning jars that I had stored at the old house in the crawlspace and it was just beautiful fall like weather.
Back to canning tomorrow.

Have a great day!

stella

[jen_in_southtexas]

As it turns out, we hardly got any rain from Ike. We got some wind but not alot. It was terrible to hear about how bad the other areas got hit.

Saturday i went to mow my property with a PUSH mower. Mainly I mowed the "common" area like where I like to sit under the two big trees. I got carried away and while i still had some wind in me I kept mowing and mowing so i ended up mowning about 1/3 of one acre. The yard really started to take shape and look pretty but it got tiring with that heavy mower so I stopped to rest and to throw some short ribs on the pit. It was very overcast and the temperature dropped to about mid 70's and that is a real treat for us. It was one of those very quiet and pleasant country evenings. How I had wished i couldve spent the night there. It was perfect. After about an hour it started to steadily sprinkle. Its a good thing i had just about finished with my short ribs. Needless to say I packed up things in the truck and reluctantly made my way home.

Temperatures have been in the low 70's to upper 60's in the evenings and any south texan will tell you that is a very nice treat. You'd think we won the lotto.

There is a 50/50 chance i may leave town this weekend for a family function but that remains uncertain. If i dont leave town, Im going to try and finish the fencing on the back of the property...the Tposts are set in place just need the fencing and I bought the fencing last week. Also am going to buy some material for the making of my cabin. I have done my homework by comparing material prices and found that Sutherlands in a town about 13miles away has the cheapest prices.

I hope everyone is enjoying their homesteading projects.

Until then......see ya in the woods.

-jen
eL Chiquito Ranch
South Texas

[bookwormom]

good luck with your fencing, I hope you have someone to help you. those rolls can be heavy. prayers and blessings, rooting here for you on your cabin project :)

[WileyCoyote]

Well, we finally got the woodstove pipe replaced!
The woodstove pipe had a leak in the roof seal. Even tho' the house stood vacant for almost 2 years, the owner indicated that the leak had gone on for much longer, while they were still in the house.

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk312/WileyCoyote_NE/Work%20On%20the%20House/IMG_0459.jpg


Now check this out! We replaced the rusted-out bottom pipe, sealed the top outside on the roof with heat sealing caulk, and I wirebrushed and steel-wooled the exterior of the stove (and the castoff cast iron pot and li too) and oiled everything...

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk312/WileyCoyote_NE/Work%20On%20the%20House/IMG_0330-1.jpg

All told it took about 6 hours yesterday. Today it is raining - and not a leak anywhere!

(yes, I did have to brighten ithe last pic up, it was pretty dark, hence the weird back wall color)

[Southerngirl]

We just bought a 1963 930 Case tractor for our small 25 acre farm for $600, which from looking online at other tractors, we got a pretty good deal. It hasn't been started in years, sat in a barn, farmer just wanted it gone, of course he has a brand new one so this one meant nothing to him. Well we sure are happy with it! Husband checked everything over before starting it, and it runs great! We got a front end loader for it from a friend for free but still looking for a pull behind brush hog for it.
I am staring a compost pile (new at all this). Also getting the area ready for a garden next spring.
If anyone in my area, north central Oklahoma or southern Kansas know where I could get a brush hog for this tractor, please give me a shout.
Thanks
Southerngirl

[pinetreefarm]

I am in the north, and am canning, freezing and dehydrating almost everything in sight. Started baby tomatoes in the greenhouse in preparation for raising them in the solarium this winter. We live in the woods so in the winter with no leaves we are bathed in sunshine. We are in the process of making 4 more beds including caps. Just picked the last of the apples and must do up those soon. The carrots (a bumper crop this year) will stay in the ground until good hard frost as will the potatoes.

We have ordered a 3 year Honey Crisp apple tree to be delivered.

Henhouse is ready for spring.

DS is looking to do some bee raising. I would still like to raise a small worm farm, mostly for fun...will see.

i am behind in my spinning so think this is on the plate as is the window washing. DH and I had hopes of getting away this fall but that is just a glimmer at this point.

Pine

edit for typos.

[bookwormom]

looks good Wiley, took a lot of elbow grease I am sure.
from day to day we hope that rain will come and we have no idea if it will rain soon or the drought continue well into fall. we set up a fifty some gallon tank in the cellar and now have to fill it up. Husband has to give up full baths, back to navy showers, I need the cistern water for clothes washing. There is always this fear in the back of my head that the well will run dry. the carrots were so measly not worth fooling with. I had not watered them. the onions are rotting again. I do not know what it is with onions here, they just rot. anyone else have that problem? I canned some onions in pickle brine so I have instant onions when making potatoe salad. they are so small I hate chopping them for drying, will take me forever. we are collecting any and all buckets we can get our hands on for next years garden to use in watering. DM showed a picture of his garden with buckets in a row and plants planted around them and mulched. all I need is find the mulch. we have no grass clippings around here. I am thankful for oakleaves, though they make the soil acid.
well, we have six ducks that are overdue for butchering, you have to feed them everyday nevertheless. I called my former neighbor, she was really on the ball. she raised around 120 geese every year for the Christmas trade and made a bundle at sixty bucks a goose. They were all ordered. She told me ducks are butchered after 13 weeks. you all have a good day and pray for rain.

[thequeensblessing]

Our garden has about gone by now. Whatever is left is just drying up as we haven't had rain in weeks. I've let the remainder of my green beans dry up on the vines and I've got to pick them as soup beans still. I have a few tomatoes left out there, but for the most part, it's done. I need to clean the garden up and put it to bed for the winter. I need to clean up the herb garden and get it winter ready too, but I should pick and process some of the horseradish first.
I need to transplant all my strawberry runners and ready the strawberry bed for winter.
We planted 12 apple trees in the orchard and have 4 pear trees and 3 peach trees and one more plum tree to add to the orchard still. It's just finding the time to do it all.
We have a dozen cockrells to put in the freezer, and a couple dozen older hens to can up.
Our church is coming out next month to build the new barn, so we've been getting the site ready. Had the dozer out here last weekend and moved the chicken coop over. There'll be a new chicken coop built onto the back of the barn. The barn will be 32x40. It will have 16 lambing jugs in it, a milking stanchion for the cow, and a 10x10 box stall, as well as a grain and hay storage area.
This month has flown by!
Are we all ready for October?

[jen_in_southtexas]

I went out of town this past weekend for a family social and I wish that i had stayed home instead and kept a workin' on my property.

*Good news* I finally gave my realtor the "go ahead with the paper work" with the 1+acre next to mine. Yes I am buying it as well!! I dont want any neighbors and it is a nice tract of land with lots of trees. I am excited and I have my work cut out for me for the next several months or more. The grass is overgrown so i am going to get my friend with the tractor and 6' shredder to come and mow it down and then i can keep it maintenanced after that.

It rained quiet a bit today and rain is in the forecast for tomorrow as well. This means the skeeters will be worse than what they already are. If the ground stays wet and moist there is no way Im working on my Iproject. Mosquitos here are thick and hungry. I swear that sometimes the OFF doesnt work. The bites on my ankles from the chiggers i got into are getting better. They are taking so long to heal but they do look better.

Other than this, things are on the quiet side for now. I hope everyone is enjoying their homesteading projects.

Until then...see ya in the woods.

-jen
eL Chiquito Ranch
South Texas

[bee_pipes]

This morning the first turkey egg pipped. You are not supposed to help them hatch, so we left it be. I checked on it later in the afternoon and found the turkey inside was dead. It seems to have drowned in its own fluids. The tip of the beak had broken through the shell and when it stopped moving the fluids exposed through the break cemented the beak to the shell. I checked out the egg after no movement most of the day and discovered the death. Curious as to what could have stopped the poult in the home stretch I started peeling the egg shell back and saw the nostrils were covered with the same dried glaze that had glued the beak to the egg shell. Poor fellow. We disposed of the near hatchling and another egg that had cracked. Down to 9 eggs. The piping egg did get us moving on the brooder. We sprayed the inside with chlorox and brought it inside, lined the bottom with papers, prepared feeder and waterer and set the heat lamp on to warm the brooder up. We have had problems with slow hatches drying out, so I filled an additional trough in the incubator to increase humidity.

9/12
Yesterday was mowing day. We have a small piece of lawn around the house that Karen likes to keep trim. I have to agree with her, it does look good when freshly cut. I had the brush mower and turned to heavier chores. The grass between the creek, dog pen and garden fence was getting pretty high. The younger chickens love it and the turkey hen lays out there next to the creek. The high grass and brush make visibility a problem and an ideal place for predators, but is now manageable. The large pond was also getting overgrown with brush. With low water levels I managed to cut out the grass and saplings right down to the water. The area has not been clear all summer and there was at least one old guinea nest hidden away. The last job completed was the far side of the creek, another place the poultry like to roam. The grass was tall in patches, but we have seen raccoons coming down from that side. Mowing is also an excellent opportunity to look for piles of eggs. Usually we find these nests and remove all except a few eggs. The eggs left behind are marked and the nest is checked daily for fresh eggs. Lately something has been eating the eggs, so rather than finding a clutch, we find shell pieces. Work was brought to a sudden halt last night when I hit a stump. It stalled the engine and the battery, which needs replacing, did not have enough juice to restart the mower. An hour or so on the charger this morning will return the mower to operation.

9/13
I was playing the gas gauge pretty close to my chest. There were no reasons to go out into town except to fill up the tank. On Friday I had a reason and was running on fumes by the time I pulled up to the pump and saw gas had gone up to $3.99 a gallon and there was a 10 gallon limit per customer. We have been enjoying prices around $3.29, and my concern with filling up was to prepare for price spikes with the hurricane headed for Galveston/Houston. When Katrina hit New Orleans gas took a nasty spike and didn’t come back down for months. Today Karen and I made a run to town and I took gas cans along. We were too late – gas had jumped to $4.99 a gallon. We had two vehicles at least ¾ full, and one full gas can, so we’re going to try sitting out the worst of this.

9/17
This morning I found a dead chicken in the dog’s pen. It was one of the youngsters hatched this spring. It would appear to have flown in. Surprisingly the carcass was not that mauled. It had two broken bones protruding through the skin and appears the dogs caught it and killed it as a reaction to its movements, but stopped short of plucking it and stripping the carcass. I am hopeful that is some of the training and reinforcement telling on them. When they killed the bird they felt too guilty to enjoy their kill. They all acted very submissive when I found the bird, like they knew they were in trouble.

The meat chickens are still eating like pigs. We will pick the plumpest one out Sunday and slaughter Monday as a test case. If we are happy with the carcass it yields we will begin full-scale harvest.

Incubator results are disappointing. With the exception of the near-hatch we had on 9th, there has not been one peep out of the eggs. It is about time to shut down and dispose of the eggs. Better luck next year.

Today I was emptying and cleaning compost collection buckets and noticed guineas nested behind the sawdust bins. The hen is sitting on eggs and refuses to move, a cock has positioned himself in a location protective to her and is posturing at me every time I get near. It looks like we’ll have youngsters for the brooder regardless of failure or success with the incubator.

I found two paper shell eggs in the turkey hootch this morning. This may herald the end of the hen’s first full season of laying. She has produced a fair amount of eggs for us, but we have only been able to add a single turkey to our holdings.

Gas prices are still high. They have gone down from the nearly $5.00 a gallon we were seeing, but news from Nashville says prices there are still high and many stations are frequently running out of gas. The news blames this on panic buying from consumers and this or that official from various associations concerned with taxing and selling petroleum products are warning us to remain calm. I wonder how much difficulty they have in filling their tanks? This is a problem for us, I believe; because the political leaders at the state capitol are not having problems filling their tanks wither. These people are just too isolated from the conditions their constituents live under.

9/23
Yesterday we trapped an armadillo. I had a chance to get a close look at one a few years ago in Mississippi, so was not as curious as I might have been. We placed the trap down by the creek so the critter could at least have water until we disposed of it. Turned it loose by the landfill later in the evening.

This past weekend Karen and I got the rafters finished on the part of the shed that will shelter the firewood. A total of 10 rafters, all made from salvaged lumber. We are going to use Tony’s method of cross bracing with 2x6 flush to the rafters, rather than 1x4 nailers across the top. That’s going to require 24 pieces, but should let us use up smaller scrap 2x6.

Today is slaughter day. We were going to try yesterday, but I didn’t make preparations ahead of time. Right now it’s 5:30 and we have the scalding pot on and the kitchen cleared of anything close to the sink. Karen has the table covered with plastic garbage bags for processing. We aren’t sure how many we can do in a day without overdoing it, so we have selected six of our plumpest chickens, isolating them in crates with water to give their digestive systems a chance to empty out without dehydrating them. We have to get the dogs fed and put out, sharpen a few knives and stage gear next to the slaughtering area. First light is around 6:30, so that’s the time we’re looking at for getting under way.

Karen is getting insistent about doing something with solar power. We have decided to get the well off grid as a test case. It will be a small, independent system and should give us good experience. It will have its own panel, battery, charge controller and inverter. I can’t find my copy of the Rex Ewing book, “Power with Nature” so have ordered another copy of the book and a power meter/analyzer. The meter, brand name “Watts Up?” is a little device that can be plugged in between an outlet and an appliance to collect information on power consumption. This provides hard figures on power consumption, compared to calculated loads from labels and owner’s manuals. I asked around about local vendors for components and one person replied with a link to a blog about a couple in eastern Tennessee that built a house off-grid from the ground up. Don’t know that I’m crazy about the design of their house, but it is interesting and I can see the benefits of the design. They also included a price list of the components they used.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/tennessee/359683-going-off-grid-east-tennessee.html

I have been doing a little reading about rabbits recently. I think we may add rabbit meat to our produce. It would seem a single family can get by on two hutches, which we can build ourselves, a single buck and two does. They reproduce and grow quickly and arrangement like this can produce a remarkable amount of meat in a single year. They are small and easily dressed, like chickens, and there is much to recommend the meat. It has been a long time since I’ve eaten rabbit, the last occasion being in a mess hall in California – not the best of circumstances under which to meat any food. The small space requirements are perhaps the most appealing aspect of the whole project. I have read accounts of people raising rabbits for food and they all seem to consider it a mainstay in their food production because of the minor attention needed by the rabbits and their productivity. Food conversion, I believe, is four pounds of feed to one pound of meat.

Later…
Well, you’d think dressing a chicken was like riding a bike… guess not. The first one took a while, the second one went faster, and the last two went really quick – found my rhythm. We only got four done this morning because we were not moving as fast as last year. We also tried a slightly different arrangement – the chickens were dressed outside before bring them inside. We used to do the slaughtering and plucking outside, then dress in the kitchen sink. I like this arrangement a lot better, all we bring in to process are cleaned carcasses, fully dressed. The only two problems were that it took a little while to get back into the groove after so long, and we need a heat source to keep the scalding pot hot. It cooled much faster than I expected, making plucking more time consuming, slowing down the entire train, which let the pot cool off… We have an old Coleman stove I think we’ll pull out tomorrow for the scalding pot. It doesn’t generate a lot of heat, but it should be enough to make up for heat losses. The longer time also allowed word to get out to the neighborhood yellow jackets, by the fourth chicken I was spending a significant amount of time swatting yellow jackets while trying to work. A faster morning means we might be done with six chickens before yellow jackets start collecting around the area.

There were a few humorous incidents too. This time we tried slitting their throats, instead of chopping their heads off. The reasoning behind that was to leave the spine intact, letting the heart pump the blood out for us. That seems to have worked well. Because we were so rusty it took the first two to get an idea of where we needed the buckets. The chickens started jerking, splattering blood around, so I raised the buckets all the way. The buckets had a little water in the bottom to keep the blood from congealing, and raising them all the way made the chicken flop and splash the water, creating a bigger mess. Karen and I were both covered from those two chickens for the rest of the job. We did get the adjustment right though – the last two went smooth as silk.

Tomorrow we’ll try six again. These little chickens are much easier to dress and meatier than our layers. There is ample space in the abdomen to make opening them without puncturing organs easy. We’ll see how they taste before deciding if we want to go this way again. I’m kind of leaning more towards a heirloom breed. These poor fellows don’t have much of a life. It would be nice to have something that enjoys ranging with the rest of the birds. This could be a management problem, trying to separate them at night. A good meat chicken will still need a high protein diet – more so than the layers. We also won’t see the phenomenal meat development either. The little fellows we have now are only six weeks old – an impressive amount of meat in 24 chickens for that short of a time.

This also brings to the front our need for a scale. It would be nice to have specifics about weight at slaughter, dressed weight and processed weight. We’ll keep our eyes open for a used scale in the thrift stores. I was looking on the web and there are decent mechanical scales out there – don’t want something that depends on batteries or electronics – but the prices they are asking for them are a little more than I’d like to spend.

Regards,
Pat

[WileyCoyote]

The walking onions are up! *I planted them on the 15th and after the rain on the 21st they are already poking their little heads up out of the mulch! Dance dance dance

Bookwormmom, 'walking onions' are 'multiplier onions' a heirloom plant that produces onions on the top of the plant. They are called 'walking' onions because when they fall over, if they are not harvested, they root right where they fall - so they will "walk" all over your garden. We'll get green onions between now and frost, and then next spring the little darlings will come back to produce the onion tops. I had a hard time raising onions down South - our soil was heavy clay, even with amendments, root crops did not fare well. They would either rot before they flowered, or the roots would be small and unremarkable. Even heavy blocky carrots would have fine tops but their roots couldn't 'push' in the clay. I tried everything including specific, organic root crop fertilizers, but they just fought me. The only root crops I could harvest were potatoes; they were tough enough to fight the clay.

We replaced the basement door yesterday; it was old and battered (faces the North winds and snowdrift) and leaked terrribly, all down the steps into the basement. DH built up a molding around the frame too, to help keep the weather out, and put up a three inch high piece of rubber at the base in front of the door. We have been reglazing and caulking and painting windows and doors to help weatherproof the house; it hasn't been done in a loooong time. Can anyone tell me the purpose of painting the faces of wood trim but not the upper or underside of the boards? While I have been painting I have found boards that have had their faces painted (sometimes two or three colors) but the undersides are still bare wood, and pretty frazzled to boot. I thought that the whole purpose of painting was to seal the boards against wind and water damage... so it has taken me a lot of extra paint (and time) as the wood has soaked it up.

After the cooling rains this weekend, we are forecast to have temps in the 80s and even the 90s this week. Even so, the leaves are turning brilliant reds and golds, so fall is here whether the weather agrees or not! I'm just glad it gives us more time to do the outside stuff. But I really prefer the cooler weather.

Pat, I'll bet you and Karen looked like you murdered someone after the chicken buket incident! We are thinking rabbits too; but I have been looking (rabbits are not big here) and wondering where one would buy them. I thought there would be some at the County fair, but not so. The single buck and two does sound ideal to start. Also we are planning on putting them in the greenhouse to raise the CO2 for greenup, as well as to harvest the manure for fertilizer.

Also we have been having a lot of yellow jackets, and wasps hangign about the houses here; everyone's complaining about them. You can barely go outside without being swamped by them. And yesterday the horses had apparently pissed off some honeybees; they were hanging about them even after they came into the corral, flying at the horses butt first and with pure intent. Pat, I may need to consult you about how to incarcerate them in a hive! I'd rather have them working with me than against me... the wasps and yellowjackets are just a nuisance, and seem to be looking for something. The old timers here say they have never seen them as prolific or as aggressive as this year.

[Cactus-Kay]

I've enjoyed reading what you all are doing at your homestead's or farms. Gives me some ideas, and some questions. for those that are making jelly, I need to ask in another forum about that. I made 4 types of jalapeno jelly about 3 years ago and just remember that one of the types was the only one that set very well. Trying to figure out what I did/didn't do that caused the problem. This fall I want to make more since its so expensive at the store.

I have two weeks off work coming up and will take some of that time to bushhog (shred) some of our place that needs it. We have winter wheat coming up and need to fence in some of it to finally get the couple of cows we have been planning on adding.

Lots of fence work to do. Also plan to put down a laminate wood floor. I have been walking around on underflooring for about three months after I ripped up the old carpet that covered that area. I think the laminate flooring will be practical for us and the dogs.

Reading about rabbits reminded me that we tried raising New Zealand whites. The babies died almost as soon as they were born but I never knew why. Then we fixed up a rabbit 'yard' where we could let the rabbits loose to run and they had a plank to get back up into their pens. they dug a hole back up under the patio and some babies were born in there. We didn't see them until they were old enough to hop out and eat with the parents. It seemed to be working out good until one morning when I went outside to find two of the adults and 3 of the babies all dead in the pen. We could see injuries but nothing that looked severe. one of the adults that was alive had an injured ear. I thought something had swooped from above. Then that evening my dog was barking and I went out to see a big old rattlesnake coming up out of that rabbit hole. :(
We gave the two living ones to a friend's son. I guess I haven't found rabbits all that easy to raise. Everyone else seems to.

Just joining in to say 'hello' and I am enjoying reading your posts.

[bookwormom]

husband does not want to keep rabbits. he does not mind killing chickens, it may be the cute thing. who knows. when I was a kid my uncle kept oodles of rabbits, ( he had 8 kids to feed) they were kept in a lot like chickens, so they could hop around. If I remember the idea is to lay down chickenwire flat on the ground so they can not dig , put a low fence on top of that. for the housing, they like to be in a cool place and putting down bales of straw or the like to make a den keeps them cool as they are close to the earth. put some boards on top and more bales. I guess one could get creative with that. cleaning would not be hard, move the top and sweep it out. If I were keeping rabbits that is how I would go, and put a jug of frozen water in it when it gets too hot.

thanks Wily, I'll hurry and plant my starts of walking onions right away while the moon is waning.
It is so dry it feels like walking on cornflakes. Glad you got rain. Hope we do soon.
I know what you mean cactus Kay. hope you get your floor soon. I personally dislike carpeting. give me a moppable floor anytime.

I set out more strawberries and planted garlic between them. They are supposed to like each other. to plant anything I make a shallow trench, fill it with water, plant and cover with dry soil.

we had enough trouble with chickensnakes, I think big rattlesnakes would freak me out. I used to have an attitude of live and let live as far as snakes go, but not anymore. the word is full of mice and rats and they have to feed off my chicks and eggs, and I guess baby bunnies too. Did you kill it?

[Cactus-Kay]

Bookwormom, I tried to kill it, I think I irritated more than anything because all I had was my 22 pistol. It went back in the hole and I suppose it left later. since then I have a 410 "snake charmer" and have got a few. Two weeks ago opened our little shed to see one coiled right in the door. I was a good ways from the house so I got a shovel that was nearby and killed the thing.

Your idea of a pen for rabbits sounds like a very good idea. I actually think the babies that were born likely died due to the heat, plus the moms didn't use the nesting boxes but had them out on the wire. I don't really want to raise them for meat anyway.

I will have to try your idea of planting! Never have heard of planting into water and covering with dry soil like that. I raised okra and some other things this year but the squash and ornamental gourds...the ground squirrels ate them as soon as they leafed out :( . We did have a little terrier that kept the ground squirrels under control but she disappeared and now we are having problems again. Those little rascals are cute as anything but dig holes and eat up garden plants.

[sbemt456]

Sounds like everyone is still really busy around the house. We are hustling here as well.
I got the shock and heart break of a life time on Monday. We had ordered 50 more cornish cross babies so we could butcher before bad weather. Well I got them last Thursday and all was well till sometime Sunday night. Hubby and I mowed and cleaned around the chicken houses on Sunday and with it being warm out side I had turned off the heat light because the chicks were too hot. Went back later that night and turned it back on. Went back about 11 AM on Monday to check on chicks and when I opened the door I only saw a hand full of chicks. Got to looking for the others and found 2 piles of dead babies behind an old chest freezer that I had in the building to store the feed in. So I scooped up the remaining 7 and put them in my shirt tall and noticed they had some injuries. Brought them to the house and got them taken care of. Hubby got home and I enlisted his help cleaning up the mess in the building. He moved the freezer and informed me there were no piles of chicks but in his words "dam what a snake" A huge cow snake was behind the chest freezer. We killed the snake, he had already swallowed 2 chicks because we could see the buldges in his mid section. Started hearing chicks in distress. Moved the freezer and couldnt see them. We had to take the vent off and the snake had packed the dead chicks in compressor compartment like sardines and 2 live ones. One of them died today of his injuries. The survivors had broken ribs and a wing and several bite marks. That was probably the worst loss I have ever in all my years had with chicks. I was just heart broken, because my youngest son had decided to pay for the chicks and his older brother was going to buy the feed. Now we start over. Have 50 more that will be here after Oct 8.
Hubby and I are building a new brooder house next week.
So I have learned a hard lesson. And for the ones out there that raise your chicks, remember that in the fall snakes are looking for easy food and a place to hibernate. I guess I provided the heat with the heat lamp for the chicks and the chicks were a free meal for him. So make sure your brooders are snake proof. >:(

stella

[bookwormom]

you know we may have snakes active again, too. I have 7 hens that ought to be laying and all we get are one or two eggs a day. the coop is at the other end of the woodshed and I can imagine that snakes could hide in there.
Cactus kay, what is a snake charmer? I know it is not a flute.
sorry about that stella. that is so upsetting. those poor little ones, can you imagine that monster crawling in on them. I head never heard of a snake putting up a reserve. maybe putting up a heatlamp now when the nights get cooler might be a way to catch some of those snakes?

I don't plant in water, I plant in wet dirt and cover with dry dirt to keep it damp below. I am short on mulchables this year. what a difference mulch makes. My garden is too big to effectively mulch everything.

the other day at the filling station in town a man asked us if we knew where he could get a cheap dryer ??? ??? I should have told him at the dollar store, they sell clothes lines and pins, but that was not the answer he was looking for.

[MinotBob]

Here is a Snakecharmer http://www.ableammo.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=84990

[Cactus-Kay]

Yes Bob, thats pretty much what I have. My husband had a couple of 12 gauge but I would not shoot one of them and the 22 pistol and rifles don't always get the job done.

Stella, thats awful about your chicks! How horrible. I once was up at our corrals and heard a sound like little beeps. I tracked it down and found a huge silver colored snake with a baby rabbit in his mouth. He just had his little head sticking out and was still crying. I just hated to see that and had to walk off out of the sound of it. I have no idea what that snake was, never had seen one that color.

bookwormom, I get it about planting in wet dirt. Why was I thinking that if you put water in the trench it would stay there and not soak in ?! :D

[Catalpa]

Stella, so sad about your chicks! I detest snakes; I probably would have freaked to find a big one killing my stock.

Sounds like everyone has been busy. I played hooky from work one day this week to catch up with the produce; canned 24 quarts of tomatoes and froze six quarts of green beans. Today I'm making tomato jelly, and I have the dehydrator full of peppers. My bushes are still producing oodles of cherry tomatoes; I'll be dehydrating them when the peppers are done.

I'm building a big patio behind the house; it was always a difficult area to mow, and I always hated having to move the grill, swing, and picnic table all the time. I got pavers and bricks from craigslist, and am laying them out in a bed of sand. Slow, heavy work, but yesterday I spent a few hours on it and made good progress.

Weather is finally starting to cool off, so I guess the next project is taking down the pool. :D

[MNMOM]

They are talking about a frost for next week, I think that is in the northern part of the state, so I'm buckling up some outside work, I will finish getting the windows all washed this week-end.

[jen_in_southtexas]

Drove up to my property yesterday late evening. Got late on me and it was such a nice evening that i decided to stay and slept in the back seat of my truck. The weather was really nice last night and got down to 63degrees....that is AWESOME around here. It was nice and quiet but the people who live one county road over have all these dogs who bark incessantly sometimes. It got annoying after a while till they shut up and i fell asleep.

A friend of a friend looked at my mower this morning and got it running and all. The belt had slipped and somehow turned over. He fixed it and the mower started up without hesitation. Well after mowing a nice little spot I turned it off and it didnt want to start up anymore. It was trying to but wouldnt. I called the guy up and told him about it but i had another commitment today so i couldnt stick around to mess with it. The belt may have slipped again. Dont know.

I would like to head back out tomorrow but I am feeling a little run down kinda like your body feels when you are catching a cold....weak-like. My throat is feeling funny too. If i feel this way in the morning I am staying in all day. Im going to take some vitamin c that is in powder form that you mix with water. I think it is called Emergen-C and im calling it a night.

I hope everyone is enjoying their homesteading projects.

See ya in the woods,

-j
eL Chiquito Ranch
South Texas

[MYellowRose]

jen what you may be coming down with, if not a cold, is a sinus infection if you have seasonal allergies. That sounds exactly the way I feel when I start getting one. Only trouble is I can't take my meds until I've had it at least a week. That way I can make sure it's actually a sinus infection and I don't waste them if it clears itself up on its onw.

[bee_pipes]

9/24
The last job yesterday was to get the rafters marked off for cross pieces. We will be putting in scrap of 2x6 flush with the rafters, in a manner similar to the one Tony showed us on the chicken coop. We have a grid drawn on a piece of paper with each member assigned a letter. Measurements for each length will be taken and recorded on our grid, and then a pile or scrap can be gone through, cut and assigned to each location. This should speed up the process and make the final mounting much simpler. After the cross members are in place it will be time to haul our salvaged metal roof from the back field and put it down. This roof will serve as a shelter for the firewood and make a handy place to keep tools while we work on the remainder of the shed.

Yesterday we slaughtered six more chickens. Tony, bored with convalescing from his knee surgery, came over and watched as we wrapped up the last two birds. Karen, doing the final processing of the chicken, is running out of vacuum bags and has informed me that the freezer needs to be reorganized to make room for all the meat. I have read accounts of people going through large numbers of chickens in a day or two – that was the only work they did until all the chickens were processed. I have got to take my hat off to them – it’s not easy work and can get tiring after a few hours. We do have the luxury of time, and I don’t think we could handle the flood of volume to the freezer. Karen suggested a break tomorrow to let her get the freezer re-arranged. I would like to keep on working until the job is done, but we need a place to keep the end product. So, while she works on the freezer, I’ll get bread making out of the way. Processing the chicken has been quite disruptive to the kitchen. Everything on counters near the sink and on the kitchen table that can be moved has been moved. Items that remain have been covered with plastic bags to catch any splatter. After the day’s work is done everything gets cleaned, then sprayed with chlorine bleach and wiped down. The improvements on the set-up outside are working out well, and the addition of the camp stove to keep the scalding pot hot worked as hoped. The last chicken plucked was as easy as the first one. We really got our routine down too. Karen took each carcass inside to process as they became ready; leaving me to dress a current chicken while two were bleeding out into the bucket. By the time she came out for the next chicken, I was plucking. If I moved fast enough I could have one dressed and ready for her by the time she returned. When the second chicken went onto the dressing table, I put two more up to bleed and started dressing again. With the routine down, we could do more than the six in a single day, it’s just a matter of having room in the refrigerator for freshly processed chicken (24-48 hrs), and ultimately in the freezer for packaged chicken.

9/27
Karen declared a holiday from the slaughter on Thursday so she could make room in the freezer. I would have liked to gotten the job done, but didn’t complain about the break. I made bread. We were out and Tony wanted more, so I made two batches (six loaves). We did take it easy and the meat chickens got a break from attrition.

Yesterday we were back at it with six chickens. That seems to be the maximum number we can do in a morning before the yellow jackets make it impossible to work. I don’t like the poultry to be out and about while this sort of work goes on. For one thing, we are trying to maintain as much cleanliness as possible; we don’t need a bunch of birds climbing around the work area, knocking things over and snatching offal. With six birds we work until about 9 AM. By then the birds are getting pretty insistent about being turned out to graze. We have eight birds left and have decided that two days of four birds each would be an easy pace. I wouldn’t mind getting them all done at once, but the sixth bird yesterday convinced me it would be impossible. So far we have 16 birds put away, and Karen spent the remainder of the day putting up 8 quarts of chicken broth. A good day.

Limber neck seems to be making an appearance. We have lost one young layer and have another in a cage to convalesce. I have all the birds on vitamins and electrolytes to help them fight off the infection. It seems to affect the very young and very old – so far the only two casualties are two birds that are from this year’s hatch. Another bird seems to be having an eye problem – either the eye was pecked out in fighting or it is covered with a thick film. It too is convalescing in a cage, isolated from the rest of the flock. The meat birds will only be with us for another two days, so they are getting regular water. They have been isolated from the flock the entire time they have been with us, so hopefully we can complete butchering before this becomes an issue for them.

We have been enjoying wonderful weather for the last week. Nighttime temperatures dipping down to the 60’s and daytime highs in the low 80’s with low humidity. We have definitely turned the corner from summer. A little rain would be nice, but not a deal breaker.

The compost bin reeks to high heaven from the offal, heads and hocks from 20 chickens. Last night, when I came home in the evening, I could smell decomp at the front gate. If the breeze carries in your direction, it can get quite strong. Tomorrow we finish up and I’ll inoculate the pile with topsoil from the woods to get some cultures into it. There will also be the pen from the meat chickens with ample litter and droppings to cover the pile with. That should get things cooking nicely (and quickly). By Monday there shouldn’t be any smell at all.

The yellow jackets were waiting for us this morning. We only did four chickens, but they were as thick as the end of the six chickens yesterday. Fortunately they are only aggressive about getting in to a food source. If they were stinging we would not be able to work. We have been careful – swatting and brushing them away – to avoid crushing one or getting stung. I’m sure they release a pheromone in a manner similar to bees, and one sting would lead to an attack on the unfortunate victim. We always have the smoker to fall back on, if needed, but so far they are more like a cloud of very big gnats – annoying more than anything.

Yesterday, while butchering a chicken, I started singing the chicken fat song. Don’t know why – just an unconscious sort of thing. Karen had never heard it before. My singing voice does not exactly give the listener a faithful rendition – a lucky guess could not even recognize the melody. So I found a copy on the web and downloaded it for Karen. As you can imagine, she was little impressed. It’s just a silly kid’s song from back in the 60’s. The web site I found the song on was surprising, though. It was the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. I vaguely remember that he started the presidential fitness program – all the rage back in those days of elementary school. Apparently they adopted the song (may have commissioned it, for all I know). The song was written by the same fellow that did The Music Man, one of Karen’s favorite musicals. Who knew.

9/28
We just wrapped up the last of the birds. The offal has been disposed of, the compost bin inoculated, slaughter area washed down, and kitchen cleaned. We still have a few pots, bowls and knives to wash and disinfect, but everything that has to be attended to immediately has been taken care of. Later today I’ll clean up the meat bird pen and load the litter into the compost bin too. For right now we are taking it easy and thinking about a late breakfast. Maybe dinner out tonight to celebrate – anything except chicken for the next day or two. Tony was much interested in the chicken and has purchased three whole chickens from us for the princely sum of $6 each. It’s nice to share with neighbors, but I could not see trying to do this as a livelihood. It does feel good to have 21 chickens, whole and cut up, in the freezer. Now to prepare for rabbits and goats…

The rabbits will be the simplest – I just haven’t settled on the location of the hutches. The goats are another matter. I waited too long to start construction last winter, and will have to wait for the leaves to drop and sap to fall from the trees. We are going to build the goat shed like a cabin, but the timbers will be much smaller. The woods needs to be culled out and there are a lot of 4-6” trees that will make excellent timbers for the construction. I’d like it to be big enough to have room for milking in the shed, ample room for the goats, enough room to put up a birthing pen when the need arises, and room for storage of feed and straw. It will be a good sized structure. I have a location selected, across the creek from the rest of the livestock. The soil is poor and the land there is going to waste. The hillside is wooded and would do well with bored goats eating back brush. The real advantage is that two sides of it are already enclosed in fence. With a pen off the shed, made of hog panels and fence posts, the goats could have access to the creek and a constant supply of fresh water. Sometime in the future we can look at moveable electric fence and give them rotating grazing/browsing areas. The entire hillside is surrounded by fence, so each new area can be secured with the addition of two runs of fencing, if they adjoin the previous area.

Regards,
Pat