Good Day of Pickin'

We drew a nice variety of herbs and produce from the garden this afternoon. Pictured here are carrots, parsnip thinnings, celery, chard, thyme, and sage. I was the most excited about the celery because this was actually our first cutting. We had a good bit going earlier, but the damn deer managed to get in and make a salad bar of things. Luckily the celery bounced back enough to yield a few late stalks.

Chicken Powered Composter cont.

As I mentioned the other day, the leaves in the chickens pen needed a little muddling. After we had filed the pen, it rained plenty for most of two weeks. All of the precipitation weighed heavily on the leaves, forming a thick matted layer that stuck itself to the ground.

We got a few rain showers earlier this morning, but the sun came out later in the afternoon and it warmed up quite nicely. Armed with a pitchfork and camera, I set out to turn the tangle of leaves. I chose to use a pitchfork instead of a rake for this job because any rake we own would either too flimsy or would uselessly clog. I believe that I chose wisely because the job took only about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Afterwards it was obvious that the leaves were well on their way. They still need to be broken down a bit more, but there was the musky smell of composting and the chickens seemed to have an easier time making their way through the heaps. I suppose that we could give it another two weeks and then it would be time to collect the lot into a more tradition compost bin.

When the leaves are removed there will obviously be nothing but bare earth in the pen. This may be a little messy when it starts to snow. I think we may look to add another batch of leaves or some straw. We'll revisit the subject when it comes about.

Just Beyond the Garden

I took this photo not too long ago while I was waiting for Meg at the train station. I was snapping shots of this old bridge in the fading light to test the different apertures of our camera. For as long as we've been using this station, I've found myself admiring this grizzled and withdrawn bridge. It's probably my Pittsburgh blood; we're known to be quite fond of our bridges.

Anywho, Meg and I are privileged to have a train station about a mile and a half from our house. The line takes us to our various jobs between our house and the city. This little convenience has enabled us to become a one car couple. In order to keep from wandering off of topic I will say that this post is not about sharing a car, but about the incredible convenience of trains.

Meg's dad, Mick, told me about a book he read that explored the decline of the railway system after World War II. Essentially the government's largess with highway system funding left the rails to spoil. I know, the incorporation of our highways has helped make our economy what it is today (hmm, that might not be a great example), but what I say is if there is an alternative, why not take it?

All of the progress we make in the garden to help with the environment makes even more sense when we can add it to other elements of our lives. We spend far less on train passes than we would on gas, one car means one insurance policy, and we both can spend our commute on more useful endeavors, like reading or napping.

Beans

We signed up (I signed us up) to participate in NaBloPoMo--that's National Blog Posting Month, for those of you who don't speak acronym. That means we have to post on the blog every day for the month of November. Do you know how many days are in November? A lot. Do you know what goes on in a Pennsylvania garden in November? Not much. So today, you're getting a picture of beans.

These are Cherokee Trail of Tears beans (and this is not my picture):

Seed Savers Exchange

The Cherokee tribes in the southeastern US grew these, and managed to take some seeds with them when they were forced out of the southeast to reservations in Oklahoma. Nice, huh? We bought them from the Seed Savers Exchange last summer and planted them a bit too late, but we got a pretty decent harvest anyway. A couple weeks ago I pulled off all the remaining pods so they could dry inside.

We have at least six cups of these, so we're in need of some good, wintery black bean recipes. I think this one sounds pretty good, but we want to spread out our supply on more than one pot of soup.

Walk Softly...

and carry a big stick.

One of the projects from this weekend was to find a replacement flag pole for the Jolly Roger. Sadly our garden has been flagless for a month or so due to some serious flower power.

This was our first year trying to grow flowers and we thought it would be cool-lookin' to have something vining up the flag pole. Morning glories sounded pleasant and the seed packet said they would grow about 12 feet. Our flag pole was about 20 feet so we though it would be perfect. Shortly after what we thought would be the last frost, we planted a few seeds at the base of the pole and hoped for the best.



A few months later we realized that the seed packet seriously underestimated the potential of the morning glories. They grew to the top of the pole and were reachin' for more. The pole was about 2.5 inches in diameter, that heft went a good ways up, and we thought it would surely hold.



We were wrong. Meg went out to feed the chickens one morning and noticed something was off. It wasn't windy the night before but the sheer weight of the foliage snapped the pole in half. If we were to replace the pole then, we would have had to cut out the remaining morning glories and we were gonna have none of that. So, we had to wait for them to do their thing, which is a gift to see when going out for morning chores, and then die off.



After they croaked, Meg and I went to the bamboo patch at the end our our property and cut us a fresh new pole. We're planning to let it dry flat and will hoist the Jolly Roger come Spring.

Bundled Up

As Kelly wrote yesterday, we drained our rain barrels. Six hundred gallons of frozen solid water isn't good for much except maybe causing the rain harvester to explode, so we thought it best to dump the water before winter. To make sure no rain or melting snow makes its way into the system before spring, we designed a nice little winter hat for the lead barrel.

We cleared the accumulated crap (sticks, leaves, pieces of shingles, a nail, and a big dried-up clump of glue) off of the screen, and layered a couple pieces of left-over row cover plastic over the top of the barrel. We secured it with a nice, classy, black plastic trash bag, and it should be good for the winter.

Wake of the Flood

Meg and I have been busy this holiday weekend with fall garden clean up. We should be good on blog topics for a least a week. One of the items on our to-do list was to drain our rain harvester before the hard freezes arrive.

This was our first year collecting rain water on a larger than average scale and it was marvelous. We mostly had a pretty wet summer here in southeasten Pennsylvania, but we got hit by an unabated dry spell from the end of July through most of August. With close to 600 gallons of water in reserve, our garden thrived. We're hoping to construct another rain harvesting system to feed off of the shed in the lower section of the yard.

In the meantime we want to make sure that the plumbing on our current harvester is free of water so the pipes don't burst this winter. The barrels were completely full and took six to seven hours to drain. (The middle photo was taken right when I turned on the water. It actually comes out much stronger, but gravity is our pump and sometimes it takes a minute or two to really get going.) That's a whole lot of water. Some time tomorrow we'll cap the lead barrel and divert the downspout. I also left the spigot turned on so that any condensation in the system would be free to drain.

We wanted a lot of garlic this year. We ordered some from Seeds of Change, won some from a dude on eBay, bought some at a farmers' market, and were given some of this house's resident garlic (Music garlic, which has been planted here for years). All together we have:

Georgia Crystal
Russian Giant
Music
Italian
German Extra Hardy
Bogatyr
Chesnok Red
Spanish Roja
Emmaus (some mystery variety we picked up at the Emmaus Farmers' Market)

At the end of the day we had 429 cloves of garlic planted in two and a half nice, composty beds, and covered with a few inches of broken down grass clippings and old straw.

Don't be alarmed by the smoke. We had us a little old-tomato-plant-fire to keep us toasty while we planted.

We planted some of the garlic earlier in the season and just mulched it today. It's already sprouted and has made some good headway so far. The new stuff will probably sprout soon, considering the weirdo temperatures we've been having--it was 70 degrees yesterday and 40 today. Either way, we're going to be eating major amounts of garlic scapes in June and harvesting a boatload of bulbs not too long after that.

Gobble, Gobble

Earlier today we chopped up our carrots

cooked 'em up with some garlic and sage (both from our garden!) and olive oil

and ate 'em.

Along with lots of other stuff, of course.

We hope all you bloggers had a happy Turkey Day.

Crunch

Here's what's for dinner (or part of it) tomorrow:


Yum, Vitamin A. These are some of the last carrots from our summer planting–they've gotten sweeter as the weather's gotten colder. Our fall carrots are plugging away, so we're set for the winter.

Misty Morning

Its been raining for a few days so there hasn't been much outdoor activity to post about. The rain is helping with the leaf project going on in the chicken coop. The wet is weighing the leaves down and softening them up. I think we're planning to fluff them back up with a rake when the weather dries out. This muddling should help in assisting the chickens with the shredding end of the business.

Love It Spicy

Mmm, Hot Sauce! This was my first go at hot sauce and I must say that it turned out pretty good. I’ve been glopping it on everything.

Ingredients: Red Ripened Hot Peppers, White Vinegar, and Salt.
Cook the hot peppers in white vinegar. Remove the peppers, save the vinegar, and let the peppers cool. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, remove as much of the skin as you can without becoming irritated. Put the peppers in a blender or processor and zap it until it is chunkless. Use the vinegar as a thinning agent. Add salt to taste (vinegar is an acid and salt is a base; you need the two to even each other out).

UFC: Ultimate Feathered Composter

See all those leaves? You know what they mean? Oh, yes, it's Chicken Composter time! The brilliant plan this year was to stuff the chickens' pen full of all the Fall leaves we could get, let the birds stomp and chomp them up, and wind up with boatloads of compost in not much time.

Kelly's brother Derrek and I raked for about an hour, and managed to cover about 1/6th of the yard. We made six massive piles. It took another hour to transport them all down to the coop. First, we raked the piles onto big tarps.

Then we hauled them through the yard and stuffed the big bundles of leaves through the door to the chicken run. (And by "we" I mean Kelly, Derrek, and Steveo. Someone's got to take photos.)

At first the chickens were terrified of the big blue tarp, and they huddled together in the corner of their pen.

They didn't really know what to make of the situation. They caught on soon, though, and started mowing through the leaves as we filled up the pen.

This is literally 400 cubic feet of leaves, minus the volume of the three chickens that are buried within:

That will give the ladies something to do all day now that they've had enough time to destroy their grass, and we should have sweet sweet compost by the Spring. Thanks, chickies!

Look Out

The majestic chicken soars over her territory.

We raked leaves today, and threw them in the chickens' pen. They were a little skeptical at first, but I think they like it. They now share their yard with 400 cubic feet of leaves. More photos and details to come.

They All Fall Down

The trees around here put on a lackluster display for most of the season. Some of the trees that usually look fantastic sort of just turned brown and crapped out a few weeks into October. In the past week, though, the holdouts have really been putting on a show.

The poplars (and check out that moon!)

A Japanese maple...

...and another

The holly

Yet another Japanese maple

What Gets Ya Goin?

I heard on the radio that Barneys is going "green" for the holidays. It makes me mad to see how principled and proactive inspirations are made fashionable and commodified. The reason for my anger isn't because I feel that these ideas are best left exclusive, but I know that fashion has a shelf life too short for any true impact to be made. Pretty soon being green will become trendy and ultimately die in the public's interest.

I'm easily drawn into this "leave it alone" mood. When I see models wearing dresses made of recycled plastic bags, I feel like what Meg and I (and tons of others) are trying to do is somehow becoming closeted into this twisted vaudeville performance. Just get rid of the damn bags.

But, we are always being redefined. (Prepare for my digression.) I heard the bit on Barneys yesterday and had been simmering until this afternoon. I was flipping through some past photos for a blog idea when I ran across these shots of an abandoned greenhouse we spotted on a hike a few weeks back. We hiked for two or three hours and I laughed when I realized that all but one of the photos I took from the whole trip were of this greenhouse.

The hike was beautiful, but I remember that this greenhouse really sparked our interest. We started talking about Future House Farm and all of the things we need to do to make it a reality. There's something very private and personal, not secluded, about trying to live in an environmentally conscious way. It seems that the more self sufficient we are, the larger our community becomes. I realize now that fashion happens when you allow it to happen and sustainable living means there is no shelf life.

Muy Picante

Because we were buying Trader Joe's hot sauce by the case to feed Kelly's spicy food addiction, this year we decided it might be more economical to grow our own hot peppers. We put in four varieties: three kinds of chiles and a jalapeño. Hot peppers all look pretty, but this year's pageant winner by a long shot was the tobasco chile.


Both of the tobasco chiles we planted were huge and covered with hundreds of tiny peppers by the end of the season. Just before it started getting frosty at night, we
pulled out the plants so we could dry out the peppers inside. Here's Kelly carrying a branch (and to give you an idea of how huge they got, he's 6'2"):



I think the plan for these is that they will be dried out and ground up into little chile flakes, which will presumably be incredibly hot. Just now I asked Kelly, "How hot would you say those little peppers are?" "Wicked," he said. "When I ate one, I was in a desperate position." It's true, I watched.

The rest of the peppers were made into hot sauce, and Kelly will probably post about that process soon; I can't even look at the pictures without my eyes watering and my tongue seizing up.

When the Crows Go

There are three types of birds we pay attention to most in our backyard: chickens, crows, and hawks. The relationship these birds have with one another is a lot like the rock-paper-scissors game. (I must admit that part of this has been heavily influenced by a Demitry Martin skit. I would add a link to it, but its just too damn long.) The equation goes as such: Chickens = Paper, Hawk = Scissors, Crows = Rock. As loony as it may sound, it is quite true. Hawks try to eat chickens, Crows attack hawks, because they are very territorial, and chickens, well, they eat all day. I think you get the point. Chickens don't do anything to crows and crows don't bother the chickens, and that's alright by us.

If you're worried about hawks in your area, we've learned that its pretty safe for chickens to free range when they have one or two of the following working in their favor: one is that there are lots of crows in their immediate area, second is if the deciduous trees where the chickens hang out have their leaves. When both of those things are absent, then it's time to think about a pen that protects them from the sides and the air.

We had to put our ladies in a pen about a month and a half ago because they were digging in our neighbor's flowers. It was a bit of a drag reducing their play area (which was wherever they felt like going) to a rather large pen, but we planned on doing it anyway, so no harm no foul. Hmm, no foul. That could be funny.

Last year our chickens were attacked twice by hawks. Thankfully someone was within earshot both times and our terrified and beaten girls lived to tell the tale. I will say this, however: when you hear a chicken gawking in distress, you'll know it. Then when you have to see the unfortunate sight of your silly chickens getting thrashed at, well let's just say that it's enough to break your heart. After the attacks Meg and I started designing what we felt would be a hawk-proof pen.

We used five-foot galvanized garden fence for the walls (there are foxes about, too) and fruit tree netting for the top. To make the vestibule tall enough to walk around in, we propped the netting with a cross beam from our bamboo patch. It's been working out rather well. If you'll notice in two of the photos, the chickens are in the area of the pen that is closest to me. This isn't because they think I'm cool, but because they think I might have food. Man! They make me laugh.

Its Autumn, the leaves are falling steadily and the crows aren't in the same summer abundance, but Meg and I feel certain that any hawk that wants to take a bite out of our chickens will surely starve. Cheers.

This Is Kelly's Hand Modeling Portfolio

Incidentally, it's also the troupe of heirloom tomatoes that provided the seeds for most of next year's tomato crop.

Since we expanded the garden at the beginning of this year and realized that we have a lot more space than we thought we did, we decided that next year we'll squeeze in as many different tomatoes as possible. We bought the above 'maters at the farmers' market in October, and diligently saved the seeds before devouring the tomatoes. We're not really sure what they are, aside from the fact that they're heirlooms and they're organic. They'll join our Brandywines and German tomatoes, plus an unpictured gigantic yellow thing that we also picked up at the farmers' market.