January Farm

Our little farm is about as snoozy as we are in wintertime. The greenest place is definitely the front porch, which Adam enclosed in plastic again this year.

 I have three leggy tomato plants. Today I noticed two little tomatoes!

 I dug herbs from my beds and plunked them into pots in late fall. Now I have: dill, cilantro, basil.

 My young hens are laying through the winter. All are part silkie (I think?), but only the youngest one, who started laying just a few weeks ago, gives me a true olive-colored egg. See?

 I have six hens and a rooster I don't like, but he does his job. Well, he does half of his job. He protects his ladies. Not sure how effective he is in the romantic side of his job though!

 Today is barely warm, so farm doggies are outside. Trixie:

 Ned:

Our strawberry transplants are surviving on the front porch too.

I was asking Adam today when I'll likely be able to start working in the greenhouse, as I love doing in the late winter/early spring. He'll cover the greenhouse next week. I should be able to start fiddling in there in mid-February, I hope.

Lastly: gourds. They are curing well on the front porch.

See all that lovely mold? These are the largest ones. I've been practicing on smaller ones that dried first. Here's a summarizing video of what I've done with gourds thus far:

By the time I get to the largest gourds I should have my style perfected, haha! Thanks so much for stopping by to check on our sleepy little farmette, where not much happens and we're mighty peaceful about it.

Eggs in the Orchard

Chickens keep you guessing, oh yes, they do! My year-and-a-half old hens (Ethel and Punkin) molted this fall. Feathers everywhere! And the feathers still attached looked like their owners had been pulled through a brier patch backwards. Quite unkempt.

Ethel and Punkin laid eggs faithfully for a year. Mature hens stop laying while they molt. They also stop laying in cold weather. So it was no surprise to me when they stopped laying sometime in October; I haven't had an egg from them since. Their feathers grew back; their combs brightened again. Bernie started stomping at them again ... I figured they would lay again soon.

Bernie, Ethel, and Punkin have the run of the entire orchard. They are spoiled birds.

The back of the orchard is still a jungle. This morning Adam decided to use the sunshine and warmer temps for clearing out the back of the orchard. I'd hunted there for a hidden clutch of eggs, knowing that some hens will randomly begin laying in a hidden spot. I have a friend whose hens laid about 40 eggs in a flower pot in the top shelf in her garage, before she found them!

See that jungle back there? Adam had already been clearing when I took this shot. He came inside to beckon me with my camera. He found the eggs.

 Nine eggs, all Punkin's. She's been laying daily for a week and a half. Naughty girl!

I gathered them in my coat pocket and took them inside. Then I tested to discern if they were still good. These eggs were much fresher still than any grocery eggs, which are stored for many weeks before arriving on the shelves there. To check an egg's freshness, put it in a bowl of water. If it sits on its side on the bottom of the bowl, it's very fresh. If it sits on its end on the bottom, it's fresh enough to eat. If it floats, IT'S BAD. Throw it away.

All Punkin's eggs were very fresh! I thought they would be -- it's been quite cool, and the eggs were in the shade. I scored 9 eggs from my orchard! How many women can say that?

 Adam decorated the front of the house for Christmas. The porch/greenhouse is doing well again. I dug three volunteer cherry tomato plants from the garden weeks ago. They are growing and even ripening fruit, on the front porch.

 

I'm not sure how well they will do out there, considering it regularly gets to 40 degrees at night. But I had basil last year throughout the winter. We shall see!

Oh -- I nearly forgot! I just went to check on the chickens, and Punkin took the hint! I found a huge green egg in the laying box in the coop. Yay! Now, I just have to discover where in the world Ethel has been laying her eggs for the past two weeks. As I said, chickens will keep you guessing!

Falling Behind!

When your husband (AKA, Mr. Muscle on the farm) injures himself, farm work quickly overwhelms, and we fall behind. Not only am I behind in my blogging, I'm behind in my many duties around the farm! Weeds are taking over, Radishes are not pulled. Potatoes are not covered. Tomatoes seem to be taking over the world.
Peas. They are high.

 Pea production has begun. I don't want to pick any early; I want them fully-developed, so I can freeze bags of whole peas for the summer and fall.

Wando peas

These are just a few of our many potato plants.

 Spinach is bolting. Lettuce is looking puny, but the soil in that part of the bed was not prepared as well as it might have been. Below is a Brandywine potato-leaf tomato plant. I seem to have a million of them. (Just kidding.) But I do have a lot! They all need homes, and they must NOT find a home in our yard!

Seriously -- I put about 56 tomato plants in beds in our garden, and that is ALL that I want or need. I refuse to do as I did last year, plunking random tomato plants in any available spots next to a fence, only to have them consumed by weeds and die slow deaths. These are gorgeous heirloom plants. If you want one for free -- or a few, or however many -- please stop by and take them home!
If you look carefully in this photo, you will see bunnies. Can you find them? After I saw them, they both ran away. I hope the dogs don't find them!

 Adam is still leaving our clover and buttercups in the pasture, although he's mowing paths for us to walk easily. He wants the clover to go to seed and become thicker each year. It's so pretty and good for the bees.

 Here's our first tomato bed. The lines hanging down to each plant are recommended by Peter, who worked at a small organic farm last summer; this is the method they used. And it really works. See the one cord going straight down? It's longer and already is twining around the plant below. Or perhaps I should say the plant is twining around the cord.

 Some of you will recall my eucalyptus tree. I think it is most assuredly dead. However, I'll leave it for this season to see if anything happens. But ...

 ... below, at its base, lots of new growth has appeared!

 I'm relieved. I may have a eucalyptus bush instead of a tree, but that's okay.
And the dead branches are so beautiful and aromatic.

 Let's tour the herb garden, shall we? The thyme is blooming and the dill has reseeded from last year.

 

The bushy plant below on the left is tarragon, which returned from last year. I'd read that it should overwinter here fine, and it did! On the right you see just part of the conquering oregano that is taking over the entire herb bed. It is a low plant, so I'm letting it do its thing ... for now.

 

Most of this below is cilantro. I wanted lots of it, and I do have a lot.

 This is lemon balm, which also overwintered well. And on the right is lemon verbena. It survived in a pot on the front porch all winter.  

I'm sad to say that my little bay tree (above) must've died over the winter. I was so hopeful!

I may try again and keep it in a pot on the porch.

My overwintered basil is still alive in the herb bed, but on its last legs.

Roses are blooming. This one is beside the front porch.

Together Adam and I took down the plastic sheeting on the ends of the front porch.

 We will replace it with breathable shade cloth for the summer.

 See the yellow roses there?
And now we have good cross-breezes on the porch.

Above is my semi-shade garden along one side of the house. The elephant ears have come back. The artemesia is doing well, and the sedum is healthy if short. The two ferns are quite beautiful, and six of my hosta plants, two of the three astilbes, and the lantana have all come up. The hearty amaryllis is brilliant. Sadly, my new bleeding heart didn't make it, and one of my hostas is not up yet. Overall, not too bad. I will try again with a bleeding heart once I find out why it didn't survive here. The bed is quite long (all the way down to the wattle fence in the distance) and is still sparsely populated. I added a foxglove last week.

The Front Porch Project

 We like our front porch, but we don't use it much. It's very close to a busy 2-lane road. In an 1100-square-foot house, we want to make all the space usable. So Adam is turning the porch into a greenhouse for the winter.

 He painted and nailed some 1x6 boards around the perimeter of the porch.

 To them he'll attach these metal channels with "wiggle wire" inside them -- all along the top edge and the bottom edge of the porch.

 He's ordered a roll of plastic greenhouse sheeting. It will be wrapped around that wiggle wire and pulled tight in the metal channels, enclosing the porch.
And Saturday he installed a screen door. He did the framing:

 It looks really good! When the sheeting arrives, he'll finish the porch. Then I'll have a warm(er) place to put my lemongrass plants and all the other potted items -- ferns and such. We may sit out there too.

We also planted five elaeagnus bushes along the front of the property, between the porch and the road. They grow very fast and form a thick hedge of privacy. We felt it would be a bit more "neighbor friendly" than a tall wooden fence. We want to use our front porch, but it's no fun to be stared at while you sit there. Here's a photo of an elaeagnus hedge just down the road from us:

Yep, that's what we want.
More on the front porch and the new roof later this week ... hopefully!
Update: The wiggle wire and channel strips arrived:

 It goes in very easily and makes the plastic sheeting nice and taut. Adam says he'll use this stuff again. Here's what the first side of the porch looks like:

However -- the truck that was delivering the rest of the red metal roofing was in an accident and all materials were rendered unusable :( So we will have to wait on delivery of the additional roofing for the little building.
AND ... the USPS somehow utterly lost the rest of the wiggle wire and channel strips for the porch, so Adam can only do about half of it. Ugh. If we could just get stuff to our house, he could finish these projects! Still, doesn't that first panel look great? He will trim off the excess sheeting, and it will be done.
This morning I start digging plants out of the herb garden, repotting them, and getting everything ready for the new greenhouse!