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.

Everything's Growing But My Bank Balance

Adam just walked in from the garden and said, "You know that wild grapevine on the back garden fence? It's loaded with grapes!"

The back fence is out of control. I don't know what large shrub is under the grapevine, but it's growing on top of it in the sun, as vines love to do. Little clusters of grapes are All Over It. Adam's back there now, whacking off some to produce better grapes. I imagine the birds will find them too.

We've had no success with our grapevines in the "orchard" because they don't get enough sun.
We put some of our Wando peas on a trellis of 4" welded wire, and they are standing upright and beautiful.

They're easy to harvest. But we ran out of that welded wire and thought we'd make some wattle fencing, remember? This is what inadequate wattle fencing will do to your peas:

Next year it's welded wire all the way. We've still harvested bags of peas so far and have a long way to go. A good year for peas. You pick them when they look fat and plump like a sausage but haven't started drying out yet.

Some of my tomato plants have early blight. See it? We pulled about ten beautiful, full plants right out of the bed and threw them on the burn pile :(

The trellising system thus far is excellent for tomatoes.

Can you see how the cord curls around the main tomato stem? It's easy then to gently wrap it around a little more every day or two as the plant grows.
I had a few random volunteer tomato plants in pots. They nearly died when we went on vacation. I put them into the beds where I'd ripped out the sickly tomato plants. They're so short the cords don't reach them yet!

My two rows of bush bean plants are coming up nicely, much better than last year. I probably have them way too close together, but I overplanted because last year I had such bad luck with their germination.

 I'll plant more beans in stages so they don't all come in at the same time.
Here are two volunteer cucumber plants that sprouted in Adam's compost

 Several of these early volunteers already have baby cukes starting on them. They will go in beds later.

 A volunteer tomato and cuke are in one compost pile,
and a volunteer cuke and watermelon are in another.

 

 These are perhaps my healthiest volunteer tomatoes -- three plants that sprouted up from the chicken poop compost pile intended to enrich the asparagus. I wrapped a piece of leftover fence around them for support.

 I guess that chicken poop's not going anywhere for a while!
And speaking of watermelons, Adam filled two more tire planters in the garden and I planted watermelon seeds in there. What do you bet the volunteer watermelon does better? Yep.

 And Adam's willow tree sprig is doing fine in a bigger pot. He will put it in the ground soon.

 In the greenhouse (which is a true hot house these days), I'm starting herbs. I want to start herbs from seed and sell the plants at the farmers' market. Nobody does this, and I think there's a need for it. And unlike cut herbs, the plants only improve week to week. I don't like selling "perishable" items at the market. Any herbs that don't sell I'll simply put in my own herb garden if it gets too big. Below are basil, thyme, tarragon, parsley, and sage, waiting to be born in their little earthen nurseries.

 Many friends responded to my plea for pots!! I really needed the small pots -- the next stage up from the starter cells. I prefer plastic pots; the paper ones leach water away from the little plants' roots.

 There's an issue with little plastic pots. I challenge you to try to find them for sale at WalMart, Lowe's, or your local farm or hardware store. I'm referring to what I wanted: a pack of about ten 2" pots -- plastic ones. I looked and looked. Adam said (as Adam often says), "Let's check online." And we could've bought them online for 30 cents per pot! That's just too much to pay for a very small plastic pot! And if I'm selling my herb plants, that adds quite a bit to the cost per plant.
One day I was roaming in a favorite store, Dollar Tree. Everything in there really is just $1.00. And look what I found!

A pack of twelve little plastic pots -- perfect! -- for $1.00! So I bought 12 packs, of course. Items appear and disappear forever at those dollar stores. Those 144 pots, plus all the donations from friends, will give me pots for years :)
So far I have basil and some early dill to sell.

I think I have a bit of a green thumb when it comes to starting plants, plus I do enjoy it so much. If I could make any money doing that, I would be a happy woman.
Because ... I decided a few months ago to stop working at my part-time afternoon job at an afterschool program for children. It's a lovely place, and I will miss it, but physically it is so taxing. I'm on concrete/asphalt, very active, for 3 hours straight, and it's hard on my bad veins. It wears me out every day and makes me non-productive in the evenings. Even though I don't go to work until about 2:30, it dominates my day from lunch onward. I will still substitute there some, but not every single day. I only have 13 days left! Then I will be a free woman to focus my attentions on my soap/lotion/yard business, and on increasing the productivity of the farm in small ways like selling herbs. So ... here's to new enterprises!

Life on the Funny Farm

 Apple trees are blooming!

 For several hours this morning I monitored the third "play date" for all my chickens, trying to integrate the new white pullet into the flock.

 So far, so good. The first time, they did chase and harass her a bit, especially my two Ameracaunas (a roo and a hen). They must be a meaner breed. Honestly I think Punkin is just plain neurotic.
Here's Little Snow, as I call her:

 So sweet, so docile. During the play date yesterday, Bernie was letting her know he was Boss! She skeedaddled into the coop and hit behind a nesting box.

 Poor thing! So stressy. Today they are more laid back, not fighting ... but their behavior is quite bizarre! Everybody except Snow was inside the coop -- even with the orchard available! -- and they were squawking and putting up a fussin'! Finally I went in there to find out what the matter was. All three hens were standing there, looking at The Favorite Nesting Spot. Every little flock has a favorite spot to lay an egg. And who was in the favorite spot? And who was clogging up the works and making the hens mad? Bernie! That's who! Sitting there on a couple of their eggs, no doubt, pretending to be a girl, haha! I think he was just escaping the stress of trying to wrangle all those females and their hormones.

 Adam trimmed another 1/3 out of the big pear tree. He took all the straight water sprouts and started making a pretty wattle fence for the peas in the garden. I adore the rustic, peasant look of a wattle fence.
Meanwhile in the greenhouse, things are progressing. Here's my work area:

 Today I began transferring tomato seedlings from their first cells into small pots. Such an exciting time!

 I did 19 plants.
Adam has not felt well the last few days. He's very, very achy and sore, probably from arthritis. He hurts all over. I reminded him of his ache-mantra: "Motion is Lotion." He came out and turned ... or "fluffed," as he says ... his compost, with help from three pups. He loves the company of dogs.

I also have hostas up, and sedum and ferns and cilantro and masses of oregano. The Scuppernong grapevines have begun to leaf out too.
In the veggie patch we have these things up: potatoes, spinach, lots of peas, lettuces, radishes, and Swiss chard. Asparagus continues to do well. That's it from the farm!

Prepping for the Girls

(This is an old post that I wrote but failed to post before things progressed and the next post was ready to publish. Still, I want it in the record, so here it is for future reference.)

Adam has worked hard on the chicken coop and yard, and it's nearly done!

Now we have a walkway for us into the coop and new weighted fencing and a door into their yard.

That door has a spring so it will close on its own quickly, and it has a latch, of course.

Adam hung this door on the coop doorway with a big latch too. We want them to feel secure at night.
I watch lots of videos from Becky's Homestead.com. She lives in Florida, built her own homestead from scratch, and raises some happy birds. Plus, I have several good friends locally who do a great job with their chickens too. So I have lots of good teachers. Becky recommends these laying boxes made from plastic tubs, so we will give them a try. They are cheap, private for the birds, and easy to clean. They're up off the coop floor on a 1x8x8 board on cement blocks.

Close-up. Instructions for these boxes are found on Becky's site.

This morning while I was at the farmers' market Adam built a roost.

We'll only have four Barred Rock hens, quite young ones, at first, so this is plenty of roosting space, and two nesting boxes will be more than enough for them.

We bought two bales of hay and 10 lbs. of start-and-grow feed to begin. I'm researching all the various advice about feeding. Becky recommends feeding oats also in the summer and whole corn in the winter. My chicken friend Bob says that's not necessary. Some say alfalfa. Some say crumble and some say pellets. All I know is that feed is expensive, and we don't want to buy anything that's not necessary or helpful. The feed will be stored in that cooler to protect it from mice.

Adam cut a little chicken door in the side of the barn for them to go in and out. There's a hook to keep it open in the day and a latch to secure it closed at night.
Becky says that chickens lay much better if they feel safe and are kept stress-free. So I want them to feel absolutely safe from predators.
What's left? Install the waterer and a shallow feeder, which we have, and add four hens.

 Each day we're getting a handful of tomatoes, and it will increase. I hope to take some to the market next Saturday.

Our grape vines are putting out tiny grape clusters -- so cute! And our figs are ripening well. 

The peas are about done. I do enjoy how the harvest on a farm gently shifts from one plant to the next.

Last but not least, Adam's sweet corn. It's quite a bit higher than this now; I took this photo about a week ago. His corn is well behind other fields of corn locally, but for good reason. He looked up their schedule and planned for his corn to mature 2 - 3 weeks afterward, to prevent any cross-pollination. He doesn't want any contamination. So we may have to wait a bit longer, but hopefully we'll have better corn for the wait.