Springy Things

I know that Spring is going to get here sometime.  It is.  I just know it will.  You'd never have guessed it by the temperatures here the last few days though.  Forty-seven degrees is just not normal for here in the first half of May.

 

 

 

And certainly not by the vast amounts of water that have landed on top of us. 

 

 

 

 

Between the two it's been dank and cold here lately, but supposedly there is a warm spell headed this way.  We'll see.

 

In reality, though, Spring has shown up already.  Many things have bloomed and it's been quiet a show.  Here's some of Spring around the farmette.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off My Feet

I'm kicking back and putting my feet up for a few days.  Not that I don't have anything to do, but I just don't have a choice in the matter.

A while back, my toe started to hurt.  It was an ingrown toenail on the right side of my big toe on my right foot.  No big deal.  I've had them before.  It starts out with a bit of soreness on the side of the nail, but a little work with a pair of nail clippers and it goes away. Didn't work this time, however, and it kept getting worse.  In fact, it got bad enough that I developed a limp.  And an infection.  It was obvious that this was beyond my ability to handle, and I needed to hand it over to the professionals. 

So Tuesday I went to my family doctor and she sent me to a podiatrist.  My appointment was for this morning and off I went expecting him to bring me back in the next day or two to dig out the ingrown toenail.  Not so.  He decided he could take care of it right then and there.

He deadened my toe.  That was not fun.  What he did next, I have no idea because I wouldn't look to see.  It sounded bad and smelled worse.  According to what he told me, he took off the side of my nail (sound), took out the ingrown part and then cauterized the root (smell) so that it wouldn't grow back.

After it was over, I looked at the ingrown shard that he had pulled out, and it was huge!  It was about 1/2 inch long and had been growing straight down into my toe.  Good Lord!  No wonder it was hurting so badly.

So he bundled my toe in gauze and sent me home with good drugs.  I started getting the feeling back just as I got home so I took advantage of the pain killers and spent the afternoon piled up in my mom's guest bedroom snoozing away.  What luxury!  Sister is taking care of the chickens and goats, so all I'm doing is sitting around surfing the web and watching videos.  I'll have to be back up and at it in a couple of days, so I figure I'll take advantage of it while I can.

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

I currently have too many roosters.  I have seven.  According to chicken culture, you should have about one rooster for every 10 to 12 hens.  Earlier in the year, I had about 70 hens so everything was running smoothly.  This particular group of roosters are very nice to have around.  They do their job of continuing their genetic lines, plus they are on constant lookout for predators and work hard to find the best scratching spot for their particular group of ladies.  Best of all they all get along together and I don't have to be on the constant alert for fights.

A problem has developed lately though with the loss of several of my hens.  Something went through the flock and I had a few just drop dead from God only knows what (that just happens sometimes).  I've lost a few to predators (I've got a red tailed hawk that has discovered the chicken buffet here) and then a few were lost to their own stupidity (jumping over the fence into the waiting jaws of my sister's dog qualifies in the stupidity catagory).  Their loss has thrown my numbers off.  I'm averaging about six hens per rooster now and things are getting a bit tense around the barnyard.

This is Champ, my main rooster.  He took the position of main roo with the passing of his father Red.  I haven't got a clue who his mother is, but Champ is about three years old and doing a marvelous job of keeping everybody in line.

My second in line is a black Minorca by the name of Kemosabe.  I bought him about a year and a half ago as a chick and he's quiet handsome.  His biggest downfall is that he crows all the time.  And I mean all the time, 24/7.

 

 

 

The three muskateers come next and I have to look at them really closely to tell them apart.

 

 

 

 

Pigeon is up next but he was being very camera shy the day I was taking pictures and went and hid.

 

Last but not least is the Lone Ranger.  He's at the bottom of the pecking order which makes no sense as he is the largest rooster I have.  I'm guessing that he's about 10 to 12 pounds and he outweighs even Champ.  He doesn't push his weight around, however, and always lets the other roos have precedent.  I worry about him hurting some of the hens, but his personality has saved him from the stew pot so far.

 

 

 

 

 

I keep thinking that I need to get rid of some of them as I'm down so many hens, but this is such a good crew of roosters that I can't bring myself to do it.  I've got so many chicks coming on this spring that I keep hoping they will continue to get along well until I can replace the hens in a few weeks.  Wish me luck.



Bubbling Away

I've always been a fan of saurkraut (it's the German in me).  When I was a kid we ate it fairly regularly with sausage (another German staple) and it was just a meal I took for granted.  Things changed over time, though, and I realized we weren't eating kraut and sausage as often.  For one thing the kraut tasted funny, off a bit.  It wasn't the kraut of my youth, tangy and spicy with an earthy scent that blended with the sausage.  Now it was sharp and bitter and tended to clash with the taste of the sausage.  I  just figured my taste for these things were changing and over time gave it up altogether.

Then one day, I was reading an article on saurkraut and I discovered back in the 70s/80s companies that were making kraut transitioned from the old way of fermenting cabbage to make their kraut to simply dumping shredded cabbage in a vat of vinegar and letting it sit until the cabbage wilted, then canning it, labeling it kraut and sending it out the door.  Took a lot less time, hence cheaper, and they could get more out the door in a shorter amount of time, therefore more profit for less work.

Soooo...for several years I just went without saurkraut.  Since I've moved back home though, I've been wanting kraut and since I'm doing the "from scratch" thing nowdays I decided to give it a go on my own.  I wasn't expecting much, but figured the worst I could do was make some unique chicken food.

Ever since I saw one, I've been wanting a fermenting crock, so Sister got me one as a present.  This particular one is Polish and I have to admit it looks a lot nicer than the German ones.  The German ones are very utilitarian (imagine that, Germans-functional!) but not as artistically done as the Polish ones.

 



So I got myself a head of cabbage, and then decided, Why stop there?  I added sweet and hot peppers, garlic, onions and carrots.  I figure if I'm going to ferment, I should ferment in a big way.

 



 So I chopped it all up, mixed it with the required amount of salt, packed it into the crock, sealed the whole mess up and waited.

 

 



One thing I love about this crock is that it has a water seal lid.  Once you put the lid in place, you pour water in the small lip around the crock opening and it seals the lid on.  No air can get in to cause bacteria growth and it cuts down on the spoilage enormously.  (as long, of course, as you keep an eye on the lid and don't let it go dry)  The lid will occasionally burb however as the cabbage begins to ferment and outgasses.  That little bubble popping through the water tells you that everything is working as it should and all is right with the world.

So after the crock is packed, it's a waiting game.  The recommendation is two weeks minimum, but you can let it wait much, much longer if you've got the patience (I don't).  Longer waiting simply gives the kraut a tangyier bite, but won't hurt or ruin it at all.

So I waited, and waited, and waited.  Finally the two weeks arrived and the lid came off.  Oh my!  Was this stuff ever good!  The cabbage part was so much of my childhood coming back to me, and the other veggies were just a wonderful add on.  I'm especially fond of the carrots.  They are still crunchy and have a salty, sweet, soury kind of flavor.  I have to admit to not being overly impressed with the peppers and think I will leave them out in the future.  And since it is fermented food, it has tons of good probiotics in it which make you feel all good inside.

So now the pot is going non-stop and we'll be having kraut for forever.  It's super simple to make and just about any vegetable will ferment in there.  The problem is making the last batch last long enough to get the new batch through the initial fermentation.  I see more crocks in my future.

Mistake? I Think Not!

I made a mistake today.  A serious error in judgement.  Or so my mother tells me.  Actually, I think I had the best luck in the world.

I had spent the entire day trying to go through boxes of paperwork that had piled up during the various moves I've made over the years.  I have the mortifying feeling that some of this paperwork hasn't seen the light of day in over a decade.  Be that as it may, I decided to do something about it today and was making great headway until about two o'clock this afternoon when I reached the point where I just could not tackle another pile of murdered trees without going stark raving mad.  So to clear my brain I decided to get in the truck and just tool around a bit to blow out the cobwebs.

So I loaded up the dog and off we went, headed south.  I intended to go to the community about two miles south of me and stroll through Dollar General for a few minutes before going home.  Instead I kept traveling and ended up in the town about 10 miles south instead.  I figured since I was there I would go to one of my favorite stores just to see what was happening, the feed and seed store.  That was probably my first mistake to Mom's way of thinking.

Got in the store and wandered around a bit and as usual drifted back to the chicken section to watch the new baby chicks for sale there (mistake #2).  While I was standing there, the store manager (a very nice man who I'm on a first name basis with mainly because I spend a good portion of my income in his store), came by and struck up a conversation.  He was talking about the new shipments they had just gotten in today when a small chicken fluttered out of its bin and perched on the rim.  Manager shook his head as he reached over and placed the chick back in its bin.   "These chicks in this bin have been here a week and they are getting big," he said.  "They're feathering out and nobody wants them after they're not cute little balls of fluff anymore.  They're starting to fly and cause problems.  They're getting in the other bins and I caught one running through the store the other day."

We looked at each other and inspiration struck us both at the same time.  "How much?" I asked(mistake #3) at the same moment that he said, "50 cents apiece."  Now a 75 percent markdown is just too good to pass up, so all I could reply was, "Done!"

So home I went with 22 chickies in tow (and one very anxious dog).  Luckily we had just put this year's first crop of babies out in the brooder house last week, so we had empty tubs.  As soon as I got home, I made sure they were clean, put them on their stands and made them ready.

 

 



The bricks are to set the waterers on.  If they are just on the bottom of the tub, it really becomes a mess.  So after this I added chips, waterers, feeders, chicks, tops and heat lamps.  Another batch, ready to go.  Actually, three as I split the 22 chicks into three tubs.

 

 

 

By the time I got all that done, it was time to go do the outside chickens chores.  The feeder was getting low so I loaded up a five gallon bucket with three-way scratch and off I went to the hen house.

 

 

 

 

After the number of chickens I had went over a dozen it was obvious that the little feeders from the feed store weren't going to be able to handle that many birds, so I went to the poultry supply store and invested in a commercial feeder that will hold a 50 pound bag of feed at one time.  It comes with a hood that covers the feeder so that you can set it out in the yard and rain won't get in it, but since it's in the hen house, I found it's easier to work it with the hood off.

 

 

 

 



When I start pouring scratch in the feeder there is a flurry of excitement from the entire crew and everybody runs to grab a bite.  Some just can't wait and will peck at the feed as it pours into the feeder.

 

 

 

 



After the feeder is filled and everybody is munching away, it's time to gather the day's eggs.  Some of the hens will go broody and stay on the nest continuously, even when I take the eggs out from under them.  I guess they think they can hatch thin air.  Others simply lay their egg and leave.

 

 

 

 



After the eggs are collected and everybody is in the hen house and roosted up for the night, it's time to close the hatch, shut the door and turn the patrol dog loose for another day.  With everything locked up for the night, then the farmer can go relax and count the loot.  29 eggs!  A good day's work.

 

 



Success So Far

Today was Big Bee Day at the Farmette.  It was the day to check and see if the queens had escaped from their cages and were making a home in the hive.

This all started in January when I started taking beekeeping classes from the Madison County Beekeepers Association in Huntsville.  www.alabees.com   I've always thought beekeeping would be an interesting hobby, and I'd been attempting to get started in it ever since I moved back into the area.  Due to various circumstances beyond my control, it just hadn't become a reality.  This year the stars all lined up and I began the process of getting bees on the farm.

I took the classes and ordered two hives from Rossman Apiaries in Moultrie, GA. www.GAbees.com  I picked the hives up at a bee conference in Auburn on Feb. 2.  The hives came in parts, so I improved my nailing skills by putting them together.

 

 

 

 



 

Then after all that nailing and gluing, I had to put everything in place.

First the platform

 

 



Then the stand

 

 



Bottom board

 

 



Empty super

 

 



Add the frames

 

 



Inner cover

Top cover.  Done.  Who would have thought there were so many parts to a beehive.

 

 



So Monday was the big day.  The bees were arriving.  Sister and I traveled to Lookout Mountain Honeybees in Gadsden to pick up two packages of bees.

 

 



I thought the farmette was in a rural area.  I've got nothing on these guys.  They are truely out in the middle of nowhere.  It was in the mountains though and very beautiful.  We wandered our way home on back roads through Collinsville and Albertville and by the lake in Guntersville.  A beautiful drive that would have been restful if I hadn't had about 40,000 bees right behind the back of my head.  Just as we got home, the heavens opened and one of the worst storms I've seen this year barreled through with buckets of rain, hail and some hefty winds.  We later learned that an F2 tornado touched down and traveled the road we had been on about 30 minutes earlier.  Several businesses were destroyed and many people lost their homes.  Luckily no one was killed.  I haven't heard how the beekeepers came out.

After the storm passed and it cleared up, it was time to install the bees.  Bees are tough.  You just turn their cage upside down and dump them in the hive.  Prior to that I had placed the queen in her cage in the hive.  She comes in a small wire and wooden cage with two corked ends.  You take out the cork on the side that has a candy plug behind it and then the bees eat through the plug to release her.  I attached the cage to a frame with a tack through the tab that comes on the cage.  Sorry I forgot to take pictures.

After the bees were in the hive we strapped the tops down so the wind wouldn't blow it off and added a feeder full of sugar water and then left them to settle in.

So I impatiently waited two days and today I got to open the hives and see how things were going.  The sugar water was going down in volumn and bees were all over the frames.

 



If you look closely at the above picture, on the bottom frame you can see the white tab from the queen cage that is attached to the frame.  So then I carefully pulled out the queen cage and found.......

Nothing!  She was gone, out of her cage and crawling amongst the hoards of workers busily preparing a home for her and the future generations she would breed. 

I carefully put the hive back together and went to the second hive to find the same scenario taking place.  I am left with humming hives and two empty queen cages.  This is a good thing.

So in spite of my ineptitude, the bees are taking care of themselves and they seem to be settling down and making their home here at the farmette.  Life is good.

Back By Popular Demand

I recently left the rigors of farm life and went on a visit to friends that live near the coast.  While I was there, everybody fussed at me about not blogging any more.  So watch what you complain about, you may get a solution.  I'm back!!!

I'm going to give a lot of excuses for not blogging in almost two years, but really it's mainly because I just got bored and busy and distracted and I thought nobody was interested.  My other excuses are that my computer bit the dust so I'm having to upload from my sister's computer down at my mom's house.  (That excuse is a bit weak as I'm spending more time there than at my own place.)  My camera also bit the dust, and frankly blog posts are boring without supporting pictures.  (Actually, it wasn't the camera, it was the charger, but it's replaced now.)

So here goes.  In the last year and a half plus, Sister and I have instituted a lot of changes here (here generally means my house and her and my mom's property where a lot of the actual farming takes place.  They are only a half mile apart so the distinction get a bit blurry on occasion.  I'll try and remember to let you know where in particular I'm talking about.)  We've started several new projects and done lots of work and I'll be talking about that in particular in the future.

Since I posted last, the chickens have expanded.  I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of about 75 right now.  I had around a hundred at one point, but disease, dogs and hawks over the last several months have taken a toll.  We have several baby chicks in various stages of growth, however, to replace the fallen and add even more.  The chickens are the main focus right now of my farming efforts so expect a lot of posts on them.

 

 

 



We've also planted lots and lots of fruit trees.  I've decided that reaching up and picking fruit is much easier on my back than bending over and picking vegetables (although there will still be plenty of that too.  Who am I kidding?)

I thought my building was at an end when I got the house done.  Not so.  Last summer, I put a Hobby House up in the back and moved in my loom, spinning wheel and the buckets and buckets of yarn that I have.  It's made quiet the cozy little retreat.

 

 



We've added a couple of goats to the menagerie.  Lulu is on the left, Jolene is on the right.

 

 

 

 

And just this week, (yesterday in fact) we installed two beehives.  Now that was interesting!

 

 

 

 





So there's lots happening here at the farmette, and you're going to get to hear about all of it.   I'll be posting as things happen and in between, I'll post on lots of the above and a few other things we've done to catch you up to date.  I'm looking forward to getting back into this.  Hope you are too.