Garden Goings-on

Here's what's happening this week in the garden:

Alliaceae (onion) Family:
The garlics I planted in November continue to do well and thrive. A friend had given me some Walla Walla sweets back in March (I think?) and they are looking very healthy. Some chives from last year actually over-wintered and are coming back vigorously. A few of the chives are looking a bit yellow. Any ideas as to why this is happening??? The leeks we put in a week and a half ago look good too, still tiny, but good. They are in an unprotected bed, and we found deer hoofprints in the bed, but none of the leeks got nibbled - yay:)

Asteraceae (lettuce) Family:
Amongst the garlic are a few volunteer lettuces from the mesclun mix that had inhabited that bed last year. I think they are enjoying the shade from the garlic. I planted two rows of mesclun, one row of romaine, and one of spinach early in March. So far the mesclun are doing well, as are the romaine, but the spinach didn't develop at all. A few little cotyledons came up, but they mostly got eaten by some bug that didnt seem to care at all about the other greens right next to it. Hmmm....

Brassicaceae (cabbage) Family:
Between the onions I planted radishes two weeks ago and they are finally developing their second set of leaves. Nothing seems to have made a snack of their cotyledons (knock on wood) even though I have kicked a small handful of slugs out of the garden lately.
Yesterday I transplanted about 15 of our broccoli starts (and possibly a few kohlrabi, as I got a lot of them mixed up...) out into one of the raised beds, and they are looking pretty good so far.

Cucurbitaceae (cucumber) Family:
Monday we transplanted 6 of our cucumber starts outdoors and they seem to be suffering a bit of shock. Their cotyledons and second set of leaves are both looking whitish at the tips and a little less green all over. Does anyone know if this will subside or if there is something seriously wrong?? We also put 4 pumpkins out a few days ago, and they seem to be suffering from the same thing, but a little less so. We're going to plant a few summer squash in the same bed as the pumpkins. I also recently read about "The Three Sisters" of Corn, Beans and Squash. I had already planned on planting two rows of corn at the edge of the bed that the squash are in, and now I think I will plant some pole beans next to the corn so they can vine up.

Papilionaceae (pea and bean) family:
The peas I planted in late February/early March, are doing well. They are about a foot and a half to two feet tall. They're a bit peaked looking, so we are going to try fertilizing them with some alpaca manure tea this week. We cut some bamboo poles and propped them into an a-frame semi-structure and are training them up the poles. Hopefully they will make a lovely little pea-fortress.

Solanaceae (potato) family:
The potatoes have not shown their faces yet. I check every day and still nothing. Our tomato and pepper starts, on the other hand, are doing well. We brought about half of our tomato starts out and put them in the hot house about a week ago. So far they are looking ok, but aren't as big as the ones that are inside under the lamp. They also suffered a bit of shock at first, and some of the leaves have a whitish discoloration on the edges, but it is minimal and they seem to be recovering already. Within the next week or two, we plan to put the tomatoes outside, once we make sure we have plenty of protected bedspace for them. We were worried about the peppers because we had planted them indoors at the end of January, and they hadn't seemed to grow much. Two weeks ago, I repotted them and now they are flourishing. I am confident that they will grow lots of big happy peppers this season. At the end of May we plan to transplant them to their permanent spot in the hothouse.

Fruits:
Last week I dug out a forest of weeds that was growing in between the fence and a big raised bed and laid down black plastic. In one section I cut three holes in the plastic and put three strawberry plants and they are looking great. We still haven't found a good permanent place to put the raspberry. I got one in a pot from my mother last summer, and never put it in the ground. I thought I had killed it, but it came back this spring and looks just as healthy. There are also several apple trees on the property. We did a little bit of pruning on one this winter, so hopefully we get some apples this summer.

Herbs:
We had started a ton of basil and a little bit of oregano, dill, and sage indoors. The sage looks (and smells) awesome in their little starters. The oregano hasn't shown its face yet, but I know that it takes a while to develop. The dill is lanky but developing its second leaves nicely and looks overall pretty good. The basils are doing terribly. So far only a few have their second set of leaves and they are all extremely short. What are we doing wrong here?? Does dill just develop really really slowly?? We got some thyme, lavender, and marjoram as starts at a nursery and they look awesome.

That's the update for now. Much more to come later. Share your gardening stories and advice with me please I'd love to hear it!!!

More Chick Pics

The babies are growing! They are even fatter now than when we took these pics a few days ago...







We are in a routine now, in which overnight they stay in the secure top part of the tractor with the heat lamp on them, and then around noon every day we put a ramp leading down to the bottom part, which is directly on the grass and is only protected by chicken wire. They stay down there until evening, before it gets dark, then we put them back up top.

At first, they didn't understand that the ramp would take them down to their grassy playground (which they LOVE!), and we would have to *gently* usher them down, or physically pick them up and put them down there, but the past 3 days, they have gone down all by themselves. They are still very ungraceful about it, and don't always use the ramp to get down the entire way. Sometimes a few will go all the way down the ramp, but mostly they walk down a few steps, then tumble the rest of the way down in a flurry of feathers and peeps. One day I opened it up, and walked away to see what they would do. I was inspecting my garden, when all of a sudden I glanced over and what looked like 5 or 6 of them all flew out at once! Needless to say, it was very cute.

Once they get down there they are very much like children who have been cooped up inside for a while. They flutter around, pecking and running laps. They often look like they are bouncing around.

They are indeed getting very fat. The Buff Orpingtons and Austrolorps (which I read, are actually an Australian breed of Orpington, initially called "Austral Orpington" but it was eventually abbreviated to Austrolorp) are the largest, and you can tell they would be good meat birds. The Buff Orpingtons have a particularly pronounced comb on their heads, and two small reddish streaks on the undersides of their beaks. Every day it seems they become more and more brown. The Austrolorps are still primarily black, with a bit of whitish yellow on their bellies. One is still larger than the other, but the difference is starting to even out. My little "Simon" (as I nicknamed her after Simon Birch since she was the runt) is getting larger and putting on more weight :) The smallest are still the Silver Laced Wyandottes, but every day the size difference between them and the other girls becomes less and less distinguishable. Their feathers are developing into what will in their adulthood become a beautiful black and white lacy appearance. They are still the most elusive to me, and are usually the last ones I catch to put them up at night. My favorites are the Ameraucanas. Their feathers are brown and fancy and they are the easiest to catch and hold.

As I write it is becoming darker and I should go put them in their cozy sleeping area!

A Few Things about Starting Seeds

Hi again!

Just a few notes about our seed-starting experience so far.

These are the seeds we chose to start indoors:
-Broccoli
-Cabbage
-Kohlrabi (purple and white)
-several kinds of basil (Thai, Bush Spicy Globe, Purple, Sweet, Genovese, and a few I can't remember right now)
-lemon balm
-dill
-oregano
-sage
-tomatoes (Stupice, Gold Medal, Cherokee Purple, and Sungold)
-sunflowers
-peppers (Poblano Ancho, Jalapeno, Mixed Chiles, Yolo Sweet, and Purple)
-cucumbers
-pumpkins
-Chives
-Onions
We started our seeds in Mid-March in 8 flats with 36 individual sections. For the soil we used a mixture of regular potting soil and peaty seed starting mixture. This worked great.

We started with a space heater underneath the table the flats were on to germinate, and once they started to sprout we placed 2 full spectrum lights about 12 inches above the flats. In the future, I would put the lights on a pulley system, and start them about 2-4 inches above the sprouts, then raise the lights as the plants got larger. Our broccoli, kohlrabi, and cabbage seedlings stretched and got way too spindly and fell over. Fortunately, we caught it before they died, and re-potted them in larger pots, and mounded the soil up around them so that only their leaves and a tiny bit of stem were above the soil line. We also placed a fan on a cupboard next to the table so that there would be a slight breeze on the sprouts. I believe this is what saved our tomato seedlings from stretching too badly, since it required them to grow sturdier stems.

The peppers we started inside under a light at the end of January, and now it is mid-April and they are about 3 inches tall and most of them are just starting to develop their second set of leaves. They were becoming root-bound, so we re-potted them last week and they are beginning to look more healthy and vigorous. In May, once it becomes warmer out, we will transplant them into our Hot House we built last year.

The cucumbers came up the largest and most vigorous of all the starts. To start transitioning them before we transplant them outdoors, I have moved their flat into the hot house for the next couple of weeks. They have been there for about 2 days and they look great.

The hot house can get up to 70 degrees during the warmest part of the day, and usually doesn't go lower than 55 or 50 degrees at night.

The pumpkins are also quite vigorous but are stretching much more than the cucumbers did. We will transplant them outside this weekend, mounding the dirt up around them.

We had the stretching problem with the sunflowers as well, but instead of re-potting them, I just went ahead and planted them in the ground outside and they are doing just fine.

The things we have already or plan to direct sow in the ground are:
-garlic
-potatoes
-spinach, romaine, and mesclun mix
-peas-pak choi
-beans
-radishes
-carrots
-squash

We got a lots of Walla Walla Sweet onions already started from a friend and from Cenex, and put those in the ground 3 weeks ago, and they look great.

I planted garlic back in November and now the stalks are a foot tall, and should be ready at the end of the summer.
I just planted the potatoes yesterday so we'll see how they do. For their bed, we just tilled up a plot in full sun about 8 feet X 8 feet and amended the ground soil with some compost from the farm/garden store. We got some Yukon Gold seed potatoes from the farm/garden store, and I saved two organic russet potatoes that had started sprouting tons of eyes. I cut the potatoes into chunks about the size of an egg and each piece had at least 2 eyes on it. I laid them out to dry for a day (or two) and then put them out in the bed in rows, then mounded dirt on top of them, rather than digging down. As they grow, we have been told we are supposed to continue to mound the dirt around the stem, and the plant will send out shoots into the mounds which will produce potatoes.

I put the peas out in early March along the fence and they have come up about 3-4 inches and look very healthy and green so far.
Also, just today I put some corn and marigold seeds in flats in the hot house. We shall see what they do.

This is such an exciting time of year because there are so many different kinds of seeds for sale, and so much to do in the garden, and you have all summer to look forward to watching everything grow! It's such a great feeling to have plenty to do outdoors after being inside for most of the winter. Can't wait to see how everything turns out!

Raising Chicks, or "It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much...

...and live with her too little."
~Oscar Wilde

I recently found this quote and thought it an apt title for my first real post, which will be regarding the subject of raising chickens.

All my life, I have been aware of the presence of this creature, the chicken.

I have eaten chicken meat from all parts of the bird, prepared in all different ways. I have enjoyed eggs as a delicious source of energy in my breakfasts, and cracked countless into baked goods as an efficient binding agent.

I have even had a general knowledge of the birds anatomy and behaviors. They have wings, feathers, beaks. They spend their days pecking in the dirt. Roosters crow, hens lay eggs...not exactly an in depth understanding of the animal, but in our modern society where the rich bounties of this fabulous fowl are effortlessly procured in neat packages from a clean, hygienic, and most of all convenient local market, one need not know much more than these simple facts.

As Trystan and I started thinking more and more about buying only animal products which came from animals treated humanely, we began buying the Free Range/Organic eggs at the market. We immediately noticed a difference in the eggs quality and flavor. Then we started buying eggs from a local farmer. These eggs were even more luxurious and tasty.

Then the little idea worm started to burrow its way into our consciousness - we wanted to start raising our own chickens so that we could have such high caliber eggs practically delivered to our home every single day for (hopefully) less than we are spending currently.

So after a while of contemplating it, we decided to take the plunge. A co-worker of mine had recently told me about her chicken tractor. The basic idea behind this structure, as opposed to a more traditional and permanent coop/chicken run, is that you can move the tractor around your yard, giving the chickens an ever changing environment which they can forage for food in. This serves a dual purpose, as the chickens will till up the soil and fertilize it with their poop as they go. My co-worker also claimed that the mobility of the structure helped to reduce the likelihood of rodent infestations. So, with our new-found knowledge of chicken tractors, we looked at several websites with different examples of tractor designs, and finally settled on a cozy A-Frame design reminiscent of a Swiss Chalet. We were able to build it out of mostly recycled wood from a recent renovation project. The only thing we had to purchase new was the chicken wire for around $13 at Cenex.

Carried by the momentum that was growing around this project, I checked out almost every book about chickens that the local library had. "The Field Guide to Chickens" by Pam Percy is filled with pictures, descriptions, and history of just about every chicken breed which ever lived. In addition, "Keep Chickens!" by Barbara Kilarski has become my constant companion.

Ok so now we've (almost) finished the tractor, we've read the books, we've been drooling (er...well something like that) over pictures of different breeds....it's time to take the plunge and buy the damn birds.

We went to the local farm and garden and selected 4 breeds we had read were good layers and had mostly darker plumage (does this word even apply to a chicken???) so that they would not stand out too much to predators. We bought a little feeder and waterer, some starter mash, and compressed wood shavings. We had also previously purchased a 250 watt red tinted heat lamp bulb to keep the little ones at a toasty 95 degrees for the first week of their lives.

We got a pullet run, which means theoretically all of the chicks are girls, but the sexing at the time of their hatching is only 90-95% accurate, so we may have a rooster on our hands...I read that they are sexed based on color, and it can take up to 5 years to train as a chick sexer (I think thats what they are called).


When we got them home, we needed a brooder. A Brooder is where the chicks will live for their first few weeks/months until they are ready to go into their tractor. It needs to have the food dispenser, water dispenser (both of these we picked up at the farm/garden store for under $5.00, and it is worth it to know that they will work), wood shavings to absorb the poop, and a heat lamp. We found an old oversized appliance box and taped up the flaps to make it extra tall, since they would soon be jumping/flying. Then we filled it with the necessary items, dumped the chicks in, and ta-DAAAA we had our very own make-shift brooder!

Our little ladies hatched on March 29th and we got them on March 31st. It's now April 16th, and we have had them for almost 4 weeks.

The first week they would go through about 1 mason jar full of food in 2-3 days. In their second week with us, they started going through 1 jar a day, and now we have to make sure to fill up once in the morning and once in the evening. With the eating comes the pooping. The first week and a half we could get away with changing the wood chips in the brooder every few days, and now they stink it up much sooner.

They have lost almost all of their baby fluff and have begun to develop the beginnings of a comb on the ridge right above their beaks. They are scampering around and every once in a while jumping/flying. They can get about 5-8 inches off the ground! One day we looked in the brooder and saw some poop on the top of their water container, which is about 6 inches tall and we knew they were getting more and more rambunctious. Since we had noticed they were gravitating away from the area directly under the heat lamp, and since the lamp was close enough they could have jumped onto it from the top of the water container, we raised the lamp about 10 inches up. They seem to be more comfortable being directly underneath the lamp now.

This past week we also introduced a few mini-perches into the brooder to give them an opportunity to try out roosting. Since the box they're in is cardboard, we just poked two holes in the sides just big enough for a stick, and stuck a stick through each. They took a few minutes to get used to it, then just hopped right on like old pro's. Oh animal instincts, how I love you so.

Two days ago, Trystan went up to check the chicks and they had knocked over their water container. Those little piggies! So yesterday, since it was a warm, sunny day, and we were out in the garden anyway, we decided to put them in the tractor for a couple hours for a change of scenery. They loved it! I think they will be great foragers.

The breeds we chose are the Ameraucana, Silver Laced Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, and the Black Austrolorp. The Buff Orpingtons like to be in the warmest spot in the brooder and seem to sleep the most, and be the most skiddish. There is one Austrolorp who is much smaller than the rest, and I keep calling her Simon Birch. Poor little dear...her Austrolorp partner is by far the largest of the group, and we are suspecting there is a chance it is a rooster. If it is, we will probably keep it, unless it becomes a nuisance, in which case it might become a tasty dinner :) I think a rooster may be a beneficial thing to have around here since there are so many predators, but we'll see, since most people do not recommend having a rooster unless you have 12 or more hens. The Ameraucana's are shaping up to be the most beautiful of the group. They have lovely almost leopard print wings with reddish brown heads and tufts on the sides of their faces. I am also partial to them because they have let me hold them the longest and are always looking up at us from the brooder. So far I cannot tell the difference between the two Silver Laced Wyandottes. This is the only breed where the pair look almost identical. The Buff Orpingtons were yellow when we first got them, but now that their "big girl" wings are developed, they are becoming a lovely light brown.

Well, I guess that brings us up to date on our chick-ventures thus far. I'm sure there will be many more stories to come as they grow through Pullet-hood and then into genuine laying hens.

These are the blogs of our lives...

Hi!
We are Trystan and Julia, two crazy forest critters on a mystical journey towards Self Sufficiency! (If any of you have seen the now defunct British TV series "Good Neighbors", please read the words "Self sufficiency" with the inflections of Tom Good)

Ok, so its not always mystical and we aren't forest critters, but this is our new blog chronicling our journey towards doing more stuff for ourselves.

We hope to use this as a tool to help others who are seeking real life answers to their questions about gardening, composting, recycling, raising chickens, brewing beer, growing fruit trees/bushes, and hopefully many more things to come!

This is not to say we have all the answers, far from it in most cases as we are amateurs, but in the past year or two since we sowed the first the seeds (I couldn't resist that pun!) of sustainable living in our brains, we have realized the value of learning from other peoples' experiences. It will also serve to help US to remember all the little treasures of knowledge we glean along the way.

It is also our hope that this blog will help us to share our deep love and appreciation for our natural world. All of these activities serve a purpose, to fill our bellies and sustain our bodies, but as we have watched our fledgling seeds transform into veritable living sculptures, or marveled at the patterns on our 3 day old baby chicks feathers, we have felt a deeper connection to the food we eat and the earth that is our home.

We hope that anyone who is reading this will join in the conversation! Give us your thoughts on the subjects, discuss alternative solutions, share helpful books or web links, vent frustrations on uncooperative plants or animals...whatever! The sky's the limit! I'd pop in a few more cliches here, but....I just don't really feel like it.

I'll leave you with a quote from the German poet and critic Heinrich Heine:

"Like a great poet, Nature is capable of producing the most stunning effects with the smallest means. Nature possesses only the sun, trees, flowers, water and love. But for him who feels no love in his heart, none of these things has any poetic value. To such an individual the sun has a diameter of a certain number of miles, the trees are good for making a fire, the flowers are divided into varieties, and the water is set."