Just another morning

On By stefrobrtsIn 2010chicks, barclay, chickens, mightyLeave a comment
What a beautiful morning! The sun is shining..
The birds are singing…
The flowers are blooming!
The rain has made our backyard like a jungle. A jungle Barclay would love to explore, but I’m trying to teach him to stay on the other side of the fence, even though he is an expert at finding places he can fit through. Here he is looking at me through one of those spots. He can squeeze right through there, and probably would as soon as I turn my back!
The cats will sit for hours staring at a clump of grass, waiting to catch a field mouse. But once it’s dead they lose interest and leave it in the yard…
Ugh! Bad kitties…
It was such a beautiful morning I let mama hen bring her chicks out of the tractor to explore the yard. I’m confident she’ll take good care of them. She’s very watchful.

Baby trees/garden update

On By stefrobrtsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I temporarily planted my baby apple trees in pots until I can get out and dig holes for them in the pasture. I also need to wait until those apple-tree-eating sheep leave, which will be Sunday.

I have 5 Haralson apples, 3 Snow Famuse apples, and 2 Yellow Newtons. The Newtons were a mistake, they were mixed in with the Snows and I didn’t check all my tags carefully enough! Oh well, I’m sure they will be fine. Sounds like they all pollinate at the same time, which is what I was looking for. The Snows and Haralsons are all-around (cooking, eating, saucing) apples, and the Newton sounds more like a tart cooking apple, which is fine.

Out in the garden the lettuce is doing well. It seems to be enjoying the cool weather.

I have lettuce, onions, and beets coming up in this bed, with a second planting of lettuce and spinach just poking up in the bed further back, along with a few herbs, and just planted a third planting of lettuce past that.I also got my yellow wax beans, but they were bush beans, not pole beans. Either way, I planted them on the other side of the bed form the pole beans. Should be plenty of beans by the end of summer!

The tomatoes are still wearing their shrouds and looking like a troop of lost ghosts! We’re still having downpours (I heard someone today speculating it was because of the Iceland volcano), so I won’t be uncovering them quite yet.

Gardening update

On By stefrobrtsIn gardenLeave a comment

I’ll have to get some pictures tomorrow. Today the sun came out! Miracle of miracles! I spent two solid hours working outside while the weather was nice. I sprayed blackberry bushes that were out of control around the side of the house, cut down the bamboo stumps by the pond with a sawzall so everything is flat to the ground (more of my efforts to beat out the invasive bamboo I’ve been fighting the last couple years).

I spent some time in the garden weeding, and I have to say the weeding is going very well considering the area was a paddock just a couple months ago. There are some persistent sticker weeds of the type that they are all coming from a massive underground system, so it keeps sending up new shoots. As soon as I see their prickly little heads I pull them up, and they come easily, usually dragging a long white root behind that is all curled around from it’s efforts to come up through all that cardboard I laid down.

Once everything was weeded I smoothed out the last garden bed and planted Blue Lake pole beans down one side of it. I would like to get yellow beans to plant down the other side, so maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the feed store and see if I can find a packet.

Everything is growing well in the garden. The tomatoes look a little sad, but it has been cold and cloudy. The lettuce is loving it, as is the beets, chard, and herbs. The squash had a little setback when I transplanted them, but they seem to be recovering and putting on new leaves. There’s some bug damage, but not too bad. The potatoes are just starting to peek up through the straw I piled on top of them, so I need to go check my book and see what to do next. Pile more straw on them, if I recall correctly.

Update: I saw a notice on CL this afternoon that the local exhibition garden had leftovers from their fundraiser tree sale, and were closing out trees for just three hours at the extension office – including $3 bare-root apple trees! I closed the store and ran right over and got ten baby apple trees. I researched them before I went and picked a couple interesting but unusual varieties – Snow Famuse and Haralson – five of each. Great, now I have to go dig ten holes! Time to plant a little orchard 🙂

Rain won’t stop me!

On By stefrobrtsIn food3 Comments

It just won’t quit raining! Long after we should be enjoying pleasant spring days we are still getting pounded daily by rain, hail, and high winds. My garden plants are hunkered down under their covers wondering if there will ever be heat and sun. I haven’t even bothered to replant my patio pots, and they are overgrown with opportunistic weeds. Since it has been too wet to mow, the grass in the backyard has grown so tall that it can’t be mowed now. Seems like there’s nothing else to do but put on a coat and break out the BBQ!

My little Cobb BBQ, perfect for hunkering under the patio cover out of the rain.

Mmmmm, marinated chicken for fajitas – yum!

Chicken update

On By stefrobrtsIn 2010chicks, chickens1 Comment
Mama hen doesn’t like you looking at her chickies!
But they are too cute! I had to look!
These are ‘Barnyard Mix’ chicks from my egg layer flock, so they are Blue Cochin crossed with Buff Orpington or Buff Cochin, or there’s also a White Cochin. They are quite a mix.
Interesting how the grey ones are getting blue and buff feathers.
I think I have two baby roos and four baby hens, but it’s hard to tell at this age. Still, two of them have such pronounced combs that even Dave noticed. We’ll just see how they grow out.
Meanwhile, in the brooder box, my borrowed broody hen is still setting on 12 more barnyard mix eggs, so hopefully I’ll have more of these guys to pick from.

Trout Lake 2010 – pt 2

On By stefrobrtsIn airstream, barclay, dave2 Comments
 On the third day we woke up to a beautiful morning

We jumped in the van and went for a drive through the pine forests to a nearby town called Glenwood. We stopped at the Conboy Wildlife Refuge.

Yup, more pine trees.
Wide open marshlands for the birds. Though we didn’t really see any.
Our walk around the park pooped the puppy
But he perked back up in time for lunch..
After not seeing any birds at the refuge, we saw plenty of them while we were parked eating lunch.
And wildlife. Well, almost…
And a pretty view of the countryside
We got back to camp just in time to watch the races – dogs vs people!
A weekend in the Airstream is always a great weekend!

Trout Lake 2010

On By stefrobrtsIn airstream, barclay, dave2 Comments

Every year our camping friends get together for an early summer campout at Trout Lake, WA. We pack up our wee little Airstream trailer and join in when we can. This year it was on the ‘must do’ list!

This isn’t half the trailers – just the ones on our end of the campground.

For me, the primary thing I love about this campground is the spectacular view of Mt Adams just a few miles away.

Of course the opportunity to hang around and catch up with old friends and make new ones is pretty cool too.

Barclay managed to find his way into the center of the circle most of the time and did his best to schmooze lovin’ and treats off the other campers.

 Dave and sleepy Barclay at afternoon nap time for doggies

Dave and Barclay
Dave insisted on getting a picture of me and Barclay!
Closeup of Mt Adams
So pretty and rugged!
We had an expert ‘smores’ cook serving everyone around the fire
And then a jam session broke out
And I just sat staring into the warm fire and enjoying the music
Until it was time to go to bed!

Jerky!

On By stefrobrtsIn food2 Comments

I’ve been wanting to make jerky for a long time, ever since I first saw the Good Eats episode a couple years ago. Well now I have a dehydrator and some knowledge of how to do it safely, so on the way home last night I picked up 2lbs of Flank steak and decided to give it a go.

I froze the steak, sliced it thin across the grain, and marinated it using the Good Eats recipe. Then just before bed I poured the marinade into a pot and brought it to a boil, and put a few jerky strips into it at a time, returned it to a boil and pulled them out and let them drain. That’s supposed to kill any e.coli on the outside of the meat. Then it goes onto the dehydrator racks. Since the book said 10-12 hours, we let it go overnight.

In the morning I woke up at 5am  and thought I’d check it, and it wasn’t quite done, but it had only been 6 hours. I went back to bed and woke up at 9, and by then it had been cooking for 10 hours – the minimum expected time by the book – but it was overdone.

It still tastes fine, just the texture is a little more dried out than I would have liked. And the rumor that you can make jerky cheaper at home? Tillamook Jerky costs $5 for 3.5oz. My jerky cost $11 for the meat, not counting the cost of marinade or electricity to process it, that 2lbs of flank turned into 9oz of jerky! If you divide it out, it’s pretty much a wash. The main benefits are knowing what’s in it, and flavoring it the way you want to.

It was fun to do for the experience, but for the price I think I’ll stick with dehydrating fruits and veg.

Food Preservation Class

On By stefrobrtsIn food, garden4 Comments

Yesterday I spent all afternoon making these six cans of preserves. It’s two quarts of Apple Pie Filling and 4 half-pints of Pickled Radish Relish. The radishes are fresh out of my garden -Yum! The Radish Relish tasted pretty good right out of the pan, so I imagine it’s going to be even better after it sits and the flavors meld.

I am taking a class through the county extension on food preservation. It’s their Master Food Preserver class, and it’s 9 weeks long, one full day a week. We started with food safety, why things spoil, what makes food unsafe, and then moved on to freezing, drying, canning high-acid foods (like the apple pie filling) and pickling (like the relish). Next week I think we do jellies, and after that low-acid foods using a pressure canner.

It’s a hands on class, so every week we actually get to do this stuff with volunteers right there to help us through the steps. I remember things so much better hands on. At this point I feel like I confidently understand why you do what you do to make sure your preserves are safe to eat when you’re ready to use them. I felt like I wanted to make some preserves at home so if I had any questions I could ask the teacher at class this week before we moved on to something new, but it actually went quite well. By the book, so to speak.

The price for this class, aside from the lab fee, is to put in 40 hours of volunteer time after class is over. This will be things like manning the county food safety line and answering people’s questions about if something is spoiled or how to preserve foods, or going out in public and teaching classes or assisting at them, or doing pressure gauge testing clinics. So I guess that’s what I’ll be doing this summer!

Broody hen #2

On By stefrobrtsIn 2010chicks, chickens3 Comments

I had my black hen go broody, so I saved up a dozen eggs to stick under her, and moved her to the chicken tractor with the eggs in a crate. This worked fine last year, and she sat and raised her chicks in the tractor, but this year, she didn’t like being out in the tractor, and decided not to be broody anymore!

So with a dozen eggs I didn’t want to waste, I started looking for an incubator. I had several people offer me one, but then I thought to ask Martha if she happened to have a broody hen, and she did! She said she was stealing eggs out from under her every day (broody hens are kind of annoying if you don’t want them to raise chicks for you). So I went over to try and catch her, and she got away. The next day Martha caught her and put her in a crate, then I came over and we put her in a smaller crate, then I took her home. Martha said she’s moved broody hens before, but never across the county! So we didn’t know if this would work. I put her in the brooder box with the crate full of eggs, food and water, and left her there to relax.

The first night she spent sleeping outside the crate, and I was thinking this wasn’t going to work. This morning I went in to check on her and she was sitting on the eggs! Yay! There’s no better incubator than a mama hen! I hope she settles down in there and keeps sitting. I’ll keep it quiet and try not to disturb her. 21 days to more chicks (I hope)!