The busy time of Year

Warm weather, new growth, and good fortune, all add up to lots to do.  Our neighbor had some trees taken down that were over the power lines.  With the weather these days, any trees that can fall onto things you don't want smashed are a real threat.  The trees also threatened her home.  The sad thing was that one of the trees was a big, old and beautiful Spruce.
The up side to all of this is that the crews doing the tree work gladly agreed to give me all the wood and all the chips.  The wood, most of it, will be heating the house next winter, and possibly the one after that.  The guys used their big machines to stack it all in the upper drive where I can still get around it but where I can get at it and work it in the shade (bonus).  The spruce may become spars for some small boats to be built in the future!
The chips are being used in a few different ways.  We are using them to line walkways in the garden.

Well trodden path to the chicken coop now
covered in wood chips

 They will help reduce the amount of weeds that come up, and increase the amount of moisture in the garden.  It is impressive how the chips can be dry on the top layer and very moist just below.  It is forecast to be a hot and dry summer, and it seems that we might be due this unpleasantness.  The other measure we are putting in place to deal with the moisture issue is using the chips to create a swale.  In this case a swale is a small ditch where runoff will travel and hopefully stay for a while.  The ditch is filled with the chips, which are porous enough to let the water flow but will help to keep the ground from eroding.

The main garden now has paths covered in wood chips
and the swale borders it's uphill side to hold moisture and prevent erosion
from runoff.

We also have chips around the base of the fruit trees.  Even if the season is not as bad as forecast, these chips look nice, reduce the amount of weed pulling, and will relieve some of the pressure to water.  They also smell great!  The perfume of a dead, ground up evergreen.
Momma sneaky snake just shed her skin and is looking really great.  We saw junior yesterday.  These are the garter snakes that are here each year.  It took us a minute to get used to them but now they are like family, and have even become a bit complacent about us being around them.

Momma snake warming up in the sun on a cloudy day.
The dog is sleeping next to her just off camera frame.

Two new additions to the place and family this year are plum trees.  They are young but someday we might have some sweet tasting fruit and a lovely tall tree.

Kind of spindly now but give her a few years
and we may have a nice tree to sit under and plums!

The arbor for the grape has turned out to be a great visual improvement and hopefully a practical one for the grape.

The grape arbor in the distance.  this makes for a
nice place for morning breakfast.

I have really been enjoying the "sunrise deck" that I put up.  Each morning I take my cup of coffee up there and set it aside while I to a bit of meditation.  It is a really great way to start the day.

sunrise deck from the cafe table on the porch

sunrise deck from the peach/plum tree terrace
That's the grape arbor on the right.

I now have the summer to get the wood cut, split and stacked.  It is really a lot of wood and that makes me feel two ways at once.  The first is that I feel comfort in knowing that the little house will be toasty warm this winter.  The second way is that I have a bit of time ahead having to hear the drone of that chainsaw and smell it's fumes.  I may try and move logs a piece at a time with in range of the electric chainsaw, which isn't so unpleasant to use.

It's a busy time of year.

Lots of little plants have sprung up from the seeds we planted.  Now the thing is to keep them alive!  

Asparagus!

Asparagus season has ended for us here already.  It was great while it lasted but now the plants are tall ferny things that lean over from their own weight and give something nice to look at in that corner of the garden.  We added about 6 new asparagus plants this year and at least 2 of them have sprouted.

The first strawberries have begun to blush and we may even get some soon if the new young chipmunk I was doesn't get to them first.

The potatoes we planted have all come up and look very healthy.  We put some more in the lower garden yesterday.

This year we have found a bit of return plants coming up on their own.  We have kale, tomato, sunchokes of course, ground cherry, squash, sunflowers, and of course all the standards, mustard, red mustard, lamb's quarter, dandelion, and more I am sure we will discover later.

The hens are all doing well.  A few of them are fond of the Sunchokes so we cut them up and feed them to them.  I never knew that chickens really like apples.

I don't think the fig tree really made it thru the winter the way we wrapped it.  There are a few small green buds on it in one place and we are thinking of letting it get thru the summer to get it's self a bit stronger and then transplant it into a pot and take it inside for the winter.  It may do better that way and we could put another cherry tree in it's spot.

We added a grape vine and two blueberry bushes to the family.  They seem to be doing ok so far.  The other 2 grape vines have little tiny grapes on them.  Very exciting.

This summer I hope to build a new and improved woodshed for our fire wood, one that actually looks nice as well as being functional.  Right now I am working on a woodshed in the work yard for all the milled wood that I have.

Lots of little garter snakes out right now.  They are kind of funny, some skittish others more social.  The dog likes to entertain herself by chasing them.

I've been using the SolarShower for bathing in the bath house in the afternoons, after the water has been heated by the sun and after I have worked all day getting dirty.  It is a very refreshing and comfortable thing to have the whole of the bath house to bath in and no furnace running to heat the water.

It's the best time of year right now.  This is the time that if you were given the chance to go somewhere, this is where you'd pick to go.  No need to head to the beach or anywhere else really.  We love it here at this time.

The Hens

Something like 440 eggs to date from the 6 hens we have living with us.  They started laying in August(?), ya, I think it was August.  For a few weeks it was an egg or two a day and a few malformed at that.  Then about 2 weeks after the first egg arrived we were getting a good 5 or 6 a day.  Just this last week the laying rate has slowed.  I attribute this to the shortness of the day and the cold setting in.

The Brown leg horns were the most inconsistent, and the last to start laying, but they are the ones still laying now. The Red sex link were the first to lay and the most consistent, but were the first to stop laying.  The Tetra's are still laying, but miss every so often.

Having the 3 pairs of hens makes it easy to keep track of who's doing what, it makes it pretty easy to keep a count while working out in the yard and being aware of predators.

We have had our share of predators around.  Hawks sometimes circle but the "girls" take to the wineberry bushes and the dog keeps watch.  One day I caught a Fox about 10 feet from one of the girls, and chased him into the woods.  That was months ago and we haven's seen him since.

We have been feeding them a cup of organic grain/feed in the morning and again in the evening.  They usually finish this, although sometimes they leave a bit in the evening.  During the day the birds are truly free range and can roam as far as they want to.  On occasion I have gone out and herded them back closer to the house but only when I was concerned for their welfare.  They do tend to find thickets to hang out in during the day, especially when it was hot out.  I often just leave the dog out to sit up on the hill and keep watch.  Reminds me of the old Looney Tunes cartoon with the sheep dog and the coyote.

The girls have gotten to know my call to them and come running when I go out and call them.  I do this at mid day when I bring them a snack, usually of corn on the cob, in season, and now dried corn from the summer mixed with sunflower seeds and ground cherries, apple cores.....During the summer when there is plenty for them to forage, I give them less, but now there is not much out there and they need the energy to keep warm, so I give them a bit more.

With the cost of the feed we are spending under five cents and egg, or were when laying was more regular.  Maybe with the winter laying being less we might safely average about spending twice that.  Still ten cents an egg is pretty good in my figuring.

I'd love to get them to eat some of the sun chokes that grow here in large amounts.  Those and the ground cherries grow here like weeds so to get them to feed the hens would be wonderful.  I might try making a mash out of them and see how they like it.

eating our yard

After a morning of painting, and chicken coop improvements we put together and then ate a great lunch that was mostly from our own yard.

Tomato sanwhich
fried potatoes
corn on the cob
sauteed kale, red pepper,onion and Chanterelle mushrooms

 The Kale is from the front yard
The Chanterelle mushrooms from the woods behind the house
We have potato & tomato plants growing in many different places.
Onions grow next to the kitchen
Peppers grow down in front.  So does the corn & cucumbers

Kale and Chanterelles.

For desert there is fresh fruit from the farm, peaches, cantaloupe, watermelon, canary melon, nectarines, & plums.
Because of the limited sun we get here our peaches and apples are still a ways from being ready to eat.  Most of our vegetables take as much as 4 weeks longer to ripen than the local farms.
After finding out that I am a vegetarian (who tends toward being vegan) people have asked me, "What do you eat?"  Really?  There is so much to be eaten and enjoyed.  For dinner it was burritos with beans and rice and squash and peppers in a tomato and onion sauce topped with fresh scallions and cilantro.  Really?  what do I eat?  I eat lots, and enjoy it all.