Rockets in the greenhouse, green beans for supper, and a dead duck

 RIP my little Blackberry. You were my favorite duck and much loved. I miss you every day.

 

Week 13
30 October 2012

So, we built a rocket in our greenhouse this week. It works great too! That whooshing sound when the engine lights up and begins to burn good is amazing to listen to. Okay, okay, okay ... so don't go calling NASA or anything, we aren't planning a trip to outer space or anything. The rocket we built is a rocket mass stove heater and it boggles my mind. You build a fire in it ... but the fire doesn't burn straight up like normal fires do ... and there's no smoke that comes out the chimney ... and you only use sticks ... and you can cook on it ... and the heavy mass of it retains the heat and releases it slowly during the cold nights to keep the plants nice toasty despite the freezing temps on the other side of the thin plastic sheet. No, don't ask me how it works, I don't really understand, but I know it does work. Somehow in the mechanism of it all the smoke is completely burned off so that all that is left is a little CO2 and some steam. I also know it gets really really hot. The steel can we have over the heat riser literally burned red hot during the burn time. It's a beautiful thing ... thank you my friend Debbie Norvelle Henderson for introducing me to them.

This is it at the moment because we ran out of clay for the cob covering. I'll post a pic later on when we get more clay on.

And speaking of the greenhouse ... we've already had three major hard freeze nights here in northern Oklahoma. Normally that would signal the end all of end alls to our gardening, but with our lump of a greenhouse, we actually ate fresh green beans for supper tonight. And the bean plants are still blooming! so I guess there's more of them on the way. Maybe we can have fresh green beans steamed with onions and bacon for Thanksgiving dinner along with our homegrown turkey. Wow, what a thought! We also have zucchini squash setting on nicely with no squash bugs to be seen and tomatoes. Yeah, tomatoes!!! We also have several types of brassicas growing - broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts - plus an avocado tree, a ginger plant, lettuce, and a cucumber specially grown for greenhouse conditions. Our next trial is to try potatoes ... mainly because we have potatoes sprouting in the potato bin and we thought "why not?"

Fresh green beans for supper the end of October

One of several handfuls of tomatoes set on 5 plants

Last, but by no means least, is the sad sad loss of my beautiful duck Blackberry. I posted a pic of her as a baby which shows you exactly why I fell madly in love with this duck from the first day I saw her. She was one of a kind and her loss is felt by not only us but by her duck pals as well. I wish I knew what happened to her. I'll spare you the details of the discovery ... it wasn't pretty and frankly, I cried all the way to work that morning ... but she was killed by a predator of some kind. We're guessing it was the possum that killed our turkeys poults last spring that came back and got her but we aren't sure. So now the ducks get moved inside for the night to their new house. So far so good. We've had no new losses. And I quickly stuck all of the duck eggs we had gathered into the incubator to see if maybe, just maybe, we could hatch out another little Blackberry. Fingers crossed.

Incubators, dustbowls, and shooting guns

21 October 2012

Weeks 9 - 12

Wow. I've kind of gotten behind in my weekly summaries of life. Guess life has been ... too busy, maybe?

Let's see ... we've added 25 meat birds to the family and 4 more egg layer babies. The meat babies will keep us in chicken for between 4 and 6 months depending on how much we eat chicken, of course in the meantime we have to care for them until they are big enough to process. It's been somewhat of a chore as we chose to try a new feed method using fermented feed. Ugh, ugh, ugh! It was supposed to reduce the amount of feed you use, decrease the amount of poop and therefore the smell of the brooder, and give the birds a better quality of life. It didn't reduce the amount of feed they were consuming but it did reduce the amount of growth they had which meant we were going to be feeding them even longer than normal to get the same rate of growth we've had before. Nor did we find that it reduced the poo or smell. We were still cleaning out the brooder at least once a day if not twice. And as far as quality of life goes, well, our birds go outside everyday anyway and play in the grass and get sunshine and chase bugs and try to fly and find worms ... I'm not sure how much better quality of life can be for chickens. So, long story short, they are getting regular high protein feed now and growing along well. Last round we had 6 and 7 pound birds after they were processed, so we'll see how these turn out.

Meat birds ... the shirtless wonders!

 We also had to set up the greenhouse earlier than normal this year as we got an early frost right as the fall tomatoes and squash were beginning to set fruit. That took a load of time as we expanded this year to include another growing bed and a walkway down the length of it. We also made it taller so no more stooping to take care of things in there and added screening across the top to keep the poly covering from sagging under water and snow loads. When we finished ours we went to Stillwater and helped dad get his put up as well, and then breathed a huge sigh of relief that it was done for the year.

A respectable photo with mom and dad, hubby and kids, putting up dad's greenhouse.

And another photo of what really happens behind the scenes!

But the weather had it's own plans it seems. This past week brought us a dustbowl for a day with strong winds and blowing dust, and besides the 35 car pile up on the interstate just south of town which shut down the interstate and rerouted traffic through our sleepy little town, it blew the cover entirely off the greenhouse. We shuffled around and stowed the poly sheets where they wouldn't blow to kingdom come and waited until the winds died down. Of course, given the temperatures that night, we had to put it back up before we could go to bed which meant zip tying the poly back on in the dark. Although it will be a memorable experience, it is not one I care to repeat any time soon.

At least the last month hasn't been all work and no play. We took a day off and went to the Wildlife expo one Saturday. After picking up Zek at 8:00 am in Stillwater, we headed off to Guthrie and the Lazy E arena where we kayaked, ate wild boar stew, traversed rope bridges, shot clay pigeons with a shot gun, learned how to clean fish, shot a few arrows, threw an atlatal, and chewed on some bison jerky. After about three hours and lunch under the lift gate on the expedition in the rain, we headed back home. It was great to just do nothing that had anything to do with the farm or the house for a few hours.

So often our lives revolve around what has to be done ... feed the birds, water the animals, clean the bedding, cook a meal, go to work, plan school, etc ... and while it seems like we busy busy busy all the time, sometimes it seems we never get anything done. It's easy to start feeling down and overwhelmed by everything that has to get done. But slowly we are learning "how to eat the elephant". One bite at a time, one little piece done today, another little piece done tomorrow, and eventually it all seems to come together somehow. Like this recycled pantry shelf we built. It took about a week of doing small parts each day, but finally it was done and my kitchen is greatly appreciative of space that was freed up in the cabinets.

One of the things we've been trying to learn is how to incubate and raise our own succession of chickens and turkeys and ducks. Since we'd love to get into heritage bird farming and continue to raise birds to sell, incubating is an important skill for us ... but we just haven't been able to get it right yet. Our of three tries we've managed to hatch one bird. We seem to get them to grow until it's time to hatch and then they never hatch. Thinking we just couldn't manage to keep the temps and humidity constant enough with the small incubator we made, we built a bigger one. However, the same problems exist with it. None of our chicken eggs made it through the last cycle. Now we're waiting to see if the ducks do any better. Fingers crossed.