Straw bale gardening, fodder for the poultry, and gardening with Thomas Jefferson

Well, we have embarked on yet another gardening adventure ... or is it two more gardening adventures ... or is it three?? hmmmm Whatever the count, we are moving forward with our usual blind leading the blind way. Nothing is too difficult to achieve. Is it?

Gardening adventure #1 - straw bale growing. This is essentially exactly like it's name suggests, growing things in a straw bale. Sounds simple, right? We thought so plus it was an inexpensive way to use the vast expanse of concrete that was our driveway as a gardening area without the work of tearing up thick concrete and building new raised beds. So, off we went and bought ourselves some straw bales. They are cheap here. $5 each. (Sometimes it pays to live in farm country.) Then we did some research and some more research and some more research ... and decided it maybe wasn't quite as simple as we thought but it was still simple enough to try.

We set the bales up in the driveway, grain ends up baling wire wrapped around the sides. At first we put three in a long line and began the week long process of getting them ready to plant. For three days, we watered the bales. Yep, you heard me right. We watered the straw bales. And yes, I felt completely ridiculous doing so. Our driveway is visible to at least six neighbors without them even leaving their properties so I guess it's a good thing that they all think we're nutso anyway. Then for five days we fertilized AND watered the bales, as if watering the bales wasn't goofy looking enough.

Finally, we used the sawsall and cut v shaped trenches in the top of each bale about six inches wide and deep, filled them with some garden soil, and plopped in some of those overgrown squash plants along with a trellis. And true to Oklahoma weather, two days later we got freezing temps. So, then we wrapped everything in plastic sheeting and added some hot water bottles and believe it or not, several freezing nights, a freak snow storm, and a day of sleet later, the squash are still growing strong. I'm impressed even if you aren't. Lol.

Gardening adventure #2 - growing fodder for the birds. This was a no brainer decision. We've been spending way too much money to feed all those critters who've moved into our hearts and minds and had to find a new way to feed to lower our costs OR get rid of some of the critters. Getting rid of critters, needless to say, was not going to happen so ... We found fodder. Basically fodder is grains that are allowed to sprout and grow for six days and then fed out. Supposedly it has a higher nutrition value and is more easily digested than other forms of feed. I don't know about all that scientific stuff. I'm the black sheep artist in a family of scientists, after all. But I do know that my animals LOVE it. They swarm me to get their share. We started small just to see what was involved by just sprouting in bowls in the kitchen but have now moved to growing in large plastic trays and buckets.

Our logistics involve around 350 lbs of animal and we feed out at a 4% rate. So we start with 3 lbs of grain (we mix oats, wheat, sunflower seeds, and a mixed plot spike) and end up with around 12 - 14 lbs of feed. It makes a huge relief in our feed bill.

Gardening adventure #3 - a Thomas Jefferson garden. We both read "A Rich Spot of Earth" by Peter J. Hatch recently, cover to cover with enthralled rapture and it sparked the idea to dedicate one of our raised garden beds to growing just vegetables that were grown by Thomas Jefferson. It's been a fun project to research but there are a lot of books that I'd like to own and read about his gardens, especially the one that includes his diaries and journals. We included in our bed tennis ball lettuce, mexican sour gherkins, costoluto genovese tomatoes, scarlet runner beans, asparagus beans, and white scallop squash which Jefferson called Cymlings. It's all planted now so fingers crossed it all grows and produces. The scallop squash I started about three weeks ago, so they are nice and big now but everything else went in the ground as seeds today. I'll have to post pics as everything fills in.

Probably the most interesting thing about this project has been the research into what we now call "heirloom" seeds. There is a raging debate among gardeners here in the good ol' USA about the use of heirlooms, hybrids, or GMO's. Personally, I think there's a whole lot of hype in the arguments and not much truth being given out. I try to stay out of it because some of the ignorance gets me hot under the collar. But it has made what I've found through research into seeds and gardening and ancient seed varieties so much more interesting. Like - Did you know ...
- all orange carrots are a hybrid that were created in the Netherlands in the 1500's. Before that carrots were purple, white, and occasionally red. Hmm.
- cabbage and all it's variants have been eaten for over 5000 years and have been being hybridized for that long too.
- most of what we consider garden staples today like potatoes, tomatoes, and beans weren't commonly grown until after the 1700's. Before that they were unknown to most of the world and were widely considered poisonous until the mid to late 1800's.

I could go on and on but I guess I'll end this for the night. No pics this time. Nothing real exciting to see except piles of dirt and straw bales. Hopefully next time I post I'll have more visual matter to include. Night all!

Gutters gardens, baby turkeys, and growing squash in the living room

5 March 2013

So, how long has it been since I posted a blog entry? Well, my friends, I guess that's just too long since my husband has been bugging me to post again for a couple of weeks. And now that we aren't in the depth of a cold dark winter, and I have plants growing and babies popping out, I guess I have something to post.

 So, I guess biggest news first. BABY TURKEYS!!! Thanks to our new incubator we got for Christmas, we have been able to hatch babies successfully for the first time and we are so excited. We set 24 eggs initially and replaced 2 of them a few days in when we discovered we had a couple that were cracked. Within 10 days we had 19 babies growing along well and removed the eggs that weren't fertile. Now turkeys are supposed to take 28 days to hatch so we were preparing to unplug the turner and move the eggs to cartons on day 26 along with raising the humidity to help with hatching to about 65%, however, on day 25 we were candling the eggs to see if they were all still alive and we discovered 4 eggs had already internally pipped.

After scrambling around and resetting the incubator with stationary cartons to hold the eggs in an upright position (the best for hatching success) and adding sponges to raise the humidity quickly, we put them in "lockdown" early. Within 24 hours we had our first eggs pipped externally, and 24 hours after that we had babies like the one pictured above. The one looking up at us was #1 and the one laying down was #2. Of course, while most hatched easily and well on their own, we had a couple we had to help out. The biggest ones seem to have trouble turning around in the shells to be able to completely "zip" the top of the shell off so we ended up finishing the zipper for them and let them pop themselves out. All said and done we ended up with 15 live babies from 19 eggs.

They are now two week old working on three weeks old and we've had no losses, which is a huge improvement over our shipped birdies that we've had in the past. So all-in-all it's been a major success. Now, if we could just sell a few and make a little money ... Oh well, all in time. Here's some more baby pics to enjoy.

Pushing off the top of the shell

Drying off

Zippering

two weeks old with feathers

My other project of late has been starting vegies for the garden. I've started tomatoes early numerous times in the past, but this year I expanded my experience and started tomatoes, melons, cucumbers and winter squash as well. Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch ......... I NOW know that starting these things indoors is a great idea only I shouldn't have started them at the same time I started my tomatoes. We have winter squash in pots literally everywhere and some are starting to put on blooms!! So we are scrambling now to get them planted outdoors ... somewhere, anywhere, that we can artificially keep warm until we quit having snow and cold. A friend of mine suggested that we just build trellises in our living room and let the squash grow at will with the added bonus that we would avoid the dreaded squash bugs that our warm summers bring. I think I'll pass for this year and just hope we can keep them at bay long enough to get a harvest.

Winter squash two weeks ago

one of over a hundred tomato plants

And newest of all the projects, wedged in between giving spas to cold wet chickens, splinting a broken turkey leg, and building nest boxes for rabbits that will hopefully kindle soon, is building a gutter garden. It isn't done yet so maybe, if I post next week, I'll have some pics of the in process and finished project complete with strawberries ... Just a little teaser for you. And a few more pics for your viewing pleasure -

Our five new baby khaki campbell ducks

Taking a swim in the bathtub

dehydrating potatoes from our 50lbs

Seed pack design - made for a seed swap but I was playing with logos for the farm and like this one

Week One 2013 - new babies and everything

Okay, before you say it, I know it's been a couple of months since I posted anything. Life just seems to have a way of getting in the way of sitting down and writing things out to share. So today, for the first time in two months I have a Wednesday afternoon that I'm not tied down doing anything in particular so here's a new blog post from me.

Filling everything in since my last post would be a nightmare I think. I'm not even sure I remember what I had for breakfast yesterday let alone what all has happened since November. But I'll give it a go...

Let's see, sad thing first - we lost all but one of our ducks to an opossum. Stupid thing killed two of our male ducks but didn't even try to eat them. We were not happy. However, our surviving female has integrated well with the chickens and turkeys in the coop so alls well I guess until we can get more in the spring. Hehehe, just today as I was feeding them greens from the garden bed (broccoli plants that overwintered well in the greenhouse) I saw Silver snatch bites of food from one of the chickens beak. Every time the chicken would pick up a piece of broccoli leaf, Silver would take it away and swallow it. At least she's holding her own.

We also have raised two sets of meat birds and processed all of them. What a chore between feeding them fermented grains, cleaning their pens, processing them all, freezing, canning, making stock ... Jeepers. But now my freezer is FULL of chicken, and my pantry is FULL of chicken and stock plus I have several jars of homemade bouillon. Think we'll get tired of eating chicken soon??? Lol. After paying for the feed, the birds, the shipping, the straw, the cleaning stuff, and the electric bill I'm pretty sure it would be tons cheaper to just buy it at the store. Oh well, at least we know what they ate and how they were treated in the process of their short lives.

Christmas we spent at my parents house with my sister and nephew. Got a new Nook HD and the first session of a writing course that will start this spring that I'm really looking forward to. If I could just afford the other several months of it ... dreams I guess. At least it's a start and maybe we'll come up with the funds for another couple of the sessions if we sell enough turkey poults and eggs this year.

New Years my dad then took the whole clan of us out for dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and then we went to see MannHeim Steamroller in concert. It was awesome and a great start for a new year.

In other news this month, we hatched out 4 baby turkeys from a set of 5 eggs. All of them started out fertile but one "quit" the day before lock down. It happens I guess. Supposedly even the big hatcheries with all the fancy incubator systems only get between 70 and 80% hatch rate so I think we did pretty well in our new little incubator. I've started putting out feelers for selling eggs and baby poults in places so hopefully we'll have some buyers before too long. We set another 25 eggs yesterday that should hatch in the mid February. It would be great if we could sell ALL of them.

So here's a pic of the babies!

Pipping it's shell

Coming out, wings first

Getting his head out

It's so hard to stand up when you're first born

2 days old

And in the gardening arena, I have three 72 cell seed flats planted with various items. Over 100 cells are tomatoes (not sure where they are going to all get planted ... hmm, maybe I can sell some of those too) and almost all of the tomatoes are already up and sprouted. I also planted peppers, parsley, basil, and some squashes along with 36 cells of artichokes. Warm weather better hurry up and arrive for good! My green thumbs are itching!

Surprise packages, winter produce, and a bit of canning

Weeks 14 & 15
12 November 2012

Well, guess our big surprise of the week? Yep, that's right. A new baby chicken was born this past week, ugly, covered with goo, and screaming like everything ... just like normal. This is Gus or Gussy depending on whether or not it's a girl or boy, which we won't know for a few months yet. I'm hoping girl because we need to start replacing layers.

After the last three sets of eggs we've had haven't hatched, we were beginning to think that maybe we should give up trying to use our homemade bators and wait until we could get a "real" one, but given the cost of commercially made ones it was going to be a long time before we could afford one. So, when we lost our beautiful duck, we still had some of her eggs and decided that we were just going to set all of the eggs we had to see if we could hatch some and just to fill up the bator I threw in some chicken eggs as well. We went 21 days (which is when chickens should hatch) and two of the three chicken eggs were no longer alive but this one was still moving around so I left it alone. I kept checking it everyday just to see what it was doing and everyday it was still moving. So the day it was born I had been busy busy and hadn't checked the bator all day. As I was getting ready to go to bed, I heard some peeping. At first I thought it was on the TV my husband was watching but then, as I realized he had the TV muted, I realized it was coming from the bator. My daughter and I opened up the door and this chick popped out of its egg.

Here it is at 24 hours old. Looks a lot better huh? Today it is all fluffy with a black spot on top of its head, eating and drinking and hopping around pecking at things. Of course, it thinks I am it's mother which might make the transition to yard life a little difficult later on, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Nice tomatoes, eh? My five tomato plants in my greenhouse are just loaded with these nuggets. Have I mentioned how excited this makes me? I am so stoked that I am growing tomatoes in November in northern Oklahoma. And not just tomatoes ... I also harvested a huge zucchini this week too and have several more on the plant as well as 2 quarts of green beans. We decided it was kind of funny that any more we get more harvest in the fall, winter and spring than we do in the traditional garden time of summer. If the summers continue to be 110 + degrees for weeks on end, it could save us a lot of hassle, water, and energy if we just plan to not grow stuff over the summer. Hmm, we'll have to think on that for a few weeks as we eagerly await the arrival of seed catalogs for 2013.

Pineapple anyone? We found a great sale for 99 cents a piece so we bought a bunch of pineapples and canned our own. Isn't it beautiful? It's so nice to be able to just grab a jar off the shelf and know exactly what is in it. We also canned another round of beans this week too, since we seem to eat them a lot as refried beans in burritos for lunches or as a side dish for a mexican meal. Next up ... canning chicken!

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.

Mud pies and sand castles or pie in the sky dreams?

23 September 2012
Week Eight

Well, so much for building anticipation by showing all the steps and slowly explaining how we did this before revealing the completed work. Lol. I've never been one for surprises much and I really like how this turned out so I wanted this pic to be the top of the page. "Layer One - clay bread oven, Sept 2012"

Needless to say we spent the weekend in every (ok, most?) child's dream ... making mud pies and building sand castles ... squishing the clay and sand mix between our toes and under our feet, slapping it together with sticky grimy hands, splashing water on each other. And in the middle of it all we had to stop and build a giant wet sand dome shaped 'just so' to act as support for our clay walls. It was every bit as fun as playing in the big dirt pile when we were kids but a whole lot more rewarding in the end!! It's probably a good thing I didn't know about these ovens when I was a kid or my mom and dad would've had a whole yard full of them. As it was they has brick turtles pens and whole house plans built from walls of leaves ... me and cob would have been a nightmare!

So, anyway, here's a few more pics from our weekend adventure.

Good ol' Oklahoma Red Dirt

Our base layer

Breaking up the clay

Kneading the cob

The oven base and beginning of the walls

Mixing sand with water to form the dome

Sand dome covered with newspapers and walls going up

Finished first layer with door cut out

Honestly the only part that was a pain in the neck was forming the sand dome inside the clay base. It kept falling all over the place and judging how steep to make the walls and how high to build it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. But we finally got it done and then we had to fight to keep the wet newspapers stuck to it. They wanted to fly off in the wind. At one point I just gave up and started throwing clay on it so the inside of the oven may be kind of wrinkled-y but no one will see that part anyway. I'm already drooling over the bread and pizzas that are going to come out of this - chicken pesto, eggplant and onion, sourdough bouille, etc ...

Pie in the sky?? Well, in the midst of us playing in the mud and building with wet sand, we found out that the 26 acres of land that we have been drooling over for the last two years, which is only 30 miles from my parents, was dropped in price by half. Obviously they needed to come down in price given the land sat there for two years with no movement, but we never expected it to ever be in our price range. However, and this is where the pie-in-the-sky dream comes in, even though it's in our price range we can't even start to arrange financing for it until January when we pay off our car ... and we just don't imagine it will stay on the market for very long now. If it were only "money falling out of the sky" instead of "pie in the sky", we'd have it made. I guess what will be will be. I thought of starting a fund for donations ... I could call it the mud pie fund and everyone who donates gets to spend a weekend with us "living the farm life" and take home fresh eggs and veggies. It would only take 1,000 people giving us $75 each and we'd have it made ...

Ah, ... pie in the sky!