A New Home

There are no pictures with this submission, but I just wanted to comment on how great the girls look in their new digs. And I say digs literally. When I passed thru today after attending a three-day literacy retreat in Boothbay Harbor, I was so happy to find the flock not only bigger, but very happy. Yes you can tell when chickens are happy. They have this gentle coo and today the ladies were scratching and rolling in the freshly tilled (they did the tilling) dirt outside the coop. They seemed to take great pleasure in rolling up against a buddy as they covered themselves in dirt. The chicken guides say they like to do this to get rid of mites and other skin pests. After a good roll, they vigorously shake the dirt off and go inside for a drink. Suzy seems to be a very attentive mother even whilst tending to Lilly and Bullet. I hope that when Mike arrives and takes some of the canine burden off her shoulders, she will be able to spend some more quality time inside the coop. I suggest she bring in a comfy chair and read to them in the evening. It's like Chicken Soup for the soul....try it sometime....really! Hopefully this upcoming fourth of July weekend we can install electricity and have a light to read by in there. I invite you blog readers to enter the "First Egg" lottery. For five dollars you get to pick the day we see the first egg. I'm taking October 10, so pick another day. We'll get some pictures soon...Taperman.

Slug hunter

I started the day with my first ever slug hunt, which was about as exciting as it sounds.  We had some rain last night, and it was foggy this morning, so when I got up, I headed out to the squash field to pick slugs.  Lily and Bullet had to stay inside, which they were not pleased about, but I don't trust their ability not to step on the squash plants.  There weren't as many slugs out as I had expected, so I only got about seven, which I gave to the chickens, who were very appreciative.  My poor squash plants have taken quite a beating from the combination of cucumber beetles, squash, and an inattentive farmer.  Out of my four original spaghetti squash hills, I only have one plant left, which is a bummer since I really love spaghetti squash.  Below is one of the happier nutty delica hills.  Of the squash plants, the Lumina pumpkins, candy roaster squash, rouge d'etampes pumpkins, and sweet dumplings are faring the best.  The spaghetti squash and uncle david's dakota winter squash have taken the greatest hit from the bugs, especially sad since these were two of the varieties I was looking forward to the most.  I think that next year, I'll invest in floating row covers to protect the baby seedlings.  I'll probably also move my squash field to a different location, to see if that will help.



The giant pumpkins are doing better, and I may have to stop calling them "more dead" and "less dead" soon if they keep growing!   Below are both of them.  If you look closely, you can see tendrils starting to form on both. 



Giant pumpkin 1 (formerly, "less dead" giant pumkin)



Giant pumpkin 2 (formerly "more dead" giant pumpkin)

More exciting than the squash is the fact that I harvested my first broccoli and beet greens last night for dinner!  I decided to make a mashed potato crusted quiche, as I love quiche made with broccoli and greens.  The broccoli that I mentioned earlier this week was very close to blooming, so I took that stalk.  While I was in the garden, I decided to use beet greens, to start the thinning process in the beet bed.  Lastly, I grabbed some more arugula, because I have so much of it that I've been trying to incorporate it into every meal, which is actually a lot easier than it sounds.

Broccoli, pre-harvest

Broccoli, arugula and beet greens, pre-quiche

As you can see above, I had a tiny beet that came with the greens, so I cut it up and threw it into the quiche as well.  I'm happy to report that the quiche was delicious, and it was very satisfying to make a dinner that included three different vegetables that I've grown!

Finished quiche!

My fashionably late asparagus

The asparagus is finally up! It feels like it took an abnormally long time for this to happen, but as I was mentally drafting this post I realized that 1) I don't exactly remember when I planted the asparagus, although I feel like it was late May, and 2) I haven't come across anything yet in my reading that says how long it takes asparagus plants to come up. None of my books mentioned anything about a month+ long wait, though, so I'm sticking with my gut feeling that these are late blooming asparagus plants. But it doesn't matter, because they're actually here! I was weeding the other beds in the garden on Sunday, and noticed some funny looking plants in the asparagus bed. In my many weeks of farming, I've developed a handy two-pronged test for identifying weeds. First, if bugs are eating it, there's a chance it's something I planted. Bugs much prefer my veggies to weeds. Second, if it shows up in more than one bed, and it's not something I planted in more than one bed, it's a weed. The funny new plants in the asparagus bed failed question one, as they were untouched by bugs, but they certainly didn't look like anything else in my other beds. When I looked at them more closely, I noticed that the very slender stalks resemble asparagus quite a bit. I consulted my gardening bible, and it had a picture of a well-developed asparagus bed, with lots of frondy plants waving in the breeze. I don't have that, but my little guys are at least trying. As a congratulations for surviving present to them, I finally weeded their bed. I'd been hestitant to weed it before, partially because I didn't want to inadvertantly pull up any asparagus plants, and partially because I was pretty irritated that I couldn't see any asparagus. Now, though, they have a mostly weeded bed, and I told them several times how proud I am that they've joined the garden, just in case they're like my dogs and enjoy verbal praise.

Cauliflower blanching

We had rain for most of the end of last week, and my garden was very, very happy about all the water. My plants have really taken off, and even though I'm harvesting lettuce and arugula several times a day (arugula omlettes are fantastic for breakfast, by the way), each time I go out it looks like the plants have gotten bigger.

The herbs that I started from seed are also coming up nicely, which is a little surprising to me because I did a very haphazard job planting them. Below, the front left is thai basil, with regular basil in the back left. Thyme (which I bought as a seedling) is in the back right, and the front right is dill started from seed.

My tomato plants continue to look extremely happy - planting them in beds full of compost and manure was definitely a good call. Below, you can see that blossoms are starting to form on the tomato plants. The stems are nice and thick and strong, and I spent more time this morning pulling off suckers, which seem to grow back as soon as I turn around.

The snow peas are now all tall enough to reach the trellis, so I've held off on giving them more support as they seem to be hanging on well. Today as I was weeding, I also learned that snow pea plants smell wonderful - almost sweet.

Remember that dud row of swiss chard that I mentioned before? Well, it's finally germinated. Very strange, but I'm not questioning it. Below are the little guys - looking at the bed, it's very hard to believe that I planted them on the same day as their tall neighbors.

The pepper seedlings that I bought are also starting to blossom and form peppers, although the purple peppers that I started seem to be a little behind. I think that the seedlings I bought were older than the peppers that I started - at least, I hope that's why! Below is the green pepper that has started to flower, which you can see if you look closely below.

The cauliflower looks beautiful. Two of the plants have started forming heads - the more developed one is below. I read in my gardening bible that you need to blanch the heads to keep them nice and white, so I blanched the two heads that were ready this morning. The process was really quite easy, I just loosely pulled the outer leaves together over the cauliflower head and tied them together with twine.

The radishes and carrots look good, although I pulled a few of the radishes and the roots were all spindly and not radish-like at all. I'm borrowing Mike's homebrewing motto, and just giving them more time.

The broccoli below is probably ready to be harvested, so I think I'll be going out later today to grab it before it flowers. I'm thinking a quiche with broccoli and arugula will be delicious.

Finally, below are the beets (back) and bok choy (front). Given how much damage the bok choy sustained from the flea beetles, I'm impressed by its growth. It's time for me to thin the beets, which I think I'll do later this week. We have quite a few people coming this weekend for fourth of July, so thinning/weeding might be a group activity.

Farming is exhausting

*This is actually just a gratuitous cute dog picture - these guys don't really do any farming.

Lily has cultivated a taste for slugs and snails, which is disgusting but part of me wants to harness it for good, since the slugs are doing a serious number on my squash plants. But it can't be good for her to eat slugs, so I'll be handpicking them, and maybe setting some beer traps, this week. If the chickens were a little bigger and wiser, I'd be tempted to let them out on the squash field to have their way with the slugs, but they're still figuring out where they live, and what chickens do, and I'd hate for them to eat the squash seedlings rather than the slugs.

The first harvest

We had our first garden-based salad last night! The lettuce is now ready for harvesting, so I picked a mix of the mesclun lettuce/mustards and arugula for dinner last night, and they were delicious! I also brought a bunch over to my parents, because this farmer is all about sharing. It's kind of amazing to me that this food is something that I grew myself from seed - that's really cool. Also, it's delicious.
I also had an embarassing farming incident earlier this week, when I lost a chicken on Tuesday. I went out to put the girls to bed for the evening (which involves shutting their trapdoor to the yard and telling them goodnight, but not kissing each one as Taperman instructed me to do), and my headcount revealed that I had 19, not 20, girls. I was very worried. I took my flashlight out and searched the chicken yard, nearby trees, the run-in, and the barn, and couldn't find her anywhere. I nervously called Taperman to let him know that I had lost a chicken, and to ask him which one was missing - I'm not quite familiar enough with the flock to tell.

By Wednesday morning, I still had 19 girls and was feeling like a chicken farmer failure. I opened their trapdoor to the yard, and looked around again for the missing girl, with no luck. I also admonished the remaining chickens for not being concerned that they'd lost a sister.

At 3:00, I went out to look for her again, and when I did a headcount in the coop, I had 20 chickens again! I have no idea how she got out, where she went, or how she got back in, but I'm glad my naughty wandering chicken came home. This weekend, Mike and I will be beefing up our fence/chicken yard security to prevent any further chicken breakouts.

You're just a potato bug, potato bug

When Mamie and I were little, there was a song on some PBS show that went something like, "you're just a potato bug, potato bug, a little potato bug." I think Mamie was sick when the song came on, and somehow she was given the nickname of potato bug. Well, I've now met actual potato bugs, and can say to Mamie that they really aren't anything like you. But you are still a little potato bug.

This morning I was successfully able to wear out the dogs long enough to get some garden time in. I pruned more suckers off of the tomato plants, which are just starting to form flower buds and look beautifully green! I did some haphazard weeding as well, and keep telling myself that every pulled weed counts when I look around and see how many beds there are.

Above, tomatoes and marigolds, 6-22
Below, swiss chard 6-22

I checked on my squash field, and the garden dust doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on the cucumber beetles, but they also haven't done too much more damage to the plants, so for now, I'm calling it good. Soon, I'll have to thin out the hills, as several had three or four plants sprout. Above and below are two of the hills, as of this morning.

On my to-do list for this week/weekend is some snow pea maintenance. The plants seem to be having a little trouble grabbing on to the trellis, so I'll have to help them out somehow. They're growing really fast, but as you can see below, they're a little floppy.

And here is a poblano pepper! With the plants that I bought as seedlings, I feel like I can't be quite as proud of their progress, especially when, like this poblano, they were quite big when I acquired them. However, the fact that the poblano plant is alive and producing fruit is a definite victory.

Separately from the main squash field, I have two giant pumpkins growing. My mother bought the seedlings at a library fundraiser, and we transplanted them a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if I've written much, if at all, about them, which is fairly on par with the amount of attention I've given them. Each week, I give them about five more days of life, but they're still hanging in. We refer to them as the more dead and less dead giant pumpkins, so that about sums up their current status. In the above photos, the top plant is the "less dead" giant pumpkin, and the bottom is the "more dead" giant pumpkin. It's all about low expectations here.

And speaking of what good setting low expectations can bring, I'm experiencing a bit of a marigold miracle! Remember those poor marigolds and zinnias that I lovingly raised from seed indoors, only to harshly set them out on a hot day without any hardening off? Well, I was pretty convinced that they were all going to die, given how terribly sunburned and shriveled they got. This week, though, they've staged an impressive comeback. You can see above that new, healthy green leaves are growing, so I think these guys might actually make it. This has not helped reinforce the importance of hardening off for me.

Look at this lettuce! I harvested a bit yesterday to bring over to my parents, and think I'll be grabbing some more tonight for dinner. I'm kind of excited and irrationally nervous for my first partially home grown salad. Like, it's kind of a big deal.

Also a big deal, are my potato plants - good god, they're getting huge. They also have a few potato bugs, which I hand picked off of the plants and put into soapy water. That is very brave for me, because I hate bugs (I know, I know, that's really unacceptable for a farmer). Potato bugs are really big and move slowly, so it wasn't very hard once I got over the ick factor. There also weren't very many, which helped. Then I hilled the plants, which means pushing extra dirt on top of them, so that only the tops show. This was a little challenging since my potato plants are wildly different heights. Some ended up completely buried, while others still look quite exposed.

Above are the cucumbers, arugula, and brussels sprouts. You can kind of see that the majority of the brussels sprouts are growing nicely, but one plant in the middle is stunted. It doesn't look dead, so I'm not really sure what's going on. The cucumbers are all growing well, and arugula has really taken off.

The broccoli and cauliflower, above, also look great. The broccoli plants have almost all started forming heads, and it looks like a few of the cauliflower plants are beginning to develop as well.

Below is the bok choy/beet bed. The bok choy is in the front, and the plants on the left side of the bed, at least, have grown quite a bit in the last week. The ones on the right aren't doing much. I'm not sure if the seeds just didn't germinate there, or if I had technical difficulties while planning. That's certainly possible.

Getting the girls settled

As promised by Taperman, the chickens arrived yesterday morning. I hear that they handled the car ride over very well. Stoney and Winston provided supervision while we loaded the girls into their crate, as you can see. Last night, Lily and our new addition, Bullet, also met the chickens (through the fence). All of the dogs are deeply interested in the chickens, and in what cannot bode well for my girls' future survival, several of the chickens were quite curious about the dogs as well.

By yesterday evening, the girls had figured out how to use the door to go outside, and were greatly enjoying their fenced in yard. Several of the smarter girls had figured out how to roost on the gate that we set up to the yard, and one flew up to the top of it to see Mike. We'll be re-configuring that setup this week.

Today is also the start of my first official week of unemployment/full time farming. So far, it's going well. Both dogs were up bright and early this morning for lots of playing and running, and now they're asleep in their kennels. I'm very happy that so far, Bullet is extremely patient with Lily and doesn't seem to mind when she sits on his head and bites his ears. That has to be a good sign, right?

My farm is also looking very good, although I've been so busy with the dogs that I haven't had a chance to do much work in there this week. My squash plants have mostly germinated, but I have cucumber beetles all over them. After I watered the squash this evening, I dusted the plants with garden dust, which allegedly is organic but has some serious warnings about not eating/breathing/touching it, so I hadn't wanted to break it out.
I just put the chickens to bed for their second night, and can report that after a headcount that I performed twice, all twenty are safely shut into the coop. When I went out at 9, five were roosting on the gate in their outdoor pen, so I picked them up and scooted them through the door. The rest of the girls were fairly evenly dispersed between the windowsill, roost, nests, and floor. Taperman was concerned about the temperature last night as it dropped to 50, but so far, the girls appear to be fine.

Below, are swiss chard, eggplant/onions/tomatoes (with potatoes in the bed to the left), zucchini and green beans, and potatoes, all as of 6-19-2011.

Moving Day

Well, it's moving day for the girls. The nursery is maxed out. The pine shavings are beginning to reek, and their new quarters await them in Maine. I'm not sure exactly how the move will evolve, but most likely I'll put them in the large wire dog cage and drive them over in the Element sometime this afternoon. Suzy arrived Friday night with Lilly and took a few pictures. As you can see they have grown a whole lot and actually look like little chickens. Next stop "The Farm".

Weeding, and the chicken coop is built!

We had another very productive weekend on the farm. I knew that it was time to finally face weeding, as this past week saw tremendous growth in my weed population. My seedlings have also grown enough that, for the most part, I can tell my vegetables from the weeds (although I did accidentally pull out some bok choy, which was unfortunate because the bugs already did a number on that crop). Mike occupied Lily while I weeded on Saturday, and I managed to get through about half of the garden. Emotionally, weeding my garden is a bit of a roller coaster. I finish a bed and feel quite accomplished and satisfied, and then I look up and realize there are so very many beds left. I saw this coming, but it still stings.

I also had to do some serious maintenance on both my onions and my leeks. We went to the farmer's market on Saturday morning to buy some veggies and more seedlings, and as we were waiting to pay at one stall, I overheard a man animatedly debating various leek planting techniques with a farmer. They were talking about trenching versus digging individual holes, and I started to get a little concerned. After way too much thought, I realized that of course, leeks need to be planted deeply in order to get that nice long white part. Also, of course they're planted deep in dirt - that's why you have to wash them so thoroughly. I had planted my leek seedlings about an inch deep, which is not even close to sufficient. So I dug them all out, then made 6 inch holes and re-planted them. Onions, too, were an area where common sense and research did not inform my original planting decisions. As I was weeding, I noticed that I had planted clumps of 3-4 (sometimes far more) in places where only one onion should have gone. I had also bought even more onions at the farmer's market, so I had a lot of onions to (re)plant. I finally got them all sorted out by Sunday afternoon, and can safely say that I do not need to buy any more onion seedlings. Now they are occupying corners in almost every bed. At least we like onions.

I also planted more carrot seeds and radish seeds as part of my plan to have continuous harvests of these crops over the summer. The plants have grown so much in the past week, and Mike and I both agree that it's actually starting to look like a real garden now. I still have more weeding to do, but I think that the beds actually look tended now, which is a vast improvement over how they looked on Friday.

Speaking of vast improvements, Mike mulched the walkways of the garden, and they look lovely now. He did landscape paper, covered with straw, covered with mulch. It looks nice and neat, and hopefully this will keep the walkways weed free.

I think I may also be done adding new veggies to the farm. I bought several different kinds of eggplant at the farmer's market (hansel, gretel, rosa bianca and apple green), although I have low expectations for their survival given my track record with eggplant. I also now need to officially be done buying new seedlings, because given my onion re-organization, I am out of room at last.

While I was weeding and planting, Mike, Taperman and Lily were hard at work readying the chicken coop for the girls. They built an outdoor run with 6 foot chicken wire fencing (there was much marveling over the fact that 6 foot chicken wire even exists), and Taperman fashioned a pulley-operated door so that the girls can have access to the run from their coop. We are now ready for the girls to arrive on Sunday. We still need to put in a roost and laying boxes, but the roost can easily be done next weekend, and we still have time before they start to lay.

Lily tested out the door (no picture, unfortunately), and confirmed that it works fine. Perhaps she's part mastiff, part chicken?


Above, close up of a tomato plant (6-12). Look how nice and green the leaves are! I think they're happy. Taperman also showed me how to pull of the suckers (new branches that distract the plant from forming good roots).

Below, peppers, tomatoes and marigolds (6-12)



Below, snow peas (6-12)


Below, radishes and carrots (6-12)


Below, potatoes (6-12)

Below, onions and scallions - they're too tiny to see but I promise they're there (6-12)

Below, swiss chard and onions (6-12)

Below, Mike and Taperman digging the trench for the chicken fence. They buried the fence in the ground for added chicken security.

Below, Lily - our chicken dog.

Below, lettuce (6-12)

Below, eggplant, broccoli and leeks (6-12)

Below, herb bed (6-12)

Below, green beans (6-12)

Below, tomatoes, eggplant, onions, sunburnt marigolds (6-12)

Below, brussels sprouts, arugula, onions, lemon cucumbers (6-12)

Below, broccoli! (6-12)

Below, bok choy (6-12)

Below, beets and bok choy (6-12)