Merry Christmas 2008

I recorded a Christmas tune that I wrote earlier this year with my brother-in-law Chris, or Uncle Carbuncle as our son refers to him. I made a little online Christmas card and thought I'd send it out to anyone who might happen to stumble on this recently neglected blog. So Merry Christmas already. Hope you like it:

http://hesgotalist.tumblr.com/

Mr. Pumpkinhead

Thought I'd do a quick post just to show some of the last of our peppers. We decided to go ahead and pick everything worth picking since it had been threatening to get down close to freezing. We gave away a bunch of these. Just no way we could've eaten all of them.

I wish we had more that ripened to red. They're just so much sweeter and tastier when they're red. Our friends at the Milkweed Diaries have an interesting post on peppers. They've grown a variety and note that green peppers aren't easy for our bodies to digest. I think there's some truth in that. We went to see an acupuncturist once and he looked at my tongue and told me I should cut down on all the raw veggies. He recommended a book called the Tao of Healthy Eating by Bob Flaws. I picked it up but haven't read it yet.

Remember those pumpkins that I was psyched about having finally grown? Well, they weren't going to last until Halloween, so we used them to create some funny/scary figures:

Honkin' peppers take top honors

What is the biggest success of this year's garden? Well, we successfully grew pumpkins and even though we only got five or six that was a first for us, we grew some watermellons (though they were quite seedy) and cantaloupe (all ripened at once), but the biggest success in this year's summer garden is our bell peppers.

No they didn't win any blue ribbons at the state fair, but here we are more than midway through October and our pepper plants are still loaded down with ripening fruits. This is kind of a cruddy picture, but you can see how thick and bushy the plants are in the background. I've had to stake several of them to keep them from toppling over under their own weight.


Here's another photo of a few peppers I picked last week. Yes, we're still getting eggs too.



I'm not totally sure how to account for the pepper's success other than the garden soil maturing naturally through our few years of adding lots of organic matter. What's been really cool is how thick some of the stems are and how thick the walls of the fruit are. These photos don't tell the whole story - we've had some really honkin' peppers. My only wish is that more of them would successfully ripen to the point of turning completely red. We've had a few big ones go the distance - and they were delicious, tender, and sweet - but for some reason many of them start to show signs of rot or insect damage before they can turn completely red. Bummer. Maybe next year things will improve even more and we'll get more honkin' red peppers.

Ready for winter - should it come

Loyal reader Paula has been kindly nagging me to update the blog to help alleviate her boredom. Naturally I am putting all other responsibilities aside to deal with this emergency. I have actually had things I wanted to blog about but actually doing those homesteading activities takes some time - time that might otherwise be spent blogging.

Using wood as a supplementary heating fuel was a goal when thinking about and designing our new house. We don't have terribly bad winters in central NC, but we do get our fair share of ice. In 2001 (I think it was) we had a really bad one and were without power for four or five days. Being without power we were without heat because our thermostat required electricity to turn on our gas heat. We spent several nights and days in our sleeping bags. I think it got down in the mid 40's - inside the house. Spending the night in the sleeping bag is kind of fun since you can pretend you're camping, but spending the day in a sleeping bag just to keep warm is rather charmless.

So an efficient, wood burning appliance was a must have in our new house. I got some great advice on how to select a stove and where to put it from this site: woodheat . The information on chimneys is extremely useful. As the site notes - the chimney is the engine that drives a wood heat system. If you're interested in all that stuff you can check out the info on the site, so I won't send Paula into further depths of boredom with that detail here, but I will say that our woodstove is in a central location and the chimney runs straight up from the stove and exits the roof as close to its peak as possible - these are good things. I tried to find a good picture of our stove, but it seems to only appear in Christmas pictures, which again, are quite boring. We have a Jotul F400 Castine and couldn't be happier with it. Our's has double doors, which I guess they don't do any more on this model.

So here's what this post is really about - our wood pile! What could be less boring!?!


The story of our wood pile is actually quite interesting. Notice that there's no bark on this wood? That's because it comes from a pallet making factory. Everything here is left over scraps and cut off pieces from that operation. The guy who delivers it for us told me that something like 3 of every 5 hardwood trees cut in the world are used for pallet making. I guess that makes you realize that oil is not the only natural resource being depleted by the global economy's appetite for consumption. In any event I'm glad that the company producing these scraps is able to get rid of them without putting them in a landfill, and the guy who delivers them to me makes a little money off them, and we save a little money on natural gas by heating with them. Now if I could just find a way to make the wood stack by itself maybe I'd have more time for blogging.

We've got a picnic table if you have any appetite left

We have a little camping spot in the mountains of far northwestern NC that I thought we be greatly improved by the addition of a picnic table. In order to maximize enjoyment of time spent there I thought we should build the table at home and then transport it to the mountains in large pieces that could be easily reassembled in situ.

I looked around the innerweb for picnic table plans that seemed reasonably easy to follow. I ended up going with the plans found here. They were actually quite clear and easy to follow. Materials for the table cost just over $100 (damn lumber is expensive!). We went with the PT wood - yeah, yeah, it's not good for you and stuff, but it's got to last out in the elements and it's not like we're going to be licking or chewing the table itself for crying out loud!

Anyway here's a shot of the completed table - ready to be disassembled and loaded into the trailer. I know it's hard to see but cargo in the back of the wagon is a bulk package of TP . . . hmm, foreshadowing?

So we get the family all loaded up (Ma, Pa, Mr. O, and Scout) and head off on a 3.5 hour drive to the mountains. With about 60 miles to go Mr. O starts groaning and grunting about every 3 minutes. When asked what's going on he says, "I'm holding it, I'm holding it!" Since he's wearing a diaper we respond with "Let it out, let it out!" As time goes by this exchange becomes more and more frantic with the parents becoming more and more distraught. When we finally arrive he let's it out - a big, long relieving number 1. We get over this hurdle, but a tone for the weekend has been set.

With Mr. O all tucked in the camper for the night Ma and Pa settle into camp chairs and cold adult beverages. Within about 10 minutes some stirring is heard from within the camper followed by the sound of Mr. O losing his lunch (and dinner and snacks) all over the camper. After tending to our little fellow and getting him settled back in we decide it could be a long night and that we ought to settle in ourselves on the non-puked on side of the camper.

We made it through the night puke free - yes! We've seen this before where Mr. O will have a one-time puking episode and then be fine. We were hopeful that such was the case this time.

Meanwhile - back at the picnic table: The next morning we prepared to eat breakfast at our newly assembled and installed (lots of leveling involved) picnic table. Just as all seemed right with the world Mr. O climbed up and stood on one of the picnic table benches and gripped the table top with both hands. I was sitting on the bench myself wondering what he was up to when a sudden gushing sound from inside his pants told me exactly what he was up to. Diarrhea + camping = good times! This episode was repeated every 60-90 minutes for the rest of the trip.

As we break bread at our picnic table on future camping trips we shall always remember the inaugural meal taken at the table and the sounds and smells that went along with it.

Chickens > squash bugs

Some say this blog is dead. Not true I say! We've just been busy for cryin' out loud! Geesh.

Check out the pumpkins we grew. They came a little early and at least one has been transplanted to the compost pile since this picture.

I think I wrote about the squash bug problem in my last post? I've tried a couple ways of getting the chickens to take care of them. First I tried picking the pumpkins and carrying them into the coop where I would then brush the bugs off into the waiting maws of our birds. This didn't work so well - most of the bugs bailed from the pumpkins as soon as they saw me. Idea two was to brush the bugs into a bag of some sort and then carry that into the coop. Again, limited success. Idea three: bring the chickens to the bugs. Check it out:

This has worked marvelously. The chickens love being in the tractor and scratching about in the melon patch. Any movement by the squash bugs and they are snatched up in a heartbeat. The birds also get to munch on overripe melons and stuff, which they dig.

Seeing the chickens work the melon patch and take care of the squash bugs has given me the idea of letting them spend more tractor time in the garden areas when we aren't actively growing anything. Their scratching works the soil nicely, they clean out (hopefully) pests that might overwinter in the beds, and they add nitrogen-rich poop that will hopefully be broken down enough by the time we get to planting again.

Of course, as I've documented somewhere on this blog, the only drawback to this plan is it means I have to catch the chickens to put them in the tractor. I watch this video to get myself psyched up for that task: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ZkY7tnpRs (if you need a context for this video check this out this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoEEPoBwf7Y&feature=related )

Good times in the melon patch

Due to the success of last year's volunteer cantaloupe we decided to expand our garden efforts this year by starting a melon patch. We chronicled the actual process of starting the patch in a post on Gardenaut. Since then we planted watermelon, pumpkins and two types of cantaloupe. Oddly enough I don't like watermelon, pumpkin, or cataloupe but growing them has been a hoot. We've had some success and have learned a lot in the process. (whoops I forgot that I do like the pumpkin cheesecake bars that Dianne makes, but other than that I'm not much for pumpkins).

Our seeds sprouted nicely and the plants took off as you can see in this photo:

We've had a lot of fun searching through the foliage looking for ripening fruit. The first things to fruit were the watermelons. We planted Sugar Babies - a smaller variety that produces round fruits that are dark green. They are supposed to get up to 8lbs, but ours probably topped out at about 5 or 6 pounds. Not too bad for our first go at it. One lesson learned is that we need to be planting a seedless variety. When we sliced open our first melon I was stunned at the number of seeds inside. Another lesson was that we need to harvest a bit sooner - many of the seeds had actually started to germinate inside the melons, which I thought very unusual. I'd never seen this in any fruit or veggie, but perhaps it's more common than I realize.

Here's a shot of our first slice into a melon - the tomatoes are from our garden too. I don't know where the dirty dishes came from.

See what I mean about the seeds:

D reports that despite the seeds the fruit was quite sweet. These look a little "rindy" to me too - as in there's more of the white part than I'm used to seeing, but maybe that's because I'm used to seeing store bought melons.

The cantaloupes were next to ripen. Unfortunately most of them seemed to ripen at the same time, which happened to coincide with our beach vacation. Here are young versions of our two cantaloupe varieties:

I didn't really know how to tell when they were ripe, but my dad suggested that they were ripe when they fell off the vine. He is not a gardener so I don't know how he knew that but he was right. When they're ripe they literally fall off the vine right into your hand.

The variety in the top photo, we'll call this one the non-lobed variety, ripened first and I hear they were quite tasty. Mr. O ate a bunch of them almost by himself. When we got back from vacation we had a couple of the lobed fruits that weren't rotten but we haven't had a chance to slice into them yet (just got back yesterday afternoon). We'll have to report on their taste in a later post.

After many unsuccessful efforts we have finally been able to grow pumpkins. We don't have a ton and they aren't going to win any state fair ribbons for being gigantic, but just having bona fide orange pumpkins in the garden is a major success for us. Unfortunately when we got back from vacation I noticed that one fruit was covered in squash beetles. With each new success come new challenges. I plan to cut that fruit off the vine tonight, gingerly carry it into the chicken coop and then brush all the beetles off and watch the chickens feast on them. When squash beetles show up turn them into eggs and fertilizer. It's all about permaculture.

Parsley, dill, and swallowtails

We've had a bunch of black swallowtail caterpillars thanks to our parsley and dill plantings. Mr. O really enjoyed watching get bigger each day. I think most of them have either gone to the chrysalis stage of their life cycle (though I haven't found any chrysalises) or they've been chomped by birds.

We used to have a rue plant that attracted these caterpillars, but unfortunately it was too attractive and the caterpillars ate the thing to the ground and it never returned.

I find it unusual that most of the butterflies I see flitting about the place are tiger swallowtails but I never seem to see their caterpillars.

Here's a young black swallowtail caterpillar about to chomp on some dill:

And here's a passel of more mature caterpillars going to town on the parsley. Interesting how drastically they change color as they mature

So what does an adult black swallowtail caterpillar look like? We haven't been able to get any shots of them at the farm, so here's a link.

Mr. O is 3 today

We've been neglecting the blog a bit but there has been a lot going on at the farm. Veggies are coming in nicely, including some new things we've either never grown or never had success with. We'll post about those things soon.

Today is Mr. O's third birthday so I thought we'd do a Happy Birthday post. Here's a great recent shot of him taken by Mr. Jon:

We've got a big birthday party planned for tomorrow - lots of his friends and some of our friends too. I like to think there's fun stuff for kids to do here and hope they all enjoy romping about. I'm sure there'll be a lot of swinging and of course some excursions into the chicken coop to play catch the chicken (que the theme from "Rocky"). I think there will also be a trek down to the creek to do some splashing and looking for animal tracks, minnows and crayfish. There's also the playhouse in Mr. O's garden village to explore. We planted parsley in one of the beds in the garden village and it did great. So great in fact that it's now full of black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars . I think Mr. O will be excited to show those off to his friends.

I'm also excited about sharing food that we've grown with our guests. We have some big tomatoes ready to pick that we'll slice up and put on burgers. We plan to have a pesto pasta salad with pesto made from our basil. On my to do list still is make deviled eggs from eggs that our hens have provided. There'll be tons of our cucumbers sliced up on the veggie tray (we really need to move the cukes people so please eat all you can.) I think the veggie tray will also include some of the bell peppers out of our garden. I have a feeling that there will also be some unauthorized blueberry and blackberry picking by the youngsters and that Mr. O might be the ringleader of that effort. We may even slice into one of the sugarbaby watermelons from the melon patch. They're not quite as big as the seed package says they get, but they have "yellow bellies" and make a hollow sound when you rap them with your knuckles. A lady at the farmer's market tells us that when the melon's underside turns yellow instead of white (hence the yellow belly) then they're ready to eat.

Here's Mr. O showing us where a melon is hiding:

Happy birthday buddy.

Swinging through bubbles

When our property was cleared and graded in preparation for housebuilding the guy who did the work left two good-sized trees standing in the backyard. It's hard to say whether or not he did this intentionally or if he just got close enough to being done and decided to call it quits. Either way they seemed like the perfect spot for a swingset and if there's one thing Mr. O loves to do it is swing. I think he would gladly spend hours in a swing if someone is willing to keep pushing him.

I had been trying to figure out how to safely attach a beam between these two trees that would be big enough and stiff enough to withstand a couple kids and maybe an occasional adult on the swings. I originally thought about using lag bolts to attach a 16' 4x6 beam between the trees but that plant didn't seem workable for two reasons - 1) I couldn't find lag bolts at Lowe's any bigger than 5/8" x 8" and, 2) it seemed like a 4x6 beam across a 14 foot span was going to have some deflection when the swings really got going.

After some internet research and a visit to Agri-Supply for some serious hardware I came up with the final plan. Instead of a 4x6 beam I decided to use tripled 2x10s for the beam. Instead of relying solely on lag bolts to both attach the beam to the trees and carry the weight of the beam I would use two 30" sections of doubled 2x10s per tree and lag bolt them to two sides of each tree to serve as supports for carrying most of the weight of the beam in a sort of cantilever fashion. At Agri-Supply I found 5/8" x 12" lag bolts that I used to attach the supports to the trees. I used three bolts per per support in a triangle formation. I also found found 3/4" x 12" lag bolts at Agri-Supply which I used to attach the beam directly to the trees. These are more for preventing the beam from moving than they are for carrying the weight of the beam. In order to get the three 16" 2x10s to act as one beam I nailed them together with 3.5" nails about every 6 inches along each long side. The second board was nailed to the first and the third to the second. Getting the first long board up and leveled was the toughest part of the whole project. Those 16 footers are heavy.

I thought Dianne and I worked pretty well together to get the beam up and secured. I tried to explain things as we were going along but I'm sure there was still some mind-reading required on her part to figure out the plan.

I'm happy to report that the swings are a huge hit with Mr. O and that there is virtually no movement or deflection in the swing beam.

Another thing high on Mr. O's list is bubbles. He has an automatic bubble blower that puts out swarms of bubbles. What could be better than combining two of his favorite things?

Veggie status

Here's a quick update on the garden. Squash vine borers have just about decimated the zucchinis but I'm not too sad. We got a bunch of fruits off them and haven't eaten many of them - maybe tonight we'll grill some up. Here's a shot of them (and some peppers) in their prime:

We're actually thinking about pulling up the zukes just to clear out the dead foliage. I'm doubtful that we'll plant those next year.

Peppers seem to be doing pretty well - they're putting on tons of fruits but so far non have gotten very big or very meaty, though I remember from last year that the biggest peppers came after the initial fruiting.

Tomatoes seem to be struggling a bit this year. Several plants have just up and died while others look pretty weak and have a lot of yellow foliage. Our romas and beefsteaks appear to be doing the best. Both have several fruits on each plant. The wacky heirloom varieties are a mixed bag - some have already given up the ghost and some seem poised for a decent showing. We planted these later than our other tomatoes, so it may take them a while to catch up. We had the top of a tree come down onto a few of our plants - did a fair amount of damage but I think they should rebound.

So far our cukes are the stars of this year's garden. We have about 7-8 pounds of kirbys picked and cleaned. Now we just need to find a good dill pickle recipe and we'll be set to pickle. Our non-pickling cukes are doing well too - there'll probably be 3 or 4 more of those to pick today. Those things sure are pokey - lots of little spines all over them and the plants too. I'm always very itchy after picking them.

Beans are doing so-so. It's kinda tough to keep up with the yard longs - those things grow fast and once they get too big they get kind of mushy and not very tasty.

Looks like our first-year melon patch is going to produce. We've got several small watermelon fruits forming. I'm hopeful that our cantaloupes won't be far behind. Squash vine borers have gotten to our pumpkins, though haven't caused as much damage (yet?) as they have to the zukes, so maybe there's hope.

The blueberry plants set a lot of berries this year and a few are just starting to ripen; however, Mr. O eats them faster than we can pick them, so I'm not sure we're ever going to get enough at one time to do much with them. Here he is caught in the act and looking sheepish.

I'll close this post with a shot of Scout doing some backyard breakdancing. I snapped this right in the middle of his windmill. Yo, Scout - where's your cardboard?

Gardenaut Posts

Did you know that we're "contributing gardeners" on a blog called Gardenaut? Why yes, it's true. One can read all our Gardenaut posts at this link.

Dianne has come up with a new word to describe baby cukes: cukembryo.

Loadin' the boat

We took Mr. O on his first fishing trip on Memorial day and had a great time. How is this related to suburban homesteading you might ask - well, before going fishing we had to dig up some worms for bait and there's no better place to do that than in the garden. So dig we did you dig?




Pepper plants are looking pretty good, eh? We harvested a nice haul of worms including one that I swear was half snake - it was huge. By far the biggest worm I've seen in these parts. Take a look at this mess of worms we dug up. A neat thing I noticed while digging was how many worm castings were evident in the soil. The castings are sort of hard to describe if you haven't seen them before. Picture a piece of poop about the size a worm would produce and you'll have a pretty good idea. I keep forgetting that this is the internet - here's a nice picture of worm castings.

With more than enough bait collected we headed out to Lake Raleigh, a 90 acre lake on NC State's Centennial Campus that only allows non-motorized boats. A great thing about the lake is that it's about 5 minutes from the farm - can't beat that.

We shoved off in the canoe and headed for a nice pocket along the bank that looked like it would have lots of fish. Once we cast our worm rig close enough to the bank it was fish after fish. Mr. O was very into counting his fish. He counted up to 16 fish, then 18, then back down to 16. I'm not really sure what the final count was but of course that doesn't matter. I will note that his first official fish reeled in was a largemouth bass - didn't get a good picture of it because it was ony about 3.5 inches long. But here he is reelin' in a big one.

Of course they weren't that big, but they were real fish that he caught and got to touch and hold and let go and that was a neat thing to watch. I was surprised at how readily he touched the fish and even how he was fine with letting them go. Here he is practicing catch and release.

We even took some videos with the camera that I'll try to post here. Let's see if this works.

Well it seems to be there. Check out his laugh near the end - too funny. Obviously the trip was a success. I think we were only out for about 2 hours - just enough time to get out and have fun without overdoing it. Though it did make him a little tired. He fell sound asleep on our five minute drive back to the farm. We didn't use anywhere near all the worms we collected so we deposited all of the remaining ones, including the big boy, back into the garden.

Chicken update - we got five eggs today. The first time that all five hens laid in one day. One of the Silver Phoenix eggs was much bigger than any I'd previously seen. I was thinking that their eggs would probably start to get bigger once they reached full maturity and today's egg seems to confirm that.

Snake Battle: Chapter 4 on to victory

In this short post I am officially declaring victory in the Man vs. Rat Snake battle. I believe that we both have found happiness in this outcome. As I dropped him, the snake, my nemesis, off at his new location I was secretly thinking, "you're going to like it here dude." I'm sure he has found new eggs and new baby birds to eat - hey, just keeping it real people - and no longer feels the need to ingest our hard won eggs.

Speaking of things eating other things - last week I was walking up to my building at work and red-tailed hawk was tearing apart a freshly-killed squirrel. The hawk was all business. There were plenty of people around but he wasn't budging. A woman stood about 15 feet away snapping pictures of the carnage.

So our hens our laying steady now and we get about 3-4 eggs a day. Ok I said this was going to be a short post.

Snake Battle: Chapter 3

We didn't lose any more eggs yesterday but I think that was only because Dianne worked from home and was able to check the coop every few hours. She collected three eggs - one each from Coco (huge egg!) and Winnie and one from one of our young Silver Phoenix hens. The SPs are kind of hard to tell apart so it's sort of tough to tell who's doing the laying, maybe more than one them?

When I got home from work I decided to clean out the old hen box hay and put in some new stuff. I really need to change out the hay in the entire coop - getting a little stinky in there. I raked out a bit of straw and there he was - Mr. Black Rat snake all coiled up in the back. GRRRR!!!

I had read a post on the back yard chickens forum that one way to deal with these things is to catch them and then drive them somewhere a good ways away and release them. I really didn't want to kill the guy. They can be beneficial - in fact several folks on the BYC forum said they didn't mind losing an occasional egg to snakes because they do such a good job of controlling the rodent population. Apparently rats and mice can be even more harmful to a chicken flock than a snake. Well, I do mind losing eggs because we only have five chickens and at this poing get only three eggs max a day. So I caught the snake in the same box I used last time, taped up the top of the box, put it in the passenger seat of my car and set off to deposit the creature somewhere far away.

NC State University has some farming education units about four miles from my house and I thought this would be a perfect spot. I turned down the gravel road that winds through the farmland and came to a low spot where the road passes by a creek and some wetlands. I thought this would be a perfect spot. The fact that a turkey education unit was about 100 yards away was even better. Maybe having hundreds of turkeys around, and presumably lots of turkey eggs, would make this place attractive enough to this snake that he wouldn't want to make the miracle journey back to our place.

The actual release of the snake went off without a hitch. I unceremoniously pulled the tape off the box set it on the ground tipped it over and gave it an encouraging shake to get the snake out. I think he spent a few minutes getting his bearings and then slinked off into the tall grass of the wetlands. Driving with the snake in the car was actually a little more nervewracking than catching and releasing him. Have you ever driven a car with a 4.5 foot snake in the passenger seat? Let's just say my attention was divided between watching the road and watching the box. Why did I put him in the passenger seat and not the back you might ask. Well, I figured if this snake gets out of the box while I'm driving I want to know about it. The last thing I want is a snake loose and hidden inside my car - that would kind of suck. It turned out to be a good thing I had the snake in the box next to me. A couple times I heard some snake movements in the box indicating he was exploring options for exiting the box. I gave the box a couple of loud smacks to discourage that activity - while stopped at a red light of course.

I'm very hopeful that this snake won't be back, but there are a couple of discouraging aspects to this story. 1 - how in the heck did this thing get in after all the coop fortification measures that I described in my previous post and what am I going to do to prevent it? I honestly don't know. 2 - I'm not totally sure that this was the same snake I found in the coop the first time. He seemed to have some faint markings that I don't remember from our first encounter. Ugh.

Snake Battle: Chapter 2

Here's a shot of the egg-eater getting away through the chicken wire when I first encountered him. When I saw him get away it was obvious that I'd have to put up some wire with smaller holes and possibly patch up some other spots too.

This picture was taken last Thursday and I knew I wouldn't have time to make repairs until the weekend. On Friday I came home and checked the coop first thing. I didn't see the snake anywhere but I checked for eggs and there were none . . . hmmm. The hen box was getting a little poopy so I decided I'd go ahead and clean that out. I put hinges on the front wall of the box to make clean out pretty easy.

Here's a shot of the coop that I think will show what I'm referring to as the front wall - it's where the chickens walk up their little chicken ramp and into the box.

And here's a shot of the clean out door open - you can see how that gives easy access to the inside of the hen box.

Anyways, I'm raking out the old straw and have it almost all out when a snaky head pops out from the back corner. There he is coiled up in the hen box lookin' all fat and happy. You could tell he had really been enjoying himself until I came along. First he has a nice big meal then he's got a ready-made cozy spot to curl up in and take a little snooze. Sounds nice doesn't it?

What to do now? I hemmed and hawed a bit trying to figure out what to do with or to the thing. I decided to get a box from the garage and see if I could scoop him into it with my hay fork. After several attempts I was finally able to use the fork to drag his fat snake butt out of the corner and over the edge of the open hen box door - plop - he landed right in my waiting box trap. I quickly closed the lid and made sure it wasn't going to open. Once I was certain he wasn't going anywhere I carried him far back into our woods. I went across our creek thinking that the prospect of a river crossing might help discourage him from returning - probably won't do a darn thing.

We didn't see him back all weekend, of course I was out checking for eggs about every 15 minutes. I gathered them as soon as they appeared - eggs are really warm when first laid, neat.

I did put up some 1/2" hardware cloth over the chicken wire on the wall he was using to come in. That side of the coop is the only one that wasn't already covered in 1/2" hardware cloth. I also used some expanding foam spray to plug a hole in some of our porch framing that I think he was using, or could use to gain access to the coop.

Let's hope this works. I'll keep you posted.

White Eggs and a Black Rat Snake

One of our Silver Phoenix pullets has started to lay. I assume that means she's graduated to hen status? I'm guessing it's Caroline who's laying. She's the biggest of the SPs so presumably the most mature - at least in a reproductive way. Her eggs are quite a bit smaller than Winnie's and Coco's (as you can see in the picture). I think they'll eventually get a little bit bigger but probably won't ever be quite as big as Coco's. SPs are a smaller breed and I don't think they're particularly noted as super huge egg layers. The other difference in the eggs is that the SPs lay white-shelled eggs.

In other chicken news . . . It looks like we've got our first predator issue. Thankfully it's not attacking the chickens. No, what we have is an egg stealer. I was giving the ladies food and water yesterday and when I checked for eggs there were none. Odd I thought - the day before we had three. As I was making my way out of the coop I saw the culprit - a 4 to 5 foot long black rat snake hanging out on a ledge above the coop door. I tried to catch him with the fork I use for moving hay around, but he easily slithered out of the fork tines and made his way through the chicken wire covering the lattice under our screened porch and went to hang out in our deck framing. Looks like I'll need to cover that section of chicken wire with something that's got smaller holes. What makes that tough is there's not much to nail or staple the wire to on that side of the coop.

I don't like to kill stuff but I'm starting to suspect this snake in several other incidents we've had around the place. If we can't keep him out of the chicken coop we may have to consider the death penalty. I've seen him (or another black rat snake) climbing up a tree to one of our blue bird boxes in the back yard, I've untangled a black snake from the bird netting around our blueberries, and we lost a clutch of blue bird chicks to something - I can only assume it was the black rat snake. According to the web sites I've checked out these snakes eat not only eggs but also small birds, and one of their nicknames is "Chicken Snake" - that's not a good sign.

One thing I wonder is how the snake knows where to go for the eggs. Our nesting boxes are inside the hen box so you can't just see the eggs. Do eggs have a smell that snakes can detect? Actually I bet that's it. I'd be curious to know if anyone has any more info on that.

A Quick Update

It's May and we haven't updated the blog in a while so I thought I'd get something started. The gardens are coming along really nicely - in fact it's hard to believe how quickly things have progressed. The bell peppers are starting to show flower buds, the tomato plants are getting thicker and taller and are putting on bigger, darker green leaves. The zucchini that we planted (as pictured in our last post) have all come up and put on their first true leaves. The basil is up too. The only thing left to put in the main veggie garden are the funky tomato varieties that good buddy Jon gave us. They started out small and spindly, but now they are thick and strong - like bull.

The blueberry bushes are doing great - they have lots of berries started and one has even starte putting up new shoots about a foot outside the base of the plant. I think that's a good thing - no? The strawberries look great - we even have our first tiny fruit starts.

One thing that's not looking so great is the asparagus. Not sure what the problem is there, but we do not have as many shoots as last year and most of them are pretty spindly. We did have one plant put up two nice shoots - the size you'd eat if we were picking them. Hopefully the other plants will continue to get established and start sending up some thicker shoots.

The hops are doing terrific - we've had a normally wet spring and the established hop plant has already climbed to the top of one side of our arbor, which is about 8-9 feet. We transplanted a rhizome on the other side of the arbor that we got from our neighbor, Ms. Susan, and it has taken hold and is putting on new growth.

Still to plant is the melon patch. We have it all prepared and have the seeds ready to go - just need to find the time to stick them in the ground. We also need to mulch over the entire patch. I'm concerned that it could become a real weed haven before the melons have a chance to cover the patch with their vines.

Sorry no pics with this post - we'll probably take some more this weekend and will hopefully get some new ones of the garden up.

Project Pics

We got lots of stuff done around the place this past weekend. We planted zucchini, parsley, basil, and something else - maybe coriander? I can't remember - Dianne is that right?

We ran soaker hoses along each of five rows in the big garden:

We spread about 2 cubic yards of mulch in various beds:

And we got a new garden patch started that will hopefully be home to watermellon, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and possibly some potatos:

I did a full post on Gardenaut that covers how we got this new bed started. It should be published in a couple days. It was a busy weekend around the place. We also got the lawn mowed, which is kind of a big job. Place sure does look better with a haircut.

Oh yeah, we also put in new stepping stones - that Dianne and Mr. O made - by the chicken coop door:

Strawberry Update

Lots of activity on the farm this weekend but I don't have lots of time to write about it. Thought I'd post a quick strawberry update. With the exception of one plant in one of the beds the plants in all three beds are doing well.

Here's one with a blossom on it. Most of the plants are starting to put on buds. We're supposed to pick these off the first year to encourage the plant to focus on establishing a strong root system, but it's going to be hard not to let some of the blossoms go and hopefully turn into strawberries.

It's strawberry season here in Central NC. Mr. O is a strawberry fiend. We picked up a basket full at the farmer's market this weekend and he has been plowing through them. We found one berry in our basket with a particularly large nose.

Getting the Garden Going

We're a little behind on the garden so far, but we've started to get some things in the ground. We've got 18 tomato seedlings we bought at the Raleigh farmer's market (very close to our house) and they're ready to go in. We also have 13 or so tomato seedlings that we got from our friend Jon, who started them from seed. (Jon - they're looking a little spindly - hopefully they'll perk up). Included in this group are some neat varieties with some unusual colors - I'm really looking forward to seeing how these do.


So what do we have in the garden? Well we got pepper seedlings in - I think the variety is called Red Beauty and they also came from the farmer's market. 18 of those. We've also planted pickling and regular cuke seeds as well as sugar snap peas, yard long beans, green beans (not sure the variety). We put some snow pea seeds in the ground too - probably too late in the year to do that but we'll see what happens.

The cukes, peas, and beans will grow up the trellises you see in the left side of this picture, the peppers will be next to them, then zucchini, and then two rows of tomatos. Note the headless scarecrow - extra scary. You can barely see it in this picture but I use a string between two stakes to lay out my planting rows. Some may find this a little anal - but I like my rows to be fairly straight. I saw Eliot Coleman use this technique on the gardening show that he and his wife Barbara Damrosch used to have. That was a great show - wish it was still on.


Our tomato cages are made from field fencing. We have an extra roll around for making fence repairs and I figured it would work well for tomato cages. I snip the bottom horizontal strand of wire off each cage which allows 6 or 7 vertical wire pieces to penetrate the ground about 5-6 inches. This keeps the cages from toppling over in a heavy wind.


What else are we doing around here . . . .? Well, the strawberries need mulching, the hops are doing well, we cleaned out the chicken coop for the first time. This took a little longer than I anticipated. I'm thinking maybe we need to invest in one of those big-wheeled garden carts - those things are cool. The wheelbarrow is good for hauling really heavy stuff, but a garden cart could hold more light, loose material like the old straw from the coop. We also planted Verbena around the coop to spruce it up a bit. We're planning to do a good bit of mulching around existing and new flower beds this weekend - maybe get some horse manure too if my source comes through.

Finally, I'm writing for another blog called Gardenaut as a contributing gardener. My first post was posted 4/17/08. Check it out.

Something’s Brewing at Sourwood Farm

Ok, something was brewed and is now fermenting – bubbling happily away as we speak (um, or read or type or something). I figure that homebrewing fits into our suburban homesteading – producing something that is normally bought at a store. And let me tell you, our local grocery has a terrible selection of beer! So, we benefit in two ways from our homebrewing efforts – one, it is cheaper than purchasing commercial beer and two, we have an unlimited selection to choose from.

While I would love to be able to produce the ingredients needed for brewing, the only thing really practical is to grow hops. We have an arbor over both of our gates and we planted some hops at the base of the larger one two years ago. One side did not make it at all and the other side came up meekly/weakly and fizzled out. The drought has not helped but that side is up this year and looking strong. We also got two additional rhiozomes from our friend S (best neighbor ever) this weekend for the other side. Hopefully we can keep them nicely watered from the rain barrels this summer but tomatoes come first. I am willing to sacrifice the hops for homegrown tomatoes. The variety of hops that we are growing is Cascade, my favorite.

My homebrewing efforts started about ten years ago when S dug her equipment out of storage and showed me the ropes. I was hooked immediately! Every batch has been drinkable. Sure, some have been better than others but over the years, I have refined my techniques and processes so I’m turning out some fairly consistent and tasty beers (so they tell me). I also have narrowed the field down to several go-to recipes that are our favorites.

Right now we are drinking a pale ale that I would have to say is our all-time favorite. Nice and hoppy but not overly challenging, easy to drink but still very interesting.

So, the brewing, right. I brewed a lemon wheat this weekend. I love this ale in the summer. Don’t let the lemon scare you off – it is there but just enough to be slightly refreshing and light. I think it goes well with the wheat.Hopefully next weekend I can get this wheat bottled and get another batch brewed (an ESB). This flurry of brewing is more than my usual batch every several months or so but I’ve been tasked (happily accepted) with having some beers ready for our camping trip to the Bass Mountain Bluegrass Festival at the end of May. That’s ambitious for my schedule of brewing and waiting FOREVER to actually bottle but I think I’m up to the task. We also need to get the garden in sometime too. Busy days here at Sourwood!

Spinach . . . . . . finally

After many, many tries we were finally able to have a real spinach harvest yesterday. Not sure why but until now we have had no luck with spinach. We've tried growing it in several locations and have never had any results to speak of. In fact the stuff that we harvested yesterday was actually planted last fall. It sprouted and put on a couple leaves and then just seemed to go to sleep. We let it be over the winter and now that spring is here it actually grew with little to no attention - so that's what easy to grow means.

My theory on why the plants went sort of dormant last fall is that the day length was getting too short and the sun was too low in the sky for the plants to get much sun. We have an acre or more of our property cleared so getting enough sun isn't usually a problem in the spring and summer. The cleared part of our property is surrounded by tall pines and poplars, so as the days were getting shorter and the angle of the sun was lower I think the spinach wasn't getting enough sun to thrive. The fact that the spinach lived through the winter tells you how mild our winter was - I think we only saw snowflakes once.

The other green stuff in the picture is garlic and shallots. We planted those last fall too but I think they're supposed to go through the winter and then come up the following spring. Dianne tells me that they won't be ready for harvest until their foliage dies back and then they may take some curing after that. You can see I'm not the garlic and shallots expert in the family.

Here's a shot of Mr. O doing some serious spinach picking - that one sure did have some long roots. We enjoyed fresh homegrown spinach in our salads last night and with every bite I savored the gobs of nutrition coursing through my digestive system and finding their way to wherever vitamins and minerals go. It reminded me of the School-House Rock tune "The Body Machine", which I only heard 80 bazillion times this weekend as we drove to Northern, VA and back. That CD is one of Mr. O's favorites. I have to admit I learned a lot from those as a kid. Check out the tune and video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVAvxGDjlpM .

Surecrop Strawberries

It didn't feel much like spring this past Saturday. We had wind, rain, and highs in the mid to low 40's. We muddled through nonetheless and got our Strawberries planted. We ordered a variety called Surecrop. I think we ordered ours from Burpee but their website no longer has a description of this variety - I think they may have sold out. Miller Nurseries has a decent description of Surecrop.

We decided to go with a June bearing variety as opposed to an ever-bearing on the advice of Dianne's mom who is a graduate of Virginia's Master Gardener program. Her experience with ever-bearers was that you never got a big enough crop at one time to do much with the fruits other than just eat them. So we went with a June bearer hoping to get a crop that we can use for preserves. Of course there will be the inevitable crop losses when Mr. O is helping us pick. He loves him some strawberries.

We ordered 25 plants and they came as mostly roots. We trimmed the roots to 3" as the planting instructions noted and then buried the plants up to the crown making sure that the crowns were level with top of soil. Strawberries like a loose sandy soil with lots of organic matter. We have none of that in our native soil so we planted them in three different raised beds that we filled with a mixture of either horse manure and loamy topsoil or compost and topsoil. By the way the leafy green stuff on the right side of this picture is a hop plant that we hope will one day grow up and over the arbor in the picture. It dies back every year and then sprouts anew from a rhizome, so it's just getting started this year.

We spaced the strawberries pretty far apart in the raised beds. Like their wild strawberry cousins these cultivated plants send out runners that start new plants. So eventually our raised beds should be covered with a mat of strawberry plants. Wonder how long that will take. Our planting instructions advised picking off all the blossoms this first year to enable strong root growth. I think we'll adhere to that for the most part, but we might have to let a few go just to see and taste a couple homegrown strawberries.

Chicken update: Winnie and Coco are laying regular now. I was a bit worried about Coco a week ago because I had seen her on the nest twice but she hadn't layed anything. She got interrupted on Easter as we had guests over who wanted to check out the chickens - man did she put up a racket about that. She popped out of the hen house telling us off in clucks and squawks. A day or so later she finally layed. We've had a couple two egg days over the past four or five days so I think she got over it. Sure was fun dying (and eating) our homegrown eggs for easter.