Another photo log

Linden tree aka basswood. Edible flowers and young leaves. Nourishing and anti-inflmmatory

Just learned about it in my herbal apprenticeship Friday and here it is on the farm :)

You eat the leaves when they are still small and translucent... Too late for this tree. Now we have to wait for the flowers to bloom to make herbal infusions.

Another lilac

Katie Coldwell bought us a mushroom kit as a wedding present... Look how well these shiitakes are doing!

Poor raspberry didn't transplant well. I think it will make a comeback though.

Almond tree... Doing well!

Colleen and Marvin helped is mulch around all our new trees last weekend... Many thanks!

Older batch of chickens outside in paddock that is moved every Friday 

8 new pullets (adolescent hens) that we got on Wednesday. They are being hazed until the pecking order is established... Hence them huddled in the corner :( 

we got 2 of each type. The black and white ones are called Barred Rocks and are my current favorites.

Buff Orpington on the left and Rhode Island Red on the right

The gray one is an aracauna. She is tiny, but fast!

Automatic Chickens and Busy Bees

While Alicia has been busy posting about what trees are blooming and eating down our pantry, I have been busy with many other projects.  The automatic chicken feeder has long been complete and with the advice and help of family and friends it works great and can be set up to feed the chickens for a few days if we are gone.

 It really was a simple device to make.  The only parts I bought were the flexible drive shaft (clear plastic tubing), the hose clamps and the motor.

 Everything else was scavenged.  The one mistake I made with it though was winding the copper wire (leftover wire from grounding the electric fence to the ground rod) the wrong way.  Instead of the feed coming out the end opposite the motor it comes out the side by the motor.  So I  had to make a wood housing that just covered the motor but left spots open for the feed to fall through. One of my original problems had been that the auger would get bound up with all the feed so that resulted in installing the gutter ramp to direct the feed to a smaller area.  

Now with a digital timer I set to turn on for 2 minutes in dispenses more than enough feed for the hens that we have.

Another all winter project that just came to a conclusion was building 2 beehives.  I ordered a 3 pound box of bees through Dadant and Sons.  They are a beekeeping supply company.  They finally arrived last Tuesday.  Those bees were destined to go into top bar beehive that I built.  Topbar beehives are thought to be more natural than the traditional Langstroph hives.  That is because the bees are not given any premade foundation and have to make all the honey comb themselves.  The yield of honey is slightly lower because more energy is put into the comb but its more akin to what wild bees would do.

 This is the beehive before any bees have been put in.

This part comes off to reveal a plexiglas window that is inset into the hive.  This allows for quick checks on the bees without doing any invasive inspections.

This shows the boards that they will make the comb hanging from. Also note the 3 holes at the back of. The hive where they will enter and exit from.  The follower board in the center of the picture will move along the box as more bars are added as the bees fill them up.

The box that the bees come in is on the ground at the left.  One can see the thousands of bees swarming around and inspecting their new hive.  I will post the videos that I took on YouTube soon.

I also bought and just finished assembling with the help of Alicia, Colleen and Marvin a traditional Langstroph hive that I was going to take the bees that have been living in the wall of the old beer depot here at the farm.  However, like many bee colonies, it looks like they didn't make it through the winter.  So I might instead try to split the top bar colony once it gets more established.

The bees will do a great job of pollinating all the fruit and nut trees that were recently planted and are beginning to bud out.

Eating Down the Pantry

Neal and I declared May "eat down the pantry" month, meaning we are only buying dairy products. We are finishing off the produce and random bits from the cupboards, fridge, and freezer, and we haven't been suffering a bit. Who knew how much we had saved up? Between Meg Kelly from High Meadow Farm keeping us stocked with greens every week and our own little cold frame, we have been eating greens at least twice a day. We're expecting plenty of seasonal produce from the garden and markets staring in June and we want to have room for them.

So far we have tried out:

-"corn pudding" to use up our frozen sweet corn. We've been feeding the extra corn to the chickens and they LOVE it.

-enchiladas with cooked greens, Scallions from meg, leftover mushrooms, carrots, frozen corn, freezer chicken fro the fall, and canned salsa... Yummy

- beet and turnip gratin from Annie's website: leforthomestead.blogspot.com

-pasta with frozen pesto (wish we would have started eating down the fridge earlier because we already have greens in the yard that we could be using.

-asparagus from our CSB farmer.... Delicious 

-pizza with frozen tomatoes and fresh spinach from Meg

-rice and beans with scallions, fresh greens, and frozen corn

-black bean soup... Surprisingly flavorful

-sautéed greens

To date, we have been able to harvest these foods from our garden and cold frame:

~Lettuce

~Radish

~Kale

Meanwhile we have wild harvested:

*dandelions

*lamb's quarters

*red raspberry leaves (for tea)

*stinging nettle

*chickweed

*violets

We could be eating garlic mustard, purslane, and more... But we have so much good food from the CSA and in the freezer that we haven't gotten around to it.

Beet and turnip gratin

Asparagus for breakfast

Cheese kit I received for Christmas from my folks

The kit makes ten batches... So nine more yummy batches left :)

We used milk from Grassway Organics Farm. We'll be returning... So delicious!

Almost 2 quarts of whey and a half pound of queso fresco.

Radishes from the garden. They taste surprisingly good sliced and served with the fresh cheese

More May flowers

Lilacs!

Tulips

Crab apple... Mistakenly called the tree with white flowers an apple previously... Oops

More lilacs. These remind me of my folk's home and the lilac festival

Not sure what this shrub is

Also don't know what these flowers are. I like that they are a bit hidden

Neal and Mike installing a rain chain on the barn to channel water from the gutter to the rain barrels. We use the barrels to water our veggie bed and potting shed when they're full

Lastly, asparagus from our community supported beef (CSB) farmer... Thanks Brian!

Exponential growth

It's hard to believe that just a month ago we were thrilled to see anything green growing up because now a few days absence means the plants are HUGE when we get back. Exciting and slightly nerve wracking at the same time depending on whether or not our crops and edible weeds win the race for space.

Below are the pictures of the veggies sprouting on our lasagna bed, dandelion flowers taking over (edible...and can also be infused in oil as a lotion), blooming trees, nettle growing, and the cold frame plants flourishing [not necessarily in that order]

The last picture is of our homemade pizza from our larder. Neal made a sourdough pizza crust, we added tomatoes and sausage from the freezer, plus spinach from our CSA. This May we are focusing on "eating down the pantry" before we have tons of fresh produce coming in from the garden. We probably could have started in April... lesson learned for next year. Right now we are only buying dairy, grains, and meat from the store. Don't worry... Our diets aren't suffering: already today I've had bok choi (CSA), chives (from a friend's garden), beets (CSA), scallions (CSA), dandelion (cold frame), seaweed (cupboard stash), garlic (gift from fellow farmer), egg ( from our chickens), soup (from freezer and fridge foods), and yogurt (homemade last week with just milk and saved yogurt starter from the last batch). So, life is good here with lots of yummy meals as we make room for this year's harvest.

I'd be interested to hear if any of you are eating foods from your gardens or foraging yet.

May flowers or May showers?

Neal and I made pasta for our sixth month anniversary on Saturday.... So delicious and fun. It reminds me of play dough... Hehe. We did one beet based dough and one carrot based dough from a pasta making class I took with Annie Wagner Lefort for my birthday two years ago. Here is her website, full of homesteading ideas.... Www.leforthomestead.blogspot.com

I tried out a new yogurt recipe from my herbal teacher, Linda Conroy. I had been using the crockpot method, but I wanted to give her method a shot too... I'm going to have to work with it a few more times to get the consistency that we like, but wow was it tangy! Yum. Below is a picture of the yogurt being strained through a cheese cloth for a thicker final product. We use the whey in soups and breads for a little boost of protein. Here is Linda's yogurt recipe.... http://www.moonwiseherbs.com/cultured-milk-for-health-nourishment-and-fun/

We have been watching the water flow as it rained the last two days. Neal has some rain barrels set up to catch rain from the barn roof. We are also using a skill we learned in our permaculture classes: berms and swales (or mounds and ditches). The swale from the shed should ideally bring water from the shed roof to our vegetable garden and then the water will hopefully slowly leach into the berms to water the gardens over time. The wood chips are filling in the swales so we can walk on them without twisting an ankle. We still need to do some work with the slope of our swale so we actually are moving water from the shed roof to the garden. The less watering I have to do by hand this summer, the better!

Check out the pictures below to see some of the new growth on the farm. There are nettles sprouting up by the barn, raspberries leafing out, a cold frame teeming with greens (kale, lettuce, dandelion, and lambs quarters), and finally tons of daffodils in our fruit tree guilds.