chickens | Northwoods Homesteader

What Will the New Year Bring???

MerrieDecember 26, 2015December 26, 2015Leave a comment

I am not one for making resolutions for the new year but every homesteader has a list of things they want to accomplish for the next year. We are no exception.

I have already ordered the fruit trees that I will pick up at Fedco in April. This year I have only ordered a couple of replacement trees for ones that we have lost along the way. Our orchard is about as big as we want with around 14-15 trees. We have planted apples, plums, cherries, pears and apricots. Of course we have our perennial bushes too.

There is a inside project that I would like to start work on this winter. It entails putting a wall up in the kitchen to create a butler's pantry. That is the easy part. I will have to empty a bunch of cabinets and store those things until the project is finished. It also involves moving the refrigerator to a new wall and my hubby redoing the plumbing to the ice maker. Once it it finished I will have somewhere to have all my appliances out and ready to use without clogging up the visible kitchen counters. I'll keep you up to date as this project proceeds.

Garden planning also happens during the winter. I got my first seed catalog almost a month ago. Since I now have the greenhouse that will change a few things. Speaking of the greenhouse here is a picture of my sweet Zoe sitting in front of it's frosty side. She always goes outside with me.

It will take a little work to get the greenhouse ready for planting. I still have to dig up the existing ground and put in good soil. Right now I'm planning on trying peppers there this next growing season. I have great luck with getting the pepper plants started from seed but I just don't seem to be able to get many peppers. My hope is that the extra heat created by the greenhouse will give them the boost they need.

Every year I look to improve my gardening. I seem to have a knack for raising livestock but gardening is a different matter. I think my biggest problem is neglect once I get things planted. Time in the summer just seems to go by so fast and the weeds always get ahead of me. I have started using mulch which has helped greatly. Come this summer I am going to give landscape cloth a try under the mulch. I have built three raised beds so I do not till the garden anymore. Not tilling each year keeps the soil healthier and allows all the good creatures in the soil to flourish with only minimal disturbance. I have enough materials for one more raised bed and my goal is to get that built this spring. The beds are 20 x 3 feet so I can easily reach from each side. There is a path between each bed. It is surprising how much you can plant in this space.

We will not be raising pigs this next summer. We usually raise several every other year. Pigs do so much better if they have friends to hang out with so instead of doing one each year we raise them every other year. The pastured poultry worked very well last year and we will continue that this coming summer. If I get adventurous I will even try the incubator to hatch some ourselves. And, of course, the baby turkeys will arrive in July as usual.

Our perennial beds will continue to prosper with care. We have our 100 strawberry plants and our two asparagus beds doing well. Those will both take a little work in the spring to pull out weeds, fertilize, and mulch. We were truly amazed at the amount of strawberries we harvested this last summer. I'm thinking I would like to experiment with fermenting some of the asparagus. We like it pickled so why not. I want to see if it will stay crisper that way.

The big outside project for this summer will be mixing and pouring a slab for our generator room. Currently the generator is in the garage but we would like a dedicated spot outside the garage proper. The plan is to add a room to the garage just for the generator and the fuel tank. I'm not great with cement but I have seen many projects where homeowners have poured slabs in sections as they had time/money to do it. We will be looking for a electric or gas mixer to purchase before we start the project. I can already name 2-3 other projects that we would use it for besides the generator room.

Wow, this sounds like a lot of stuff to get done in one short year. No matter, we will get the projects done that we do but you have to start with some kind of a plan. Whichever of these projects that we get done they will be an improvement to things here at the homestead. Believe it or not, I'm looking forward to all of them. It is so satisfying to make things better and knowing that you have done it yourself and with the help of friends and family.

May the new year bring inspiration to you and your family.

Blessings,

Merrie

Nest awaiting spring — Nest in Beech tree awaiting spring

Getting Ready For Winter

MerrieOctober 31, 2015October 31, 2015Leave a comment

I know it is only the end of October but it is time to get the homestead ready for winter and all that means. Here in the northwoods it means cold temperatures and snow, sometimes a lot of snow. There will come a point when the daytime temperatures do not get above freezing for days on end. At the heart of winter in January and February we can get below zero here at the homestead.

This week has been very busy with several projects getting done in preparation for winter. As you can see from above one was getting the bee hives wrapped with tar paper. I know it is not pretty but it serves the purpose. On the left hive you can see the hardware cloth over the lower entrance. This is to keep mice and voles out of the hive. They would love to nest in the cozy warm hive with free food during the cold. The tar paper keeps the wind from being able to get into the hive where the different super boxes meet. Cold wind can kill a hive very quickly. The black also helps to absorb what heat the sun will provide on cold days. At the top you will see another small upper entrance. When the snow gets deep the bees are still able to exit the hive to do a cleansing flight if we have an occasional warm day.

Bees only leave the hive when the outside temperatures get above 45 degrees or so. That means that they are retaining all their excrement until such a day. When there is a winter day that is warm enough they will all make a run to the outhouse. The snow around the hive will be dotted with hundreds of brown spots where the bees have been able to relieve themselves. To me as a beekeeper this is a welcome sign, it means that the hive is still alive and has made it through the winter, at least to that point.

Ken and I are really excited to attend the Maine State Beekeepers Association's annual conference in a couple of weeks. It will be our first time attending and we hope to glean a lot of wisdom from much more experienced beekeepers.

We did the hives late in the week but the week started out with processing our broilers. Again we had 25 Red Rangers on pasture from mid July. I kept two of the hens and put them in with my layers. One I call Buffy, she was an unusually light color so I wanted to keep her. The other was just so she would have a familiar face when they were integrated into the laying flock.

The broilers that were processed earlier in the summer were all frozen whole so we decided that these would be cut up and frozen in pieces. I packaged side breasts, leg quarters and wings. It is a little more work but the packages sure take up much less room in the freezer than the whole birds. I think we will like having the variety of chicken to choose from.

Part of why it was nice to have the chickens take up less freezer space is that this week was also when the pigs were delivered to the processor. Although we process our own chickens we have not yet taken the step to do our own pigs. Besides that we had FIVE this year. That is a lot of pork. Some were raised for other folks but we will still have plenty to fill the rest of the space in the freezers.

Getting livestock into the stock trailer does not always go as planned. Thank the Lord that we were able to borrow a large stock trailer with two sections from a friend. We knew that five pigs, all weighing over 250 pounds, were not going to fit into the two horse trailer that we own. It is funny but each animal has their own personality and right from the beginning we had one that we called Lazy. She would not go out into the yard when the rest did and she preferred to take more naps that the others. Don't get me wrong, she ate just as much as the others but she was not as motivated by food at the other four. There is the dilemma. With a couple cans of food and a few apples the other four happily jumped up into the trailer to get their breakfast. Not Lazy. Fortunately the trailer had a middle divider that could be closed. We closed the four into the front part of the trailer and started the long process of trying to convince Lazy that she also wanted to get into the trailer to get breakfast.

Long story short, and just to point out that animals cannot always be convinced to do what you want, we ended up having to dispatch Lazy, bleed her out, load her in the trailer with the tractor and take her to the processor that way. This is not the way we would have chosen but sometimes you have to do what is necessary to take care of business on the homestead.

Homesteading is not for the faint of heart and sometimes you have to do things that you would rather not in a way you would rather not but that is the way life can be. Do what needs to be done and move on to mucking out the turkey pen.

Upcoming Classes

MerrieAugust 11, 2014October 4, 2014Leave a comment

It is still busy here on the homestead but I am getting lesson plans together for two classes that I am going to teach at the local adult education in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. The first class will be on Basic Preparedness . It will be in September. I will also be teaching a class on getting started with chickens in October. If you live anywhere near I would love to have you come to the classes.