Free Range Living

Deal of the day.

2012-01-26T14:02:00.000-08:00

Look what I found at our local thrift store today - a brand new (still in the package!) Yolife yogurt maker for only four dollars!

I have always relied on the warmth of my oven light when making my own yogurt, but the temperature isn't always consistent, and this way, I don't have to worry about accidentally turning the oven on and ruining the whole batch (something I've done more than once, despite my best efforts).

My favorite thing about this machine is that if I want to make more yogurt than the 7 glass jars will hold, I can just use the taller lid that came with it, which allows me to make a bigger batch using my own, larger containers.

Pricing them online, it looks like I saved myself about $46. Sweet!

Bacon Jam

2011-12-30T10:16:00.003-08:00

I shared this link on Facebook yesterday, but it would be such a good addition to any New Year's Eve party that I thought I'd share it here too.

I know I've spoken quite a bit about being at least a partial vegetarian (I was vegetarian/vegan for almost half of my life), but that has flown out the window in recent years, so when it came time to plan my husband's 40th birthday bash a few weeks ago, the menu was very meat-centered. It's a well-known fact that men love all things bacon (*wink*), so when I spotted this recipe for bacon jam in the winter edition of Edible Vancouver Magazine, I knew I had to give it a try.

This "jam" is a slow-cooked combination of bacon, caramelized onions, coffee, and maple syrup; it's not exactly your typical scone topping, but it's a fantastic addition to a holiday cheese board, and the very notion of a jam made with bacon turned out to be a great conversation starter.

I served it alongside a baguette and some freshly picked arugula. I think it would also be great with an aged cheddar, and can't wait to try it in a grilled cheese sandwich.

Wishing you and yours all the best in the new year!

The Running of the Birds

2011-12-09T11:13:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone is having a nice December, and that you're enjoying your holiday preparations, whatever form they take.

I was heading out to the garden the other day to harvest some leeks, and took this video of the chickens along the way. Apparently they see me as the giver of all things good, because every time I venture outside (or even open the door), I'm immediately besieged by birds. They're so determined to be first in line, that I literally have to run to stay in front of them and to avoid stepping on little toes; I can only imagine what my neighbors must think when they see us all sprinting across the yard, en masse.

Our property is on a flight path, and I think the airplane/helicopter noise adds a little something to the video. We don't often get a plane and a helicopter going by at the same time, and they don't usually fly that low, so the girls were a bit startled and abandoned their chase by the end.

Next stop, Pamplona.

Happy weekend!

Winter Has Arrived

2011-11-20T12:30:00.001-08:00

So glad I managed to get my spring bulbs and perennials planted when I did (last week!), it looks like winter might be here to stay:

Full Circle

2011-10-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

I knew this day would come, and I knew that I wasn't going to be ready for it when it did. Realistically, when you have 42 chickens, it's pretty unlikely that they're all just going to pass away peacefully in their sleep, sparing my husband and me the unpleasantness of having to dispatch one of them, but that day came and went, and it was actually okay.

One of our Red Star hens (the one who suffered a prolapsed oviduct back in the spring, and actually recovered after 8 days of me poking it back in) hadn't been her usual perky self for a few days when she suddenly took on this strange upright posture:

Since she couldn't get herself up the ramp into the coop, and the other chickens were starting to bother her, we brought her into the house while we tried to figure out whether there was anything we could do for her. After several days of hoping that she would magically pull through, it became apparent that she was getting weaker and we'd probably have to step in (but we were still hoping beyond hope that she might just expire on her own). I moved her into a sunny spot for the afternoon while I did some gardening nearby, but after a while I noticed that she had started moaning.

Dang it, she wasn't going to let us off easy.

We decided to try using the killing cone method, and set one up on the wood shed (out of sight of the other chickens, of course). Not having an actual cone, we modified a milk jug for the job.

I was quite emotional in the moments leading up to it (I became a vegetarian, and stayed one for almost 20 years, as a result of my last chicken butchering experience). I held and comforted her (me) for several minutes, and made my husband promise that we could back out if she freaked when we put her into the cone, but being upside down made her surprisingly calm, and it was over in a matter of seconds.

I have to say that I'm amazed how easy it was (for me anyway, she'd probably disagree), and I'm starting to think that maybe we could actually do meat birds one day. Granted, I'm sure it's different killing a vibrant, healthy bird than one that's obviously suffering, but it's more of a possibility than it was before (you seasoned farmers can stop laughing any time now).

To satisfy our curiosity, we did a crude autopsy to see if we could find out what was wrong with her, and she appears to have been egg bound. Her ovary held an egg which, for all intents and purposes, was hard boiled. Don't even ask me to try and explain that one, but it confirmed for us that she likely never would have recovered.

Happy trails, my friend.

Winter Garden 2011

2011-09-27T14:48:00.003-07:00

I spent some time in the garden this week (in between rain storms), cleaning up the last of the summer crops, harvesting potatoes and onions, and transplanting small starter plants from the nursery bed into their roomier winter beds.

Thinning the carrot patch. Sweet babies!

I like to leave my carrots in place all winter until I need them. This works as long as the ground doesn't freeze solid, which (fingers crossed) shouldn't happen until January. And if we miss a few, it's not a big deal, it just means we have fresh carrots in the spring when the snow melts.

Bolero.

Dragon (purple carrot).

We've got lots of different greens out there, flourishing in the cool fall weather:

Lacinato Kale

Red Russian Kale.

Red Ace beets (the tops are delicious in salads).

Arugula (my personal favourite).

A variety of hardy lettuces.

Our summer was a little too cool for heat loving crops like squash, so our harvest will be smaller than usual, but they'll still make for some yummy soups, stews, and desserts (and maybe even a jack-o-lantern or two).

"Lumina" pumpkin.

Hubbard squash.

"Sunshine" (kabocha squash).

"Rouge vif D'etampes" (the original Cinderella pumpkin).

In addition to the usual turnips, celeriac, and assorted root crops, we've also got leeks...

...some herbs (although the basil is looking chilly)...

Dill seed head.

...and a few heat-loving stragglers.

And, of course, what would the winter garden be without the brassica family? Is it a coincidence that they look so gorgeous in the rain? I don't think so.

Kohlrabi.

Ermosa cabbage.

Broccoli.

Fall is also the time when the most revered crop goes in. I didn't end up with much of a garlic crop this year (one head actually), as the resident vermin dug it all up and ate it during an early spring foray into the garden (I warned them that I considered that pre-seasoning, but they didn't seem worried).

I buy locally grown garlic from the organic market here to use as seed, and it's excellent. This didn't look like quite enough to me, so I had to go back and get more after taking these photos.

After fortifying the bed with a little bunny fertilizer, I poked the individual cloves under the soil for their long winter sleep.

Now I plan to sit back and enjoy some cozy winter meals while dreaming about pulling armloads of garlic under the warm July sun.

Book Review: Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat

2011-08-30T00:18:00.003-07:00

I was invited to participate in another virtual book tour being hosted by TLC earlier this summer, and having had so much fun with the previous one, I was eager to take part. This book is very different from the novel that I reviewed last summer, but the topic is one that I have pondered on my own many times over the years, especially as our family grows more of our own food, with livestock becoming a part of that move towards self sufficiency.

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, by anthrozoologist Hal Herzog, is a fascinating look at the human relationship with animals. The author challenges some of our most deeply held thoughts and beliefs, exploring personal, religious and cultural biases. He plays devil's advocate while questioning why people believe what they do, without being condescending. For instance, why do many of us abhor the idea of cockfighting, yet will happily eat battery raised chicken? Herzog would argue that the fighting bird lives a much better life in its two years of "training" than a meat bird could ever dream of:

"Looked at objectively, it is hard to deny that there is less suffering caused by cockfighting than in our apparently insatiable demand for chicken flesh. It is likely that 10,000 or 20,000 chickens have their necks slashed in a mechanized processing plant for each gamecock that dies in a derby. And there is the inconvenient fact that the life of a fighting cock is fifteen times longer and infinitely more pleasurable than the life of a broiler chicken. Why then is it legal for us to kill 9 billion broiler chickens every year, but cockfighting can get you hard time in the federal penitentiary?"

Herzog is certainly not a proponent of cockfighting, he even goes to the trouble to buy humanely raised meat and free range chicken for his family, but he does a good job of holding a mirror up to our society's often distorted sense of morality. To his credit, he counts himself among the rest of us when pointing out the flaws in our collective thinking, acknowledging that "human attitudes toward other species are inevitably paradoxical and inconsistent".

He also speaks at length about vegetarianism and the attitudes behind it, as well as the phenomenon of ex-vegetarians (which outnumber their vegetarian counterparts 3 to 1 apparently, and of which I am one). It was a progression that I easily related to, and I thought he nailed the reasoning that leads to this lifestyle for many people. I was "reformed" from my vegetarianism when I realized that animals were going to die whether I ate them or not (I blame 70's Disney movies for my warped relationship with animals), and in the wild it's often a long, slow, painful death. If we give our meat animal of choice a humane life and a dignified death, that makes it okay to eat them, doesn't it? (Who am I kidding? I'm as likely to eat my chickens as I am to eat my cat, dog or rabbit).

These kinds of convenient rationalizations are the crux of Herzog's book, and while he doesn't provide us with clear answers as to why our moral relationship with animals is so murky, he lets us off the hook by acknowledging that "these sorts of contradictions are not anomalies or hypocrisies. Rather, they are inevitable. And they show we are human".

I thoroughly enjoyed Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat. It's funny and thought provoking, and I've found myself talking about it on several occasions over the past few weeks. I highly recommend it for anyone who lives with, despises, or eats animals.

Hal Herzog's website: http://paws.wcu.edu/herzog/
His blog: Animals and Us

Spilling the Beans

2011-08-26T10:27:00.002-07:00

Sorry, this isn't the confessional post that that title would suggest.

Having been vegetarians for so long, our family has always eaten a lot of beans. We do eat meat these days, but beans are still a delicious, protein packed staple in our house.

While canned beans are a quick and easy way to incorporate legumes into your diet, you end up paying dearly for that convenience (upwards of $3 a can if you buy organic). I've also found that I often end up using a partial can, leaving the rest to dry out and get lost in the depths of my fridge. Canned beans are an all around money waster.

Black beans after a nice, long soak.

A better idea is to buy a big bag of dried beans and cook them yourself (and if you have a pressure cooker, this is a much faster process). Lately I've been soaking and cooking large batches of black beans and chick peas at the same time (to save myself some time). These are the two kinds of beans that I use most often, but it works with any kind of dried bean.

Once they're cooked and cooled, I spread them out on a baking sheet like I do with my berries, freeze them until solid, and then I scoop them into freezer bags for safe keeping.

When I need a handful of black beans to sprinkle on top of nachos, or chick peas for my tabouli salad, I just take what I need, thaw them out (a microwave does this handily), and Bob's your uncle. It's a cheap and convenient solution, and the texture of the beans doesn't seem to suffer from being frozen. It's win/win.

Boy does it feel good to get that off my chest!

Saltspring Island 2011

2011-08-17T08:52:00.004-07:00

We returned from our annual pilgrimage to Saltspring Island last week, and I thought I'd share a few photos.

Misty morning at Ruckle Park.

We shared breakfast with a hungry sea otter:

(Well, he didn't actually share, but that was just fine with me).

Spent the mornings exploring the tide pools with Grandma:

The tide pools are teeming with life. The kids love tickling the sea anemones and catching hermit crabs:

I think we got the best camp site in the park this year!

Couldn't resist taking a couple (dozen) photos of the Arbutus trees:

My son relaxing during our walk to the old Ruckle family farm.

The nearby farm has a large flock of free ranging turkeys. I just love the sweet sound they make (and no, it's not "gobble gobble"!).

I heart this old farmhouse kitchen!

Just as we were about to leave the farm, my daughter noticed that a turkey poult had escaped from the shed where his family was being kept. After about 15 minutes of trying to catch the little guy, we finally reunited him with his frantic mother:

I never get tired of this place.

Book Review: Keeping Bees

2011-08-16T10:08:00.004-07:00

I've just had a look at a new book called "Keeping Bees", by Pam Gregory and Claire Waring (the book is part of Flame Tree Publishing's Green Guides series). Claire Waring was a contributing writer to The Beekeeper's Bible, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed last summer.

At first glance, the book appears to be very simplistic, with lots of photos and the text broken down into easily readable snippits. But, while it is clearly aimed at the rookie beekeeper, the book is in-depth and comprehensive, covering a wide range of topics, and is the perfect resource for someone just starting out. The photos are beautiful as well as educational, and the simple format makes the wealth of information easy to digest. Especially helpful are the summaries at the end of each chapter which highlight the most important points.

What I liked most about Keeping Bees was the relaxed, supportive tone. The authors never seem to take the stance that there's only one way to do things, and they actually encourage us to get information from a wide range of sources. They even provide an extensive resource list for those wishing to do further research, which is very useful, because as the authors point out, "There is a wealth of information about beekeeping. Unfortunately it ranges from the bonkers to the old-fashioned with all shades of helpful between these extremes, and it is very hard for the new beekeeper to unravel what is useful".

Keeping Bees takes a somewhat intimidating subject matter and makes it very accessible to the novice beekeeper. I can see myself drawing from it heavily when we finally make the jump into "bee farming".

For more information on Flame Tree Publishing and their books (I see that they have a Keeping Chickens guide as well!), check them out on Facebook and Twitter (@flametreetweet).

Dust Bowl

2011-08-03T09:25:00.001-07:00

We've had such a cool, wet summer around these parts that it's been branded the "bummer summer" by some. If we ever do finally get a nice, hot day (or heaven forbid, two in a row), it's almost sure to rain within 48 hours. Needless to say, there haven't been nearly enough beach days for our liking, and I'm starting to worry that we're not going to meet our quota for this year. The upside to this is that I haven't had to water my garden once this summer, and our grass is still nice and green.

Dark Brahma sisters enjoying a bath.

Thankfully (as far as these two are concerned) our soil is so devoid of organic matter that it dries out very quickly, making the conditions perfect for a dust bath. The hens routinely dig great pits in their attempts to get "clean", and I have had to fence off several of my beds in order to give the plants a fighting chance. Sometimes I wonder what the heck I was thinking when I decided to share my garden with these chicks, but they derive so much joy from this simple activity that I don't have the heart to deny them, and have surrendered several prime planting areas to their fowl ways.

The one busy shaking herself off is Pippin' (or "eagle bait" as she's fondly referred to around here). Not only did she survive being grabbed in the head by an eagle in April, but when he came back six weeks later and tried to pick her up by the back, she just shook it off and trotted back to the coop like nothing happened.

With a "pair" like that, I think the girl is entitled to a dust bath or two.

Wild Huckleberry Tarts

2011-07-12T11:02:00.004-07:00

Red (highbush) huckleberries grow wild in our area, and we're lucky to have an abundance of these bushes on our property and in the neighbouring park.

My daughter went for a sleepover at a friend's house last week, and those crazy girls spent the evening terrorizing the neighbourhood, stripping the shrubs of every last huckleberry like a couple of teenage hooligans.

After a few catastrophic giggling fits that resulted in spilled berries, and some unwelcome sampling by a sneaky dad, the evening's work resulted in just over a cup of these tiny red jewels.

Like any good sleepover, this one extended well into the next day, when I got a call from the girls saying that they'd walked to town (if you can call our handful of shops a "town") and bought some tart shells, and could I please come get them so they could do some baking. Kids these days.

We did a quick Google search to look for a suitable recipe, and finally settled on this one. Since they had so few berries, we halved the filling recipe, adding an extra tablespoon or so of sugar as red huckleberries tend to be more tart than the blue, lowbush variety.

The resulting tarts were positively scrumptious, especially topped with a dollop of whipped cream, and were the perfect ending to that evening's dinner on the beach.

Sometimes I wish summer could go on forever.

Five Weeks Old.

2011-07-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on the babies before signing off for weekend activities.

When the chicks were a couple of weeks old, I moved their "nursery pen", which is inside the coop, in front of the door to the chicken tractor, creating a larger area for them to explore, and giving them access to the outdoors (but still keeping them separate from the big girls).

They're loving being outside where they can sun and dust bathe, and chase bugs, and they quickly learned to respond to the rooster's alarm call, and will dash inside at the first sign of trouble (with Reepicheep standing guard at the door). I think they're going to be a lot more predator savvy than our first batch was in the beginning.

Now that they're five weeks old, they are starting to look more like their future adult selves, and this week we had a revelation about what breeds we actually have. It turns out that one of the girls we thought was a bonus Americana is actually our Silver Laced Wyandotte, and the one that we thought was the Wyandotte is actually a third (bonus) Ancona, and judging by the size of its comb, it's a boy. We still can't tell whether our Cochins (which were straight run, not sexed) are male or female yet, so I'm a little worried that we could end up having three extra roos on our hands, but I'm actually quite excited about having an Ancona male. Aside from being absolutely gorgeous, they're alert and vigilant watchdogs, and could prove to be an excellent choice for breeding should we decide to go that route next time (Anconas are prolific egg layers, unlike Faverolles and Cochins, who we chose for their charm and good looks).

I'm hoping to try introducing them to the older flock in the near future, fingers crossed that they'll be accepted with open arms/wings.

Have a great weekend!

The Case of the Missing Berries: A Garden Caper

2011-07-06T10:10:00.003-07:00

After threatening to rip out my strawberry patch last year due to lackluster production, I think I've finally figured out the key to getting a good crop. Despite having 60+ strawberry plants, I never seemed to get more than a handful or two at a time, barely enough for a nice dessert, let alone extra for freezing or strawberry jam.

This spring, the plants were absolutely covered in blossoms, and I made a point of giving them a dose of fish fertilizer early on to give them a little extra "oomph". Things were looking good, and I had my eye on a large berry that was promising to be the first ripe one of the season, but when I excitedly went out to pick it one morning, it was nowhere to be seen! This continued for a week or so before I realized that I had a blatant act of thievery on my hands. Being a veteran chicky mama, I'm wise to the ways of my feathered friends, and can spot an avian bandit when I see one. Why hadn't I noticed that the robins were looking fat and slow as they hopped (lumbered) so innocently around my yard? They'd been gorging themselves for weeks, and were becoming so spoiled by the abundance that they would take a single bite out of multiple berries, the wasteful little punks.

Thankfully the solution was pretty simple. I covered the row (fairly loosely, so the bees can still get underneath at the ends) with floating row cover, and just remove it every couple of days to harvest what's ripe, leaving it off for several hours so the bees can access them more easily. Now I'm harvesting 1 - 1 1/2 pounds every couple of days; I've even started freezing some!

I really I shouldn't be so pleased about outsmarting these crooks, but I am.

Birdbrains.

Chillin'

2011-07-01T08:49:00.002-07:00

It's Canada Day in these parts. If you need me, I'll be (weatherman willing) outside catching some rays.

Happy long weekend!

Scrumptious Sorrel Tart

2011-06-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

I made this tart for the first time last month, but it's actually been two years in the making.

The idea of using something like sorrel in a tart wasn't even remotely on my radar until I read about it over on Tara's blog (which is a must-read, if you haven't already discovered it) almost two full years ago, and her excitement over this recipe was so infectious that I immediately started making plans for a sorrel patch of my own.

Maybe it was my anemic garden soil, but the seeds I sowed last spring didn't turn into much of anything until this year, so my plans to try making this tart last summer were foiled. I know, I probably could have just gone out and bought some sorrel, but I didn't, hence the two year wait.

Turns out, my sorrel patch is just the right size to provide exactly the amount of leaves required for one full recipe (thankfully, it regrows quickly, and I was able to make another one a few weeks later). I may have to consider expanding it so I can freeze the filling mixture for winter meals.

The resulting tart was incredible, unlike anything I'd ever tasted before. Sorrel itself tastes a bit like lemony spinach with a hint of rhubarb, but the custard does a good job of mellowing that sharpness. Likewise, the brightness of the greens cuts through the richness of the eggs, cheese, and heavy cream, balancing the flavours brilliantly.

This recipe is worth its weight in gold just for the crust, which was deliciously light and flaky. I followed the recipe to the letter the first time I tried it, but I've since made it using a yellow onion (because I didn't have a red one), and I've also substituted half & half for half of the heavy cream (because that's all I had), and it was still excellent.

If you're feeling inspired, you can find the recipe here. I certainly hope you'll get to try it before 2013!

We Are Family

2011-06-15T08:35:00.004-07:00

Our second batch of chicks arrived in the mail early last week, and in preparation, my husband built a cozy little nursery pen inside the coop. We set things up anticipating having to use the heat lamp, but I was still hoping that one of my broody hens would step up to the plate and make that unnecessary.

Shortly after the chicks arrived, we took two peeps out to the coop to see what the hens' reactions would be (we had 5 broodies at the time). Most of them either growled at us to go away, or showed no interest in the chicks at all. Our darling Reepicheep (a Blue Laced Red Wyandotte), however, was intrigued - she even tolerated having them snuggle under her for a minute. We tried moving her into the nursery pen, but she was indignant and desperate to get back on her nest, so we decided to wait until nightfall.

Under the cover of darkness, we snuck into the coop and moved Reep into her new pen. Thankfully, she was more than happy to hunker down onto her new nest (why are chickens so dopey after dark?). Hardly daring to breathe, my daughter and I carried out the box of noisy babies, fully expecting it to throw the coop residents into a frenzy, and started slipping them, one by one, under their new mom. To our delight, she took to it like a pro, clucking happily, and fluffling herself out to accommodate everyone. In the end, she fell asleep with 20 peeping fuzzballs tucked blissfully within her warm feathers. I went in to check on them every two hours throughout the night, just to be sure, but there was no need - our girl had adapted beautifully to becoming a mother literally overnight.

It's interesting watching Reepicheep raise her babies. She's been teaching them how to dust bathe and scratch for treats, and they've even started responding to chicken language (she makes the sound for "oh look, I found something yummy!", which I've only ever heard the rooster make until now, and they all come running).

Her brood seems to love her so much that it's hard to imagine raising chicks with a heat lamp for a mother. They even seem to love horsey rides the way she did as a chick.

The only downside that I can see so far is that this batch of babies is so bonded with their adopted mom that they have no interest in us humans. Every time I go in to check on them, they run away in terror. I'm hoping they'll get over that if I ply them with enough treats.

But really, how can I even dream of competing with this:

For those who are interested, here's a breakdown of the breeds we went with this time (all from McMurray hatchery):

-7 Americanas (one was a freebie)

-4 Cuckoo Marans

-4 Rose Comb Brown Leghorns (we're down to 3, as one was weak and died not long after arrival)

-2 Blue Cochins (one was a freebie)

-2 Anconas

-1 Silver Laced Wyandotte

Not a bad deal - ordered 18, got 20. All of them are female, except for the Blue Cochins, which are straight run, so their gender will be a surprise. Here's hoping that they aren't both roos!

Refurbished Freebies and Integration Questions

2011-06-01T08:10:00.001-07:00

I was in the city last week delivering eggs to a friend, when I spotted some weathered but otherwise decent wicker chairs sitting out by the dumpster. I've been looking for something like this to put on our bedroom deck, so I nabbed them.

In need of a little TLC.

I bought a couple of cans of "Canyon Black" spray paint, and after just a few minutes of work per chair, they were looking good as new. Total cost: about $10. Not bad.

Ready for hosting our evening gin & tonic.

Our latest batch of chicks is arriving early next week, and I've been doing some research on how best to integrate them with the existing flock. Does anyone out there have experience with this, and would you be willing to share your ideas?

We've got several broody hens at the moment, so I'm contemplating letting the girls raise them instead of keeping them inside in the brooder. I've read that letting hens raise them can make it easier for them to be accepted into the flock, and that the adopted mothers will do a good job of protecting them should problems arise. If I do this, I'm thinking of putting a large dog crate or other shelter into either the run or chicken tractor, and letting them live there until the chicks are old enough to move in with the general population, but worry about the possibility of the bear returning (my husband saw her in the park near our house 2 weeks ago).

If I decide to raise them in the house without the hens, what's the best way to introduce them to the group, and at what age?

To Bee or not to Bee?

2011-05-15T23:37:00.009-07:00

Okay, so that title is a tad obvious and somewhat cheesy, but it was late when I was writing this.

I did my annual mason bee house keeping a little late this year, but things were looking pretty good despite the neglect. We seem to have had quite a few new masons setting up residence, probably twice as many larvae as I put out last year. We'll be in good shape if we can double our numbers every year.

The house also contained dozens of what I'm assuming are wild bee larvae. They look similar to those of the mason bees, but there's a lot more pollen packed in there with them. I'm happy to know that our house is being put to good use by these unexpected guests, especially considering the ongoing struggle that bees have been facing in recent years.

Freshly washed mason bee cocoons, with a couple of the guest larvae on the left.

I wasn't quite sure how to treat these guys, not knowing whether they'd tolerate the kind of bath that I give to the mason bee larvae, so I experimented with washing a couple, and opted to leave the others where they were.

After a good scrub, the babies went from their bath and into the fridge until the outside temperatures warmed up a bit. I put them out into the house a few weeks ago as soon as I noticed that my fruit trees were starting to get flower buds on them. I went out the other day to see whether this year's batch of pollinators had started to hatch, and this guy tumbled out.

It looked like he had only just emerged from his cocoon, somewhat later than the rest of his siblings.

The wild bee cocoons were still intact, but it's possible that they just take longer to mature. There were still a couple of mason bees left to go as well.

On another note (although still bee related), I think I mentioned that I occasionally fill in for my mom and step-dad at their B&B when they go away. I've never considered myself much of a people person (too shy for my own good most of the time), let alone someone who's overly fond of tourists (working as a waitress in a resort town, as well as a hotel front desk clerk while I was in university, pretty much took care of that), but I have to say that their guests are something else entirely. Maybe it's the funky, East Van neighborhood that the B&B is located in, but the clientele they attract is an amazing bunch. They're always so friendly and relaxed that I come away feeling like I've made great new friends.

When I was there inn keeping in March, there was a young couple visiting from Tennessee who my mom was convinced that I'd hit it off with (they were into bee keeping and were soon to be getting chickens - kindred spirits!). Of course she was right, as mothers (especially mine) tend to be. Aside from being a really sweet couple, he and Adrienne turned out to be a wealth of information. Jay let me pick his brain about all things "bee" over the course of several days, and gave me a long list of books and information to fill in the gaps before he left. He's one of those people that seems to just love what he does, and it's infectious. They have been in the bee business for about 4 years, and are doing it without chemicals. They raise bees, breed queens, capture swarms, and rescue beehives in danger. In addition to selling honey, they also make lip balms which they sell in their Etsy shop.

Jay has been kind enough to let me share the link to a post he did recently called 10 Tips I wish some old guy had told me when I started beekeeping. I think it's a great starting point for those of us who are interested in setting up hives of our own. He hasn't been blogging for long but the information contained in his blog is useful and the photos are gorgeous. Please pop over and check out the Williams Honey Farm, and be sure to take the time to say hello, we need to encourage him to continue sharing his wisdom with us!

There's a chance that we might get him to agree to an occasional guest post, so if there's something in particular that you'd like you know about, leave your suggestions in the comments.

Standoff

2011-05-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

The resident badasses staring each other down.

Pumpkin Seeds, Chickens, and Bees (Oh My!)

2011-05-06T15:15:00.002-07:00

It's been busy around here with at least some garden prep and planting happening daily. In addition to the vegetable garden, I'm trying to set up a cutting garden, hoping to grow enough to provide flowers for my mom's bed and breakfast, in addition to our eggs.

The potatoes are in, the early tomatoes are tucked away under their tunnel, and I started dozens of squash plants this week (I try to start them on May 1st every year). We've had a cooler than normal spring, so hopefully it's not going to prove too early this year. Fingers crossed that the weather warms up in the next few weeks!

One squash variety that I tried for the first time last year was the Kakai pumpkin. While I usually grow pumpkins for their tasty flesh, I have always found their seeds to be a delicious by-product.

I started buying pepitas (hulless pumpkin seeds) a couple of years ago to add to my favorite salad. The only thing I don't like about them is they're quite expensive to buy, and the thought of shelling thousands of homegrown pumpkin seeds myself was a bit daunting, so I was happy to find a variety that would produce them naturally.

After separating the seeds from the pulp, all I did was rinse them well and spread them out to dry. We have them on our salad almost daily, and I truly believe that their abundant health benefits have helped keep me flu-free this winter. I know there are a couple of other varieties of pumpkin that produce this type of seed (Snackface or Snack Jack for example), and I'd be interested in hearing about your experience if you've grown them.

The chickens who were suffering after last month's eagle attack have both recovered fully, and are back living with the general population. Pippin (the one that the eagle actually grabbed) has a slightly misshapen skull and a wicked case of bed-head, but she's regaining her strength and seems able to see out of both eyes again.

I'll be back soon with an update on the mason bees, and to introduce you to my new friend, Jay, who's an expert on raising honey bees without chemicals. I'm hoping he'll teach me everything I need to know to set up my own hives in the coming year.

See you then!

A Close Call

2011-04-21T10:36:00.003-07:00

We feel blessed to live in a place surrounded by wildlife, and usually we're nothing but casual observers to the daily struggle for survival.

When we made the decision to start free ranging our chickens (they were going a little stir crazy spending the long, rainy winter cooped up in their roomy "compound"), we knew we were trading relative security for the possibility of losing a few to marauding carnivores.

Since we'd gone almost an entire year with almost no trouble, I think we (both us and the birds) had gotten a bit blase about the whole predator thing, but that changed abruptly last Thursday during a late spring snow storm. The first indication that something was wrong was when the kids and I found ourselves face to face with an eagle mid-dive (my son swears it was only 3 feet) in front of the living room window. We ran outside yelling and screaming, and quickly did a head count. At first everyone seemed to be okay, but then we noticed that Pippin, one of our dark Brahma hens (pictured midway through this post), was just standing in place, not moving, while everyone else was running around in a tizzy. As I got closer, I could see that she had blood on one side of her head, and what appeared to be puncture wounds just behind her eye and down the side of her neck. I quickly scooped her into a cat carrier and brought her in next to the fire to die peacefully (or so I thought), while the kids extracted the other chickens from their hiding spots.

Princess keeping an eye on things.

She didn't appear to be suffering, and was fading fast, so I decided to spare her (and myself) the trauma of having me dispatch her. Pardon me while I anthropomorphise for a minute, but I'm almost certain that my chickies consider me their mom, and since Pippin noticeably calmed down whenever I spoke to her, I would have hated for the last thing she saw to be me finishing her off.

About an hour after bringing her in, I noticed that she was slowly becoming more alert as the shock wore off, and before too long, she stood up and started eating!

I got out my trusty poultry first aid kit, and optimistically doctored her wounds, still expecting that she would most likely expire in the night. Not only did she not die, but she laid an egg the following day, and is still kicking a week later! Yesterday she had a visit with her pals (who are back to free ranging, but are much more savvy about staying hidden), and is back to scratching and preening like a normal hen. One of her eyes still doesn't open fully, and her head looks somewhat wonky, but I'm hopeful that she'll be back to normal before too long. It would be somewhat fitting if this hen ends up surviving a run in with an eagle, as I have always thought my Brahmas looked like little eagles themselves.

We're not exactly sure why the eagle didn't succeed in taking her. She's a large bird, so it's possible that she was too heavy for him to grab quickly, but we also found some black feathers that aren't hers mixed in with the ones scattered about at the scene, so we're thinking our rooster might have gotten involved and kicked the eagle's proverbial ass. The gutsy thing came back again the following day, swooping down into the run in a second attempt (the run was open, as the winter's snow collapsed the netting a couple of months ago - this has since been replaced), but they'd all run inside before he was able grab one.

One of our other hens suffered a prolapsed oviduct as a result of the scare (the same thing happened after we were visited by the bear last year), so it's been a regular General Hospital around here.

Thankfully, a pair of crows seem to have moved into the area, so I've been plying them with bread in an attempt to get them to stick around. Crows are a predatory bird's greatest annoyance, so I'm hoping they'll set up shop and work as a first line of defense against future aerial attacks.

I'll keep you posted.

Sittin' in the Garden Eatin' Worms

2011-03-26T10:44:00.001-07:00

Just when I was finally starting to get my blogging groove back, my darn computer kicked the bucket (and took all of my freshly uploaded photos intended for new posts with it)!
We're working on getting that info off of the hard drive, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share a photo that I took with my cell phone while gardening the other day.

This is Speckle, a sweet little character who has been one of my favorite hens from the very beginning. According to several sources about chicken breeds, the Speckled Sussex isn't supposed to be much of a forager, but this girl has proven to be the best one in our flock. As soon as she hears a shovel, hoe, or rake hit the soil, she comes running from wherever she happens to be, ready to snap up anything fat and wriggly that might be turned up. Our neighbors are highly amused by her antics, cringing as she darts under the blade of whatever garden tool we happen to be wielding. She has such a complete disregard for personal safety, that if she makes it through the planting season with all of her appendages intact, it'll be nothing short of a miracle!

Skin Care

2011-02-21T23:20:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned previously how much trouble I have finding things I can use on my skin without it turning into an itchy, scaly, reptilian mess - there aren't many products out there for someone who can't handle artificial colors, scents, or preservatives (and I like to think I'm low maintenance - pffft!). I used to think my inability to use any kind of moisturizer meant that I was doomed to look like Yoda by the time I was 45, but thankfully I've found something that I can use on my skin, and it works so well that I think everybody should have a bottle in their medicine cabinet!

My skin's best friend.

Safflower oil is said to be as close to our skin's natural oils as you can get, and the linoleic acid it contains helps lock moisture in the skin. I like to smooth a few drops over my face and neck while my skin is still damp after washing, and the oil soaks right in (my skin is naturally fairly oily, and it doesn't at all make me look like an oil slick). If you're a little heavy handed, any excess can just be blotted off. I've tried coconut and olive oils this way, but neither disappeared into my skin the way safflower oil does, or left my skin looking as nice.

To soften more than your face, you can add a few drops to your bath water while it's filling, or apply it over wet skin after stepping out of the shower; it also works wonders on hands that are parched after a day spent digging in the garden.

But wait, it gets even better. The 375 ml bottle in the photo was $9 at our local (overpriced) health food store, and it's organic to boot. Good luck finding that much of anything for less than $10 at a beauty counter. Not to mention, I've had this bottle for about a year and it's only half empty - a little goes a long way. I do find, however, that it's easier to handle if you decant the oil into a smaller, more manageable bottle (I only had to knock the large glass bottle over once before coming up with that brilliant idea).

It may not smell delicious, come in a fancy bottle (unless you put it into one, I suppose), or get you a bonus "gift" of product samples you'll never use, but it's just the thing to ward off mid-winter chapping (and maybe even a wrinkle or two).

Building a "Champagne" Garden on a Beer Budget: Part I

2011-02-18T09:50:00.001-08:00

The view out my window when I woke up this morning didn't exactly shout "spring!", but the angle of the sun has changed noticeably in the past few weeks and I've been dealing with a pretty bad case of spring fever. This can mean only one thing - time to start thinking (obsessing) about the garden.

The view from my bed this morning.

Having such a large, blank canvas to landscape, and very little money with which to do it, we've had to get somewhat creative in our approach to planting. If you're in a similar situation, now is the time to get yourself to the local garden center and take advantage of some mid-winter deals.

I went to one of my favorite places with my mom last weekend on what was a completely miserable "Wet Coast" winter day (read: grey mist and pelting rain), hoping to satisfy my recent gardening cravings. The sight of all those lovely hellebores and primroses was almost overwhelming, and I was tempted to fill my cart with colour (at a hefty price), but then I stumbled upon the clearance rack.

It wasn't nearly as exciting to look at, being comprised mainly of pots of soil with a few dead twigs stuck in them, until I started reading the tags and noticed the prices. These perennials had been marked down 50% at the end of the previous growing season, and were now being cleared out for an extra 75% off the sale price!

I scored Heucheras, Fuschias, Joe Pyeweed, Astibles, Bee Balm, Creeping Thyme and all kinds of other goodies, at a fraction of what I would pay for lush looking ones a few months from now. Perennials are usually expensive, because they come back year after year, and can eventually be divided and spread around the garden, which makes them perfect for a low-maintenance, low-budget garden. In the end, I came home with over $300 worth of plants, but spent only $38.

My one word of caution would be to look for signs of new growth on any clearance items you buy, so you can be sure that it will actually produce for you come spring. Since most perennials should be starting to put out new growth right now (especially if they're living in a greenhouse), it's the perfect time to go looking. What better way to spend a wintery weekend?

Now if only this darn snow would melt, I could get these babies into the ground!

A Chocolate Valentine Treat

2011-02-14T12:08:00.002-08:00

Happy Valentines day! I hope everyone is enjoying a break from the February blahs, and that you're taking the time to indulge yourself in the obligatory V-day chocolate binge. If you haven't yet made it to your local chocolate shop, all is not lost. In a matter of minutes you can whip up a batch of these delicious chocolate scones, which are perfect for sharing with your sweetie (or not).

I didn't have the white chocolate chips the recipe calls for, so I upped the semi-sweet chips to 1/2 a cup, which seemed to work well. They were perfect paired with a slathering of homemade raspberry jam.

Check back over the next few days for the first in a series of posts on what we've been doing to build a "champagne" garden on a beer budget.

New Beginnings

2011-01-14T14:16:00.002-08:00

So much for the one month hiatus that I talked about way back in September (which I only got around to mentioning to my Facebook friends, now that I think about it). I hope you had a great fall and are enjoying 2011 so far!

The break came about when I stepped in as temporary innkeeper at my mom's B&B for a month while she and my step-dad traveled through Eastern Europe. It turned out to be a great experience, but the rigorous pace of cooking and cleaning left little time for things like blogging. In fact, I had such a good time getting to know the people who came to stay that we're considering running a self-catered B&B in our suite instead of finding a full time tenant.

The break continued long after I came home partly because I got to thinking about the nature of blogging and what I get out of it. I started writing this blog as a kind of glorified "gratitude journal" written solely for myself, but it quickly became something that I really enjoyed doing, in large part due to the interactions with readers and other bloggers. But lately I've been wondering whether blogging is a legitimate outlet for aspiring writers, or if it's merely a way for attention whores to pimp themselves out to the internet public. I'd like to think that that was never my motivation, but take those negative thoughts and combine them with a serious lack of the mental energy required for coherent writing (rare around here at the best of times), and you can see why I've been absent for so long.

This past year turned out to be one of self-reflection and redirection - isn't that what one's supposed to do when they turn 40? (Gawd, I'm such a cliche). What started out as an attempt to get a handle on some ongoing health issues resulted in a life-altering shift, during which I lost almost 50 pounds and rediscovered the vibrant person that I'd stuffed into a dark hole at some point during the past 15 - 20 years. The change was so gradual and (seemingly) effortless, that I'm still shocked when I think back to where I was a year ago. What the hell took me so long?

Long story short, I've been reveling in my new found energy and have been making an effort to say "yes" to things that I previously would have shied away from, which, while fun, has resulted in less time for sitting in front of the computer. I do think there's still a place in my life for blogging, but have to figure out a way to fit it in on a regular basis.

I'll leave you with this shot taken from Grouse mountain (one of our local ski hills), where I recently learned to snowboard alongside my husband and kids. Considering what an insanely beautiful place I live in, it's hard to imagine ever having said "no" to taking it all in.

Rainforest Flowers and Book Winner

2010-09-12T23:26:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who left a comment on the Hothouse Flowers review post. After using a random number generator to select a winner, the book goes to Jennywenny of Foray into Food. Jenny, if you can forward your mailing info to me at freerangeliving@gmail.com, I will pass it along to the people at TLC Book Tours, and a copy will be mailed out to you shortly.

Since we're talking flowers, I thought I'd share a few photos of flowers from our garden this year. Many of our newer flower beds struggled because the soil was freshly broken and hadn't yet been amended enough to ensure vigorous growth, but the beds that I created last year did much better.

The liatris and shasta daisies multiplied considerably since last year and put on a good show this summer. The wildflower bed in the background (Pacific Northwest Wildflower blend from Westcoast Seeds) is a gorgeous mix of annuals and perennials and blooms continuously from early spring until fall.

These Valentine sunflowers are thriving thanks to the excess nitrogen in the soil next to the chicken run. Situated on the south side of the run, they created a nice shady patch for the chickens during the heat of summer, and are now feeding the family of Stellar's Jays that live on our property.

We've been letting the chickens have the run of the yard occasionally (while we keep a watchful eye out for eagles and bears, of course). This is Ruby, our beautiful (and very broody) Buff Orpington, chasing crickets on the lawn above our septic.

And here's a final parting shot of the wildflower patch, which is looking pretty sad after this weekend's rain. At it's peak, the tallest flowers were over my head, and it positively buzzed with bees all summer long. Because of its ongoing beauty, low maintenance nature, and low water requirements, I will definitely be sowing this mix elsewhere in coming years.

Next up: a veggie garden update.

Hot House Flower: Book Review and Giveaway

2010-09-07T00:27:00.005-07:00

Okay, I'm having a really hard time accepting the fact that it's September already, but the rainy, miserable weather is relentless in its efforts to convince me that summer is indeed over. I have no excuses for my latest absence, aside from an utter lack of desire to sit in front of my computer when I could be swimming or sitting on the beach with a good book instead.

These past two months have been one of the best summers I've ever had. Of course, all of that fun also means that we didn't get as much work done on the house as we have during the previous two summers, but we put that time to good use getting better acquainted with our community, and it feels like we're finally creating some strong ties. It's starting to feel more like home than anywhere I've lived in a long time. I've even made some good friends, which isn't always easy for this shy (some would say reclusive) introvert.

I've got lots to tell you about the garden, and some delicious new recipes to share, but first I've got another book review for you.

I was asked a few months ago if I would take part in a virtual book tour put on by TLC Book Tours, and while this particular book is a fictional work rather than a book about food, gardening, or insects, the plot does center around plants and their possible effects on our lives, which I thought might appeal to some of you.

Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin

From the Publisher:

Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire is one woman’s journey from the modeling and advertising world of New York City to the rain forests of the Yucatan Peninsula. From the hot and steamy plant dealers in the Union Square Green Market, to the curanderos, herbalists and shamans of Southern Mexico.

Lila Nova is a 32-year-old advertising copywriter who lives alone in a plain white box of an apartment. Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, Lila has a simple mantra: no pets, no plants, no people, no problems. But when she meets David Exley, a ruggedly handsome plant dealer, a country-sexual, as she calls him, her lonely life turns into something far more colorful. From the harsh streets of Manhattan to the verdant jungles of the Yucatan, Hothouse Flower is the story of a woman who travels beyond sense and comfort to find out what she really wants.

I have to say, my first reaction was to judge the book by its cover - with a title like Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire, I was sure it was going to be a bodice ripper set in the steamy jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula. Don't get me wrong, I'm not above indulging in a little "chick lit" once in a while, but I have to admit that I was careful not to leave this book lying around the house when I had friends over, lest they take me for a desperate housewife, escaping the tedium of domestic life in a trashy novel (and so what if I was, anyway?).

Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as tawdry as I was expecting. I found the botanical "factoids" at the beginning of each chapter very interesting, and was disappointed to discover that the Nine Plants of Desire exist solely as a creation of the author's imagination.

That being said, the main character, Lila, leaves a little to be desired, and I found it hard to relate to her on almost any level. One could argue that that's because she works in advertising in New York City, a far cry from my own reality, but I don't think that's the only reason. Throughout the story, she is repeatedly mistreated and manipulated by the men in her life, (even when they are supposedly trying to help her), and she seems to just float through the book doing what other people tell her to do. I usually had no idea why she made the choices she did, as there wasn't a lot of back story or emotion present to use as a reference point. I tend to like character driven books, and there just wasn't enough character development for me. In the author's defense, some of this may have been an attempt to maintain an air of mystery around certain people.

While the characters themselves were weak at times, the lessons they provided occasionally proved to be thought provoking. Take this passage on why people aren't always true to themselves, a message one usually only encounters in books about unschooling or attachment parenting:

"They think they are, but the person they were born to be was covered up by years of living with parents and going to school and fitting in. Every year that passes, a person gets covered up a little bit more, like a sleeping bag slowly zipping up around a body. It's a subtle process until the day a person is totally gone."

There were several other insights sprinkled throughout that left me thinking about the book even after I'd put it down. So, while it's largely easy summer reading, the author obviously has something to say about the human condition, which lends some substance to this otherwise escapist story.

Despite the few problems that I had with the book, overall it was an enjoyable, fast paced, and funny read. There's a bit of a suspension of disbelief required for full enjoyment, but if you can take the leap and believe that putting your faith in strangers and following shamanic visions is an acceptable way to live one's life, you'll be well on your way to adventure in the Yucatan. It might just be the perfect book to tuck into your beach bag, should the sun ever return.

The publishers have offered a free copy of this novel for one lucky reader of this post. Just leave a comment and I will pick a winner at random on September 12th (must be a resident of the US or Canada).

The Laundry Line

2010-07-28T09:32:00.003-07:00

We finally managed to get the clothes line up and ready before the warm weather hit (not that I have anything against hanging laundry out when the weather is bad), and it's been seeing a lot of use, sometimes up to three loads a day when it's hot.

We dithered for a long time about what kind of line we were going to build. The original plan was to have it run off of one of the decks, but with the house being built into the hillside, that idea proved difficult as it inevitably would have been positioned in such a way that my tall husband would have literally been clotheslined every time he walked past it.

Then, I was flipping through one of my mom's gardening magazines this spring and came across the perfect solution: a free standing laundry line with a trellis on either end for growing vining flowers (you can find the plans here). This is another one of those times when delaying the start of a project left time for the perfect solution to present itself.

We don't have the trellises built on the ends yet (all of those bits and pieces really add up), but the clematises that we planted on either end aren't big enough to need support yet anyway.

Finished or not, it's still a huge improvement over last summer's drying rack.

Keeping Bees

2010-07-26T12:49:00.003-07:00

If you've watched the news at all in the past couple of years, you undoubtedly will have heard that bee populations have been dying out for reasons unknown. I was told by a local bee keeper this spring that our area actually suffered a 100% loss among domesticated hives this year, and it wasn't a particularly harsh winter (at least not compared to last year). Statistics like that are enough to put a scare into anyone, especially when people like to quote Einstein as having said that humans would die out within four years if honey bees were to disappear.

Not long after hearing about our local situation, I started noticing an abundance of bees on the wild huckleberry bushes during my regular walks, and our rock cress was positively buzzing with these orange-bottomed beauties.

How could these guys be so prolific when the domesticated bees were faring so poorly?

I like to do what I can to help out my bee friends, but I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, so when I was asked to review a couple of new books about bees, I was keen to do so, hoping that it would give me a better understanding of these amazing insects.

The first one that I read is called Keeping the Bees, written by Laurence Packer, a Toronto based mettilologist (bee biologist).

Packer's tone is humorous and familiar, and reading his book is a little like spending an afternoon "talking bees" with a knowledgeable old friend. Some of the information is so interesting that I found myself reading excerpts aloud to my son, such as how cuckoo bees gain access to the "fortresses" of other bees, which, as Packer puts it, "reads like a lesson in ancient military strategy". How could an 11 year old obsessed with battle games not love that? The part about how the larvae of the Francisco oil beetle (about 700 of them) clump together to trick a habropoda bee into thinking it's a female bee (and thereby hitch a ride with him back to the nest where they eat the pollen stores and habropoda children) still gives me the heebee jeebies.

Packer also talks about the fact that honey bees aren't necessarily the best pollinators, but are being relied upon in conventional agriculture because there aren't usually enough wild bees on large industrial farms to effectively pollinate the plants, either because they are too far from significant wild bee habitats, or due to a lack of diversity among crops (resulting in fewer visits from the choosier bumble bees). This practice is spreading disease and ultimately compounding the problems faced by honey bees.

The other great thing about this book is Packer's ability to take a subject matter with the potential to be extremely dry and complicated, and make it accessible and entertaining even to those of us without a background in zoology. This book is a must read for those who would like to know more about wild bees and what we can do to keep them around.

The second book is called the Collins Beekeeper's Bible: Bees, Honey, Recipes & Other Home Uses.

This book focuses largely on the keeping of honey bees, and is absolutely packed with information for anyone interested in setting up their own backyard hive(s). The thing I love most about this book is the abundance of color photographs and gorgeous illustrations. I'm a very visual person, so I found the images (which range from lovely styled photographs and line drawings, to historical prints and etchings) to add to and compliment the practical information perfectly.

This great tome of a book (well over 400 pages) covers the history of bees and beekeeping, includes clear instructions on setting up and maintaining a hive, as well as harvesting honey and other bee products, and has extensive lists of beneficial plants and bee friendly flowers. It also provides dozens of delicious sounding recipes, homemade beauty and cleaning products, as well as the medicinal uses for honey, and crafts using beeswax. You can rest assured that you'll be seeing some of these foods/projects in upcoming posts.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading both Keeping the Bees and The Collins Beekeeper's Bible, and feel I have a greater understanding of bees as a result. I'm sure that I will refer back to both books many times as I continue to set up my garden (and hopefully one day, bee hives). I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to learn more about bees, wild or domesticated, and think that together they form the basis of a complete and comprehensive bee library.

Wordless Wednesday - Two Kids, A Swing, And A Camera

2010-07-21T14:27:00.001-07:00

I Clove Summer

2010-07-19T00:26:00.002-07:00

Back in early October when the weather was dreary, I eagerly planted the first crop of the summer garden. Garlic may take a long time to turn from one lowly clove into a plump head packed full of them, but it's worth every minute of the time involved - there aren't many meals in this house that don't start with a clove or two.

In honor of this week's garlic harvest, the kids and I decided to celebrate by roasting some of the smaller heads to have with our dinner. My daughter whipped up a batch of Artisan Bread dough (you can find the recipe here on page 4) so we'd have some yummy bread to go with it.

The roasted garlic was so mellow and sweet that we were sucking every last morsel out of the papery skins.

Of course, an appetizer like that deserves an equally special main course, so we made one of our favorite summer meals: pasta tossed with arugula, tomatoes, feta, and yes, more garlic.This is all part of my evil plan to get the kids associating delicious food and happy tummies with manual labor (in the form of gardening).

I'm not sure where I got the original recipe, or whether I'm even using the correct measurements anymore, but it's a delicious way to use up that arugula that's going to seed in your garden. Here's roughly what I do:

Pasta with Arugula, Tomatoes, and Feta:

2 tomatoes, chopped (throw juice and seeds in too)
5 - 6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 - 2 cloves garlic, minced
one bunch arugula, rinsed and chopped
salt and pepper, to taste
3/4 of a pound of pasta

Assemble the sauce ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Cook the pasta of your choice according to package directions. When pasta is cooked, drain and add directly to the bowl with the arugula mixture (don't worry if there's a bit of water clinging to the pasta, it will loosen the sauce). Toss to combine. The heat of the pasta wilts the arugula and begins to melt the feta cheese, making everything creamy. This is an excellent, and fast, summer meal.

Meals like this are the reason we go to the trouble of keeping a garden. With our bellies full, we regularly make our way down to the beach for an evening swim. Summer is fleeting in our neck of the woods, and we have to get our fill while we can.

Before too long, it'll be time to plant the garlic again.

Me And My Hoe: A Love Story

2010-07-14T23:59:00.004-07:00

Don't worry, I'm not going to get all Pretty Woman on you, I just have to take a minute to mention one of the most useful garden tools I've ever had. This hand forged half moon hoe has been a godsend when it comes to weeding (my least favorite chore), making routine garden maintenance a breeze.

The sharp blade slides under the soil's surface, uprooting and slicing weeds. This one is on a long handle (about 5 and 1/2 feet), so I can stand while weeding, saving my back.

You can find similar hoes for less money, but according to Steve Solomon, it's worth getting one made of forged steel because the blades are stronger and can be kept sharp with a wet stone, unlike the cheaper versions which are dull and tend to chip. There are other kinds of "scuffle hoes" with different styles of blades, and I'm sure they all do pretty much the same thing, but the key is to find one that is sharp and can be kept that way, as that will make the job easier in the long run.

I find that the hoe works best when the weather is hot and dry. I run the blade through the garden beds, exposing the weeds' roots, and let the heat of the sun finish them off. I make sure to do this when I know I won't be watering for a day or two, as this gives the weeds less of a chance to re-root. Most things can be left in place as long as they haven't gone to seed, but anything too pernicious (such as morning glory or creeping buttercup) should be removed completely and thrown in the garbage. Repeating this process every couple of weeks has kept my garden well aerated and weed free. Apparently, if I do this regularly, I'll eventually have fewer weeds to deal with, as most of the seeds in the top layer of soil will have been sprouted and subsequently murdered.

I hope I still get at least a few.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation - 2010

2010-07-11T23:39:00.004-07:00

A few quick photos from our holiday while I attempt to get back into writing mode.

We traditionally camp when we're on Salt Spring, but this time my mom and step dad rented a beautiful old heritage home for the week. The kitchen was amazing, with custom built free standing fir cabinets and an AGA. Though I've always wanted an AGA (which is always warm and ready for use), it kind of lost its charm when we were hit with a heat wave, at which point everyone gave the kitchen a wide berth.

In addition to deer, raccoons, and rabbits, the property had a family of free ranging quail. We saw three adults and a bunch of babies, but they were almost impossible to catch on camera.

For the most part, our days were spent reading, swimming, and laying about, though we did occasionally leave the house to eat. The favored routine was to head to Salt Spring Island Cheese to sample their wares (goat cheese topped with truffles is a favorite, as is the one topped with olive tapenade)...

followed by a trip to the Salt Spring Island Bread Company.

The "bread lady" makes such amazing things that it's almost impossible to choose, which is why we're obligated to go back daily.

With our bags overflowing, we made our way to Ruckle Park for a picnic on the beach. While passing through the farm on the first day (the 1000 acres surrounding Ruckle farm became a provincial park in 1974), we noticed that they were busy "making hay while the sun shines".

Not having been here for three years made the reunion with our favorite place even more special. Our bellies full, we spent the afternoons easing back into the familiar surroundings, reminiscing about summers past, and catching up with old friends.

Kickin' Back

2010-07-07T20:13:00.002-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know that I'm going to be away for a few more days, as we're halfway through an unexpected, last minute vacation to one of my favorite places, Salt Spring Island. It's been three years since we've had a proper holiday, so we're reveling in the R&R, taking the occasional break to eat, read, and cool off with a swim.
The only downside to the trip is that my darling hubby is stuck back in in the city bringing home the bacon. He and I started coming here 17 years ago when we were at university in Victoria, thumbing our way to Ruckle Park, the absolute best place to camp, anywhere. We have so many memories here, it feels like a second home.
To read a bit more about this amazing place, and to see where we've been hanging out all week, click here (scroll to the bottom to start from the beginning).
See you soon!

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T08:46:00.001-07:00

Wishing my fellow Canucks a very happy Canada Day!
July 1st is also the anniversary of the day we moved into our house, we have been living here for two years now. We'll be taking part in community celebrations, followed up with a barbeque in the rain (how west coast).
So grateful to live where I do!

What's New in the Garden

2010-06-25T11:16:00.004-07:00

I had no idea when I decided to participate in the Kinder Gardens project how little I would actually have to contribute. It's not like the kids haven't been in the garden over the past month, but as far as having something concrete that I can report on, no dice. My daughter picked out a bunch of herbs so she could start a "Medicine Cat" garden (inspired by the Warriors series), but they're still sitting on the deck waiting to go into the ground.

I think the problem lies with the expectation that they were going to want to plan and carry out some kind of "project". That's all well and good, but my love of gardening certainly didn't come from my mom forcing me to participate in the growing of our food, it developed naturally out of experiencing the benefits of having a large family garden. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of long summer days spent stuffing myself with sun warmed raspberries, collecting piles of hazelnuts, and my dad using the bucket of a backhoe as a picking platform to to access the best fruits on our enormous cherry tree.

Freshly picked strawberries to top off our breakfast.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm going to put away all of the cool, projecty ideas that I have floating around in my head for now and just let the kids enjoy the fruits of our collective (okay, mostly parental) labor.

As for my own garden plans, not having to share garden space means I can have as many projects on the go as I want! I've done things a little differently this year armed with information from Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon. I got this book out of the library earlier this year, hoping it would give me some ideas on how to improve our lousy soil, which it did. I have to say, however, that I almost didn't get to that point, as Solomon's tone in the first two thirds of the book is so negative and condescending that I almost threw it across the room several times. I did manage to stick it out until the end, and I'm so glad I did, because my garden is thriving this year. I ended up buying the book, because I think the information is vital to those of us on the west coast, and if Solomon is to be believed (and he must know a bit about gardening on the coast, as he's the founder of Territorial Seed) much of the core advice in other gardening books just doesn't apply to us here.

So, based on his advice, I limed the soil, added bone meal, manure and compost, and made raised beds. Against his advice, I did use our chicken litter to amend the soil (he's against using wood products in the garden, but our soil is so devoid of any organic matter that I figure it can handle it). We also made tunnel cloches using 1/2" pex pipe from the hardware store (a good deal at less than $2 each) and 6 mil plastic. According to the book, cloches are better suited to our climate than solar greenhouses, and they cost considerably less to build.

The frame of the cloche.

This bed was planted on May 24th, the earliest I've ever set out my tomato plants (notice the emerging potato hills to the left of the tomatoes). Based on this year's success, I may set them out even earlier next year.

Solomon uses 2x4's to hold down the edges of the plastic tunnels, but we tried making "clips" using 3/4" pipe on a friend's advice. It didn't work as well as we would have liked, but I suspect that's because we used a scrap of pipe that was a different brand than we'd used for the frame, so they would occasionally let go and fly at my head when I was least expecting it. Next year I will try making them again using the same brand of pipe. In the meantime, we're using a combination of rocks and 2x4's to hold down the edges.

Some of the best advice gained in the book was to let go of the notion of growing tomatoes that require longer than 75 days from transplant, as our summers are just too short and cool. Looking through my seeds, I noticed that many of my heritage tomato seeds from southern seed companies took 100 or more days to mature. That would explain my recent lack of success in the tomato department. The other problem was that the plants would often get chilled and quit growing for a few weeks after transplant, which the cloche prevented.

Within three weeks, the tomato plants went from about 4 inches tall to well over 2 feet and flowering, so I removed the tunnel earlier this week and put up the tomato spirals:

We built another hoop house for the peppers, which are also flowering and happy. I'll leave this cloche in place for a while longer as peppers like a bit more heat than tomatoes, and are less tolerant of our cool summer nights.

The eggplants' shelter is a little more impromptu, but is working well. I lined the bed with black plastic to collect heat, and made a protective tent out of pipe ends and floating row cover.

It ain't pretty, but a peek underneath reveals happily growing plants:

The potatoes are now fully hilled and flowering. They're doing much better this year than last, when I got a return of about 1:1 (as a friend of mine said, I should have saved myself some time and put the seed potatoes right into the fridge!). I'm looking forward to harvesting a few babies soon and making a batch of lemony potatoes!

Elsewhere in the garden, the three-sisters plot is well on its way, the onions are fattening up, and the blueberry plants are covered in fruit.

It looks like the kids have some work ahead of them!

Wordless Wednesday - Our Newest Residents

2010-06-23T10:05:00.001-07:00

Poultry in Motion

2010-06-20T23:47:00.002-07:00

I thought I'd share a couple of photos of the chicken tractor, which, thanks to a break in the weather, is finally finished. We made it out of scrap wood and cedar trim left over from the house construction, as well as bits of leftover fencing.

If you've never heard the term "chicken tractor", it's basically a moveable pen which gets pushed from place to place, allowing the chickens to trim, weed, and aerate your lawn or garden beds, fertilizing the soil along the way. It's beneficial for the soil, and keeps the chickens from getting bored. Curved wooden skids on the high side make it easier to move.

The girls explore their new pen while Chuck trims off the excess wire.

The tractor docks on the opposite side of the coop from the run, and will serve as an extra "room" when it's not being moved around the yard. It will also be handy as a broody pen should we decide to hatch our own chicks (the hardware cloth on the sides is 3/4 inch so babies can't squeeze out), or as a place to keep a sick or injured bird. We're going to make a removeable roof of some kind to cover one half of it, which will give them some shelter from the elements.

I can't wait to take this baby for a spin!

Our First Loss

2010-06-16T23:34:00.001-07:00

I had hoped to post an update on the garden tonight, but the day had other plans.

I went out to water the chickens this afternoon and noticed that one of our Speckled Sussex hens had something hanging out of her vent - a lot of something. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I think she must have had a prolapsed oviduct (which can protrude through the vent opening) that ended up getting picked at by the other hens. The injury was so severe that I was pretty sure there wasn't much that could be done for her, but I moved her into a quiet pen in the basement while I did some quick research and tried to decide what to do. After doing some reading and speaking to some chicken-keeping friends, it became clear that she wasn't going to recover. Thankfully, fate stepped in and saved us from having to put her down ourselves, as she slipped away not too long after we brought her inside. Aside from the two Salmon Faverolles chicks that we lost at 6 days old, this is the first of our hens to die.

Freckle, 5 days old.

I'm thinking she must have had something wrong with her reproductive system from the beginning, as we would occasionally (a couple of times a month) get an egg that looked like it had been difficult to pass (bloody). Still, I was really sad to lose one of these birds, as the Speckled Sussex is quite possibly my favorite breed. They're friendly, adventurous, and hardy (even during a torrential downpour, there's usually at least one Sussex out wandering around in the rain). Thankfully, it wasn't the one who spent her first few weeks sleeping in the crook of my neck that died, but her sister "Freckle". I wasn't totally sure until I went out into the coop this evening and "Speckle" came running in to see me, squawking "criiiick, criiick, criiick" in her funny, raspy voice (the only way I could tell them apart as they matured).

We've had a hell of a month with our pets, and this is incident number three, so I'm hoping we're done now.

Bear With Me

2010-06-15T11:31:00.002-07:00

Yay, I'm finally back online! A couple of days after my last post, the power cord for my laptop died, and it's taken almost a month to get a replacement. I was able to use my iPod and my son's computer to update my Facebook page occasionally, but Blogger didn't agree with my son's 10 year old hand-me-down Mac, so I wasn't able to post here.

There's a lot to tell you about, but I'll start with the most exciting news first.

We almost lost our flock to a predator at the beginning of the month. Those of you following me on Facebook have already heard a bit about this, but now I can share photos.

We don't have a lot of things that prey on chickens here aside from hawks, eagles, and the occasional dog (we don't even have raccoons or skunks), but just over a month ago, a bear showed up in the area. Normally this wouldn't be much of a problem, but this particular bear has developed a taste for poultry and has raided more than half a dozen coops, despite the fact that it's prime Salmonberry season and there's no shortage of other things for him to eat at the moment.

I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago and happened to glance out at the chicken coop and noticed that the window trim was torn off and laying on the ground.

After taking a closer look it became obvious that somebody with muddy paws was the culprit.

Notice how he tried the knob and the latch, but didn't touch the door anywhere else? This guy's a pro.

After a few minutes of panic and trying to decide whether it was safe to go out and check on them, I finally saw a couple of the hens hop up onto the window perch. Okay, so at least it wasn't a total loss.

I could hear that the neighbor's dog was out and not going ballistic, so I figured the bear was long gone, and I eventually mustered up enough courage to venture out for a better look. Closer inspection revealed that he also tried to gain access through one of the other windows, as well as the pop door which will eventually provide access to the chicken tractor. Thankfully the hardware cloth that we stapled over the windows and under the sheeting kept him from gaining entry and everyone inside was fine (if a little rattled). Not that he didn't try - the mesh was stretched and covered in muddy paw prints. I'm so glad that we went overboard and built the coop with the expectation that we might one day have to deal with predators trying to get in, I can't imagine what I might have had to deal with that morning if we hadn't.

Local authorities have been trying to capture this fellow for weeks now, but he (she?) has proven to be a very smart bear (hey, he knows how a door works, for goodness sake), and has so far avoided the traps that they've set. I wonder if they've considered making it look more like a chicken coop. In the meantime, we've reinforced the coop (the trim is now screwed on tight, and the windows have secure latches), and we're being extra careful about walking on the park trails.

Hopefully he'll make his way to another location soon, either on his own or with the help of conservation officers.

The Hangover

2010-05-20T11:08:00.002-07:00

I wonder what kind of traffic that title will bring to the blog.

I apologize for my recent absence, I was detained against my will. Well, okay, not for the entire three weeks, but I've spent the past two recovering from the excitement of the first week.

I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago, and certain members of my family took it upon themselves to shake me out of my comfortable, predictable life and live it up a bit (I think I've mentioned that I'm a major creature of habit, and generally go to great lengths to avoid varying my routine). So when my mother suggested several months ago that I renew my passport so that we could partake in a little cross-border shopping, I thought "Sounds a little crazy, but why not?".

When she picked me up on day one of our trip and we started driving across the city toward the border, I was ready for the adventure that lay ahead of us. Even when she said that we had to make a quick stop at the airport to "drop off something" that had been "left behind" by one of their B&B guests, I was still wondering what kind of trouble we were going to get up to in Seattle. So when my step-dad suddenly appeared out of nowhere (to pick up the car, it turns out), and my mom blindsided me with the news that we were in fact going to Las Vegas instead of Washington State, I couldn't have been more surprised (or panicked). Las Vegas wasn't exactly on the top of my list of places to visit, but it was fun to do something so removed from my usual life, and spending that much time hanging out with my mom, sister-in-law, and her sister (who also just turned 40, and was equally surprised to be going to Vegas) was a real treat. Thankfully, my husband managed to slip a pair of sandals into my bag without me noticing, as I had dressed (and packed) for drizzly west coast weather. Arriving to 80 degree temperatures wearing my usual wool socks and Blunnies was a bit of a shock to the system.

Contrary to what the title of this post would lead you to believe, I did not spend the entire two days in an alcohol-induced haze gambling away my life savings. We did pack as many activities into our time there as we could, but unfortunately didn't have enough time to head out into the desert, which was a little disappointing; I can't imagine a landscape more different than the one I'm used to. The highlight of the trip was taking in a Cirque du Soleil show (Mystere). We've seen a few of their shows on t.v. and absolutely love them, but I'd never actually seen one in person. Needless to say, it was amazing (as well as hilariously funny).

I'm not much of a shopper, but we did some of that as well. My lovely friend insisted that I should share my big purchase with you here, although I suspect she's probably just making fun of me. Surrounded by the most glamorous of shops filled with clothing, jewelry, and baubles of every description, I came home with a...(wait for it)...

...egg carton.

I happen to think it's a thing of beauty (don't the brown eggs look so pretty next to the turquoise?), but according to my daughter, I'm lamer than lame. Apparently the lameness gene is a strong one, because my mom's lone purchase was a door knob. Do we know how to live it up or what?

My actual birthday weekend was spent getting to know the partner and young children of one of my oldest and dearest friends. We're old high school chums and were roommates at university, but have been bad about staying in touch over the years. Thankfully, our relationship is such that whenever we do manage to reconnect, we're always able to fall right back into things as if we'd just seen each other the day before . I'm so smitten with her adorable boys that there's no way she's getting a moment's peace from me now.

Long story short, the excitement of the trip, combined with time away from home and visiting with friends meant that there was a lot waiting for me when celebrations came to an end. You could say I had a lot "hanging over" me, not the least of which were weeks of missed blog posts, which were unfortunately relegated to the bottom of the priority list.

I'll be back very soon with updates on recent projects, as well as some news about the loss of one of our dearest animal friends.

Happy Victoria Day to my Canadian friends!

Making Yogurt

2010-04-26T17:12:00.009-07:00

Well, here it is: the long overdue yogurt post. I've been meaning to write about making yogurt for at least three years now, and you can see from the abundance of photos that I've been preparing for it for a long time.

As I mentioned in my post about making butter, organic dairy products can be had for a lot less money by making them yourself using organic milk and cream, which usually cost much less than the equivalent amount of organic yogurt or butter (this is also true when using conventional milk and cream).

Before we get started, here's a basic ingredient list:

1 liter (quart) of milk or cream (I like to make it with at least 2% milk, not low fat).
1/2 cup of powdered milk (optional, but will help make the yogurt nice and thick; this is less necessary with higher fat milk).
2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup of plain yogurt as a starter. This can either be store bought (make sure it says it's made with "live" or "active" bacterial culture), or saved from your previous batch.
heavy bottomed pot, whisk, thermometer, and jars or glass/ceramic container.

Before doing anything else, heat your oven up to 225 degrees. This is to sterilize the container(s) that will house your yogurt. I bought a lovely pottery crock for this purpose years ago, but while it was packed during our move, I started using Bonne Maman jam jars that I originally got off of Freecycle to use as storage jars in my pantry. Put the container(s) into the oven and leave them in there for about 20 minutes. To save time, start this process right before heating the milk. When they're done, take them out and leave the door open to let the oven cool down.

The first step in making yogurt is to scald the milk (make sure you mix the powdered milk in while it's still cold, or it might go lumpy). Heat the milk in a heavy bottomed pot or bain marie, which can be made by putting a bowl over a pot of water, until it reaches 185 degrees F. If using a bain marie, you can pay less attention to it, but when using a pot, be sure to stir it almost constantly to avoid scorching the milk. Scalding will kill any bacteria in the milk. I broke my candy thermometer years ago, so I just go by sight. The milk is hot enough when it's steaming and frothy, but not boiling.

When the correct temperature has been reached, remove the milk from the heat and let it cool to below 120 degrees, but not lower than 90 degrees. Using my "built in" thermometer, I usually wait until it's just slightly warmer than body temperature. You can speed this process up by immersing the pot in a sink filled part way with cold water (usually about 10 minutes), or just let it sit on the stove (about 30 minutes). While the milk is cooling, take out your starter and let it come up to room temperature.

When the milk has cooled, stir a couple of tablespoons or so into a small bowl with the starter. Whisk until smooth, and then stir back into the pot. Pour the milk into your containers.

Check the temperature of your oven. You want it to be as close to 100 degrees as possible; any warmer, and you risk killing the bacteria in the starter. If it has cooled too much, turn it back on low for a few minutes to warm it up. I incubate my yogurt in the oven with the light left on.

It's a good idea to lay a towel or something over the oven controls during incubation to remind yourself not to turn it on. The one time I got lazy and didn't bother, the yogurt was boiling in its jars before I remembered it was in there (it ended up being nice and thick and tasted fine, but was no longer suitable as starter).

If all goes well, after 6 - 8 hours, your milk will have turned into delicious yogurt. The longer it incubates, the thicker and tangier it will be. When it has reached the desired consistency, put your yogurt into the fridge to chill. It will continue to thicken slightly in the fridge. If you find the resulting yogurt to be thicker than you like, stirring will break up the structure of the milk solids and loosen it up (likewise, if you like a thicker yogurt, avoid stirring it as much as possible). Yogurt will keep up to two weeks in the fridge, but use it sooner if planning to use it as starter.

While you can use lower fat milk to make yogurt, lately I've been making it using half and half (10% MF). This might sound ridiculously rich and decadent (which it is!), but it results in a yogurt that's unbelievably thick, mild and delicious, like a very good Greek yogurt.

I honestly believe that the decadent nature of a higher fat yogurt doesn't actually contribute any more calories to one's diet than low fat, since you're usually satisfied by a much smaller portion (and just for the record, I recently had a physical and my cholesterol levels are excellent!).

This yogurt is a fabulous addition to things like muesli or pancakes with fruit, and it's great for making parfaits with granola. I often to eat mine with a drizzle of syrup.

If you prefer the flavored variety, it's really easy to make fruit sauces that can be stirred into your delicious homemade yogurt. Just stew the fruits of your choice with powdered sugar to taste (powdered sugar contains cornstarch which will help thicken the sauce). You can also use granular sugar and a bit of cornstarch. This is a great way to use up all of that frozen fruit at the bottom of your freezer.

Even if making your own yogurt didn't save you any money, it would still be worth doing. The active bacterial cultures in homemade yogurt are very good for you, and the taste is beyond anything you can buy in the store.

While it may sound like there are a lot of ways that making yogurt can go wrong, it's actually a very forgiving process. If it's not already part of your repertoire, I hope you'll give it a try!

First Asparagus!

2010-04-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

While I was out planting sunflowers this afternoon, I stopped to check the recently planted asparagus patch to see if there was anything growing yet, and there was!

It'll be a couple of years before we can start harvesting spears to eat, but asparagus has always been one of my favorite vegetables, and I'm just happy to finally have the space to grow it.

Have a great weekend!

Kinder Gardens Kick-Off

2010-04-21T22:57:00.001-07:00

Today I'll be starting a series of posts focusing on gardening with children as part of the Kinder Gardens project organized by Kim over at The Inadvertent Farmer.

Our kids have always been involved in caring for our various gardens over the years, so of course I thought they'd be as excited as I was about taking part in this project, and I quickly began thinking up all kinds of cool things for us to do in the garden together this summer. But when I asked them what they thought about participating, I was met with shoulder shrugs and a resounding "meh".

Watering our community garden plot, 2004.

My daughter turned 14 a week ago, and while she's not at all the kind of teenager who sighs at everything her dad and I say, she does tend to react to anything we suggest with a mixture of resistance and caution (this is not a new thing, she did it as much at 4 as she does at 14). Okay, so she likes what she likes, I can respect that, but it makes brainstorming for ideas a little difficult. The upside is, she's a total foodie and loves to cook, so we'll be planting lots of the pattypan squash that she loves so much, in addition to our usual garden favorites. My son, however, might be a bit of a harder sell.

For us, gardening and food have always had very close ties to the literature we enjoy. Books like Brambly Hedge, and the Redwall series (they even have a fantastic seasonal cookbook), which go into great detail describing the growing, harvesting, cooking, preserving, and sharing of food, are among our all time favorite stories. The kids have always loved to pretend to be characters from the books while they were out digging potatoes, pulling carrots, and picking berries, and all three of us have pined on more than one occasion for Mrs. Crustybread's kitchen, or for a larder similar to the store stump.

So after talking about it with them for a while, it's looking like literature might work its way into our garden once again, this time in a slightly different way. I'll save most of the details for next week's post, but let's just say that there's a lot to be learned about herbal medicine from the Warrior Cats and the professors at Hogwarts.

Now I just have to figure out a way to work Hobbits and a few Star Wars characters in there.

Oddities

2010-04-19T22:51:00.003-07:00

Look what I discovered when I went into the coop this afternoon:

This has got to be the smallest egg I've ever seen, even smaller than the quail eggs we used to buy! Its small stature is even more evident when you compare it to one of our regular sized eggs:

Since we're on the topic of strange eggs, I might as well share a few more of the odd ones we've gotten. This one was so large that the only thing I could think when I saw it was "ouch".

What made this egg truly bizarre was the thick, malformed shell. It looked like it had been molded out of clay.

Of course this bad boy had to be a double yolker:

We've also gotten quite a few shell-less eggs:

These aren't new to anyone who's ever raised chickens, but it definitely freaked me out the first time I reached into the nest box and felt an egg "give" in my hand.

You certainly don't get this kind of variety in a carton of store-bought eggs. I can't wait to fry up my tiny egg.

Perhaps some tiny bacon would be in order?

Potato Patch

2010-04-15T11:31:00.003-07:00

The potatoes are in, and the gardening season has officially begun! We finally had enough of a break in the rain that the soil dried out somewhat, allowing me to dig without everything getting caked in mud.

I dug two trenches down either side of a four foot bed, allowing for about two feet between the rows. I then sprinkled a layer of "bunny fertilizer" in the trenches, and dropped the potatoes into place.

I alternated the potatoes by colour, thinking that it would be easier to identify which variety I was digging up if the ones growing right beside them didn't look exactly the same. To help me better keep track of what was planted where, I also made markers using stones and a UV stable felt pen.

I planted the seed potatoes a few inches down into the trenches, and I will earth the soil up whenever I see a nice green shoot poking out of the soil. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, by mid summer I will have lovely, potato-filled hills in place of the trenches.

If nothing else, a spring garden is filled with promise!

Garden Prep

2010-04-11T23:32:00.001-07:00

We spent the weekend getting the garden ready for planting, finishing the fence to keep the deer out, and marking and shoveling the soil into raised beds.

The fence, awaiting a gate and a cable along the top.

You can see that we finally managed to get the tilling done in spite of all of the rain/snow we've been getting. The garden is no longer a safe haven for grass and weeds!

While doing some tidying around the compost bins, I noticed that my watering can has been doing double duty as a mouse trap, similar to the one that Kim's been using over at The Inadvertent Farmer (have you seen this post? Freakishly cool, but definitely not for the faint of heart!). Note to self: store the watering can upside down so it doesn't collect water.

We used string and stakes to mark out our pathways, and then shoveled the soil from the paths onto the beds, creating raised beds. While we were working, we decided it would be fun to let the chickens into the garden now that it's fenced. I used my video camera to capture the moment thinking that I could share it with you here, but the rooster was so moved by the girls' excitement, that he promptly jumped onto one of the hens, turning it into an entirely different kind of movie.

They spent the afternoon happily following us around, dealing with any residual grass, and snatching up the occasional bug or worm unearthed by our shovels. Since it's early enough that I don't really have anything growing yet, I didn't think there was much for them to get into and destroy, but it turns out they have a taste for garlic greens. Hopefully our eggs won't taste funny tomorrow.

This gorgeous weather is supposed to hold for a few more days, so tomorrow I'll be taking the opportunity to get my potatoes into the ground. Maybe, if they promise to be good, I'll invite my friends to join me.

Whole Wheat Apricot Scones

2010-04-11T10:16:00.001-07:00

When it comes to food (well, it kind of applies to everything in my life actually), I tend to be a creature of habit. When I find a recipe that I like, I will make it over and over again until either the novelty has worn off, or I discover a new favorite. I don't just toss the recipe aside at that point, however - it will simply become a standby instead of an obsession.

That's where I'm at with the Whole Wheat Apricot Scone recipe that I discovered over at Orangette recently. I've made them for breakfast every Saturday since she posted the recipe, and I think we may have even had them two days in row. That's in addition to the occasional tea time batch.

The dried apricots are delicious, but I have made them with dried cranberries (I'd used up all of my apricots feeding my addiction), and those were also delicious. The recipe calls for butter, but I always use non-hydrogenated margarine, and I like to dress mine up with a dusting of coarse sugar on top.

Quick, someone distract me, I feel a batch coming on...

The Bee House Has a New Home

2010-04-10T21:32:00.003-07:00

Waking up to a dusting of snow yesterday just about drove me around the bend, but the weather today more than made up for it - I even put my seedlings outside so they could sunbathe for a while this afternoon.

We spent most of the day building a new fence around the garden (more on that another time), but I did take the time to put the mason bee house in its new spot on the chicken coop.

I don't know why it's taken me so long to get it set up again. I think that by the time I finally thought about it last year, all of the bees were sold out in the local garden shops (I didn't have any cocoons from our last house because a mouse discovered the container they were in in the garage and ate them all). Luckily I was more on the ball this year, and have had bees snoozing in my fridge for the past month or so. I'm not going to put them out until the nighttime temperatures quit going down below zero (isn't it supposed to be April?), which will hopefully be within the next week or two. That will also ensure that a few more things have started blooming before the bees are ready to get down to work.

In the meantime, I'll be crossing my fingers in the hope that this sunshine sticks around for a while.

Chicken First Aid

2010-04-09T15:47:00.004-07:00

I had no idea when we first got our chickens how much veterinary work would be involved with caring for them. I've had pets my whole life, and it's only on the very rare occasion that I've ever had to do any kind of doctoring. So far with my hens, I've had to deal with injuries ranging from sprains, to slashed wattles (run-in with the rooster?), and a broken beak (no idea how that happened, but it bled worse than any other injury I've seen) - that's in addition to the normal, everyday cuts and scrapes and incidents of picking.

Any vet worth her salt would have a tool kit at the ready for dealing with problems as they arise, and this is mine:

So far, these four items have been all I've needed to nurse my babies back to health when they're hurting. A couple of things will come as no surprise, but I expect that at least one of them might leave you scratching your head.

The peroxide is great for disinfecting cuts and scrapes, and the antibiotic ointment is self-explanatory, but can you guess what I use the pepper for (and no, it's not seasoning for the ones who don't make it)? Black pepper works like magic for stopping bleeding, and it's an indispensable part of my first aid kit for my people as well as my birds. Just grind it up (a fine grind is best - store bought ground pepper works too), and apply it to the wound. It doesn't sting at all, and it is even said to reduce scarring (the one with the ghastly gash across her wattles looks fine now, if that's any indication). The pepper has the added benefit of deterring any hen who tries to pick at the wound (including the patient), as they don't like the smell or the flavor. I can only wonder what my neighbors think when they see me heading out to the chicken coop with the pepper grinder under my arm. (Kidding! I usually grind some into a tissue and take it out in its own little packet).

The Tiger Balm (which we use to ease my son's growing pains, as well as sore adult muscles) is great for preventing picking. After stopping the bleeding (if necessary) with some pepper, I smear the tiger balm on the feathers surrounding the area that's being targeted (try to keep it on the feathers, not the skin). The strong scent of the camphor, menthol, clove and cinnamon oils will make any chicken think twice about going in for a nip, as will the flavor, should they decide to take a taste in spite of the eye-watering smell.

Depending on the injury, I might use only one of these things, or all of them at one time. If necessary, I'll isolate the bird in a cage for a few days (with her own food and water), close to her friends so that she isn't lonely or scared. This also helps them to remember her, ensuring that she won't have to go through the trouble of re-establishing her place in the pecking order when she's reintroduced.

It amazes me how rugged and resilient these creatures are, even though they seem to have no regard for personal safety, and will happily injure themselves (or each other) at will. Our neighbor even managed to nurse one of her hens back to health after its abdominal cavity was torn open. So far I've been lucky and have only had to deal with basic injuries, and not with things like bumblefoot or egg binding (knock on wood), but time will tell.

And now for something completely different...

2010-04-07T21:01:00.001-07:00

I spent far too much time updating my blog template today, so there's no time for a real post. Instead, I'll share two silly photos that I just downloaded off of my phone. Both were taken by me while in Vancouver recently.

The first one we see on the way to my mom's place, and I've been meaning to take a photo of it for ages:

And I spotted this one in a public bathroom yesterday:

Who comes up with this stuff?

Faux Flagstones

2010-04-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's a little embarassing to admit that we've been living here for almost two years and still have a mostly gravel front yard. We have grass growing over most of the back yard and the septic field, but the front is what suffered the most during constrution, and we've never really had a clear idea of what we wanted to do here, so we did the obvious - nothing.

We always thought we'd do a cottage style garden in the front, but where to start? Sometimes all it takes is one thing to set the ball rolling. My mom and stepdad decided recently that it was time to replace the aging concrete walk at the base of their entry stairs. I've read many articles over the years about people reusing broken concrete in their gardens to create the look of flagstones, and since we needed a path and lacked the funds required for real flagstones (and since we're always happy to rescue something otherwise headed for the dump), we jumped at the chance to breathe new life into their old sidewalk.

We spent an afternoon working in a torrential downpour, placing the "stones", until we had something that we liked the look of (top photo). At first it required a bit of imagination to visualize how the pieces would look without their rough edges exposed, but after my husband spent days digging them in, I think they look surpisingly like the real thing.

We're creating garden beds alongside the stones and under the kitchen window which will echo the lines of the path. For about five feet on either side of the stones (as well as between them), we're going to sow the same low maintenance grass seed that we planted over our septic field.

This grass took a little while to get established in our very rocky soil, but now it looks great. The resulting lawn is drought tolerant and requires little to no mowing. I for one am looking forward to seeing some green in this area, and to having less dust flying around when the weather turns dry.

The lesson here? Sometimes avoiding a project pays off, giving opportunity (and inspiration) a chance to knock when it's good and ready.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Facebook Me

2010-04-04T22:01:00.001-07:00

Just thought I'd let anyone who's on Facebook know that I've finally gotten around to setting my blog up over there. You can get to my page by following the link in the sidebar, or by clicking here.
In addition to my blog, my page will have short status updates, as well as extra photos and other tidbits that don't always find their way into blog posts. These will show up in your news feed as I add them.
Hope to see you there!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-03T21:05:00.001-07:00

Spud Order

2010-04-01T11:11:00.004-07:00

Maybe it's the little bit of Irish blood that I've got running through my veins, or maybe it's my tendency toward carbohydrate addiction, but potatoes have always been one of my favorite things to eat. As far as I'm concerned, they are a food group in and of themselves. We often make a meal out of a baked potato (a quick and easy lunch if you own a microwave), or go slightly fancier by adding lemon, capers, and olive oil to boiled new potatoes.

Since they're well suited to growing in cooler climates, potatoes are the perfect crop for northern gardens. They tolerate a variety of soil types, and produce reliably with little effort. My grandfather tells stories of spending his childhood tending the family potato field during the great depression. They grew an acre in nothing but potatoes, and the resulting harvest saw them through a entire year until the next crop went in. You'd think that after spending years eating potatoes every day, he'd never want to look at them again, but they're still a staple in his diet. Maybe I come by my love of spuds honestly.

Nowadays, there are so many interesting varieties that it can be difficult to know what to grow. I knew that I would definitely be planting my favorite Yukon Golds and Red Chieftans again (which I'm sprouting and planting this year from potatoes that I originally bought for cooking), but I also wanted to try something new. That's when I discovered Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes. Their website is packed with a bevy of gorgeous potato varieties, and I spent days drooling over the selection before settling on a final order (which ended up being much larger than originally planned). The beauty of their site is that you can order small amounts of many different kinds of potatoes, making it easy to experiment.

"Chitting" seed potatoes.

These are the varieties that I finally settled on (all "foursomes"):

-French Fingerling

-Viking

-Kennebec

-German Butterball

-All Red (2 packages, because I'm intrigued by the idea of pink mashed potatoes)

-Green Mountain

-Desiree

-Purple Viking

-Alaska Sweetheart

-Russet Burbank

-Shepody

The garden is now completely grass-free and ready to go, but we've got a stretch of rainy weather to get through before planting these babies outside. I can't wait to see if this bunch will produce a new family favorite.

Is there a potato variety that your garden would be incomplete without?

An Interesting Follow-Up

2010-03-19T09:39:00.003-07:00

I'm loving the conversation that The Femivore's Dilemma has created, my husband and I have been discussing it for days. I think I found the original article so irritating because, from the outside, I fit her description to a "T". Never mind that I've been working toward this way of life for the past 20 or more years, if the shoe fits, I'm clearly nothing more than a flaky fad follower, doomed to be little more than my husband's house pet.

I don't really agree with the suggestion that the article legitimizes the decision to follow this lifestyle, it seems more like an attempt to belittle it. But it's hardly a new thing for society at large to feel disdain for farmers or anyone else who has aspirations beyond the latest iPhone App.

I read an article this morning that I think is the perfect contrast to the last one. The author takes the position that people are making the changes necessary to survive in the face of a shifting and less certain economic climate. What do you think?

The Dropout Economy

Are We All Just Desperate Housewives?

2010-03-16T09:57:00.001-07:00

I read a very interesting article over at Howling Hill this morning, and had to share it with you here. Accurate, or insulting? I'd love to hear what you think!

The Femivore's Dilemma

Foiled!

2010-03-12T23:08:00.001-08:00

I mentioned recently that the weather here has been unseasonably warm (the warmest January on record). It has been so warm, in fact, that four of my hens decided it was spring and went broody at the end of December, and several others started moulting not long after.

Of course, I responded to my own instincts (spring fever!) by giving in to the gardening bug that's been whispering in my ear. Forget working inside. Who cares that a third of the house doesn't even have flooring yet, we've got to get this year's garden started!

So last weekend we bought a load of composted horse manure from my husband's commuting buddy, borrowing his rototiller at the same time (you can see in the above photo that we've grown a lovely cover crop of wild grasses over the winter, which we are hoping the tiller will help us with). It was going well for a while, but after about an hour, the old belts gave out, and the tines would no longer cut through the soil.

No problem...hubby got some new belts and we were all set to resume this weekend.

That was until we woke up to this yesterday morning:

We've had flurries off and on all week, but it didn't actually stick until yesterday.

So much for spring. The chickens were less than thrilled (except for our intrepid Bella, below, who is always first in line to check out something new) and spent most of the day inside the coop. The half-naked, freshly moulted ones sat huddled and shivering.

I may not be getting outside to play in the dirt anytime soon, but that gardening bug's not going down without a fight. Most of my seed orders arrived last week, so I've spent the past few days getting a jump on seed starting.

I've got flats of cool weather vegetables on the go, as well as several different kinds of perennial and hardy annual flowers. I haven't started a lot of flowers from seed in the past (aside from those that I've seeded directly into the garden), but there's no way we can afford to buy enough started plants to fill the space that we have now.

Hopefully spring will return before too long and I can start putting some of these things into the ground.

Chocolate Avocado Muffins (with Raspberries)

2010-02-25T15:40:00.006-08:00

Sounds a little weird, doesn't it?

But trust me, you are going to want to eat these muffins morning, noon, and night.

I got the original version of this recipe from a friend several months ago, and have been in love ever since. They are delicious enough to be called cupcakes, but I stand firm in my refusal to call them that because they're so darn healthy. Don't get me wrong, these aren't your typical "nuts and twigs" kind of healthy, more like "chock full of antioxidants and things that make you smile" kind of healthy.

Before writing me off as a complete loon, consider this:
-Chocolate, and the cocoa it contains, is an excellent source of flavonoids. Dark chocolate has nearly eight times more of this antioxidant than strawberries.
-Fat is an important part of a healthy diet, and the oleic acid that the avocado contributes to these muffins not only helps lower cholesterol, but it also makes you feel full faster and leaves you feeling more satiated than less healthy fats.
-Avocados are one of the most antioxidant rich foods there are. They contain several different kinds of carotenoids, including lutein, which is essential for eye health. They are also an excellent source of fibre (which improves digestion and keeps you feeling full longer), as well as folic acid, which prevents birth defects and helps maintain heart health.
-Mental health is just as important as physical health! Chocolate contains serotonin, which is an antidepressant, and it also stimulates endorphin production, which gives a feeling of pleasure and reduces the effects of pain and stress.

If that isn't enough to convince you to give this recipe a try, let me tell you that they are also unbelievably rich and moist. Your kids will think that you're spoiling them rotten, and they'll have no idea that they contain anything green. One of these muffins is just the thing when you're jonesing for something bad, so much so that I've considered calling them PMS muffins. That certainly doesn't mean you should hide them from the men in your life (although you may have to), or limit yourself to eating them only once a month!

Chocolate Avocado Muffins:

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Beat together until smooth:
-1 avocado (ripe)
-1 cup sugar

Add:
-3 large eggs

Followed by:
-3/4 cup melted unsalted butter or non-hydrogenated margarine
-1 tbsp vanilla extract
-3/4 cup milk
(It's a good idea to mix these ingredients together before adding them to the avocado/egg mixture so the heat from the butter doesn't cook the eggs).

Stir together and add to wet ingredients, mixing just until combined:
-2 2/3 unbleached flour (experiment with adding up to half whole wheat pastry flour if you like)
-1/2 cup cocoa powder (sifted)
-1 tbsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp salt

Fold in 2 cups frozen raspberries (optional).

Optional addition or substitution: 1/2 - 1 cup of chocolate chips.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until cake tester or toothpick comes out clean when placed into the center.

Makes approximately 16 regular sized muffins, or 12 large ones.

I've made these without any additions, with only raspberries, only chocolate chips, and with both things. My kids prefer them with only raspberries.

I hope you'll give these a try and let me know what you think.

Olympic Dreams

2010-02-24T15:31:00.005-08:00

Wow, three months goes by really quickly! I may not have posted for a while, but not due to a lack of things to talk about.

We're having a lovely second winter here, although it has been a lot less snowy than last year was, we haven't had anything but a tiny dusting. Not exactly ideal weather, however, considering that we're currently hosting the winter Olympics. Whistler has been fine, but Cypress Mountain, which overlooks Vancouver, is covered in mud and is only able to look wintery on TV after weeks of transporting snow by truck and helicopter from snowier regions of the province.

There are many reasons for people to be unhappy about the fact that the Olympics are being held in our province (not the least of which is the huge debt we will be saddled with for years after they're over), but now that they're underway, we're actually really excited about it and have been enjoying them immensely. Our kids were so keen that they even agreed to get up at 5:30 in the morning in order to see the torch make its way through our little community a few days before the games began.

They weren't the only ones - the street was lined with spectators eager to take part in this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Vancouver itself is absolutely buzzing with activity, I have never seen the city so alive for such an extended period of time. The kids are so caught up in the whole thing that they're following every sport very closely and have hardly missed an event (okay, maybe it's not just the kids). My son has even decided that he's going to take up snowboard cross and compete in the 2018 Olympics (guess we better start saving our pennies).

The arrival of the Olympics has also seen the opening of my mom and step-dad's bed and breakfast. After years of dreaming and working toward this goal, the Bee & Thistle Guest house has finally opened its doors and is welcoming guests from all over the world. They've even hosted a former Olympian, who coincidentally played on the same Canadian hockey team as one of my former high school teachers - what a small world.

This new venture has inspired my mom to start her own blog. She's an amazing cook and photographer, so if you feel like drooling over some yummy looking food, check it out. She has also posted photos of their beautifully renovated heritage home, which some of you might recognize as the place we called home for a year while we were building our own house. Keep them in mind if you're ever planning a trip to Vancouver.

Magical Mushrooms

2009-11-13T09:00:00.005-08:00

A few photos from a recent walk through the park near our house.

My husband thinks these two look like they're sharing an intimate moment.

If the other two were a couple, this is definitely a mother and child.

I need to get my hands on a good mushroom book so I can go hunting for edibles (pretty sure none of these qualify). Edible or not, they're still gorgeous, and I'm always excited to spot some huddled together on the damp forest floor.

A Good Egg

2009-10-19T08:15:00.003-07:00

Here it is, the thing I have dreamed of for so many years - a fresh, homegrown egg from my own hens!!

The layer of this beauty remains a mystery, but I have my suspicions. It was just laying there in the middle of the coop floor when I went in to clean their waterer yesterday afternoon (thankfully the shell was really hard, so it hadn't gotten broken from them walking all over it). We've been trying not to get our hopes up about getting eggs any time soon, as we had just spoken to a friend whose hens took almost 8 months to start laying, so of course we didn't have a nest box built yet, but my clever hubby managed to get that sorted out last night.

After waiting several hours for my daughter to return home from a friend's house (torture!), we fried that baby up. It was the best egg I've ever tasted, but, as my husband pointed out, it better be good for the $300 or so dollars it cost us.

Can't wait to see what they leave for us this morning!

A Month's Worth of Posts In One

2009-10-09T15:09:00.002-07:00

It's been a busy month, as we've been rushing around trying to get several things done before the weather turns cold and wet. We spent so much of the summer working on the chicken coop that now we're rushing to catch up on other stuff that "had to" be done before fall. On that list was resealing the decks, staining the board and batten cedar on the basement's exterior, painting the windows, finishing the deer fence (so that we can plant out more trees/shrubs), and getting perennial beds and grass started on the front side of the house. We managed to get some of those things checked off our list, and some are still being dealt with. A week of dealing with a nasty flu bug didn't help matters.

Here are a few other highlights:

In the garden, it was the year of the mini's:

Wee watermelon...

...and bonsai corn.

They may have been tiny, but they were delicious!

I was really pleased with the Rosa Bianco eggplants. They produced quite well, and the pale flesh looks really nice grilled (it even has a cute ruffled edge when cut into rounds).

We used some of the pallets that came with various building materials to make a woodshed, which we filled with trees that were either bent or broken by last year's record snowfall.

My mom and step-dad went to the Okanagan (the province's hot spot) for a holiday several weeks ago, and came back with 75 pounds of organic tomatoes, and 40 pounds of apples (the tomatoes I canned, and the apples are in cold storage). With the difference in price between buying them there and buying them here on the coast, I think it might be worth taking a trip up there to stock up every fall.

The girls are doing well, but no eggs yet. They're 18 weeks today though, so it shouldn't be long!

And here's the latest addition to our menagerie..."Lucky" the bunny. My husband's coworker moved into a new apartment and was unable to keep her, so rather than see her sent to the SPCA, we agreed to give her a home (yes, that would be a "sucker" sign on my back). She's exceptionally cute, and is already doing her part to fertilize our garden. Did I mention that you don't have to compost rabbit poop before using it in the garden? Yes, I was swayed by the poop - how sad.

This weekend is Thanksgiving for those of us in Canada, and I am thankful for all of the things I just mentioned, and then some. I wish you a weekend filled with things that you are grateful for, even if you're not going to spend it eating yourself silly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Scoop on the Coop

2009-09-11T13:45:00.050-07:00

Well, we have finally finished the coop enough that I decided it was time to tell you a bit about our summer project.

We're pretty pleased with how it turned out, considering that it's made almost entirely out of leftovers from our house. The only things that we had to buy were a few extra roofing shingles, a couple of sheets of plywood for the roof, a gallon of exterior paint, and wire mesh for the run.

Still a few things left to do, but mostly done.

The work involved was a little more than we anticipated (and most of it through record summer temperatures), but since almost every room in the house looks out on to the coop, we wanted it to be something that we enjoyed looking at.

While we didn't have any actual building plans, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted it to look like. Using Google Sketchup, we played with things like the wall height, roof pitch, and window/door placement until we ended up with something that we were happy with.

My husband hadn't done a lot of framing before, but he did an amazing job of turning our ideas into an actual structure.

Some of the features that we planned for are:
we placed the coop in the sunniest part of the yard so that the run will have a chance to dry out in between winter rain storms.
passive solar heating - the coop is oriented exactly east/west, so the overhang shades the windows on the south side during the hottest part of the summer, but lets the light in when the sun is lower in the sky during the fall and winter months to help keep the chickies warm (also, because of this positioning, the coop itself creates a nice shady patch in the adjoining run).
the coop and run are directly in front of the vegetable garden, with an extra door into the back of the coop so that all of that precious chicken manure can be scooped out right where we need it.
there's an additional pop door on the south side where we will eventually dock a chicken tractor (next year's project)
we wired for overhead and exterior lights, as well as an outlet for either a fan or heat lamp, depending on the season.
we're going to install gutters which will lead to rain barrels on the back side of the coop in order to reduce our dependence on well water for irrigation.
we allowed for lots of natural ventilation. There's a ridge vent in the roof, as well as soffit and gable vents, which will eventually have small doors so we can close them up during cold snaps.
Insulation and back door into the garden.

As mentioned, we used almost entirely recycled materials, many of which were given to us. My mom and stepfather are renovating their house (which was built in 1909) to turn it into a B&B, so we were able to take a lot of things that would have otherwise gone to the dump, including the insulation in the photo above. We insulated the ceiling using rock wool and styrofoam sheets that were left over from insulating our basement slab.

The interior walls are covered with shiplap that was torn up from the floors and walls of my mom's house (beautiful one foot wide, 100 year old fir boards). They will eventually get a coat of paint to make them easier to clean, but right now they are a weathered grey, which gives the coop a rustic, barnlike feel.

The exterior is covered with fiber cement lap siding, which we painted to match the house. I built the ramps out of cedar decking cut-offs.

This is the day that we let the girls out into the run for the first time. They were pretty sure that we were up to no good...

My favorite Speckled Sussex was the first one out of the coop.

...but it wasn't long before they were outside and charging around the run.

I'm still amazed at the instincts possessed by these domesticated birds. They kept a constant watch on the sky, and would run inside at the first sign of an aerial attack (it was usually just an airplane - our property is on a flight path).

You can see in the above photo that the bottom of the coop is enclosed with 1/2" wire mesh, which was given to us by our neighbor. It's a much heavier gauge than hardware cloth, and will hopefully keep anything from digging under and making a home under the coop.

Pippin - our beautiful Dark Brahma

The run is about 5 1/2 feet tall, so the kids and I can stand in there comfortably. The top four feet are covered with 2" square wire mesh, and the bottom 18" with 3/4" hardware cloth. The hardware cloth is actually 3 feet wide, but we buried the bottom 18" underground to prevent anything from digging under the fence. While we don't have many of the usual predators here (not even raccoons or skunks), with the public trail running past our property, there is some concern about dogs.

Of a bigger concern are attacks from the sky, so I used the deer fence that didn't work so well on the veggie garden to cover the run and keep out winged predators.

This second gate from the garden into the run will make it easier for me to bring them garden scraps. We also want to be able to let them into the garden from time to time for a change of scenery and to help clean things up at the end of the growing season.

I fashioned their roosts out of cedar decking and 1 x 4 cedar trim (which had been pre-stained). I sealed the cedar with the same non-toxic linseed oil product that we used on our butcher block countertops.

The east facing window provides them with a sunny spot to bask and preen in during the early morning hours...

...and I built a perch under it so that they can take in the view during the day. It's easy to tell who is at the top of the pecking order by observing who gets to sleep here at night - it's clearly their favorite spot.

I'm in a rush to build some nest boxes, as their faces are starting to turn red, which I understand is a sign that they're getting ready to lay. I'm thinking about building a "community" box as opposed to individual nests, as I keep hearing that they will all use the same one anyway. Any thoughts on this from those of you with chickens? My girls are a cuddly bunch, so I can't see it being a problem.

After all of that hard work, I think my favorite part of the coop project is the stepping stone that my daughter made to go in front of it. It makes me smile whenever I see it.

Now if only they would start laying!

Sour Puss

2009-09-06T18:07:00.006-07:00

Ours is a family that loves big flavors. Salty, bitter, spicy, sour - you name it, we love it. Even the kids adore things like garlic, dijon mustard, kalamata olives, and tonic water, which is a dream for me, 'cause there's no way I'd enjoy cooking nothing but plain pasta or white bread sandwiches.

One of our very favorite things is sauerkraut. A hot dog or reuben sandwich (veggie or otherwise) just isn't the same without it. I remember my grandmother making sauerkraut when I was a kid, but it's something that I've never been brave enough to try my hand at. The benefit of making your own kraut is that it can be left unpasteurised so that it will retain the healthy probiotic bacteria (similar to those found in yogurt) that are responsible for the fermentation process.

Until now, the thought of overseeing a crock of fermenting cabbage for several weeks has always seemed a bit daunting, but this year I decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.

I sliced up the heads of cabbage (one green, one purple so that I'd end up with pink sauerkraut) using my mandoline to ensure uniform thickness, and stirred it together with some sea salt (the cabbage didn't end up releasing enough juice on its own, so I had to make some extra brine to cover it). This is a very small batch, as I only used 2 1/2 pounds of cabbage instead of the 50 that the recipe called for, but I thought it best to start small.

I covered the cabbage with a layer of cheese cloth, tucking in the ends, and put a plate on top to keep the cabbage submerged. It's supposed to sit like this for several weeks, and the house already smells of fermenting cabbage, but I'm hopeful that we'll end up with something delicious. More to come...

Another treat with pucker power is the oh so lovely dill pickle. I made ten quart jars last week using my favorite recipe, and I can't wait until they're ready to eat.

Cukes chillin'.

Since we all love pickles on our burgers but don't always like to take the time to slice them, I was thrilled when I came across Dill Pickle Relish in a store last year. Thinking that was the smartest thing I'd heard of in a long time, I went on the hunt for a similar recipe. Canadian Living magazine is well known for its excellent recipes and cookbooks, so when I found a recipe for this relish on their site, I was pretty sure that it would fit the bill.

The resulting relish is a pretty close approximation to chopped pickles, but I'll probably tinker with it a bit the next time I make it (omitting the sugar and upping the amount of garlic to make it more like Kosher dills). In the meantime I'm sure it will be a nice addition to our winter meals.

Our weather has turned in the last day or two and it's suddenly feeling very much like autumn. The chickies have had their first taste of west coast weather and I'm not sure they're fans. They were so stunned by the sudden deluge that we had this morning that they just stood there looking confused and pathetic. After about 5 minutes of waiting for them to run inside, my daughter finally took pity on them and pushed them in through the pop-doors one by one (I guess they hadn't yet realized that it wouldn't be raining inside the coop as well). They've since figured it out, but they actually seem to be enjoying the light drizzle right now.

As for me, I'm sitting beside the first fire of the season, and enjoying a warm cup of chai.

Labor day indeed - ha!

What We're Harvesting Right Now

2009-09-02T13:03:00.007-07:00

Aside from complaining about four-legged invaders, I haven't really spoken much about the garden this summer so I thought I'd do a brief update.

Our soil is still really awful, so things still aren't doing as well as I would like. One of our friends described the soil here as "rock flour", and that's exactly what it is (a result of glacier movement over this area during the ice age). It's extremely fine, but it doesn't clump together like clay, so when you first dig it, it looks deceivingly rich and light, but a few days without rain and it reverts to its powdery form and blows away in the wind. It drains well enough, but there's almost no organic material in it, so whatever water it absorbs, it doesn't hold on to for very long. We amended it as much as we could this spring with horse manure, coconut husks, and compost, but it wasn't nearly enough. I'm madly composting piles of veggie scraps with chicken litter and seaweed that I've collected on the beach, so next year it will get another much-needed boost.

We had the hottest summer on record this year (Vancouver broke its all-time heat record one day [33.8 C] and then broke that record again the next day [34.4 C]). We got to 39 degrees celcius (102 F) in the shade here at our place, which is unheard of on the coast (we're higher up and farther from the water than much of the surrounding area, so we tend to get hotter summers and colder winters). We've also gotten less rainfall since April than ever before - our usually rainy spring was eerily dry. These extremes hindered many of the plants in the garden, but at least the eggplants are happy:

My favorite Dusky eggplants do well even during a cool summer, so they're going gangbusters with the heat. I picked the above two on the weekend, and there are 8 more on the the two plants outside. It's time to grill some eggplant.

The Rosa Bianca eggplants are arriving slightly later, but are also producing like crazy:

The Gold Rush and Romanesco zucchinis are producing well, but not so much that we're getting sick of them.

Bags of whole basil are being frozen for winter use. I used to turn much of my basil into pesto, but now I prefer to freeze it to use as I would fresh basil. It tastes as fresh in March as it did in August.

The tomatoes aren't doing very well, but I am getting a few a week. This is my first year growing the Nebraska Wedding variety, and they seem to be happy. I'm looking forward to getting my first taste of these orange beauties.

Our peach tree surprised us with over two dozen delicious fruits, even though we moved it from my mom's garden to our own after it had already started blooming this spring.

I had to smile this morning when I went to the garden and saw this fresh pile of deer droppings...on the outside of the garden fence.

The deer aren't taking it lying down, however. One of the gutsy little suckers actually came up on to the deck the other night and ate the plants that I was saving to plant around the chicken coop. This involved making the trek up the steps and walking 20 or so feet across the deck to where the plants were sitting - all this while we were sitting in the adjacent living room with the lights on! We heard a bump at the time, but thought it was the cat.

I hate being outsmarted by things that don't even have opposable thumbs.

The Must Make Jam of Summer

2009-08-30T09:59:00.005-07:00

If you're a fan of peach and raspberry jams, then you've got to give this recipe a try. It's the perfect blend of the two flavors, which go together unbelievably well, and the color of the resulting jam is amazing.

I made this for the first time a few years ago, and my kids loved it so much that they dubbed it "Mommy's Special Jam". It's especially good on freshly made crepes (one of our favorite desserts for those times when we're craving something but have nothing in the house).

Its real name is Peach Melba Jam, and you can find the recipe here.

Not being one to leave things be, I did change the recipe slightly. I actually like the added texture of raspberry seeds in jam, so rather than running the pulp through a sieve to remove them, I left them in. To make up the extra pulp that the seeds would be displacing, I added an extra 1/4 cup or so of raspberries (this has the added benefit of making a slightly softer jam, which I like). I got 8 jars out of the batch instead of 7.

I'd love to hear what you think if you try it!

Deer, oh dear.

2009-08-25T14:37:00.015-07:00

One thing I didn't have to contend with in my city garden was four footed garden pests. As long as the dog didn't get in and run roughshod over my plants, the only things I really had to worry about were slugs and aphids. Not so here in deer central.

We've been pretty lucky that our property doesn't seem to be on their main route. For most of the year, it's rare to see a deer in this neck of the woods, even though people across the street (on the lake front) seem to have them year round. Last year I left all of my plants unprotected for several months and they weren't even touched. Come July and August though, it was a different story. The pickings must get fairly slim at this time of year, because they suddenly start showing up in droves.

As annoying as it is to lose flowers and other ornamentals (they seem to particularly love anything labelled as deer proof), I've been tolerant of them and their nibbling because I understand their need to eat, and most of those things will recover eventually. Even so, I researched homemade deer repellents and started spraying my hostas and other tasty plants with the concoction. It really seems to work, as I recently had a new, unsprayed hosta sitting in a pot beside the sprayed ones in my garden, and it got eaten while the others were completely untouched.

Deer Repellent (this is a combination of a few recipes that I saw online):

Put a litre (quart) of water into a blender and add

1 egg
1 TBSP baking powder
1 large clove garlic

Blend until smooth, strain, and pour into a spray bottle. Spritz anything that the deer seem to like. Refrigerate any extra for a later application. This should remain effective for at least two weeks, unless there's a lot of rain.

We are in the process of installing a more permanent solution (deer fencing), but we recently had a breach that left me fuming and contemplating filling my freezer with venison.

When we first put in our garden, I bought 200 feet of fence from Benner's, which worked really well. This stuff is incredibly strong, and even works to keep the dogs out. The only problem is, it's also quite expensive, especially when you've got well over 1000 feet of fence line to protect. So I was understandably thrilled to discover that Lee Valley had deer fencing for $20 per 100 feet. It's very thin and lightweight (like the netting that you put over fruit trees to protect your harvest from birds), but the packaging assured me that the deer wouldn't go through it as long as they knew it was there. The only problem is, it catches on absolutely everything, so I was worried about birds getting entangled in it (I'd already cut a robin out of our badminton net this summer and didn't want a repeat), and the dogs plowing right through it in their galumphing. So we decided to move the heavier fencing from around the front of the garden to the perimeter of the yard, and put the flimsy stuff in its place around the veggie patch as a temporary measure (we'll eventually build a lower, sturdier fence to keep the dogs out). But, with all the work on the chicken coop, we still haven't managed to finish fencing the perimeter of the yard, so we'd been relying on the flimsy stuff to protect the garden. You know where this is going, don't you?

A few days ago, I was out in the garden and noticed footprints through my freshly planted bed of winter crops. I was slightly annoyed thinking that the dogs had somehow gotten in, but then I saw that the apple tree was looking less bushy, and the strawberry plants were bald. It was then that I noticed a section of fencing laying on the ground. Thinking that it had somehow gotten knocked down during the previous night's wind storm, we put it back in place and thought nothing of it.

That is, until I woke up the next morning and saw the fence laying on the ground again, with one apple tree leaning on a funny angle (and half of the apple harvest laying on the ground), and the other apple tree looking like this:

The main central branch is snapped off at its base.

Then I saw the cherry tree:

My winter broccoli crop is also a goner:

And the lovely pepper plant which is loaded with peppers is now missing it's top.

They also chewed my winter cabbages, ate the leaves off both grape vines, and decapitated the heritage bean plants that I was growing solely for seed for next years crop. An entire summer's worth of babying these plants and they're gone in 24 hours - grrrr!

To add insult to injury, they came back twice that day. My neighbor had to chase them out in the afternoon while we were out (and even fixed the fence for me - have I mentioned our wonderful neighbors?), only to have them return again a few hours later. It seems that once they figured out that they could pull down the fencing, there was no stopping them.

Needless to say, the Benner's fence is back around the garden, and there's a rush on to finish fencing the yard.

And the deer are damn lucky that my freezer is full of frozen berries...

My Summer So Far

2009-08-19T08:33:00.022-07:00

It almost seems unnecessary to explain my absence anymore - it's pretty much a given that there will be a good month or more between posts these days. Here's a brief update.

We've been busy working on "outside" things while the weather is good, namely the chicken coop.

The coop during the framing stage.

There's a lot to tell you about this little project, but I'll save it for the big reveal post (which will be soon - we're almost done!).

Bella (named for Bellatrix, our favorite Harry Potter "baddie").

The chickens are growing like weeds, and they're loving their new coop. I didn't want to move them in while we were still working on it because I thought the noise would be too much, but I couldn't handle having them in the basement anymore - they were starting to free range! They tolerate the sounds of construction better than I thought they would though, and as my neighbor joked, their only complaint about the new coop is that they no longer have cable TV.

The garden is doing fairly well, with some things faring better than others (isn't that always the case?). This is the first tomato of the season, a Cherokee Purple that I harvested a few weeks ago. We've also had a few Speckled Romans, and there are a lot more out there that are getting close.

Bonsai garlic of 2009.

The garlic was one of our major failures, with the lack of rain and fertile soil leaving them rather stunted. Considering that they started out as volunteers from last year's neglected crop, I can't really complain. My daughter is thinking about turning the tiny bulbs into earrings and wearing them as Edward Cullen repellent (unlike most girls her age, she's not a big fan of the Twilight books).

Last month we had a major thunder storm pass through the area - the sky was the most amazing golden colour right before it started. We sat with the lights off and watched the fork lightening dance across the sky all evening. The only one of us who wasn't impressed was poor Princess, who stayed under the bed for hours after it ended.

Today we're heading to the beach, to squeeze the last bit of summer out of the remaining days of August.

I hope you're having a great summer too!

Chocolate Fix

2009-07-09T08:34:00.013-07:00

I posted this recipe on my homelearning blog almost three years ago, but it's still such a favorite of ours that I thought I would post it over here as well, especially as I've been intending to share low cost recipes. When trying to lower one's food bill it's critical to cut out non-essentials, but thankfully chocolate cake doesn't fall into that category.

This recipe makes fantastic cupcakes as well.

There are many versions of this cake out there (Made-In-the-Pan Chocolate Cake, Vinegar Cake), and it's as easy as any store bought cake mix. What makes it penny wise is the fact that it requires no eggs or milk - it's basically flour, sugar, cocoa, and water. Don't let the simplicity of the recipe turn you off - it's unbelievably rich and moist and only improves with age (I actually prefer it the next day).

My daughter decided to bake one up the other day as it was raining outside (hallelujah!) and we were all lazing about enjoying the cooler temperatures. She doubled the recipe to fill a 9x13 pan, but accidentally put in waaay to much cocoa powder. Never one to throw away perfectly good ingredients, we tripled the batch (6 times the original recipe!) and ended up with three 9x13 cakes. I generally have no problem finding a way to dispose of chocolate cake, but this was a little much even for me, so we sent one off to live with my mom and chocolate-loving step dad, and divided the second one between our two closest neighbors. We've almost polished off the third one, and it's still scrumptious almost 4 days later.

You can find the recipes for the cake and frosting here (we baked our doubled batch for about 45 minutes). The frosting recipe will give you more than enough for a single cake or batch of cupcakes, but we doubled it to cover all three of our large cakes.

3 Years, 300 Posts

2009-07-06T00:00:00.007-07:00

I noticed while going through my list of posts the other day that it was coming up to three years since I started writing this blog. I was also getting close to having written 300 posts. Without too much effort on my part (unless you count my squeezing out yesterday's brief comment on the state of my laundry), the two seem to have coincided on the same day, which is more than just a little weird. Surely that must mean something, but I'm not exactly sure what.

I don't know what else I can say that I didn't already say in my misty-eyed one year anniversary post, except that someone once told me to write down what it was that I wished for, and that "putting it out there" would help make those dreams a reality - this blog is proof that it works.

One of my favorite photos of our old garden.

For those of you who haven't been around for the whole three years (heck, who has - I know I certainly haven't been!), I thought I'd share a few of my favorite and most popular posts.

The post on Mason bees gets so much traffic from Google that I can't believe I almost didn't write it!

My attempts at making butter using a stand mixer is another favorite. What's not to love about freshly made butter?

The recipe for homemade granola was so scandalous (okay, not really) that it was labelled as "porn" by the gang over at Slashfood.

We were very excited about how quickly our house sold, and what that sale meant for our ability to buy our dream property.

Click here to see all of the changes that we made to that house.

Getting lots of scrapes and boo boos this summer? Maybe some homemade calendula salve would help.

Finally, I would like to thank my darling hubby for helping to make all of this possible. We've learned so much together over the years, and if he doesn't know how to do something, he's always willing to give it a go.

It means a lot to me that so many of you take the time to come around and see what I'm rambling about at any given time. I don't know if I've got three more years in me, but I hope you'll keep checking in whenever you get a chance!

This Is Ridiculous

2009-07-05T10:45:00.009-07:00

Okay, I realize we've got a million other projects on the go (the chicken coop being priority number one at the moment), but I don't know how much longer I can go on like this:

We seriously need to hurry up and build a laundry line.

I really miss my clothes line!!

Hen Pecked

2009-06-29T22:42:00.008-07:00

We had our first case of picking among the chicks today. We have noticed them jostling for dominance lately, establishing the pecking order of the group, but this afternoon things went a little farther than it should have. Sometime between my afternoon visit and when I went down to take them some leftover greens after dinner, one of the White Wyandottes had a large bloody spot on her back and another one below her vent. I've seen them occasionally pulling at each other's feathers during their little tiffs (which are never very bad), but I think today one of them actually pulled hard enough to dislodge an adult feather, resulting in some blood, which on her white feathers stood out like a beacon for the rest of them to pick at.

Needless to say, she has been removed from the group for the time being. The insect cage that the mantises recently vacated has been repurposed as an isolation cage. Luckily it's just the right size to tuck into a corner of the brooder, meaning she can stay close to her friends (and the heat lamp) until she heals up.

Alan's wondering why he can't get in to those nice full bowls of food .

There was a bit of confusion while they all figured out why they couldn't get in to that area of the brooder anymore (and why she couldn't get out), but everyone has since calmed down and they are even managing to cuddle with her through the screen at naptime.

Hopefully she heals quickly and this is the last time we see anything like this for a while.

Praying for Garden Pests

2009-06-28T22:29:00.010-07:00

We've experimented with adding several different kinds of beneficial insects to our garden community over the years. We introduced ladybugs one spring and had fun watching them multiply by the hundreds over the summer (click here to see our photos of the ladybug lifecycle in action). Mason bees are another insect that we have encouraged to take up residence in our garden. With honeybee populations dwindling in some areas, we may eventually come to depend on mason bees and other lesser known pollinators to keep our plants productive.

Some good friends of ours, fellow homelearners, ordered Praying Mantis egg sacs (or "ooths") from a science supply company this spring and ended up with an extra one, which they kindly offered to us. The literature said that each of these dried-fig-shaped egg cases could produce between 100 and 400 baby mantids, which quickly begin cannibalizing each if they're not separated, which they keep doing until there's only one left standing. Since we weren't particularly interested in hosting insect gladiator battles, and we haven't got nearly that many bug cages, we had to come up with a plan B. It occured to me that I remembered reading that mantises are good to have in the garden, as they are voracious eaters who will make quick work of all kinds of garden pests, including aphids, mosquitoes and caterpillars when they are young, and beetles, flies, wasps, crickets, and grasshoppers when they are fully grown. The decision was made to give them their freedom rather than keeping them as pets. I'm hoping that they also have a taste for termites and carpenter ants, which are two things that we have in abundance around here.

We hung our egg case up in our insect cage (which has housed stick insects and served as a brooder for several generations of butterflies over the years) a month or so ago and pretty much left it to its own devices. I had almost forgotten about it until one morning last week when I noticed that we suddenly had a cage full of mantid nymphs:

Close-up of the ooth.

We kept them in the cage for a little while so that we could observe them and their behaviour, but when it became clear that there weren't going to be any more hatching, we decided to release them into the garden rather than watch them make a buffet brunch of their brothers and sisters.

We let them go several dozen at a time in various spots around the yard, and they seemed happy to be free.

They're cute little things when they're only a day old, but I'm not looking forward to coming face to face with this guy anytime soon.

Chick Update

2009-06-24T07:51:00.016-07:00

I woke up to the sound of rain this morning and did a little happy dance. It's been well over a month since we've had any precipitation here (except for a couple of minor sprinkles that didn't even get the ground wet), so my garden is suffering, as I've been avoiding watering too much in an effort to not drain our well dry. We (stupidly) didn't have our rain barrels set up before the last major rainfall, thinking we still had lots of time. June is fairly wet in these parts (in fact, we often call it Junuary), so gardens usually have time to get well established before the heat and dry weather sets in, but not this year, so many of my plants aren't as far ahead as I'd like them to be.

What is growing like crazy is our brooder full of chicks! They quickly outgrew their 3 X 3 enclosure in our mudroom and needed a larger space to roam. As fate would have it, someone offered up some large plywood shipping crates on Freecycle that week, and we snapped one up to house the chickens until we get the coop finished.

The box is about 4 1/2 feet by 5 1/2 feet, by 18 inches tall, and we added a row of 2 x 10's around the top so they can try out their wings without flying out entirely (although we're going to have to add a screen on top very soon, because they're getting close). Because of its size, we've had to put the new brooder downstairs. This spot is ideal, because they get direct sunlight for some of the day, and at night we lay cardboard across most of the top to keep in the heat.

Princess keeping an eye on things.

The kids like the new brooder because there's room enough for them to climb in for a visit!

As for the chicks themselves, they're growing like weeds! Everyone is healthy and happy and quickly becoming like members of the family. I don't usually like to play favorites, but I think I have one. She's a Speckled Sussex, and I think she's just about the prettiest thing ever. She runs and hops into my hand whenever I stop by to say hello, and if I take her out to hold her, she curls up and falls asleep in the crook of my neck, trilling happily to herself.

Her sister, however, is not such a fan, and refuses to be held. I can tell them apart not only by their reactions to me, but because the cuddly one has those dark spots just above her beak.

Another favorite is Reepicheep (named after the warrior mouse in Prince Caspian - click here to see a clip from the movie), my son's Blue Laced Red Wyandotte. She's an adventurous gal who loves to play. Here you see her enjoying a horsey ride. You've heard of a boy and his dog? Well, I think we might have to revise that a bit...

The mystery of the Faverolles also seems to have been solved, as their feathers have come in enough for us to tell whether they are male and female, and the consensus seems to be that we have one of each (yay!). The female is called Sadie, and the male has been dubbed Alan A'Dale, after a character in Robin Hood who was portrayed by a singing rooster in the Disney version (click play below to watch a clip - careful, the song is really catchy!).

Babies

2009-06-16T20:04:00.023-07:00

As if there weren't enough things to distract me from blogging, having a box or peeping fluffballs to watch certainly doesn't help!

The post office in Blaine, WA, called bright and early last Monday (6:15 to be exact), to let us know that the chicks had arrived, and you'd have thought a family member had gone into labor with the flurry of activity that ensued! My mom had offered to pick them up for us, since border rules changed on June 1st, making it so that a passport is required to enter the US, and mine expired years ago. Thankfully the crossing was pretty quick at that time in the morning, so we had only just gotten to Vancouver by the the time they were on their way back. There was a bit of a panic when they couldn't find the health papers (which were under the chicks inside the box - seems like poor planning to me), but it turns out that it's suprisingly easy to import live animals into Canada!

Our first peek at the chicks - everyone seems to be in great shape!

All of the chicks were alive and well, and the hatchery included a second Salmon Faverolles male as a bonus. We spent a little while getting the chicks fed and watered, and set up a temporary brooder box for the trip home.

We got them home and set up in the main brooder, and everyone seemed to be happy (it's a little scary in the beginning - there are so many things that can go wrong!). But by Tuesday evening, it became apparent to me that one of the Salmon Faverolles wasn't doing so well. It was chirping loudly and swaying back and forth on its feet. I kept an eye on it for a while, but by morning it had really gone downhill. I spent all day Wednesday trying to nurse the poor babe back to health, feeding it softened food and vitamin water drop by drop, but nothing seemed to help, and she (he?) got progressively weaker. By that evening, another of the Faverolles was starting to exhibit the same symptoms. I separated them from the others for the night, and by morning, the second one had died. The first one was still clinging to life, but within an hour or two, she was gone too. It still seems odd to me that we would lose two of the same breed for no apparent reason, but one of them did have an eye gummed shut when it arrived on Monday (we managed to soak it open), and two of the Faverolles (we're assuming these two) were chirping very loudly all the time, as if they were in distress. We were joking about it actually, that the breed we got because they were supposedly so quiet turned out to be the loudest of the bunch. I guess they might have had something wrong with them from the beginning. Now the question is, who survived? Do we now have two Faverolles males? Two females? It even occurred to me that they might have sent an extra because they knew they were having problems with them - who knows. Hopefully it will turn out that we still have one of each.

On the bright side, the rest of the chicks are doing really well. They seem to have bonded with us and come running when we go in to see them (especially when they think I've brought them corn on the cob!).

My daughter and I tried to get some good photos of them when they were about 5 days old so we would remember what they all looked like. Here are the resulting "baby" photos:

New Hampshire Red

Salmon Faverolles

Australorp

Dark Brahma

White Wyandotte

Delaware

Red Star

Buff Orpington

Barred Plymouth Rock

Jersey Giant

Speckled Sussex

Black Star

Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

Rhode Island Red

The kids have been giving them the occasional bug, and one of the Barred Rocks seems to be the huntress of the group, snapping them up before anyone else knows what's going on.

First time outside!

We're enjoying this latest adventure immensely, and in the words of my son, "I want to always have chickens!"

Chicken Run Around

2009-06-07T22:16:00.008-07:00

One of our (my) main reasons for leaving the city was that local bylaws didn't allow us to have a flock of backyard chickens (of course, less than a year after we moved, they changed the rules).
Once we got our occupancy permit for the new house and were able to negotiate a regular, non-construction mortgage (back in mid March), we were finally able to relax a bit and start thinking about things other than the inside of the house (not that it's finished, mind you, but we can live with it).
I started researching hatcheries early in the spring, looking specifically for heritage and rare breed chickens, and preferrably sexed so that we could control the number of roosters we'd end up with (because as we've already established, I'm not going to be dispatching animals anytime soon). I found one that sounded perfect, but after placing my order and waiting for several weeks to hear back (the website was very reassuring that they were just busy and would be in touch), I finally managed to get ahold of the owner only to be told that their posted minimum of 24 chicks required for delivery is actually a minimum of 50 if they're being sent by airmail (why the website doesn't mention this, I don't know). After much deliberation, we decided to go ahead and order the 50 and find homes for the ones we didn't need. But, after nearly 2 more weeks of not hearing back from him, we gave up and started looking elsewhere (he did eventually get back to me three days ago - a good month later - to tell me that he couldn't fill our order. Good thing we didnt' wait).
We more or less gave up on getting the breeds we were after (my daughter was desperate for her Salmon Faverolles), as there wasn't much variety available from local breeders at this point, and rare breeds are, not surprisingly, kind of hard to find. I was beginning to think we'd have to order sex-link hybrids to at least ensure that we'd be getting females, but then we discovered that McMurray Hatchery would ship an order to the nearest US town and provide all the paperwork necessary to bring the chicks into Canada. Yay!
So, long story short, we've got 26 little fuzzballs arriving sometime in the next couple of days! We ordered 23 females, 1 straight run, and 1 male. We wanted one rooster to act as a watch dog, and decided to go with the Salmon Faverolle male, as they are reportedly very sweet and quiet, and are one of the best looking roosters out there. The females are:

2 Salmon Faverolles
2 Black Australorps
2 Dark Brahmas
2 New Hampshire Reds
2 Barred Rocks
2 Buff Orpingtons
2 Delawares
2 White Wyandottes
2 Speckled Sussex
1 Rhode Island Red
1 Blue Laced Red Wyandotted (this one's a straight run, so it could be male or female)
1 Jersey Giant
2 Black Stars
2 Red Stars

I decided to get a few of the hybrids (the Stars) because I'm going to be providing eggs for my mom's Bed and Breakfast and wanted to be sure that we'd have a consistent supply (and besides, they're just pretty).
One of my husband's co-commuters (he travels to work in a van pool) is also a small scale chicken/egg farmer, and he finds our mixed-bag chicken order (as well as the whole concept of choosing chickens based on looks and personality) rather amusing. I may never be a hardcore poultry farmer, but I think I've discovered a new obsession - there are many more breeds out there that I'm dying to get. Maybe "poultry collector" is a more accurate description.

We found this video on Youtube today. It's a segment from Dirty Jobs (a great show, if you've never seen it) where Mike Rowe goes to McMurray Hatchery to learn about chicken sexing. It's a little alarming to see what the poor things go through before they're stuffed in boxes and mailed to their new homes, but it's exciting to know that they're finally on their way!