Homestead Happiness and Progress February Week 4

Winter returned with a vengeance this week, dumping two 8+" storms on us, and never really stopping in between.  Its sunny today, but were supposed to get another couple inches overnight and tomorrow.

As a result, the homestead looks like this, and most of our time was spent getting to and from work.  However...

On Friday, a large round of robins descended upon our boxelder tree, probably to discuss why they were in such a hurry to head north.  Theres at least two dozen of them there, and probably more hiding behind the snowy branches.

Look at em all in there!

It sure doesnt look like spring, but theyre here!  A tell-tale sign that the actual spring is not far behind, which is good enough for this week.

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Homestead Happiness June Week 4

Lots of developments on fruits, vegetables, and wildflowers this week made us happy.

The creeping bellflower, which is kindly filling in our less-maintained areas with purple June/July flowers, is in full bloom.

Its an invasive species, but other than being an aggressive spreader and difficult to eradicate, its not as bad as some invasives.  For example, this patch s a hotspot for bee activity.

The squirrels won round two also, picking 90% of our strawberries while they were still green, even with the quick and dirty strawberry cage in place.  So either the woven wire fencing has too large of holes, or were battling mice instead of squirrels.  (Or were battling jedi squirrels that can pick the strawberries using The Force...we know they exist.)  We made our quick and dirty strawberry cage slightly less quick but even more dirty by covering it with 1/2" hardware cloth.

Weve got an especially delicious-looking strawberry that no squirrel could possibly resist as a test probe.  If it gets picked, our problem is definitely mice.

It looks like we might actually get some raspberries in year two.  Only a handful, but hey!  You gotta start somewhere.

We were thinking we would get skunked on apples, plums, and sour cherries this year since there were only a few flowers on the plums (none on the apples and cherries) and we couldnt find fruit on anything.  But behold!  There are a few plums we had missed.  Were going to have four of them come September.  Quadruplets would normally be very exciting, but its a good thing we made so much jam last year!

Similarly, the Nanking cherries seem to have survived the winter ok and will be ripening soon.  Our likely-bird-planted versions compete with other shrubs and weeds in the shady areas of our yard, so we dont usually get enough of these to do anything with but make a light snack.  But theyre really good, so maybe we should do some plant propagation experiments to give them a chance to reach their full permaculture potential.

Finally, the corn is definitely going to be "knee high by the fourth of July" since its already thigh-high now!  Were currently devising squirrel-deterring plans for when the ears start to ripen.

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness February Week 3

Were still fine-tuning some of the experimental details on our eggshell leavening, but it was otherwise a productive week around the homestead (thanks to some unseasonably warm weather!).  Heres what made us happy this week.

We got another batch of wine started, this one from frozen black raspberries.  They had been in the freezer since July of 2004!  They say a fine wine improves with age, guess well find out if that applies to aging before fermentation, too.  At least, the berries still tasted good!  Also, starting the wine meant Jake could clean up the mess that the berries made in the fridge while they were thawing.  That made Katie extra happy.

Outside, highs in the 50s and 60s (°F) made for happy playing in the dirt, including playing musical berries.  We transplanted dormant strawberries out to the garden where we can protect them with the motion detector sprinklers, and dormant raspberries to the place vacated by the strawberries since they werent thriving in their original location.  Also, Musical Berries is going to be the name of our new family band.

Also on the yard work list was chopping out the remaining stump from the tree of heaven, filling the hole with dirt, and planting another tree in its place.  Some of the old stump pieces had termites, which the chickens liked a lot.  In fact, they were willing to brave a battlefield of flying wood chips to get to them, and with 100% survival rate.  Weve got ninja chickens! (Never mind, were going to call our band Ninja Chickens.)

In the process of our eggshell leavening experiments, we also made a big pile of wood ashes, which well use in a future set of leavening experiments.  The connection between these two will become apparent in the near future.

The rhubarb is alive!

The chives are also alive!  Its always nice to know the plants are starting to think springly thoughts, too.  The weather, on the other hand, is very ambivalent--after highs in the 60s on Saturday, we got a nice blanket of snow last night!

The chickens are also revving up their egg production--four eggs in four of the last five days.  Keep up the good work, ladies!

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness for March Week 2

We skipped our HAP post last week because there wasnt too much to report on, other than the potato starch experiment.  We mostly did that, played in the snow, and tried to figure out why our bees died (more on that in a few days).  But there were a few snippets of progress this week.  Heres how we entertained ourselves:

We had collected our soil samples back in early February, when the ground was unfrozen and dry from a warm and sunny January.  But we finally got the dirt fully dry and broke up all the chunks.

That meant it was ready to bag it up and send to Massachusetts for nutrient and heavy metal testing!  Hopefully we only have to do the metal testing once, since its expensive.

Saturday was Pi Day.  Were trying to cut down on our sugar consumption, but on a nerdy holiday that celebrates with dessert, we didnt stand a chance.  The recipe was essentially this.

Free composting/mulching materials.  Thanks, Craigslist!

REUBENS!!!!

Ok, the real St. Patricks Day isnt until Tuesday, but Sunday was the start of Irish Food Week here at the Lab.  Plus, we couldnt wait until Tuesday to cook up our corned beast because weve got pesky obligations that last all day, e.g., off-homestead work.

What made you happy this week?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Homestead Happiness and Progress HAP This Week

Weve noticed in past years that we start to develop some symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), of a sort.  The weird thing is, it seems to be out of phase with the time of year that its supposed to crop up, that being the winter doldrums when sunshine is in short supply.  For us, and we wonder if also for many other part-time homesteaders, the winter isnt so bad because theres not a ton of stuff to do homesteading-wise (except dream and plan), so our off-farm responsibilities dont really get in the way of anything.

But then,  the air starts to get warmer, the ground starts to dry out, and the days start to get longer, but are still short enough that daylight hours are in precious short supply.  Thats when it hits us--when we want to get out in the yard and do stuff, but its already dark (or nearly so) when we get home from work.  So, to combat the worst effects of our out-of-phase SAD, were starting a new (hopefully weekly) series featuring simple things that made our day around the homestead. Itll remind us that even if we cant spend as much time on homesteady stuff as wed like, theres still plenty to be happy about and progress is still being made.  That is, were going to combat SAD with HAP.

This is a schematic representation of our out-of-phase SAD.  For full-time homesteaders, we imagine a flat line right at the top.  Another way to interpret the graph is to imagine the red line as homestead responsibilities and the blue line as how caught up with them we are.

Happy thing #1: The bees are still alive!  Even after adding a big ol candy board, we hadnt seen the cluster for a few weeks and couldnt hear much buzzing in the hive.  But on warm days, theres plenty of activity and usually a few dead bees pushed out the bottom entrance (which is good because it means there are still housekeeping activities going on inside).

The Meyer lemon tree finally has flowers again!  It had struggled through several years, and not even put out flowers the last couple, so hopefully well actually get some lemons this year!  Maybe we should put it out by the bees and hope they pollinate it!

Rapidly growing avocado tree.  Its now taller than an avocado!  If we can keep it alive, we might even start to see fruit in a mere 5-13+ years.

The Swiss chard is still alive and starting to pick up again.  We didnt have much insulation on it, just a closed in row cover, and hit -10 °F multiple times.  But the chard is a real trooper!

A new bag-drying configuration.  We finally figured out what to do with that kitchen window opening, those two eyelet hooks, and that piece of string we didnt want to throw out!  [Katie rolls her eyes.]  They dry way faster here than standing inverted on the counter or in the dishwasher Murphy-style drying rack.

Right now they drip dry into a couple plant pots...water conservation at its finest!  In the future well put in a planter there that looks like it actually fits there.  With the bags hung symmetrically, and the light coming through the window just right, this setup looks almost...decorative. [Katie rolls her eyes again.]

What made you happy on your homestead this week?

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HAP November week 4 Happy Thanksgiving from THL!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We wanted to make a slight variation on our normal homestead Happiness-and-Progress posts and give a quick rundown of some of the things were thankful for.

First: you! THL broke the 50k all-time-pageview barrier this week.  While thats pretty small compared to most real blogs, its still humbling (and motivating!) to realize we have an actual audience outside our immediate family.  So, thanks for reading!

Second: a yard in which to do all our goofy experiments, and which also looks nice and scenic while being coated in gently-falling snow.

Third: Craigslist, which not only lets us find great deals like this trailer, but also lets us meet lots of friendly and interesting people in the process.  Its easy to forget when watching and reading the news, but theres a lot of good people in this world.  Theres also a lot of good free horse manure, and this little beauty will be hauling a significant portion of it to our yard.

Fourth: a not-empty freezer and pantry.  See also: item #2.

Fifth: the holiday season, with its abundant homemade treats.  Sugar high will be in effect from now through the new year.  Hooray for the holidays!

What are you thankful for?

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Homestead Happiness June Week 1

Summer is really kickin into gear around here, and although the spring was a struggle for garden prep and pollinators, theres some good news from the Lab on both fronts this week.

Our wildflowers (Erysimum, Wallflowers) from a few weeks ago were joined in bloom by some feral roses this week.

We havent seen many bees on either of those, but the wallflowers are being worked by some hover flies.  We think this specimen is Eristalis arbustorum.

Meanwhile, the hawthorn a few feet away has its own ecosystem of insects pollinating it.  Another hover fly (probably a Drone fly), a blue bottle fly, some small feral bee (or small feral bee-imitating hover fly) we couldnt identify, and the honey bees we were hoping to see there.  There were at least two other species that we couldnt get good photos of.  But, in trying to identify these bugs, we learned that the larval stage of many hover flies (although not of these two) eat aphids, and some eat scale and other garden pests.  So, stick around, hover flies, well need you soon! (...and feel free to check out the scale on our Meyer lemon tree; we set it by the driveway for you.)

In the garden, our squash have sprouted!

The kale is also up, although it would have been nice to get this in the ground several weeks ago.

Meanwhile, our tomato plants seem to have largely survived (so far) the bi-daily hail storms weve been getting.  We did have to replace a couple pepper plants in what were referring to as a jalapeno emergency.

Strawberry season is so close we can taste it.

We also got a double-yolked egg from our Red Star hen that broke the 4-oz barrier.  We think there should be an additional category for eggs this large.

What made you happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness April Week 4

Plenty of bee-related news has us kind of giddy this week.

Our new bee package arrived on Saturday.  The local distributor sold more than 1,500 packages, which meant it was a total zoo for picking them up, and that our bees will have some competition for the neighborhood flowers.  Still, its nice to see such an interest in beekeeping, and theyll definitely have first dibs on the dandelions in our yard!

The new bees are already taking full advantage of the pollen in our dandy-filled yard.  Keep up the good work, ladies!

As a side note, in preparing the hive for the new package, we ended up finding the old queen.  Turns out she didnt die in the great yellow jacket war of 2014, and we can rule out that they absconded last fall.  That leaves either CCD, or too heavy of losses from the yellow jackets to make it through the winter.  Should we start a portrait collection of our queens for future colonies to look back on and remember their storied history?  This was Elizabeth I.  Right now we have Elizabeth II.

The bees came just in time, too, because our strawberries are starting to bloom!  Weve got the squirrel cage set...now if we can just get all the mice trapped out of the adjacent shed before the berries ripen, we might actually get some to eat this year!  Also, to the fruit trees waiting to flower: ready, go!

We also realized that swarm season and hunting season are complementary.  So, if we put a ladder stand in one of our trees now as a support for a swarm trap, we can turn it back into a hunting stand later when we either catch a swarm, or when swarm season is over in July.  Either way, it will be ready in time for deer season! (Although we probably wont be able to hunt deer from the stand in its current location.)

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness April Week 1

Overwintered crops, physical acquisition of seeds, workable soil, and gypsy ducks made us happy this week.

The chard and garlic under the row cover are really taking off.

Compared to the stuff planted the same week last fall outside the row cover, this garlic is at least an order of magnitude larger.  Plus, the chickens may have eaten the unprotected garlic.

Ducks in the front yard?  We only saw them one day though, so they must be transients.  Maybe we should build a second nest box in case any others stop by.

The fruit trees and dandelions are starting to bloom.  That led us to stand in the yard yelling at the trees to slow down, because our bees arent coming for another two weeks.  That, in turn, led the neighbors to wonder if we had finally gone over the edge.  But our fruit trees seem to be lagging the neighbors, so maybe it worked!

Fresh chives for breakfast!

We were able to start turning over some new garden beds, which was good since were already behind schedule on starting seeds and direct sowing things like onions.  Our hope was that taking off the sod with a mattock and piling it on the bed would inspire the chickens to scratch through the clumps, in the process knocking off the topsoil.  Unfortunately, they seemed mostly uninterested in it...until we took off the sod ourselves and covered it in compost.

Seeds arrived! Time to get our plant on.

 What made you happy this week?

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