Let Me Sum Up
by jericho | June 26, 2012 at 03:15 PM | categories: sheep, yurt, chickens, maine | View CommentsAs you can tell from our long hiatus from blog posting, the growing season has officially begun! Everything that has happened to us in the past month is worthy of about 20 blog posts, but I recognize that we will never get around to writing them all so I have decided to sum things up as best I can.
THE YURT
Last time we posted, the yurt had been raised (with lots of help from friends and family- Thank you all!) and we were getting ready to move onto phase three of our living quarters this year. We waited to transfer our stuff into the yurt until after a rainstorm so we could make sure that it was watertight. Rain came. The yurt stayed dry! Amazing! This is unfortunately not the end of the story. As the rain continued (and continued and continued) a few drips appeared here and there. Nothing a few strategically placed buckets couldn't handle. Then, one day the drips increased to the point that we decided to at least move our bed out of there and back to the cabin. When I went back to check the yurt later that day the entire floor was flooded.
Rising to the challenge, we decided that our best option for waterproofing would be to cover the whole thing with plastic, which we did with lots of help from the Mazzeis. Here is a picture of our new,improved yurt. In some ways the ropes actually make it look a little bit more authentic. Go figure.
The story ends happily with us back in the yurt and no more floods (keep your fingers crossed for us please). Phew.
THE LIVESTOCK
You know how in my first post about chickens I mentioned that none of our chicks had died yet? Well, they continued that way until they were nice and big and just about ready to eat. Then, one morning Jean-Paul was greeted at morning chores by one chicken that was lying down, unable to get up but still alive. We brought the sick chicken inside to get warm, tried to get some food and water down its throat and kept an eye on it. A few days later the chicken was no worse, but had not shown any improvement so we put it down, thinking that if it was sick it would be better to kill it before it spread anything.
We then kept watching our other chickens carefully and started adding some apple cider vinegar to their water. Some people say that this helps to prevent coccidiosis, a parasite that chickens sometimes get and may have been the reason for our sick chick. Everybody seemed ok until a couple of weeks later when Jean-Paul again had an unpleasant surprise in the form of a dead chicken. At this point, I called our local Extension Agent and she suggested that we could take the dead chicken to the necropsy lab at UMaine to find out what was wrong. As Lincoln said, it's kind of like CSI, but for chickens.
To our relief, the lab results showed no horrible contagious diseases or parasite, but rather that our chicken had pnuemonia caused by a "crop problem". The crop is located at the base of the esophagus and is essentially a little food storage tank. When food is available, the chickens can eat a bunch all at once, but then store it in the crop to be digested over a longer period of time. Apparently our bird had a blockage of grain in the crop which then somehow caused it to get pnuemonia. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot that can be done to prevent this problem. Just cross our fingers and hope the other birds have better digestive systems.
Onto the sheep. They are wonderful and cute and I love them (and yes, despite all of that I am still going to eat them). I mean, they are definitely not the perfect children or anything: they sometimes try to push through the fence, get tangled up, and then escape and go leaping off across the field; and thus far they don't have a shelter because they have pretty much destroyed the two shelters that we have tried to put in there by jumping on top of them (it's tricky to make a shelter that is light enough to move twice a day, but sturdy enough to withstand sheep playtime). Despite their foibles they are fun to have around because they are helping to mow and fertilize the hay field, and they are just adorable.
The one with the most outstanding personality looks a little bit like an Ewok so we named him Wicket. Sticking with this Star Wars convention, the others are Jaba, Chewbacca, and Storm Troopers number 1 and 2 (we can't tell those two apart yet). Can you guess who's who?
THE GARDEN
For a while there we thought that all of our hard work was either going to be devoured by slugs, drowned in 6 inches of rain, stifled by sod, or just remain stunted for lack of nutrients in our soil. However, just in the last week or so things started looking up. While Morgan, Cole, Parker and I were weeding the brassicas yesterday I even found some tiny heads of broccoli forming!!!
All in all, it's been a pretty exhausting month. I'm not gonna lie: I've cried a lot and sometimes it is hard not to want to just give up. This is when it is really good to have a partner in crime: when I am ready to throw in the towel, JP is there with hugs and reassurance, and when he is overcome by pessimism I bring on the optimism and am ready to figure out how to get through our most recent crisis. But it is definitely hard sometimes. I think this is the appropriate time to say: c'est la vie, right?
HEY! We have made it through half of the year though! Amazing to think about really. That means there is time to double the adventures that we have had so far this year. Hmmmm....Should I be happy about that? I think so. We've learned so much already and though I am sure there will be more challenges to come, perhaps the second half of the year's adventures will be a little less traumatic and a little more fun.
Happy Summer Everyone!
Yurt II: The Yurt Returns
by jean-paul | May 22, 2012 at 09:00 AM | categories: yurt, maine | View CommentsWith the season now in full swing, finding time to actually reflect on what's happening is harder and harder. All of the farm projects are exciting, engrossing, and educational (usually heavy on the education, if you catch my drift), but I'm so glad when my head hits the pillow at night. This also makes me intensely appreciative whenever someone lends a hand. Jericho and I were fortunate enough to have a great group of family and friends do just that for us the weekend before last, at our yurt raising work party.
This was the second time we put up the structure. The first time wasn't too bad, and this time was even smoother. First, cribbing on which to level the platform.
You might think that's my overseer stance, but actually it's my I'm-tired-from-carrying-these-platform-pieces stance.
Then come the walls. One, two, four. You might thing three would be in there somewhere, but it's not.
And a door.
Next the roof, which consists of a ring and about a million rafters. Fortunately we had lots of help to move the rafters.
Then the canvas goes over the roof.
The crown goes on and then the canvas for the walls.
And then it's a yurt!
Though we've been living in a cabin without electricity for the last four months (albeit less than a quarter mile from my mom's, where there is electricity), we decided we wanted electricity at the yurt. Beyond the obvious, there's a very practical motivation for this.
Last weekend we got the solar panels installed and set up some electric fence. The electric fence is part of another story, though. Tune in next time for more on that.
Vegetables (In Progress)
by jean-paul | May 03, 2012 at 09:00 AM | categories: vegetables, maine | View CommentsLast time I wrote here, it was the end of March and we were enjoying some unseasonally warm weather. Now it's the beginning of May and the weather is back to normal - which means it's a bit colder now than it was. And it's wet.
Wait, let me be more specific. The Sunday before last it rained six inches. Over the following week it rained two more inches. Last week it rained another two inches. We put a 100 gallon tank out in the field. It's three quarters full now. So... a lot of field work has been suspended, since it's unpleasant, difficult, and damaging to try to work out there in several inches of standing water and mud that grabs onto your boots and holds tight.
Still, the vegetables are coming along. Our hoop house is working out really well. The days of moving one or two dozen flats of seedlings indoors overnight are long gone. Now happily inhabiting the hoop house full time are flats of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, beets, green peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, fennel, onions, leeks, shallots, a couple kinds of flowers, and even a little bit of lettuce.
One thing I've learned about seedlings is a problem called damping off
.
This is a description of symptoms more than cause, but the causes seem to
mostly be fungal. An unfortunate number of our touchstone beets have
succumbed to this. Here's a healthy touchstone and one affected by damping
off:
The touchstone seem to be much more succeptible to this than the merlin variety. The merlins look a bit better overall, in fact: ours have germinated more reliably than our touchstones, and they look tougher than the touchstones that did come up (even the healthy ones).
Yellow beets, though. That's worth it, right?
We've also direct seeded a few things - carrots, beets, peas, salsify, spinach, turnips - out in the field. Despite how wet it is, these (as well as the kohlrabi, beets, and chard we transplanted out a little while ago) are doing pretty well. Our raised beds are probably partly responsible for the big puddles, but they also mean the plants are up out of standing water (which I can only guess is a good thing).
How do I know those things are doing well? Mostly because of this:
It's not extremely obvious from these pictures that we're planting into raised beds (but we are). These are about three feet wide and three or four inches above the pathways between them. As with the garlic bed, they're a hundred feet long. And as with the garlic bed, we're making them without powered equipment. Last fall, Jericho figured out what our soil is missing based on soil analysis results from the extension service. So the first thing we do to make these beds is amend them.
Then it's time for the mattock (yes, I was thinking about minecraft the whole time) and garden rake to move soil from the pathway onto the bed. The garlic also looks and smells awesome.
Although I have started to notice quite a few slugs clinging to them (I'm sure they love the near constant drizzel and absolute lack of direct sunlight).
Based on our crop plan, harvest starts tomorrow. Let's just say the plan is flexible.
Finally, here's a quick chicken update (I know the title of this post
is Vegetables
, but I've decided to make the chickens honorary
vegetables). On Tuesday we moved them outside into the trailer Jericho built.
So far they're doing swell and enjoying scratching up the grass. And they
continue to grow at an incredible rate.
Introducing The Livestock
by jericho | April 22, 2012 at 09:32 AM | categories: chickens, maine | View CommentsSo much has happened in the last couple of weeks that we are going to need to write four or five blog posts in order to catch you all up, but perhaps the most exciting event was the arrival of our first batch of chicks!!! Back in March (or perhaps it was February?) I ordered chicks from Freedom Ranger Hatchery in Reinholds, Pennsylvania. Most of the meat birds raised these days are Cornish Crosses which have been bred for intense meat production (especially on the breast) at the expense of hardiness and foraging ability (because why would they need to forage if we are only feeding them grain?). So although large breasted meaty birds have a certain appeal, we decided to go with Freedom Rangers. Our chickens are supposed to be great pasture birds and have a wonderful flavor that makes it worth the extra few weeks they take to grow. We will certainly report on whether or not that is the case.
Raising chicks presents a few challenges when one does not have electricity. First of all, chicks are supposed to have access to 90 degree temperatures during the first few days of their lives. Usually, a brooder (the first home for the chicks) will include a heat lamp which solves that problem. With no electricity a heat lamp was not an option so we decided to use buckets and jars of hot water both underneath and inside the brooder. You can see in the picture below that the brooder is on legs so that there is space underneath for the buckets and some insulation to attempt to keep heat in
I can report after about a week that the hot water method does seem to be working, but the first couple of days were pretty rough. At first, we only had buckets underneath the brooder and the temperature just didn't seem to be rising high enough. We got the woodstove really cranking, attempting to warm up the second floor (which is where the chickens are because that is where the most light and space is). Unfortunately, the heat doesn't want to rise in our house (no vents to let the air move around) so in order to get it hot upstairs it had to feel like a sauna downstairs. It was ridiculous. I can't think of a time that I have ever been so sweaty in April. We actually decided to pick up our bed (just a foam mattress) and move it into the back of the van because it is way to hot in the house to sleep. The things we do for love, right?
Anyway, we finally filled a couple of jars with hot water and put them right in the brooder with the chicks. This immediately raised the temperature and provided them with a choice of temperatures (closer to the water=hot, farther away=cold) which is ideal. We did have to get up multiple times the first couple of nights to make sure the water was staying hot and the fire was going in the stove, but as their temperature requirement decreases so does the need for nightly check-ins. Phew.
Ok, enough business. I know you all just want to see pictures of chicks so here you go!
On Friday, April 13th I got two exciting phone calls: one from the post office telling me that they had a box of chicks for me to come pick up, and one from my best friend Elly who had given birth to a beautiful baby girl the day before! I was somewhat overwhelmed (in the best way possible) as you can see from the silly grin on my face in the picture above (the only part of my face you can see which in some way is appropriate to how I was feeling).
When I walked into the post office the windows weren't open yet, but I could hear our chickens chirping like crazy on the other side of the wall. The woman who brought them out to me seemed very relieved to be rid of them. They were quite loud. Interestingly, she also commented on how great it was that they were all alive and said that a local business had been ordering a bunch of chickens lately and they were all arriving dead. The first indication that we made a good choice in our breed and source of chicks.
Books that I read and people I talked to said that it would be completely normal to lose a few chicks in the first couple of days. Some may get sick in transport; some might get squished if the birds are cold and try to pile together to stay warm; some might not find the water in their new home and die of thirst (not particularly bright these birds). That said, I was fully expecting a few deaths, but so far our birds have been doing nothing but growing at a ridiculous rate. The first day and night the little chicks would kind of sprawl with legs outstretched and heads in strange positions while sleeping and it was very hard to tell the difference between sleep and death. In fact, when I got up at 3am to check the brooder temperature that first night I had a bit of a shock looking at them lying like that. The temperature was just about 90 degrees and I was debating about changing the water but in my groggy 3am state I decided that either they were dead and it didn't matter, or they were sleeping really soundly and I didn't want to disturb them. In the morning all 26 of them were up and about and eating like crazy. They have since learned to sleep in a more civilized manner thank goodness.
Though they are still incredibly cute and fun to watch, our chickens have already lost some of their infant charm. Partly this is due to the fact that they are swapping fuzz for feathers, but mostly I think it is the way that they attack my hands every time I feed and water them. Seriously, these guys are fierce! Makes me a little nervous actually. Especially considering they are only going to get bigger. We are hoping it is just that they are ready to forage and think that our hands are delicious insects that they can eat. Speaking of which, the chicks have come in handy for dealing with a little ant problem that has arisen in the house. Catch an ant, put it in the brooder...instant chicken frenzy.
Happy spring everyone!
The Sine Curve (Hoophouses and Pitfalls)
by jericho | April 03, 2012 at 02:47 PM | categories: building, maine, seedlings | View CommentsAs Jean-Paul mentioned in our last post, we have been hard at work getting our hoophouse built so that our seedlings will not perish from lack of light or from too much heat in our makeshift low tunnel (all of our broccolli and kale seedlings fried in there and we had to start them over again). The 80 degree weather a couple of weeks ago provided the perfect opportunity to get outside and get to work!
First, we had to lash pairs of saplings together and bend them (as JP mentioned). Then we started assembling the endwalls by attaching our sapling hoops to 2x4's as shown below. Sidenote: this idea to use saplings for just about everything this year prompted the first name suggestion for our "farm" which is Crooked Sapling Farm. I think this is a fabulous name. Others are not completely sold...yet.
Next, we covered both endwalls with plastic and cut a hole in one endwall where a door will go. Another sidenote: in future, I must remember to make JP pose for the photos because really, this is ridiculous.
More 2x4's were used to finish the base of the frame, more sapling hoops were attached, and voila! A hoophouse skeleton! About one foot of each of the sapling hoops was stuck into the ground to provide some support and stability, and then each one was also attached to the 2x4 base with pipe grip ties/two-hole straps (there was some confusion about what they are actually called). We also pounded some stakes (i.e. more saplings) into the ground against the endwalls and attached the endwalls to them to prevent bending inward or outward.
The last stability measure was attaching a "spine" along the top of the hoops. This also helped to pull each sapling hoop into the shape that we wanted (although some were more agreeable than others).
At this point, it is time to explain the title of this post and say that although life up here is amazing, it is not all sunshine and roses. Sometimes our seedlings fry in the sun and sometimes they get moldy from lack of it; sometimes a porcupine decides to take up residence in our outhouse; sometimes I wish I could turn on a tap to get hot water instead of having to heat it on the stove; and sometimes it snows at the most inopportune times...like when we are trying to put plastic on our hoophouse. Granted, we should have known better than to try when the forecast said there might be snow, but we were feeling optimistic and really wanted to get that plastic up. It was an incredibly frustrating and somewhat demoralizing experience.
But you know what? We made it through as we always do and I am sure that we are stronger for it. Building character and all that.
And now our seedlings have a place to go!! The last hoophouse addition (for now) was 8 55-gallon barrels and four hardware cloth tables to set the seedling trays on. We filled all of the barrels with water in hopes that the water will heat up during the day and then help to keep it warm inside the hoophouse during the night. The filling process took about a week because we were hand pumping all of the water (my arms are still sore) and then using a large elevated tub and a garden hose to get the water to run into the barrels. Thank goodness the hoophouse is slightly downhill from the pump or we would have been hauling a whole lot of water!
As I think about it, I realize that I really should have called this post "The Sine Wave" because living is a series of ups and downs as opposed to just one, but you get the idea. Luckily, we seem to always get past the dips in our sine wave very quickly and spend most of our time at the top. Can't ask for much more than that.
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