Punkin' Patch

This morning we saw the sunshine right away and it was obvious we were in for a grand day of working in the garden! My son went to work with daddy today and so my youngest was following me around telling me how dreadfully bored she was. I promptly seized the moment and told her it was going to be pumpkin planting day and she could help! This immediately stopped her in her tracks and she went in search of the seeds.

She declared that she wanted to hold all the seeds we were planting in her pink Hello Kitty purse and be in charge of them. We were planting pumpkins, sun flowers and marigolds, so she had a fist full! No problem! But first, we must dig a trench! Her head hung with frustration and I told her not to worry, we'll work together and get 'r done!

I beckoned my 10 year old to come help me dig and we had our first true lesson on how to handle a shovel. She thought it was great fun for the first couple, then it became a chore 'cause...well it was one! You see, we were digging a trench right along our chain-link fence in the grass (gasp!). It was actually quite fun! We would dig, flip and chop. This was to turn over the grass and weeds and then to work the soil for planting purposes!

During this amazingly long process of dig, flip, chop, we were discovering all sorts of great things. I found a sleepy moth that I held on my finger for a while and the girls tried to hold it as well, but alas it broke free and flew away. My youngest was finding worms and having a wonderful time playing with them. She was also concerned that we may be killing the worms with our shovel during the "chop" part.

After we were not quite half way through, my little punkin' had waited long enough and was ready to release the seeds from her Hello Kitty purse. I showed her how to place them in the soil, to pat it down and to space them a little ways apart. We were going to alternate between pumpkins, sunflowers and marigolds. She watched ever so carefully and declared that she was ready to do this task.

I continued to dig the trench and she happily planted away in a wonderful fashion of "freestyle" planting. She said it was kinda crazy, but it'll work. Indeed! I have no idea where the pumpkins start or stop and if there will be a menagerie of sunflowers and marigolds bunched up together in one corner or if there will be 20 pumpkin vines fighting for space in a 3 foot section. Needless to say, we will have fun when they pop out of the ground!

She planted with fervor till about half way along the fence and then announced that she was done now. She told me that I was in charge of the rest of the seeds (not much was left!) and she picked up her pink Hello Kitty purse and skipped off into the front yard.

I had to laugh at the cuteness factor. The goal was to plant pumpkins along my oh so beautiful, yet sturdy chain-link fence and have the pumpkins trellis and look lovely with a splash of sunflowers towering over and keeping guard and some marigolds holding the line secure. What we ended up with is a treasure for always, a PUNKIN' PATCH that is as delightful as my 6 year old.

April

THE SCOURGE OF THE FINGER LAKES

It's been a week, and we haven't caught that little bugger. We mowed the grass, and that helped, but not for very long. Then, about 7 little chickens somehow found themselves caught in the fence and either died from the shock of the electric fence, or before they could struggle free had their heads popped off and their blood sucked. So, to sum it up, 7 more dead baby chickens and ONE serial killer weasel at large. Then, today as I was chisel plowing on a field a good 300 feet from the chicken house, I came across a pile of austerlorp feathers lying on the bare ground, which means there's an accomplice! Enter Mr. (or Mrs.) Hawk.
This is at least the third bird that the hawk has swiped and feasted upon. It's a little harder to tell when a hawk nabs a bird, as there is no decapitated body lying around after the deed is done. If you're lucky you'll find a pile of feathers or a half gutted corpse. It really sounds like a horror movie when I describe to people what's happening to our flock. We set some weasel traps today with some bloody meat as the bait, and I began a search for a guard dog, so we can at least feel like we have some power over this situation. Maybe Underdog will show up to save the day or my ol' pal Foghorn Leghorn. I heard that donkeys make excellent livestock guards.

Adam

BEWARE of the Weasel

It is only AFTER you get chickens, that you find out you've been living with a weasel! We've lost almost 10 teenage Austerlorp chickens on the farm to a weasel in the last few days. We've never seen it, nor do we really know what we're looking for. Now, when I first thought about a weasel interacting with chickens, I was thinking of a little ferret type animal with innocent little eyes and a pleasant demeanor.
But then I remembered that Looney Tunes cartoon with Foghorn Leghorn and the weasel, and I realized that weasels are maybe a little more aggressive than you might think. But aggressive enough to take 10 chickens in a few days?
It still wasn't adding up in my head, because weasels are so small. I'm fairly certain they are of equal if not a slightly smaller size than our little chickens. The curious detail about our dead chickens was that they were murdered at night AND during the day, and weasels are supposed to be nocturnal. The other curious detail was that the bodies were not being dragged away and devoured, but left out in the open... without their heads. So they must be vicious, snarling little beasts!
Then a gnarly old concrete dude, that was working on our new barn floor, told us that weasels love fresh blood. In fact, they love it so much that they pop the chickens heads off and suck the chickens dry. So... these are not just cute little aggressive beasts, but blood sucking, vampires!
This was a truly disgusting image to have of our cute little austerlorps, between the jaws of that beady eyed blood sucker. While all of this weasel education was coming about, we were trying to figure out how to stop the madness and move on in all of our chicken endeavors. Do we get a dog? Do we mow the grass and wait in a rocking chair with a 22 rifle? Do we put the chickens in the barn and wait until the roosters are big enough to fight the weasel off? Well, we decided to mow the grass, set traps, AND wait with a 22. We shall see how long this evil will remain. Until then, keep your children inside, lock the doors, and get a good nights rest.... if you can...

Adam

Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan speaks about food in Minnesota based on his book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. I found this very interesting and think it may be my next read!

It's about an hour long, but highly interesting! This will take you to MPR (Minnesota Public Radio).

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Enjoy!

April

PEEPS

Chicks have been steadily hatching at our house since last night's entry, and as promised I have pictures of those fuzzy little ladies. I can't believe how cute they are! It's enough to turn Mickey Rourke into Marisa Tomei.


They've got a nice life ahead of them too. Sittin' under the heat lamp for a few weeks, with chillaxin' in the chicken coop, then off to the yard to take craps all over my car. It sounds pretty good to me.

Chicken Fever!

OHHHHHH I can not wait for everything to grow and then end up in my stomach! This is a very hard time of year to be... an eater and a cooker of food. There are certainly treats to have and good greens to cook up, but the anticipation of those summer veggies is sometimes a little too much to handle! On top of that, I've been patiently waiting for the 500 austerlorp chickens to show up on the farm, and that chicken house we built has been sitting empty for a month! Well, at long last the little teenage mutant chickens are here! I went into a trance when I was hangin' with them the other day. The sound of 500 little peeping chickens is hypnotic. Rosie the farm dog was beside herself and so were we. It'll be many months until they start laying, but just the fact that they have arrived will tide us over until we start ripping vegetables out of the ground and off the vine.

The tiny peeps of our housemates hatching chicks has been my background music of the evening. I held a chick in my hand that had just broken out of its egg, and I felt like a proud father even though I hadn't done a thing to aid their birth thus far. By morning, there just might be a whole pack of drying little chicks under the heat lamp! It has indeed been a weekend of chickens and warm fuzzy feelings... I feel like a three year old girl.













Adam

Ramps and Fiddleheads

I'm entering my 4th week at Remembrance Farm in Trumansburg, New York. It's a largely mechanized, Biodynamic, Organic vegetable farm. Nathaniel, the owner and operator, mainly grows root vegetables, salad and cooking greens, and soon eggs. Our chickens haven't arrived yet, but soon... SOOON there will be 500 little hens doing the Egyptian around the pastures of clover. In the mean time we've been working on a big ol' chicken house. It's really just a hoop house on skids, but we've been building perches and roosts on the inside, so it will really only be a hoop house in structure. Last week we started planting onions with a transplanter. The transplanter is a little implement that pokes little holes in the soil while also putting a dab of water in that hole. Two people sit in seats attached to the back and shove onion plants (or whatever you're planting) into the holes like 10 year olds playing whack-a-mole at the arcade! We planted around a 150,000 plants in a week, which is not bad for three guys in a week. It was hard to feel too proud of ourselves, because the Amish were goin' to town on a new addition to the work barn and a new machine shed for the farm. They've only been going for a week, and it's just a few days off from being finished! Those guys build like maniacs!
When I got home today, my lovely lady suggested we go forage for some spring goodies in the woods, so we did. We came back with a fist full of ramps and some fiddleheads which we promptly fried up to tide us over until dinner. For those of you who aren't familiar with either of these spring delectables, Ramps (on the right) are wild leeks that grow in the forest mainly, and Fiddleheads are the curly little sprouts of the fiddlehead fern. The long one in the photo is too mature to eat, I picked it to show how the plant looks at a later stage. It is really satisfying to find such tender little green treats this early in the season. I'm already looking forward to garlic scapes and the first of the cookin greens!

Adam