Goose Salad

Yesterday I went out to plant my tray of perfectly sprouted, ready for action lettuce. I've been dying for real salad and my victory was close... But instead of finding my tray of sprouts, I found this....

Destroyed. Gone.

I looked around for the perpetrators. I found them.

Guilty.

Dang. Nothing is more disheartening then having your gardening efforts thwarted by badly behaved poultry. Nothing. 

So what do you do when you have a barnyard full of flying monkeys who live only to destroy everything you put your hand to?  As always... the best you can.

Hoops with netting are protecting the broccoli and bok choi.

Sure you can fence poultry out of your garden but they will always find their way in... so while fencing is your first step it is not your last. I've had terrific success using hoops. Cutting up fencing might make you grind your teeth but it's better than finding all your seedlings scattered. Using hoops also keeps the dogs from trampling everything.

If you really want to do it up right then add netting. It might seem like a high cost way to grow vegetables but you can reuse these materials over and over. Plus you can use hoops and plastic or row covers to extend your gardening season.

I find that somewhat low hoops are best - that way the chickens can't easily get under the hoops and scratch around. For two or three row plantings I cut the fence so there are 5 full holes in the fence piece.... and cut each end piece in the center of the hole.  This way there are pointy end pieces that I can push into the ground to hold them in place.

As for what happened to my my lettuce..... instead of putting the tray up on the table I put it on a low bench. And then walked away. That was my error. I need to put all of my seedlings at least hip high to discourage them from becoming goose salad.

What happened to the geese? Nothing. I glared at them.

I'm going to see if I can plant the shattered remains of the seedlings - they might grow yet. But if the geese keep it up my first salad my indeed be goose salad... if you know what I mean.

Happy Thursday everyone! Did your goose get your salad?

Ham Cam

I have to get geared up to think about pigz..... that is the furthest thing from my mind right now. So here is my inspiration.....

I think Steven Raichlen would be proud. Check out those cross hatch marks...

Hear the sizzle on the ham cam....

OK. I can do this. I'm going to turn mine eye toward pigz and all their porky glory. Soon.

Do you want to get started with pigz? Here are some links to get you going....

How to grow out feeder pigs on the cheap- Part 2

Part 1 is actually pretty important... do you know what you are getting into with pigz? Pigz can be big, mean, and dangerous. You gotta have good fencing and be ready for a strong animal that might not be cooperative. That Babe movie is a lie. And don't I know it.

Once you get them grown out you gotta do something with them. Have a plan to get them taken to the butcher... or why not do it yourself? We do! Can you butcher at home? Sure. THIS IS A GRAPHIC BUTCHER POST WITH PICTURES AND EVERYTHING. DO NOT CLICK ON IT IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE HOW TO MAKE MEAT!

Want to learn more? Check out my Pig Page here.

Happy Monday everyone! Are you grilling ham slabs?

A little frost, onion sprouts, and a leek in the wrong place.

I was surprised to see a little frost out there this morning - no one said anything about frost! We did not have any warnings so I was very glad that, at the last minute, I covered everything up again last nite. Good thing too!

Onions. Look at those sprouts!

In the meantime the onions I planted are starting to sprout up.

They are intentionally planted very close together - I'll thin them out as we go along thru the growing season. I'll use them in salads and such. I'm just glad to see a little life out there. And you can see that I need to do some weeding this morning. We had a good soaking rain on Saturday and now nothing but clear skies for the next week at least.

These are leeks and not onions. Now they are in the wrong place. Drat.

I woke up this morning with only one thought. That was, "I put the leeks in the wrong place." At the last minute before the rain started I grabbed my last bundle of "onions" and put them in the upper garden. Then didn't think about it again. Until this morning when I suddenly remembered that they weren't onions at all but leeks.

Drat.

I put them in the wrong place. Well, I'm sure they will enjoy their wrong spot now. I'll see how they do.

Speaking of leeks... I mean.. leaks... Thank heavens we do NOT need a new roof. We had a leak and couldn't figure out what to do about it or where it was coming from. Initially we braced ourselves for having to do some work on the roof - or our big fear - to get a new roof entirely..... but then thankfully The Big Man figured out that it was just a drip under the kitchen sink. It turned out to be a $7 fix.

Every day I'm grateful for my husband. He's good with stuff like this - I'm good with other things. We both had different leeks/leaks to deal with this weekend. Mine are in the wrong place and his is perfectly fixed.. and it all worked out.

Happy Monday everyone!

27* and New chicks! Creepy Meat Update #4

How low did she go????? 27* this morning at least. Yikes! Yesterday I brought in most of the trays of seedlings that were still outside. I'm hoping for the best for the rest of the greenhouse. Of course, now we are out of the danger zone and I have to carry all these trays back upstairs and outside. I'm thinking of it as an opportunity for better organization.

The new box of little buddies.

But the big news is that TSC has their chicks on sale! Quick! Run right down and get yourself a deal. We couldn't resist so we got 10 more meat chicks for $1.49 each! What a great price and no shipping. I asked them for an even BETTER deal... but no dice. It never hurts to ask.

About this time the TSC employees are really tired of the incessant peeping so I'm hoping they might be willing to go even lower on their price. We'll see what happens.

The 2nd batch are showing the newest chicks how to chicken.

If you are keeping track we need to get another bag of chick starter - my hubs will bring one home today after work. That will be a total of 4 bags at $15 each. For everyone wondering if it's "worth it" to raise your own chickens.... yes... yes it is. Good luck, suckers. This story is both heart breaking and scary.

Our total count is 10 first batch meats, 5 barred rocks, 10 second meat batch,  5 Buff Orpingtons, 1 weird, sad story one that could be a roo, and now 10 more for the 3rd batch meats. When you look at it all written down it kind of... looks worse than it sounds... hum... That's a lot of chickens. Yay!

I'll have to get some pix of the first batch meats so you can see how big they are. Still holding off on butchering as they are not big enough for us. They are just over six weeks old. Many people butcher at 7 weeks but we usually do not.

Won't they flop over dead? Not necessarily. Remember we've had meat hens live long enough to actually lay eggs! So we aren't worried about creepy meat heart attacks just yet.

However I am very very hungry for chicken. I mighta been inspired to go back up to Mrs. Yoders after I saw this article and that they were voted one of America's Top 12 buffets. And yeah, I put the hurt on that buffet real good... so much chicken. But more on that later.

I need to get to work on hauling all my seedling flats out of the basement and work on being better organized outside.

Happy Friday everyone! Did you run right down to the chick sale? Or were you too worried about the freeze last nite?

Frost today - freeze tomorrow?

I can't believe I had to turn on the heat this morning! Baby, it's cold out there. Good thing I moved all the plants and seedlings to protected spots.

Frost bud. 

What is the difference between a frost and a freeze? Here is a very boring explanation. Here is a slightly less boring explanation. The most important thing is how it affects your plants. A freeze is much worse.

Do you rush the gardening season? Sure, I do too. I figure the worst thing that is going to happen is that I'll waste some time and a little money. At most I'll be out $11 for a flat of broccoli and a couple bucks for some seeds I already put out there - but if it pays off then I'll be a couple of weeks ahead for home grown salad. I'm dying for fresh salad. I'm sick of store-bought salad. I'll take the risk.

To me it's not much of a gamble... I've been to Vegas. In fact, you could say that I've almost burned Vegas down.... so I've lost a lot more money than what I paid for a flat of broccoli.

I'm hoping this apple blossom will be ok.

I'm not sure why some gardeners are so critical about us "season rushers." I'm excited to get out there and work and if it pays off then great. If not, that's fine too. We just take some precautions and hope for the best.

Yesterday we moved a bunch of trays of seedlings into the basement and a bunch of potted up veg into the greenhouse. Then I covered up the stuff in the greenhouse with sheets, blankets, and row covers for extra protection. I also covered up the broccoli and onions in the garden.

Tonite will be even colder so I'll take even more of the flats into the basement. Then it looks like we will be back on track.

Happy Thursday everyone! Are you getting  frost? Or a freeze? Did you get everything covered up?



Will it work? I dunno... I hope so. If not then I'll just shrug and start over.

I think I figured out why the tiller wasn't doing such a great job.

Mighta run over some stuff that caused the till not to work so well.....

It could be that all this twine and stuff may have impacted the performance.

I think the wire was probably also a contributing factor.

I am the reason we don't have nice things. For those of you who are following along with The Great Mower War.... I am prohibited from using the mower and someone was just a little too smug about how he mowed the other day without bending the blade.

I think he just wasn't trying hard enough.

Happy Tuesday everyone! Are you making sure your tiller is at peak performance?

Tater planting

I need to get some garden notes in here.... sorry for a boring post. Later this summer someone please remind me that the potatoes I planted yesterday were from the sprouted buckets in the basement.

These were some of our taters from last year.

I also had some from the grocery store that look to be from the Norkotah variety.

I think this will totally work.

I had two half-to-mostly-full, 3-gallon buckets of the sprouted taters. They had already started growing so I had to get them in the ground quick. I put them by the pear tree and the garlic in the newly cleared area.  I will never remember this.

 I think these were $1.99 or so. Fun and easy!

I plant these little onion starts closely together then thin them out as the growing season goes along to be used in salads and such. The remaining ones will then be properly spaced and grow to full size. That's the plan anyway.

I also put in a bunch of white onion sets, and some starts of purple and sweet/candy onions by the broccoli. This is going to be an onion-o-rific year!

Planting potatoes is easier than falling off a log. Seriously. You can read about it here. You can read more about it here. After I made shallow trench for them and then covered the sprouted taters with dirt, we went and got some fresh straw and bedded them down deeply.

Potatoes are great for new garden areas because the straw will improve the soil and help smother out any pesky weeds. I found some poison ivy in this new area so I hope I can be rid of that. *absently scratches arm.....*

Someone asked me if seed potatoes were different than regular potatoes? Nope. But sometimes they will treat eating potatoes to keep them from sprouting. (ew!)  So yes, if you have taters from the store and they sprout you can plant them! Might as well try, right?

Our favorite taters are the Yukon Golds. I think they are pretty and they are a good, all around use tater. So we got a 50lbs bag of them. You'll remember what happened the last time I got a 50lbs bag of seed potatoes, right? The never ending potato harvest. Of doom.  Oh boy. Potatoes for everyone!

Happy Monday everyone! Are you planting potatoes and onions?