Yesterday was perfect

Yesterday was the kind of day my city friends think I have every day - it was perfect. The truth is days like that are one in a million - so I enjoyed every second of it.

I got up early, worked outside all day, then had a terrific salad from my yard for supper. Our weather has been stunning. Instead of the hottest time of the year we've had September-like sunshine and low humidity. At this point I don't even care if we have a early frost and winter - this weather is worth it. The forecast says it will be like this for the next week and I'm going to soak up every minute of it.

Everyone was outside and happy. The chickens clucked around, the little turkeys gobbled their glee, the goats were (mostly) well behaved, and no one died. Any day without a barnyard casualty is fabulous.

Today is all about making pickles.

Happy Monday everyone! Are you having a fabulous day?

Potato Harvest

You say potAto, I say potato, but either way it's time to take up those spuds! I'm still working on the potato harvest. This what it looked like yesterday....

It was kind of muddy but I took up 2 big buckets of potatoes. My boots were completely soggy by the time I was finished.

After it dried out I ran the tiller thru these two potato patches and planted beets and beans. Yep! I'm still planting. Have you seen this great "What to Plant Now" over on the Mother Earth News site? It's a great reference to keep your garden going.

I still have several more potato patches to take up - and I'll use those now-improved sites for fall and winter crops. The soil where the potatoes were really benefited from the deep layer of straw that used to mulch in the spuds - and using the pitchfork to turn up the soil while searching for the potatoes really helped my hard, clay dirt.

Today I'll be working on canning up these taters. We have a rain day so that works out perfecting - I can work inside and the beets and bean seeds will get a good soaking.

Happy Saturday everyone! What are you harvesting?

Success!

All my fretting and fussing over the little peach trees finally paid off - success!  Oh glorious day! Oh lovely fruit! Oh sweet nectar of the peach!

Success!

Yesterday I was weeding around the little peach trees and I looked down and - peaches! On the ground! I couldn't believe it! I hadn't found any ripe peaches because the side of the peach tree I had been checking (on the outside of the fence). But on this side - this side had tons of ripe fruit! They were just falling off the tree!

So I grasped my treasure and bit in..... it was heavenly. Standing there with the sun on my back and the peach juice running down my hand... oh happy day!

How extravagant that I could stand there, pick ripe peach, take a bite or two, and then toss it away to avoid the bad spot on the peach. I'm rich in peaches. I have so much fruit that I can afford to waste it just because I can. Of course I didn't really because today I'll gather up the downed fruit and give it to the chickens.... but wow what a day. Nothing is better than your own harvest. Nothing.

So many peaches - I'm rich in peaches!

Here was the biggest surprise - the peach I picked up was a white peach! The peaches on the other side - the unripe ones - were the normally yellow/orange/reddish ones. So not only did this this little grove of peach trees grow and produce - they are also different varieties! Wow!

Not bad for compost peach trees.

Normally I would go up to the local orchard and pay for some baskets of peaches but now... now I can check this success off my list. Anytime I want some peaches I'll just walk right outside. Cost of goods = zero. Free trees and free fruit for the taking. That feels like wealth to me.

And to all the haters who told me that these little trees would never produce or fruit. How do you like them apples... or rather, peaches. Either way - suck it, haters! Whoot!

I made my first peach crisp last nite with a handful of blueberries. I love summer sooooo much.

Happy Friday everyone - are you eating a big bowl of home grown peach and blueberry crisp for breakfast? Why not? Go out and throw some peach pits on the ground... it works!

T2

This is what I've been working on this morning.....

 Second turkey pen, same as the first. Ratty old hen for scale.

The second turkey pen is set up and half of the young turks have been installed. There was a lot of pipping and flapping but I think they like it. We hope to have less fighting and more growing with these new accommodations.

It's been like September here since the weather broke - sunny and stunning. This morning it was down to about 53* and low, low, low humidity. I have all the windows open.

I also got a tomato! Open the flood gates and let all that tomato-y goodness flow! This is the first of a small but vigorous crop. I can't wait to have tomatoes for every meal.

Happy Thursday everyone - do you have your second turkey pen set up? Did you get any tomatoes today?

More On The Peach Tree... and Farmer Liz's book give away!

I'm still standing by my earlier assertion that I will not complain about the rain no matter what.....

This poor little peach tree....

Altho..... The other side of the peach tree flopped over. Ugh! And wow what a rain we had! The other day we got about 2.5 inches. It still wasn't enough to knock the humidity out of the air but finally....last nite's cold front finally did the trick. Our 90*+ heat wave is over and now we have smooth sailing for the next week. I'll be able to get back to the garden just as soon as the mud swamp dries out.

Until then today is an all day Pickle Mania. More on that later.

But what I really want to tell you about is Farmer Liz's superduper book give away! Check out the round up she did for her series on "Getting Started With Growing Your Own" - the chicken edition. Great interviews with folks who love their chickens and how we all got started. I talked about my interview here.

Farmer Liz is giving away a copy of her favorite chicken book, which is also MY favorite chicken book, The Small Scale Poultry Flock by the best poultryman in the business, Harvey Ussery.

The giveaway is for Australian readers only, as Farmer Liz lives in Oz, but for everyone else you can find Mr. Ussery's stupendous book in my bookstore or by using the Amazon.com search box on the right side of this page.

Are you thinking of getting started with growing your own? How about getting started with chickens? Check out what other folks have to say and how they got started! Thanks, Farmer Liz for this great series!

Happy Wednesday everyone, anyone else have a hellacious rain?

The Great Garlic Haul of 2013

Remember back in October when I planted all that garlic? And it actually grew and produced lovely scapes?  Well now look at it!

Last week I took up one of the garlic plots - and this is just some of it! This is going to be The Great Garlic Haul of 2013!

Most of the bulbs are just lovely. Some of them are a little small but I think they will be just fine. I'll keep the biggest ones for planting - the rest will be cured and then will be ready for action.

One of the things that really bugs me about this part of the country is that there is shocking lack of fresh produce. The produce in the grocery stores is horrible - it's one of the reasons that we grow our own. I'm not sure if I'm just used to having a good selection from when I lived on the West Coast and we got tons of fabulous produce from California or what... but it's just a misery out here. You'd think that with these growing conditions you could final all kinds of local produce but nope. If you drive around here all you'll see growing is corn, soybeans, and wheat - not food.

The thing that really grinds me gears is how expensive garlic is in the stores - and it's almost all from China. Doesn't that seem a little crazy to you? Why do we have to fly it in from halfway around the world?  And it's terribly expensive. I think I got my $9 worth - which is what I paid last fall for the planting garlic.

I figure I have a king's ransom in garlic out there - and it's all mine mine mine. I'm going to take up all this lovely garlic, cure it, preserve it, and use it all up. Soon the meat chickens will be ready for dinner and I'll be able to make Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic. Oh happy day!

Happy Monday everyone! Are you taking up your garlic?

Raising Turkeys: Emergency Turkey Management

The funny thing about meat-style birds is that they seem to grow exponentially. We see this a lot with the creepy chicken meat birds but wow the meat style turkeys really surprised us. One day they were cute like this.....

Day One of the Great Turkey Project - new arrivals.

And over night they became this! So we had to implement an emergency turkey plan. We needed to get them out of the house.

They got bigger. Fast. They are now about a month old

As with most day old chicks, the baby turkeys (called poults) started out in a tub in the basement. The peeping is cute for about a day. But then the dust and the noise and the over-interested house cats kind of take the fun out of it. Then the other morning I found that the poults doubled in size over night.

Little turkeys are very small. And adorable. Shoe for scale.

So we needed to spring to action. We quickly shoveled out a spot in the garage and whacked together a pen. Our original plan was to move the meat chickens over to the chicken house and put the poults in the turkey house. But a rascally varmint changed everything. We still haven't caught that slinky mink but we brought in a huge rat haul. We still aren't taking any chances.

The tub set up inside. Totally works like a dream. Until they get too big.

The big differences between meat chickens and meat turkeys (this variety is called Broad Breasted Whites) is that the poults tend to be a little more tender requiring warmer and more stable temperatures...and... well.. the chickens tastes like chicken when its time for dinner.

The poults are also, relatively, very expensive. So you don't want to take any chances with these expensive and not-hardy birds. Starting them inside is a great idea. I got 20 poults for about $99 from Ideal Poultry - which included the tax and shipping. This is the best sale price we've seen all summer.

The new pen set up outside. Totally works like a dream. Until they get bigger.

We decided on an easy to assemble pen based on materials on hand. We used small sections of hog panels for the ends and one half piece for the side. We used fence stables to affix the sides to the posts in the garage and then just tied the side piece together with baling twine. This made a remarkably stable pen. A few shakes of straw and then we proceeded with the turkey transport.

We used fence staples to affix the hog panel sections. Bungee is not necessary but I am over cautious.

Initially we were only going to put half the poults out in the garage but when we saw how happy they were to be in the great outdoors - which they could see from the safety of their pen - we took the rest of them out. Once they were out of the house my allergies immediately improved about 85% so everyone was happy.

We tied the long side of the pen with baling twine. You can use this stuff for anything.

Because we've had the heat dome oppressing us we didn't need any kind of heat source for the poults and they were just about ready to feather out anyway... so they did just fine. We set up a fan in case they got warm but really it was just about the right temperature.

Their initial reaction was stunned silence. They they loved it. 

We are going to expand this pen for them so they have more room and because we figure we can just keep them in there for a while. Like most folks in the Mid-West we really only effectively use about 20% of the space in the garage - which is really a big 1.5 story pole barn. So now that we are properly motivated we are going to do a big clean up and we may just keep the turkeys in there until they are called to dinner.

I kind of had a funny image of opening the big sliding door and a herd of huge turkeys would come wobbling and gobbling out. So if only for laughs I'm going to get that garage cleaned out.

Meat style turkeys can be slaughtered at about 4 months. So by the time the weather cools we'll start hauling in the turkey harvest. But for now these little buddies are my milking partners. They are hilarious at this age - trying to strut and gobble - its very funny.

That's the update so far. Stay tuned for more on how to raise turkeys.

Happy Sunday everyone - do you have turkeys in your house? Garage? In the turkey house where they should be?