Easy Comb Easy Go

We've had a few trade offs this fall.  All of our bees left us, but they did leave behind a twenty pound gift!  That's right, honey!  When we went to check on our bees a few weeks ago there weren't but a few left in the hive.  The queen was obviously gone and we think the bees either swarmed or were honey bound.  We'll have to start fresh again next year with a new package of bees. 

Since the bees won't be needing it during the winter, we decided to harvest all of the honey made throughout the summer.  To do that, we scraped each frame of wax and honey into a large strainer and let the honey drain into a bowl below.  We melted the leftover honeycomb in a crock pot and let the wax solidify on top of the excess honey.  The recovered honey went into the bowl with the rest and then the wax was re-melted into blocks for candle making.  After collecting all of the honey we could, we filtered it through some cheese cloth into mason jars.  Viola!  Since we won't need all of that honey for cooking and baking, we plan on making mead as soon as we find a good recipe.

We also butchered two of our turkeys, one for Christmas and one for whenever (Thanksgiving was already covered).  But because we can't drop below our bird quota, we picked up three new ducks.  They're Cayuga/Rouen cross-breeds, but we won't hold that against them.




Sadly, our cat Pazuzu decided she liked living with the neighbor better than us, so in order to stay at our mammal quota, we had to replace her too.  However, we decided to go with a different species. Yep, we are bringing a new, little homesteader to the farm.  Baby Stinson is due May 19th!

And no, the baby doesn't actually have talons.

And Summer Comes to a Close

It's been a very busy summer, hence the reason we haven't posted anything for a while.  I began a new job that requires me to be in Tacoma a few times a week in addition to our other jobs!  We have also been busy stalking land in Montana, hiking, camping, hanging out with our handsome little nephew, and of course taking care of the farm!  As summer comes to a close, all crops need to be canned or vacuum sealed.  It's a timely process but so worth it to get to enjoy the fruits (or rather mostly veggies) of our labor.  The garden, animals, corn field, tomato field, and all of our herbs did fantastically over the summer.  Most of our fruit trees are a tad too young to be producing fruit just yet but we did get quite the crop of apples from the one apple tree that our bear friend pushed over a few years ago.

As we move into fall, Kenn and I are trying out a few colder weather crops.  Hopefully we will be able to keep you updated more often on those throughout the fall and winter!  In the meantime, check out our summer's bounty (well, this is just a small portion of it).

Chest High By The 4th of July

Our corn was knee high by June 14th but that doesn't have much of a ring to it.  Ears are starting to come in on our early corn and the other types are growing well too.  Apparently we have done something right with the soil in the corn field because most of the stalks are growing one or more shooters.  I think we are going to leave the shooters on instead of taking them off, just to see how well they do.  Maybe they will grow ears too!

Another piece of good news about the corn field is that it now has micro-irrigation!  Kenn installed it a few weeks back (as well as in the main garden area) and it has saved us a ton of time with watering.

Corn Field

As for the rest of the garden, things are going mostly pretty well.  The unseasonable heat has caused some of the lettuce to bolt and some of our cooler weather crops aren't so happy but at least the tomatillos and tomatoes are loving it.  In fact, most of them have outgrown their typical large pots on the deck for the first time.  To mitigate the problem we ended up creating a little tomato forest in front of the chicken run since that specific spot in the yard gets fantastic sunlight throughout the day.  We still have nine tomatillo and tomato plants in pots on the deck to add to the forest but they aren't in dire need of being put into the ground just yet.

Tomato Forest

All's Well That Ends Well

Have you ever tried to water a garden and corn field with small water bottles?  We have.  And not because we thought it would be fun.  It definitely wasn't.  So why, might you ask, were we watering a massive garden with such small amounts of water?  Because when you're relying on your vegetables to keep you through the winter and your well pump dies of old age mid-garden water you'll do time-consuming things to keep your plants alive. 

Well Crane

If it had been a typical June month here in Washington it wouldn't have been so necessary to scramble for water for the garden.  Given that the temperatures had been over eighty degrees for a week with no rain in sight, we called a well repair man and dug out a case of water bottles from storage in the laundry room.  Luckily, at 12:30 a.m. that night we were blessed with a new well pump and water in the reservoir the next morning.

We learned our lesson about not keeping enough water stored and snagged a rain barrel to set up under one of our gutters.  With our fifty plus animals on the property now, we need to keep enough water around for them to have to drink, for us to drink, and for our garden and fruit trees.

In other news, we finally eliminated the mole that had been creating such chaos in the front yard landscaping and that had made us late to Kenn's dad's birthday dinner.  After months of setting traps and trying to kill the mole's food source we were finally able to get him. 

Proud Mole Hunter

It's definitely a matter of being in the right place at the right time when getting this job done.  When rounding the corner into the front yard on Saturday, I spotted a moving mole hill and yelled for Kenn to grab the shotgun.  Moles are pretty sensitive to vibrations and the mole hill stopped moving with my yelling.   After about fifteen minutes of standing still next to the mole hill though, it started moving again.  Kenn, point blank, shot the hill and after some digging around in the dirt we found our perpetrator.  Apparently this is a pretty effective method as we used it on a second mole the next day.  As I learned from Kenn's dad, moles come in pairs.  Hopefully we get a break from these buggers for a few weeks before new ones move in.

Brave New World

Checking out their new surroundings

Over the last week and weekend we were able to put the finishing touches on the run for the chicks and turkeys.  The gate is on, chicken wire staked down, and netting is up.  Seems pretty predator proof but I think Kenn is secretly hoping for a bobcat to fall victim to our netting over the top of the run. 

For hours we watched our chicks and turkeys take brave leaps out of the barn coop and into their new outdoor world.  It was amusing to watch as they flailed and hurled themselves out the doors.  I thought they needed a ramp at least to get back into the coop, but nope!  Those brave birds were able to hop right back into the safety of their indoor home.

Buzz Kill

Well, not everything goes as planned on the farm.  We have made so much progress on many things and we have also taken a few steps back on some others.  But this is the way we learn.

Ruger with baking soda on her bee sting

Kenn and I opened our hive on Saturday to check things out and what we found were a bunch of sluggish bees.  After checking the frames we noticed there weren't any eggs.  What happened to our queen?  I'll tell you what happened to our queen... once again, we made a beginner beekeeping mistake.  We hadn't changed out our poor honeybee's sugar water for over a few weeks.  Who would have thought that something so loaded with sugar could go bad?  Well it does and bad sugar water causes bees to starve.  StinsonFarm should write a book titled, 101 Ways To Starve Your Honeybees.  We have already found the first two ways.  Lucky for us, once we changed out the sugar water and threw some powdered sugar into the hive, our sluggish bees came back to life.  We did have to re-queen though.  Hopefully she takes!

We lost some of our rabbits too.  Not as in they hippity hopped away from the farm, but rather, they died.  As I'm writing this I'm realizing how terrible at farming Kenn and I must sound.  I can assure you that it is normal for any farmer to lose animals every once and a while.  It just seems that it happened at StinsonFarm all at once.  We had somewhat of a cold snap during the evenings last week and a few of the baby bunnies got out of their nest box and couldn't get back in.  Unfortunately those babies didn't make it through the night.  The same litter had a runt that didn't make it either.  We're pretty sure that momma rabbit wasn't feeding it and that it died from starvation.

My lesson in rabbit butchering (note: this
is not one of the baby bunnies that died)

Drying anise leaves

In good news, I was able to harvest some of my anise leaves already!  It's so early for this so I'm pretty excited that I'll get more than one harvest out of them this year.  Anise meringues here we come!  My cousin, Nicole, was visiting us this weekend and brought us some perfect containers for storing the leaves.  Thank you Nicole!

Spring Madness

That whole bit about sticking to one project at a time in order to actually finish them definitely doesn't work for us.  We didn't finish the chicken run last weekend but boy did we get a lot of other farm chores worked on and some completed.

The corn field is finally planted with sweet corn and a few other varieties.  We want to see which variety grows best here in the PNW at 1,100 feet.  In past years I have had troubles with birds plucking the corn kernels out of the ground after they've germinated which rips the tops of the plants clean off.  This year Kenn and I put together quite the creepy scarecrow.  It looks more like a Night of the Living Dead character.  We also strung some string across the rows of corn in hopes of deterring the birds.

Corn Field With Extra Creepy Scarecrow

Since the bottom story of the barn coop is all sealed up and temperatures outside aren't too cold, we decided to move the chicks and turkeys out to it from their tiny nest box in the shop.  We're still using a heat lamp just in case and so far so good!  They made it through their first night in the barn coop and seem to like their new home.

Chicks And Turkeys In The Barn Coop

And if these birds weren't enough, Kenn came home Monday night with nine more.  Nestled in their nest box in the shop we now have two Guineas, two Bantams, and five Broilers.  I'm guessing we should make some headway on the chicken run this weekend...

Guineas, Bantams, Broilers

In other news, our garden is doing pretty good so far.  Even with that last cold snap!  Chives are well on their way to producing seeds for next year and the lupines are getting huge!  We can't wait to try these legumes.  Neither Kenn nor I have ever eaten lupine beans so if we like them we will harvest them again next year.  The strawberries and raspberries seem to be very happy and the rest of our starts are well on their way.

Chives, Lupines, Garden

It's None Of Your Beeswax

Week two check on our honeybees was a success!  Well, except for the part where I sent burning embers from the smoker into the hive which really pissed the girls off.  Before our week three check I plan on putting a screen over the opening of the smoker.

So far, the queen has been released and the worker bees are working hard.  Quite a bit of the wax foundation has been drawn into honeycomb on the center frames.  We checked for supersedure cells and swarm cells and we have none.  This is a good thing since supersedure cells are indicative of a sick queen and swarm cells are created in preparation for swarming.  Our frames also show that our queen has been busy laying eggs.  Good job your majesty!

Honeybees

 

 

Barn Coop

In other news... the barn coop is sealed up!  Well, on the lower story anyway.  Siding is up and the doors are on.  We started sinking logs as posts for the chicken run on Saturday.  With good weather on the way this coming weekend we should be able to finish up the run!

Future Duck Pond

Even though Kenn and I keep telling ourselves to finish one project before starting another, we conjured up a new idea which I started on over the weekend.  We decided to use the little stream run-off from the property and gutters as an area for ducks someday.  So, I started digging yet another pond and will create a small dam to hold the water.  So far it's a muddy mess.

Turkeys And Chicks Are Here!

Chicks and Turkeys

Finally!  We've been waiting for these little cluckers for a while now.  Last Friday Kenn picked up our order of seven New Hampshire chicks, nine Delaware, and two turkeys.  Two of the Delaware chicks are roosters.  We are hoping to breed and hatch our own chicks and turkeys one day.

With our new addition we need to amp up work on finishing the barn coop!  I haven't been so helpful recently as a mole in my front landscaping has captured much of my attention.  He just won't die!  I should write a post about ten different ways not to kill a mole.  One of them being: don't stand over the moving mole hill with a shotgun because you'll be there all day which makes you late for your dad-in-law's birthday dinner.  But I digress...

Kenn has been ripping boards like a mad man to finish the siding on the barn coop.  Next we will finish the three doors.  One for us and two for the chicks and turkeys which will lead to the run.  This run will have tall enough fencing and netting over the top so that we don't have bobcats eating our chickens again.  Hopefully we can get all of this finished within the next month so that all 18 birds can be moved out of their current box house before they get too big.  I guess I should table Project Kill Mole for a while.

Jinx!

I guess I've learned my lesson after bragging about our beautiful spring weather.  Apparently the Grinch stole spring and started doling out mid-April snow.  The dogs are loving it but I'm a little worried about all of our crops that have already started peeking through the garden soil.

Barn Coop

Last week, pre-snow of course, we were able to get loads of outside work done.  Kenn has made good progress on the barn coop.  Almost all of the siding is up!  It has taken more than the average share of time since he has to cut down cedars on the property and then mill them up.  We keep reminding ourselves of how much money we have saved using our own lumber though.

Remington and the corn field

And our medical disaster dog, Remington, was finally able to get out and about to help spread some manure (no, not his own) in the corn field.  Another yard of good, mixed compost and soil should hopefully be enough to get the field ready for planting (weather-permitting of course).

In past years I have had trouble keeping birds away from newly planted corn kernels.  This year we may have to try netting or a scarecrow until everything has germinated.  It's tempting to set up a scarecrow just to see the reaction from our dogs.

Grape trellises and lavender

The early spring weather we were having had the lavender happy for a while too.  So in order to make more room for it to spread, I pulled the messy landscaping rocks out of the bed.  We can use the rocks in the future for the pig wall (more on that when we start getting ready for pigs).

Our wine grape starts will ship soon too!  We don't have our permanent trellises in yet but they need something to climb so smaller trellises will have to do for now.  The grape starts will be planted between the lavender plants since the soil pH requirements for both overlap.  Someday I'll have to set aside a larger portion of the property for more lavender since I plan on pressing the oil for different uses.

The Latest Buzz

Spring is definitely here and it's bee time!  Our little mason bees have been hanging out in our fridge during the winter months and are ready for their new home.  I realize how bizarre that sounds, but I can assure you that if you open up our refrigerator a swarm of bees won't come flying at your face.  They're actually resting in cocoons in a box until temperatures are warm enough outside for them to emerge.  Keeping mason bees in a refrigerator during the winter months keeps them protected from severe weather (as if we ever actually have severe weather in western Washington) and predators.  We should have set them up in their new home last month since the temperatures have been warm enough but building the barn coop and getting the garden ready for spring planting apparently took precedence.  Oops!  I'm hoping our mason bees are still alive in their cocoons.

Mason Bee Hive

Our honeybee nuc is going to be ready for pickup in a few weeks as well so last week we spent some time getting the hive ready.  Last year we made the common beginner beekeeping mistake of not giving our bees enough sugar water to supplement since they didn't yet have honey stored.  Lesson learned when one day we opened the hive to check on them and we found 10,000 sluggish or dead honeybees.  To this day I'm not proud to admit to having starved to death 10,000 pets.  Terrible.  This year we are going to do it right.  I hope.

Honeybee Hive

Worms, Turnips, Barn Coops, and Drunk Dogs

There has been a lot going on at the Stinson homestead this last week!  Mostly good and a little bad.  I'll go against the grain and give you the good news first.

Our baby bunnies are two weeks old now and hippity hopping all around their cage.  They're a little ahead of their growth schedule since there were only two bunnies as opposed to the typical nine or ten.  We're not sure of their sex yet but one is brown and the other is black and they are FAT!

We also got all the big rocks picked out of the field we're going to use for corn this summer.  It only took us about 3 weeks.  And by the way, I'm never doing that by hand again.  Kenn planted buckwheat in the field for now in order to churn up the soil a bit and give it some nutrients before we plant corn this spring.

Worm Bin

And we got worms!  Not the parasite kind, the worm bin kind. I cannot wait to use the worm juice on our plants and I'm excited to get some of our food scraps composted more quickly.  This will be fantastic for our garden!

Our turnips finally went berserk, grew their bulbs and we've been eating them with our homemade hummus.  We really were hoping to have these during the winter since turnips are supposed to be a cold weather crop and we grew them in the cold frame but I guess getting them in spring is better than not getting any at all!

Turnip

The barn coop roof is finally up and the loft finished too.  Now for the siding and doors and we'll be set!  It's a good thing we've had some good weather to work on this considering our chickens and turkeys get here in April.  I'd also like to camp out in the loft one night before we put the birds in there.  Hanging out in that loft is like relaxing in a glorified tree house! 

Kenn in the coop loft

And then there was Remington... you realize how much you love your pets when you spend your tax refund fixing their teeth that they broke on rocks in the yard.  He was pretty groggy when we brought him home from his procedure on Tuesday so of course I snapped a picture of the poor dog.  He looked pretty snazzy in the green handkerchief the vet gave him for St. Patrick's day.

Remington

How Is This For Curb Appeal?

Our families may be wondering if Kenn and I have fallen off the planet since our last post.  I can assure you that we haven't!  It has been a busy couple of weeks with beautiful weather.  And as many of you know, beautiful weather means a lot of work outdoors.  Save the inside projects and blogging for a rainy day!

We have accomplished a lot these last few weeks from getting the roof on the barn coop up, to finally getting rocks dug out of the corn field (with the help of Remington, our German Shepherd, of course).  While Kenn was putting the finishing touches on the coop roof, I worked on getting some landscaping done in front of the house.  Finally some curb appeal to the Stinson homestead!

Before / After

And Then There Were Two

We have new additions to the Stinson Farm!  Momma rabbit gave birth to two squirming bunnies on Saturday and no, they don't get to have names unless you want to call them Dinner and Pot Pie.

It's an unusual thing for us to get to see the entire labor process with these rabbits.  Typically the baby bunnies are all of a sudden just there one morning but this Saturday when Kenn went to check on the rabbits, this particular momma was just starting to pluck tufts of her fur out for her nest.  So, Kenn and I spied on her to see what she would do and how long the whole process would take.  It was pretty anti-climactic as she sat in her nest box and 10 to 15 minutes later she was out and eating her food.  Kenn gave her some asparagus ends so we could distract her in order to pull the nest box out and check on the little creatures.  Pictured below is what we found.  Two already wiggly bunnies!

Bunnies - my dad says they look like rats

The Barn Coop And Ruger

The weather here in western Washington has been like spring weather without the rain!  Temperatures have been in the high fifties which has been perfect for working on the chicken coop.  Even Ruger (our lab) came out to help this weekend.  She's more of a fair weather builder.

Ruger The Coop Builder

I've decided our new coop looks more like a barn than a chicken coop, hence my calling it a barn coop.  Maybe I'll make a sign for the door when we finish construction, just like I did for our rabbits.  Our rabbit hutch sign currently reads: Angora Prison Farm.  But more on that later...

So, the barn coop is really coming along!  We almost have the second story finished and the roof is ready to be constructed.  We decided on a second story for our barn kitty, Pazuzu.  She'll probably like living above the chickens in an actual building rather than underneath the front porch.  Poor thing is chased under the porch on a daily basis by our huge German Shepherd.  The second story will also be a good storage space for hay too.  I'm pretty sure the idea initially arose from my bitching and moaning about the hay mess in the garage.

Barn Coop in progress

Winter?

What happened to winter?  We're supposed to have a 64 degree day this Friday and it's February!  I'm fine with the comfortable temperatures, it's fantastic for yard work and chicken coop building.  One minor problem with the nice temperatures though... what happens if we get another freeze?  It's still possible since the winter months aren't quite over, but with this warm weather most of our plants and trees have started budding.  Even our chives and green onions have started to come up.  Will having another freeze stunt our crops and orchard trees?

Chives and green onions from last summer

They're Alive! Also, A Chicken Coop On The Rise.

Old seeds do grow!  The brussel sprouts and broccoli are well on their way.  I thinned them out a bit after the photo below was taken.  I wanted just one start in each starter container.  The grow light is still positioned above the starts but yesterday I added one of our old heat lamps that we'd once used when we had baby chicks.  It's so cold in our garage right now and that's where our starts are located for the time being.

 In addition to winter container gardening we were able to finally start building our chicken coop yesterday!  When we first moved to this property we unfortunately found that bobcats are quite abundant in this area, as one quickly picked off all of our chickens while we were away on our honeymoon.  Now we're building a proper coop and chicken run (with a roof this time) with lumber from our cedar trees here on the property.  Kenn has spent months cutting down trees and milling lumber, using his alaska mill, for the coop.

And That's How The Yard Caught My Hair On Fire

I've burnt many brush piles in my life but recently found that one should probably employ the buddy system when doing so.  I would have lost less hair, I'm sure, if my husband would have been home to let me know my hair was on fire.  Luckily, my sense of smell is pretty good and burning hair is a smell I know well (I played with a lot of fire when I was a kid).

So, the reason I was burning brush this week is because we've cleared a large section of our property for a chicken coop and chicken run.  We piled up all of the stumps and branches and decided burning them was the best way to get rid of them.  I'm starting to wish we had just dumped it all into the ravine.  Burning this pile is going to take ten years.  Okay, that's probably an exaggeration but it could take a while.

Kenn on top of the burn pile

Anyway, at some point during my burning stumps I stood back to watch the fire and that's when I noticed the smell of burning hair.  At that point I knew exactly what had happened and contemplated whether stop, drop, and roll was necessary.  Deciding it wasn't, I started smacking the top of my head to put the fire out.  Okay, so there wasn't really a fire on my head but rather a burning ember from the brush pile.  It did burn a nice-sized chunk of my hair out though which is a bit depressing.  I immediately called Kenn at work to tell him that the yard was trying to kill me again.  He said that was probably an exaggeration but came home soon after anyway.

Lessons learned:

1. Wear a hat when burning stumps
2. When you want your husband to come home early from work just call him and tell him the yard is once again on a murder rampage
3. Dump unwanted stumps into the ravine next time

Trying This Blog Thing and Winter Container Gardening

Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts

I have to admit that I don't know what I'm doing as far as this blog thing goes but this is for my own sake so that's okay I guess.  I needed a place to keep track of our sustainable living endeavors so that we don't keep making the same mistakes over and over again.  Someday we're hoping to live in Montana and completely off the grid.  We're close now, not location-wise since we live in Washington, except for the fact that we have underground electricity. 

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about my attempt at winter container gardening.  Again, I don't really know what I'm doing but I figure I'll learn something in the process.  I like to learn from trial and error.  I should probably start doing more research before I try things but what fun would that be?

Ok, so the vegetables I'm attempting to grow in February...  I had broccoli and brussel sprout seeds leftover from last year.  My mom told me once that you're not supposed to use old seeds.  Apparently they don't always grow?  Nonetheless, I'm going to try it anyway since I love trial and error.  I mixed some of our rabbit poo and dirt together, shoved it in my starter containers, planted the seeds 1/4 of an inch below the soil surface, and stuck the containers under a grow light.  We'll see what happens!