Centennial Hops
How does your garden grow?
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.
We made great progress on the garden this weekend! We got the sugar snap peas, shelling peas, and green beans in the ground and the pea trellises up. I took a lesson from last year and have planted the peas and beans more heavily this time around. I also plan on doing some succession plantings of the peas in particular. In the backyard garden the cool vegetables are happy for almost the entire summer so I’m going to try to use that to my advantage. With the pea tendrils as well as the the actual pods being edible it would seem arguable that one can never have too few pea plants. We were also very happy with the harvest of green beans we got last year and have coveted the garlicky beans we canned through out the winter (only one jar left!).
Potato boxes at the end of the season
The seed potaotes are on the kitchen counter to start sprouting and Bengt pulled out the potato boxes, disassembled them, and put them in their spots. In doing so he discovered a secret clutch of chicken eggs hidden inside one. We had simply been storing the boxes on the far side of the house under the eaves for the winter. This puts them out of sight and doesn’t use up space in the garge or greenhouse. It also puts them very close to the dryer vent and across a small patch of grass from the compost pile, both favorite roosting spots for our free range chickens. We had noticed the egg count drop after the winter passed but just chalked it up to other changes. We don’t think the hen that left the clutch is still with us unfortunately, or I’d try to encourage her behavior. There were only five eggs and they were clearly undeveloped. We are honestly surprised that they weren’t in worse shape considering the cold nights we still have some what frequently.
There are still kale, cabbage, and herb starts on the kitchen counter waiting for a few more leaves before they can get transitioned out to the garden as well. The tomato starts in the kitchen need to be potted up and moved to the greenhouse. The hops Bengt planted last year have come back as have the chives, blueberries, and columnar apples. In the way of wild/forage around the farm the salmonberries and alpine strawberries are starting to bloom and the dandelions are out in full force.
Currently in the garden:
Head and Leaf Lettuce, Mustard Greens, Brussel Sprouts, Red and Yellow Beets, Radishes, Carrots, Walla Walla Onions, Cauliflower, Sugar Snap Peas, Shelling Peas, and Green Beans
Currently in the greenhouse:
Strawberries
Currently running wild:
Salmonberries, Alpine Strawberries, Dandelions
While picking out the farm property/house, obvious points of interest were the electric, water supply, sewer, water heating, and house heating. I think about each of these as “supply systems” and have been working to build plans to improve the “sustainability” of each.
The term “sustainable” used in marketing misses the mark when used to describe our goals. Yes, we want what we do to have a minimal ecological footprint and examine the source, transportation, and materials used to produce what we buy… but that’s not the only way I’m using the word. I want our “supply systems” to a) help us survive (supply clean potable water, keep us from freezing, keep us out of the dark, etc.) and b) require little input to continue function.
sus·tain·a·ble [ sə stáynəb'l ]
1. able to be maintained: able to be maintained
2. maintaining ecological balance: exploiting natural resources without destroying the ecological balance of an area
My primary focus for the past year has been on water, electric power (for lighting, cooking, computing and entertainment), and heating. The house is on Puget Sound Energy utility power, a well, and septic tank. It has forced-air electric heat, a small Jøtul wood stove, and a big propane hot water heater.
I posted about my water woes in December, but haven’t posted the full impact that this had on our electric consumption. The shocking thing to me is how much of our electricity usage is driven by our water consumption. The well is fed by a 79 foot deep 1.5HP submersible pump and a 9 amp Franklin Electric pump control box. To put this in perspective, that’s the equivalent of flipping on 10 100 watt light bulbs, when it runs! For much of the month of December, the pressure switch was misadjusted and even when working property, we were running the water to try to clear the sediment out of the lines. The effect is clearly visible in the “January 09″ bill. What’s going on in that Jan-Apr 08 timeframe?! Our well was broken. There was a crack in the pipe leading from the well to the house. That was fixed in late Feb. and you can see the drop in usage immediately after.
My goal for the summer is to draw less than 500 kWh/month. To do this, it’s going to take some diligence, but I think it’s doable. The house has several very large skylights that almost eliminate the need for interior lighting until after sundown. We put a clothes line, last summer and that should supplant our clothes dryer. We’ll probably even use the solar oven (caramelized onions, Israeli cous cous, and lentils work well).
I’ll post again, about our overall energy conservation (and which definition of that word I’m using) and some more metrics another day. I also endeavor to post more about the rest of our “supply systems.” I have to run, though… there’s a light on in the kitchen.
One of the Araucana chickens many colors
I unintentionally “recovered” a chick. Originally we had thought I had one less layer and Bengt had one more broiler. As his broilers have been growing like weeds we’d noticed there was a small one in the bunch. I made Bengt come take a look because I thought we should move it in with the smaller layers. I was worried it wasn’t going to do well competing with the rest of the broilers since they are pretty aggressive around feeding time. As we were watching it, I realized that it was exactly the same size as my layers next door. So we moved it over with the smaller layers. Once it was under the white heat lamp we realized it had green feet which means it was my missing Aruacana/Americana and not a broiler at all. Woops! It was a bit upset at being separated from the flock it had come to know and spent the better part of the evening making alarm like high pitched chirps and the broilers would respond back. Fortunately she seemed to settle in after awhile and she is now acclimated to her new flock. She’s the whitest Aruanca I’ve ever seen, but I’m glad we realized the situation. So now we have 14 broilers, 11 layers, and our “free rare chick”. I really need to get some updated pictures.
Last night was a rough evening.
I was home sick on Monday and when checking on the baby chicks I noticed one of my layers was pasted up and not behaving well. I brought her inside, cleaned her up and returned her to the brooder box. Her posture was a little odd still, but she was active so I didn’t worry.
Yesterday morning she was standing but kind of stunned as the other chicks whizzed around her (they are very active at this stage). When we got home last night she was clearly doing very poorly. I came in to the house on the verge of tears and told Bengt she was dying. There was no question that it was better to end her suffering at that point and Bengt handled the unfortunate task. He had already poured me a glass of wine and I took it out to the back patio where the sun was setting and sat on the ground while the full grown hens milled around trying to decide if I had a snack and what to make of me being at their level.
Afterwards Bengt and I talked about the responsiblities for the lives of our animals, the decisions we have to make, and as usual I was pretty emotional about the baby chick. We talked about how it’s supposed to get easier over time, but that while we hope it does get easier we also hope we never lose the connection. I reflected on how each time we lose an animal or choose to end a life the emotional reaction causes me to do a full evaluation if we are doing the “right thing”. The right thing for us? for the animals? for our family? for the earth? Despite the heartbreak and emotional toll it takes on me, I haven’t yet come to a different decision than the ones we have made leading up to this point. We also discussed about how at the point at which I don’t cry over a lost life anymore, that maybe we would need to reconsider our decisions as well.
This will only be the first of many lives lost either by design or unfortunate circumstance for the season, but I still find it challenging regardless. I struggle to describe to someone else how I can make the decisions we do despite my strong affinity for the animals in our care, but I still think offering them a grieved, humane life is better than faceless killing.
This is just so you can get a more realistic baby cheep cheep experience 
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I had to try out my new Flip MinoHD around the farm since I got it primarily for creating farm reports. This first video is just some footage around the farm in mid-March. We still got a couple days of snow on and off up until early April.
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Feather Footed Chick
So we’ve figured out which one of the chicks is our “free rare chick”. Bengt noticed it first, but… one has feathered feet! We didn’t order any breeds that could have feathered feet so it looks like this one is our little odd one. I’ve nicknamed it “Boots” for now. We don’t know the sex of it and farm sense tells you that a “free” chicken is going to be a rooster, but we’ll have to wait and see.
With the feathered feet and a normal number of toes we are left suspecting that the breed is either a Cochin or a Brahma. You can see some great photos of Brahma and Cochins here. It appears to have a different “build” than the other chicks. It’s a bit stockier and fluffier. It looks like it’s waddling most of the time. It’s terribly cute and I can’t wait to see how it grows up!
We also have discovered that there was a small error in our order. We did get 27 chicks as requested but it looks like we got one extra Cornish-X and ones less Araucana. Oh well. One of the “Araucana” also appears to be very light golden which I didn’t think was typical for Araucanas so we’ll see how that one grows up. It’s clearly not another Cornish-X though.
Happy Baby Chick Day!
We got the call from the post office at 5am this morning letting us know that our hatchery order had arrived. We had prepped the brooder box over the past two weekends and it was all ready to go so we jumped out of bed and headed to the post office to pick them up. We came home and got them settled before dashing off to work, but Bengt had time to set up the webcam again. So for the next couple months we have Baby Chick Cam!
Baby Chick Cam!
We have 27 total: 14 Cornish-X (meat birds), 6 Arucanas, 3 Barred Plymouth Rocks, 3 Black Sex-links, and 1 “Free Rare Bird”. Since the Arucanas can vary quite a bit in coloring we actually aren’t sure which one is our “free rare bird” just yet, but it will be fun guessing!
[update: streaming chickcam is up at http://www.miscfarm.com/chicks/ - bn]
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