September 21, 2018 Wormfest at Creekside Farm

Never let it be said that our chickens are poorly fed.
Today I tilled two new gardens and the hens had a worm feast.

We have happy, fat, hens.

Normally we give them what everyone else gives their chickens: Layena Pellets from Purina. The pellets have a higher than average percentage of calcium and are not medicated, so the eggs are good and the shells are hard. But they can go through about fifty pounds of the stuff in a week, so we augment the pellets with copious amounts of whole grains we got from a client who had about 3200 pounds of defunct survival food stored in his attic. Mostly wheat (3 varieties),  but there are oats, barley, and corn too. We mix one scoop of grain into their pellets. But they eat quite well here besides.

The vegetables from MacGreggor's Garden, that don't come up to snuff aesthetically, go into the chicken run for nearly instant disposal. If  tomato has a defect, and plenty of them do, then the chickens get a feast. About every three day or so I put five pounds of tomatoes out but they also get beans that grow too large, monster cucumbers, failed melons, and the kitchen scraps from cooking. 

Needles to say, they a free roaming, so there aren't very many bugs on the ground. They chase around all day, browsing bugs and seeds from all around the Farm. Nearly omnivorous, I even seen them eating a dove that didn't pay attention and they occasionally find a vole, or a mole, poking his head up  and chase each other around trying to steal it away for themselves. 

Many of the more mature hens have taken to following me
around whenever I am on the tractor.
They seem to know that I bring good things to the surface.

As Fall comes in and Winter approaches, our chickens are going in very healthy, fat, and happy.

September 17, 2018 Homegrown Harvest Part 2

The nightshade family of plants includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and (surprisingly) Potatoes. We put in five varieties of Tomato, four of peppers, tomatillos and ground cherries, as well as the root crops written up previously.

• The tomatoes did well, and are still doing well. We had a hard time controlling the heat in the greenhouse, but eventually got some 50% shade cloth to cover it so things started growing and producing. The plants in the greenhouse produced very well, and still are, but next year we'll plant them quite a bit differently. Tomato cages made us prune them too much, keeping the yields artificially low. The flavors of the four different varieties came through very well. The few we planted outside did very little production, they seem to like it hot. We feed the dumpy ones to the chickens, keeping only the perfect fruit for ourselves. We would have sold them, but we didn't open the fruit stand this year, so most of the good stuff was given to people as gifts. Ann just loves being able to go pick a fresh tomato from the plant and prepare it immediately.
• We put tomatillos and peppers between the tomatoes and so these got over-crowded. The tomatillos never did anything worthy of eating, but instead gave us marble sized fruit. It had a good flavor, but wasn't a real tomatillo. The Ground Cherries (something like a tomatillo) were also disappointing. We'll try again next year. 
• Our peppers did well outside of the greenhouse, they are coming in this month and we have a ton of them. The greenhouse peppers did some, but were probably too hot and so did not meet our expectations. We also put in "cool" jalapenos which have no heat to them, but haven't found a use for these yet. Ann makes wonderful chili rellenos of the Poblano peppers, superior salsa from the jalapenos. The cool jalapenos are for experimenting.

We grew a lot more than I'll speak of here in this post. Strawberries did well, if only for propagating new plants for next year's success. We'll move them in the Winter to another temporary, but much better, home. But we hope to get them into a vertical garden next year at some point.

The Marijuana crop is as simple as falling from a log, if you get the right seeds. We got the right seeds and so Pot is always a good, easy, crop to grow. We'll harvest it in late October on the eve of the first large rain event and give most of it away to friends and family because these plants put out.

But there were other crops worthy of talking about too:

• Cucumbers produced only enough to eat ourselves or serve to the chickens when they inevitably grew larger than they should have. We did two varieties, a pickler, and a slicer. We will put them in heavier once we open the produce stand.
• The cantaloupe melons did nothing and probably needed better sun. 
• We did eat some nice Sugar Baby watermelons and so will put them in heavy next year. 
• We also did quite well with pumpkins too (even though we don't want to do these as a cash crop). We have Jack-o-lanterns galore.
• Pole peas did enough to tell me how many to put in next year, and how to do it. Peas are not a favorite crop and take a lot of work to prepare, but they will work in the produce stand, if only for show.
• Bush beans produced very well too. These will be given a larger grow next year. I found that sorting them into visually  similar classes made preparation better. The big ones would be for canning, but I doubt we'll can them. The slender ones are spectacular for poaching and quick frying them in bacon fat afterwards. Yummy.

All in all the garden experiment gave me local clues as to how to proceed, and reading gave me ideas for improving the crop next year. I can't wait, so we're working on finding a winter crop to put it and planning the gardens for next year while waiting on paperwork to build our farm house.

September 2, 2018 Homegrown Root Harvest

We started collecting the harvest of root vegetables this past week. Truth be told, we had more ambition than results.

Our onion crop went in late. Purple, white, and yellow onions went in in mostly unprepared soil, fifty at a time. So it was these first planted onions we took. In the end we got a one year's supply of all three, in various sizes, mostly perfect for a small household. We'll use most of the smaller onions for seed next spring. I replanted a bed of onions for winter harvest, but the results will be experimental.  Hiede Hay (Ann) made some wonderful Pico de gallo with our Jalapeno peppers, SanMaranzano tomatoes, and the white onions. Absolutely wonderful on chips or in eggs. The purple onions were lightly spicy on hamburgers a few night's back too.

We got our potatoes in late too and only took about 120 pounds out of the ground as the result. I tried planting them in raised rows, which was an unnecessary step and probably reduced our yields. But there is enough for eating all through them winter and spring, leaving enough seed to increase the planting next Spring. We had three varieties in the ground this year and it seems a good mix.

• Going into the year we were thinking that our favorite potato was going to be the German Butterball. Light yellow flesh (not as yellow as a Yukon Gold, but similar) with a semi-russeted skin that brings some earthiness into the flavor. We tried it in the garden at the old house last year and found it made a great baker or fry. We had a hard time finding seed potatoes this year but got enough to propagate seed for next year's planting, and eat about three gallons this winter.
• The break-out new favorite turned out to be the Kennebec. Super thin-skinned and nearly white flesh. This one makes a masher with flavor that holds up very well against gravy. It does very well in stew, if cooked separately and added at the end. The starch probably breaks down too easily for longer cooking, but the Kennebec  had a great "high end" restaurant appearance and flavor. We got about five gallons for eating and a whole lot of seeds this year. Yummy!
• Once our long time favorite, we also put in the Red Pontiac (now replaced by the more potatoes a-la-mode (above)). We will use the mostly for boiling and cooking with meat,s since it holds up well when being a bit over-cooked. The flavor is not as strong as with the other varieties we tried, but the Pontiac does very well in stew and is extra creamy if served on the side with fish or fowl and is also very nice to look at. We got five gallons from our planting this year and will have plenty of seeds for next year's crop.

None of the radishes or carrots we planted never did much, but we'll have to solve this riddle next year. We did get about three "French Breakfast" Radishes this year (out of two hundred attempts). They had a nice light flavor and tubular appearance which makes it worth pursuing next year. The carrot thing was just disappointing. We'll get them next year.

We'll eat very well this winter and be ready for a proper planting schedule next year.