IT WORKS!
Last weekend, as the cold and rain and snow moved in, I buttoned up the greenhouse as tight as I could. Remember, this is a Hillbilly, throw-it-together-and-adjust-as-needed, Greenhouse so buttoned up is a relative term. In truth, I wasn’t holding out much hope that the plants inside would make it through the past week’s winter weather.
Today, once the temperature got above freezing, I bundled up in my winter gear to check on things and, hopefully, to harvest a few carrots for tonight’s dinner.
Once in there, I was definitely overdressed! it was downright toasty. Everything was green and growing. Even the lettuce that got a haircut last weekend was re-growing.
It just goes to show you — things don’t have to be perfect to be good enough. I could have spent thousands of dollars on a “proper” greenhouse – well actually, I don’t have thousands of dollars for a greenhouse but that’s beside the point. Instead of spending all that money, I used what I had and what I have is good enough that I am harvesting vegetables in January!
Yes, I did get the carrots I wanted and have some nice Split Pea and Ham Soup simmering on the stove.
The Power of Distraction
We started with a list of nine items for our Saturday chores, some for Oscar, some for me. Only one of them was a big deal.
I assigned Oscar to find the corner brackets for a raised bed that I brought from Cheyenne. He found two right off. I found another. Then he got distracted into tidying and sweeping the garage and starting the generator so it’s ready for winter. Then I asked him to move the stuff off the porch to the garage. Not bad things to do, it just now I’m left with only the Hope of another raised bed.
Lists are great. They help us get things done. Maybe not the things that are on the list but … we’re not sitting around surfing the net so I guess I’ll take what I can get.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
A New Year gives each of us a blank book. The pen is in our hands and we each have the ability to write a beautiful story. I hope your story, and mine, is full of adventure, good health, and learning new things.
2021 HOMESTEADING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
I spent the waning days of the year reviewing the projects we did on the homestead this year. It wasn’t as much as I wanted to do but, looking back, it’s nothing to sniff at either!
2021 TWO CHICKENS HOMESTEAD ACCOMPLISHMENTS
made a hoop house chicken run with a door on each end
covered the original chicken run to increase the size of the coop
made a brooder box
expanded the chicken flock
planted boysenberry bushes
started a vegetable garden
made a hoop house greenhouse
made cold frames for the brick raised bed planters
built part of a fence with cattle panels
cleared the abandoned porch from the woods
began developing a section of land for next year’s Three Sister’s Garden
took a chicken processing class
canned, froze, and dehydrated produce from ours and others’ gardens and orchards
began learning how to use the Volcano Grill
acquired and started cooking with cast iron
As we did these tasks and projects, we acquired more of the equipment needed for the homestead. Probably most importantly, we gained a whopping amount of experience, knowledge, and confidence.
I am pleased with what we’ve been able to achieve.
COOP SCOOP
The past few months with the chickens has mostly involved maintenance, with rare events worth mentioning. This month, however, a lot has been going on in the chicken coop so I thought I’d catch you up on their doings.
As you may remember, I separated Road Runner, the rooster, from the girls last summer. He was being too rough on the three hens (Eager, Caboose, and Pecky). Eager had been terrorized to the point she stayed in the nest box to avoid him. Caboose and Pecky had all their feathers stripped off their backs. Everyone needed a break from the rooster. Further, it was time for the new girls to be integrated into the flock. Road Runner would have made a mess of that, too. So he had a time out. I cleaned up the little coop (we used it the year before to quarantine the sick roosters) and he has stayed there ever since.
The integration of the new chicks with the older hens went well. The older ones were cranky about it for awhile but they were outnumbered so eventually just gave in to the reality of life. The flock was calm.
As it got colder, I began transferring Road Runner from his lonely bachelor pad to the coop at night, when chickens have no brains. Then he was put back in his coop in the morning. No drama, just sharing of body heat. We’ve been transporting him back and forth morning and night for the past three months.
Around Thanksgiving, hoping to re-introduce the rooster, I tried letting him stay in the run but he was a jerk and even pecked Miss Piggy until he drew blood. Then I tried to let him free range with the girls a couple of times but he just could not be a gentleman. He would catch a hen and viciously beat her up. Rooster on hen behavior can seem pretty rough but this was brutal. That was the end of mingling for him! At this point, I was seriously considering if this rooster had reached the end of the line.
Then came the night in early December when I brought Road Runner to the coop and discovered Miss Piggy standing in the run with blood everywhere. She’s the one with the distended crop that I had been struggling to resolve. Apparently in her efforts to hop up on the door frame to get into the coop, she had clawed herself and cut deep gouges into her breast and crop. I brought her into the house for the night. As I cleaned her up and saw how badly she had damaged herself, I knew it was time to let her go. I put her out of misery and she is buried next to Chrissy, who died in September. Rest in peace, Miss Piggy.
After a few more weeks of pep talks trying to convince the girls, “There’s 10 of you and only 1 of him. Don’t let him bully you. You can take him!,” I decided to just let flock work it out. The weekend before Christmas, I left Road Runner in the run with the girls. Amazingly, everything went fine. They have been together for over a week now, other than a few ruffled feathers, everyone has been behaving well.
Eager started laying again shortly after the rooster was banished and has continued to give us a few eggs each week. The legbars, Caboose and Pecky, however, went into moult and stopped laying entirely. I had 11 chickens eating my food and living rent free. Not a good scenario.
Things have started looking up though. One of the new girls started laying! On December 14th, we found a cute little sage green egg in the nest box with Eager’s brown one. Then the Thursday before Christmas, there were Four Eggs in the nest box! More new layers! One of the eggs we’ve collected even looked like it was a Pecky or Caboose egg (based on size). How exciting!
Now that production is increasing, I’d better start gathering customers. Once all 10 hens are laying, I am going to be over-run with eggs.
What a good problem to have, don’t you think?
‘TWAS A WHIM
I kind of miss the days when we all made loads of Christmas cookies and took them to friends and neighbors. Besides providing some special treats that we didn’t get any other time of the year, it served as a way to let people know they mean something to you, even though they aren’t on your Christmas gift list. It was a lovely treat to get and give cookies.
As people have tried to ease the chaos that accompanies the holidays, a lot of traditions have bit the dust. This seems to be one of them as there are very few people I know who make and share Christmas cookies. Even I don’t make cookies every year.
I hadn’t planned on doing it this year, but, on the way home from church, the bug hit me and we started baking as soon as we hit the front door.
Since it wasn’t a planned event, I hadn’t shopped for supplies or planned which cookies to make. It added to the fun to be able to follow through on that whim with only my imagination and what I had in my pantry.
I pulled out the three cake mixes and two packages of cookie mix from my pantry and we started churning out some yumm.
I made cake mix cookies (recipe below) with the cake mixes: Cranberry Orange Cookies (using dried cranberries and dried orange peel to flavor them), Lemon Cookies (using lemon juice and dried lemon peel for flavor and topped with powdered sugar on top), and Chocolate Cookies (those were supposed to be M&M cookies with the M&Ms I had hidden away, but, as is very like me, by the time I got home I forgot that I was going to do that {insert eye roll here}). One package of cookie mix was for peanut butter cookies, a personal favorite. The other package of cookie mix was for sugar cookies. I didn’t have any sprinkles to decorate the sugar cookies so I mixed a few drops of red food coloring into a couple tablespoons of granulated sugar to perk them up a bit (I was quite impressed with myself for thinking of that).
Does the fact that I didn’t slave away for days making Christmas cookies make them less valid? No, I really don’t think so. I like that, despite the busyness of life, one of the traditions that make this season special could still be done.
Traditions are important. They connect us. They create memories. They give us a sense of belonging (which is just as important as our need for food, water, and shelter). They give us a sense of security. As families, and societies, we need traditions. I’m grateful I was able to follow through and keep this tradition alive one more time.
Cake Mix Cookies
Need cookies in a hurry? Keep a few boxes of cake mix on the shelf and you can whip some up with very little fuss or muss. I only buy cake mix when it’s down to $1.00 or less so these cookies are inexpensive, too. The variety of cake mixes is nearly endless, or get basics like butter, yellow, or chocolate cake mix and add stuff in – or not – you’ll have an enjoyable treat.
1 box any flavor cake mix
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put all ingredients in bowl and mix well. Scoop onto cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool 2 minutes. Transfer to paper towels or cooling rack. I use a small scoop so get around 3 dozen cookies.
WHOSE CACKLEBERRY IS THIS?
My new pullets hatched in early June and have now passed the 6 month mark. I’ve been watching for eggs for the past couple of weeks with great anticipation.
The wait is over … at least for one of them. Someone started laying eggs on Tuesday, has laid an egg a day since then, and is actually using the nest box!
They are little pullet eggs, which are about the size of the medium eggs you see in the grocery store. The color is leaning toward sage green now but that could change to more of a blue as time goes on. Or, they might stay green – I did get some Easter Eggers after all.
The question, now, is: who did it?
Everyone in the hen house is keeping their beaks closed so it may remain a mystery for a long time….
Looking Ahead
There’s really not much time off when gardening in this part of North Carolina. When you’re done growing for one season, you’d better have already made your plans and prepared for the next season. Winter isn’t even immune from this cycle; it’s just a little slower paced. That means, I am already looking ahead to the next growing seasons. Spring planting starts in February/March. Summer planting begins in May.
One of my new trials for next summer is to do a Three Sisters Garden. I’ve never considered doing one before since I don’t eat corn, but when the corn stands started popping up this fall, I thought: “The chickens eat corn, I eat beans and squash, I can do this!”
Since corn takes a lot of growing area, it definitely will not work in my raised beds, so I will have to put the Three Sisters Garden in-ground. To begin preparing an area for planting, we laid a tarp out to kill a section of grass this past weekend.
In late Spring (April maybe?), I plan to plant that area in a cover crop to further prepare the soil. I’m thinking maybe radishes and mustard greens would work nicely to break up the soil and add nutrients and structure to the soil. I’ll look at other possibilities, too, though.
I’m looking forward to learning new things from this experiment.
Hillbilly Greenhouse
Everytime we touch the greenhouse, it becomes more “hillbilly.”
We started making it in September by covering a hoophouse with greenhouse plastic, held on with ratchet straps. The next step was to be the closing up the back end and adding a door to the front end, but getting Covid but a crinkle in that plan.
When the temperatures dropped really low in October, all we could do was clip pieces of greenhouse plastic to the ends. Then the winds came and we laid a board across the back end to hold the plastic down. At this point, shall we say, the greenhouse had plenty of ventilation. As it got colder, we added another panel of plastic to each end, held on with clips.
Amazingly, the plants inside are still alive with this make-it-up-as-we-go structure!
Today, the winds were bad again and the back end came apart so we pulled out that homesteader’s staple: duct tape. We taped all the plastic sheeting pieces and seams together, put the board back against it, weighted the board with leftover bags of soil.
Y’all this is the most Frankenstein thing you ever saw — but it works so I’m not knocking it!
So far I’ve harvested all of my radishes and cut the lettuce twice. I did notice that, though the peas were blooming and the cauliflower and beets were growing, they had suddenly stopped progressing and started to looked a little puny. I wondered if it had been too cold or if it was just my black thumb.
Wednesday, a You Tuber I watch, Living Traditions Homestead, commented that they had been having trouble with the plants in their greenhouse (they have a real one!). After trying various things, they determined it was the soil they used – the same brand of soil I used. Though it was specifically intended for raised bed and container gardening, and priced higher because of that, it did not live up to it’s on-line reputation. They had to add significant amounts of fertilizer and their plants turned around.
Today, after we finished adding duct tape to the Hillbilly Greenhouse, I fertilized everything. I hope it makes a difference.
Two Chickens Homestead 
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