April 27, 2008

PODcast

Where POD means Poop On Demand. :D However, I have recently learned that goats will not POD no matter how much you beg and plead them to do so. Part of goat management this time of year includes monitoring their worm load, which requires a sample to be tested. It's best to know where your sample comes from - which is where that POD feature comes in handy. Much better than standing around in the field with baggies in your pockets waiting for the next fresh sample to arrive. Ask me how I know.

But when not being asked for POD, goats will leave a lot of manure around for the taking. Although rumor has it that goats will eat anything - including tin cans - they are actually very picky eaters. By winter's end, there is a lot of leftover hay they have scattered on the ground around their feeders. This hay has to be raked up and removed, or the grass underneath will not grow as fast. I rake up the hay and use it as bedding in the garden.
Today it was used on the onions. They hay keeps the moisture in, the weeds at bay, and has lots of built-in composted goat poop that makes great fertilizer.
I use simple wooden stakes and a Sharpie to mark my rows. These are Yellow Globe which will grow to be a medium sized onion.
These are Red Wethersfield, an heirloom type with pink flesh. Red onions are my favorite! Cornell has a great online guide to vegetable varieties I encourage you to check out. http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/
We have a bit of a cold spell coming up that includes a bit of a frost. Once that night is behind us, I will plant some peas and radish. The garden will be a bit smaller this year but I am experimenting with some different varieties and growing methods to allow us to offer our customers more choices.

Posted by roosterh at 3:44 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2008

Signs of Spring

The turkeys can go where ever they want. This can be a good and a bad thing :) I love how they come running when I call. But when Gary works on his truck, he could probably do without the extra help.
You will have to click this picture to get the whole effect. Everyone came out to help Gary change his oil. Another downside of letting turkeys free range this time of year is that it is also breeding season. When I was taking these pictures, I heard a wild tom on the hill behind us. It wasn't too long until one of my hens answered his call and made the trip up the hill herself. I saw her tom, and he was large and very handsome, but afraid of me. He ran and I led the hen back down the hill. I might have to rethink this free range thing.
Some flowers have started to bloom which I hope will attract the bees away from the grain. They still swarm our grains every afternoon, hungry things. These crocus should stick around until we get some really warm days, or until my birds discover them.
These snowdrops, or Galanthus, are in my rock garden, hopefully protected from most curious beaks around here.

Posted by roosterh at 7:24 PM | Comments (2)

September 9, 2007

12 gallons of tomatoes + 12 hours

Add 12 hours work to 12 gallons of tomatoes and you get 15 quarts of sauce. And you know what I did today too :)

Posted by roosterh at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2007

Picking Projects

It's that time of year where there are so many projects to pick from, everything needs to be done before cooler weather comes. There are babies born every day. Tomatoes, cucumbers and blueberries to pick. Potatoes to dig. Last night we had a huge storm that knocked down most of our corn stalks, so those had to be attended to today. We managed to give Tucker the boer buck a manicure too.
And there's firewood and locust posts for fencing to be done. The scaffolding against the house means we have to finish up staining the wood before snow flies, with or without the help of the turkeys. I am surprised it withstood the winds last night.
So Gary pressure-washed the end of the house today, without turkeys. And without me - I could hardly watch.
Just look at that ladder! Yikes!

Posted by roosterh at 4:21 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2007

Quiet Sunday

After yesterday's big adventures it was good to have a quiet day at home. It iwas cool and fall-like today although the sun warmed things up a bit.

The calf spent the day outside and we moved the pigs outside for good.



They look pretty happy! The temp is supposed to go to the mid-40s tonight so we filled their house with hay.



The other pigs are in their own pasture.



If the little pigs keep eating like this they will be as big as the others in no time!



We also worked on the garden fence. The chickens have been getting in and eating tomatoes as soon as they get ripe - not good! We've hardly been getting any. The corn is almost ready. Would you say Gary is outstanding in his field?

Posted by roosterh at 8:59 PM | Comments (2)

August 18, 2007

Breakfast - this never gets old to me

OK so this never gets old to me. Here is Saturday's breakfast before our big day. On the left is our homegrown bacon and on the right is homefries with homegrown potatoes and homegrown onions. We also had our own eggs. If I were a better bread baker our toast would have been homemade too but Danny Wegman made it for us instead.

Posted by roosterh at 7:27 AM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2007

Scratch and Sniff

Don't you wish you could smell these?
These lilies don't have too much scent.
Believe it or not, I find a lot of bulb plants on the side of the road, for free. :)
More lilies.
Foxglove.
I planted rhubarb this year. Again. The turkeys keep picking this spot as *the* best spot to take their dust baths. I have tried adding lots of manure and plant debris to the dirt, no go. Then I added these broken pieces of fence to get in their way - they just pushed them. Two rhubard plants out of 3 have been squished and dusted to nothing, but still keep trying to come back. Here's hoping they will!
Bird's eye view of the vegetable garden. Hopefully they will not figure out the fence does not go all the way around it. Shhhh!

Posted by roosterh at 8:39 PM | Comments (0)

June 8, 2007

Flowers, Chicks and Clouds

I take pictures of the rhodos and azaleas every year. With the heat we have been having I almost missed them.
I have been slowly building a shady garden over the years. It is retained in a rock wall at the side of the deck off the house. It gets some sun in the late afternoons. Its shady cool area beckons the geese to come lay down in it but fortunately (for them!) they have not ruined any plants yet. I have Lady's Mantle, snow drops, crocus, huechara, bleeding heart like this,

a decorative climbing honeysuckle, and clematis.

Toesy lives in the pastures with the goats. She has been sitting on eggs the past month and once one chick hatched, she gave up on sitting and started showing her kid the world. Here she is outside the pig pen.
Hens can be very protective of their babies. Here Toesy has determined the pigs are a little too close for comfort and gives them a piece of her mind.
Once that hen gave up on sitting on the rest of her eggs, I gave all 3 of them to this Sussex hen in Blue's doghouse. This hen had just hatched out 2 turkey poults earlier today, and lost a chick to what appears to have been a raid by a different flock of chickens. They do that. :/ But the transferred eggs have already pipped and soon this Sussex will be rewarded with a couple babies. It takes at least 21 days for eggs to mature to hatching. That's a lot of sitting and staring for these hens, and it's been hot.

With the heat we get humidity and thunderstorms. There's a doozy on its way down the valley. Tomorrow I will have lots of baby pictures to show!

Posted by roosterh at 8:39 PM | Comments (1)

May 28, 2007

Potatoes, poults, and calves

This year we are planting mostly white potatoes and are trying some reds and blues too. The reds and blues have to be cut and cured before they are planted.
Here are some red and blues already cut.
Gary sorts seed potatoes.
The tractor pulls our new potato plow to create a row. We used to do this by hand with a hiller on a rototiller. With our sloping and rocky soil, the tractor makes this job much much easier.
A row.
A row filled with potatoes. Gary is at the end of the row covering the potatoes.
While we were planting, there were a lot of events happening in the fields next door. Betty was going into labor.
It was a pretty easy delivery. Once she was done, everyone gathered around to meet the new calf.
Betty cleans her calf. It is a bull calf.
JW looks on.
Good job, Betty.
Chicken is not the youngest anymore!
The calf nurses for the first time.
He's pretty big - not quite as big as Chicken when he was born - but a good 80 pounds.
Earlier that day, some turkey poults began to hatch. And a chick. They are inside right now. The turkey hen (the one under the Cub tractor) is good at sitting on eggs but not on chicks. I found these 2 on the floor next to her, almost dead from cold.

Posted by roosterh at 7:22 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2007

Planted garden today

I planted 5-6 rows of corn and peas a few weeks ago and the onions have been in for a while, but today 30 tomato plants went in. They are mostly plum with some hybrid slicers and 2 heirlooms. I want to try canning sauce this year.

Everything is very dry and even when rain is in the forecast it barely sprinkles. Here's hoping we have a tomatoes to can this year!

Posted by roosterh at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2007

Blossoms

Blueberries today. This year's crop too soon to tell but judging from the lack of rain we have had so far I am going to say it will be not as high as other years. You heard it here.
The lilacs have a very heavy scent this year. It is heavenly.

Posted by roosterh at 5:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2006

Chance of frost tonight

We hav eour first chance of frost tonight. I am doubtful but I will cover our small garden anyway.

A trend I have noticed this year is that everything is a week early. I haven't kept track of our first frost dates over the years though, not sure why.

One year about 5 years ago we had a bad snowstorm on Halloween. The way things are going this year, I bet we have snow on the ground before Halloween.

Posted by roosterh at 6:21 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2006

Late May Pix

The rhodos are in bloom.
Lots of flowers
Gary warms up for our first sawmill job of the year.
A toad decides to make his home in the grass.

Posted by roosterh at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2006

More Spring Plants

Perennials are great - just let them grow and pray the geese don't find them first.

Quince. Last year it had a practice run with just a few blossoms but this year it flowered in earnest. Finally.
The geese haven't spotted the hostas yet.
Crab Apples with lots and lots of bees
Crab Apples with lots and lots of bees

Posted by roosterh at 9:54 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2005

You say potato

After digging them all day, if you say potato, I will probably beat you right now. Just kidding. We finished digging all of our potatoes. We planted about 800' of potatoes and dug them all --four rows of 200' - in 3 days, by hand. Here I am with 11 5-gallon buckets of potatoes. There are 21 more buckets and baskets full of potatoes inside the root cellar.
Gary used a potato fork to lift the plant out and I used this neat little tool to find the taters. I think it is really meant for weeding but it worked well for me. We bought this in a box of oddlots from an auction at some point. I just happened to find it mixed up with our hand tools last week and thought I would give it a shot. It works well as a backscratcher too. ;-)

Posted by roosterh at 8:24 PM | Comments (3)

July 15, 2005

Blueberries are ripe for pickin

I picked blueberries today, about 10 cups. I could have used the dancing arms of Shiva to help: one hand to hold the bowl, another to pick the berries and my other 2 I would use to swat at bugs. They are terrible!

I use a very high tech way pf picking the berries. They grow in clusters and while they may be subject to about the same temps and light levels, they ripen at different rates. As a result some berries in one cluster may not be ready for picking. If I tickle under the cluster just right, the ripe berries let go of their loose stems and fall, making a satisfying plunk as they join the others in the bowl.


When I have decided that I have picked all the ripe ones I can, or when the bugs finally get to me (usually the bugs win before the berries are all picked) I make my way to the kitchen to sort and clean the berries. On my way I stop to offer a couple plump ones to Murphy the Turkey. In the kitchen, I sort through the berries, removing the stems, unripe fruit, and bug-eaten fruit. These pieces go into a small bowl, the ripe fruit goes in a colander for rinsing.
The unusable parts go out to the chickens or turkeys and the ripe fruit goes into the fridge. I like to eat them with homemade yogurt. This year we will try making blueberry wine.


It looks like a good year for blueberries.

Posted by roosterh at 8:35 PM | Comments (0)

July 3, 2005

Some Plant Pix

The blueberries will soon be ripe.
After last year's total tomato loss, I planted about 40 plants to ensure we will have tomatoes. They are a mix of slicers, plums and canning tomatoes.
Bee Balm or Oswego Tea. Related to Bergamot.
This is in my garden and I am not even sure what it is! Foxglove I think, but it is only a foot tall.
I have never seen another lily this color.
Wormwood, named so because it is an old remedy for ridding livestock of worms. It is a tall plant and impressive.

Posted by roosterh at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2005

Planted garden

Finally got most of the garden in. Planted a couple types peppers and several types tomatoes (the buckets) for slicing and canning. Here is hoping we have a better year for tomatoes this year. Experiments this year include okra and chard.

Posted by roosterh at 6:06 PM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2005

Of goats, socks, soap and spring

Was I ever wrong about Nala! She is still in the barn and looking ready to explode. She is so big. Cappy and Annie are still in the pasture, not looking too ready yet.

We have some bitter cold weather and lots of snow. It snows some every day. If I call off any of my paths I can get into snow up over my knees. We had a nor'easter blow through earlier this week. Even in the midst of a snowstorm, driving home one afternoon I saw a robin make his way across the road in the air with the snow. This morning walking into the office from the parking lot I could hear robins marking their territory. It won't be long now until the Red-winged blackbirds appear and really make it spring around here. The calendar says 11 more days until spring, but I won't believe it until the RWBB comes to the hills of Candor.
With spring comes chicks. I have my order ready, even before my seeds are done. I have enough seeds to get us started for this year, but want to try a couple new varieties that are supposed to be good for NY. Plus I have 2 new greenhouses to try.

I am up to the heel on my first sock. This is the hard part. I enjoy knitting at the end of the day. I can relax and let my mind go, and in a zen-like way it relieves stress. Usually it relieves stress so much I fall right to sleep!

I have a crafty in-law. (Actually I have a LOT of totally crafty and creative in-laws!) But my husband's Uncle Kenny is quite clever in his toolshop. We put out heads together and designed a system for displaying soap at shows. He made some handsome inserts that will hold lip balms, lotion bars and even tins! I love them and he did such a fantastic job. I need to get some soap made to show these beauties off!

Posted by roosterh at 9:55 AM | Comments (0)

January 5, 2005

January is for seed Catalogs

They started arriving in late November. It is amazing how many there are despite the fact that larger companies are gobbling up the smaller ones. The last week of December I recycled all of my catalogs from 2004 and I now have a new stack of 2005 books.

Everything looks so good on the printed page. It is easy to overspend and underestimate the time and effort involved when you start everything from seed. The advantage of growing everything yourself as opposed to buying started plants is that you have more selection, it is cheaper and you know exactly how the plant has been raised (if that is important to you).

Choosing your seed can be the most daunting task. I keep notes of the gardens I plant each year (last year's notes ran the total of about 2 lines) including maps and layouts. Last year's garden didn't amount to much although I started out with high hopes.
Here are some practices I use to plan what to grow in the upcoming seasons:

• Cornell has released a website of information on vegetable varieties that I am finding quite useful. It includes the varieties tested, the vendors and contact information, ratings and more details about the plant itself. http://www.cce.cornell.edu/veg/
  
• I have compiled a list of seed catalogs that I like to visit.
  Go here to find some you will like. Garden Watchdog also rates these companies, some seed companies out there aren't the greatest.
  
• When you visit the seed sites, be sure to put your e-mail address on their mailing list and request a catalog. Many of them send coupons both in the postal mail and as e-mails where you can save some serious cash.
  
• Last year I compiled a list of the plants I wanted to grow then sought them out in each catalog. I kept an Excel spreadsheet of the cost from each company to find the cheapest cost. Of course if you are ordering a bunch of seeds from one company it makes sense to spend a couple cents more per pack to save on shipping. But it does pay to do your research.
  

Posted by roosterh at 1:58 PM | Comments (1)

July 23, 2004

More Pix

Random Summer Pictures

This year's chicks

It's a good blueberry year

The volunteer compost garden

My herb garden is in need of a good weeding. Here are some echinacea.

This year's chicks; her name is Honey.

Dorkings have 5 toes (most chickens have 4)

Ethel is happy to see me. She loves a good scritch.

Beagle and Ethel chow down

Beagle and Ethel in front of their house

Muscovy duck with babies

Maran chicks and a couple others

Murphy flirts with adult maran hens

This year's chicks

This is a welsumer/maran cross named Checkers.

This year's chicks

This year's chicks and turkey

Goose goose

Posted by roosterh at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

November 9, 2003

Getting ready for winter

We finished up the sawmill job with another 380 board feet. It was a short day. All told we did about 2000 bf for the farmer. While we were there, many folks stopped by to see Hoot, the farmer. Although he has over 700 acres, folks always know where to find him. One man came with bags and bags of leaves that he started to dump in the woods. Seeing opportunity, I intercepted and we took the bagged leaves home with us. At home we spent some time tilling composted goat bedding, poultry bedding and the bagged leaves into the garden. We also had a bonfire to burn the bindweed I pulled out of the garden as well as some corn stalks that developed smut this year. Ustilago maydis or corn smut is a fungus that grows primarily in sweet corn; infected kernels grow large and oddly shaped, turning grey or black as they fill with spores. While I prefer to destroy corn that is infected with this fugus, in Mexico, it's huitlacoche (wheat-lah-KOH-chay), and a delicacy to be savored. OP corn is more susceptible to smut, which overwinters in the soil, than hybrid varieties. And guess what I grew? Country Gentleman, an OP variety. I guess next year I will stick to hybrids. Another method to prevent smut from infecting corn is crop rotation. I do this anyway. Here is more information on corn smut from the Virgina Cooperative Extension.

Tilling the garden Corn Smut or huitlacoche

Posted by roosterh at 2:57 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2001

Garden June 2001

Here are some pictures of Rooster Hill Farm complete with my then-comments, before it was Rooster Hill Farm!

The garden in its infancy, 2001. The mounds are zukes, cukes, winter squash and gourds. Beyond that are tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, carrots, beans, peas, onions are across the back (on your right) and corn is on the other side.

Other side of the garden. Horseradish and asparagus to your left, corn in front of you. The white PVC on the right is framing for blueberry bushes. There are 71 bushes. House can be barely seen through the trees. Chicken coop is small structure (there are 2 --only one is in use). Small orchard is ahead of you -- cherry, pear and peach trees. The birds usually get them before we do. ;-)
Pix of the garden 6/26. Starting to take off. We are feeding the rabbit population of Tioga County, I think.
6/26
What can I say? I like gnomes. This one is cooking tofurkey. ;-)
Here is a view of the house. Can you see my flower boxes? The deck is a great place to watch the sunset.
Here are Penny and Martha.
Here is a view of the pond, and sleeping Buddy. 6/8/2001.
I could not get the chicks to stand still for a group shot until a hawk flew over. From the left: Snowy, George, Zorro is behind George, Xena, Martha is behind Xena, and Penny. 6/8/2001.
6/8/2001 Here is a wall I am building to retain a flower bed. I am going to plant a clematis there to climb the lattice and maybe some other climbers.
The flowers were given to me, and they are sapiglosis, blue eyes, candy tufts, convulvulus, moonflowers, nicotiana, and then the clematis, buddleia and pansies I planted.

View of my start at a perennial garden.
Close-up of a delphinium.
Close up of some echinacea (coneflower).
Lily
Lupine -- love that blue!
7/16/01 view of the garden
Zukes front and center.
We are experimenting with different tomato structures. I think the smaller plants may be cherry tomotoes -- the dogs knocked over my seed trays and I am not sure what got planted. ;-)
Peppers, eggplants, peppers and more tomato experiments.
This is what rabbits can do. These rows used to be 2 varieties of beans, plus a row of peas and a row of carrots. They even dug the carrots up out of the ground.
Corn -- also a rabbit favorite. And horseradish in the front.
Horseradish.
My first try at growing eggplant. Flea beetles are the worst!
My first birdhouse gourd plant. There are blossoms coming!

6/8/2001 Here is an antique wheelbarrow I got at a garage sale this weekend. Now I have to fill it with flowers or something.

Monarch on milkweed.

Posted by roosterh at 3:49 PM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2000

Garden 2000

Here are some pictures of Rooster Hill Farm complete with my then-comments, before it was Rooster Hill Farm!

Here are all the blueberry bushes. I guess there's about 50. (note: there are actually 75).

The view on 08/11/00.
View: no fog. I'm standing a little bit more up the hill (by the chickens) but the view is essentially the same.
The garden (Buddy the beagle in the background). Here you can see corn and carrots. We're pulling carrots now; looks like we'll have corn next week, if not this weekend!
Top view of the garden, sun hasn't even reached it yet. Corn, tomatoes, peppers, butternut squash and cukes. String beans are on the far right. Blueberries in the background.
Poe and Rose, my first chickens.
Poe and Rose, my first chickens.
Here's the house. You can see Chicky in his funky digs. (Chicky was a chick hatched out by Elizabeth's class. He was kept under my Jeep hardtop.)
Had to throw in a pic of sunflowers!

Posted by roosterh at 3:35 PM | Comments (2)