The Ultimate Garden Deer Fence!

When we moved here everyone told us that to have a garden and fruit trees, we HAVE to put up fencing to keep the deer out.  After a lot of research and talking with other gardeners, we decided to put up 5 ft. wire fencing around the entire perimeter of our garden with electric fence extending another 3 feet above that. The berry bushes outside the garden only have 2 strands of electric fencing about 3 feet tall and surprisingly the deer don't jump it.  I am happy to report that after 2 growing seasons, we have not had ANY deer damage.

We use a 30 mile solar electric charger.  This charger is awesome!  It has always kept a charge and you can hear a slight audible click so you know when it's pulsing.  A few times we have woke up in the middle of the night because a slug slimed its way between the charger housing and the terminal which shorted out the charger.  (This sounds bad, but really the slug was fried on the electric wire while the charger ticked on - though it did take Jon a few midnight runs out to the garden to see what was going on.).  We disconnect the solar charger in the winter and store it inside.

Using zip ties, fiberglass poles were attached to the fence posts and extended another 3 feet above the regular wire fence.  Two strings of electric fencing were attached to the fiberglass posts.  

We put in 3, 8 foot grounding rods for the charger.  In hindsight we could have probably used just one.  A word of advice when putting these in, make sure they are in a location that won't be in your way!

In the foreground of the picture you can see the deer damage on the blackberry canes outside the electric fence and the untouched canes on the inside of the fence.

The Case of the Disappearing Honey!

We've had quite the year keeping honeybees and already had to combine the two hives on August 25th.  I fed them immediately after introducing the two colonies and checked for new brood.  Everything looked fine by the end of September and I fed them right up to when the fall nectar flow began.  By the beginning of October, the hive was a good weight and I left them alone.  This past weekend I decided to heft the hive and was thinking of feeding them since the weather was warm Veteran's Day weekend.  Come to find out, the hive was light as a feather!!!  Jon and I suited up and went into the hive to find maybe one frame 1/3 full of nectar, a few cells of pollen, and no brood.  The queen was still alive and moving around.  What's interesting about this scenario is that this is the exact thing that happened to one of the hives before we combined them in August...they were completely robbed of all their honey stores!

I think this is a bit odd considering the hive was a good winter weight less than 2 months ago and they were busy during the nectar flow.  I think the hive had been robbed out by another hive...perhaps one in the woods or from another beekeeper's hives 1 mile away?  This May during swarm season, Jon and I were gone for 2 weeks and we suspected that one hive swarmed so perhaps they found an old tree and got established?  The yellow jackets have also been up by the hive a lot the past few weeks and I squish them when I can, but in hindsight, I should have reduced the hive entrance to discourage robbing.  Whatever the reason, we're not happy because there really is no way to save this hive.  In a month or so I'll gather up the empty boxes and store them for next year.

Cheap and Easy Leaf Mulch

Last spring in my post about fruit trees I wrote about mulch and how well the chickens shred the leaves and fertilize it into mulch.  This fall we have been raking leaves from all over the yard and storing them for use throughout the winter so we can get a head start on the mulch and have it ready early spring.  The chickens benefit greatly from these leaves because they have something to scratch when the days are cold and they are cooped-up indoors; and the outdoor run doesn't get muddy from the wet weather.  The leaves also add a layer of insulation in the coop and outdoor run which I think keep bugs closer to the surface for them to hunt.

The process is fairly simple, I first spread two old bed sheets on the ground and rake leaves onto them. 

I had to convince Paul that there would be an even bigger leaf pile up by the barn.

Together Jon and I carried the leaves to the barn. 

After all the hauling we took a break to play in the leaves!

Some new leaves were added to the outdoor run and the rest were left in a pile to be added throughout the winter.  Before fall ends, the pile will reach the bottom of the coop window.

Time for the chickens to go to work and shred the leaves while at the same time fertilizing it with their poop!

How to Shell Black Walnuts

This fall the walnut tree dropped really large nuts with hulls that were really easy to remove.  This is our third year harvesting walnuts and each year I learn a little bit more about the process.  Most people put the walnuts on their driveway and drive over them to remove the hulls.  We have a gravel driveway leading up to a cement driveway and I really don't want the cement stained so I just step on the nut wearing old shoes and the hull slides right off.  If the hull is hard and doesn't separate from the shell, I toss it in the woods because the nut isn't fully mature.

I also don't keep any nuts that have these white worms hiding under the hulls.  These nuts are usually bad. 

After the hulls are removed I put them in cardboard boxes in partial sun.  Every couple of hours I shake the box until all the nuts are dry.  The two boxes on the right are butternuts...given to us by some friends. 

Jon and Paul found a unique way to remove the hulls this year...hitting them with a baseball bat!  Our son likes to go find them in the yard afterwards.  If you use this method, make sure to check your nuts.  If they get cracked, open them immediately because they will not store well if air gets inside the shell.

2013 Garden and Homestead Review

Fall is here and while there are a few items left in the garden, I decided to tally up our stash for the winter. Keep in mind that what I've listed is what we put up for the winter.  I didn't include all of the
fresh produce we ate throughout the summer (e.g. peas, cauliflower, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, etc.).

If you've been following this blog for awhile, you may remember the post about record keeping and having a preservation log.  This binder is a must-have for me and helped me put together this list in about 5 minutes.  I also posted about the canning shelf last year which makes organizing your canned goods so much easier if you have the space.  Overall Jon and I say we had a very successful year despite the wet conditions that rotted all of our root crops. Thankfully we have carrots left over from the previous year and the third planting may survive into the winter with enough mulch.
If there is one thing I have learned from homesteading it is this: always think ahead and prepare more than you need because you never know what the following year will bring.  You just can't predict the weather, the pests, your health, and everything else. This summer I had an appendectomy and threw out my back and was basically unable to help Jon for 10 weeks this summer.  Thankfully my husband shares the workload, otherwise the garden would have never happened.  With so many unknowns, you can never really have enough excess; and don't forget about all the jars that will be given away to friends and family!  : )

• 85 bulbs garlic (10 bulbs will be used for seed)
• 14 meals of frozen corn (7 full quart bags)
• 10 pie pumpkins for eating (15 for decoration)
• 30 butternut squash
• 58 quarts bush beans
• 31 quarts, 10 pints stewed tomatoes
• 22 pints tomato soup
• 25 half-pints tomato paste
• 35 pints salsa
• 12 half pints green tomato hot dog relish
• 3 quarts tomato juice
• 4 pints, and 7 half-pints strawberry jam
• 1 gallon strawberry wine (5 bottles)
• 1 gallon freezer bag srawberries
• a lot of strawberry soda and mashed strawberries in freezer for ice cream etc.
• 26 quarts peaches
• 15 quart bags frozen peppers (sweet green, beaver dam, poblano)
• 1 gallon peach wine (5 bottles)
• 1 gallon pumpkin wine
• 31 quarts applesauce
• 5 pints apple butter
• 21 quarts apple cider
• 1 gallon apple wine
• 3 gallons hard apple cider
• 3 gallon jars of dried apple slices
• 5 gallon bucket of hulled walnuts, butternuts, and hickory nuts
• 20.25 pounds honey
• Updated 11-30-13   
• 14 pints venison
• 13 pounds ground venison burger
• 2 frozen venison roasts
• 1 batch venison jerky

Golden peaches in jars don't last long!

This summer marked our first honey harvest!

The rains really flooded our seasonal creek and the culvert couldn't keep up with the water so it went over the road.  Neighbors who have lived here 35 years have never seen it flood like this before. 

With the flooding, many skunks were out digging at the ground eating the grubs.  They were up by the beehives but left them alone because there were so many grubs in the ground coming to the surface from all the water.  The flood was dubbed, " The Two Skunk Flood" by Jon's coworkers (kind of an inside joke).

We added 3 barred rock chickens to the coop this year which has been exciting!  They are a bit more skittish around us, but they are beautiful and can be hard to find when they're free-ranging in the woods...

The chicken coop now has 6 chickens.  We're still waiting for 2 of the barred rocks to begin laying.  Last year all of the golden comets were laying before the end of August, and here we are in October and the barred rocks haven't really started.  Not sure what that's all about?

Paul really helps us with the chickens.  He lets them out, puts them away, and helps with feedings and filling the outdoor run with leaves.  If anything, he has socialized them and made them gentle to handle.  Above is a picture of Paul holding our favorite chicken (affectionately named Turkey)...she is the head chicken in the roost who seems to always get more than her fair share of the scratch, crawfish, mice, and assorted grubs we give them as treats.

The green manure is filling out very nicely.  This past weekend we planted the final few rows!  Everything has been put to bed for the year and Jon anxiously waits for the seed catalogs to start arriving!

A Large, Cheap and Easy Greenhouse For Under $300

The finished product

We've battled for years about spending a lot of money on a greenhouse. Most greenhouses that fit our growing needs cost $2000-4000. We just couldn't bring ourselves to cough up the money for that. Then Jon came across a Youtube video that used cattle panels as the skeleton and voila, we had a weekend project. The video that Jon watched will about make you nauseated (the camera jumps around everywhere) so we fast-forwarded through it and got the basic idea and went to town improvising the rest.  In the end, what we came up with has turned out to be fabulous and only cost us about $255.80.

Dimensions: 16 x 8 feet of growing pleasure

20x20' of greenhouse plastic*- $62.80 

2 Earth Anchors - $14

14 - 2x4x8's ($3/board) - $42

15 haybales - $45

Barrel Latch to hold window - $3

4 - 16x4' Cattle Panels: $80

24 - zip ties - $3

1 lb - 2 1/2" Wood Screws - $6

10' of pretty thick wire -  Leftover from another project

1 - Pipe insulation foam - Leftover from another project

10 Concrete blocks - Free - found them on the property

2 door hinges - Free - found them in a box of misc parts

5 old windows - Free - re-used from our previous home

Misc. scrap pallet wood - Free

* from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (RPK Tufflite IV) 

Leveling the foundation.

Notice the braces on the corners---they help with stability.

A trial set up in the garage. This was key in getting the length and angle for the support posts. To make the angle right, we held the full length 2x4 up and penciled the angle onto the 2x4 where the cattle panel intersected it.

Zip ties add stability between each panel.

Pipe insulation helps keep abrasion between plastic and panels to a minimum.

The skeleton is ready for plastic.

Earth anchors with old electric fence wire keep the structure anchored to the ground in strong winds.

Using the cinder blocks to raise the greenhouse off the ground allows Jon to stand up without hunching over.  The cinder blocks also keep the wood off the ground so they won't rot.  We did not use treated lumber. 

Looking good, we need some doors now.  Logs temporarily held the plastic down until the haybales arrived.

We probably didn't buy enough plastic (25 feet may have been a better choice), so we improvised.  We had some old windows laying around for cold frames and they happened to be wide enough to fill the door gap, so we just framed them in with 2x4's. We used scrap pieces of wood to ensure they didn't fall out and those subsequently also doubled as door handles.

Inside looking out the front door.

Blocks of wood screwed into cross pieces held the plastic in place. 

A latch was added to the back window for easy removal when we need more ventilation.

A view looking at the back window from the inside.

This is our Listada Vi Gandia Eggplant.  All but one plant died this summer from flea beetle damage.  This one finally made flowers, but now it's too cold to produce so Jon transplanted it inside the greenhouse and it is thriving!

Our friends who helped deliver the cattle panels in the back of their truck had a great idea  to use hay around the perimeter as insulation.  After a year of rain they will be added to the garden as mulch and replaced with new bales.

So majestic..

Dealing with Termites

Less than a year after purchasing our home we found a spot in the floor of the breakfast room that heaved a bit.  We figured it was from moisture and the fact that the installer nailed this "floating floor" around the edges which created the bulge.  Well, Jon decided to replace the 3 boards that were ruined (thank you previous owners for leaving extra flooring!) and when he opened the floor, this is what he found...

Lovely...and there were termites crawling around.  Apparently they eat sub-flooring because you can see it crumbled to pieces. This small 8x10 room has a crawlspace (the only part of the home with a crawlspace) and it is very damp under there because there isn't cross ventilation and the previous owner didn't cover the entire space with plastic.

We decided to remove ALL fiber material (e.g. cardboard) and wood from under the porch including the woodpile left by the previous owners.  We stacked it far from the house and sure enough those logs were light as feathers and infested with termites.  We call this our $1,000 wood pile.  The wood will be used this winter for maple syrup boiling. 

We chose to use the Sentricon protection system for our home instead of dumping gallons of pesticides into the ground.  The Sentricon system is a bait that entices the termites to eat the food that prevents them from molting which kill the worker termites and eventually the entire colony. 

Our tropical plants are looking great for their first year!  After transplanting and watering, Jon noticed termites in the soil!!!

In the picture above, Jon and Paul are sifting through the soil and smashing the termites.  Just our luck...there was a small hole in the bag of soil that was stored under the porch.  The termites were eating the wood chips in the soil. 

A close-up of a termite in the potting soil.