The First Egg!

I imagine most chicken keepers can remember the excitement they felt when they discovered the first egg in the nest box.  Our ladies have been laying for a week now and each day we are happy to discover the small eggs in their straw bed. The first week we collected 14 eggs!

I suspected that egg laying was soon to begin when I noticed a change in the chickens' behavior.  In particular they were more boisterous and started pecking at my shoes and the ring on my finger.  Seeing this change and noting that they were 17 weeks old, I decided to open the nest boxes and fill them with straw.  Besides the times when they were given watermelon and apple peelings, I had never seen such a frenzy in the coop until they were given straw.  All three nest boxes were demolished in a matter of minutes!  The coop was a mess when I returned each evening.  After 3 days of re-making their boxes, the straw was finally left alone.

I scratched eggs off the grocery list this week!  The one little brown egg looks a little lonely with all the white!

Harvesting Apples

Can it really be time for apples??  Jon and I are really trying to keep up with all the produce that is coming in with living in a different time zone.  Our pumpkins are orange and the plants are dying back; the butternuts are turning tan; and now a friend's neighbor's apple tree is dropping its apples!  This apple tree is the largest apple tree I have ever seen!  The owner says throughout the years people pick a bag or two of apples for applesauce and pies, but he doesn't care for apples and just mows over them.  He was more than happy to have someone take them away...and we were more than happy to pick them!

We don't know what variety these apples are but they are completely green and super sweet!

The apples aren't as juicy as some varieties but we managed to make cider with about 10 gallons of apples.  Made 8 quarts.

This is the best kitchen gadget ever---the apple peeler, corer, slicer!  This little device has saved me countless hours over the years.  It took maybe 25 minutes to fill both of the soup pots in the picture below. 

Two soup pots full of apples and cinnamon sticks are boiling down for applesauce.  Two full pots of raw apples yields 7 quarts after the apples have cooked down.

Even the chickens enjoy the apple scraps...in addition to the seeds they find in the cow manure marinating in the front yard. 

Several batches of dehydrated apple slices were made with the solar food dehydrator. 

There is so much fruit right now that we're having a hard time keeping up!  This week we ate the first watermelon from our garden.  This watermelon was the juiciest I had ever tasted.  The chickens LOVE watermelon seeds.

The Garden Has Turned Into a Jungle!

This is our first year of really bringing in the harvest from our own garden.  In years past we grew enough to sustain our family with fresh vegetables throughout the summer with a little excess to can and give to friends.  This year however with a different growing climate and a lot more space, we are really bringing in the harvest with plenty of leftovers for friends.  Jon is thrilled to finally grow melons and bring a 5 gallon bucket full of produce to me in the kitchen!  So far I have canned 54 pints and 11 quarts of pickles, in addition to 2 gallons of refrigerator pickles!  After all that we are still picking more cucumbers and Jon continues to bring grocery sacks full of them to work.  We are so cucumbered-out that I do not remorse over the dozen or so that we find that have already yellowed.  The chickens have had their full and barely touch any that we leave in their presence.  Needless to say, only one cucumber plant will be grown next year...

Here is a snapshot overlooking most of the garden. Squash, cucumbers, and melons are along the fence on the right side with carrots and broccoli front and center with beans, okra, tomatoes, and corn behind.

Our first homegrown cantaloupe!  We didn't know when to pick it because the shell didn't look finished yet; but the bees and insects thought it was ready because they would sit on the melon and suck out its juices!  We figured if they are sucking out the juices, then it must be ready to pick!  It sure was tasty!

Do you see the corn tassels in the back?  Well, the pumpkins have taken over and are practically suffocating the corn.  We didn't realize how many vines a pumpkin plant produced and how long they stretched.  

Here are three baby watermelons almost ready to pick.

In Portland they would only reach the size of our fist by fall.

Who ever heard of pumpkins ripe in July?  Well, here are 2 of our almost ready to pick sweet pumpkins.  I hope some of the pumpkins don't ripen until fall because I would like to use them for decorating!  I see a lot of pumpkin bread, pies, and jam...  In Portland our pumpkins turned orange in late November. 

Here is our long line of squash.  With 6 acorn squash plants I counted 16 squash (so far...).

As we know, vine plants don't have boundaries.  The butternuts felt a bit claustrophobic and decided to go into the field.  Here is one big butternut just starting to change colors!

Here is a butternut squash plant climbing the fence.  If you look close you can see a small butternut.  We hope it doesn't tear the fence down when it gets big!

And because Jon is silly, he left supper on the counter for me one evening...tomatoes and okra!

Queen Bee Has Tight Boundaries

So...after introducing the 2nd nuc of bees in early June, I have performed 2 hive inspections to make sure this queen is healthy and laying eggs.  Both inspections confirmed that she is indeed alive and laying, but the problem is, she is only laying on the original 4 frames that came from the nuc!  There are empty frames of drawn comb next to her, but she refuses to lay eggs in them!

At first glance when opening the hive, one would assume that all is well because the bee population is in fact really large and they are filling out frames with comb, etc.  When digging a little deeper, you will notice drawn frames with no eggs and larvae but 4 frames packed to the edges with capped brood, pollen, and nectar.  It's almost like the queen works really hard and then takes a vacation until the cells are empty.  This discovery after 2 months is a bit unnerving for a beekeeper.  I did notice 2 uncapped queen cells which could indicate a replacement queen, but I have been told that most hives keep a queen cell around as a warning to the queen...

I don't know if there is anything a beekeeper can do to encourage expansion.  I thought I could switch frames around but I have always been told that this a no-no.  Thoughts anyone?

Sorry, no pictures for this post.

Homemade Lincoln Log House

Recently my parents passed down the Lincoln Logs that date back to my Dad's childhood.  I think there are 3 different sets but they are all compatible with each other.  Unfortunately all of the trusses were broken on the ends and there were only 4 roof slats, so I traced the broken trusses onto some scrap plywood and made more roof slats.  With a more complete set, Paul plays with the Lincoln Logs more!

After a few weeks mulling over storage ideas, I came up with a giant Lincoln Log House to store all the pieces in!

The bottom logs are glued and nailed together, and of course there is a solid bottom so the toys don't fall out.  The trusses, roof slats, and chimney are all removable.  They could be glued together and come off as one unit or even have a hinge.  Paul's favorite part of building is putting on the roof so we left it detachable.  The logs were made from 2x4's that Jon put through the router table to round off the corners.  The notches were also made with the router.  

Overall, the project was fun and Paul loves having a big log house!  I enjoy having a separate place for the Lincoln Logs besides a plastic bag or mixed with all the other toys in the toy box. 

One Week Without Electricity

Hello Readers!  You may have noticed that I have missed my weekly posting; and for good reason...we had no electricity!  A derecho storm blew through much of the Appalachian area on June 29th and left hundreds of thousands without electricity and some without water.  Thankfully we still had water.  I describe in detail how we coped during this power outage.  Many of the things mentioned below we do on a normal and semi-normal basis to be resourceful with our electricity usage.

Refrigerator/Freezer:
This had to be the most stressful part of losing electricity.  In general we keep our refrigerator and freezer moderately full and only open it on an as-needed basis.  We don't just have a hankering for a snack and stand with the refrigerator door open for minutes while deciding what to eat.  When the power went out, we only opened the refrigerator 4 times in 2 days.  By day 3, the milk was just starting to cool off.  By the end of day 2, all of the leftovers were gone in the refrigerator so we began eating items in the freezer.  At the end of day 2, all of the meat was still frozen solid.  The homemade ice cream had turned to liquid but was still very cold and actually hurt my teeth when I drank it. Halfway through day 3, a friend of ours had received electricity, so we packed up the remaining items in the freezer and refrigerator (including condiments) and kept them at her house.  With a small cooler and reusable ice packs, we brought items home to eat for the rest of the week.  I think the meat would have lasted until day 5.  The only items I ended up tossing in the woods because I was unsure if they were safe to eat was a half jar of spaghetti sauce, an open container of soy milk, and a half jar of mayonaise.

Keeping the House Cool:
We seldom use air conditioning; in fact, we have only used it 3 days all summer, and that was Memorial Day weekend when we had friends visiting to replace the barn roof.  While the temps have been in the 90's outside this past week, our downstairs never went above 80 and the upstairs above 85.  What did we do?  At night we opened all of the upstairs windows and a few downstairs that are safe to leave open in case of a prowler.  At 6am when I woke up, I opened up all the downstairs windows if it was cooler outside than it was inside; and by 7, all of the windows were closed.  A blanket was draped over one of the south-facing upstairs windows to keep the sunlight out and another window had its curtains closed.  Just like the refrigerator, we only open the outside door unless we need to and we consolidate our trips outside.  The basement was probably another 5-10 degrees cooler but we didn't spend much time down there because that would require flashlights and batteries.  By 10 am we were usually done with all of our outside chores and would sit in the cool house for the rest of the day.

Hot Water:
This probably was easily solved...use a garden hose.  We have 3, lead-free garden hoses strung across our yard to water the garden; and when filled with water all day long, the water is literally scalding by noon on a clear day.  We used the sun's energy to heat the water and enjoyed a gentle breeze while watching the bees pollinate the clover in the yard.  We used my homemade castile soap and had a fun time spraying each other with the hose.  The hostas behind us also appreciated the drink.  This is something even town residents could do...just wear a bathing suit!  For washing dishes we heated a pot of water over the fire when we cooked our food.

Cooking Food:
This was a no-brainer since we go camping.  We have a small fire pit in the backyard so we cooked all of our meals with fallen dead branches that fell in the storm.  To reheat leftovers the first 2 days, we used our solar food dehydrator.  As far as having enough food, our pantry is more than stocked.  

Overall, going without electricity for a week wasn't that bad for us.  If we were like some people without electricity and water, then I'm sure this post would be a bit different.  The thought of not having water made me realize that when our well is fixed, we should make sure that it can manually be pumped in case of a power outage.

Throughout the week we heard generators running at the neighbor's houses and couldn't help but wonder how efficient they were, what they were mainly used for (refrigerator vs. hot water vs. computer, etc.), and how much it cost, not to mention the environmental footprint they make.  Jon and I don't have any intentions on getting a generator because we managed just fine without one.  If it were winter, our fireplace would provide heat; not to mention we kept our house at 34 degrees while living in Laramie, WY for a year when we were poor college kids.  I think a little bit of sacrifice is good  for everybody.  Plus, who wants to wait in line at the gas stations who had electricity...some of those gas station lines were literally a mile long with traffic controllers; and they limited usage to $20.00 per stop!

At the end of the 3rd day, the water heater no longer gave us warm water.  We took this opportunity to empty the water out of the water heater to get all of the sediment out.  It is recommended that a house does this once each year.  From the picture below you can see all of the sandy-looking stuff that came out.

In one week, the garden exploded with ripe produce: beans, cucumbers, zucchinis, and beats.  Just when I had all of the canning supplies packed in boxes and ready to take to my friend's house to process, we received electricity!  I was relieved to do this at home; but it did get me thinking more about expanding our food drying and cellar options.  Now that we have a basement and land to construct a cellar, I would like to look into this more.

On a side note, one thing that did happen during this week was 3 bottles of Perry (sparkling pear cider) blew off their corks!!  We think they are still carbonating which we expected would happen since we had to bottle them early because of the unexpected move across country.  It was a bit of a mess down in the basement...imagine cleaning up the mess on the floor using a flashlight.

Mexican Bean Beetle Invasion!

Our experience with garden pests have been very minimal...slugs and aphids.  Now that we live in the country without the suburban pesticides, we are realizing how difficult organic gardening really can be.  So far this spring/summer we have dealt with: cucumber beetles, potato flea beetles, cutworm, aphids, potato beetles, slugs, and the Mexican bean beetle.  We have spent hours and I mean literally hours, hand picking these pests.  Of course, aphids fly away and we haven't figured out the right mix of dish detergent and water for pest management control.  Any readers who have suggestions, please leave a comment!  The picture above shows a section of bean plants that have been affected by the aphids and the Mexican bean beetle.  Surprisingly the beans themselves haven't been affected, only the leaves.  

Here is a cluster of the Mexican bean beetle eggs.  One beetle can lay 40-75 eggs in a single cluster.  

Here is the larva.  These pests live on the underside of the leaves which makes finding them a bit more work.  We have 250 plants so that's a lot of leaves to turn over!

Weeks ago when we first saw this brown beetle, we thought it was a beneficial insect because the aphid population was declining.  Come to find out, it's the adult Mexican bean beetle!!  

I am so confused when it comes to knowing which bugs are pests and which bugs are beneficial.  There are so many different colors of ladybugs that I never know which ones should be left in the garden.  I left the ladybug in the above picture on the bean plants assuming it was a beneficial.  Do any of you readers have advice on identification?