Planting: Week 1

We officially started our planting season! Last Saturday we started our very first round of seeds.

On top of the left bucket is the seed flat that we are using to start all of our seeds. We are planting in a 4:2:1 parts sawdust to sand to perlite.

First we mixed the sawdust, sand, and perlite together and added water to moisten it.

Next, we leveled the mixture and drew lines every 2 inches to mark where the rows will go.

Then we used a piece of wood to make our 1/4" deep rows. Sam wanted to take a picture of me to prove that I "actually helped." It is true he does most of the work but I really do try to help. The tiny human we created tends to take up a lot of my time and energy... but she was asleep so I was able to help :)

This is how it looked after I was done.

Then voila! Seeds are planted. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and 5 varieties of tomatoes.

We threw some burlap on top to prevent the seeds from getting disturbed while we water prior to germination. 

Today we officially saw a few plants making their way through! Pictures to come. Plus, we will be planting more this weekend! Stay tuned!

New and Improved Garden

Well, it has only been almost a year since we last posted - that's not that long right?! I guess that is what happens when you have a baby...

Last year's garden was mostly a flop, most likely due to the fact that we were figuring out how to keep a human baby alive (which we did, thank goodness!). But we were disappointed with the results of our garden since we put quite a bit of time (initially) and money into it.

Therefore, we decided to go all out this year! 

Sam has worked extremely hard building this awesome greenhouse so that we can start our growing season early - we will actually start some of our seeds in about 2 weeks!

This is what the inside looks like. We have two 4' x 20' grow boxes. At the top of the T-frame there is wire running the length of the box which will enable us to grow many of our plants vertically instead of taking up so much space in the grow box.

We have decided to use the Mittleider Method for gardening. We chose this method for its reliability and to maximize our chance for success. 

Inside the greenhouse is the seed table, which is kind of like a mini greenhouse/hoop house inside of the big greenhouse. On top of the table is the heat mat (black with green writing) which serves to help keep the seed starts warm. 

We planted some 'practice seeds' January 7th, just to see if the environment of the seed table was warm enough to allow for proper germination and growth. So far it is working really well! We planted a bunch of different things - beets, zucchini, pumpkin, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, turnips, peas, etc etc - and everything is looking awesome. There have even been a few days where the temperature has gotten up to over 95 degrees inside the seed table hoop house! And actually, that is almost a little too warm :)

This is what the seed table hoop house looks like when it is all closed up.

One thing I want to make sure to highlight is Sam's raspberry pi. He has spent countless hours programming the raspberry pi (which is a mini programmable computer) to track the air and soil temperatures. He has attached multiple probes to track the temperature of the air inside of the greenhouse, the air inside of the seed table hoop house, the outside air, the soil inside the greenhouse, and the soil inside the seed table hoop house.

If you are interested in seeing this data, click the following link: Greenhouse dashboard

We also have two more 4' x 20' grow boxes that we decided to cover with hoop houses. We will not be able to grow vertically in these boxes but the hoop houses will still enable us to start our plants earlier. We will start all of our seeds in the seed table hoop house and when they are ready to be transplanted, we will transplant them into their respective grow boxes.

Just in case you were wondering, our chickens are alive and doing really well! Millie likes to watch them :)

We will be posting regularly again, documenting our successes and failures as we embark upon this journey towards self reliance!

Honey and bees

Since it has been such nice weather here for us in Utah this winter, we decided last weekend to go check on our beehives to see if our bees were still alive (seeing as the temperature was in the 60's). We are sad to report that neither one of our two hives made it through the winter. One of the hives we didn't really expect to make it through the winter since it had a slow start and did not seem to be incredibly productive all together. The other hive, however, we were quite surprised to find that it did not survive because it had done so well all throughout the summer and fall! Such a bummer.

On the bright side, we now have about 30 lbs of delicious honey! We harvested one of the hives last weekend and then finished up with the other hive this weekend.

Here is what we did...

First, we took a frame out from the hive and observed how cool it looked.

Second, we cut out the pieces of honey + comb.

Next, we crushed it up.

Finally, we strained the honey and put it into jars and voila! This is what you end up with...

The bottom ones that are a different color are the ones we did last weekend, which have now begun to crystallize. Apparently when you put your honey right from the hive into jars without heating it up/pasteurizing it, it starts to turn cloudy pretty quickly. We decided not to alter our honey since we tend to think that the more "natural" it is, the better. The appearance of this honey might make it look less appealing, but man it sure tastes great and is easier to spread!

The top jars of honey are the ones we processed this weekend... hence the darker color (which is what our other ones looked like too once upon a time). We even have cinnamon sticks in a few of the jars to try to make cinnamon honey because we recently tried some at a local beehive store and it was INSANELY AMAZING! Hopefully it works out and tastes as delicious and we remember.

We already have our order in for more bees for this upcoming season... we are eager to try again and hope we will be more successful at keeping our bees alive this time around.

Hopefully this inspires some of you to invest in some of your own bees... they are some of the most fascinating creatures that exist! And they are also critical for our food supply, so if you like to eat food and want to continue to survive, you might gain a little more appreciation for the hard work that they do. If you are looking for more information on bees or need a place to get some, let us know and we would be happy to point you in the right direction and get connected with the people who have the bees/supplies :)

New Baby Chick

Broody Hen + Fertilized Eggs + 21 days = Cute and Fuzzy Baby Chick

We had another hen go broody. It is not normal for them to do it during the winter, but it does happen. So we let mama hen do what mama hen does best. And the result is adorable. 

(Sorry for the portrait orientation on the videos and pics)

Turkeys Participating in No Shave November

I know we haven't shared much about our turkeys, but I wanted to write a quick post about them since they will be getting ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow. We will be sharing more about that later.

I went out last night to shut the door on the barn and noticed something a little strange on one of the turkey's chest. It looked like a bushy weed got stuck in its feathers. I wondered if any others had the same thing and so I checked them out. One of the other Toms did. This is what it looked like.

(Sorry the pics aren't the best. I took them this morning when I let them out and I didn't want to fuss about trying to get good lighting for a picture of the turkeys at 6:30 in the morning)

When I got back inside I consulted my expert that knows everything (Google) and found out that it is a "beard". I had no idea that turkeys grew beards! Granted I did not grow up in a hunting family or on a farm, so I was never expose to a live turkey. I guess that they decided to not shave them this month for No Shave November.

Some other things that you might not know about turkeys.

• Turkeys can fly - The domesticated turkey that most people eat for Thanksgiving can't because it is bred to be so big, but wild or heritage breeds can.
• The "Butterball" turkeys that you find at the store have been bred so that their breast meat is much larger. As a result of this they can't mate on their own and have to be artificially inseminated. Not the way nature intended it to be which is why we chose a heritage breed.
• Ben Franklin has been quoted as saying that the turkey should be the national bird. This is not entirely true. He wasn't happy with the Bald Eagle because he said that it wasn't a respectable bird and the turkey was more respectable. smithsonianmag.com has more information on this.
• Supposedly their gobble can be heard a mile away. I am not sure ours are that loud, but it is loud. And fun to talk back to them when they are doing it. Our neighbor kids would get them going from their yard.
• When you say a kid is being a turkey because they are getting into trouble, you are spot on. Turkeys are curious creatures (a lot like kids) and they like to jump over fences, jump up on anything they can and peck at anything new. Ask Nicole about this.
• Turkeys aren't dumb. I want to preface this by saying that I don't really think any animal is dumb. Animals are all smart in their own ways. After watching a completely domesticated hen hatch a chick and raise it without ever seeing it or being taught how to do it, I realize that animal have much better instincts than we do in some ways. Back to the turkey. The typical Thanksgiving turkey might be dumb because humans have bred any intelligence out of them. But heritage breeds and wild turkeys are intelligent. 

Stay tuned for how we turned these beautiful birds into a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.

The things we do for our chickens

Last night we had quite an interesting experience with one of our chickens.

Sam went out to tuck everyone in for the night and only counted 22 birds (we have 23 birds total). After looking around for a minute he found this:

One of our chickens had nuzzled its way into the middle of some welded wire we had laying around (which was on the side of the barn they supposedly do not have access to, by the way) and was stuck. Her tail was sticking out but we couldn't pull her out and were afraid we would cut her up if we tried. Sam tried to push her through to the other side but, as you can see in the picture, this side was pinched and the hole was smaller, too small for her to fit through - I had run over the welded wire a little when it was in the driveway a while ago - oops :). 

Our only solution was to unroll the ENTIRE thing in the dark... in the FREEZING COLD.

This whole scene was sort of hilarious to me so I took a couple pictures because it just HAD to be documented. Just picture a chicken's little head poking out going around and around while we unrolled and unrolled and unrolled... seriously funny! I mean, it was a little sad, but mostly hilarious since we were 98% sure she wasn't hurt at all, just stuck.

Towards the end we had to be careful unrolling the welded wire so we would not to bend her feet and break something since her feet were all tangled in the wire.

Once she was free she seemed a little in shock. We held her and pet her to let her know we were just trying to help and then we let her walk around for a minute to make sure nothing was broken or hurt before sending her off to bed with the rest of the flock. She was totally okay by the way, just a little confused.

Sometimes chickens are quite smart and sometimes they are really dumb (in this instance, for example). Nonetheless, it is ridiculous and quite funny the lengths we go to keep these chickens safe and happy. They are crazy but we love them!

Bye Bye Birdie

We are sad to report that our poor cute rooster is no more...

As I mentioned before, we put the rooster in the brooder for a couple days so he could adjust to his new home and all the other animals around here. He seemed a little stir crazy in there so we let him out a couple times for a short time when we were able to supervise. And every time we did the turkeys (and a few hens) wouldn't leave the poor guy alone... which kept the rooster scared pretty much all the time. 

Friday night we thought we would let him out into the barn at night so he would already be there when everyone woke up in the morning. Ironically that night, we went to "tuck in" everyone and the rooster had already gotten out of the brooder (he knocked over some boards which had to hurt) and was just sitting on top of it. Made our job easy! We decided to do this Friday night so that we (I'm using this word loosely, by "we" I mostly mean Sam) could be out there Saturday morning to supervise without having somewhere to be. Sam went out and checked on the rooster in the morning and he was still in his spot on the brooder (we assume he felt safer there) so we just let him stay there. 

We had planned to play pickleball with some friends that morning so Sam checked on the rooster again right before we left and he still hadn't moved from his spot on the brooder. We figured he would be fine there so we left and played pickleball for a couple hours. Then we went to our friends' house and had brunch and picked raspberries... so by the time we got home again about 4 hours had gone by.

When we went into the backyard we couldn't find the rooster anywhere so we figured he jumped over a fence somehow and we got ready to go on a rooster hunt (I was used to this with having to chase down a few mischievous turkeys in the past). We couldn't really see or hear him but then Sam looked more closely into our neighbor's yard just to the north of us and saw white feathers alllllll over... never a good sign. Especially when that neighbors has two really big dogs. The poor rooster unfortunately became one of the dog's morning snack. :(

We assume the rooster got brave and decided to venture out of the barn but was being chased/bullied by those blasted turkeys and jumped over anything it could to find refuge from those dang turkeys. Unfortunately, of ALL the yards he could have jumped into (we have 5 different yards that meet up with ours) he jumped into the WORST ONE!

We are sad about our poor rooster but there is not much we can do about it. Even though having animals is mostly a lot of fun, death is something you have to deal with too, especially with these kinds of animals. It is never fun to lose an animal and I still have a hard time with it, no matter how many times it happens.

We hope to get another rooster in the future and will keep you posted, as we don't know when that will be!

P.S. Our turkeys are driving me crazy and even though this is probably terrible to say, I think I will be happy when they will be gone next month!