Fall is definitely set in,the aspens are changing color and the mushrooms have been and gone (and we're completely mushroomed out!), but strangely enough the garden is still holding in there. Salads, chard, spinach and beets among other things have been feeding us steadily over the summer, so we can only guess at their output. Here's roughly our harvest so far, much of which has been either frozen or persevered.
- 43 pounds of potatoes (a mouse nibbled at a few of them, grrrr!)
- 4 pounds of chard (more still to come)
- 1 1/2 pounds beet leafs (again loads more to harvest)
- 4 jars of pickled beet
- 2 pounds of garlic
- More salad than we could eat (benefits of cold climates!)
- 15 stalks of rhubarb
Other produce produced in small quantities include: Snap peas, spinach, radish, cherries, turnip greens, chillies. Harvests still to come: Brussels, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, beets and chard. Herbs: Basil, Dill, Oregano, Marjoram and Thyme.
So we're just over half way there for the year but plenty more to come! Other garden updates include: 1 new 8×4 foot garden bed dug for next year and this years garlic bed has been covered with black piping and plastic, we'll see if we can get an extra month out of it with some spinach plantings.
Three of our spring chicks turned out to be roosters and the last of them went to the "block" today. Shame the Rhodes Island was very friendly :( So last weekend we picked up 5 replacements from someone on CL, they're a few months younger than the other girls so they'll be in the quarantine pen that is inside the electric fence for a while yet.
We got, 2 Black Australorps, 2 Black Star and one other speckled pullet, I can't remember what she is, I was told and saw an older version of the breed, we only meant to get four new birds but I'm a sucker for rare breeds :)
We've finished our 2nd to last jam, a Raspberry from 5 pounds of wild raspberries collected in the forest. Others this year include: Peach and Orange (mentioned in the previous post), Orange and Dandelion marmalade (making use of our spring collected Dandelion harvest), Strawberry and Peach and finally Strawberry, Apple and Rhubarb. The only one left will be Gooseberry and something, our Gooseberries are nearly ready and the forest ones are already harvested.
Super Simple Raspberry Jam Recipe
Could not be easier…
5lb Raspberries
5 cups Sugar
Wash and destem the berries. Sugar is 1 cup to each pound of Raspberry. Boil berries until rolling (2-3 min.), add and stir in sugar and bring back to the boil for about 10 min. Jam is ready to canned when you can place a blob on a cold plate and run your finger through it and the parting remains. We threw in our meger harvest of 20 sour cherrieswe had growing ;)
We recently returned from a vacation of rafting down the Grand Canyon, on our way back we stopped at Palisades CO., just off I70 near Grand Junction. Palisades is primarily small family farm orchards - we've just entered Peach and Pear harvest time, so we picked up 50 pounds of Peaches.
For the first recipe ;-)….
- 17 ripe Peaches
- 4 Oranges
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 6 cups sugar
- 1 packet of fruit pectin
Quickly dip the peaches in boiling water for about 45sec to loosen the skin and then peel, coarsely chop. Dice the oranges into small chunks and add to peaches and add sugar and cinnamon stick.
Simmer for 20min and add pectin. Pour mixture into sterilized jars and return to hot water bath. Remember that depending on your altitude you may have to boil the jars longer, I think we had boil for 45min at 9,000ft.
The final accommodation for the spring chicks is complete, and a little larger than expected I might add. 2 stories and 18 square feet on the main level (4 x 4 feet plus nesting boxes) and 8 square feet on the second level plus a perch. We built in an RV sky light for extra ventilation and light during the winter months and tiled it with lino flooring to make it easier to clean.
It's a lofty 10ft high and raised 2ft off the ground to allow extra roaming space and predator protection, the chickens took to the ladder on the first day! 3 doors, one hatch for the hens to enter and exit, one large main door for cleaning and access and one lid over the nesting boxes.
The original plan was to add on a frame covered in wire mesh as the outside area but plans changed, and we went with a poultry electric fence from Premier1, so far we've not had any incidents with the local fox and coyote population, I just have to remember to turn it off when climbing into the area ;).
There are two things that grow in abundance here in the mountains, Dandelions and Rhubarb, so what better way to use the excess than to make a seasonal mountain wine? Here's this years recipe:
Dandelion and Rhubarb Wine (2 gallon yield)
3 cups Dandelion petals (tip: pick during the mid day and try to avoid any green bits).
1 cup diced Rhubarb stalk.
2 Oranges, both peel and juice, care not to include any white bits.
1 Lemon, peel and juice, again not white bits.
4lb Sugar.
1 pack or wine yeast.
The Process
Pour about 5 cups of boiling water over the Dandelion petals and let stand 2 days max. to extract flavor. Boil the petals for 20 min and strain through mesh bag and return solution to boiling pot, discard petals. Add water to bring wine to 2 gallons and add Rhubarb, Lemon, Orange and Sugar. Leave small amount of orange juice to the side to make yeast starter. Gently boil mixture for a further 45 min while you make the yeast starter.
To make the starter, add luke warm water to the remaining orange juice and a teaspoon of sugar, add yeast and let stand for 15min then stir, in 45 min the starter will be ready to add to cooled wine mixture, lid it and add bubble air lock. I usually leave the wine in the primary fermentor for 3-4 weeks then siphon to secondary fermentor for another 3months. Bottle and store.
Suppose I should do an update on the garden! We've put in 4 new raised beds this year and a major overhaul on the others. The salad space has been reduced and moved from last years location to a smaller, new bed but the production of the salad has doubled!! I must be doing something right.
One of our major crops, the potatoes have a new bed dedicated to themselves, and spare space has filled with potted potato plants. Garlic is going strong, we put down a bed of them last fall and mulched them well, they were our pot luck planting, not sure if they'd survive the harsh winter.
The covered bed of Chard and Beets that I wrote about in the early spring that was covered in snow for a month is looking very healthy and strong, there's even a few bonus lettuce and mustard that popped up, very early direct sowing of Beets and Chard are on next years list, very hardy but quick growing crop. I finally got round to adding the vertical support to the cover frame work and helped greatly with the snow load.
The Brussels we started indoors in march are nearly 2ft high and the other brassicas are also looking promising. In the fruit department, the Rhubarb has produced a nice amount, the cherry trees are covered in flowers and the Raspberries are vigorous, the only dissapointing crop is the gooseberries, out of 3 plants only one is really producing.
I've been putting off posting about the "chicken tractor" or backyard chicken coop, till I had drawn up the plans properly for people to reference, with how busy things are in the spring, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon :(
I had in mind this coop was going to be for 2 - 3 exotic Bantams, I ended selling it on Craigs List and decided to focus on the chicken Mc Mansion for the entire flock. The idea was for it to be an ultra portable coop for backyard chickens that could be moved around to semi free range the hens and mow the lawn while being easy to clean 100% predator and rodent proof. It's 6ft long by 4ft wide and 3 1/ft high, the enclosed coop uses 2ft of the 6ft length. 2 access doors, one on the coop to allow cleaning and egg collection and one 4ft door on the side to allow the chickens to free range if wished. The coop door was basically one entire side of the coop, hinging on the frame of the construction, with two shaped over lapping metal caps on the roof.
Being my first coop it took 4 - 5 days and approx. $120 to build. Any gaps between doors and hinges were filled with marine insulation strip, kind of important to make it draft free as possible when temperatures up here get down to minus 30f! The nesting box divider and perch slide out for easy cleaning and the coop floor was covered in smooth lino, again for easy cleaning. The great thing about the small size of the construction is that a single 60watt bulb would be sufficient to take a bit of the chill out the air in winter.
For anyone who interested here's the basic chicken tractor plans in zip archive format.
We're also expanding our livestock quota this year, 3 weeks ago we took delivery of 13 day old baby chicks, 4 Rhode Island Reds, 8 Columbian Wyandottes and one mystery rare breed. The chicks are all very happy and so far only one casualty, one of the Wyandottes became constipated and despite our best efforts of soaking it's rear end in warm water and applying triple antibiotic, which appears to be the best courses of remedy, the chick didn't make it. A great shame, any loss for a hobby farmer/small holder is a bad one.
The rest are perfectly happy, we're lowering the temperature around them by 5 degrees each week by raising the heat lamp, soon they'll be out growing the half of a large dog crate they're in.
The first crop of Swiss Chard and Beets have gone into the ground, I'm hoping I'm not too early in my eagerness!
A few changes have been made to the poly tunnel/hoophouse system from last years design, it was found hammering 2ft lengths of rebar into the soil and putting the pvc pipes over those to create a frame, is much more stable and can handle a greater snow load, the plastic pipe keeps its form much better. The other alteration yet to do is adding a length of straight, sturdy pipe across the top, again, this should improve it holding ability.
Inside the hoop house 6 plastic bottles have been spray painted matt black and filed with water, the idea is they store the warmth during the day and release it overnight, so far so good, the soil hasn't frozen and only on a few occasions the condensation on the plastic froze. But looking out the window now, we've already got nearly a foot of snow on the ground and it's still coming!! Maybe I am trying a little too early…
Fall is definitely set in,the aspens are changing color and the mushrooms have been and gone (and we're completely mushroomed out!), but strangely enough the garden is still holding in there. Salads, chard, spinach and beets among other things have been feeding us steadily over the summer, so we can only guess at their output. Here's roughly our harvest so far, much of which has been either frozen or persevered. 
So we're just over half way there for the year but plenty more to come! Other garden updates include: 1 new 8×4 foot garden bed dug for next year and this years garlic bed has been covered with black piping and plastic, we'll see if we can get an extra month out of it with some spinach plantings. 
