MountainSmallHolder.com

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…

We were given back in November a very large cut of local venison, enough to fill the freezer and last us all winter. I believe in using every part of an animal, ethically it's not right to waste something that has given it's life up for you to eat. So once the cuts were packaged up, bones stripped of meat and boiled down for stock for the dogs, we had a lot of leftover trimmings. I've always wanted to make my own sausages, believing I could do better than the offerings at the super market and after a bit of research we had a plan…

We tried a few very experimental recipes but 1 turned out well. 

0.75kg ground Venison
04kg ground pork
2 Tbspn chilly powder
2 Teaspoon ground coriander
1 1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/2 Teaspoon Mustard seed
1 teaspoon Oregano

One lesson of experience… always use real castings for the sausages, the collagen really don't cut it.

Another late post ;)
While the high altitude lakes are now frozen over, we managed to pay them a visit before the weather set in to do spot of fishing for some Cut Throat Trout. Two we froze for another day and two I decided to have a go at preserving by salting and cold smoking, but I wanted to do it the way I thought it should be done and later compare my technique with a how-to for preserving fish online.

After cleaning the fish I made small diagonal incisions about 1/2 inch apart along each side of both the fish. I then rubbed a very generous amount of good, course grade sea salt into the flesh, making sure it got into the cuts. While the fish were marinating in the salt for about an hour I got the smoker ready. Since not having a true cold smoker, I used our greatly under valued clay chimney fire place, the height of the chimney was just enough to allow the smoke to cool as it rose and the fire was kept to a smolder to maximize the smoke and not cook the fish, since the objective is to draw out the liquids and preserve with the smoke.

The one downside to using this equipment was I had to keep returning to the fire every 20min to stop it either burning out or catching a flame, I did this for 10hours. Over all the preserving experiment went really well, the salted smoked fish kept fresh for 2 weeks in the refrigerator and made a nice creamy smoked fish pasta sauce. On reviewing my method online, the one thing I will do next time is soak the fish in a brine over night to allow the salt to get completely through the flesh.

So the Fall is quickly approaching and the garden is really coming into it's own now. It's getting a little tense too. The lean-to green house is overgrown with tomatoes (and mutant growing sun flower), fingers are crossed hoping they will ripen before the weather really starts to turn. On one plant alone we counted about 50 tomatoes!

Salad is still growing strong despite the frequent hail storm and the constant grazing by the household, we plan next year to cut back on the amount of greens grown and focus more on vegetables that can either be stored or persevered. The Strawberries that were planted in the spring have been dug up and replanted in a half wine barrel to make way for a new smaller, salad garden bed with a wind proof and heat retaining roof that has yet to be devised, more on that project later!

Since it's only been our first year of really growing produce up in the mountains (more about that later), we've had to suppliment our veggies with ones from the farmers market. We picked up a few bargins at the end of day sales, sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes among others and we've been a few preserving experiments. 

 Earlier in the year we picked a bunch of super cheap cabbages from a family run farm shop, sauerkraut was the quickest way to dispatch our over supply, this recipe worked pretty well: http://waltonfeed.com/old/sauer.html (note: best to leave for six months or its has a teeth cleaning quality ;-).

 Another helpful link for solving an abundance problem is here: http://www.new-jersey.com/Daytripper/pickles.htm, just finished making our first batch of pickles, can't wait to start sampling them in a few days!