Is our adventure really over?

It's a bit sad that we've neglected our blog for so long. There's no excuse, really.

Well, we did it! We went an entire year without buying food at the grocery store. Although we kept saying we would never go back, somehow we've relapsed into some of our old habits for the sake of convenience and cost savings. Just yesterday I was clipping coupons in preparation for my next trip to the grocery store. I still HATE everything about grocery shopping.

We still have our backyard chickens. We raised two flocks of 4 chicks in our guest bedroom this spring before transferring them to a temporary coop in our background. We had to combine the two flocks at just the right time so that the older chicks wouldn't beat up the younger four. Just when they all started to get along, we traumatized them again by joining them with the 7 elders in the big coop. On that same day we said goodbye to Lucy, Gigantor, and one other bird (sadly I've forgotten her name). We froze the carcasses and will likely use them to make soup sometime this winter...?

The garden beds are mostly empty now. We planted our winter crop several weeks ago- some lettuce, arugula, beets, and carrots. I'm not sure that we'll get much of a crop though, especially after that random snowfall we had. There are plenty of potatoes in the cellar and green beans in the freezer. We're yet to have a fully stocked pantry and freezer, but we're on our way....

Michael took his hunting course and went on his first hunting trip- but I'll let him blog about that.

Time to plant!!

So here's the skinny of what we've done over the winter:

We went wine tasting, a lot. We went to several farmers markets to see what they have for winter, which is actually pretty much what you see during the growing season minus some vegetables. We also tried out Spud.com. Spud offers locally produced foods and goods delivered to your home. We've used Full Circle Farms in the past and Spud is WAY better. We'll be ending our Spud membership in a few weeks as our own garden begins producing.

We've lost a couple more chickens, one recently due to age, the other we're not sure the cause. I blame attrition. And one more just after Christmas because she had a crook beak and I euthanized her. So we're down to 11 ladies. We'll be fattening the flock up and harvesting a few in the coming months and getting new chicks to replace the old ladies. Hopefully we'll be getting up to about 10 eggs per day. We've had so much success selling them to coworkers, neighbors, and at our driveway farmer's markets that we need all the eggs we can get to even come close to the demand.

Last week we spent a few days at the Monteillet (pronounced Moan Tee A) Fromagerie. The

Monteillets are a couple that have a working farm and cheese business about 25 miles outside Walla Walla in a town called Dayton, WA. We had a great time getting to help with some farm chores and taking a Cheese Making class with Pierre-Louis. Normally classes are $200/person per day. We signed up for the hard cheese class - a one-day class (or rather, half of a two-day class). They ended up teaching us both halves in one day. it made for a long day, but was WELL WORTH IT. In the end we ended up getting the full two day course for the price of one day.

They have a little cottage they rent out. Visitors pay $200/night for the whole cottage w/ one bedroom. If you need to spread out, there are two more rooms in the cottage that can be had for an extra $100/night each. So, if you took up all three rooms the lodging would cost $400/night. They fill the fridge with farm fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese and some meat for breakfasts.

Trisa usually takes the pictures, hence you won't see her in very many. But here's me making cheese, wearing a lovely hair net. We made Chevre, Feta, some French hard cheeses, and more. I don't know all the names, but in the picture you can see some large molds to my left - those are for Feta, some tall mold in front of me called logs in French,

the medium mold I'm working, and there's 48 medium/small molds past the large Feta molds. Out of the picture are about 6 large muslin bags for the fresh cheese to my right. The Fresh cheeses are the Chevres and one other I can't remember t

he name of.

The countryside in Eastern WA is so beautiful. The farm is in a great setting right next to the Touchet River (think tushie, as in your bum). I prefer to call it the touch it river, but I never did

because it is running so high and fast right now. Plus is was super cold outside all of the days we were there. Trisa calls this next picture my family photo. Who knows? Maybe it'll go on our Christmas cards this year...

On our way home, we stopped at the Palouse Falls. It's an amazing waterfall in the middle of the plains. FREAKING AMAZING. There's an old legend that a beaver tricked a coyote and threw him into the hole that the falls now enter. The coyote was stuck for eons and dug the pit and tried to claw his way out. The result was the canyon the river runs through, the pit the falls enter, and the appearance of scratch marks on the pit and canyon walls. If you look closely, you can still see where the coyote tried to claw his way out.

This year we are again offering some boxes in our front side yard for rent. We've already rented out two of them and we haven't even posted on craigslist yet. We've also created some more flower beds in our front yard and we have some plans to make a couple of long skinny beds at the bottom of out lawn and practice what we read about last year - SPIN farming.

Over the winter we tried to extend the growing season by installing hoops and covers on three of the boxes, but the 14 days of subfreezing temperatures we had over Thanksgiving and into December wasted our efforts. We ended up planting a few areas of Dutch Field Peas - they are Nitrogen fixers that have been adding N2 to our soil for a couple of months and some Rye Grass that we turned over this weekend that will break down and add some Carbon to the soil. This season we're adding some Blood and Bone Meals, but just a little, and some Chicken manure. In another season or two we'll be at a level where we're adding almost nothing to our soil that doesn't come from the "farm."

I'll take some pics of the farm this week and post them so you can track our progress and the plants and the weather with us.

That's all for now.

Mike

OMG it's been a long time

It's so hard to blog after so much time has passed. I'm not quite sure where to start. First, thanks faithful reader who called me to remind me to blog and making me get off my rear and just do it already. For the last two weeks I've been telling myself I was too busy.

The farm is firmly ensconced in Autumn. The leaves are falling and our GINORMOUS Japanese Maple is a beautiful fiery red that glows in the evening sun. GORGEOUS!! I've always said that if/when we move, we're taking that tree no matter the cost. The chickens are seeing less and less grazing, but they're loving the little time they get to roam the backyard garden each week. The worms are in dire peril. Our ladies are expert worm hunters.

They also eat spiders, slugs, maggots, grubs, and whatever else they can find. After processing apples into apple butter two weeks ago, we gave them the pulp that was left behind from the food mill. They went positively batty for that.

A few weeks ago, we picked up about 60 pounds of apples and pears. With the apples, we made apple chips and apple butter. With the pears we made some pear chips and canned pear slices in a light syrup. We've some left of both that will go to apple and pear sauce this week. The apple butter I made is fricken awesome. I used the recipe from "Ball's Complete Guide Preserving Everything" that I ordered from Amazon a few months ago. I modified the recipe a little to use a tiny bit less sugar. Ball's guide is fantastic. I thought there'd be more on Allrecipes.com, but most people's recipes I've found seem too sugary, or more like for parents preserving things kids will eat. One more gripe, if I may, is that there's not even ONE good bread recipe I've found on allrecipes.com; there's only ONE good recipe in the two cookbooks I use the most: Betty Crocker's wedding edition and Bon Apetite. I NEED some more good bread recipes!!! On the bright side, I'm getting very good at the simple peasant's white bread recipe form the BC cook book. I've increased the sugar (since I use raw sugar) by 1 tsp and reduced the flour by 1/4 cup and WHAMMO it's moister and less crumbly but still has a nice stiff crust. I've yet to master moving the loaf from the greased stone I let it rise on to the preheated stone I leave in the oven without punching down the dough a little more than I'd like. That's something to think about.

Here's the apples, pears, cider and some of the implements we used to process them.

Here's the apple butter and the pear slices cooling after canning:

If you'll notice, canning and a good glass of pink wine go together splendidly. Generally I dislike pink wine, but Brian Carter Cellars Abracadabra Rose is actually quite decent. It's one of 3 pink wines I can stand and I've tried literally hundreds.

Here's Trisa cleaning the coop on Sunday. You can just see her hiding behind the sunflower stalk. Gigantor is at the bottom of the pic wondering what Trisa is up to.

I broke our regular camera a while back so I'm using my phone right now. Please forgive the low quality pics. We'll get a new camera sooner or later. This next pic is interesting.

There's two blurs that are Lucy (black blur on the right) and Kate (red blur on the right). Lucy is broody - that's when a chicken stops laying eggs and starts sitting on them. There's a reason we call people who are grumpy or who look like they just hate what's going on, broody. It's because they act the exact same way a broody chicken does. I mean EXACTLY. Lucy was just walking down the gravel path, Kate was digging for worms. Usually, nothing would happen if Lucy were to walk by Kate, but Lucy in an instant was UBER FIGHTING MAD and she lunged for Kate. Her ferocity was such (and she's a dumb chicken) that she misjudged her velocity. She went right over Kate and landed inside the coop about 6 feet away. It was very funny and I was just lucky to catch that instant on camera.

This was two weeks ago during the 70 degree weather

OK, enough fricken words already.

That's all for now. I'll blog again soon(ish),

Mike

"Work" after work

I always look forward to coming home after a long day at work. Not because I hate my job. I love my job. I also love my farm. Inspecting the garden is always the first order of business upon arriving home. Today I was pleased to find 5 fresh strawberries ready for picking. We've had very little luck with our strawberry production this year, so I was pleased to find these 5 berries before the squirrels ate them for dessert.

After changing into my farming clothes (consisting of my worn out jeans, favorite hoodie, and rubber boots), Michael and I (with pinot gris in hand) let our chickens out to graze in our side yard. Our every broody Lucy refused to leave her nest, but the remaining 12 were eager to get out of the coop. Before we knew it, Audrey had made her way to the opposite end of the yard to scratch and peck in our front yard garden. Audrey knows where to find the best worms. She also knows that she's not allowed in our front yard garden. So she waits for the moment when we aren't looking, running as fast as she can to reach the garden boxes before we realize she's gone. We don't have to worry about the other chickens. They tend to stay in the same general area. If Audrey's missing, we usually know where to find her and then how to guide her back to a more appropriate scratching site.

After an hour or so in the side yard, we were ready to guide the chickens back to their coop. When I opened the gate, I was surprised to find an egg in the path. I'm pretty sure Wilma laid an egg on the way out to the side yard. Wilma is yet to learn how to lay in the nesting boxes. She also hasn't figured out how to climb up the ladder to the roost at night. The ladder is the key to finding the nesting boxes....

Speaking of eggs, it's time for dinner. That's all for now- Trisa
-Trisa

A New Order

Last Saturday, after visiting the AMAZING Edmonds Farmer's Market, I was determined to complete the day by adding some new chickens to our flock. I got busy cleaning the coop while Michael perused the ads on Craigslist. Much to my disappointment, he discovered that many of the ads we had seen previously were no longer active. With the coop clean and ready, I couldn't give up the plan. This had to be the day. So, I joined the search and found, much to my delight, a dairy farm in Enumclaw with chickens for sale. After a quick call to the farm, we jetted out the door and began our 90 minute journey to beautiful Enumclaw.

The farm was nestled against a hill off of a long gravel road. I opened the car door and immediately felt at ease. I love the feel of country life. There's no need to rush into anything. Everyone seems to move slowly making the time to take in the sights, sounds and smells.

The dairy farmer's son raises Bantams on the side for city folk who want one or two pretty chickens as pets. He happened to have some mixed breeds available. When we entered the coop, I was a little worried. Many of the chickens looked hen pecked. We learned that the farmer had just pulled out a couple of roosters the day before. Apparently there were too many hens and not enough roosters to go around.... After looking more closely, we spotted a healthy one. Before too long we found the four we wanted: Barney, Bam Bam, Fred, and Wilma.

With these four added to the flock, we now have two flocks resisting the need to become one. If we don't put the new four onto the roost at night, they sleep down below in a vulnerable position apart from the others. I know over time, they will work it out. But, I hate the tension that comes with a disrupted pecking order.

The sociology of chickens is fascinating. Every time we lose a chicken or introduce new ones, the pecking order changes. I can't seem to find any real pattern to what makes a chicken reach the top of the order. Gentle, quiet natured Greta with her slow reflexes and tiny brain continues to rule the roost. Barney is fighting for second place. I hope she wins.

-Trisa