Independence Day Parade

On July 4th, Amy fulfilled a life-long dream of driving a float in our little town's Independence Day Parade.  Wilmore's own Crazy Chicken Lady pulled a chicken float with live chickens.  The float was a hit, even though the weather was not.

Snowmageddon 2016-the Animals View

The animals have not enjoyed the snow as much as the kids have.

The End of the Garden 2015

The garden season has come to an end for 2015.  It was a difficult year with record rain in June & July making most of the early planting rot where it stood.  I only canned 18 pints of tomato sauce this year, that's it!  No salsa, but no worries, we still have plenty of salsa left over from last year.

I did figure out the best place to plant peppers.  I used the southwest corner of the flowerbed & had the best pepper harvest I've ever had.  Meanwhile, the peppers I planted in the garden produced about 3 peppers.

My acorn squash has apparently cross pollinated with the (volunteer) pumpkins.  Haven't cracked one of these opened yet so not sure if they are eatable. 

Homestead Update

Here's an update on our little homestead and a couple a videos on my sister's neat way of milking her goats.  Thought you all would find it interesting. 

Girl Power

Sometimes, you just have to teach your girls how to use power tools.

Chloe using the power sander

Essie's turn

And other times, a more primitive tool gets the job done.

Duck Pond?

The Ducks seem to be the only ones enjoying this miserable day!

Birds in the Snow

The ladies decided they'd had enough of being cooped up in the greenhouse and needed to soak up some real sunshine.

The ducks left the greenhouse a few days ago and have been holding up in their house for the most part.
We are so hoping the ridiculously cold temps are about to be behind us. 

Compost Update

Just a quick update on the giant compost pile.

When the kids & I finished dumping all the leaves & garden debris in the pile, it measured 8 feet!

But then garden plans changed a bit again and we had to expand the compost pile.

The Compost Crew

Fall is a composter's favorite season.  The leaves start falling and the neighbors start bagging them up.  This is my first fall with the truck and I've been putting it to good use, trust me. 

 This was part of the haul a few  weeks ago

 Some bags end up under the deck to use as bedding in the chicken coops throughout the winter.

Replace lattice and no one is the wiser regarding the 30 bags of leaves

 Some bags get spread out in the driveway and run through the mulcher

Beautiful shredded leaves

On Tuesday, the kids had the day off of school so I recruited these little helpers.

I decided to put some fencing around my giant compost pile this year since when I don't, the chickens just tear the pile apart in about 1 day.  I still plan to let the chickens in the pile on a weekly basis to stir things up and help break down the contents.  The pile contains not only leaves, but also all the tomato/pepper/sweet potato plants from the garden, litter from the duck & chicken houses, & several spent annuals from neighbor hanging baskets/potted plants.

Our neighbor Layni has learned a lot of composting and today, I dubbed the trio "The Compost Crew".

Today, the girls decided they wanted to help collect the leaves around town, not just unload them.

Four pick up truck loads later, we collect just about 100 bags  

(Can you see how high the compost pile is in the background on the left of the picture?)

The best part of the day, Essie pulled this stick out of the fire and in her best Alicia Keys impression, belted out, "This Stick is on FIRE-R".

She kills me sometimes.

Fall Is Upon Us

Fall is here.  It's not my favorite season because it means winter is coming soon, but it does bring the opportunity for lots of leaves to use in the garden.  I fenced in the small portion of garden that is still producing and let the chickens and ducks run the rest of it.  They are loving all the new dirt to scratch around in as well as cleaning up the remnants of the garden.

I've already collected half a dozen bags of leaves/yard waste that people have thrown out.  Definitely great entertainment for the chickens and by next spring, it will be great compost for our garden!

Spreading Their Wings

With my parents here for a long weekend to celebrate the girls' birthday, you know I'm going to find some homesteading projects for my Dad to help with.  The list was quite short this time as he seems to be getting into this retirement thing.  =).  One project was to fence in the part of the garden still producing in order to let the chickens & ducks have the run of the rest of the garden.  By the end of the gardening season, the soil is quite compact so I like to let my animals do the cultivating & fertilizing of it for me over the fall/winter.  Its always fun to watch them realize the harvest awaits them. 

A Sunflower Forest

I believe this is the 5th year of my garden, though it expands every year.  Three years ago I planted some sunflowers and the last two years, I haven't planted any, but they keep multiplying and multiplying 

(thank you, birds).  

This year, they popped up everywhere and I'm too sentimental to pull them out or transplant them into nice neat rows.   I ended up calling my garden "the forest".  Matt called it ugly.

The sunflowers ended up 10-12' tall.  Their roots spread quickly through the top few layers of mulch but that meant they weren't anchored very well in the soil.  A few strong storms and some started to lean pretty badly.

Look closely to see all those lovely pollinators!

They grew in single stalks and with multiple branches containing multiple heads.

 This is all from one stalk!

One main stalk with multiple branches

Some were not so pretty, but this was an enormous head, which meant lots of seeds for the chickens (free food!) as long as I could harvest it before the finches got to it.

The chickens love it when a hang a few stalks on their fence.

The sunflowers really provided too much shade for the vegetable garden so as soon as each stalk died off, we pulled them out.  The root balls were so massive that we ended up just chopping them off.  I threw them into the chickens so they can scratch off the dirt and bugs.  I'll burn them once they dry out.  

She did it!

Some were as big as my head!

And of course they offered wonderful embellishments for our girls' swords!

Essie even tried to glue it on.

AJ mulched up the stalks and the chickens had a ball scratching threw their new bedding.

p.s. The wonder of using power tools has worn off on this boy (dang it!) & now he just complains about working (typical American tween!)

There are multiple reasons I love sunflowers.

                                                 1) They attract pollinators

                                                 2) Free food for the chickens

                                                 3) They are beautiful!

                                                 4) I didn't plant a single one

Baby Chicken Update

Just a quick chicken video

And the biggest news for the "babies" is that we've gotten our first eggs from them so I guess they are now officially hens.

And So It Begins

This last week has been in the 90's and let me tell ya, I'm already tired of the heat and humidity.  Not that I'm ready to go back to our sub-zero days of winter, but I'd love a day in the 80's with a lot less humidity than we've been having.  My garden would really be suffering but since I'm using the Back to Eden method of growing with a mulch covering, everything still appears green and lush.  I've watered the plants in the greenhouse and a few ones in the garden that seem to be struggling a bit, but haven't watered anything else (yet).  I've been able to just hand water using water from the rain barrels so no extra expense on the water bill!

Yesterday, I picked our first cucumber

This morning, I harvested this

And by tonight, I found a zucchini and pulled a potato plant (just a volunteer one that was in the way of some other plantings)

The funny thing about the acorn squash is that I did not plant any acorn squash.  Its growing in one of the side beds so I guess it got imported with some compost.  I've never prepared acorn squash, but after a quick internet search, I decided to bake it up for supper. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and it seemed pretty straightforward and easy.

First I cut the squash in half

Scooped out the seeds (like a pumpkin)

Place the halves face down on a cookie sheet and popped it in the toaster oven for 30 minutes on 350 degrees.

Reserved the innards for the chickens and ducks (both went crazy when I throw this out for them)

After 30 minutes, I pulled the squash out of the oven, put 1 TBL of butter and 2 TBL of brown sugar in it, closed it up and put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes.

Pulled it out, sliced, drizzled some of the sugar/butter mixture over it and served.

Everyone said it tasted sweet (thanks to the brown sugar, no doubt) and Matt & Essie had 2nds.  This is a good side-dish and a good way to get some more fiber and vitamins into your diet.

We also had our first (of like 100) sunflowers open today.

If you look hard at the flower above, you can see a bee in the bottom of the face (about 6 o'clock)

I took this one holding my phone with my arm completed extended and I'm still looking up at it.