Nice November

It's been the nicest November that I can remember. This time last year we had already had our first snow storm. Unlike the typical greyness of brooding clouds and cool morning fog, the month showed off its golden side. The usually shy sun has played with Natures' colour palette and has found the gold shades ranging from light tan of cut wheat to the darkest browns of the discarded leaves.

It's been mild for November, while the frost decorates the land most mornings with a chilling reminder of what is to come, the days warm in the weakening sun. Sometimes it even hits the double digits. I've rarely had to keep the wood furnace running all day. Usually I get it going in the morning and let it burn out by mid day. I'll start it again as the sun sets and the damp settles in.

I've been able to continue to do outdoor work and get to know November a little bit better. I always thought that November was bitter and mean, uncaring. Now I know it's more thoughtful than that and actually can be reflective. It has a prettiness that's easy to miss when I rush from its usual wind-pelted rains that keeps me indoors as much as possible. I like this warm side of November, it's a nice change.

Little Orphaned Kits

My dear Ceilidh died very suddenly and unexpectedly on Sunday. I have no idea why. She seemed to be in perfect health. She did have a gummy eye that I had treated with chamomile tea, it cleared up completely until about a week ago. Ceilidh was a Californian and I had her for a couple of years. She was a bit on the standoffish side, had more important things to do that letting me rub her head. But she was an excellent mom, having many litters and raising them successfully. I'll miss Ceilidh, she was snobby but she was a delight to watch in 'mom' mode.
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When Ceilidh died, she left 5 thirteen day old kits. She obviously was taking great care of them, they're all huge, round, alert and happy. Their eyes are open and they are nibbling on hay, oats and pellets but they are too young to survive without some kind of version of mother's milk. So I'm hand feeding them. Hand feeding kits usually has a very high mortality rate. I'm hoping because they're not newborns that their survival rate is much higher. I'm using a homemade formula consisting of whole milk, egg yolk and sulfured molasses. I've used it before and it seems to be nourishing. Mind you, I've never raised kits on this formula, just hand fed a couple for a day or two until they could be re-united with their mom and siblings. The biggest thing about hand feeding kits is trying not to drown the poor little things when syringing formula into their teeny, tiny little mouths. It's a drop-by-drop process right now but I'm hoping they'll clue in that the hard plastic thing has yummy food in it, I'm hoping that will make it easier.

Saving Tomato Seeds

I was quite pleased with the results of my cold frame experiment this year. I've decided to save some tomato seeds the 'right' way in lieu of just throwing all the seeds and skins in a cold frame and hope for the best. It worked but the tomatoes did start late and there was too many of them. So I'm going to be more organized for next year.

Saving tomato seeds is a little bit more complicated than just grabbing the seeds and drying them out. There's a whole process to them. Selecting the tomatoes that are ripe to the point of spoiling is what most instructions recommend. I picked one beefsteak, two romas and a heritage tomato. I know for a fact the heritage tomato is one of the plants that sprung up in my cold frame because I didn't buy heritage tomatoes last year. So if I get any plants from this tomato it will be second generation DaM Farm tomatoes. Tomatoes are self pollinating and don't usually cross-pollinate so, unlike pumpkins for example, it's rare to get cross species.

The second step is to cut the tomato sideways or through its 'equator'. I would imagine the point is to have easy access to the seeds. It worked well for the beefsteak and heritage tomatoes. I found the romas, with their long oval shape, were better if I sliced them lengthwise, I got much better access to the seeds. I used a spoon to get the seeds out. After fooling a round for a bit several different spoons, I finally found one that worked the best with both less mess and general grossness. Over-ripe, squishy tomatoes definitely have an "ew" factor. The type of spoon is what I call a grapefruit spoon used to scoop out the insides of grapefruit. The end is not a point but straight across and while not sharp, it's not a blunted as a regular spoon. It does a really good job on getting the seeds stuck on the side of the tomato walls.

Once the tomato seeds have been collected, I put them each in their own labeled glass and added a couple of tablespoons of water. Then I covered the glass with plastic wrap and poked a hole in the wrap. This where is gets all scientific. The reason for doing this is so the seeds can ferment. It gets rid of germs and disease that might be in the seeds. The hole in the wrap provides air exchange which is necessary for the whole process. It's recommended to place the containers either in a sunny window or on top of the fridge. I chose the fridge, mid-October in PEI means sunny windows are not a consistent thing. Besides, being on top of the fridge means, I see them all the time and won't forget to stir them daily which is also part of the process.

Then I wait 3 days letting the tomatoes ferment. Apparently knowing the seeds are ready is easy, you just wait for a disgusting, scummy, smelly, slimy layer form on the top of the water. It also attracts those horrible little fruit fly things and haunt me this time of year. So here they are, all scummed up and ready for the next step.

Now I skim off as much scum as I can and pour the contents into a small strainer, the kind you'd use for herbs or tea, if you didn't have a tea-ball. Then I rinsed the seeds under running water until all the little half rotted pulp bits and what not is gone. I put them on coffee filters to air out. After a couple of days, I put the seeds directly on the plate since they were all sticking to the coffee filters. Apparently it takes about a week for them to completely dry, when that happens,I'll bag and tag 'em. And next spring, I'll see if I did dry them right or not.

Hey Man, Thanks (Gardern Reflections 2009)

All that's left to do is the crying. Well no, not really. The tomato teepees need to come down and be stored for next year. The nasturtiums can be pulled and dried for the rabbits and the rest of the carrots need to come out. There's no crying to be done this year. To tell you the truth, I am left with a sense of amazement, it's been one heck of a harvest.

Almost everything did well. I pretty much kept with the same companion planting I did last year. I had most of the onions growing in the annex and got 2 half feed bags of great onions from two packages. I might buy 3 packs next year.

I did over-plant terribly this year. I did that the first year and then I smartened up. This year, there were a couple of issues that led me to over-plant. I was using my own saved pumpkin seeds for the first time and I was a little unsure if they'd work so I planted a bit more than usual. I ended up with 80 some pumpkins. That's a lot of pumpkins considering last year I thought 40 was too many. I won't plant the cucumbers near the pumpkins again though. The pumpkins did overtake them a bit. I have also found out that planting plants of the same family close together does attract more of the harmful bugs. Planting crops farther away from each other means more travel time for the bugs and they can't get as established and do as much damage. I didn't have much of a problem with bugs this year because I brought Mandellas out to the garden whenever I was weeding and she had a wonderful time eating earwigs, (her favorite) cucumber beetles and anything else she could get her little hooked beak around. She was terrific bug control and great company in the garden.

I didn't really over plant the tomatoes per se. I did the cold frame experiment and bought a couple of flats of tomatoes just in case. All did very well and, ta-dah! - 9 boxes of tomatoes. I'm not thinking I'm going to run out of canned tomatoes this year.

I did have a part of the garden not do well at all so I replanted the beans and carrots in the new lasagna garden where they did very, very well. Hopefully letting that part of the garden go fallow after dumping a lot of compost and rabbit manure on it will help for the next season.

The three sisters did well. The corn was from my own seed. Now that was pretty easy to save, all I did was dry out a cob of corn. I ended up planting way to much, again, because I wasn't sure that it would work. Happily, a friend of mine was having terrible luck with her corn and I was able to give her all my extra plants. They transplanted well and she had a good crop of corn as well. I have found letting the corn get to 4 - 6 inches high before planting the snowpeas a good idea. That way the fast growing snowpeas don't over-run the corn which grows much slower at the start.

I planted some organic lettuce mix and beets this year, courtesy of my mom (Eileen) who sent me some seeds, they did beautifully as did the chard. I think I will plant more packs of lettuce next year. I planted 6 packs but with the rabbits, us and all our visitors, I kept running out. I think I might go up to 10 packs next year. I'm the only one in the family who eats beets so a pack is more than enough. The rabbits love it too and I have found if I leave a few beets hanging around, I can harvest the leaves for the bunnies right up to almost snow cover.

The herbs, mainly dill and basil seem to like the lasagna garden better. The dill did very well there. The basil, planted with the tomatoes in the main garden, was average. Last year when I grew it in the lasanga garden, it was exceptional.

As far as my new projects went, one, the tomato cold frame, was very successful and the other, the potato tire growing scheme was an utter failure. I'm hoping to expand on the cold frame idea I used for the tomatoes. And I'm not ready to give up on the potato project completely, think next year I'll tweak it a bit and see what happens. I think that's the best part of garden, the plans, the hopes, the sense of accomplishment sprout right along with the seeds.

Chicken Update

Today I gave the chickens the insides of the pumpkins I baked for freezing. Of course, there's always one in the crowd more interested in the empty container than in the seeds. I guess she's just making sure I didn't leave any in there, she probably figures you never can tell with humans.

A hen Doin' Her Job

This year, we decided to keep more hens over the winter. The demand for our eggs has increased to the point where sometimes we don't have eggs for ourselves. That kind of defeats the whole reason of chickens in the first place. We're hoping by having 17 hens instead of 10 will meet all our needs. I'm also thinking the more warm bodies in the coop the warmer it will be this winter. Personally, I really think we need a four legged animal in there to use as a walking furnace. A friend of mine has a goat and her barn stays a lot warmer than my coop. I'm leaning towards a donkey. Always wanted a donkey. Don isn't too sure about a donkey, may-be he figures he gets enough braying as is. (Now there's a question best left unasked!)

I'm hoping the increased number of hens will keep the two roosters living in relative harmony. So far it's been working. Last year, I ended up separating the roos because one was being harried to death. This year I kept two new roos and they are getting along better. Each have their own harem of hens and as long as the second rooster, Chandler, doesn't start courting one of Captain Morgans' ladies, they co-exist pretty well. They don't ever fight, Chandler knows he's second fiddle and seems to be fine with that arrangement. He doesn't crow and he always gives way to Captain Morgan. I think because there's more hens, they can easily share without any conflicts. The real test will be when they are cooped up together days on end during a winter storm or cold snap.

Captain Morgan (front) and Chandler (back) Ignoring Each Other Peacefully.

We're thinking next spring of getting a few more layers, hopefully Americaunas, like Leah; green eggs are cool. I might look into getting a few meat birds to raise over the summer as well. I really like my dual purpose chickens but it takes two birds to feed us, it might be nice to have a few of the bigger variety. While we might expand our variety, we will keep mainly to our heritage breeds. They don't have the problems the modern breeds have. Modern meat birds, because they're so heavy tend to go lame easily. Modern egg layers won't go broody; that trait is pretty much bred right out of them. That means they won't sit on a nest to incubate and raise chicks. I certainly prefer broody hens to incubators and brooders. What ever we do, as long as I can go into the coop and thrill to a nest full of eggs, I'll be happy.

Dusk and the Rabbits

Today I decided to breed my does for the last time before spring. I like to give my rabbits a break from raising litters over the winter. So I was puttering around, letting the rabbits do their thing when Dusk wandered in. I don't mind when Dusk comes to visit, he's always well behaved. Of course, it helps that he has absolutely no prey drive at all. While it might be a dogs' 'nature' to run down a rabbit, it's not in Dusk's nature to even dream of harming another creature.

Hanging with the rabbits is a special treat for Dusk. If working with the rabbits is my favorite chore, it's definitely Dusk's favorite pastime as well. When he sees them, his ears perk up and the tail starts going a mile a minute. He doesn't mind baby rabbits climbing all over him and he likes to visit everyone. His favorite buddy seems to be Ocean. Ocean is a Creme D'Argent and my main buck. None of the rabbits are frightened of Dusk but most just ignore him. Not Ocean, though, he seems to like Dusk's company as much as Dusk likes his. Ocean will hop right over to him and settle down next to him. I don't know if you'd call it friendship but it sure looks like it's a mutual understanding.

Ocean and Dusk hanging out, shooting the rabbit poo.

Making Salsa

We've just come off of two beautiful weeks of Autumn glory. The days were sunny and crisp, rosying my cheeks and warming my heart. It was a great time to work outside and enjoy the colour and the accomplishment. Sometimes life is just like biting into an apple.

Yesterday, the inevitable weather temper tantrum happened and kept me inside. Being in a warm home with a wood fire going made up for the rain and gusty winds. Looking outside at the flash of red in the old maple by the house turned the sky from a depressing grey curtain of cloud into a perfect backdrop

Well, if I can't be outside in the Autumn air with its indescribable crispness, I'll be in the kitchen, experiencing the 'other' Autumn smell as pumpkins, apples or tomatoes are processed for the winter. A lot of baking happens in the fall here at the DaM Farm. But today I decided to make salsa. I always can my tomatoes first then if there's any left over, I'll make salsa. It was a great year for my tomatoes and I harvested about 11 - 12 bushels (listen to me, talking farmer talk - bushels!) so there was lots of extras. This is the third year I've made it but it's the first year I've done it from scratch. I used a package salsa canning mix previously. I looked around at various recipes and decided on a fairly simple one to start with, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro and dried crushed red pepper. One of the recipes suggested that draining the tomatoes after cutting would make a thicker salsa. I love thick salsa and did find my salsa a bit on the runny side so I did that. I kept all the juice that I drained out and made tomato juice. I figure it will be great to add as liquid to the crock pot for roasts stews and making chicken or rabbit stock. I still have a load of tomatoes left so I will be making another batch of salsa. We love it here, 24 bottles is not too much at all.