Long weekend.

We spent our long weekend Sunday working in the yard. The weather was nice for working outside: warm but not to hot and over cast. We got all the stuff on the list done and got to spend some much needed time together.
We picked all the onions out of our garden. Normally we would not pick them until much later but we had such a warm spring that they were all dieing back already. The shed that we were using to keep the meat chicks in is right beside the the onion garden so we fenced in the garden and let the chicken run around and scratch it up. This will hopefully add some nice nitrogen rich manure to the garden for next years crop. Plus they will eat all the slugs that have been at my basil.
My little guy got very muddy while his daddy and I were picking onions. He had a good old time munching on the onion greens, which did not surprise me as he has taking to eating spicy food with us curries and hot mac'n cheese.
I did a big cutting of our basil plants to keep the chickens from digging them up. I plan to pick the leafs, blanch, chop and put them in the freezer to add to our pasta sauce for the winter. I just finished the stuff from our CSA from last year, which i had turned into more of a pesto with ground nuts and garlic. I liked it but it was more work and I didn't find it any better when it came to putting it in tomato sauce, which is what we did most of the time. We were two months behind in putting in our garden this year so our garlic did not bulb. They look more like green onions that last of garlic. I have not come up with a plan of what to do with them yet but i think i will just leave them in the ground until I need some garlic and then chop them up fresh.

role call

It feels like our farm is starting to fill up:

43 Chickens

12 Cats

6 Geese

And

3 Humans

So busy

Things have been so busy around here since we got back, its like i have to do everything now that i missed last week. Thankfully my brother has come to stay for a few weeks to help me get some stuff done.The day we got back one of our Americauna chickens started laying so its been so nice to go into the hen house and find a little blue/green egg with the lovely brown ones.
I started a batch of sour cherry wine this week. I got the recipe from my mom and its the first time i'm trying it. So far it smells really good; kind of like cherry pie and yeasty bread. Its bubbling away now and hopeful it will work. If it dose i'll share.
I must say that the one time i feel at peace with everything that is going on here is when i'm hanging clothes on the clothesline. It must be in the evening while Liam is hanging out with Matt. Nothing seems as overwhelming and it feels like i'm getting something done. As i'm shaking out the wet clothes the fact that the counter is coved in dishes or that i'm not sure what to do with 12 cats (oh yes ginger her kittens) dose not seem to weigh on me so much.

Picking up chicks

Our order of 30 duel propose meat chicks came in on June 22nd with 2 extra. They were so cute and little. I know they wouldn't stay like that for long. Right now they are about 2 weeks old, almost covered in real feathers and are running around in a pen in my laundry room. They are going to have to go outside soon as I am getting sick of the smell and bust. We are planing to slaughter them ourselves so we can learn how. We have some extra hands to help so I think we should be OK. We are going to let them grow for about 11 weeks so that brings the big day to around mid September.
We unpacked then, showed them where the water and food was and left them to grow big and fat! So far things have been going very well and we hope that continues.

The new girls in the hen house!

This week we have some new arrivals to our farm. My mother came bearing four Rhode Island red chickens to add to our flock. They are sisters to some of our girls(from the same batch of hens as ours from last summer). She had twenty-one birds and only enough room for fourteen in her coop this winter so we have some lovely new ladies to help round-out our seven into a wonderful eleven! I was a little worried about introducing the new chickens to the flock as we have had some trouble with the trio we bought a few weeks ago, but its almost as though they were there all along. With no more then a few feathers flying and a few squawks, none of them seam any worse for wear.

11 Chickens
5 Cats
(soon to be more as Ginger is due any day now)
And
3 Humans

New chicks

It has been about a week now and our new Americaunas are starting to settle in. We found a trio, two hens and a youngh rooster. They are beautiful little things, the hens are silver and black and the Roo is silver and brown. They are still quite small, only about 12 weeks, so we still have time to get them used to people. If everything goes well we should be exspecting wounderful blue/green eggs in about two and a half months.

Too many eggs

We are getting about two dozen eggs a week now and can't eat them all. We have been selling the extra and the birds are easily paying for themselves . I love to fry them, the yokes are orange and the whites don't run all over the pan, they almost stick up as much as the yokes. Yummy!

Starting off

I, Sophie, my husband Matthew and our 3 month old son Liam want a farm. We want to sell our house, buy 10 acres and grow lots of yummy food on it. Until then we are going to make the most of the small city backyard we have. I was raised on a hobby farm and have always loved to cook fresh food. My husband is new to the idea of growing things but is really coming around to the idea. At the moment we have 4 laying hens, 2 cats, 4 gardens, 3 fruit trees and berry patches. This blog is to document are work towards homesteading, cooking good food and raising Liam.