Homestead Update #10
Hey friends! I'm back with a very exciting update! Lots of stuff happening on the homestead lately. Must be all that quiet time I've been taking. HEHE. Let's jump right in.
Eggs
Oh boy! Those girls are so sneaky. Actually, I think just one of them is sneaky and I think it's Loretta. We had a workday yesterday where we are finally moving the chicken coop and expanding the run! YAY! More on that in a minute. So we had a workday and we had to let the chickens out because we're moving the coop. But the girls were thrown off because they wanted to lay eggs! Which is great! But so confusing because they are 'trained' to lay in the coop in a nest box, or as close to a nest box as one can get. But because they couldn't get in the coop they were creating such a ruckus. I kinda of ignored them and figured they would find a spot to lay their eggs just this one time. We had a boat leaning up against the back porch so it wouldn't get snow and ice in it during the winter (sometimes you put things off until the very last minute and then it's too late so you improvise for the time being. That's what happened with the boat). So I went looking for the girls to check on them and found a few underneath the boat. No big deal. Or so I thought. I gave them a couple of minutes and then went crawling around trying to see who was underneath the boat and what they were doing. I soon realized they were laying their eggs underneath the boat. And I thought "hmm. Okay. Not a bad back up plan for today". Little did I know that they had been laying their eggs underneath the boat for a long time! I found 8 eggs under there! I suspect it was just Loretta laying her egg under there for who knows how long. And because all the eggs, except one, were white I have no way of knowing. But my Loretta is so flighty and I'm pretty sure she's the one who was laying in the knotweed next to the creek last fall. That little brat! So I have to toss out 8 eggs. But I'm including them in this week's egg count so I can keep track. But I took the boat away and now they'll have to find some other sneaky place to lay their eggs.
So, for this week's egg count I got 35 eggs from 3/13-3/20/21 (technically I've been doing Friday-Friday but since I'm posting this on Sunday I will include Saturday's numbers as well. And I also want to make note that I forgot to write down Tuesdays count as well. I've only been getting about 4 eggs per day so I can only presume I got 4 that day as well, but I'm not writing it down here).
Oh. And I've decided to add my two little chicks to my flock which means that we will have a rooster hatched on the homestead. They aren't pure breed chickens, but that's okay. The hen should lay olive eggs although she isn't a much-sought-after olive egger. Although honestly there isn't such a thing as a pure olive egger. They are cross bred to lay olive eggs. So I guess she IS a much sought after olive egger. Time will tell.
Classes
I've been busy scheduling classes! I have lots of chicken keeping classes coming up plus a seed starting class. And I'm selling my beeswax food cover kits again and they include a virtual make along! I'm happy about that! You can see the full line up in my shop.
Featuring
I'm so excited to announce that I was a guest on the Red Kill Mountain Farm's podcast! And it dropped this week. You can listen to it on your favorite podcast platform. Please give it a listen and then tell me what you thought. Before you go listen, can you guess what we talked about? I'll give you a hint-it's in the name of my business.
garden
Not much to report in way of actual gardening, but I did update my spreadsheet, mixed my seed starting mix, and started: rosemary, cilantro (for a class), lavender, luffa, arugula, and two kinds of peppers (King of the North and Fish). Mixing the soil was relatively easy once I found a place to mix such a big batch! And then using the soil blocker wasn't too bad either. It took me a couple of tries before I figured out the best way to use it (Steph has a great post all about using a soil blocker here). I think the main thing for me is figuring out how wet the soil needs to be. One try I think it was too dry and the next too wet. But I made it work. This planting was just the beginning so I hope to be more proficient by the end. And note to self, remember to clean the blocker after every use!
Chicken Coop
It. Is. Done!! The move is officially done. The run expansion is done. We still have some minor tweaks to do and some renos on the coop to do, but we will get them done in the next couple of weeks. The fly shop will open soon and the Mister will be busy with that but the weather looks nice this week so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get it all done and then the girls will be a lot happier! And a huge thank you to our friends John and Diane from Triple H Farm for all the help and hard work. We could not have done it without them. Homesteaders helping homesteaders. I love it.
Maple Syrup
This season of maple syrup has not been good at all. The weather has made it be a very short season. So far I've collected 56 gallons of sap but had to dump 12 of it due to bacteria growth. With the freezing temps the sap just hasn't flowed as well and now the Norwegian Maple is starting to bud. The Norwegian isn't as good of a producer so I won't tap it again. One of the sugar maples (the one next to the house and fly shop) isn't producing as well either. But we have tons of sugar maples near the house so I'll tap different ones next year. And maybe add more taps. The new evaporator set up is perfect though! We've figured out a system that works. The Mister built it in the new fire pit so it's really self contained. And this fall we'll build it again and tarp it so it doesn't get snowed in. The firepit had so much snow in it that we couldn't build the evaporator until the snow melted. So I'll be lucky to get more than one gallon of syrup this year. Thankfully I still have syrup left from last year.
In other news
I think I mentioned it but I've rendered all the lard. I'm glad that's done but I ended up burning the majority of it. I went against my better judgement and listened to a random website on the internets that said the cracklings will float to the top when they're done. But that's not always the case. In the case of both batches I did, they did not float to the top. Lesson learned.
I also found a new walking route. I'm feeling that I need a longer walk and one the challenges me. Otherwise I don't know how I'm ever doing to lose the M word weight. I'm hopeful that this challenging route will do the trick. I did 3.38 miles in just under an hour. Of course some of that time was used to stop and smile at the horses that were staring at me from the fence!
The New List
So I wanted to do a whole new LIST since I've really gotten a lot done from the other lists. My next focus is on the garden and getting that established in its new location. But I'm also looking forward to doing some stocking up on things-pasta, making cheese, etc. Oh. I have an exciting update about our commercial kitchen but that will have to wait a little bit. Let's just say that we're doing some updates to the kitchen and I'll be using it for all my processing and classes very soon. But. For now, here's my new list:
1. Garden: move hay wagon; install fence and gate; draw up garden planting plan; figure out what flower seeds I have; plant garden and flowers
2. Make soap
3. Make pasta
4. Cheese Fridge: order new gasket, clean fridge, set up as cheese fridge
5. Chicken coop expansion: clean out coop; install curtains; clean up old shavings
6. Make and freeze mozzarella
7. Process cherries
So that's it for this week. My apologies with the pictures. We were so busy this week getting things done that I grabbed my phone rather than my camera. But that won't happen much around here! You know how much I love my camera!
'Til next time
-k
xoxo