Learning to garden, preserve fruits and vegetables, cure meats, raise animals and homestead in Vermont
After a long winter with little egg production, things are finally looking up. Some of our new hens never came “online” last fall and ended up waiting until this year. But since Wednesday morning, we’ve gotten 17 eggs including 2 already today. That’s from 9 hens. Based on the color of the eggs, it looks like at least 6 hens are laying some of the time.
Well, between keeping up with all the projects and having a new baby, this blog has taken a bit of a hit. So this post won’t be too lengthy, but wanted to do a quick bullet point list of stuff we managed to accomplish this year.
Lots of plans for next year that I may get into in another post. Soon it will be time to buy and start seeds. By the way, if you are thinking about seeds, don’t forget about my new site PickAPacket.com and tell your friends. It allows you to compare prices and see varieties carried by 13 of my favorite non-GMO seed companies, including lots of heirloom, organic and open-pollinated varieties.
Well, it’s already July and I’ve been so busy working I haven’t had much time to blog about it. The short story is our gardens are overall doing fairly well, considering it is the first year. We are certainly fighting weeds, but that happens regardless. The soil structure is definitely better in the front garden, where we dug up a spot that was more hay pasture than lawn. Both need a lot of work, particularly when dry. After a rain though, the soil really isn’t too bad and I think with some tender loving care in a few years we’ll start seeing some pretty good structure.
We had a chance to plant more peas this year and focused more on sugar/snap peas, since you get a lot more for the space and they are easier to freeze for later. Ezra has taken a big liking to peas, particularly shell peas which he eats raw by the handfuls. On most days he has to go “check his peas” and is actually already doing a pretty good job at learning when they are ripe. It’s pretty cute.
It’s been pretty interesting to see the difference having lots of direct sun makes. It’s mostly a good thing, although we had a couple of issues with transplanting where the plants got some sun scald. We’ve always had to worry more about wind or temperature than sun before. The tomatoes I am especially happy with and we’ll see if the actual harvest lives up to the expectation. But this is the first year I’ve been relatively happy with my tomato (and pepper) starts. We should start seeing some ripe tomatoes here shortly, there are a bunch off small green ones on the vines.
Here are some nice jalapeno plants, with some sweet basil in the background.
More peppers, including the “fish” peppers in the foreground. We use red plastic mulch to help reflect more of the good light spectrum that peppers (and tomatoes) love. Still trying to determine how much difference it makes.
Potatoes are coming along nicely and we had our first red new potatoes the other night. We have a nice variety planted, including several different fingerling varieties. This year we decided to try seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine. Jim Gerritsen has a reputation as one of the top organic potato experts in the country, so curious to see how these do. I think this may be a hit and miss year, with the soil structure not being super loose the way potatoes like.
A lot of folks don’t realize potato blossoms are some of the prettiest flowers you’ll ever see in your garden, check out this fingerling variety in bloom right now.
Here are a few other things that are starting to come into harvest. This is the time when all the hard work starts to pay off and you actually see some results from the labor, so I love this time of year.
One of our first broccoli crowns.
First bush beans, a variety we discovered last year and really has become one of our go-to beans: Provider
And of course the first of probably too many zucchini.
We’ve just about got our two garden plots in shape and have started some planting. Took a lot of tilling and it’s still not great. With the clay soil it is either too wet and mucky or it’s dry with hard clay balls. So going to need a lot of amendments, but we knew that. I’m making semi-permanent raised rows, which should help with drainage and give us a place to focus our compost, manure and other nutrients.
Here’s a few shots of what we’re starting from.
Slightly closer look at the rows.
We’ve got three raised beds with row cover going now.
It’s been really warm for the last week and plants are suddenly taking off. I had to mow the lawn already. The lettuce seems happy. This is lettuce I started indoors in February or March.
Here is a view of the front garden, which will mostly be perennial berries, asparagus, etc. We’re using it this year for a few other things, like peas, pumpkins and potatoes.
And one last shot of some peas that appear to be thriving despite the conditions.
Little bit of a departure for this blog, but I’m always going to be a music lover and musician. So just thought I’d note some of my favorite music of this past year, in no particular order:
As you might expect, life has been pretty busy since our move. Fall went pretty quick and now we are already headed into winter, so work outside will slow down for awhile. Here are a few of the things we’ve been working on.
This winter I hope to do a few small projects, including building a larger chicken coop using the principles in Fresh Air Poultry Houses. We also still have some odds and ends to wrap up in the master bath, painting to finish in the upstairs and some electrical work to have done. I hope to get some additional storage and a workbench/tool area set up in the basement, now that we have some of the insulating done.
I’ve ordered my first 4 apple trees for spring delivery and we’ll need to start thinking about strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, rhubarb and additional trees for windbreak to plant in the spring. Plus our normal seed starting and the fun we always have looking though all our seed catalogs. This year we’ll finally be able to grow some things we didn’t have room for in the past, such as sweet corn, melons, pumpkins and lots of other things. Not sure we’ll get to all that in the first year, but we’ll do what we can like we do every year.
In all the busyness, I have neglected to post anything about our new property. On July 19th we closed on a 10 acre property in New Haven, one town over from where we are renting now in Bristol. The house is a nice size with plenty of room and not too old. It was built in 2000, so it’s just old enough to need some updating. The last owners moved to California about 5-6 years ago and it’s been rented ever since. So it’s in need of some TLC to get it looking the way we want, but we think the house and property has a lot of potential.
We’ve already gotten hardwood floors put into the living room and master bedroom. We’ve gutted the master bathroom, ripping out a corner whirlpool tub, the vanity and the toilet. Small closet in the room is getting demoed out as well. The whole place could use a fresh coat of paint, so we made a good start on that over the weekend between us and also some hired painters.
We may update the kitchen at some point, but probably need to wait on that. We would like to use it for a bit to determine exactly what we want to do. We are going to put a gas range in and replace the refrigerator at least. All the appliances appear to be original from when the house was built, so they are showing some age.
View from front porch
The property itself is mostly cleared, rolling pasture. The farmer next door is haying a lot of it one final time. We’ll be putting in a small garden plot or some raised beds immediately for a fall garden. Next spring I would like to set up 3-4 smaller garden plots and we’ll set up rotations through them over time. We also want to plant some berries, apples, asparagus and other perennials in the spring. May need some trees as well, particularly to get some windbreaks going. The house is up on the side of a hill overlooking the valley, which provides fantastic views, but is also likely to be windy.
Another view from front porch
Much more as we go, including some before and after room photos as we get updates completed. At this point we plan to move in early September.
It always seems the summer starts to get away from me around this time. I did manage to go out and take some photos today after all the family left. We had a full house over the 4th and got to eat some great local meat, including my cured sausage and bacon, eggs and produce from the backyard and homebrew. I finally smoked some local pastured pork shoulder into some delicious pulled pork in the barrel smoker. It was in there about 5 hours and to be honest it probably could’ve gone another hour or two as it wasn’t quite as “falling apart” as I hoped. Still very good though, with a great smoke ring and nice bark.
The summer so far has been a strange one weather-wise in Vermont. After a mild sunny May, it seemed like it rained all of June. I think we’ve had rain almost every day for the last 3 weeks. That means we still have a bit of lettuce and other greens holding on in July! But also means the tomatoes and peppers aren’t as happy as they could be. However, most things are holding up well. The potatoes look great and all the brassicas are enjoying the cooling effects of the rain. We’re even still getting some radishes.
Anyway, I just added a bunch of new photos to Flickr if you want to see the latest progress. I did want to show one before and after photo that I think it’s interesting. This is a row of kale and beets. The first photo is from June 16th and the second photo is from today.
See more photos at Garden 2013 on Flickr
Due to a nice warm spring here in Vermont, our garden is off to a great start. Here are some photos from a couple of weeks ago, stuff is much bigger now.
We are trying out some new trellis ideas. The trellis netting works great for most things (tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers), but couldn’t really hang (no pun intended) with the heavier squashes such as Blue Hubbard. Here is a new trellis I built using scrap wood and chicken wire. May build a few more, this only took about an hour.
Peas poking through and then a few weeks later
Garlic off to a good start. It’s almost 2 feet high now
Bought a tiller
Hoop tunnel
Cabbage overwintered in cold frame. Soon after we transplanted it, the chickens got into it. This poor cabbage can’t catch a break. It’s still limping along, so maybe it will come back.
You can see more photos and keep up with our 2013 garden on Flickr.
Ezra turned one year old on first day of December. I was hoping to get this posted closer to his birthday, but the holidays have a way of getting in the way.
Typically this blog tends toward the practical and matter of fact, but sometimes it’s good to reflect on the why. Although having a family wasn’t necessarily the primary motivator in our decision to move to Vermont and change up our lives, it certainly played a part. While many people raise families in a large urban area like Chicago and I have the upmost respect for those who do, the fact is it can be difficult. It’s pretty expensive to afford housing in the city with plenty of room for kids, although people make it work. Obviously much of the world where extended families live in large huts would consider this a first world “problem”.
So that’s one reason people move to the ‘burbs, but that wasn’t in the cards for us. In particular, many of the things we wanted to do involved needing space, not just for kids, but for canning jars and beer making equipment … animals and gardens … and so on.
Anyway, I’ve already covered a lot of the reasons we moved to Vermont, so I won’t reiterate those. I’m more interested in thinking about what kinds of dreams I have for Ezra and how living in Vermont plays into that. When I was growing up in a very rural area, I reached a point where I couldn’t wait to leave. There were a lot of reasons for that, many having nothing to do with the rural environment.
Anyway I’m hoping we can do some things differently and give Ezra some good reasons to love the lifestyle we’ve chosen. I know he may reach young adulthood and need to set out on his own adventures. He may have to live in his own “Chicago” for awhile to appreciate his young life here. That’s certainly a discussion for another day well down the road.
Here’s what I’m dreaming for him in the meantime though:
It will certainly be fascinating to see how Ezra develops and experiences his environment. I can’t wait to watch and dream with him.