The first day of *home*school

Last week our school district had their first day of school, but as I was waiting for books to arrive I waited until this monday to start our school year.  Even now I still am missing Aurora's math workbook and several other books, but they should be coming in the next week or so and we don't need them right now.

It's funny how big a deal school can seem, and in reality how little it changes our daily routine.

Like every other day we got up, ate breakfast and really did our own things for several hours this morning.  I had phone calls to make, the kids played imaginative games.  They were dancers and fancy ladies and gentlemen.  Aurora listened to Little Women for a while (an audio book that we downloaded for free from librivox.org) while she crocheted and the boys played legos and looked at books.

Once I was finished with my calls we went outside and did our social studies lesson, a chapter from Story of the World, talked about what we read and then did a workpage.  Michael and Gabe just sat in the sandbox and played the whole time (not that it took us very long).  After that the older kids got clipboards, paper and pencils to draw trees with, their science project for the day.  And once naptime for Gabe came around I sat Michael down with Bob the Builder and reviewed Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with Aurora.  I was so pleased that she hasn't forgotten a thing!  She got everything I asked her to do right up to the lesson we left off at.  Who says kids forget everything over the summer? :)

And that was school.  Of course we did all kinda of other things that I count as schooling, such as chores, walking, and we talk all the time.  We had an impromptu geography lesson over lunch (which tends to happen a lot since the wall is covered in a huge world map).

I love teaching my kids at home

The End of August Update

It's taken me a long time to get these pictures.  We went to CA the middle of this month for my grandma's 80th birthday.  It was a wonderful trip that was super jam packed and recovering from it has taken longer then anticipated.

It was thrilling to come home and see how beautifully everything was doing here at home.  When we left the summer crookneck squash was almost ready to pick, as were the cucumbers.  When we arrived home both were producing and we have had a steady stream of fresh produce trickling in from outside.  The tomato plants are so big they are falling all over the place, even with cages on them.  Red potatoes I'm digging a bit later then I could have and are now quadruple the size of an average red potato (which works for me) and taste wonderful!  This is our first year growing red potatoes.  Corn is huge and, save for a few stalks that fell over during storms, seems to be doing beautifully.  With luck (lets hope the raccoons don't know where we live) we'll be eating corn by the end of the month.  And the squash is doing AMAZING!  It is so beautiful to see this sea of squash vines climbing throughout the garden.  They were planted under the corn and have spread out over potatoes and a few other beds.  To be honest I really don't have a clue how much squash is in there.  It's a huge area and the plants are waist deep for me.  I know on the ends I can see pumpkins and acorn, spaghetti and butternut squash, maybe even a few other varieties.

Two of my Blue Andalusian hens

 Chickens are all doing well.  It was only after I started writing this that I realized that I never posted about the stinky little visitor we had a few months ago that killed half our chicks. :(  A skunk dug under our chicken tractor and killed my rhode island reds, all my meat birds and the fancy mistake birds.  All that we were left with was a buff orpinton rooster, a buttercup hen and a turkin hen.  It was quite really frustrating.  We fixed the chicken tractor (put a good sturdy bottom on it) and have had no predator problems since.  We only found out it was a skunk after our dog, Midnight, recently found it near where the tractor had been and got sprayed.  (Poor Midnight grabbed the darn thing by the tail and got sprayed in the face.  Glad the skunk got a beating though, and Midnight is doing fine now.)
We've just moved the chicks into one of the runs off the main chicken coop and they seem to be loving it.  A lot more freedom.  That tractor was getting awfully small for all of them.  It's been a very intense chicken year and I'm thinking that next year we will probably be getting laying breeds and less fancy breeds, but we'll see how I feel once these girls start laying.

It's been a busy year for us.  We all feel quite please with everything that has been accomplished so far and look forward to the harvest months ahead of us. :)

Garden pictures

Forest weeding

Hugelkultur potato bed

Yay!  Strawberry plants!

Black raspberry hedge.

North side of the garden looking south.

It took a long time, and is still a work in progress, but we got our hugelkultur beds made, mulched and the garden fenced in.  We also have strawberries, asparagus, corn, squash, potatoes and tomatoes successfully growing and looking beautiful.  We planted several other things (like peppers and brassica) but the slugs leveled those, sadly.  We also have woodchucks and gophers that are getting in (fencing isn't completely done yet) and they have been working on the beans and cucumbers we planted.  These pictures were from several months ago, hopefully I will get to go out and get some updated pictures for comparison.  All in all we are very proud of what we have accomplished even if it's not exactly what we thought it would be.  We should have plenty of potatoes and squash at least this winter. :)

The great chicken mixup

 We had some interesting adventured with chicks this year.  I ordered them in two batches so that I could get my meat birds started.  I wanted so many rare breeds for layers and ordered so late this year that the soonest I could get all the birds together would have been the middle of June.  A bit late for the meat birds.  So last week I was suppose to receive my 20 buff orpington males and 5 RIR (rhode island red) hens.  (Because they are so popular the RIR hens were available earlier then all the rest of my hens.)

The day they were suppose to arrive came and I was up early waiting for the call from the post office.  But instead of hearing from them we got a call from a man in St Paul saying he had received his and our chicks.  It was 6:30 in the morning so no on could call the hatchery (Meyer) so despite being annoyed and confused I just shrugged it off and waited.  But an hour later my post office calls and says they have chicks for me.  I was confused, but hey, chick with my name on it aren't going to sit in some cold post office.  Forest picked them up while I got things ready.  A regular little chicken midwife complete with hot water and towels. :)  When they got home and we looked in the box it was definitely not my order.  There were only 15 chicks and it was an assortment (rare by the look).  I'll admit we were all in a bit of shock.  There was no packaging slip so I hadn't a clue who this box belonged to.  But again I just shrugged because there was nothing I could do until I talked to the hatchery.  Everyone got fed and watered and was put in a nice warm box in the back room.

Later in the day I got to call the hatchery and explained what had happened.  I felt so bad for the lady that I talked to because it wasn't her fault at all, but I knew it had to be hard dealing with such a crappy mix up.  She was great though and got everything straightened out quickly.  She said my ordered would be shipped the next week and I could keep the chicks I received.  I felt bad for the person who didn't get their chicks but thrilled too to be getting such a wide assortment of new birds.  So far I have identified six breeds and there are still two I'm not totally sure of yet.  The six are naked neck turkins (top photo), golden polish (who actually died a few days ago), golden spangled hamburg (second photo), golden campine, sicilian buttercup (third photo) and two buff brahmas (that I am Thrilled about! last photo).  The two breeds I don't know for sure look like barnevelder and either blue hamburg or blue andalusian.   We've lost 4 out of the 15 in the first 4 days.  I can hardly complain seeing as these were free but I'll admit it makes me just a twinge worried about how hardy the rest of my chicks will be.

Still I am thrilled with my new chicks, looking forward to the others and am enjoying my life with chickens.

Gardening in the dark

The beginning of February found us totally excited about our future garden, about planting and about the end of winter.  Forest discovered a wonderful blog from some folks here in Minnesota and was inspired by how early they were able to get their starts going.  They build this beautiful little hot room thing with grow lights and a watering system in their basement and by the time they could plant safely outside, they had big and beautiful plants all ready for the garden.

Forest and I thought this was a great idea and perfect for us.  We have a huge basement and as most of the rest of the house is under construction (and/or occupied by curious kids or crazy cats) we thought it would be great to tap into the space that, to this point, had been un-used except during tornadoes.  It's warm in the basement because we heat the house with hot water from our outdoor wood boiler and all the pipes run through the basement.  Perfect.  So we bought the grow lights, dug out the extra lumber we had and Forest started building.  In just a few days he had built this beautiful bench.

Unfortunately at this point in the story is when our family got sick and stayed sick for two months.  The plants were sorely forgotten.  By us anyways.  The mice thought they were awesome and ate a lot of the seeds and some of the starts (though they did leave our flat of lettuce alone).  It was very disappointing.

Finally Forest brought a table and our starts, up into our bedroom where they could get more sunlight, stay a more consistent temperature and be mouse, child and cat free.  Since we moved them up there the lettuce has gotten much bigger and we even have two small comfery plants coming up.  This is thrilling because we planted about 100 comfrey seeds!  They take 30 days to germinate and we thought nothing was going to come of them.

We may try to replant tomatoes and peppers, or maybe we'll just buy started plants from the highschool again this year.  It's disappointing that our attempts to start seeds has gone so poorly.  But then we didn't anticipate getting (and staying) sick for so long.  Maybe next year we'll do better with the starts.  but this year has certainly been a good learning experience for us.

2011 Chicken Order

The fact that I needed to order chickens this year completely slipped my mind when we were sick in February and March.  This is our 4th year ordering chicks in the mail and will be our first ordering from Meyer hatchery.  Normally we order from Strombergs but this year I wanted to try something new and Meyer had the breeds I wanted.  So we'll see how these chicks are.

I've spent the last week trying to figure out my order.  I had a few people to talk to about what their plans were.  My mother in-law gets eggs from me and wanted a few for the freezer and my friend Britt and her mom were talking about ordering with me and also taking a few of my layers that I would otherwise be butchering this year.  It took me a little while before I was able to wrap my brain around numbers of how many we'd need to order for meat and how many for eggs.  Total this year I'm ordering 50 birds, 23 specifically for meat and we'll keep to roosters and 25 layers.  I love ordering an assortment of birds and am excited about my mixed flock.  So many beautiful birds, colors, personalities and lovely colored eggs.

For my meat birds I ordered Buff Orpingtons.  I haven't ordered them for a couple of years, but I remember them tasting great and growing really big, fast.  Or, relatively fast anyways.  At only 3 months they were as big as my year old sussex rooster and WAY nicer then the sussex had ever been.  I was very pleased.  I also ordered 5 hens.  While they aren't my favorite for laying purposes, though still good (about 3 a week), I love the orps for personality and meat.  Hopefully next year I'll be able to invest in an incubator so I can hatch my own.  I have plans to keep a roo and hopefully this time he survives.  Last time I orders orps I had plans to keep a roo but he died right after we'd butchered the rest of them. *face palm*

I also ordered Ameraucana's.  3 roo's and 4 hens.  Weird numbers I realize, but to be honest I wasn't sure if I could butcher to many roo's and but I still wanted to have some variety to choose from (reasons for not wanting to butcher are only because I LOVE these birds!).  And the hen number is weird because I already have 3 hens that still lay fine and I plan to keep.  The rooster in picture at the beginning of this post is our late Ameraucana and he was the sweetest thing.  I'm still quite disappointed about loosing him as I had planned to keep him and not butcher.  The hens are really nice layers of big green eggs.  They seem to lay pretty consistently, usually 3-4 a week.  So our flock total (if all goes right) will be 7 hens and a roo.  And then I can breed my own as well. :)

I am thrilled to finally be ordering a few Welsummer hens this year.  Though I probably wont get the beautiful dark brown/speckled eggs that the breed is known for, they are beautiful birds and there is a chance I could!  They are decent layers about 3 a week.  I don't know how they will do during the winter, but we'll see.  I'm just excited to be trying a dark egg laying breed.

Welsummers are only one of the four new breeds we'll be getting this year.  For the first time (since we moved to MN anyways) we'll be adding Rhode Island Reds to the mix.  I have been leery of adding them, (maybe because they are a more commercial breed or maybe just because they are more popular) but this year I'm ready.  I love having rarer breeds, that aren't as heavy in the egg laying industry, but I want to give the commercial idea a shot.  Maybe we'll like them, maybe we wont.  All I know is we'll be getting a lot more eggs from them then any of the other breeds so they will be working harder for us then most of the others (5+ eggs a week).  We'll see how it goes.

We're also trying out Black Australorps.  While reading about them they grew on me.  And Orpington derived bird that lays more then a normal orp (4-5 a week or more I've read).  An Australorp actually holds the record for most amount of eggs in a year (364 in 365 days!!)  I like the orps personalities but I like the idea of them laying more.  So these seem like a good answer.  I'm only getting 5 hens but I think that will be a good number to start with and see how I like them.  I also found a wonderful post on the backyard chicken forums about someone who had crossed a a buff orpington roo with an australorp hen and got some beautiful results.  I love the idea and may try for that when I start my hatching adventures.  (Check out the post here)

Lastly I really wanted to get a white egg layer.  This has been something I wanted and pretty much had given up on because I was pretty sure it would be a waste of time.  It seems like every white egg layer I have ever read about it flighty and extra active.  My chicken yard is not made for flighty and extra active so I worried about loosing the birds.  But my desire to have a white egg won over my brain this time and I ordered 3 Blue Andalusian hens.  I hope they can survive the trip with the other birds as they will be smaller then the rest.  But we'll just see.  I also know that due to the blue genetics they might not actually be blue.  But in the event that they survive shipment, I will have 3 white egg layers.  This bird lay about 3 decent sized eggs a week.  I could have ordered the more efficient Leghorns that would have given me way more eggs, but with all my other great layers I didn't need that many eggs from the white layers.  I also like the idea of keeping leghorns less the RIR (rhode island reds) as far as weird genetics go.  And really the deciding factor in getting these andalusian girls was that they would be available when the rest of my hens were shipping.

Eggs from our current flock.

We're trying a lot of new things this year which makes me a little nervous.  But over all I know chickens are chickens and in general I know what I'm doing with them. :)

For more information about chickens and pictures of all of the above breeds check out my favorite chicken websites:

• FeatherSite
• Henderson's Chicken Breed Chart
• Backyardchickens Forum
• Meyer Hatchery

Two Months In Review

While this will probably not be the most exciting post I feel a strange obligation to update about why I haven't been updating.  I always do this.  With other blogs and even with my journals I have this guilt about not explaining myself when I haven't written for a while.  Silly?  Yes.  But then I guess it help me (if no one else) understand what has been happening during my away time.

One of the best things that happened was that our youngest, Gabriel, had his first birthday!  Yay!  It was rather bittersweet for me as he is our last.  I can hardly believe how much my baby has grown, and that he's been with us now for a whole year.  Unfortunately the day of his birthday was also the start of a sick spell that has lasted a month and a half.

It started with our oldest, Aurora, coming down with the flu.  Poor thing had been exposed to half the public school who had the flu a few nights before at her dance picture night.  It's picture night, so of course people aren't going to stay home.  I so greatly wish we had (it was so cold that night that the car ended up freezing in the parking lot and I had to have my father in law come pick us up because Forest was stuck home with the teething baby).  So anyways, Aurora got the flu, and two days later Forest got it, then two days later Gabe (who was also teething) got it.  Somehow Michael got away with just a fever for a day and never had for a week like the others, and I never got it.  But as a trade off, for pushing myself so hard, I got shingles.  Fortunately for me by the time I was so sick, the others were doing better and could take care of me.  But then two weeks later my blisters had healed and the rest of the family broke out in chicken pox.  Now I have to say, this sucked a lot and I was worried and felt so bad for them all, BUT at the same time I was thrilled.  We couldn't have had better timing to have the chicken pox and now it's done!  Happy days!  I never want to go through that again if we can help it.  We had also (a few days before) just finished our electrical inspection on the house.  That has been a project we have been working on for the last 7 years!  A Huge deal for us and it's so good to know we don't have to think about that anymore.

During the last month and a half we have also celebrated our anniversary, remembered my father on the day he passed, celebrated my mother in laws birthday, had some insane weather to deal with, not to mention cabin fever.  It has been pure insanity and I'm hoping we're done with it.  There are more things planned, and we'll probably get sick again since dance class isn't anywhere near over but at the moment, we're not doing to badly.  Everyone is starting to feel better and instead of thinking only about surviving in the moment we're starting to think about the future again and how nice it will be to have warm weather and be able to spend more time outdoors.

Green Yolked Eggs

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not eat them in the rain.
I will not eat them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!

I do not like
green eggs
and ham!

I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.

~ Dr. Suess

The beginning of February found us out of nesting materials for the chickens.  We recently had gone through a bunch of old paperwork and it was just sitting in boxes in the shop waiting to be recycled or used for the fire.  But we came up with the brilliant idea to utilize the paper and fill the nesting boxes at the same time.  Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.  We started shredding paper and filling the boxes.  I was thrilled we had come up with something so useful to do with both the paper and the nesting box material.  And with my father in laws different businesses he goes through a lot of paper, so we would be set for a long time.

I was in this blissfully happy world until about two weeks after we'd started with the office papers.  One morning Forest was starting breakfast and was shocked to find a green yolked egg.  It was fresh and smelled fine, but was green.  We thought it was weird but maybe it was just one bird having problems.  So he got another mug and cracked another egg.  This time, the yolk was nearly black.  He tried half a dozen eggs, from different birds and they all were strangely tinted.  Green, gray and black yolked eggs sat sprawled out on the kitchen counter and I'll be totally honest, I had completely lost my appetite.  Out of curiosity I poked one of the yolks with a fork, just to see if the whole thing was discolored, and was rather surprised when I discovered it was still that nice yellow color on the inside.

It was depressing to see that our beautiful eggs had been contaminated and as nothing else had changed with them it had to be the ink on the paper effecting them.  I posted on the backyardchickens forum since I couldn't seem to find any information about tinted yolks.  While grateful for the support of others it seemed that most people never had problems with paper in the nesting box.  So I was feeling a bit bummed.

We stopped eating the eggs because we knew they had been tinted with ink that was not food grade pigments.  We filled the nesting boxes with straw and then just waited.  I knew it would take a few weeks to work it out of their systems.  Two weeks after the problem started it was finally over.  The egg yolks had become yellow again and we were eating the eggs.  I am convinced it was the paper and ink (not a change in the grainery's mix) that changed the color.  Our chickens are bored during the long winter and to be honest are to crowded this year.  It doesn't surprise me that they would start eating the paper when first introduced out of curiosity.

I am so grateful to have our eggs back to normal and have beautiful golden colored yolks again.  What a weird, but educational, experience.

Ordering Seeds and Crowns

It is so exciting to finally start ordering things.  Last week we received our comfrey seeds we'd ordered from Thompson & Morgan and ordered our siberian pea and black cohosh seeds from Turtle Gaby.  Those were small orders and everything in them was companion plants and boarder plants.  Yesterday we placed our orders for the edible in-garden stuff.  So many exciting and beautiful plants!

From Johnny Seed we are getting artichoke and lettuce seeds.  Forest found the blog The Urban Ton Project, and was thrilled when he read about how they were growing artichokes in Minneapolis.  So we have those on the way.  And I have dreams of lettuce lining the path to the chicken coop and being able to harvest a massive amount of greens for a salad every night.  Yum!

Seed Savers Exchange is where we placed our largest order.  Squash, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and so much more.  I love ordering from them!  Heirloom plants are so stunning and they taste so good!

Seed orders are exciting, but my heart really started pumping when we ordered the asparagus and strawberry crowns.  Seeds can be stored in a box and postponed for a year if it's just not the right time.  Crowns. on the other hand, can not.  We ordered our asparagus from Seeds Of Change.  30 of the Jersey Knight and 30 of the Sweet Purple.  I'm all about variety... and asparagus. :)  I have been looking forward to starting our patch for years now and I am thrilled that this will be the year it gets in the ground.  Even though I know we wont be able to harvest for a while.  But boy, in two years, we will be living in asparagus bliss!

I hadn't thought about planting strawberries in the garden until this year.  We have big plans for the future of making chicken runs in the large field behind their coop and filling it with different kinds of berries.  But that is many years off and while we wait for that we spend a lot of money (locally, of course) picking strawberries for the year.  While I like supporting the local business, it also makes sense for us to grow them for ourselves since we have the space.  So we ordered from Henry Field's and we got two different varieties.  Both are winter hardy (which we need at the edge of zone 3).  We decided to get both an everbearing and a june bearing so we could have our berries spread out a little bit during the season.  The everbearing variety is called Ogallala (pictured) and the june bearing is called Honeoye.  It will be a few years until we see a lot of berries.  But they will be there eventually and we have hopes of learning to propagate them ourselves, so we wont have to invest in them again anytime soon.

I can hardly believe how much this garden is already coming together.  It's so exciting, and makes me a little nervous.  There are so many new things we'll be trying all at one time.  But whether we have good experiences or bad, we'll be learning.  And that, along with having fun, is what is most important.

Plans for 2011

The last couple of weeks have been really exciting for me.  Forest and I started working on our plans for our garden.  Now we've lived in Minnesota for the last 4 years and have had a garden at his parents house every year, but this year will be the first time we get to garden at our house and set it up using the sustainable, permaculture methods we have learned about.  We went out on a warmer day a week or so ago and got the rough dimensions of our gardening space.

The area we'll be fencing in is approximately 218' long (north to south) and I'd say an average of 50' wide (east to west.  The land contours down every so slightly towards the northeast and there is also a large tree to the northeast the overhangs the garden.  We're planning to trim the one branch that is giving the most shade, but the north end of the garden will only be getting afternoon and evening sun during the summer.  We're going to have a 3' bed around the whole garden for boarder crops, in hopes that the multiple layers will help keep the quack grass out of the garden.  Or at least minimize it's invasiveness.  After that we have at least a 3' footpath and on the east side of the garden it will be 5' so we can get the riding lawnmower and bigger carts and things through for harvesting purposes and to get organic matter in and out easily.

Most of the beds are 4' wide except those few which are obviously bigger.  To me there is still quite a bit of work to be done in the planning, but it's a really good start.  It's to scale to so we really have a good idea of what our space looks like.  I worry that we're to optimistic with our spacing and that we wont be able to fit this many beds in that space, but between the northern boarder and the central keyholes we have a lot of room to work.

The keyhole bed in the lower left hand corner we had planned to let Aurora have a flower garden.  but after looking at it more we have decided to make our duck house and small yard for them over there.

This will be our first year with ducks.  I'm nervous but we just have to do it.  With a garden this size and the slug problems we had last year, we can't do it without them.  I sent my order in two days ago to Sand Hill Preservation Center and we're ordering 15 Cayuga ducklings.  It was hard to figure out the breed we wanted but eventually we decided on the Cayuga because of it's hardiness in the cold and it's ability to reproduce naturally and it's more relaxed personality.  I had thought about Indian runners or Campbells for a while.  But after a little research I realized those breeds were rather high strung and with dogs and kids around I figured we would do a lot better with one of the heavier breeds that was a little more mellow.

We're ordering seeds and plants from all over the place.  At least 10 different nurseries and seed companies, and the orders are starting to roll in.  Hopefully I'll be placing my huge Seed Savers Exchange order today so that we can get things like our tomatoes and peppers started soon.  It feels so good to finally see this dream of ours coming to life and to know we'll be producing food in our own backyard this year.