Au revoir, Arthur!

In other chicken news of the year, we regretfully had to part ways with our rooster, Arthur, in May. As you can see, he had grown up to be a fine and beautiful rooster. However, he became very aggressive this spring with my husband and the boys. It got to the point where no one (except me) could go into the chicken yard without being attacked by him. It was a real dilemma because neither DH or I wanted to end his life, but the boys couldn't even go outside and enjoy the hens because of Arthur. So........a friend of ours ended up taking him off our hands because his rooster had been killed by a fox and he wanted another one. On Mother's Day we loaded Arthur up and took him to his new home. He was happy there for a few weeks, but ultimately fell prey to the same fox that took his predecessor. We'll always remember Arthur fondly. But it's been nice to just have our four friendly hens and not have to worry about rooster attacks.



In the photo below Arthur is trying to attack DH's shoe. (DH tried so hard to make friends with Arthur but Arthur was having none of it. I guess in Arthur's mind there could only be one rooster in the flock. Since Arthur never attacked me I joked that he thought of me as one of his "girls.")

Incubating Eggs

Another exciting event in early May was incubating eggs in my Montessori preschool classroom. My assistant, Miss Melissa, loaned us her egg incubator and I brought several fertilized eggs from our flock and another assistant, Miss Carla, brought some fertilized bantam eggs from her flock. I think we had about 19 eggs in all and if I remember correctly 11 hatched. Below you can see them in the incubator. It was awesome to actually be able to see them hatch. So amazing! The Xs on the shells are so I knew which side was which. The eggs have to be turned about 3 times a day and marking them helps keep track of that.







The babies stayed in the incubator for a few hours to dry off.









Then they were moved into a tub in my office with a heat lamp. They stayed at school for a few days so all the children could hold them and look at them. Then they moved to Miss Carla's house where they have made their permanent home.

Coleman Montana 8

I did get a tent for Mother's Day. I love it! It is the Coleman Montana 8. It is HUGE. It's "footprint" (isn't that cool that I know the technical "tenty" term for it) is 16 feet by 7 feet. I think it's about 7 feet high in the center too. We have not yet camped anywhere other than our own backyard in it. Maybe we never will. We have 2 acres and DH and I think our backyard is better than any campsite we could find. No annoying ding-dongs camping 15 feet away and easy access to the bathroom and anything you forgot to bring!! Our oldest son overheard me saying that our backyard was better than any campground and was quick to point out that our backyard does not have a.) a lake or b.) hiking trails. True that. However, we could always drive to the lake or hiking trails then come home at the end of the day!







Here's a photo from inside. You can see how spacious it is. We can fit a queen-sized air mattress on each end with room for at least another 1 or 2 in the middle. I bought a patio rug that is intended for use outside RVs to put in the bottom so the floor is kind of carpeted. I haven't "glamped" it up any more than that, however.






Another great feature is the hinged door. Genius! You insert some poles into the door so it can be opened and closed just like any other door instead of having to zip and unzip. Love it!




I'll post more about our camping adventures when they happen.

Update on Square Foot Garden!

Many of you have been wondering about our success with the square-foot gardening method I wrote about in April. I am happy to say that we are having great luck. Below you can see a photo I just took in July after adding the vertical frames. For those of you who will wonder, the vertical frames were VERY easy to construct. We used some pieces of rebar and pounded them into the ground on the sides of the raised beds. I had 3/4 inch electrical conduit cut into 5 foot lengths (for the sides) and 4 foot lengths (for the tops) at Home Depot. The conduit was less than $2 per 10 foot length, very inexpensive. The corners are held together with connectors that can also be found in the electrical area of a hardware store. Those babies were over $4 apiece so that drove up the cost a bit. Luckily we won't ever have to build these again. They easily slip onto the rebar and can be slipped off and stored inside for the winter if needed. I used nylon garden mesh attached with zip ties for the netting. I couldn't find this large sized mesh locally and had to order it from Burpee. I have a ton left over. The zip ties were in the electrical section of Home Depot.





So far we have harvested broccoli (from plants), peas (from seed), green beans (from seed), onions (from sets), basil (from seed) and carrots (from seed). We have MANY green tomatoes on the vine and I am practically drooling over how awesome they will taste. We also have strawberries, cucumbers, mini pumpkins, gourds, radishes, and peppers planted. (And asparagus and lemon balm. The lemon balm is overtaking my youngest son's garden.) I am planning to move the strawberries to their own bed this fall and add more. You can see them taking over the front of the garden closest to the front in the photo above. We also planted marigolds, zinnias and four-o-clocks from seed. The zinnias did not do very well......only one grew. The marigolds are taking over my oldest son's bed......you can see them in the back left garden. I will probably plant a smaller variety next year.


Here is what I've learned: I will probably not do broccoli next year. We did have good luck with it and got several heads. However, the last head I brought in had a chubby green worm in it. I knew broccoli was prone to worms, but it really grossed me out. Also, I didn't realize how big each individual broccoli plant grows. The leaf-span was probably almost 2 feet which meant they were overshadowing the little pepper plants that were trying to grow nearby. We may try lettuce from seed again this fall when it cools off. I didn't have any luck with lettuce this spring. However, I was using old seed so that may have been the problem. The peas were SO good right from the garden..........I will definitely do them again and plant more next time. Below are a few photos I snapped recently.










Roma tomatoes............cannot WAIT to eat these!










Marigold.........my boys took marigolds very similar to this one to the fair this year.






Basil...........we had some of this in a pasta dish this week. It was awesome to go out and pick it right from the garden. It took 2 plantings of seed for me to get it to take off though. Not sure why.

Our green beans grew really well. I may even pull them now that they're mostly harvested and try for a second crop yet this year.

One last comment...........my main reason for choosing this way of gardening was so I wouldn't have much weeding to do and I have to say that the weeding is VERY minimal. It's so easy to stay on top of it. I would love to add more beds for next year. I am planning to at least add a big bed of just strawberries. That will free up space in the other beds so I may not add any more vegetable beds until I go another year to see what grows well here.

4 Little Words...........

..........that brought me back from my long blog hiatus: WHOLE WHEAT CINNAMON ROLLS.
I knew when I snapped a photo of some cinnamon rolls yesterday that I was ready to start blogging again. I am sorry for not writing in so long. To be honest, I got mad at Blogger back around Mother's Day because I was trying to write a post about the tent I received and couldn't get my photos to upload. I tried again about a week later and still had no luck. So although I wasn't planning it, I ended up taking about a 3 month break from blogging. All is well here and a lot has been going on with us. I am planning to write a bunch of posts in the next week or two to update everyone about our summer. For now, I wanted to share a recipe I just tried for the first time that is FAB.U.LOUS. I have been up late for several nights working on things for school this fall. I was dinking around online the other night and stumbled across a blog called Finding Joy in My Kitchen. There are a lot of great recipes over there, but I could not get THIS ONE out of my head and ended up making it the very next day. This is a big deal for me because I have always been too intimidated to try cinnamon rolls. They seem very complicated and I can't even bake an apple pie that I like. What drew me to this recipe was that it looked easy and it used whole wheat flour instead of white which definitely ups the nutritional value. I am pleased to say that in not much more than 30 minutes start to finish I had some very yummy homemade cinnamon rolls. They truly represent the pinnacle of my culinary achievements to date. I did not add blueberries to mine since my oldest son nixed that idea when I asked him. These are really awesome rolls. I am going to make another batch soon and see how well they freeze. They would be great heated up for breakfast every morning. Yum-ola! Well.......it feels good to be back. Please enjoy the two photos I took..........they were EASY to upload so I'll be posting again very SOON!




Before baking (above)




After baking (with icing drizzled on top)

SFG Day is here!! Yippee!!

This week DH screwed together some 2X6 pine boards to make my 4 raised Square Foot Garden (SFG) beds. And on Friday I picked up peat moss and compost to fill them. Today I picked up some vermiculite that I had to have special ordered by a local nursery and some free 4 foot wood laths that my uncle gave me. The weather ended up being pretty decent so this afternoon I spent about 3 1/2 hours putting together my SFG beds. The beauty of the SFG method is that now that the beds are done I will have very little prep work each spring from now on. No tilling or prepping the soil.......all I'll need to do is mix in a little compost each time I'm ready to plant. Such an awesome method.


Here is what the back of my van looked like at 1:00 p.m. when I started the project. It took me about 30 minutes (and some muscle power) just to haul everything to the backyard. DH would have helped but he is out of town this weekend.







Once everything was moved to the backyard it was time to make my "Mel's mix". This is a mixture of roughly 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 vermiculite. It is the combination recommended by Mel Bartholomew, the creator of the SFG gardening method. The great thing about starting with Mel's mix is that you don't need to worry about the condition of your soil.....you don't use your soil. Also, the combination is specially designed to hold just the right amount of water to make your plants grow really well. With this combination it is impossible to overwater your plants. If you want to know more, head over to Mel's website or check out his book from your local library. I have it checked out right now for the second time.





Here are my beds waiting to be filled with Mel's mix.





To mix the Mel's mix I got a big tarp and poured out all the ingredients on top. In the book Mel recommends starting with the compost, then adding the peat moss, then the vermiculite. The main reason he recommends this is because he strongly suggests finding several different types of compost and mixing them together first. I could only find a bagged mixture of humus (plant matter) and manure so I didn't need to mix compost. After mixing everything up this afternoon I have a few suggestions if you are going to try to do this yourself. First........if you are mixing material to fill several beds, only mix the amount needed for one bed at a time. I started by mixing about half of my whole batch (which means half of 12 bags of compost, 5 bales of peat moss and 2 HUGE bags of vermiculite) the first time and this ended up being pretty difficult to mix well. It was just too heavy. After that I only mixed one "bed's" worth at a time and that was much easier. Second, if you don't have to mix different types of compost I found it easiest to pour out the peat moss first, then mix the vermiculite into that. I ended up mixing these with my hands because it felt so good and worked better than doing it any other way. I was literally up to my elbows in mix. My sons helped with this part. It was fun to get so dirty. If you have another adult helping you Mel recommends folding the tarp and mixing it that way. I only had an 8 year old and a 4 year old so we used hands. After mixing the peat and vermiculite, add the compost. It tends to be the most damp and heavy so it was much better to mix it in last.





Here is what the mixture looks like before being mixed together.

And here is what it looked like after.

I lined the bottom of the bed with some landscape cloth I found in my garage and several layers of newspapers since I didn't have enough cloth to cover all the beds. Hopefully the newspaper will be enough to deter weed growth. A major reason I am doing this method is because I HATE weeding. As Mel says in the book, there is little to no weeding with this method. Because you are not using soil there are no weed seeds in the mixture. Any weeds that do pop up are easily pulled out because the mixture is so loose, unlike your yard which is compacted making it difficult to pull out weeds.

My big boy took a photo of me spreading out the mix in one of the beds. In the background you can see the corner of our chicken yard, one side of our boys' fort, and our two compost piles (in the white circular "fence".

It was a good feeling to get all the beds filled without getting rained on. It was cloudy all afternoon and at one point it seemed like it would rain, but it didn't.

The final step was to nail pieces of wood lath into a grid shape on top of each bed. Mel insists that without the grid you don't have a square foot garden. He says it is important to add the grid so you can truly see where you need to plant everything. In theory, each square foot could have a different vegetable or flower in it.

It feels good to have these done. Hopefully I will have enough energy to start planting tomorrow. I am really tired tonight!

What I've been up to

I realize I have been MIA for a while. We went on a family vacation over Easter......lots of fun. Since we've been back life has been busy, as usual. Also as usual I have become obsessed with a new idea for spending more quality time together as a family. I am hoping to start a new family tradition of camping together. We have not yet ever tried camping as a family. DH and I camped on our honeymoon (one night if I remember correctly) and also camped a little early in our marriage. We own one tent.........a teeny little pup tent that fits a queen size air mattress and nothing else. You can't even stand up in it. So.......if we are going to dive into family camping we will obviously need to invest in a family-sized tent. Since I love doing internet research I have spent NUMEROUS hours online over the past several nights after the boys are in bed looking at tents, reading tent reviews, searching for family camping blogs, etc. I can be very one-track-minded about things sometimes. It is a little over the top. I was like that last summer when we decided to get chickens. I immersed myself in "chicken research" for many weeks.

I am hoping that our family will enjoy camping together. I really want my boys to grow up loving and respecting the natural world. It is SO sad that children these days spend so little time playing outside. My favorite childhood memories are almost exclusively tied to times I spent outdoors either on my own or with my family. We did a little camping when I was a child. Although we didn't do it really often.........and sometimes it was just in our own backyard........I do have good memories of it.

For a while I was really hoping that we could get a pop-up camper to use for family camping. In fact, last summer we were VERY close to purchasing a used pop-up camper but we decided to not go through with it. We were afraid that we wouldn't actually end up using it and that it would be a waste of our financial resources. The truth is......we don't have an extra $5000+ this year to buy a used pop-up camper. So...........tent camping seems to be the best option for us to get our feet wet and see if camping is for us. While doing my extensive research these past few weeks I discovered a concept previously unknown to me called "glamping". Have you heard of this? It is where you combine luxury with camping.........like camping, but with the comforts of home. Here is a great article about glamping if you want to read more. The crafter in me really digs the idea of special camping "bedding" with coordinated table linens, etc. I am already dreaming of the cute color-coordinated camping accessories I could sew for us. (I realize this borders on insanity.......no need to point that out. I'm aware.) But............I truly do see some camp-related sewing on the horizon if we end up getting a tent and moving forward.

In case you are interested, the tent I am pretty sure is my true heart's desire is the Eureka Copper Canyon 1312. Below is a photo of it courtesy of Amazon. And HERE is the Amazon link. I have truly read dozens of reviews of dozens of tents and I think this is the one. DH............if you are reading this, pretty please can we buy this tent? It is WAY WAY WAY cheaper than a pop-up and we could use it for years to come. Just think about it, 'kay? You know Mother's Day is coming up soon!

Here are some features I love about this particular tent. First of all, the size is great. It is 13 feet by 12 feet which makes it the size of a good-sized bedroom. It's important to me that the tent is spacious enough for use to put air mattresses and cots for sleeping. Gotta have comfort. I also love that this tent is tall enough to stand up in without bumping your head on the top. Since it is a cabin-style tent the walls are pretty vertical so there should be no need to bend down to get to any part of the tent. Another great feature is a sweep-out doorway so you can easily sweep out any grass that accumulates inside. In most tents there is a "lip" at the doorway which makes it quite difficult to clean out. Most of the reviews I've read say that this tent is easy to set up. Finally, the Eureka brand is a really good brand name with a great reputation. If we are investing a big chunk of change in a tent I want it to be one that won't have to be replaced for years to come. Maybe our grandkids will someday go camping with us in this tent. If any of you out there have tent-camping experience, I'd love to hear from you. What kind of tent do you have? Any good tips for camping with kids?