The Last Garden Chores of 2013

Yes, it's 2014 and I'm just finishing garden chores from last year!  It is always so - some things can just wait and since I always seem to be busy, wait they do!  The chores involve food, food for storage.  More specifically, dried beans and onions.  Both were fine: the beans were unshelled in pails, the onions had been properly cured and were in crates.  They were fine, but not particularly easy to access.  What finally got me going?  Well, it's time to clear and clean the sun room and get ready to start growing in 2014.

The beans are one of our favourites: Jacob's Cattle.  They are excellent for soups, stews, pork-and-beans and refried beans.  They matured on the bushes and I got them picked in early October, when the pods were brown and crispy.  I had them in a crate for a few days to dry, then they went into pails and into the sun room.  I like to clean them by hand - I sit in front of the TV in the evenings and shell them.  I've tried a lot of different methods like putting the pods in a sack and whacking it on a wall or post but I find it all messy.  I think I get a cleaner product just shelling gently into a pail and discarding the largely intact pod.  I still go through the shelled beans carefully for debris and bad beans before storing in glass jars.  I'll look through them again before I cook them, but I find less debris then beans I've bought at the store!  You do always go through dried beans, right?

The onions were just fine, I just wanted to get them into smaller storage and in a mesh bag that I could hang in the back room.  I cleaned some of the dried skin off and have a beautiful bag ready to use.  A little dusty and messy; perhaps it was a job better for doing outdoors last fall but that's what vacuums are for, right?

Now that's two pails and two crates out of the sun room.  What remains are four crates of assorted winter squash and a few loose squash on the floor.  We're still eating winter squash, I'm still going to bake and freeze some for muffins and such, and the goats and chickens are still getting some real food snacks!  But the sun room is almost clear and ready for the seed starting unit to come back inside.  It's time to get growing again!

Winter Chores!

Farmer Man shovelling the....

What a difference a couple of days makes!  Sunday: temperature close to the freezing mark - quite balmy for February in Manitoba.  Two days later we wake up to -30 Celsius with a windchill of -38 C! Good thing we got some chores done!

Number one priority for us was cleaning the chicken coop.  Not a wash down/scrub down kind of clean; it's still way too cold to be using water that would freeze too quickly.  It was time for hauling out the existing bedding and refreshing it with new.  We'd been waiting for a warm enough day when we were both around - not an easy thing to co-ordinate with Farmer Man working off the farm!  We'd tried a 'deep litter' method whereas you don't haul out the bedding, you top it up.  Theory is that the mix of bedding and manure composts in place, providing some warmth.  We've decided it's not our favorite method; the depth built up quickly and it was kind of slippery.  Plus, the chickens' feet seemed dirtier all the time so the eggs were dirtier!

Watching the weather forecast we knew Sunday would be the day!  High forecast to be around the freezing mark and both of us free.  The endeavor starts with kicking the chickens out of the coop - one of the reasons we want a nice day.  With their hatch open and a number of them already outside, we lured the rest out by throwing scratch grains out in the pasture.  The flurry of activity from the outside chickens always draws the others out - if there is even a rumour of tasty treats, chickens hustle over to see what's going on!  Once they chickens were largely all out, the open door to the coop covers the hatch so no one can get back inside.  A few hens didn't make it out and Rocky the Rooster chose to stay with them, so we had to work around a few bodies!

The litter was, particularly under the roosts, about a foot deep.  We use mostly wood chips for litter, with some straw/hay mixed in because that's largely what we use in the nests and it gets kicked around. With the deep litter method, when the chips are quite soiled with manure, you put another layer of wood chips on top.  The result was something in weird, dense, plastic layers.  It was heavy and didn't break up easily: once you got a shovel under it, when you lifted, it bent rather than breaking.  It was hard work and it took three tractor buckets to clean it out!  It didn't smell all that bad, fortunately.  A quick sweep and we put down another couple of bales of wood chips and everything smells better and looks better!

A few more things got done as well.  Snow has been pushed off the roof of the house, the path up to the barn and the chicken coop has been cleared, the barn got a good sweep.  It's not exactly Spring cleaning, but it's a start! 

Sunshine and Fresh Air For Everybody!

Getting the Goats out and about!

 We believe in sunshine, fresh air and exercise for everybody!  Vitamin D is a good thing from the sun, for cats, dogs, chickens and goats, as well as us humans.  When the weather is extremely cold here in Manitoba, say -25 C (about -18 F) or colder we won't even open the doors to the chicken coop or barn.  Chickens might freeze a comb or even a foot, goats are susceptible to drafts and since our girls are pregnant....it's just not a chance we're willing to take.  I've got to tell you, though: we feel bad for our critters when we can't get them out for some fresh air!  We can't imagine a life where the animals never get outside, never get to prance and run.....never get to waddle and cluck and peck.

So, we woke up this morning and it was 0 C - that's right: a warm and balmy right-at-freezing zero at 7:30 AM!  That's about twelve degrees warmer than our usual daytime high this time of year!  Farmer Man had no appointments until the evening so we took the opportunity to get some chores down.  First on our list, and our minds, is that Randi needs his own pen.  As our Mamas get closer to delivering (expected March/Aprilish) Randi the Buck could inadvertently hurt them or the babies.  Last year we had the spare pen, but this year the boys Marty and Mervyn are occupying it.  Randi does not take kindly to the young bucks, so a new pen had to be constructed.  The biggest part of that chore, as always, is cleaning out debris!  The barn becomes a bit of a dumping ground in the fall, as we close down the vegetable operation.  We needed to re-organize the shelves behind the pens, clear out some space and put together a new pen.

Mabel and Goldie compete for pumpkin. That kept
them busy for a while!

Since the weather was so lovely, and we wanted to work around the pens, we decided to let the Mamas and Randi out.  Farmer Man led the little herd over to the trees beside the chicken coop, where the snow isn't very deep between the rows of trees.  The Goats could snack on the evergreens, forage for some dried leaves and just generally roam and relax.  Problem is: goats just want to hang with their people!  They all returned pretty promptly to the barn and preceded to get in the way.  When Randi tried some head-butting with Farmer Man, the buck ended up back in the pen!  To distract the Mamas, I  ran back to the house to grab the last pumpkin - their favorite.  We proceeded to tidy up, finding new places for tillers and grass catchers and saw horses and all the accumulated stuff!

Randi's new pen!

The goat Mamas and our little girl Marble probably tried to eat everything we moved.  Well, not eat but they will mouth everything to see if it is good to eat.  Choco wanted to chase Marble, Mabel just wanted to get at the stacked hay and Goldie really, really wanted to know what we were doing.  It was a bit of a gong show.  But, eventually, we got it done and got Randi ensconced in his new pen.  Whewwwww.......

  

The Last Garden Chore of 2012

The garden is covered in snow, and it is very cold.  The year winds down; it's time to complete the chores of 2012!  The last chore, which has been hanging over my head for some time, is to finish the dried beans.  A rather large bucket of 'Jacob's Cattle' beans, still in the pod, has been hanging around in the sun room since October.  I usually get this chore finished in November, but this year I was a little distracted by soap making.  'Jacob's Cattle' is an awesome heirloom bean, used in baked beans, soups and stews.  It's also gorgeous: deep red with white patches, although the coloring is lost in cooking.

There are many ways to shuck beans; most instructions involve putting all the pods in a gunny sack or feed sack and smacking it on the ground, or beating it with a hammer or crunching them with a rolling pin.  This shatters the brittle, dried pods and releases the beans.  We've done this for a number of years now, and I always find those methods messy.  It's just really hard to separate the beans from the debris; even outside, allowing the wind to take some of the chafe, it's still messy.  So this year, I've settled down in front of the TV in the evening and hand-shucked the beans - like shelling fresh peas.  I feel I'm multi-tasking, too, so watching TV doesn't seem as decadent a thing!

It's taken about eight hours of casual work...no hurry, no pressure!  The beans I have produced are very clean, and won't really require any more labour.  Like any dried bean or lentil or such, we'll still rinse them and pick through them before cooking, but one should always do that sort of thing.  I had the big bucket on one side, an empty bucket for the debris between my knees and a small pail for the beans in front of me on a low table.  After a while it's a rhythm, a Zen thing....the work gets done while hardly thinking about it.  I found, after a while, the moment I picked up a pod I could tell if it was good or bad, and sorted beans right on the spot.

Worth the effort? Well, yes!  If we were thinking of selling these they would have to be a ridiculous price, to cover my labor.  But, it's for our use and for re-planting, and enjoyable!  Fresh dried beans are a delight to use; at this age these beans will hardly require soaking before using.  And 'Jacob's Cattle' is a very tasty bean!

So, just as I though I had wrapped up the 2012 gardening year, I discovered that our onions weren't storing very well.  We struggle to store onions: outside is way too cold, the root cellar is too humid (good for potatoes, carrots and beets in sand).  This year we thought we had cured them well, and tried our back bathroom, generally unused, dark and cool, and had stashed the sacks of onions there.  These are all small onions, the left overs so to speak, we were just hoping to use as seed next Spring.  On inspection, I could see that onions were sprouting and I could smell a bit of decay.  So, they must come out of the sacks and be picked through to get out any bad ones if we have any hope of saving some.  I'd better get that done today, if I want the 2012 gardening season truly finished!

Winter Chores and Sports!

First, Farmer Man works! After pushing a huge pile of snow off the roof, he had to dig out the office window which ended up under the pile. Then, Farmer Man gets to play! Our friends Joe and Calla brought out their quad, Farmer Man dusted off his old quad and some snowy racing ensued! All on a beautiful, late December day!

Chicken Chores in Frigid Weather

Yes, that is a chicken waterer in my bathtub. Keeping chickens gets interesting once the temperature falls (and stays) well below freezing. We have no outdoor running water once freeze-up comes. I think for Christmas Farmer Man has asked for one of those water hoses that never freeze - we'll see...... In the meantime, cleaning and refilling goes on in the bathroom. I worry some about contamination, so we don't run the risk of bringing items from the coop, except eggs, into the kitchen. We're careful about clean-up, try not to set down the grungy waterers any where except in the foyer and we wash up well afterwards. We even try not to set down the egg basket in the coop! We think our chickens are pretty healthy, but lets get real: they poop on the floor, then walk through it, then clamber at the edge of a waterer or even get up on top of the waterer and then poop. It's not big or smelly or anything but it can still carry contaminants, so we can't be too careful.

Another winter chore that I have to get organized is bathing facilities for The Hens. I noticed yesterday that one of the girls was trying to have a bath in the wood shavings on the floor of the coop and it wasn't going that well. Chickens like to have dust baths, they 'throw' dust up through their feathers with their wings and feet. Last year I put a large kitty litter box of potting soil into the coop, and I've got to get that organized again. Thing is, that kitty litter box is in use with the little wild kitties so I've got to find or buy another container. With Christmas coming, I'm sure The Hens just want to look beautiful!

Hot Fashion Tip!

We're more about practicality then hot fashion here at Aagaard Farms. It's great when the trends intersect with our life, so we can be down-to-earth but stylin'. My new hot fashion item: fingerless gloves. They are so practical for those of us living in frigid climates!! I put them on under my gardening gloves, which I wear to go do chores, like care for chickens. They fill that space between glove and sleeve, add a little extra insulation and I can whip off the glove and have full dexterity when needed. My favourite website for all things hand-made, Etsy, has them hand-knit in a myriad of colours and styles. Mine came from the cheapsie little accessories store in the mall and are highly washable, an important consideration.

Still on the To-Do List

There are still jobs to be done, aside from the daily feeding and care of chickens. One of the big ones, which we're dreading, is the cleaning of the greenhouse. The greenhouse becomes a dumping ground all summer. As we plant out the seedlings, we tend to dump the empty flats back inside. As we work through the spring and summer, we tend to dump the sprayer, or broken sprinkler heads or whatever in the greenhouse. It's a convenient spot, it's a lean-to structure on the barn, right beside Farmer Man's shop, close to the house. Then, in fall, we clean out pots of stuff we've had around the house and dump those pots. And then, we tend to dump tools that need cleaning before putting away for winter. Well, you get the picture. Furthermore, because we take the windows out late in the spring, and never get them back in in a timely fashion, it has rained and blown leaves into the greenhouse. It's a disaster! And why we keep finding something else to do......