Gardens, Chickens and Fences

Greetings all, Ken here. Margaret is not the only to spend a lot of time in the gardens. I have been making garden fences all day. What's that you say? A fence around a garden? Silly idea I should think! You would be correct in thinking that garden fence might be silly, that is until you throw chickens into the mix. Chickens love scratching, it is in fact one of their best  means of getting food. Our chickens are experts and quite fearless in their choice of locations to scratch about in.

They are equal oportunity scratchers, lawns, flower and  vegetable gardens, wood piles and just about any other place they can get their claws into. They are quite efficient at making holes in the dirt which is where the garden fences come in. Seeds are fair game and vegetable seeds are best of all because they are usually planted in freshly turned soil and so are easy to scratch up.

The garden fences keep all but the most enterprising chickens out of the vegetable gardens. I have found a cheap and easy way to make garden fences that keep the chickens out, protect the gardens from the wind, tend to make the temperature inside the fenced area a little higher (reflected heat and light) and provide extra space for climbing vegetables such as peas and beans. With a little enginuity, you can make frames along the fence to hang tomato pots from, affix chicken wire for peas and beans to grow up and more. The only limiting factors are your budget, time available a materials to hand.

This cheap and easy method of fence building involves skids. We get them from a building supply store in London called Herman's Building Supplies. They have hundreds of skids left over from shingles, bricks and other building supplies. The best part of this equation is that they are free for the taking, it costs you time and gas to get them.

The method of construction I use calls for skids that have overhanging boards on both ends of the skid. I use all the same type of skid and just overlap them, make sure they are vertical and level and nail them to either scavenged 4X4 posts or 2X4's. I dig the 4X4's into the ground 2 ft deep, make them as vertical as I can, fill and tamp the dirt around them. Before I put the 4X4's up, I coat the bottom 2 1/2 ft with roofing tar to help preserve them. The 2X4's I cut to 4 ft lengths, cut points on them and pound them into ground.

I intend to make planting boxes for the top of the skids for the peas and beans. These will be 1X4 rough pine or spruce boards, probably lined with landscape fabric and filled with earth. (Duh!) The skids I use also have slats on the bottoms of them and you could hang pots or make up smaller planting boxes for climbing plants as well.

We have built two of these fences so far, one for the West Garden and one for the Kitchen Garden. I will be building one around the East (or BIG) Garden as soon as possible. Our grand children have expressed an interest in having a garden, so we'll be making gardens for the three of them as well.

I'm hoping this year's garden season will be more successful than last year. I guess we'll know in October how it went. We'll also know how well the fences worked in keeping the chickens out of the gardens as well.

Until next time, take care and thanks
Ken

Getting lots done outside

I am absolutely in love with this weather. I was in the herb garden today and wow the chives are about 5 inches high already. It was lovely to work in my herb garden and afterwards still smell the sage on my clothing ...every once in a while I got a whiff of it . Confused me until I remembered .
The chickens gather around where ever I am weeding or scratching around upcoming plants..Just in case . Geez they are funny.
They have also wiggled nests in the dirt and Sunday we found 2 eggs in one of these dirt nests. Odd little creatures.
I can see the spinach just popping up in the hot box that the boys and I made last week. So it is certainly working . I planted another row of spinach in the front garden.So I will have lots hopefully.
The trees here are budding and there is a tinge of yellow in my decorative bushes . I wonder if spring will stay. Would be fantastic to get an early start and be able to continue on all season .Especially after last years garden troubles. The apple and other fruit trees are in bud , I did not trim them this year but they look fine . We super trimmed the pear and cherry trees last year . We always get a healthy crop from the pears,,,not so much the cherries. Just as you think they are getting nice and ready, in swoops the birds and all that is left is stained poop.Just to prove they indeed have been there and why.
So that is how I spent most of my day today. Did I say I love this weather?
Until next time
M

Chicken tv episode 2 season spring.....

If you want to be entertained , if you want to laugh , turn off your tv and get some chickens,,and then just watch
This morning I threw out some pitch (which in chicken speak is leftovers and peelings ) a bunch of our chickens were near by and ran over to see what the bounty held. I was talking to Ken in the boiling hut and we heard another bunch of our chickens running to beat the band hollering away..Towards the pile of pitch,,,,I am sure they were yelling "wait don't eat it all"..."save some for us".I know this is a "you had to be there moment " but I just had to share..
Oh and by the way ...this years syrup is absolutely amazing.
Talk to you soon
M

The boys are back in town...

Our  Grandsons Jude and Aidan are here for the week. March break doncha know.
It is time to rediscover old forts, check the barn for racoons and plan gardens. I started this post yesterday and did not have a chance to get it written. Well today it is thursday, I am not doing well posting this week at all am I ?
As I said at the start of this post days ago ...the boys are back in town. They have been exploring ,planting, running,chopping ,lighting fires,rounding up chickens, cooking syrup,moving wood and eating me out of house and home...wow
Jude is catching up to Aidan in the eating department. They have a full breakfast in the morning, Eggs, meat, fried potatoes,toast, juice ,tea ,cheeses and assorted fruit...Jude loves kiwi and bananas. And on alternate days oatmeal laden with brown sugar and heavy cream...
Last evening we attended our Rotary meeting and Jude impressed everyone with his eating of a full prime rib dinner ,baked potato and mixed beans followed by dessert..
We have gotten a lot done. Planted peas,turnips,spinach,potatoes,lettuce and carrots. We have burned the small gardens and Ken did the large one. We have laid newspapers and covered them with straw...the thick layer of newspapers ,wet will keep the weeds down to almost nothing ...and they are free for the asking most often.
So we have been busy here and the boys have had a blast. They went for a very long walk yesterday through the bush .
I love having them here and they love to learn..again ...neither of them care about the no lights,no tv,no toaster or any of the other things we do not have ,But what they do indeed notice is the taste of food on the wood stove...especially the baked beans I made the other day....hmmmm maybe that would account for them eating me out of house and home ...do you think?
Until next time ...enjoy this gift of beautiful weather.

The Sap's a-boiling

Greetings all, Ken here. I spent the afternoon and evening boiling sap for syrup. Today I boiled down about 15 Imperial gallons of sap (18 American gallons) or 68 litres and this was the first day I really had a long session of boiling and I made good progress. All told I've boiled down about 100 litres so far. We've collected about 500 litres of sap to date and I expect more before the season is over.

I think it will work out to about 50 to 1 this year. The sap isn't as sweet as it was last year, but I'll know what the ratio is for sure when the boiling is done. Last year the ratio was about 40 to 1, and the sap was sweeter coming out of the tree. The firebox I built this year is working pretty good and I already have ideas for improvements for next year.

I'd like to have a special boiler pan made up for next year, preferably out of stainless, but I'll take carbon steel if the price for stainless should prove too high. Something about four feet long. 18 inches wide and about 8 inches deep, with handles and lifting holes or hooks. I thought about a tap for draining the sap but decided not go that route.

This boiler will fit onto a new fire setup I'm planning to build this year. Hopefully, when all is said and done, the new fire setup and boiler will make syrup making a lot easier.

That's all for now, have a good day.
Ken

The woodstove wows them again

I did a feast this Saturday for a historical group that my husband and I belong to . The group rented a kitchen in a school which had only one electric stove , the  oven did not work well ..so I sent the vegetables to the school and did the rest of the food here in the wood stove. It was funny watching faces when they commented on how fluffy the barley was or  how tender the meat was when I told them it was all cooked on/in the wood stove. I think some of them did not believe me initially. Wood cooking is a lost art it seems . Wood stove cooking cooks food in the oven from all sides.  Making meats tender and juicy . Because the juices are sealed in. Now  people have to sear their pieces of meat in order to achieve this . Ken loves to tell people how I took a frozen prime rib roast (back when we had a freezer), and cooked it to perfection in 3 hours . Medium rare and perfect , cut with a fork perfect. So if you have a chance to cook on a wood stove give it a try,,plus there is wonderful surface area, you can fit lots and lots of pots. Soup can simmer happily all day and all you have to do to regulate the temperature is move your pot from one area to another...oh and no hydro is used in the process...makes me happy to say that..
Talk to you soon.
M