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Raising It

Not over ’til it’s over: Fall Garden

Oct 17th, 2010
by htwollin.
1 comment

So, we’re halfway through October here at Chez Siberia. We’ve had a solid week of nightly frosts in the low 20s. Real ‘scrape off the windows on your car’ mornings. So, for a lot of people here, gardening season is officially ‘over’. If they’ve been efficient, they’ve ripped everything out, thrown it on the compost (except if they had blight on the tomatoes, in which case, they burned all the old plants and then disposed of the ashes), have been raking up the leaves to turn into compost or leaf mold. Game over. (more…)

Next Year’s Garden – Today! Onions

Oct 9th, 2010
by htwollin.
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I know for many people, growing things in the garden is strictly done on the ‘what costs me a lot in the store’ aspect or ‘specialty things that I can’t get locally’ aspect. So, there are a lot of people who will grow 6 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, but who won’t grow potatoes or onions because, after all, “I can buy a 50 pound bag at the store for $xx – it takes too much room to grow enough.” Or, “I don’t have room to store” or some other reason.

And Aunt Toby is here today to tell you this: It’s worth it. (more…)

Grape Jam, or My Kitchen Aid is Busted

Sep 19th, 2010
by htwollin.
5 comments

The DH and I have been at this marriage/housekeeping thing for a very long time, but even we have not done everything. This year, I became very sensitive to the whole ‘is there no food that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup in it?” thing and decided that since PB&J is the “go to” lunch at Chez Siberia, that I’d make grape jam. Since we live about an hour from one of the great grape growing regions in the United States, we decided to go up this morning and pick grapes. (more…)

Picking a Cantaloupe

Sep 5th, 2010
by htwollin.
1 comment

There is nothing, as far as I’m concerned, that illustrates how separated we have all become from our food as the anxiety people experience when they are facing a display of melons and trying to decide which one to buy. “Let’s see now – is it you press in on the end where the stem attached and if it goes in, it’s ripe? How far in? What about the smell? If it smells like cantaloupe than it’s good? How strong? Forget it; I’ll just buy apples.” (more…)

Garlic Update

Aug 21st, 2010
by htwollin.
5 comments

As you might recall, Aunt Toby found some lonely little lost forgotten garlic plants last year and scrubbed out a little area and planted them.Second chances And promptly forgot them until they came back up in the spring. One of the wonderful thing about garlic is that they really are like potatoes, since you can’t see exactly what is going on; you have to just keep them weeded and watered and hope that you get something good when they are ready to dig up. (more…)

Turkeys do NOT gobble

Aug 13th, 2010
by htwollin.
1 comment

One of the joys of raising animals is really getting to know them in terms of behaviors and sounds. Roosters, on the one hand do crow with a sound that hovers in the ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ range. Even when the roosters are just starting to feel their oats (or, their hormones), they can make a weak version of this, but crowing it is.

We’re brand new to turkey raising this year and it has been truly delightful to find out that turkeys make a bunch of different noises. But, none of them sounds like ‘gobble’. What I think that refers to is more like a ululation. ululation

They also cluck and make a noise that sounds a lot like a ‘ping’ – sort of a “Star Wars’ sort of noise. Again, I have no idea who’s doing what (supposedly the tom’s ‘gobble’ and the hens ‘cluck’ but I think they all ‘ping’.

As you can see, they look a LOT more like turkeys than the last time we took a look at them for you and they are starting to puff up and present ‘display behaviors’ a lot more now. But we have the rest of the summer and into the fall before they will be big enough to be recognizable ‘painted on a china plate’ turkeys.

Catching up out in the barnyard

Aug 2nd, 2010
by htwollin.
1 comment

That’s really not quite the correct turn of phrase because we are basically moving most of the animals around in movable pens to new grass every day, but it will do.

As you may recall, the chicks and turkey poults arrived, aged three days, in the middle of May. (more…)

Ding! Time to get a jump on a fall garden

Jul 17th, 2010
by htwollin.
3 comments

OK, it’s mid-July here at Chez Siberia and it’s been horrifically hot. And dry. And the garden is not, shall we say, looking its best. We’re still harvesting but there are parts of beds that have been picked over, harvested out. There are lettuces that have bolted. (the photo above is basil – which does not look picked over or harvested out – but I’m going to start taking cuttings anyway so that I have fresh basil this winter)

In short, time to clear the decks to start things for a fall garden. (more…)

Raising Small Livestock: The Devil’s in the Details

Jul 11th, 2010
by htwollin.
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A lot of people would like to raise some sort of livestock – whether it’s chickens or pigs or lambs or whatever – but they are stopped by lack of experience and fear. Actually, raising animals is pretty simple (not necessarily easy – which is a whole different deal):
– Make sure they have the nourishment that works for them.
– Make sure they have protection from predators.
– Make sure they have water. All the water they can drink. There is no such thing as too much water for livestock. Trust me on that one. (more…)

Sheep: From the Hooves Up

Jun 26th, 2010
by htwollin.
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As Aunt Toby said before, there are a couple of items in terms of raising sheep that if you get them right, everything else pretty much falls into place. One of the most important is keeping hooves trimmed. Years ago, I attended a talk by a ruminant specialist from Cornell, who had done a lot of work in Scotland. She said the greatest promoter of sheep health in the Highlands was…the ATV. With an ATV, shepherds could get out to even the most remote, marshy, inhospitable areas where they sheep were holed up (sheep always look for the most remote, marshy and inhospitable places to park themselves; it’s part of their mouflon heritage) to check them, check their feet, do trimming and so on. She was a huge promoter of hoof trimming. (more…)

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