Going thru a lot of wood...

We're in the second week of a bitter cold snap so I am working on projects that can be done near the wood stove. This is a pile of garden aprons in the making. I sold six last year in our shop at the harbor so being an optimist I have eight in the works for next summer.

I've had some donations of flannelette sheets and receiving blankets, so the diapers for Haiti project is ongoing, with the piles of diapers growing daily. I like to jump from one project to another so the day stays interesting. I was surprised at Shoppers Drug Mart yesterday, when I asked for diaper pins and plastic pants the young sales girl looked at me like I was from Mars. Okaaaay... the pampers generation, right. Its going to take some hunting to locate some pins and pants.                                                                                                                                                               

I am feeling SO organised today. I sorted out all my seed packages into an old empty photo album, with little tags to identify what is where. Usually they live in a tangled together mess in an ice cream bucket. Today the onions and leeks went into the potting soil, as well as some oriental vegetables and greens I've never tried before, like corn salad, arugula, and radiccio. Next will be some perennial flowers, butterfly bush and others. The spinach and radish planted in early january in the greenhouse bed is doing well . I have made a hoop and plastic tunnel over the bed with pvc pipe. During these cold but sunny days the bed absorbs a lot of solar heat to be released after sundown. At night the 4 layers of plastic are pulled over the hoops and a couple of quilts thrown on top, to get the greens thru safely to the next day. Yesterday I figured we had saved enough from not having to buy organic salad greens all winter that I could treat myself to a rotating salad washer/spinner. Nifty!

Diapers for Haitian Babies

Some readers in my local area may be interested donating materials or time to the Diaper Project, cloth diapers made from recycled materials for the babies of Haiti. Even if we give money, which is crucial in the aid picture, some of us are left wondering what practical hands on use could we be? I heard about this project from a lady in Saint John, NB and thought, I can do this in the evenings instead of watching tv, and it would be a lot more satisfying. The first step I think is to gather in materials, then recruit some volunteer sewers. Maybe a cutting/sewing day at the school? Im thinking packages of 10 diapers with one set of pins and 2 sets of plastic pants. Drug stores or large chain stores may want to donate the diaper pins & plastic pants. Here is the poster I'm getting ready:

Homemade laundry soap...cheap, cheap, cheap!

I just found out how to make laundry detergent and it's so easy and SO cheap to make, I wish I'd known this years ago. With all the bedding and towels we wash in the summer with the B&B and cottage rentals this is going to save a bundle. I found the borax and the washing soda side by side in the detergent aisle at the superstore. The bulk barn had the laundry bar soap.
The recipe :
1 bar regular people soap like dove or 1/3 to 1/2 bar laundry soap
1/2 cup arm&hammer washing soda
1/2 cup borax powder
Bucket or container with lid. This makes a bit over 2 gallons.

Grate the bar of soap and put it in a saucepan. Add 6 cups of water and heat it, stirring occasionally, until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and borax and stir til dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups of hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. let the soap sit 24 hours and it will gel. Use 1/2 cup per load.
For HE machines use 1/3 to 1/2 cup depending on load size. Works fine in cold water.
The cost of making this 2 gallon batch is under $2.00 The big manufacturers are making a killing!

Winter gardening and composting

A lovely warm day above freezing yesterday to gather seaweed on the beach..there never seems to be time in spring and summer and I read that seaweed composts quickly so a new project is evolving. After gathering up a trunkful of free fertilizer we brought it home and hosed it off thoroughly because apparently the salt residue is not welcomed by the plants. I decided rather than have it just freeze outside for the rest of the winter, to make a temporary compost pile in an unused corner of the greenhouse. I layered the seaweed with cleanings from the chicken house floor, the contents of the kitchen compost bucket, and handfuls of soil for the benefits of all the busy little microbes. I have a feeling this might get smelly but time will tell, its just an experiment and something to satisfy that winter gardening call.
 I'm reading Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest, a wealth of information on cold  weather crops in a variety of unheated structures. He has great advice on freeze proof crops like corn salad, spinach, etc, and a lot of greens I've never heard of but am ready to try. E.C. has his farm in Maine, zone 5, which is only half a zone warmer than southern New Brunswick so his ideas should work here, I think. He makes plastic tunnels inside his greenhouses to give the winter crops a double layer of protection. They are made of polyethelene sheets stretched over half moon shaped hoops made of 3/4 inch pvc. The plants grow more slowly in winter, my august planted mesclun has never bolted to seed or become tough and bitter like the summer crops will do.
My initial idea was to try and have fresh greens til Christmas but heck, why stop now? Today I planted some sugar snap peas, some spinach and radishes, just to see if they will germinate in January.

Sinless guilt-free no fat cheesecake, YUM!

The best way to enjoy today's raging blizzard, imho, is to make a nice cup of tea and settle in with a good book next to the wood stove, while savoring a delicious piece of cheesecake. I love this recipe because its mostly fat free and I feel like I can indulge myself and persuade guests to have another piece.
The recipe:
Crust - 2 cups graham cracker crumbs and enough canola or olive oil mixed in so you can press it into a large springform pan ( probably about 1/4 c oil)

Filling: 1 cup sugar
2T lemon juice
1/4 cup cornstarch
2  8 oz (250 gram) blocks or tubs of no fat cream cheese
1 cup (250 g) tub of no fat sour cream (or substitute cottage cheese)
2 egg whites
1 whole egg
1. Pre heat oven to 325 F Coat a spring form pan with non stick cooking spray. Press the crumb mixture onto the bottom and part way up the sides of the spring form pan. Bake at 325F for 10 minutes. Allow to cool.
2.In a mixing bowl combine cheeses, sour cream, lemon juice and sugar. Use a hand mixer or even better a food processor, until smooth. Add the 1/4 c corn starch , mix in for a minute. Add egg whites and egg. Mix briefly till eggs are combined.
3. Pour the cream cheese mixture into the prepared crust. Bake 55 minutes or until the center is done.
4. Remove from the oven, run a knife around the edge and let the cake cool at room temp. Refridgerate at least 3 hours. Take off the springform side and put your favorite topping on.
I use a canned pie filling like blueberry, cranberry/cherry or make my own with any frozen berries.
To make your own, thaw berries, combine about a  half cup of sugar with about 4-6 T cornstarch. Mix into the thawed berries and cook on the stovetop till thickened. Cool and spread onto the cooled cheesecake.

Our Christmas card to you, 2009

Wishing all the best to all of you out there for 2010! Love, peace and happy hens to all.

Freeze proof chicken waterer

Today's post might be useful to other chicken keepers in cold winter climates. I've been pondering how to keep the hens water from freezing overnight. Some people use an outdoor heated dog dish with the waterer placed inside but that's quite costly with shipping to Canada.

I made this contraption with some leftover floor tiles and I think it will work splendidly. My friend with the right drills cut a hole in one of the side pieces, a snug fit for a trouble light fixture. Then I cemented the pieces together with mortar, holding them in place while they set with a picture frame clamp. So the bottom and sides are one unit. Then another whole tile sits on top and the waterer on top of that.

Here's Fancy , the rooster checking it out. ...goooo fancy....go towards the light...!

The finished product. Theres quite a bit of heat coming through the top tile and I'm using a 40 watt bulb. I'm thinking a 25 watt might do. I'll only need this on the coldest nights anyway. The chicken house is very well insulated and in the daytime if its sunny out, they get lots of warmth with the window open from the  adjoining greenhouse. Speaking of which, we are still enjoying salads daily from the bounty in there. So far, just covering the greens at night with 4 layers of polyetheline and 2 quilts has kept everything going and growing.

Yum!

Just ducky

Another in the acrylic bird series. This compact little guy is a Ruddy Duck painted on a 6x8 canvas board.

In winter, Ruddy Ducks inhabit shallow, protected, saltwater bays and estuaries along the coast or ice-free, inland lakes and ponds. Breeding habitat is freshwater marshes and ponds with marshy borders mixed with open water.
Ruddy Ducks are often found in tight flocks. They forage by diving under water and straining mud through their bills to find food. Like many small-winged ducks, Ruddy Ducks must get a running start across the water to become airborne. I've only seen them in photos but I think they're just  downright cute.

Readying for Christmas

This time of year Jim and I are tossing about ideas for the homemade Christmas card. This year's creation is still in the fine tuning stages, it's always fun and each year we tend to either collaborate or take turns as the inspiration strikes. This one with our mini stallion Prince Charming was the card of several years back. At the time there was constant controversy about stifling political correctness stealing our Chrismas traditions, and with the majority of the letters to the editor steaming with indignation, we thought it would be topical  and fun to compose a poem on the inside of the card to add our own protest to the mix. It was our most popular card ever judging by the feedback, but try as we might, we can't find a surviving copy anywhere. And because we're old and forgetful neither of us today can remember a single line of that inspired Christmas  rhyme. Merry Christmas everyone! Happy Hannukah, happy wintertime, happy Everything! Let the public squares be resplendent in Christmas trees, manger scenes and menorahs. Just let everyone be happy.

Chickadee-dee-dee, 4"x6" acrylic

Four days of rain ahead so I should be able to get on with some painting without outdoor distractions. I'd really like to get back to watercolors, but I have these blobs of acrylic on my sta-wet palette that I dont want to waste so I hope to do a few more favorite birds, and learn some more about the acrylic process.

From this reference photo I painted this little chickadee imagining him in the light from the front window, as they flutter about our bird feeder near the end of the day.

Painting again

Feeling better today! The antibiotics started to take effect on Friday and I've been working on this acrylic off and on since then. It's a real mood lifter to be able to do something constructive after laying about for so long.
Gisela and Peter, our B&B guests from Germany, if you are checking in with this blog you'll recognise the photo you took that I used as a reference for this painting.
Today its pouring down rain, the tail end of some southern storm, but I'm not bothered a bit. I'm thankful for a pile of books by a nice warm fire, for feeling more chipper, and for modern medecine.

Ramblings...

I've been a negligent blogger of late, with really nothing to say since being laid up after another surgery, Oct 28th. Feeling worse and worse, today I came back from my Fredericton Dr with 2 different antibiotics to treat infection. He says I should be feeling better by friday, so I am hopeful. My husband and I went to the Saint John emergency 3 days ago, me to see what all this increasing pain was about and him for an infected foot wound . We were shocked to be treated with unwashed hands by numerous nurses and doctors, with the place crawling with H1N1 sufferers. I feel a rant coming on, maybe a letter to the editor. Thousands of Canadians and Americans die needlessly every year from hospital aquired infections including staph, e coli, mrsa etc, due to the sloppy hygiene of their professional care givers....

On a lighter note, on the way home today, my drug befuddled brain was contemplating the strangeness of the English language and its perplexing inconsistancies. We put on a pair of shoes, a pair of pants, a pair of glasses, a pair of gloves, why not a pair of bras?

Scrambling to catch up...

Gardeners are such an optimistic bunch...no matter how discouraging the passing season has been, next year will "always be better". Here are next summer's garlic cloves going into their new raised bed, amended with 2 buckets of super wonderful compost. My visions of tall green garlic plants with their artfully curling scapes are basking in sunshine, unlike this past summer's monsoon season... well at least with the raised bed they cant wash away.
A little more work on the greenhouse/chicken house. I've really got to figure out the eaves before I can go much further with the cedar shingles. The last few days I've been cutting glass to double the small windows between the doors, and caulking every draft I can find.







These are the plywood doors high up on the inside partition wall that will stay open during the summer to let out the excess heat in the greenhouse. Below them is the window through to the chicken house which can be opened on sunny winter days to let the heat through to the hens which hopefully will make them happy enough to lay.
My max/min thermometer is indicating that the greenhouse is about 4 degrees warmer inside than outside in the dead of night.
The lettuces, parsley and leeks are all thriving and I'm deeper into winter denial with each passing day....

Still sawing and hammering...

Too busy building to keep up with the blog... I've made good progress the last few days and by dark tonite got all the holes closed in. I've been blanketing and plastic covering a row of lettuces in the garden, seeded in mid august, to protect them from some killer frosts and at last I was able to move them to the new greenhouse bed.(Wow, I should have cleaned that last window before I started taking pictures!) It'll be interesting to see how warm it gets with the sunshine forcast for tomorrow.

Unfortunately the frost went right through my old leaky single pane greenhouse last week and killed off my sweet million tomato plants with a couple hundred beautiful tomatos hanging on them, sigh.

The chickies have moved in to the adjoining winter coop and are all getting along well. The have figured out how to find the roost and they put themselves to bed each evening at 6. All I have to do is close the door. Clever birds!

Building progress

A week post surgery and I'm beginning to get some strength back, thank heavens. I can just putter at little things, but with some help the greenhouse, chicken/garden shed is coming along nicely. All the plywood scraps we accumulated over the summer from yard sales and freecycle have gone into the shed walls. Today I hired an energetic teenager who transferred 2 truckloads of compost from the bin, and a few wheelbarrow loads of soil from the garden into the greenhouse planting bed. It is 4 feet x 13 feet and will give me lots of room for spring and fall gardening.

As soon as the roof is finished I will transplant some lettuces started mid august , from the garden to the new bed. I'm hoping they will be ok in there til near Christmas.

The sweet million tomatoes in the old greenhouse are coming on faster than I can eat them, and I eat them like candy, so sweet and delicious. They are doing much better than my poor beaten up outdoor tomatoes.

The little chicks seem to have turned into miniature chickens the week I was gone.

Its like they doubled in size when I wasn't looking.

I think the one eyeing the camera with its head sideways is a little rooster. He seems more assertive than the other two and is quite the little character. He is strong enough now to grab an entire piece of bread and run with it, with the other two in hot pursuit. We call it Chicken TV.