Exploratorium!

Over the weekend my friend Lorraine and I packed up some of our chickens and set up our display along with 2 dozen other hands-on educational exhibits at a large arena in Saint John. "Exploratorium" was put on by an alternative private school and we imagined it would be a rather small affair, so we were pretty amazed at the crowd of 4500 to 5000 people who showed up to pet a chicken, among other things.
     Good thing I had 3 petting friendly chickens to alternate or after 5 hours they would have had their feathers loved off! The funny question I kept getting, as a child would spot a hen on my lap, was "Is that a REAL chicken?"
 Kids love chickens. They love to stroke their soft feathers, touch their beaks and toes with a fingertip, and sense their gentle natures. The entire afternoon they were lined up 6 deep, 10 deep, hordes and hordes of kids all wanting to touch. I began to notice faces I recognised, kids coming back a second and third time. I suppose for many or most it was their first encounter with real live friendly chickens.
     Fancy, the rooster let off a cockle doodle doo every few minutes which startled and delighted and elicited fits of giggles.
       So many inquisitive happy kids, I had a wonderful time.

Just had to paint this...

When I saw this photo of 8 month old Millie I was inspired to paint her. It's such a typical "What have you got for me?" expression.
I put Fancy, the rooster in behind her, just because he's a great looking rooster and I'm very fond of him. The lighting was tricky because it's inside the chicken house with a window on each side. So basically I made it up as I went along.

Acrylic, 11"x14" Title - "What ??"

I love my chickens.

Hoop houses on the first day of SPRING

Crazy warm weather this past week, wonderful to be outdoors doing projects and gardening. We haven't had a drop of rain or snow in this part of New Brunswick for a month or so. I have never been able to till before the middle of april before, climate change is being so kind to me. So I've been building raised bed/hoop houses to get hardy plants out as soon as possible.



They are made of 2x6, 32" wide and 8 feet long with hoops made of 72"long scraps of pvc pipe, 3/4 or 1" diameter. At the Re-store I scored a great pile of large sheer curtains for a dollar apiece and sewed them into fitted covers to go over the pvc piping. That will keep the abominable little flea beetles off the plants they like to devour and also provide a bit of wind protection.

I've been saving cardboard to put between the rows to keep the weeds down.

The covers are held in place by 3" pieces of pvc pipe split end to end and pried open to use as a sort of clamp that snaps over the cloth and hoop.

A peek inside...here are rows of little chard plants set out in the first bed, with radish seeded in between. The flea beetles love radish leaves, so this year when the plants emerge, the bugs are out of luck.

At night I pull a strip of plastic over the rows to protect from freezing, altho the lettuces , spinach and chard in there can stand a bit of frost. If the temperature gets really low (what used to be normal) I can throw some old comforters over the top of the plastic.

Rain is coming tomorrow, so I can at last settle to some indoor work, knowing the whole garden is tilled and the first plants are growing. It just blows me away that its only March , here in zone 4b!

Grafting an apple tree

My most treasured books are a 4 volume set of Audels Gardeners and Growers Guide from 1928, reprinted in 1935. Volume 3, "Fine Fruits for Home and Market , together with practical and helpful illustrations - Useful and valuable tables of requirements ", opens with
"In the abundance of the yield is the joy and glory of the husbandman." All in the most elegant of fonts.
I love the illustrations, simple clear line drawings and photographs of farm workers wearing cow-paddy caps in magnificent greenhouses or with horse drawn field equipment.

The section on grafting prompted me to have  a try at improving the two wild apple trees near the garden. They are young trees that have lately started bearing some really poor fruit, so I had an idea I would try to graft some scions from an abandoned yellow transparent tree just down the road.

The manual gave several methods so I tried them all, with a few additions such as bolstering a diagonal join with a small screw.

The challenge was to keep the grafting wax liquid enough to apply , with a cold wind blowing.

The bigger branches, I lopped off with my reciprocating saw.

Of course I dont know if any of these grafts will take , but out of 7, even a couple would be rewarding. Time will tell.

Signs of SPRING!

Sign # 1 : The urge to tackle really awful renovation projects. Here I am just a blur of scraping, scraping, trying to get that 10 year old wallpaper off. Someone please render me unconcious if I ever think glue + wallpaper border again.

The sign of a very true friend...one who will help you strip wallpaper , without being paid. I put this on to cover the previous owners horrendous green paint. Now I can't stand the busyness...there's such a LOT of it ...sigh.

Sign #2: Too much solar heat in the greenhouse. Time to open those summer vents at the top of the wall.

sign #3 : Other half doing yardwork. A lot of kindling blows down each winter off the big linden trees.

sign #4 : Happy hens who want to be outdoors pecking and scratching all day long now that the ground is all bare. Fancy, (the rooster at the back) one of last summer's chicks, has grown up to be such a handsome fellow.

sign # 5 Seedlings popping up, mmmmmm the earth smells so good!

Is spring here?

Ahhh, warmer temperatures and very little snow means I want to do everything outdoors all at once. Here is a project that killed two birds with one stone... I never liked that expression but cant think of another one that fits. The alder bushes we cut a year or so ago are back in full force and I needed another compost container handier to the back door of the chicken house for the floor cleanings. Voila! Now those pesky alders are doing something useful being a compost bin. Some nipping, some hammering and some weaving, out in the fresh air, and it didn't cost a cent.

Indoors, the cloth diapers for Haitian babies has taken over the dining room table, floor, chairs...looks like a sweatshop in there the last while. Yesterday some ladies at the Vineyard church pitched in and in a couple of hours we had over 60 made. There was a great donation today of plastic pants, and here is everything packed and ready to go. I have 115 diapers jammed in a suitcase with nooks and crannies filled with onesies and sleepers. As far as I know they are travelling to Haiti with a journalist from the Montreal Gazette who will return to that country in a couple of weeks.

     We are soooo lucky to live in a peaceful and relatively prosperous place.

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!