We are big chicks...

... and we have wings - and even the start of some tail feathers!

Now that our chicks are a fast-growing reality, instead of just a plan, we have had to hurry up and finish the repairs to the chicken coop - those little fuzzballs are going to outgrow their plastic crates pretty darn quick, and the coop needs to be ready. So we have been unloading all the garden furniture we stored there over the winter, and finding new homes for the other odds and sods we have housed temporarily in the coop. This week we'll scrub out the coop and whitewash it inside.

And remember the new gate Kim built back in March?

Since then Kim built the new gate for the orchard, and another one for our neighbour, and now the chicken gate just doesn't look so good anymore: earnest, sincere and solid, but lacking a touch of whimsy. So while I was weed-whacking out the chicken yard, Kim got busy building, and here's the new gate. Much better!

First strawberries of the year

And did they ever taste good!

Chicken nursery renos

If you have come to know Kim at all through this blog you'll know she's a builder at heart. Take those builder's instincts and add a newly hatched love for her little chicks, and what do you get? Renovations to the chicken nursery.

The nursery started as a perfectly adequate plastic box with wood shavings in the bottom, a waterer and a feeder. Everything a young chick could ask for. But not good enough for Kim.

She started to worry that the chicks didn't have enough room. So we added a second plastic box, a second waterer and a second feeder, plus a rotating schedule of swap-outs from box to box so the chicks would all continue to be comfortable with each other.

Then she read that chicks need to learn how to perch on a round stick of some kind. Apparently that's how grown birds sleep at night. So she added a roost in each box. The chicks initially viewed it as an obstacle in their path from one side of the box to the other, but some are now getting the hang of it.

Some are even learning to fall asleep on it. These chicks are about to do the beak-first nosedive into the wood shavings we now recognize as chicks' usual way of falling asleep.

The chicks are very active, and flap around a lot, so the last addition was a screened-in lid for each box, to keep the chicks safe where they belong.

So far we can't tell any of these chicks apart except for one. This one is noticeably lighter in colour than the others, bigger in size, and seems to have a different temperament as well: calmer, friendlier, more curious. This little chick has quickly become Kim's favourite, and we have decided that if it turns out to be a little rooster, it will be the one we keep.

Scapes

Toady we had our first real meal of the season from the garden. Not completely, but substantially. It was prompted by the discovery of garlic scapes in the garden.

Scapes are the flower of the garlic plant, and their appearance tells you the garlic is getting close to being ready to harvest. When they curl around in a full circle you can either wear them as bracelets or cook with them. We did both.

We made a frittata with chard and spinach from the garden, seasoned with the sliced scapes, onions and feta, and had it with a salad - also from the garden - decorated with nasturtium petals. Yum.

More poppies

If I'm not boring you with posts on our chicks, I'm probably boring you with posts on our poppies. So if you've had enough about the Mucky Boots poppy explosion, thank you very much, and want to move on to something else, please feel free.

We've had our challenges in the growing department this year, what with the crappy weather and the deer and the mice and the strange diseases attacking our fruit trees. But for some reason our poppies are really, really happy. And the cavalcade is unending, with lots more to come. The deep red ones are like velvet, and the orangey-red ones I swear would glow in the dark. The pink ones are as frilly as a tutu, and the yellow ones as refreshing as a cool drink on a hot day. And they are big!

So here are a few more photos of Mucky Boots poppies. These may not be the last - there is an entirely different kind of poppy, one I don't even remember from last year, getting ready to bloom. It makes me think the word has spread, and poppies from all over the neighbourhood are coming to join the parade.

First feathers

I promise - I really do - not to write endless posts about our endlessly fascinating chicks, but am I allowed to have at least a few?

The chicks have been very busy eating, pecking, scratching, trying out their little wings, and pooping. Mostly pooping. They poop everywhere: in their water, in their food, and on each other. Kim is in charge of the chickens, so she has been very busy, too, cleaning up the poop in the water, in the food, and on the chicks. Kim being Kim, she has also been devising ways to elevate the water and food dishes above bum height, to keep the poop out.

The little fuzz-balls have been getting more active and feisty every day. When we handle them, as we are supposed to do, they now peep loudly and indignantly, and even try to peck our hands with their little beaks. We have discovered they have an interesting reaction to danger: they instantly freeze, en masse. It's like a game of Statue - all peeping immediately stops and wherever they are, whatever they are doing, they freeze. We discovered that by accident yesterday when something one chick did caused me to laugh out loud. Apparently my laugh is frightening.

As Natalie warned us, they are growing up - fast! They already have their first feathers, on the tips of their wings.

Speaking of wings, I have been trying to keep in mind the fact that - theoretically, at least - we'll be eating some of these chickens in a few months. But somehow the gap between fuzzy little ball of yellow fluff and crispy chicken wings on my plate is just too big to bridge right now. Is there anyone out there who remembers their first time eating a chicken they raised? Any advice for us?

And lastly, here is a slightly wobbly hand-held video of our chicky-babies.

Peep!

We have chicks! Ten beautiful Buff Orpington chicks, home at last.

Today wasn't the day we were expecting them - they were supposed to arrive from the hatchery on Thursday. But we got a call this morning from the local farm store that has been dealing with the hatchery for us, and it wasn't good news. For the third time the hatchery indicated they couldn't fill the order. We were clucking mad! But it forced us to search once again for a local alternative.

We'd gone this route before, without any luck. We knew we needed chicks, not grown hens, because we don't know enough to be able to determine how old an adult bird is. But all the chicks listed on local websites were being snapped up as soon as the ads were posted. Today we got lucky. A woman in our old stomping grounds on the Saanich Peninsula who raises heritage chickens posted an ad this morning for ten Buff Orpington chicks that were hatched yesterday. And about five minutes later we called her up and those chicks were sold - to us! So we hopped in the car and brought them home in a cardboard box.

We weren't quite ready for them, because we'd been planning for Thursday, so as soon as we got home we were putting out fresh shavings, filling food and water containers, and double checking instructions in our chicken books. We took the chicks out of the box one by one, checked for poopy bums (a daily task), dipped their little beaks in water to show them where it was, then settled them on their feet in their new home.

We're in love with these chicks, but boy, do we have a lot to learn. Kim was distraught when she thought one of the chicks had died. It had nose-dived beak-first into the bedding, wings spread out, and its eyes were shut - it looked dead. Turns out it was just sleeping.

The chicks themselves are doing a good job of telling us what they need, at least when it comes to temperature. From how huddled together or spread apart they are in relation to the heat lamp, you can tell whether they're too hot or too cold. We've adjusted the height of the heat lamp at least eight times so far, and I think we've finally got it right.

Chicks!

*&$%!! deer

This is what greeted us yesterday morning when we went out to the orchard. Our newly deer-proof-fenced orchard.

This freshly planted Lapin cherry tree probably doesn't have enough leaves left to photosynthesize sufficient food for the tree to live until next spring. We'll pamper it and care for it and do our best to see it through, but it doesn't look good.

A few of the other trees were munched as well, but none this badly. We are stunned.

Once we got over our immediate shock we made a circuit of the fence line, trying to figure out how a deer could have got in. Our neighbour Nick didn't have any new damage to his trees, so we don't think a deer got in over the fence we share with him. There is one spot at the back where the existing fence sags a bit, leaving a gap between the top of it and the lowest of the three wires we strung. It would take an athletically-gifted jumping deer to thread itself through that gap, but maybe it's possible. So we strung an extra line of wire there and in a few other places we can't imagine a deer getting in, but we were desperate to try everything.

Maybe 7 1/2 feet high just isn't enough?

What I can't figure out is why a deer would go to so much trouble to get into our orchard. After all, we live in the middle of a forest, with lots of tender green things for a deer to eat. And judging from the number of leaves bitten off but lying whole on the ground, the deer didn't even like the taste of our tree that much.

Our neighbour Nick, the source of much helpful farming wisdom, encouraged us to not get too riled up about it. His idea is that you do the best you can, but count on losing things every year, to deer or rabbits or insects or diseases - it's all part of the life. Instead of focusing on the 20% you lose, revel in the 80% you successfully grow.

We're working on it.

What a difference a day makes

The sun came out yesterday. After I don't know how many consecutive days of rain, the sun finally came out. It shone and shone. Working outside, I was warm, then hot. The sky was blue with just a few wispy white clouds. It was great.

Of course we're back to grey and rainy today, but there you go.

While the sun was shining I went out to the garden to see how the veggies were responding to the unusual warmth. Would they even know what the sun was for?

The first thing I saw was the row of potato buckets. I have been mulching heavily with straw as they grow, and they seem to like it because they're the fastest growing plants in the garden, even without the sun to cheer them on. It's time to add more straw, I think.

I have also been piling straw around the leeks and fennel, to blanch the stems of the leeks and the bulbs of the fennel. These still have a long way to go, but at least they haven't drowned in all the rain.

When I lifted back the row cover I found happy carrots. After growing nothing but strangely shaped and rust-fly damaged carrots last year, this year I am determined to do better. This bunch have been getting the star treatment, with a deeply dug and composted bed, obsessive-complusive weeding, and a row cover to keep the bugs away, and it shows. I even pulled one up just to check, and although it was tiny, it was blemish-free and tasted perfect.

This bed has something of everything in it: cabbages, radishes, spinach, chard and along the edges, beans. I've had a few problems with this bed: the cabbages are happy enough, but everything else has been growing very, very slowly. Either that or dying. The beans have been such a disaster I have recently replanted them, and now the new seedlings are emerging only to be eaten by something. This bed has a long way to go.

On the other hand, the garlic is happy. I keep checking for scapes, but so far no sign of any, which is an indication of how far behind we are, compared with last year.

Another of my gardening resolutions for the year was to take better care of the blueberries, and it seems to be working. Bushes that were almost bare last year are sporting a healthy batch of berries now. We'll have to put up nets soon to protect the bushes inside the vegetable garden from the birds.

And the strawberries are coming along s-l-o-w-l-y. We mulched them with straw as soon as they started to flower, to protect the berries from catching leather mould from the soil, which happened last year. I'll let you know how it works.

According to the weather forecast we're in for at least a few more days of at least showers, if not rain. I'm thinking I might haul out a few bags of the raspberries we froze last year and make jam and pretend it's summer...

Poppies from space

Maybe it's just that I watched the new Star Trek movie on TV last night, but does this or does this not look like a life form from outer space? It's actually just a white oriental poppy. Here's a more normal view.

Come to think of it, this iris blooming by the pond looks a little otherworldly, too.

Uh-oh

We have been having very wet and soggy weather for weeks. I can't remember the last time I saw the sun. Everything is droopy and waterlogged and growing mould and green scum. The vegetables in the garden are weeks behind where they were last year and I'm getting really, really impatient.

But now I'm afraid. My tomatoes are under attack by some kind of fungal disease - I think early blight, but it could be Septoria leaf spot. Ick.

I discovered the problem yesterday - several of the potted Roma tomato plants were showing signs of a problem, so I immediately moved them out of the greenhouse so whatever it was wouldn't be passed on to the vine tomatoes planted in the greenhouse beds. Then I went Internet searching to find a solution.

The first step is to remove and dispose of all suspicious-looking leaves. Then I should spray with some kind of fungicide. It looks like my organic choices are a copper spray of some kind, or a homemade preparation - either a cornmeal "tea" made with cornmeal and water that sits for a couple of days, or a mixture of water, baking soda, vegetable oil and dish soap. I think I might try all three. I've also moved a fan into the greenhouse to improve air circulation, which can't hurt.

This growing season is turning out to be fraught with problems, and I'm feeling a bit bummed about it. I guess I could be glad, instead, that last year, my first year of vegetable gardening, was such a bountiful and productive one.

Progress

Kim and I have been hard at work transforming a barren weed-filled wasteland at the front of the house into something that better resembles a garden. This has involved a trip to the quarry for rocks and the delivery of a mountainous pile of dirt, plus lots and lots of shoveling, pick-axing, digging, wheelbarrowing, aching and grumbling. We're not done yet, but we've made enough progress I thought it was time for a report. The picture above is the "before" and here is the "after".

We've pretty much finished the area directly in front of the house, plus some of the area across the path. There's still quite a bit to do, but we're really happy with how it looks so far. The difference between our feeling ambivalent about the whole project and feeling like we were on the right track was realizing we needed ferns, lots and lots of ferns, to make these new beds make sense in the bigger forest context. We had already spent as much as we wanted to on new plants, so we went digging for ferns in the forest around the house - there are so many there that a few relocated ones wouldn't be missed. While we were at it, we dug up some Oregon grape, too. We're not sure how well the plants will adjust to being moved, but we thought it was worth a shot.

Kim's stone walls worked out beautifully. The blue coloured stone is the rock we got from the quarry. She also built some stacked stone walls using flat rocks from around the property, and the two types of walls look quite lovely together.

Today we went looking for some red-twigged dogwood, to supplement the two plants we already have. We went to four nurseries and couldn't find any, so we'll save those spots and look again in the fall. We did find three pots of Japanese painted fern, which neither of us had ever seen before. They are quite small now, but will get 2 feet tall, and their name is well deserved. The light wasn't the best for taking a photo - if it was better you would see how much like a watercolour these ferns are. Beautiful.

Rain

Rain, rain, rain.

Sigh.

New boots, old boots, chewed boots, rubber ball

On our very first visit to the local farm store after we took possession of our new rural property, Kim and I bought real, proper Muck Boots. They cost a lot but they're perfect working boots: comfortable, water proof, and warm in cool, wet weather. We felt like real farmers when we came home with those boots.

I loved those boots. They were practical and sturdy and functional, if not beautiful. I wore them whenever it was the least bit mucky. Those boots and I had a strong, committed relationship - we were tight. And then there was the incident with the B-A-L-L.

You already know how beserk Frankie gets when any remotely round object comes his way, and how hard he is on those objects - if we tried to keep him in B-A-L-L-S we would go bankrupt. So when we found one that seemed indestructible, we were thrilled. He was thrilled. He was beyond thrilled. He played with that thing obsessively, especially his favourite game which involves grabbing it in his virtually toothless mouth, squirting it out with a pop so it bounces away wildly, then chasing it like a mad fiend until he catches it and can start the game all over again. Only this time he was playing on the verandah, and when he squirted out the ball it landed right in my boot.

Frankie is nothing if not determined, especially when it comes to B-A-L-L-S. He tried and tried to get that ball out of the boot. From inside we could hear that something interesting was happening out on the verandah, but by the time we got up to investigate, it was too late. My boot was chewed.

It still could have been used - a little duct tape would have gone a long way. I was resigned to that. And then on the last visit to the local farm store I began a whole new relationship with a different pair of Muck Boots. Oh, what lovely boots.

Same comfort, same serious muck-proof functionality, all wrapped up in a pretty purple package. Kim wouldn't be seen dead in them. I love them.

(When it came time for the photo shoot for this post, Frankie got the last word, as usual...)

Herbs

You may remember that one of my gardening resolutions for 2010 was to be more diligent in harvesting and drying herbs. Never one to procrastinate, I launched the first harvest yesterday.

It was prompted when I offered our visiting neighbour Nick a choice of teas, and he expressed a preference for something we had grown. Fortunately I had the one measly baggie of dried mint that was the sum total of all the herbs I harvested last year - and very nice tea it was, too. And it got me thinking that I better get going, or I'd be forced to serve Nick tea from a box the next time he was over.

So out to the garden I went. I had my eye on a beautiful, rounded mound of lemon balm, and an incredibly vigorous patch of oregano, both growing in the herb bed in the vegetable garden. These two herbs are everywhere at Mucky Boots - I think one of the two previous gardeners of the property divided them repeatedly and used them to fill in empty spots in the perennial beds. There are probably half a dozen mounds of lemon balm and about four times that many patches of oregano here and there. There's even a bunch of oregano growing out of the rock wall near the workshop.

Three minutes was the scissors was all it took to cut enough to fill a really big colander to overflowing. The stripping of the stems and tying of the bundles took longer, but it was a nicely meditative thing to do while sitting on the verandah. I ended up with a dozen bundles which I washed and then tucked into paper bags to protect them from dust and bugs. Kim is going to fasten an old garden trellis horizontally to the ceiling of the verandah so I can hang the bundles for drying.

Mint is already making itself seen in the perennial beds, so some bunches of that will soon join the happy herbal hangout. Once it's dry, I'm thinking lemon balm and mint might make a nice combination for tea, maybe with a few of the lavender flowers I saved from last summer thrown in. The Mucky Boots Blend is born.

Snowballs in May

Snowball viburnum, of course.

The last couple of days of gentle, drizzly rain has made everything fresh and green and dewy. Come the dry, blasting heat of August the memory of these snowballs is going to make me go "Ah...."

The persistence of potatoes

By now you know that Kim has a thing for potatoes, and that we have done a fair amount of raised-bed construction just to satisfy her craving for lots and lots of potatoes. This year we have two 12 x 4 beds devoted to potatoes, as well as a dozen big plastic tubs. Next year we might not bother. Why? Because the compost pile seems to grow potatoes better all by itself than we do.

Potatoes ended up in the compost early this spring when they started growing spontaneously in the beds where they'd been last year. We thought we'd dug them all up. Then when they started sprouting we dug up all the ones we didn't get the first time. Those are the ones now growing in the compost. (Why not just leave them in the vegetable beds, you might be asking? Because it's really, really bad to grow potatoes in the same soil in consecutive years - you're just asking for problems with disease. And we didn't plant them somewhere else because we thought they'd got too chewed up in the digging to be viable. Were we wrong.)

If that weren't bad enough, potatoes are still sprouting in last year's beds. I'm getting pretty tired of digging through mounds of dirt looking for tiny renegade spuds. But they're sprouting in beds where I've now planted carrots, and I think all that potato activity under the soil won't be good. So I keep decapitating the sprouts, hoping the potato will get the idea and stop trying. So far, no luck.

Contrast all that drama with the ease we anticipate in growing potatoes in plastic buckets. The idea is that you start them in a few inches of compost and soil, and then as they sprout and start to grow you keep adding more and more soil or compost or even just straw, causing more and more offspring potatoes to be formed. In the fall you tip over the bucket on a tarp, sift sanely through the soil for the fruit of your labour, and then use the soil (screened, to make sure no tiny baby potatoes make it through to cause havoc the next year) somewhere else. To me that all seems way less work than pitchforking through a big bed for the umpteenth time looking for elusive morsels of potato.

Cleaning up

Yesterday marked the end of an era - for this year, anyway. Yesterday was the day I packed up all the seeding supplies. Pots, seedling flats, trays, heating mats - everything got emptied out, brushed out, stacked up and put away. The only things left in the greenhouse are the plants that will stay there (tomatoes, peppers, basil) and all the echinacea I haven't found a home for yet.

Sigh.

Seeding time is always a hopeful time. Hopeful as in "This year my tomato plants are going to be strong and healthy, and my onions seeds are all going to sprout." In the early spring anything seems possible. But in my short career as a vegetable grower, I have already come to realize that by the time all the seedling supplies are packed away I am already being forced to recognize that the squash plants got put out too early and aren't doing well, the leaves of the pepper seedlings have sun scald, and something keeps nibbling at the pea shoots. In other words, real life has intruded.

Is it too early to be thinking of next year?

Antlers

No, we are not hunters. We inherited these antlers, along with a collection of antique rusted saws and farming tools, when we bought the property - they were mounted on various exterior walls, in a decorative kind of way. We took them all down.

We weren't sure what to do with these antlers. Neither of us are really comfortable with them - they seem kind of gruesome. But it feels disrespectful to the animal who used to sport them to just throw them away.

At one point Frankie briefly got his hands - er, paws - on them. After all, bones are something he's familiar with. Here he is trying to figure out the best way to approach such an interestingly-shaped specimen. (And yes, he is in one of the veggie beds - unplanted, thankfully - which is a really big no-no. Bad boy.)

So they have been hanging out in limbo - we move them here, and then when they're in the way we move them there. Recently they have been hanging on the fence around the veggie garden, and today they seemed the perfect place to hang a hat.