YES!

Yesterday was a big test day.  I brought a frozen chicken into the kitchen to let it thaw.  This is is the first cooked chicken from the second flock.  After it had thawed I split it and covered it with some spices.  Then baked it in the oven.  The smell was wonderful and the taste is awesome. YES! YES! I am validated!  Some of the things I tried as I raised these birds came through in the taste.  The green oats/peas as an suppliment food, the sunshine hours they spent outside the coop, the buckets of fresh water.  When these bird went for processing they were strong, active and fit. So I hoped they would be good.  I just never thought I could do this on my own.  So this winter we will all eat like kings and queens.  Now I know it is worth all the hours of work and observation to keep them fed and sheltered.  So the meat from this bird will go on to be the main course in two more meals.  Then the bits will go into a baked dish. The rest will become soup stock for a few lunches.  Funny! Until last year I had never tasted a Real chicken.  Now I am proud to be raising my own and feeding other people. 

Last week we had two nights of deep freezes. Now there are beets, carrots, squash, and sun chokes left growing in the garden. I have bags and bags of carrots but I dont know how to store them.  In the store they come bagged and chilled. I'll try to keep them in the shop but they might freeze.  Anyway they will be my snack food this month. It has been raining and misting so I'll try to stay out of the garden.  I'll need different breads this week for the dinners and soups. So Baking is on my list for today.  It is Saturday and electricity is cheap today.

Last Wed we got up on the hill and cut firewood.  We have enough for Oct and Nov now.  We are cutting near a trail so I can get the wagon in.  This part of the woods has mature aspen trees dying off as maples, basswood, ash and balsam are growing up to replace them.  So we cut the little trees that didnt make it and the aspen that died out. I am not so good at aiming the big trees as they fall, so I am taking the little ones first.

It is getting nicer outside. I'll start the bread and do some chores before I go up the hill. 

Ending the garden for now...Harvesting

Harvest is starting here.  I am pulling out the onions and storing them in bags. The carrots are going into plastic buckets. The blessing of the drought is that the cold weather is holding off for another week or so.  So this week I'll be pulling things in and tilling the ground and finishing up areas where the plants are done.  I decided that I am going to put up a small hoop house.  It may give me some choices on an earlier spring and a little more weather control for next year.  Anyway I need to get it up now in order to have the structure ready for Spring. The little apple trees [two years] are having a few apples.  Good eating!  Just not enough yet.  So I will spend some afternoons in the orchard, cleaning up around each tree and setting in braces and wire cages to keep them mouse and rabbit proof over the winter.   I am pretty happy to be a gardener.  These projects feel good and it is nice to see things fixed up.  Of course the trees are turning yellow and orange so I know the seasons are moving along. And I can do my fussing now when it is nice or do it later when it is 40 degrees, wet and windy.  It is so good to have choices.

Speaking of choices.... This year I have a torn rotor in my shoulder, two sprained thumbs and a torn thigh muscle.  All of these are slow healing and painful.  I could quit doing this work.  But I believe in it.  I am setting the framework/schedule to heal and strengthen myself during the gardening 'off season.'  I have to do it before I can write about it.  But I have made my decision. 

I spent a long time watching the sunrise today; from dark to day.  Incredible color... so soft and flowing in time.   These moments this morning are helping me.  I have to change my life. I don't know how yet.  Anyway the doctor and the torn shoulder have forced me to look at my life directions.  The deal for me is that I have to do 6 weeks of guided physical therapy with daily home exercise to restore my shoulder.  I can't do my farming like I thought I would even after 6weeks of therapy.  So maybe the 'soft and flowing' of the sunrise can help me today.  Maybe I can change in a soft and flowing way too. Maybe.....

So today I can do a few things.   The meat chickens were processed last week. It was sad to put them in cages but I know we could not have such good food without them.  We pick them up today-wrapped and frozen real food.  Most are sold already and I will send out some notes to other past customers to see if they want to order again.  The other good thing here is that I am not carrying buckets of water twice a day and lifting 50lb bags of feed and bales of bedding. So that daily strain wont be present in my schedule.   I start therapy and I will know a lot about what and how this will work. 

In the garden the drought is back. We had our last good rains two weeks ago.  The ground is dust again.  So  I am gathering and ending sections of the gardens.  The seasons are moving on.  It is hot now and soon the freezes will be here so I will be getting ready to have the gardens getting ready for winter and next year.  It is that time.  I bet there are a lot of one-armed gardeners and 'soft and flowing' gardeners. 

 

Catching you up...

I can't believe so much time has passed since my last writing.  And some big things have happened.  There have been some disasters and many wonderful times.

As for disasters.... I wrecked my shoulder carrying too many hay bales and I had surgery to get a bad mole removed.  I had to let a lot of projects go undone.  I couldn't do the work or adapt for a way to get things done.  I have so much respect for people that live and function with daily pain.   Next week I go to the doctor to find out about my shoulder.  It won't heal by itself.

Now the good stuff.  The sunrises have been incredible.  The last two weeks there has been ground fog and the sun comes up into a mystical landscape.  Most of the garden has survived the 'end of August' Frost.   I put a big fence around the tomatoes to keep out the cold.  Because of me a lot of beans and lettuce didnt get picked.  I sort of let it all go.   The orchard is  needing  me, some of the trees had apples and I didn't help them this month. I ate a few and they are very good. I feel like working in the garden again now. The second flock of chickens is adult and going in to be processed this week.  I took care of them every day and they are really healthy.   So I did something very right. Probably I did more right than I think I did.  But for sure the weeds are all over.  I can do something about that.  So that will make me feel better anyway.  REDOS.

Garden days

These have been calm days.  The 'meat chickens' were processed and now in the freezers.  We get to deliver and visit this week for part of each day. It is refreshing to see a job get finished.  Well this is a farm and there are more jobs in the wings ---- The gardens are getting covered with baled grass.  The drought is bad.  We had a rain last week but the ground is back to dust.  Last night the rain missed us again. I am doing a watering as I weed. I keep a radio and coffee by the chair and move it around to where I am working. Then I get little breaks where ever I am.  It is beautiful outside. The third crop of lettuce is peeking through the hay. The onions are getting big. The cucumbers and squash are fruiting. So it is coming as long as I water.  Maybe I should make trenches and call it irrigating. 

The baby chicks have grown wing feathers and need to leave the nursery crate.  This afternoon I will finish cleaning the coop and they can go to the little room there.  They need the heat lamp but they want to run and flap  too. They grow so fast. 

This isnt a job ---the raspberries on the hill are calling. So I am out picking this week!

After the rain

I can't believe that I haven't written for 3 weeks. There were good days and 'gritty' ones too.  Lots of family days and getting to know my grandkids.  Definitely 'good days.'  Then coming to terms with the weeds in the gardens, just going out and pulling them every day, making one plot after another look good, watering them and covering them with mulch.  It is really getting dry here. I am planting for fall beans and salad greens.  They are tiny but with watering they are growing. Lots of work that is  wonderful but I get too tired.  I get behind on my list of jobs to be done. 

My over/the/fence neighbor lived here for years. She lived her own style. We were getting to be garden friends. She was sick and died sometime last week.  She was alone.   I feel sad when I think about her.  I look at the sunrises longer, I stare at the long grasses bending in the wind, today the raspberries were so good, only half got in the bucket.  How do you celebrate life?  I look at her house.  She was an original Master gardner,  all combinations of plants were in her beds. You never knew what would be blooming there.   I think there are gardens in heaven too.  Now the clouds keep going over me.  The grass is growing and I should mow. I want to spray oil on the trees in the orchard. I have to feed the chickens.

Delicious pain in the garden

Oh I know, no pain is good..... except the muscle aches that come from planting, hoeing, tilling, transplanting, weeding  and dreaming.  The hours of bending, stooping, and crawling are so worth it.  The zuchs, cucumbers and beans are breaking through the clay soil and the vines will be coming soon.  The transplants are getting used to life in the wilds and flourishing.  I've got a chair out there and I watch or dream or just 'feel' the place.  The greenhouse is getting empty of the transplants. It will have some experiments through the summer.  I have samples of the tomato plants and I can see the difference between the tomatoes growing in open air and their twins growing in the greenhouse.  I have some broccoli that I will raise in the greenhouse bed [hopefully away from the moths and their baby worms that love my plants to pieces. 

  Today I worked all day out there. It was wonderful. I planted seven frames and got the fence up [with the vital help of my son-in-law].  I mowed weeds, pulled weeds and tilled a sod bed of weeds. Walking through it tonight I got a little smily--- it is starting to look like I thought it would look. This ark farm is a place of dreams. It really is. 

And tomorrow, my grandkids will build a salad, with the lettuces and herbs from the coldframes, and it will be a salad of foods they will happily eat.  Does it get better than that for a Grandpa?