The choice storage spot for tiny farm gear, especially during winter, is this giant shelf, where it’s warm and dry. It’s at the back of the Extended Milkhouse, the last 3-1/2′ of the old ceiling, propped up on the leading edge by a beam across and 4″x4″ posts. It would maybe qualify as an upper level, if you could actually stand up: clearance is only 3-4′ under the new sloped ceiling. It’s 3-1/2’x20′ (1mx6m) of up out of the way space…a big shelf! About 7-1/2′ feet high, I get up there by ladder. Only one season old, it’s still startlingly clear, orderly, and almost entirely filled with immediately useful stuff as opposed to sure-to-be-useful-sometime gear (though the inevitable packing boxes saved just in case of return already have a presence). It’s dusty up there. At this end are the many fluorescent light fixtures (12, I think) for the grow racks. They hang from chains from those dowels in front, and the dowels in turn hang by the nails from more chains on the rack! When seedlings are all done, I remove the lights and use the racks for harvest storage. The oscillating table fan is used to give newly emerged seedlings a bit of a toughening up, conditioning breeze. Down at the other end, stacks of 3″ peat pots and plug sheets and trays. Time to start seedling room set-up!
Yellow…
Winter white is OK, but a splash of color is nice for a change, even if it’s only a picture. These summer squash are from a late September harvest last year: Sunburst scallopini, with one green Peter Pan patty pan, and on the right, Golden Dawn III zucchini. The scallopinis are picked a lot bigger than the 2-3″ (5-7.5cm) babies favored by some, but, well, the taste for baby vegetables I usually don’t get… Wait a little longer and they’re so much bigger: more eating, less picking! :)
Welcome to the chickenhouse…
Chicken coop? Henhouse? I like ’em all. This weather-beaten little building has been empty for a while, but a little fix-up and it’ll be ready to go. You can see the electricity cable and water hose snaking out at the top left of the pic. All the modern conveniences! The last tenants, three years ago, were half a dozen turkeys, lead by crazy Tom, an increasingly aggressive male known for a flying drop kick that could stagger a grown human. I didn’t have any close encounters with Tom, although I was curious. Before that, when I first started the garden five years ago, a dozen or more incredibly colorful ornamental chickens roamed the barnyard, darting out of hedges, zipping under fences, you never knew where they’d pop up. These were all, like the goats, kinda pets, and were eventually given away. Now, the loose plan is to get, well, WORKING chickens, for meat and eggs. At first, it won’t be directly part of the organic veggie garden, more of a side project that I’ll do with Bob. We were going to start last season, but that wound up on the still-to-do list. Yesterday, I took a quick look at the chicken-raising regulations—here in Ontario, there is a quota system that requires buying permits to raise chickens, with an exception for small numbers, and I imagine it’s similar everywhere in North America. Oh, well, more on that as it happens!
Barn, Milkhouse, snow load
Not a big concern, but part of my rounds is keeping an eye on the snow load on the Milkhouse roof. It’s that shallow angle. This pic makes the potential problem clear: big, steep upper roof, unloading onto not-so-sloped lower roof. Luckily, with the wind and angle, there is seldom upper roof build-up. Although the weather’s been relatively warm recently (it did drop drastically last night), and there’s melt-off, it’s also been snowing in regular spurts, dumping an inch or so at a time. So, I keep an eye out… (If not for apparent global warming—shorter, less snowy winters in general, for whatever reason—we might have gone steeper when building last year. It seems we’re already casually adapting to visions of a freakish weather future, which IS human nature but still…weird!)
New Year’s Day
New Year’s Day in the field. I wasn’t up to catch the sunrise, so I snapped a pic of the barn…instead. Happy New Year!!
Another year gone by, and the donkey’s doing fine…
As the day faded into New Year’s Eve, I did a little walkaround, checking the goats and visiting Jack the Miniature Donkey, who’s a pretty good barnyard pal. I don’t see him up close that often (I hear him all summer), but we get along. He’s cool. Along with the goats and half-dozen cows, they’re Bob and Karen’s charges. I helped care for the goats daily for a couple of years, winter and summer, watering and feeding twice a day, experienced the goat cycle of life and death (well, birth, and occasionally, off to the slaughter). But my tiny farming career has yet to directly encompass livestock. Another thing to do! I think, this spring, CHICKENS!
Temperature gadget
This wireless remote temperature and humidity sensor sits outside, beside the side door to the Milkhouse. Here, it’s reading 0.3°C. Precise! I’m not overly thrilled by technology, but some gadgets I like. Like digital weather stations! They’ve become really CHEAP in the last couple of years. A local hardware chain just stocked a house brand, indoor/outdoor (dual measurements), min/max (stores highs and lows until reset) thermometer/hygrometer (humidity) for 10 bucks! I started tiny farming with a plain old analog min/max thermometer, until the digital ones got cheap about three years ago. Plus they had humidity. I got one, but it soon broke (didn’t like the greenhouse heat and humidity, I guess). The next generation of cheap weather stations had outdoor sensors. Cool! I got two for the greenhouse, one for the seedling room, and they’ve lasted. But, the remote sensor (a bonus!) is on the end of a long wire that I never got round to running… Now, there’s cheap and WIRELESS. That’s REALLY cool. More units, more batteries, but it’s WIRELESS. I banged in a nail and hung it out there in three minutes. It sends temp and humidity to a neat little unit sitting by my computer. It doesn’t store min/max wirelessly, that one’s not as cheap until probably next year. Instead, I glance at it quite often. The remote isn’t protected from direct sunlight, so the highs are too high when the sun hits it, but here it’s on the east side of the barn, so only the morning reading is off… Why do I need real-time outdoor temperature for tiny farming? Hmmm… It’s been just above zero days and most nights lately, and THAT’s interesting? You mightn’t have noticed otherwise that everything is slowly MELTING… Though really, watching the temperature through the day is kinda like watching the balls spin on a lottery draw: it DOESN’T REALLY MATTER! So maybe this wireless thing is yet another clever, largely unnecessary…gadget. I still like it: it’s 32.6°F outside the door, three days to the New Year, and seeds start soon! :)