These chickens like snow! The eight remaining roosters have been out and about in some fairly wild weather, making their way through 6″ (15cm) blankets of snow, gusting winds and absolutely freezing cold. They always have the option of heading out of the little door in their half of the chickenhouse, or not. I’ve only kept it closed in the morning a couple of times, when the weather was ridiculously nasty. They’ve only stayed inside once by choice, on not such a bad day, which was a bit of a mystery (maybe snow had built up at their doorway that I didn’t notice). They still roam all over—chicken tracks just about everywhere in the barnyard snow—but tend to hang out on exposed ground, like around the small stand of trees in front of the farmhouse. So far, no frostbite and no frozen feet falling off. They’re pretty tough birds…
Hardy berry
These guys are pretty impressive in the low maintenance department, definitely the toughest, hardiest potted plants I’ve known. They arrived out of the blue last January, about 20 of them. After a bit of coddling under the fluorescent lights along with the spring seedlings, I set them outside in front of the Milkhouse, and there they’ve sat, untended, in 4″ (10cm) plastic pots, for the last seven months. In recent weeks, they’ve been basically frozen solid in their pots for much of the time. And here they are, leaves glossy, setting a couple of berries… Cool!
What are they? Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), aka teaberry, a small, creeping evergreen shrub with minty, wintergreen-tasting berries (the leaves and stems can be made into a medicinal tea, and the plant also produce wintergreen oil, used as a flavoring). They’re healthy, but they’ve only set a couple of berries amongst the remaining six plants (I gave away the rest). Hmmm… I’m comfortable with the many varieties I grow of 40 or so veggies and herbs, I’m still getting used to several varieties of a dozen types of cut flower, and I’m working on ID-ing ALL of the various grasses and weeds around here. WINTERGREEN is barely on the map… So many names, so much to know…! UPDATE: Case in point… Thanks to comments below, these guys were properly identified, I’d thought they were winterberry… I’ve corrected the post!
Stacking cages
The backdrop of snow turned the puzzle of sorting tomato cages into a bit of abstract art. I don’t use these exclusively, most of the 500-600 plants each year are tied to stakes or sprawled. But the cages get used, too. After every season so far, I’ve been determined to move beyond these lightweight wire gizmos to a more robust tomato support solution, but come spring and the transplanting rush, I end up with even more of ’em. They work great for the first eight weeks after transplanting, but once the toms really get going, they’re kinda useless, too short and not strong enough to hold up the plants. At the end of the season, they have to be hacked and torn out of the tangle of dead toms. And then, they have to be bent back in shape and stacked, tossing the ones where the rings have broken from the spines. I’d left this last little task till today, and now it’s done: the before (above) and after, around 200 cages, stacked and ready to store. Next season, something new!
Chickens at work
The Shaver Red Sex-Link laying hens are doing fine in the fairly chilly chickenhouse, eating up a storm, looking and sounding healthy and happy, and producing away. They’ve been in artificial light days for the last couple of months, about 16 hours made up of daylight extended by a 60W bulb on a timer that’s on till 11pm. I’m curious whether at least some of the girls would really stop producing for the winter if the light dropped below 15 hours for even a single day. I don’t actually want to see it happen, but what if there’s a power failure? Hmmm… Kerosene lamp? In any case, fall egg production has so far stayed steady at about 20-23 a day for the 25 girls… Chickens are easy, you don’t have to know a lot to raise them casually, but there is a lot you could know. And of course, the more you know, the less you need! My winter chicken reading is Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.
Frozen chokes harvest
Despite the six inches (15cm) of snow on the big garden, fieldwork goes on. Today, I harvested about 30lbs (13.5kg) of Jerusalem artichoke out of the partially frozen ground, just to be sure planting stock is around over winter in case I need it. Since we don’t have a root cellar or walk-in cooler, storing crops in the ground as winter comes along is a risky but useful alternative. There’s still lots of carrot, parsnip, and some more chokes out there. Until the ground is frozen several inches or more down, it’s possible to harvest, although too much snow can make the whole thing a little crazy. Once thoroughly frozen, I’ve found carrots get killed off and thaw to mush, while parsnip and chokes withstand freezing just fine, staying alive and available again in spring. So far, though, everything’s still cool for digging. You can see the ice crystals in the frozen crust (above), but below that, it’s all cold, friable soil and plump, healthy choke tubers…
Battery change
There’s nothing remarkable or even that interesting about changing a battery—routine maintenance on the tiny farm—EXCEPT… Today, I finally got around to replacing the battery, for the first time, on the Kubota compact tractor. It was a quick and simple operation that put instant new life into the trusty little tractor. It also made me realize how fond one can become of a MACHINE. I know this is nothing new: for example, car lovers. For me, though, it’s a first. Like, I love my wheel hoe, but it is such a simple tool, the attachment is more to the idea of it than to the machine itself. The complex workings of the tiny tractor, however, are largely a mystery to me. I can maintain it, and fix an increasing number of things, and I understand the general principles it runs on, but mostly, I simply trust that turning the key will bring it to life. And it hasn’t failed me over the years, faithfully and reliably performing its tiny farming tasks, asking little in return (it’s even good on diesel!). So here I find myself, strangely, with a deep affection for a machine… Cheers! This new $100 Mega-tron II battery is on me! :)
Change of view
Last month, this month, the seasons march on. It looks farily snowbound, but this could all melt off in a single unseasonably warm day. Like last winter. (Browse through last January if you’ve forgotten the completely odd DOUBLE melt-off we had back then…). There’s never a dull moment with our thoroughly modern weather!