Summarizing the past year and a half

I haven't updated since September 2020, but I wanted to get back to using this blog for my own record-keeping. I moved into the new homestead on February 13, 2021, and I don't want to forget all the valuable lessons I've learned over the past year! (Half of them having to do with learning about the timing of the weather and the weed growth.)

But first, a moment of silence for the Great Chicken Massacre of 2020. I was so excited about setting up a huge new pen for them at the new property, with 2x2" fencing, 6' tall, an electric wire running along the outside to deter climbing predators, and buried hardware cloth at the bottom to prevent diggers. But a few months before the move, I woke up one morning to find 6 or 7 chickens missing or maimed. (I don't remember the number 100% at this point.) Based on the details of the attack, I'm guessing it was one or more raccoons. So shitty that I lived at the previous place for nearly 4 years without any predator attacks except for hawks taking just 2 hens, and now this just before I moved them to Chicken Ft Knox.

 

But on to happier news!

The 2.2 acre property was just bare land when I purchased it.

View from the start of the cul-de-sac, toward the north-west

View from the south-west corner, toward the north-east

There is now a happy yellow house with detached garage, a large fenced backyard, and a large pen for the chickens/orchard/garden. Inside the house, I have a whole craft room, guest bedroom, and many many houseplants.

Chipper yellow house!

View of the garage, which has a permanent puppy potty area

Some of my houseplants

Some more houseplants

More houseplants again

My very favorite chicken, the Black Australorp that was among the first 3 peepers I ever got, passed away last year at age 6. My current oldest is the Light Brahma, who will be turning 4 this year.

As of this writing, I have 1 rooster (Buff Orpington), 2 elderly hens who don't lay eggs anymore (Buff Orpington and Easter Egger, taken in from someone who was moving and couldn't keep them), 12 hens of laying age (Light Brahma, Ancona, Splash Hamburg, 2 Norwegian Jaerhons, 2 Easter Eggers, 2 Olive Eggers, Black Australorp, Gold Star, Barred Rock), and 9 2-week old chicks (Silver Laced Wyandotte, Gold Laced Wyandotte, Blue Laced Red Wyandotte, Cuckoo Maran, Welsummer, Barnevelder, Rhode Island Red, Blue Silkie, mystery chick who seems to be a Green Queen with Silkie mixed in). I am raising the chicks in a large tub with a welded wire cover in the backyard so that I can cuddle with them frequently. My goal is to finally have some chickens who like hanging out with me and maybe even being held - all my current ones will come over for food but then say "no touchie."

Most of the adult chickens enjoying food scraps

Current peeper pen by the back door

Cuddling with the Cuckoo Maran chick

Inside the run where the chickens live, I have a corridor for a backyard/hedgerow orchard of 15 fruit trees (5 nectarine/peach, 5 fig, 1 Fuji apple, 1 loquat, 1 Lapins cherry, 1 Fuyu persimmon, 1 sugar prune). I have 2 colorful raised beds (my mom did a lot of the painting for these boards). They aren't planted yet as the infrastructure and tree projects are higher priority, but I wanted to go ahead and set them out to help with planning spacing. Along the eastern fence, I plan to put another chicken-proof corridor for vining plants (tomatoes, peas, cucumbers). Later I'll add raspberry bushes - they'll be surrounded by a fence that will be accessible on all sides by the chickens, which will keep them in check.

Row of fruit trees with fencing to keep chickens out and partially attached weed fabric.

Raised beds with sheep manure and chicken bedding breaking down for compost

The backyard is 6,000 square feet, with 2 retaining walls, a concrete pad, and a french drain to move rainwater away the house. I need to rig up shade/rain cover for the dogs. I hope to install a permanent dog tub for cooling off (I currently have a plastic pool), and an outdoor shower for myself. I had originally planned to install irrigation sprinklers and a drought-tolerant lawn, but for the moment I'm just dealing with the existing plant life and it's not so bad, setting aside the occasional foxtail clump and the yellow star-thistle.

Phoenix in the backyard.

On the east side of the house, I've started planting a succulent garden with gifted agaves and aloes. It is currently totally overgrown with weeds - I let them get tall enough that the baby agaves disappeared, so string trimming would be disastrous. I am partway through trimming out a path and plant clearance with a small sickle.

Hoo boy is that overgrown.

 

The south side of the property has black walnut trees. They provide some nice privacy, but they're growing directly underneath electrical wires and somewhat block the view when driving out of the cul-de-sac. I plan to take them out and plant something different for privacy, farther from the road. Then I am going to replace the shoddy, barely-there fence along that side of the property. Add fencing and a gate along the cul-de-sac, and the property will be fully fenced so the dogs can roam!

Black walnut trees

 

I keep going back and forth on whether to get sheep for grazing down the weeds or a nice riding mower. There are pros and cons for each. Either way, it's a decision that doesn't really need to be made for a few years at least, and in the meantime one of my neighbors allows me to borrow his old, slow riding mower. I just prefer to have things all planned out ahead of time.

Recently mowed front area

 

I brought home an English Shepherd puppy in November of 2020, from a wonderful breeder I'd been in contact with for two years. We're taking ongoing classes for agility and nose work. On my own, I'm slowly working on rally-free, traditional obedience exercises, herding foundation, and tricks. We've had a couple of herding adventures with sheep already, and I hope to do more (one of the potential pros of getting my own sheep).

8 weeks old, during the drive home

All grown up, 1.5 years old

Phoenix loves my dad!

With home ownership, especially in the country and having animals, and even more especially when you're still laying down infrastructure, one has a to-do list a mile long. It is particularly overwhelming during the winter with little sun and Seasonal Affective Disorder. I certainly couldn't do it without the help of my parents and friends and neighbors.

However it's definitely where I want to be and the lifestyle I want to be living, and I know that it will get better and better over time.

Plant Lady

Garden & livestock check in

The young rabbits are almost old enough to start mating with each other (10 weeks), so it was time to separate the boys and girls. I moved all the does (mom and two babies) to a new pen.

Mama had spent the previous week with the buck, so I'm expecting another litter around December 10th. (Butchering day for this litter is December 2nd.)

A couple of my hens are getting too much action from the roosters and their backs and shoulders have gotten stripped. It's been going on for a long time, so while the two juvenile roosters who have been in the pen with them for 6-7 weeks are definitely to blame for some of it, the older rooster must have played a part as well. I had been just monitoring but it's bad enough now that I ordered a couple of coats for them. Then I'll monitor again and see if I need to get rid of the two extra roos. (Probably. But one is adorable and the other was supposed to replace the older rooster when he was injured. I'd prefer to keep them if things can work out.)

They got a new straw bale to play with and spread out for me.

Recently I opened the nesting box to collect eggs and scared the Black Sex Link into leaving. She had been about to lay an egg, so it plopped out a moment later on the ground. Finally I know who is laying these amazing giant eggs!

Two huge yolks from her eggs on the bottom and right, and one yolk from someone else's medium sized egg. Wow.

My baby fig tree has five little figs on it, but only one has ripened. With very little pest pressure, I was able to leave it on the tree until it was completely ripe. The first one from my own tree! It was delicious.

My little mandarin tree also had five fruits. One fell off early the other day. It wasn't completely ripe but it was still yummy. Lucky me.

Some day I will have true bounties of fruits...

New plants, baby fruit tree update

I haven't planted as many seeds and starts for edible plants as I normally would have by this time of year, because I am moving in a few weeks and that would be bad timing for transplanting. But my garden looked so barren and sad, that I ended up picking up a number of flowers to brighten the area, and my mood.

Ranunculus

Dahliette

Snapdragon

Hollyhock

Primrose (next to a large parsley)

Bromeliad (indoors)

 Also, here's an update on the baby fruit trees:

Dwarf Mandarin gave me a delicious harvest of about 30 fruits. Here it is post pruning.

Fig cutting is growing new leaves after the winter.

Jackfruit also dropped leaves but is now regrowing them.

Baby Loquats seem to be going strong.

Mandarin oranges

The tree I've had for 3 years has finally produced fruit that fully ripened! It is delicious and sweet, like candy.

Mandarin growth

My dwarf mandarin tree has finally grown viable fruit! Two years ago it created a lot of tiny green balls but they all fell off at only 1-2 cm in width. Last year it created a good amount of green fruit but it still fell off well before ripening. This year, I will finally get to taste it!

Quinoa harvesting

Self Sufficient Life in East Palo Alto hosted a quinoa harvesting workshop, to provide education but also get some help with this time-consuming task. I sometimes use quinoa instead of (brown) rice for variety. I'd been pondering the feasibility of growing it myself to continue my own path toward self sufficiency.

Harvesting the seeds is easy but time and water intensive.

This is a quinoa plant that is almost ready to harvest - the plants ended up not being as dry as they should have been when the workshop rolled around.

You lay the plants out to dry further after cutting, then chop them into smaller pieces.

Grab a small handful of the pieces and roll your hands back and forth. The seeds and small plant matter will break away from the stems and leaves. A sieve will allow the seeds and small matter through. Toss the large pieces into the compost - no more use for them. This step is particularly time consuming and is better done with a group of friends.

This is what comes through the sieve.

 Place the seeds and plant matter into a bowl and fill with water. Mix with your hand. Most of the seeds will sink to the bottom and the plant matter stays at the top, to be skimmed off.

 Repeat a couple of times and you have what LOOKS like ready-to-eat quinoa. However the seeds are still covered by a coating of saponin, which makes them bitter.

The host said that he was taught to remove the saponin with repeated rinses, but it's inefficient. He found the best way to do it was by swirling the seeds with water at low speed in a blender.

 Very quickly the blender fills with the bitter foam!

 Rinse and repeat until you are not seeing foam come off the seeds.

After a final thorough rinse, we finally had beautiful, golden seeds!

I would like to try growing my own quinoa, but I will definitely have friends come over to help me harvest. Also during the demo the host let the rinse water soak into the ground but he said that it doesn't seem to harm plants, so I would catch and reuse the water.

Jackfruit seedlings

My jackfruit seedlings are less than a year old and already roughly 2 feet tall. One of them developed a kink and started to grow almost completely sideways, so I tied it to some PVC pipe to straighten it out.