Where have I been?

Hello! Good to see you again!

Even though it has been a year since I last updated this blog I still receive the occasional e-mail about it so my nagging feeling of guilt over having abandoned the thing has finally motivated me to start posting again.

2008 proved to be an eventful year so catching up will take some time to cover the ground, but if you’re interested here it is.

In January of last year we were expecting a hard freeze down to fourteen degrees (f) the day after I made my last post, the coldest we would have seen in many years since at least the Christmas Eve storm of 1989. Fortunately it didn’t really go that low but the twenty two degrees we did get was bad enough for my unprotected citrus out in the grove.

I was puzzled by the damage seeing as how everything out there is supposedly cold hardy until it occurred to me it had been reaching nearly eighty degrees every day for the week prior so the trees had not hardened off as they should have. No fruit out there this year, but I didn’t lose the trees outright so they spent the year growing back what froze off. I bought frost cloth for this year so will hopefully not repeat last year’s mistakes.

As annoying as the losses in the grove were the situation in the greenhouse was much better.

Those fat Eureka lemons made some fine lemonade. The blossoms that you see are now the fruit for the lemonade we're enjoying right now. The leaf miners and grasshoppers did their best, but the tree shrugged them off to do its duty. We’ve taken to calling it “the little tree that could.”

Keeping it company was this Key lime with blossoms, green and mature fruit. Those blossoms are now a colander full of fruit on my kitchen counter. Limemade, meat marinade, or just squeezed into a glass of selzter water it's all good. Add a little rum for a great end-of-the-week treat!

Here is the brother of the first Eureka lemon. I had a bit of trouble with this one last year as I had repotted it into an overly large container which subsequently gave me drainage and root problems. I realized my error in September so moved it into a more appropriate size pot. It responded by putting on a new flush of leaves and seems to be recovering well now.

This is one of two Tahiti (Persian or Bearss) limes, both of which have produced nice crops this year. Had a bit of scale problems over the summer that I treated with horticultural oil and copper in the hopes that I won’t have to go to anything stronger. So far, so good. It's much easier to deal with pests like those before moving them under cover than trying to eradicate them once they are inside.

Winter is also the time to gear up for the year’s new birds and this year was no exception. My 2008 order from Privett Hatchery arrived on February first.

This year's list was:

4 Easter Eggers (lays green/blue eggs)

8 Production Reds

6 Barred Rocks

1 Barred Rock cockerel

10 White Leghorns

6 Black Australorps

3 Jersey Black Giants

6 New Hampshire Reds

8 Red Sex Links

1 Red Sex Link cockerel

3 Speckled Sussex

The Black Australorps and four of the Leghorns were for others. The Jersey Giants and Speckled Sussex are for pretty with the rest being working birds.

Unfortunately my good mail order bird karma ran out on me with this batch as they had a rough trip via the Postal Service which translated to the worst brooder losses I’ve ever had. I ended up losing most of the Easter Eggers, several of the Leghorns, and one or two from the rest were lost. Still managed to deliver the birds I’d promised other folks and the remaining ones were enough to meet our needs. I really hate losing chicks like that, but it’s going to happen once in a while.

Here’s a photo of the little ones freshly installed in their new home. A couple of months prior to their arrival I painted the brooder box and hover so that I could eliminate the plastic sheeting, but I think I’ll go back to it this next time. Much easier to keep things clean that way. The paint does improve the lighting inside the box though. The frame with the hardware cloth on it in the foreground is where the waterers and feeders go once the birds have recovered from their trip and can be out from under the hover. This helps to cut down on wet bedding which is a sin where brooding chicks is concerned as it encourages coccidiosis which is a common killer of poultry chicks.

Here’s a close up of the fuzzballs. For the first couple of days I like to feed them out of an egg carton because it allows them to get into the food without being able to scratch it out and waste it. Once they’re eating well I transition them over to reel-top feeders then eventually to tube feeders. I have never found a system that is really efficient at keeping chicks from wasting feed, but one can reduce it to a tolerable amount. When the chicks finally go out on pasture the brooder bedding with its attendant manure and spilled feed goes into the garden. What you see in there now grew a fine crop of sweet potatoes that I dug up the first week of November.

Shortly after the chicks came in we went down to St. Petersburg to visit with Diana’s grandparents who do the snowbird migration every year. One of the payoffs of slogging through Tampa/St. Pete traffic is stopping by Jene’s Tropicals. They’re a great source of tropical and subtropical plants, especially fruit. I picked up a Williams Seedless tangerine (a Murcott selection) that I may keep as a container plant. It’s a late season fruit so would be vulnerable to the hard freezes we often receive in January.

While there I made a wholly unexpected score of perennial peanuts!

I've been wanting some for years, but had not been able to find any in small quantities. For those of us who live south of central Georgia they are an alternative to alfalfa which does not generally grow well here. The University of Florida has done a lot of work with them developing four or five varieties for ground cover, forage, and hay uses. Once home I divided the six pots of plants into forty two to grow out over the rest of the winter. I planted the first plots over the summer. It can take several years to get a good stand from the initial planting so this will take some time but I'm excited to give it a try because it is very nearly the only practical summer legume I can grow here in my soil type and it's a perennial to boot. This allowed me to start a project that will hopefully lead to us being able to produce more of our own animal feed.

Of course with all those new birds I had to build more housing to keep them. I don’t have any photos yet of the Mk. III chicken tractor. It looks pretty much the same as the earlier iterations but for using 4x4s for the sledge runners rather than 2x4s of the previous models. This brings my chicken tractor fleet up to three and I have plans for at least three more. I’m going to have to have at least one more before I can take the 2009 birds out of the brooder and the Kinder Major will need one for her 4H birds when we find them.

Spring eventually rolled around, a trifle late, but it did finally get here. Unfortunately my spring garden was later still so that I actually got it into the ground in the first week of May! I figured I’d need all the help I could get so I enlisted some fertility magic by going to see the Kinder Major do the Maypole Dance at the local ladies club.

The Kinder Major is the blonde in the blue vest.

Just in case that wasn’t enough I enlisted the Kinder Minor’s aid as well.

Losing a months worth of growing season cost me in production, but we were still able to make out OK. We brought in enough summer squash (2 varieties) and zucchini (just one type) to keep us in fresh produce and filled a couple of half gallon jars with dried product before powdery mildew finally killed the plants as it does every year.

The rest of the garden was a mixed bag. The sweet potatoes and okra did well.

The five varieties of sweet and hot peppers on the other hand turned out to be a loss. This surprised me as I have always found peppers one of the easiest things to grow but every one of them did poorly. For a while I thought they’d contracted a virus until I read in a gardening forum about a new introduced pest afflicting us here in Florida - the Chili Thrip. The adult pest is less than two millimeters in length and likes to hide on the undersides of leaves so can be tough to spot - especially if your eyes aren’t as good as they once were like mine. Well, live and learn. Next time I’ll be looking for them and know how to handle them.

Also in May I planted the citrus trees I had bought in January. The Flame grapefruit, Sunburst tangerine (again!), Ambersweet orange (again!), and a Kimbrough Satsuma. At the same time I planted the Mutablis, Bowbells, and Madame Joseph Schwartz cracker roses I bought from a vendor at the Dudley Farm when they were doing their cane grinding and syrup making in December. The Madame Schwarz did not make it through the summer, but the others took and are now patiently waiting on me to get out there and give the rose bed the attention it needs. I haven’t planted them out yet, but I also have four little rosemary plants for that bed as well. My plan is to put a rosemary between every rose so that I get both a pleasing scent and beauty at the same time. We use a fair amount of the herb in the kitchen as well.

June came around at its appointed time bringing with it our rainy season. We caught our first big thunderstorm on a 20% rain chance to get three inches of rain in less than an hour! Just for dramatic effect it also threw in copious lightning, high winds, and hail, but other than a bit of erosion in the driveway we suffered no damage. The chicken tractors rode it out well though I did realize I needed to put rain caps on the feeders for those times when the rain comes down sideways. Haven’t had any problems with wet feed since.

The new birds we received in February started laying about then so our egg production ramped up. Lost several roosters in a brief period of time to what I think was coyotes - Fred the Barred Rock, Noodles the Rhode Island Red along with Ping & Pong the Red Sex Links - which annoyed me no end as I really wanted them for breeding. The predators always seem to take the ones I want most to keep first. In the plus column though it turned out that one of the three Black Jersey Giant pullets was a cockerel. He fooled me for a while as there were two other cockerels in that particular tractor with him so he never crowed and wasn’t showing any obvious signs of not being a pullet. Like all young males coming into their own though once his brothers had gotten their transfer orders to the Bachelor Pad he had to crow about having it made. I named him Black Jack then moved him in with the other boys. Predator losses have now left me with just five roosters.

Later that month I picked up a Kaffir lime on a trip to Lowes out of their ten dollar citrus area. I try to give that area a quick once over when ever I’m there just to see if they have anything unusual. Most of the time they don’t but every once in a while they’ll surprise me. I expect the lime will mostly serve as a curiosity like the Buddha Hand citron I picked up the same way. But I might decide to try some southeast Asian cooking sometime so will have an important ingredient fresh to hand if I do.

In July the Kinder Major spent a couple of weeks at a 4H summer camp held at the county extension office where among other accomplishments she earned her Hunter Safety Certification. As we were dropping her off one day I noticed there was a different type of perennial peanut planted in the flower bed in front of the building than what I already had. It turns out they were taking some of the plantings out to use the area for other purposes so the secretary told me I could have all I wanted to dig up! Like all good gardeners I keep a shovel in the car for just-in-case so I did. I’ve been propagating it since then and hope to have enough to put at least one planting in the pasture in the spring of next year. I don’t know the name of this variety either as the extension agent told me it had been there for at least twenty years and no one could remember what it was called. It’s one of the taller forage/hay types rather than the ground cover kind that I’d bought the previous winter. Things are looking up on the homestead feed production front!

August rolled around in its usual hot and humid way so the fruit began to ripen. We made a fair crop of grapes this year though we only harvested about half of them. Tropical Storm Fay never amounted to much in the way of wind (for which we are thankful) as she passed us by about fifty miles to the north, but she did drop twelve solid inches of rain. I picked all of the grapes and pears that were ready before she arrived for just-in-case which was a good thing because when she’d gone the remaining grapes were on the ground and ruined. We put up nearly fifty pints of pear sauce and about thirty or so half-pints of pear-butter. The grapes are still in the freezer waiting on me to turn them into jam. No fruit from the orchard citrus this year thanks to the freeze in January except for one solitary Meyer lemon.

Over the summer I experimented with using paper mulch in the vegetable garden. It’s not pretty to be sure, but it works rather well. After planting out the sweet potatoes I laid paper feed sacks between the rows then covered them with shredded paper which I also put between the plants. Except for a few places where I put it down too thinly it held up all summer long suppressing weeds, slowing nutrient leaching, and limiting water loss. I liked the way it worked well enough to do the entire winter garden the same way. It looks like a paper mache’ project run amok, but it’s working.

Also in August we advanced our homestead security by bringing home a pair of Great Pyrenees puppies. Our next door neighbor has kept Pyrenees for years to guard his goats and birds and I’ve wanted pups from those dogs ever since I first saw them. He showed up unexpectedly one day to tell us that he had a litter ready to sell so ready-or-not we bought two males. I let the girls choose their names and seeing as how we’d just finished reading The Lord of the Rings I suppose it should come as no surprise that they chose Merry & Pippin.

It’s been an educational experience for the dogs, myself, and the girls since we brought them home! (laughing}. Here’s a shot of the K. Major taking them for a walk, or them taking her for one, it wasn’t clear which. It was starting to get dark so they are in their night vision mode. The next day they drug her through a patch of stinging nettles!

We’ve been working with them around the chickens since bringing them home so they are well used to being close to birds. Being pups they still want to chase once in a while, but a firm “NO!!!” is all it takes to make them stop. As pups will do they’ve been growing rapidly and are now in the 60-65 pound range.

Merry is the one on the left. He’s slightly larger than his brother now, his badger markings are slowly fading away and he carries his tail curled upwards more often. He’s more aloof than Pippin who likes to stay near when we’re out for a walk. You can’t see it in this shot, but Pippin has a dark ring around his tail and his puppy markings are still fairly dark though they too will eventually fade to the usual Pyrenees all-over white.

We bought sturdy collars but when we went to pick them up I quickly discovered that even on the first hole the collars were much too big for either of them so had to punch more on the spot to make them fit. That was then. Three weeks ago I had to let them out to their last hole so they wouldn’t be too tight. In another month or so I may have to go buy new ones! They get a good grade of large breed puppy food with a couple of eggs apiece every day which obviously agrees with them. In fact if I don’t mix their eggs in they’ll sulk and won’t eat. Spoiled rotten, but they’re a part of our family now.

As a part of training the dogs to the birds I moved the Bachelor Pad from its place under the trees off the end of the garden to the end of the new dog pen that I put up next to the workshop. Jacques le Coq, Picky, Fred the Second, and Black Jack didn’t seem to mind once they realized the dogs couldn’t get into their side. After a few days they all pretty well ignored each other. Once in a while Jacques will get into a spat with the other boys and fly the fence over into the dog pen. He’ll spend the day there scratching around where the dogs pay him no mind. Come dark he flies back to his side to go to roost. I did once remove the dividing panel between the two which is the only time I ever had trouble as the dogs suddenly showing up on their side of the fence caused the roosters to panic which in turn caused excitement among the dogs who then wanted to chase. I put the panel back and they all calmed down. Out in the pasture where there’s lots of space they don’t act that way so I think it was the confinement that was causing the problem.

On another trip to Lowes I picked up a small Temple orange which I’ll also keep as a container planting to extend the season. The citrus collection is steadily growing! For my family members who read this - stop smirking! It’s cheap and it keeps me out of bars doesn’t it? {laughing}

With the arrival of September it was time to start thinking of the cool season garden. We don’t normally see much of a break in the weather before mid-October but the ground needs prepping while the weather is still hot. This time I wanted to use the north end of the garden which is within the fenced area, but had not really been planted before. A little time with the hundred yard measuring tape and some flagging pins had it laid out so that I could start penciling in what was going to go where. To my surprise the last week of September proved to be unusually cool so I consulted my gardening books about cool weather crops which said that carrots and turnips can be planted in September so I did. Alas, the next week proved to be quite seasonal so those two rows were not successful. The carrots faded out completely and the turnips were spotty, but enough of them made it through that I left them and we are eating the roots now. Diana and I are delighted with them, but the Kinder are appalled. {insert kid making yuck face here}

As it became available I laid out more feed sacks, cardboard, and shredded paper mulching between the rows. An area feed store proved to have granex (Vidalia type) onion sets so I bought enough for a couple of rows. At the same time I put in a couple of rows of hot and sweet peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. We got a nice rain from Hurricane Ike as he toured the central Gulf on his way to Texas, but other than giving us some much needed precipitation presented us with no problems.

Also during September I got the 2009 chick order off to Sand Hill Preservation Center. They had a special going that if you got your 2009 order in before the end of November you could get their 2008 prices. We ordered Buff Orpington, Black Jersey Giant, and Delaware chickens along with Midget White and Wishard Bronze turkeys. We’ve kept Buffs and Jersey Giants for years, but this will be our first experience with the Delawares. I haven’t kept turkeys since I was a boy so we’re really looking forward to getting them. I’m hoping the K. Major will take an interest in maybe showing them for 4H. We’ll have plenty of time to get ready for the new birds as the order isn’t scheduled to arrive before May, possibly as late as June, depending on how their hatching goes. I might even have a chicken tractor or two built by then!

October was more or less seasonal, a little cooler than usual in the first half, but not greatly so. The last few days of that month though proved a surprise when we got our first frost of the year! The night of the 29^th/30^th we broke a fifty year record when the mercury sank to 30 degrees which we do not normally see around here until a few days either side of December 1^st and I was not ready. The sweet potatoes hadn’t been dug yet, the peppers were full of fruit, and I had only just started buying the material for this year’s greenhouse rebuild, never mind having it finished! I spent an evening carting all of the container plants into the workshop then covering the peppers and tomatoes with cardboard boxes. The potatoes were nipped but I was planning on digging them up that coming weekend anyway which I did.

It was a fair harvest, but would have been a good bit more had I not lost so many roots to something eating them. Mice or voles I suppose. Next year I’ll dig them at the beginning of October to see if I can forestall some of that. Until now I’ve always dug them the first week of November, but if we’re going to get early freezes I’ll have to dig earlier.

I played the “cover before frost” with the peppers several more times after that before finally giving up. They were green healthy plants, but they hadn’t grown an inch since that first frost. By the time December rolled around I wrote them off. Such is gardening. The next frost did them in and I replaced them with a mix of cabbage, collards, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and pac choi. It’s all doing well so far though the grasshoppers seem to really like Chinese cabbage. You’d think with the five frosts we’ve had so far the grasshoppers wouldn’t be a problem, but if we get one good day of warm weather they’re out again. During this same time I also bought some onion plants from another farm supply and set them out. I misjudged how many were in a bundle so bought twice what I thought I was getting so that I now have two double rows and one triple row of them. If they make at all we’re going to be set for onions all year!

My other “must get done before frost” project every fall is getting the greenhouse ready to move the container plants in. Much of my container citrus are cold sensitive so won’t survive our North Florida winters the way they would further south. I had a problem though in that my collection of potted plants had grown rather a lot since last winter so there was no way I was going to be able to get them all into the 8ft x 10ft house I built last year. A rebuild was necessary and I was doing just that when our unseasonally early frost turned up the urgency. This year’s greenhouse measures 12ft x 20ft which is more than enough to hold the collection while leaving some room for seed starting. I’ll talk more about the construction in a separate post. So far it has passed a 28 degree night with flying colors so we’ll see how it goes when we get our coldest nights in late January and February. For next year I’ve decided to buy one of those clear solar pool covers for insulation in the hopes of cutting down heating costs.

So that brings us up to now. It’s been a long, busy year that I wish could have been busier still, but family and employment simply will have their share of our time so we gardeners have to do the best we can. We’ll eat the first head of broccoli from the garden tonight. We’ve been eating turnips for weeks. The first planting of cabbage is about ready to cut and the first onions are beginning to swell nicely. I’ve got second and third plantings of most of those out there to get us to the warm season when we’ll start the gardening cycle all over again.

I can’t promise how often I’ll update this blog, but I will endeavor to get at least a couple of posts a month in. See you the next time!

…..Alan.

New Years Day 2008

As New Years Day goes this one wasn't bad. Pleasantly cool but not so much that I felt the need for long sleeves until about dark or so. Could have been sunnier, but it wasn't gloomy or anything. The ground is still moist from the three tenths of rain we received two days ago though a day or so of sunny, dry, and breezy will soon dry that up. We're predicted for a freeze tonight - 27 degrees - but the real show will be tomorrow (Wednesday) night when the Weather Service predicts we'll sink to a chilly 16 degrees Fahrenheit. If it really happens it'll be the coldest I've seen it here since the Christmas Storm of '89 when the official low at the airport in Gainesville was 16 but my front porch thermometer said 11! Fortunately this time we won't also be dealing with a thick coating of ice and a dusting of snow too.

With an impending severe freeze on the horizon I shoved everything in containers back into the hoophouse snapping a photo or two as I was doing so. This is a Eureka lemon, one of the varieties commonly sold for grocery store fruit, with both fully mature fruit and blossom buds about to open. The greenhouse always smells heavenly when they do. Sometimes I have mature fruit, half-grown fruit, and blossoms all at the same time, but I was negligent with my fertilizing schedule back in late summer so no immature fruit this time. This one is a Key lime, also known as Mexican limes for our Left Coast readers. I couldn't get the blossoms to show up nicely but they are there if you look. As always if you click on the photo you'll be able to see a larger version. I picked the last of the mature fruit off before I thought about taking pictures, but as you can see there are immature fruit there with the blossoms. Key limes aren't as fragrant with their blossoms as the lemons, but they are still sweet if you bend a little closer. This one is NOT a thornless variety so pick the fruit at your own risk!

My Tahiti limes are putting on some nice leaf flushes, but it's hard to distinguish the new growth from the old in a photo. Even the Buddha Hand citron is beginning to blossom though I wish it would put on some new leaves first. Back before I repotted it last month I let the old media dry too much forgetting that it didn't retain moisture as well as the coconut media so it dropped a lot of leaves. I'm sure once this blossom flush is finished the new leaves will be forthcoming to support the new fruit. I'm looking forward to using the tree as a specimen on my back porch if it sets some nice fruit.

The vegetable garden is plugging along. You couldn't tell it from looking at the photo but I took seven buckets of weeds out of there over the last several days. A bit of moisture and some warmish weather and they fairly shot out of the ground. The hens in the permanent yard would get excited everytime they saw me coming with another bucket for them.

A couple of hens in the new flock on the other side of the garden fence decided they wanted to see if the grass really was greener on the other side so they flew over. Thirty two hundred square feet of winter forage wasn't enough it seems. Neither of them did any damage except to the rutabagas which they devastated. Nothing else, just the rutabagas. It's a mystery to me, but it seems they really like them. I'm not sure how much of the two rows are going to make it through. I don't think they like our erratic warm/cold/warm winter weather here. This doesn't seem to bother the turnips though as they are growing rampantly. After I took the photos I thinned the second row, the first being done a couple of weeks ago. I also thinned the carrots once again. I've never had any luck with them in the past so I tend to leave them a bit more thickly than I probably should. Both of the root vegetables are starting to swell and color up. The elephant garlic that I planted directly is getting rather large in spite of the fact that I haven't weeded their row yet. The stuff I transplanted after sprouting other places is lagging, but I attribute that to having to grow out new root systems. I think they'll catch up in due course.

The chickens are loving their winter forage. I moved more birds into the tractors so there are now thirty of them out there. This being the first time I've attempted this I can't decide if the forage is going to last through the winter or not. They may well wipe it out before the end of March. Next year I think I'll till up a patch out in the pasture for winter forage as well. Feed consumption is down about twenty percent or thereabouts, but whether I'm saving any money or not is an open question considering what I spent to grow it. I can say though that the egg yolks are staying nicely orange which is the main reason for doing this. No need for food coloring when making yellow cakes around here!

With any luck we won't take any significant freeze damage tomorrow night. I cobbled together some greenhouse insulation this afternoon using old blankets and a tarp which should allow the little heater inside to keep the temperature above freezing. The orchard trees are on their own, but I chose them all on the basis of their cold hardiness so other than some twig damage I think they'll come through OK. I did clip all of the Ponkans tonight as they are completely ripe. I may clip the remaining Satsumas and Seville oranges as well tomorrow.

Here's to staying warm!

.....Alan.

Pilgrimage

Well, Saturday the Kinder Major and I struck out overland on our annual pilgrimage to that mecca of North Florida fruit growers Just Fruits & Exotics near Crawfordville in the Florida Panhandle.


For those of us who live in the Zone of the Damned that comprises North Florida and the southernmost portions of the other Deep South states we are caught between just a little too much cold weather for tropical and most semi-tropical fruits to survive and not quite enough of it for many of the temperate fruits of the more northern states to bear fruit. This means that finding worthy varieties to plant can be a challenge. Fortunately the determined fruit grower is not entirely without resource because there are suppliers such as the Just Fruits folks and others like Peacocks Nursery in Florahome near to Palatka. One has to be a determined fruit grower though because in the usual way of things they are always far away. Crawfordville is a six hour plus round trip from Dun Hagan and this year it was an eight hour plus trip for meeting my cane syrup connection still further west to pick up my year's supply of the Southern delicacy.

Because of the time and distance involved I always buy a lot when I go though this trip was the least I've ever brought home. Too near Christmas for major garden hoggery this year.


Also in the usual way these things work I took a list with me of what I wanted and did in fact buy them - a Sunburst tangerine, Ambersweet orange, Kimbrough satsuma, and Chinotto orange. But they always stock more than they list on their website and just as soon as I walked in I spotted a Eustis limequat that I've wanted for some time that wasn't on their site. This wrecked my fruit budget, but Diana has come to expect that I'm going to spend more than I planned when I go to Crawfordville! The stuff on my list all have a fair degree of cold tolerance so will go into the orchard with the others. The limequat doesn't so will be joining the other container citrus in the greenhouse. This gives me a Lakeland and Eustis limequat so next on my list is to acquire a Tavares which will then give me all three of the Key lime/kumquat hybrids developed by Dr. Swingle long ago. With the two thorny and two thornless Key limes and the Tahiti limes and Eureka lemons we certainly do not lack for acid citrus.

Once we finished our fruit and syrup business I decided I'd better air out the child who had been remarkably patient in her riding so we went down to the old lighthouse at St. Marks. This too is becoming something of a tradition in that I've never taken her there that the weather was good! This time was no different as a cold front was moving in. It drizzled and sprinkled all the way from home to Crawfordville and back. Never really raining hard, just enough to get everything wet and limit the visibility. This gave something of a different atmosphere to our usual sunny Gulf weather as the mist softened the edges and colors of the landscape.

We took her last years Christmas present binoculars with us to take advantage of any bird watching opportunities that might present themselves and as they always do at St. Marks they did.


My little point and shoot camera isn't really suited to such work as bird photography, but I was fairly happy with this one shot of a pair of great white herons.


There was a little blue heron standing next to them but just as I pushed the button he suddenly darted behind the little grass point on the left after a fish.

The fresh water areas looked very low to me so I figure they're suffering with the drought much the same as the rest of the state is.

My other half-way decent bird shot was the pelicans on the old dock pilings near to the light. The mist was so thick that you couldn't see more than a couple of hundred yards on the water. There are several anhingas or cormarants at the bottom of the pilings.


The child had a misadventure with falling in the water so we cut our visit short in favor of returning to the comfort of the truck and its heater.

The ride home was as cloudy, damp, and uneventful as the ride up. We'd left just after dawn and arrived back just at dark. All of the drizzle and mist didn't amount to enough to even register in my gauge.

The show wasn't over though as the Weather Service had been steadily increasing our rain chance while we were gone. By the time I went to bed we were under a tornado watch over a wide area so I left a window in the bedroom half open as I always do when these late night active fronts come in. About two in the morning the sound of heavy rain and wind woke me and for the next two hours or so we had quite a show. A lot of lightning for December, but fortunately very little of it was close. The wind got a little sporty for a time, but never enough to concern me much.

This morning I woke to find this!


That two and three-tenths inches of rain is more than we've had in pretty much the last three months combined which made up for costing me two hours of sleep. We're still pretty deep in the rainfall deficit hole, but this helps. I heard a news story on the radio last week that our projected agricultural losses from the drought here in Florida for the year are going to top a billion dollars so you can bet there a lot of folks giving thanks for what we received.

The weather today was damp, breezy, and just a little on the coolish side but when the sun would peak through the breaking clouds it was pleasant. The winter forage I planted in the corn patch was prime so this morning I did a proper job of stretching the fence dividing the corn patch and the garden then moved in the chicken tractors. As these things are sometimes wont to do this did not go smoothly but I did eventually get them moved in.

The original Mk. I chicken tractor is OK on firm, even sod, but get it into soft dirt and there's going to be problems. I tried retrofitting runners onto it that raised the height of the cross member but achieved no practical difference. The Mk. II version moved much easier though the soft dirt made for slow going there as well. I need to get some grass growth over that portion of the garden which I will attend to this next month or so.

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely. I thinned one row of turnips on Friday and still have another just like it to do and the two rutabaga rows. Also have at least another half-dozen volunteer elephant garlic to transplant. The whole thing needs a thorough weeding which I hope to attend to over the Christmas holiday. The birds in the henyard really get excited when they see me coming with a bucket full of weeds this time of year.

We're predicted to go to 29 tonight I expect we'll get a nice frost out of it. I have come to love this time of year when I can spend the day working hard outside and not break a sweat. Sure is a lot more pleasant than working outside in the summertime!

.....Alan.

Giving Thanks

So, here it is Thanksgiving 2007 and what do I have to be thankful for?

Well, how about I start with this wonderful rain that is coming down. We haven't been in quite the same straits as parts of the Upper South but we've been in a drought just the same. If there is anything growing here at Dun Hagan lately it's because I've been watering it.


What else? How about a good harvest? Here's a bucket of limes I took off my potted citrus recently. They're a mix of Key and Tahiti (Persian) limes. Most are riper than I'd normally pick them but we haven't been eating them fast enough so some of them went full ripe. I'll juice these out soon and freeze it. I have about that much more of Eureka lemons to harvest soon as well for some of that good wintertime lemonade.


Last weekend the Kinder Major and I recovered the hoophouse so I've been prepping the container citrus for the move. They've been cleaned up, pruned, fertilized, and will soon be given a good copper spray to see if I can beat the greasy spot that afflicts the Key limes every winter. On the sunny days the hoophouse can be rather humid which seems to promote the disease. I also have three citrus to be repotted for which I have been prepping some coconut husks and coir.


This evening I mixed some nutrients into the chips below and repotted the citrus pictured above.


If you're growing citrus in containers or just about any other sort of largish perennials in pots these chips are worth searching for. I have to go all the way to Orlando to get them and they need some prep work before they are ready to use, but compared to all of the other media I've ever used they are easily the best. It's nearly impossible to over water yet they don't dry out rapidly either. They're fairly slow to break down as well compared to other media such as pine bark nuggets. Sure wish they were easier to find though.

The winter garden is coming along well. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, elephant garlic, and onions. As soon as they are a little bigger I'll get a photo. I need to get out there and weed out the sprouting oats that the chickens missed when they were still in the garden.

Speaking of the birds the new flock are laying like champions and the old flock is coming out of their molt so egg production is picking up nicely. This is especially good considering that I'm selling every decent egg we can produce.


Cogburn is still the boss of the old flock and the top cock over all. He's in the middle of his molt at the moment though which is why he is sans tail feathers. Most of his hens are about done, but there are still a few running around a little bare.

This is Leroy and some of his ladies and the first tractor in the background. At the moment I have him and eleven hens in their and will add three more when I have the birds.

This is Jaques le Coq with some of his ladies. He is the last of the Cuckoo Maran roosters that I started with from last year and has matured into a handsome bird. His flock are in the second tractor which you can see here:

The focus is a little soft due to the rain fogging up the camera. It is essentially the same design as the first tractor with the only real differences being in the way I put it together which makes it easier to move. I also used a tarp cover rather than the tin that I used on the first tractor. As much as I like it, the metal runs the weight up too much for easy moves.

Here's the second tractor again with a corner of the first one in the foreground. That's Leroy in the background under the persimmon tree with some of his hens. On the right is Noodles, one of the bachelor roosters and a real scamp that all of the flock bosses have to keep an eye on for trying to jump one of their hens! In the foreground is Picky, also one of the bachelors. He's a bit better behaved towards the ladies, but if no one happens to be looking well...

And lastly there is Fred Barred Rock. He's a handsome boy and quite personable. As soon as I have another tractor built he'll be promoted out of the bachelor pad. We have been rather lucky to have so many roosters and none of them being aggressive towards the kids. In fact they're all rather well behaved now that they've settled their pecking order issues among themselves.

So in spite of being a somewhat rocky year we have a lot to be thankful for, most of all we are thankful that the children are growing well, we're all healthy, employed and living in our own home. There are a lot of folks who can't say that.

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving too.

.....Alan.

Before the Fall

Last Friday Fall finally arrived here in Florida. The night time lows dipped into the fifties for a few nights and the day time highs have been staying at 90 or below mostly. It was time to get with it if I was going to get any cool season stuff planted.

The first photo is going to be the cool season garden. If you can make out the little orange flags they mark off the area (click the photo for a larger version as usual). I never plant as large a cool season garden as I do the warm season stuff and this year will be still smaller as I hope to be busy with some home repairs and improvements so won't have time to fool with a bigger one. Still should get at least five good rows in. The chicken manure laced shredded paper I forked out of the hen house last weekend largely disappears once it's tilled in though you can still see bits and pieces just yet. This coming weekend I hope to finish the second chicken tractor so I can split the new flock between the two then move them both out into the pasture where I want them until the winter forage is ready sometime in December or whenever we finally get our first frost.

The second photo is the corn patch. It hasn't been tilled in over two years and the chickens being in there for months had really caused the grass growth to take off so getting that sod well tilled turned into a real grudge match. The new knee brace worked well so my knee isn't bothering me at all tonight. It's my forearms that feel like I went best two out of three arm wrestling a gorilla! I did eventually get the whole thing done front to back then side to side to bust the sod up. There wasn't a trace of moisture in the dirt.

Weekend after next I'll spread the lime on it that I forgot to put down before I started today then till it one more time then broadcast the winter forage mix I'm planting for the chickens. It's a deer feed plot mix of rye, oats, and wheat, all varieties known to do well in Florida. I wanted to add some winter legumes, but when I wrote my extension agent for suggestions he laughed. The perils of living on the sand ridge it seems. I'm sure they'll be happy with the green feed they get.

I'll keep the birds in there until after our average last frost date by which time we should have some green stuff growing out in the orchard and pasture. Once that passes I'll move them out, turn up the corn patch then plant it to... corn! I'm hoping that a winter of 45 birds worth of chicken flickin's will be sufficient that I won't have to do much fertilizing. Of course I'll have to battle the squirrels and coons like last time, but I intend to launch a few preemptive strikes over the winter towards that end.

Vegetable gardenwise I'm thinking mustards, turnips, Vidalia type onions, and I'm going to try carrots again. Our winter weather last year was so non-typical that I don't think they really got a fair chance to perform.

.....Alan.

A-pear-ances can be deceiving

It's trying hard to be fall out there, it really is. It's just that the weather is not cooperating. The days are growing shorter. I have to do the morning chores in the dark now before I go to work. There is a different feel to the air. But it's still hitting 90 about every day, it's still humid, and (thankfully) it's raining fairly often now. Fall has been temporarily postponed until a date to be announced.

Warm weather or not life goes on. Arboreal thieves made off with my pears this year, but my brother's wife gifted me with three bags of sand pears that a friend had given her. They were dead ripe and going soft so I elected to make pear butter. I quartered the fruit then cooked them soft Friday night. Saturday before heading out to the Kinder Major's soccer game I ran them through the Victorio strainer to remove the seeds, skins, and grit cells and this morning I started cooking them down.

There was about a pint shy of two gallons of juice and pulp when I started and when I finished there was fourteen half-pints (3.5 quarts) of what tastes like the best pear butter I've made to date. I believe between the muscadine grape, strawberry, and peachs jams and this pear butter we're set for the year for biscuit and toast spread and some for Christmas gifts to boot.

If I'm lucky I'll receive another bag or three of pears this coming weekend too that I'll turn into plain old sauce. We're nearly out of the last batch.

The old hen flock have finally decided to get around to molting. They've been needing to for two months. Feathers all over the place as their new suits grow in. Hopefully egg production will back up again as well. The new flock are pretty well into their first laying cycle. Still about half of them laying pullet eggs but they're getting bigger by the day.

Didn't get the hen house cleaned out today like I wanted. Just as I was finishing up with the pear butter I looked out to see that it was raining so I started making the bread for the week. Naturally once I was committed the rain stopped, but that's Florida weather for you.

Fall and Winter will surely come one day and I'm growing more impatient by the day...

.....Alan.

The Low Down on Grass Raised Eggs

The folks over to The Mother Earth News have been compiling some interesting data on the nutritional differences between grass-raised (for real free range) eggs and the standard factory eggs.

Meet Real Free-Range Eggs (Link to the article on the TMEN site.)

October/November 2007
Meet Real Free-Range Eggs
By Cheryl Long and Tabitha Alterman

The new results are in: Eggs from hens allowed to peck on pasture are a heck of a lot better than those from chickens raised in cages!

Most of the eggs currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion we have reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project. Our testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

These amazing results come from 14 flocks around the country that range freely on pasture or are housed in moveable pens that are rotated frequently to maximize access to fresh pasture and protect the birds from predators. We had six eggs from each of the 14 pastured flocks tested by an accredited laboratory in Portland, Ore. The chart at the end of this article shows the average nutrient content of the samples, compared with the official egg nutrient data from the USDA for “conventional” (i.e. from confined hens) eggs. The chart lists the individual results from each flock.

The 2007 results are similar to those from 2005, when we tested eggs from four flocks all managed as truly free range. But our tests are not the first to show that pastured eggs are more nutritious — see “Mounting Evidence” below for a summary of six studies that all indicated that pastured eggs are richer in nutrients than typical supermarket eggs.

We think these dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely the result of the different diets of birds that produce these two types of eggs. True free-range birds eat a chicken’s natural diet — all kinds of seeds, green plants, insects and worms, usually along with grain or laying mash. Factory farm birds never even see the outdoors, let alone get to forage for their natural diet. Instead they are fed the cheapest possible mixture of corn, soy and/or cottonseed meals, with all kinds of additives — see “The Caged Hen’s Diet” below.

The conventional egg industry wants very much to deny that free-range/pastured eggs are better than eggs from birds kept in crowded, inhumane indoor conditions. A statement on the American Egg Board’s Web site says “True free-range eggs are those produced by hens raised outdoors or that have daily access to the outdoors.”

Baloney. They’re trying to duck the issue by incorrectly defining “true free-range.” And the USDA isn’t helping consumers learn the truth, either: “Allowed access to the outside” is how the USDA defines “free-range.” This inadequate definition means that producers can, and do, label their eggs as “free-range” even if all they do is leave little doors open on their giant sheds, regardless of whether the birds ever learn to go outside, and regardless of whether there is good pasture or just bare dirt or concrete outside those doors!

Both organizations need to come clean. True free-range eggs are those from hens that range outdoors on pasture, which means they can do what’s natural — forage for all manner of green plants and insects.

The Egg Board statement goes on to say: “The nutrient content of eggs is not affected by whether hens are raised free-range or in floor or cage operations.”

Again, that is hogwash. They think they can simply ignore the growing body of evidence that clearly shows that eggs are superior when the hens are allowed to eat their natural diet. Or maybe they think it’s OK to mislead the public to protect egg producers’ bottom line.

After we published our first report about the high nutrient levels in pastured eggs, the Egg Nutrition Council questioned our “suggestion” that pastured eggs were better in their Aug. 8, 2005, newsletter:

“Barring special diets or breeds, egg nutrients are most likely similar for egg-laying hens, no matter how they are raised.” There’s that double-speak, again: “Barring special diets ...” Since when are diets not a part of how chickens are raised? Come on, people, we’ve cited six studies (see "Mounting Evidence", below) showing that pastured eggs are better. The best you can say is “most likely” this evidence is wrong? Cite some science to support your assertions! The U.S. Poultry and Egg Association offers the same misleading statement on its Web site:

“What are free-range eggs? Free-range eggs are from hens that live outdoors or have access to the outdoors. The nutrient content of eggs from free-range hens is the same as those from hens housed in production facilities with cages.”

It’s amazing what a group can do with a $20 million annual budget. That’s what factory-farm egg producers pay to fund the AEB each year to convince the public to keep buying their eggs, which we now believe are substandard.

The Egg Board’s misleading claims about free-range/pastured eggs pervade the Internet, even though the Board has been aware of the evidence about the nutrient differences at least since our 2005 report. We found virtually the same (unsubstantiated) claim denying any difference in nutrient content on Web sites of the American Council on Science and Health (an industry-funded nonprofit), the Iowa Egg Council, the Georgia Egg Commission, the Alberta (Canada) Egg Producers, Hormel Foods, CalMaine Foods and NuCal Foods (“the largest distributor of shell eggs in the Western United States”).

But the most ridiculous online comments turned up at www.supermarketguru.com, a site maintained by a “food trends consultant.” It says:

“FREE RANGE: Probably the most misunderstood of all claims, it’s important to note that hens basically stay near their food, water and nests, and the idea of a happy-go-lucky bird scampering across a field is far from the natural way of life. The claim only means that the hens have access to the outdoors, not that they avail themselves of the opportunity. The hens produce fewer eggs so they are more expensive; higher product costs add to the price of the eggs. The nutrient content is the same as other eggs.”

If you’ve ever been around chickens, you know that whoever wrote that hasn’t. Chickens will spend almost their entire day ranging around a property scratching and searching for food. Even as tiny chicks, they are naturally curious and will begin eating grass and pecking curiously at any insects or even specks on the walls of their brooder box. “Scampering across a field,” looking for food, is precisely their natural way of life.

Supermarket Guru did get one thing right, though. Free-range/pastured eggs are likely to be more expensive because production costs are higher. As usual, you get what you pay for. If you buy the cheapest supermarket eggs, you are not only missing out on the valuable nutrients eggs should and can contain, you are also supporting an industrial production system that treats animals cruelly and makes more sustainable, small-scale egg production difficult.

You can raise pastured chickens easily right in your back yard — see our recent articles about how to do it here. Or you can find pastured eggs at local farmstands and farmers markets, or sometimes at the supermarket. Tell the store manager you want eggs from pastured hens, and encourage the manager to contact local producers. To find pastured producers near you, check out www.eatwild.com or www.localharvest.com

== == ==

Click on the Mother Earth News link at the top of this post to see the breakdown chart of the Free-range EggTest Results, 2007.

Some very suggestive evidence that not only do grass raised eggs look and taste better but they actually are better nutritionally as well.

.....Alan.

The Torpid Season

Every year when June rolls around our annual North Florida dry spell draws to a close as our rainy season (usually) begins and we enter what I have come to call the Torpid Season. The work needing to be done goes on as it always does, but my get up and go gets up and goes to some place cooler and drier. My desire to work outside slowly declines until more pleasant weather returns typically sometime in October. This year has been no different other than the erratic rainfall we've been experiencing.

But life goes on whether it's hotter than blue blazes and sticky humid or not. I haven't put a blog update up since June so I cannot any longer put it off. Maybe by the time I've run through the accumulated photos the weather will have abated enough that I'll feel like doing something outside so I can take some new ones!

When last we met I had just papered the henyard with bags and bags of shredded office paper. Three months later and you'd have to search hard to find any trace of it. A few rains, copious quantities of chicken flickin's and that paper composts right away to nothing. In another couple of weeks I'll shovel out the henyard and the roost house then spread it all on the fall garden. The new flock has been hard at work debugging the area for me so it's ready to turn up now.

Speaking of the new flock they started laying about a month or so ago. Here's a photo of the nest boxes with three of the hens doing what comes natural so that we now collect about a dozen or so eggs a day. I expect that number will rise for a while yet until we're gathering about a dozen and a half a day. Most of the hen fruit are still pullet sized (small), but they're gradually growing larger. I expect they will eventually come in around size large.


Here's an outside shot of the original Mk. I Poultry Schooner. Thus far I'm pretty happy with the design but for the excessive weight the tin contributes and the cross-members of the frame being a trifle low to the ground so that they sometimes catch high spots. Both problems I am rectifying in the Mk. II schooner which is now about three quarters complete in the workshop.


I have plans to build a total of five schooners - three for laying hens, one for turkeys (and maybe geese) with the last being for my daughter's 4H birds that we'll probably start researching this Fall. At the moment she's thinking Silkies. They're a silly looking bird but I have to admit after a while they do grow on one. I want to keep them separated from our other birds for biosecurity reasons. The permanent hen yard will become the permanent bachelor pad allowing me to eliminate the temporary one I put up last month which I'll discuss below.

Here's a shot of the new flock out scratching for their breakfast. They're in the corn patch side of the garden. Along about the beginning of October I'll move them into the orchard and pasture so I can till the corn patch preparatory to seeding it to winter rye. Some time in December when the other forage has been frost killed I'll move them back in so they'll have green feed for the cool season. Along about the end of March I'll move them out again so I can prep the ground for the year's corn crop after they've fertilized as well as cleaning up a fair part of the insects and weed seed to be found.


There are two new birds in that flock that I haven't mentioned before as they came on the scene since the last time I updated the blog. One of my egg customers asked me if I could take in a couple of birds that belonged to a friend. To my surprise she lives in one of the oldest subdivisions in Gainesville very nearly a stone's throw from the University president's house. She's kept hens for years but finally ended up with a neighbor who complained so felt compelled to find them a new home. I am now become the repository for unwanted chickens it seems.

So, this is Stella the Speckled Sussex. She's the first Sussex I've ever had and now that I've seen her I wish I'd gotten some years ago as she's right pretty. A good big bird too.


And this is her companion Buffy the Buff Orpington who is a still bigger bird. In fact I think she'd give Cogburn a run for his money in the weight department. She's the biggest bird in the new flock, but gentle soul that she is she's near the bottom of the pecking order I'm afraid. It took a day or so for that to get hashed out so they now pretty much coexist peacefully though she doesn't cotton too much to the boss bird getting fresh with her!


Speaking of the Boss Bird here he is. He's not full grown yet but is showing signs that he's going to develop into a pretty boy. He's as randy as you'd expect of a young rooster, but isn't too hard on the hens so I left him with the flock. I haven't decided on a name for him yet, but being the Boss Bird he should have one. I'm sure something will suggest itself presently.


And what became of the other boys in the flock? Well, when you have a bunch of teenage boys with too much time on their hands and nothing much to do with it they quickly made themselves a nuisance to all concerned. Matters got to the point that half the hens didn't want to come off the roost during the day which is no way to run a poultry operation so the time came for them to get a place of their own. They're now all in the Bachelor Pad.


It's a dumpy looking place, but that's because I was about to take it apart for salvageable materials when I decided I needed to move the boys out so it was pressed into service again this one last time. They're not too happy with the situation, but most have resigned themselves to it. When I first moved them one of them would fly over the fence each day trying to get back to the ladies. They had enough smarts to fly over one fence, but not enough smarts to figure out they had to fly over the second fence to get back to their old flock so they'd spend all day getting no love and no water until sundown when I'd chase them back to where they belonged. Except for the Maran from the old flock the rest elected not to give it a second go.

I moved the extra roosters from the old flock into the Bachelor Pad as well as they were running the hens there ragged just like the young ones were doing. There's just Cogburn and the little Silkie cock Shadow in there now and the hens seem happier for it. I tried to move the Cuckoo Maran birds one night only to have a misadventure which ended up with me losing both of them in the dark. Their barred feather pattern blends in very well with the brush at night! I was able to recover one the next morning, but his brother got himself eaten, probably by a coon judging from the feathers I found strewn all over the orchard. I have developed a strong dislike for coons over the years. The one remaining Maran still tries to get back to his old flock from time to time (those Frenchies!), but being a chicken he's pretty easy to catch by simply waiting for the sun to go down. He'll get the message one of these days I suppose. Or finally annoy me enough to receive a dinner invite!

In the next couple of days I'll try to get something up about the fruits of the harvest this year.

.....Alan.