February Freeze

Junior the Rooster that believes he is a duck on the warm compost pile

 February on Whidbey Island is usually a mix of cloudy days, some rain and usually two weeks of spring like weather.  This year we have had the clouds and rain, but instead of the spring like weather we have had snow, ice and frigged weather.  Last February we had 1.5 inches of rain at our farm, so far this year we are almost twice that.  Two days ago we had four inches of snow followed by sunny weather that melted most of it and allowed me to put some finishing touches on the newly expanded buck house, with that afternoon getting another three inches of snow.  The snow was so bad the buses refused to go north of Freeland so I had to take the 4x4 truck into town to pick up Pam on her way home from work.  I don't mind driving in the snow with the exception of crazy drivers - tailgating is popular in the snow and ice with many drivers along with passing in no passing zones.  This morning we got down to 16 degrees when I went out to change water and feed the goats.  Oh my!

Our 9 year old peach tree after pruning

Last week the buds on the peach tree were getting huge so I pruned it.  My plan was to wait until Saturday March 12th because I am doing a pruning class/workshop for South Whidbey Tilth at our farm that morning, but with the large buds I did it anyway.  Now with this freeze I'm sure everything will slow down - probably could have waited.  Every year for the past few I teach pruning of fruit trees here at our farm in late February to early March in conjunction with a series of organic food growing classes SW Tilth puts on.  With our 22 fruit trees, most of which are semi-dwarf to full dwarf, and mature, this is a good place to show how to prune.  I am a certified arborist and learned to prune fruit trees from a retired WSU professor 12 years ago - hands on at a farm with over 200 fruit trees.  If you talk to 20 fruit tree experts, you will get 22 different ways to prune.  The system I was taught works very well and is very easy and fast.

From 10 am to noon, I will take the 20 or so folks around our orchard and demonstrate my technique, also talking about organic pest and disease control, along with how to fertilize.  Then after lunch I will prune all of my trees in about two hours, with anyone that wants hands-on experience welcome to stay.

This Saturday I am going to demonstrate fruit tree pruning to a group call Gleeful Gleaners, a group of people on the south part of Whidbey that pick fruit from trees that would normally just fall to the ground and take that fruit to the local food banks.  From one of the leaders of this group: "Despite winging it, our start-up year rustled up 53 volunteers, 23 tree fruit donors (some with numerous trees) and yielded 2107 pounds of fruit channeled to people in need of it."  I believe 90% of the fruit grown by homeowners falls and rots on the ground while these same people go to the store and buy fruit grown 1000s of miles away.  We use 100% of the fruit we grow, freezing and drying what we don't eat fresh.

Our Garlic coming up through the February snow

Winter Projects

Winter is almost over and my projects are just beginning to be completed.  The highest priority was to get the buck barn larger.  I converted a covered deck that we used when we lived in a travel trailer while building our house to a home for the bucks.  The structure was about 12 feet long by 8 feet wide with the east side open.  Besides being too small to loaf around, rain would come in the open side keeping the half the ground area wet.  With our very wet winter this year our bucks have developed hoof problems.  We need more dry space for them.

The expanded buck house still under construction

My solution was to expand their barn another 10 x 12 feet, enclosing the west side and leaving the north side open.  We get some cold winds from the north but the rain usually comes from the southeast.  I have some left over plexiglass from my redesign of our cold frames so I will put a couple of windows on the new west wall to give a little more light in there.  Today I'll order the metal roof (right now I have plywood and tar-paper on it) and get a few more boards.  The plywood walls on the south and west sides will be covered with alder saplings that I will cut from our forest.

Pam putting down fresh straw in the boy's area

My next project is to rebuild the cold frames.  We have been using plexiglass for the lights for the past two years, before that we used plastic but that only lasts a year before needing to be replaced. The plexiglass is expensive (over $35 for a square) and when the wind blows our lids start bouncing and they break.  This year we bought a product called Sollex.  They use it for greenhouses.  It comes in 4' widths and is about $6 per linear foot.  So each light costs me about $6, and it should last 20+ years, it's light and unbreakable.

The new cold frame "light"

We ordered our 2011 chicken crop and they will be delivered April 20th.  After rebuilding the cold frames I will build a new chicken coop.  This one will be 24' x 8', with nesting boxes and three brooding sections.  One brooding section will be for turkeys, one for meat birds and one for each year's new flock of laying hens.  I'll build it about 2 feet up off the ground so rats don't live under it and tall enough so we can park our garden cart at the door and be able to rake the litter directly into the cart.  I should begin construction by the end of this month.

Winter has been long, cold and wet, and I am looking forward to warmer and dryer days ahead.  Not much snow this winter but a lot of rain with the temperatures in the upper 30's.

Our Livestock Guardian Dog

Pooh Bear is our 2 1/2 year old livestock guardian dog, a Great Pyrenees.  We have a small herd of Nubian dairy goats and our concern for them is the coyote and other peoples' dogs.  Before we got Pooh Bear I would lock the goats inside the barn at night, nighttime being when coyotes are most active around our farm.  We have our pasture fenced with a five foot woven fence, with chicken wire along the bottom stapled to the ground.  When we were building our house we lived in a large travel trailer and built the fence to keep our two house dogs in, so we figured it would also keep the stray dogs and coyotes out.

Pooh Bear, our Livestock Guardian Dog

We chose the Great Pyrenees because of his history as a Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD) and his friendly nature with humans.  Some of the other LGD's are scary and we didn't want that at our little farm.  On large farms the Great Pyrenees usually guards over 160 acres so his tendency is to roam.  Our goats, always believing that the plant growth on the other side of the fences has a better flavor, tended to climb on the fence to eat what was growing on the other side and would knock down the fence.  The goats were afraid to climb over the fallen fence, but not Pooh Bear.  He would then go wandering.  Our solution was to put an electrical wire along the top; we no longer have that problem and it gives us an additional layer of protection.

I had to string a lower wire along the fence that borders the gravel road as neighbors walk their dogs off-leash and it would set Pooh Bear off.  I observed him throwing himself against the fence in a frenzy and feared he might break through.

Pooh Bear watching over his herd of Nubian Goats

 Pooh Bear has two different barks.  When he sees one of our barn cats or a deer the goats pay no attention to his bark, but when he hears a coyote and barks, all of the goats run to a place behind him, watching their protector intensely.  It's really awesome to watch.  We disbud our kid goats (a process of removing the new horn growth so the goats don't have horns when they grow).  We use a goat farmer in Oak Harbor to do that for us.  One year when we returned with the kid that was just disbudded its mother rejected the kid and wouldn't have anything to do with him.  Pooh Bear became his best friend with the two of them always seen together.

Pooh Bear as a puppy and his little friend

 We have a friend that owns an 180 acre ranch in north central Washington State that is very rugged.  They raise fiber goats with no fences and use one Great Pyrenees to protect their herd.  He tells the story of his dog killing a courgar that came after their goats.  So we asked him to assist us in buying a puppy.  The first day I brought the puppy home and introduced him to our goats the dog and I were walking on an old log, showing the goats that we could do that also.  A large chunk of the log split off and a nest of bees swarmed out, stinging both of us.  I looked at our poor puppy, rolling on the ground swatting at the bees and thought of Winnie the Pooh - from then on he was called Pooh Bear.  It's a great name for him as he looks like a bear (he weights 120 lbs and looks larger with his fluffy hair) but to humans he is just a Pooh.

Pooh Bear spends 99% of his time living with the goats - his time off is every evening when we take him for a walk (on leash) with our other two dogs.  We will often see him grooming the goats, licking them, especially around the face, ears, and urogenital region.  I have often seen one of our goats go up to him and stomp her foot to wake him up and he'll start licking her leg.  On the bad side, when a kid is not feeling well he tries to help and he is too rough.  He may paw at them and has been known to pull on their ears, trying to get them out of a tight spot.  This year when the kids are first put in the pasture with their mothers we plan on putting Pooh Bear in an adjoining pasture with our bucks.

Pooh Bear resting while the herd is out browsing in the pasture

LGDs are  hardy animals and often do not use a dog house or shelter, even in inclement weather.  They generally prefer to sleep in the open, somewhere high where they can easily observe their surroundings and often, even when it is snowing, I will see Pooh Bear sleeping out in the open.

The Ugly Duckling & Other Things

Junior, our younger Rhode Island Red rooster, was hatched out early last summer by one of our Muscovy ducks, the chicken egg being laid in one of our duck nests.  The duck mother raised him like one of her own.  We thought that was cute.  When he grew up we would often see him hanging around with the other ducks, but at night he always goes into the chicken coop to roost.  Now that he is sexually mature he seems to only be attracted to the ducks!  If we end up with some strange looking ducklings this summer we'll know why.

Junior, the Ugly Duckling all grown up

Last year was a wet one for us.  Our usual rainfall for the year is around 18 inches.  2010 brought a total of 25 inches at our farm.  Seattle, about 50 miles to the south, usually has about 36 inches, 2010 was 47.  January of this year is a little more than half gone but we are almost to the level of 2010, our wettest month last year with more rain in the forecast.  It has also been colder than normal, with snow several times this winter.  The cold mornings are hard on me as I have to break up the ice in the water troughs for the animals - but it is nice walking on frozen mud rather than sinking in it.

Winter is our garden seed ordering time.  We spent an afternoon going through our leftover seeds, discarding all of the seeds over two years old, and made an inventory of what we had.  We get several seed catalogs in the mail each year but made the decision to go totally organic again this year.  Most of the seed companies have a few varieties that are certified organically grown, but High Mowing Organic Seeds are 100% certified organic.  We have used them for the past two years and have been happy with our results.  If you pay before January 1st, you receive a 10% discount.  So we figure out what we need, make a payment, and then order later.  We received our seeds a couple of days ago.  Order early so we get everything we want before they sell out.  We save our runner bean seeds from the year before (I have been doing that for 12 years), same with our garlic and potatoes.  I'm sure there are other seeds I could collect but time is limited.   www.highmowingseeds.com if you are interested.  I'm told that there is little difference (if any) between organically grown seed and non-organic, but I'm not interested in supporting the non-substantial growing methods used by many of the large seed companies.  With certified organic seeds I know the farmer is working the soil correctly.  I also know I'm not getting GMO seeds.

Today I will order our chickens for the year.  For meat birds we will go once again with the Red Cornish Cross.  We like this bird as a broiler as they have high livability, strong legs and take only three months to grow to maturity.  The White Cornish Cross grows so much faster (seven weeks to maturity) but are very dumb.  They have leg problems and won't eat bugs or grass and have been know to die rather than walk three feet to the water.  They are best grown in a cage with their water and food in front of them.  We want our chickens to have the freedom to range.  I have also read that pasture raised meat is so much better for you than just grain fed.  They say even pork is healthy if they have open range.  Being we only raise one crop per year the extra time growing is not an issue - and I'm told that from birth to the freezer both varieties consume about the same amount of grain.  I can't get the Red Cornish chicks locally so will order them from Dunlap Hatchery and will pick them up from the post office in mid-April.

We also need to replace our laying chickens this year.  I ordered the materials to build a larger chicken coop for the layers and need to get it built by mid-April.  Egg production has fallen from 14 eggs per day to about 5, yet they consume the same amount of feed.  We will butcher all of the hens this fall when our new girls start laying.  This year we going to buy the Black Sex Link, also known as the Bovan Nera.  They are very good layers of brown eggs.  The hens are mostly black with a red coloring primarily around the neck.  The males are black and white barred.  They are a cross between the Barred Rock and the Rhode Island Red.  With the new coop I'll have room to add new chickens each year.  By changing varieties each year we'll know who is ready to become stewing hens, keeping the hens for only three years.

Days are getting longer

It might not be noticed by most people, we, because the farm functions by the light, do.  I'm going out earlier to feed the goats and let out the birds in the morning, and going out later in the evening.  Our ducks also know the difference and have begun laying eggs again.  They start laying about now, peaking late winter through July, then start falling off again until they stop in the early fall.

We still have snow on the ground from last Wednesdays light snow fall.  Days have seen temperatures in the low 30's (F) and nights have been in the low 20's.  My morning chore time is mostly breaking up ice and getting the animals water.

Pam on Christmas Day in Tacoma

We had fun these past two weeks with Pam off for Winter Break from her teaching job.  We took a short overnight trip to Cama State Park on Camano Island, spent Christmas day at my daughter's house in Tacoma with most of the family, and did our annual hike at Ebey Landing in Coupeville.  Nearly every day we walked through the South Whidbey State Park that borders our farm - beautiful trails through the old growth forest.  New Years Eve we went to Lynnwood to watch the twin granddaughters so my son and his wife could go out.

Ebey Landing from the upper trail

I pruned the raspberry patch last week.  I have read many different ways to prune raspberries, tried several methods, and believe the best way is to cut out last years flowering canes (I have June producers) and wrap the remaining canes along a horizontal wire.  June baring raspberries fruit on last years new canes.  The new canes that grow up during the growing season are call "Prima Canes" (first year canes), the fruiting canes are called "Flora Canes" as they flower and then set fruit.  After the Flora Canes fruit they die in the fall and need to be cut off at the ground.  The Prima Canes then become your Flora Canes, and new Prima Canes come up and grow three to six feet during the year.  Most pruning methods have you cutting the old Prima Canes in the winter but I have found I get more fruit if I don't cut them at all.  Most of the plant's energy is used to make fruit instead of new cane/fruit.  I saw some farmers doing this and it has worked well for us.

Raspberries Patch ready for mulching

A few weeds needed to be removed and then we mulched with bedding straw from the goat barn.

Score-Card of What to look for in a Homestead

I've adapted this from the classic book written in the 1940's "Have More" Plan by Ed and Carolyn Robinson.

I LOCATION Sellers' or Real Estate Broker's Name and Phone Number   Distance to your job __________________________________ Commuting Expense __________________________________ Time to Commute ___________ Commute Expense ________ Condition of Roads in winter ___________________________ Distance to Schools or Bus Stop _________________________ Distance to Church _______ to Shopping _________________ Telephone Available ___ Electricity ____  Mail ____________ II WATER SUPPLY City Water ___  Private Well ___  Community well ___ If other than large community well or city water, have the water tested by a state certified lab doing a water  bacteriological analysis.  On Whidbey Island the cost is $20 Pond or stream? _____________  Any wetlands? ______ III ELECTRICITY Is electricity to the property?  Living off the grid (on solar power or other) is difficult and expensive.  If buying raw land, what is the  distance to the power source?  Contact the local provider to  determine the cost to bring power to your building site. IV SEWAGE DISPOSAL Municipal ____ Septic Tank ____  Raw Land Perc ___ Don't purchase raw land without having the soils tested for a  septic perc (the ability for the soils to qualify for a state or  county approved septic system).  If purchasing a property with a septic system, have the tanks pumped and inspected prior to  closing on the property.  This cost is usually paid by the seller. V LAND Total Land Available ____________ Should be at least 3/4 acre of good, level land.  Total of 2 to 5  acres to include orchard, pasture, hay field, and land to grow some stock feed. VI OUT BUILDINGS Garage ____ Tool House ____ Workroom ____ Barn ____  Poultry House and/or Barn ____ Barn for dairy, rabits and poultry ideally should contain a minimum of 500 square ft. floor area. VII ORCHARD Apple ____  Peach ____  Cherry ____ Plum ____  Grape ____ Rhaspberries ____  Strawberries ____  Blackberries ____ Blueberries ____  Asparagus ____  Rhubarb ____ An established orchard in good condition is worth money.  For a family of 4 this should contain: 5 apple, 3 pear, 1 peach,  2 cherry, 2 plum trees, 10 grape vines.  Small fruits: 50 raspberries, 100 strawberries, 6 blueberry shrubs. VIII OTHER Shade trees ________________________________________________ Fencing _____________________________________________________ Good fencing is worth considerable) Length of growing season _______ What is the micro-climate of the property?  Is it in a hole that will frost early?  Ask the neighbors. Kind of Neighbors _____________________________________ Meet the neighbors, talk to them and ask about the neighborhood Is extra land adjoing the property available? What is the property tax on this property? ________________ Any restrictions against raising livestock, etc. Are there any CC&Rs? (Coventants, Conditions, and Restrictions that run with the land) Assessed Value of the Property _________________________ Down Payment needed ________________________________ Estimated cost to repair ________________________________ IX HOUSE List out your ideal want list for a house

Twas the night before Christmas... - by Juli Fisher

… fog lay over our land.

All was quiet and calm, like a sweet little lamb.

The chickens were tucked in, their heads out of sight.The cats were all in the house, in their beds for the night

I was wrapping a few gifts, some last minute buys.

Bob was already in bed, he’s so healthy and wise.

As I put on the last tape, tied my last piece of yarn.

I heard some noises outside, they came from the barn I thought of that old poem, wondered if it could be 

Old St Nick himself came to pay a visit to me I donned my jacket and mittens, a hat on my head 

And braved the cold night instead of heading to bed

The air was so crisp, the stars shown so bright

I could see all the trees outlined in moonlight

I heard some voices I thought, but how could that be 

There were goats and some coyotes, otherwise only me

Inside the warm barn the goats seemed to be sleeping

But all came alive when they caught me a-peeping

There was Lily and Lilac and Poppy a-pile

Velvet all by herself, which is really her style 

 Rocky grunted and butted his way through the herd

But the voices I’d heard, well, not a word

Then the littlest one, Willow, stood up and said “Mom!”

In English! In words! It hit me like a bomb!

I looked about at the goats, and they all looked to me

I said “I can understand you? How can this be?”

Then Amelia came forward, the wise and sweet one

And said “We’ve always been speaking, it’s what we’ve always done.

But it took a Christmas miracle for you to really hear

To understand what we say when you’re with us out here

We each have our thoughts on our lives here with you

Now you can understand what we want you to do

Annie wants you to feed her, just peanuts all day

Cypress wants you to hug her in your own special way

Filbert wants you to stop shoving meds down his throat

Fiona wants you to tend and to brush her fine coat 

Willow knows she’s your sweetheart, your favorite pet

It’s ok, we all know she’s the cutest goat yet

Lilac’s a good doe, just frozen by fright She’s frightened of darkness, oh, and of light

Now Poppy we know is one special doe She’s very Zen, introverted, or maybe just slow The new babes are happy, we love them all well And we love you and Papa, in case you couldn’t tell

Now we must stop, you’ll no longer understand

When we call out and holler and make a demand

But you know what you know now about your goat herd

But you can’t tell a soul, no you can’t breathe a word

This is our little secret, so go back to your bed

And in the morning you’ll think this was all in your head.

Juli and I use to work together 15 years ago for a crazy person and became good friends.  She and her husband Bob have been raising goats and making cheese for many years.