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Muddy Valley Farm

~ Life on a tiny west coast hobby farm

Muddy Valley Farm

Monthly Archives: July 2018

Comfy Boots

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life

≈ 2 Comments

I think my Muck boots are finally done for. The most comfy, springy boots I have ever owned, they still cushion each step like a cloud. Toasty warm and waterproof in the rain/ice/snow, airy in the warmer weather, I love how they go on and off hands free with the help of the back door boot jack. But they are disintegrating.

 

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After more than five years of daily use, the neoprene is as parched as the Gobi desert and the seams are splitting. Left boot sprang its first leak this past spring but I coped. It IS possible to get through most puddles with one good boot and a little invention.

With no puddles in the barnyard for a while now, and none expected anytime soon, I know I can make this pair last a couple more months. But in October, or maybe November, whenever the rains start in earnest, I will have to retire my faithful old footwear and pull out the shiny new pair I got online, exactly the same style, size and colour as the old ones. “Why fix what ain’t broken?” I thought as I ordered them.

I am looking forward to pulling out my new boots. When I think of them, waiting in their box in the laundry room, I get a hint of that same shivery excited feeling I used to get as a small child, when Mom would give me September’s new school shoes. Happiness can truly be as uncomplicated as a new pair of shoes, no matter what age you are.

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I Pulled My Garlic

21 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening, Seasons

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We have been in our muddy valley now for more than twenty years, and last week, as I do each July, I pulled my garlic.

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I hung it to dry in the carport and in a couple weeks I will sort it, clean it, save the best 100 bulbs for seed, and share the rest, about 450 bulbs, among my immediate family’s three households. We usually collectively run out just before I pull the next year’s crop. My family never buys garlic.

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I gift bulbs to friends, and extended family, and usually donate a few to whichever young gardeners are starting their own garlic patches that year. Sometimes I tie it on to Christmas gifts; garlic bows. Everybody I know loves garlic.

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In October, I plant my garlic, always in a different spot than last year. Garlic likes a fresh bed each year as much as I like fresh bed sheets each week.

Garlic is easy to grow, the hardest part for me always is getting the timing right. In remembering to plant in October, not a typical garden planting time to my way of thinking. Sometimes Halloween sneaks right by and I find myself planting in November, but my garlic never seems to mind.

I mulch with plenty of leaves, manure and a sprinkling of wood ash, fence against bug-hunting chicken claws and clumsy horse, donkey and deer hooves (no one eats it, they just dig it up or step on it), then leave it alone to work its natural magic.

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By December, spindly new shoots are poking bravely through the leaf litter, pale green and spiky, and before I know it we are well into the new year and my garlic is a couple feet tall. 

In late spring, when the scapes (flower buds) appear, I nip them off as quick as I can. This encourages big bulbs. Fresh scapes are delicious in any dish that likes garlic and as I fill my big basket, I savour the smell and taste of the spicy hot juice dripping freely from the cut stems, raining on my hands and boot tops. Spring tonic. Some years I pulverize and freeze scapes in big flat patties, then break off frozen green chunks all year long to add to sauces and rub on roasts. Other years I chop them and freeze in big bags, so I can throw handfuls into whatever I am cooking. I always have too many scapes, so the chickens get some too.

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Garlic is the one crop I plant every single year without fail. It’s a perennial ritual, and, because I am me, as I plant, my mind goes for a wander. I reflect. On all the good and all the bad. All the stuff I saw coming a mile away and all the stuff I did not. And I wonder what scenes will play out this year by the time I pull my garlic, nine or ten months hence? Every year brings a few surprises, that’s for sure. Some good, and some not so much. But I’ve been lucky, more good than bad comes our way most years. 

“To every thing (turn turn turn) there is a season (turn turn turn), and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

Remember that old tune? My tall university student uncle left his Byrds tape behind after a summery leather-sandalled visit to our house on Darwin Avenue, in ‘69 or so. I listened to it lots as a preteen, playing it on my ‘portable’ cassette deck the size of a Kleenex box, before casting it aside for Led Zeppelin and the Stones. 

It comes to mind each year, as I hopefully, thoughtfully, plant my garlic.

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Tiny Chicken Finishes the Job

13 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life

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I am pleased to announce that Tiny hatched out all four of the eggs Miss Welsummer abandoned; two Legbars, a boy and a girl, and two black Copper Marans, sex unknown. Good job Tiny!

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Three healthy chicks had arrived by yesterday, but the little latecomer, a Marans who hatched sometime in the night, has spraddle leg. I have seen this before, it seems to happen sometimes with late hatchers, and if caught early, can be completely cured. Is it the late hatching that does it? Or does it delay hatching? Who knows.

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So off to the incubator room we went, little Marans and I, she protesting at the top of her voice, to apply a bandaid splint. Chances are good that she will make a full recovery.

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Happiness is…a Full Hayloft

10 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Jodi in Equines, Farm Improvements

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Nom nom nom, tasty new hay! The equines are pretty happy to have switched over to this year’s fragrant green crop. And we’re pretty happy to have a barn loft full of the stuff, capably grown and correctly cut, dried and baled by a local gentleman farmer with a very green thumb. Enough to take us through to next July for sure.

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The last few 2017 bales had turned yellow and dusty, as expected for year old hay. But no mold on the old hay this year for the first time in 20 years, a real accomplishment in our coastal rainforest climate. Why? It’s that new ridge vent the Acadian Customs boys installed last year with our barn’s nice new roof. Better ventilation (oh, and no more leaks!) has made all the difference!

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Tiny Chicken Saves the Day

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Produce

≈ Leave a comment

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Some hens never feel the need to raise a family, while other hens do and are great mothers. Then there are the “wanna-be’s”, who feel the urge but do a poor job of executing. They’re just a pain.

A proven broody is a valuable commodity around our muddy valley. Not only does she do all the work, she will usually accept any number of extra chicks quietly slipped under her after dark. As those of you who have spent any time at all scraping stinky chick poop out of basement brooders will agree, that’s a real plus!

Non-broody hens are pretty fine too, they don’t take time off like broodies do, they just keep popping out those delicious farm fresh eggs. In fact, I prefer that most of my hens be non-broody. I only need so many, especially because I find it impossible to say no to a wanna-be.

People “break” broodies all the time – discouraging them until they give up the idea of motherhood entirely. They house broodies in breezy wire cages hung from the ceiling, to cool off their nether regions; or plunge them in cool water several times a day. But I can never bring myself to deliberately break a brood. It just seems unfair to me, to let some hens raise families and others not. Every hen should have the opportunity to fulfill her procreative purpose.

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I doubt the chickens have as keen a sense of justice and equality as I do, but the wanna-be’s certainly benefit from my impracticality on this subject. A tried and true crazy chicken lady, I give everyone a chance. Or two.

A couple weeks ago, two year old Welsummer hen went broody for the first time. I already had more than a dozen hens either setting or raising young, plus I know that older wanna-be’s are often extra hopeless, but I pushed away my reservations and set her up anyway on a few Legbar and Marans eggs. She stuck like glue for the first twelve days, but started to get restless over the weekend. Today when I opened her broody box to feed and water, she flew the coop.

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There was a chance she only wanted to stretch her legs, to escape for a little sun like Daisy Mae in Dr. Seuss’s ‘Horton Hatches the Egg’, and that she’d return to her eggs after her holiday. But the broody box is a restricted entry facility, so I carefully moved her eggs next door to an open nest box. Maybe that would tempt her back to what she had already invested two weeks in. I knew the eggs would likely be fine no matter how much she dithered, I have seen hens let half-baked eggs get cold for up to 24 hours in mid-winter, and still got a decent hatch. Chickens are pretty amazing that way.

Hours later I returned to find Welsummer still hanging out in the sun, casually flipping dust through her feathers with her pal Lavender Orpington. “Well that’s that, she isn’t interested” I thought, feeling bad for the poor little chicks still a week away from hatch. But when I peeked into the nest box, there WAS a broody hen diligently setting on those eggs, my half-pint Tiny Chicken, an OEGB no bigger than a pigeon.

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With a look of intent concentration on her little face, she had flattened herself out to her utmost to cover those six eggs. That’s when I remembered that Tiny had been trying to set the past few days, but having no spare box to set her up in, I had been in denial about my little broody #14, and just kept scooping her up off whatever eggs she had gathered that day and setting her down outside the coop.

“Well,” I thought, “awesome, it looks like Tiny has saved the day,” and I carefully moved the eggs, and then Tiny, over into the broody box. An experienced mama, Tiny settled down right away again, the good little thing.

Tonight I candled, and removed two quitters, leaving her with a more manageable four eggs. In about a week, if all goes well, Tiny should get her reward!

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