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Muddy Valley Farm

~ Life on a tiny west coast hobby farm

Muddy Valley Farm

Monthly Archives: May 2019

Another Bit of Detox

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by Jodi in Equipment, Farm Life, Reduce, reuse, recycle

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Who isn’t more aware these days of toxic chemicals in our environment?  We are lucky to live on an island where the air is fresh and clean. And we make choices like using homemade soap and shampoo bars, eating homegrown, local and organic when we can, repairing rather than replacing, and avoiding buying new when secondhand will do perfectly well.

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Weaning myself off dryer sheets was on my list too, so the other night I sat down to research and then maybe order a set of those wool dryer balls online. Yup, the internet said they would work, especially if I put a couple safety pins in each.  They would shorten drying time, reduce static and pummel the clothes soft – all without coating our clothing and dryer in chemicals. $20 on Amazon, and $15 at Crappy Tire.

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Then I noticed a DIY link, and I was off!

I had a big ball of wool roving yarn in my stash, picked up for $3 at the secondhand store months before. It wasn’t labelled as wool, but a ten inch strand shrunk like crazy in hot water so I was pretty sure. First I rewound it into nine tennis ball sized balls, enough for me and any interested daughters. An old pair of knee highs and some bits of yarn and my balls were set up for felting. Unfelted, they would unravel in the dryer and make a real mess.

I put my wooly nylon caterpillars through our next two or three wash and dry cycles, then deconstructed them and voila. Homemade dryer balls. Pretty ones too, cream shot through with strands of purple and pink.

Well, that was easy. Bring on the next project! Oh, and anyone want a half gone box of dryer sheets?

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The Problem with Birds of a Feather

19 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life, Seasons

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Three hens sitting on eggs, five raising chicks and more to come. Yup, muddy valley hatching season is in full swing.

My genius plan this year?  Let the hens do the work. How? Each time I move a new broody to a private nest, I throw a few eggs in the incubator. Once her eggs hatch, I add a few more chicks. Chickens can’t count, and that’s what I’m counting on. I won’t hatch 400 chicks like last year – it was too much work anyway.

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Black Silkie has three Cream Legbars and an olive egger. Hers are almost old enough now to go in with the flock. Thank goodness, because I’ll need her brooder for new tenants soon.

Silver Pencilled Rock is an absolute star at taking new babies under her wing, her motley crew of eleven Silkies, Marans, Wyandottes and Easter Eggers ranges in age from three to six weeks – her chicks, my chicks and AF’s classroom chicks.

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White Silkie has eleven foster chicks too, a mix of Muddy Valley Farm breeds plus three little imports – Rhode Island Reds from Saskatchewan.

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Then we have Brownie the bantam Chocolate Cochin, into her fourth year raising two broods per year. Brownie hatched a legbar girl and a couple olive eggers and received six extra Marans.

We also have two Marans hens quietly getting on with it, due to hatch in a couple weeks.

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And then there’s the Silkie twins. Partridge Silkie One and Partridge Silkie Two are White Silkie’s daughters and first time broodies. Since Silkies are the best broodies on earth I didn’t foresee any issues, but PS#1 surprised me by presenting a new (to me) problem.

She hatched two silkies, white and partridge, and in the evening when I moved her out of her delivery nest and into a private brooder, I added eight little Marans. In the morning when I checked on them, PS#1 was at one end of the coop, her two silkie chicks peeking out from her skirts, while eight sad little black chicks huddled together at the other end. Uh oh.

I was shocked. In all my eight years of chicken keeping, my broody hens had never refused chicks. These birds were not “of a feather” with PS#1’s hatchlings; that must be why she rejected them. Oh dear, do I have an intolerant (alt-right?) hen?? She is certainly on-trend with world events, could it be that the rot is seeping even into our quiet muddy valley?

Gathering the little rejects and taking them inside to warm up under a heat lamp, I pondered what to do next. I could pop these ones under White Silkie and Brownie (and that’s what I did), but how to get PS#1’s family size up? My genius plan depended on more than two chicks per broody!

A day later three silkies hatched, and reasoning that PS#1 might take a chick that looked more like hers, I selected the strongest white silkie and after dark, crossed my fingers and slipped it under her.

In the morning all was serene. Three little silkie chicks peeked out from PS#1’s skirts. That night the other two hatchlings went outside and in the morning five little silkie chicks peeked out…you know the story…

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Today six more silkie chicks, all the way from Alberta, hatched in the incubator. Partridge Silkie Two is on day 20/21 (hatch expected any time now). The plan is for the little immigrants to go out to her in a day or two.

Considering recent events, I’m a touch worried. These silkies look a bit different…thanks to their showgirl/silkie fathers, most have naked necks. I hope PS#2 doesn’t discriminate like her sister did. As with all irrationality, one can never tell how far intolerance will spread…fingers crossed that love will trump fear in PS#2’s brooder. And elsewhere.

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Plastic Buckets

12 Sunday May 2019

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

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I love using our big sturdy plastic yogurt buckets around the place. They’re endlessly useful for toting all sorts of things both solid and liquid. One in each hand, equally loaded, adds valuable equilibrium to any heavy carry. Sadly the cheap plastic handles get brittle and snap after a few years. A pity, when the buckets themselves still have years of life left.

So I have a hack for that. Putting together my 1970’s macrame skills (jute owl plant hanger anyone?), a broken-handled bucket and 15 pieces of baling twine, I can fit a new handle to an old bucket in about 20 minutes.

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My earliest prototype is a few years old now, left out in all sorts of weather, and still going strong. The baling twine won’t rot and the knots tighten with each use.

I choose nine lengths of twine with their ties near one end and trim those off. Then I knot them at the end and slip the other end through a one inch hole I drilled in the top side of the bucket, knotting on the inside. I divide the nine into three groups of three and tie the same simple macrame knot over and over again. This creates a fat corkscrew that’s comfy in the hand. You could instead use sets of two, or even one, to make a thinner handle.  You could do a flat braid too but I think the corkscrew is prettier.

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When the side strings get short I tie a new length on each and that is enough to create the handle you see here. You could go longer or shorter depending on your needs and your baling twine supply. When I am done knotting I push the ends through a second hole I drilled on the other side of my bucket and knot on the inside. I trim up any loose ends, and voila, a fully functional portable container.

Plus I guess I can cross “repurposing waste plastic into something useful” off my bucket list!

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Yes I washed it before I put food in it lol!

My Dodecatheon is Blooming

04 Saturday May 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Gardening, Seasons

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My Dodecatheon is Blooming

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It was always a race. Whose dodecatheon would bloom first? Mom’s? Or mine?

We had bought each other one on our annual just-before-Mother’s Day garden centre meet-up. Took them home and potted them up, a shooting star each to decorate our decks. And then for all the years we had them, until she died in 2012, we would compare bloom dates. She usually won since her’s basked on her south-facing back deck, and got more love than mine which was left to fend for itself in among the chives and tulips in a pot by my greenhouse door. Mine was always a more vivid purple, perhaps due to it having to fight a little harder for survival.

Thanks to Mom, I know exactly when we started this annual garden shopping trip, during which I would buy her a plant of her choice, and she would buy me one too, for Mother’s Day. It’s crystal clear, the picture in my mind. So sharp I feel the achy possibility I could scan it, print it, and hold it tenderly in my hands, placing it once again in front of, instead of behind, my misty eyes. May 12, 2002. Mom was 62 and I was 41.

Marigold Nurseries. Angle parking on the strip of gravel running between the chain link fence and the road. My slender, graceful Mom, monochromatically classy in her carefully chosen garden centre-ing outfit. Light blue high-waisted skinny jeans, a baby blue t shirt and an oversized faded blue Levi’s jean button down shirt. White purse and runners. A smoke in her hand. Walking towards me from her parking spot down the line. Heat squiggles rising from the pavement, distorting her figure slightly as if she were approaching through water. And her peculiar gait, listing a touch sideways though she was walking straight on. Dusty wind blowing, flaring her loose shirt tails. Our first time. She looked like a teenager until she got up close.

We’d had a fractious relationship when I was growing up, I frustrated her and she pissed me off. But we had learned to like each other (I mean really LIKE each other, aside from the deep abiding love that securely anchored our whole family) well before the turn of the century. Maturity and motherhood drew us closer I think. And it was her who first suggested we get together near Mother’s Day and shop for that year’s annuals to fill our deck planters. But, as she pointed out, not on the exact day because I should be able to just hang out at home and relax on actual Mother’s Day – not duty visit my mother – and besides, the garden centres are insane that weekend and who likes line-ups?

That first year, after we went through the checkout, she asked me to come to her car as she had a Mother’s Day gift for me. Opening her trunk, she presented me with a brand new shiny Sunset Western Gardening Book. THE book for serious gardeners. With a simple inscription inside the front cover. That I cherish.

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You could have knocked me over with a feather. My frugal mother, splashing out on this wonderful book. When she died and no one wanted her Sunset Western Garden Book, I took it home and shelved it next to mine. I couldn’t bear to see it donated, full as it is with mom’s scratchy pencilled notes, plant tags and Helen Chestnut newspaper clippings. Maybe one of my kids will want it someday.

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Every year thereafter we made the same trip, although soon it was a whole morning and afternoon and I’d pick her up so we weren’t juggling two cars, and we’d visit every garden centre on the peninsula. Pausing for a quick smoke in the parking lots before going in. Marigold, Elk Lake, the one near Pat Bay whose name escapes me, Brentwood, Cannor. Slowly piling my minivan, then my SUV, full of flowery fragrant flats. Heliotrope. Schizanthus. Petunia. Begonia. Impatiens. Alyssum. Lobelia. I would drop her off home, help her unload her flats, give her a big hug, and head home myself, to see what my family had all got up to that day. Then I would brew a cup of tea, put my feet up, and plan my potting up strategy for that year.

My dodecatheon is blooming, and I miss my mother. I think I will see if my daughters want to go to the garden centre one day soon. You know, just a quick trip, pick up a few annuals for the deck. The last couple years we’ve started going, and this year one of them brought it up before I did. ❤️

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