Leaves for the Strawberries, Rhubarb, and Raspberries

About this time of year I start to use leaves as a mulch in the garden. Most of our leaves are Maple leaves. These are a good leaf to use as they break down quicker than Oak leaves. I think that most other types will probably also break down quickly like the Maple leaves.

My youngest son and my daughter are in charge of this task. They rake up the leaves in the yard behind our main garden into huge piles and jump into them for as long as they want to. When they get finished with their fun, they open up the big gate at the back of the garden and rake their piles into the garden.

After this we let them just sit there till about now when the ground has gotten colder, and we are expecting to get some really cold weather. Then we all go to work. We mulch around our strawberry patch first. We heap the leaves up a bit higher that the plants between the rows and around the patch. I did this quickly yesterday by just laying my small wheelbarrow on its side in the leaf pile and raking it full. Using the large leaf-rake as a clamp on the leaves I tipped the wheelbarrow up and get a nice load of leaves.

I then just wheeled them up to the patch and dumped them as I moved the wheelbarrow back. I don't like to cover the tops of the strawberries completely. I think they do better if they get to breathe a bit through the winter. I also use hardy varieties, Ozark Beauty and Fort Larmie berries. These are tough plants that will live through our Western Pennsylvania winters without mulch, but they do much better with my leaf mulching, plus the leaves keep the weeds down between the rows, big time.

After I leaf mulch the strawberries, I lock the chickens out of the garden. They love to scratch in the leaves, and will break up the mulch too much.

I also much around my rhubarb plants about the same time. I fertilize the rhubarb with wood ashes and cow manure prior to the mulching, so I like to let the manure and ashes get rained on and weathered into the soil for about a month or so before I apply the mulch pretty much the same as I do for the strawberry patch. I never fertilize the strawberries; they don't need it.

Rhubarb with manure and ashes; it will get the leaves in a few weeks.

I scatter the leaves that I have left over in various spots around the garden. If I have a lot, I will put some on the path between the red and black raspberries. Which I against all advice have had in the same vicinity for ten years with no problems. They both grow and bear like crazy.

I also keep a reserve pile near the gate in case we get some serious winds that scatter the mulch too much. It has to be serious wind to do this. It is not too uncommon for us to get 40 to 50 miles per hour winds up here on the mountain, and usually the mulch stays put. Sometimes if it is going to be 10 or more degress below zero - Fahrenheit, I will sprinkle the tops of the strawberries and  with some leaves. Usually not the rhubarb though. It just kind of dissappears as the winter gets worse, and I don't pay much attention to it.

Anyway, the leaves are free, effective, easy to work with and organic. I can't understand why I drive through neighborhoods and see black plastic garbage bags full of leaves ready for garbage/landfill pick-up. Every kid should have their own strawberry patch in their back yard. That's some environmentalism I could get behind.

A Recreational Walk Around the Farm

I like to just take a walk around the farm. It is interesting to see what the kids and the animals are doing.

I started by walking into a small woods behind the house that the kids have played in since some of them had been babies and all of them hadn't started school yet. My second son Michael has kind of colonized this woods for the past few years. I often say jokingly that he was born in the wrong century because if you give him an axe he'll soon be a chopping and a building. Sure enough he was chopping and had just built a small fire.

He has been cutting down and up trees for a few weeks and has about twenty log piles scattered through the woods. He also has been getting logs ready for some building. So far they are just cut and he has taken the bark off of a few of them. I don't think he has had the adze to them yet.

He has been building things in and out of the woods for some time now. Some of his buildings are bigger than they look in the pictures. The story and a half chalet type building is about 20 feet high at the peak. This is one of the benefits of living in the country for a child. If they like to build all they need are a few tools, and they can find their own raw materials.

After visiting the woods I walked back up into the yard and took a few shots of our cat who thinks he is a chicken, visiting with his flock. For the whole story on this check out the post of the same name on this blog. He really loves being with the chickens. When they are out he is with them.

They really are used to him and don't seem to care if he is right beside them even Pab the rooster who is right in front of him in this picture has no problem with him.

As I was walking up to the barn I noticed our now 2 week old Scottish Highland bull calf Monty licking the mineral block. He is still on milk from his mom and will be for about 6 months, but he always has to try out what Annabelle and the Dun are eating. He chews on hay and grass with them, and he eats a bit of grain and molasses feed with them and licks out their bowls. We just give them a bit of this feed in the morning and evening so that they will come anytime we call them. They can be anywhere in the fields and if I start yelling for them they come.

If this seems like a lot of hay on the ground it is. We have been putting a bit extra out for Monty to sleep on. Today was a nice day, but it is cold out at night and the Highlands sleep outside, old and young alike.Inside the barn Doggie and Red and some chickens were hanging out, and some chickens were laying eggs.

When I went in Annabelle, Dun, and Monty came into their pen, which is next to Doggie and Red's pen. I was trying to get a picture of Monty, but he kept hiding behind Annabelle, though I did get one anyway, but not a great one.

 Red and Doggie were sniffing and licking my old Carhart coat, and I could tell Red was going to try to lick me. He has the longest tongue I have ever seen on a cow. He will use it to grab leaves off of the trees in the summer. Well anyway, I took a picture just before he could lick the camera.

I guess this isn't my usual topical post, just a bit of rambling. Hope you didn't mind.

Inexpensive Deer Protection for Young Trees

We have major problems with Whitetail deer in Western Pennsylvania. They are extremely destructive to crops, bushes, vines, and trees. They also are the primary host for the ticks that carry Lyme disease, which can have devastating effects upon people and animals. However, in spite of us being overrun by deer the Pennsylvania Game Commission has a vested interest in their promulgation, and they are something of a sacred cow around here, without the benefits.

 The deer damage the young trees in two ways, they will browse on any new growth, and the bucks will rub their antlers on the trees and scrape the bark off, often girding the tree. Sometimes they break the tree in two when they are creating their buck rub.

I have tried various ways of protecting my newly planted and small fruit trees, and I think I have finally found an effective and easy way to keep the deer from destroying my trees.

I use two foot pieces of rebar, five foot lengths of 1/2 or 3/4 inch PVC pipe and orange polypropylene baler twine. All of these main ingredients are not biodegradable and will last for years. I have used the twine in various applications outside, and some has been outside for 5 or six years and is still fine.

I make a five by five square around the tree by pounding the rebar about ten to twelve inches into the ground. I then slide the PVC pipe over the rebar, mark my spots and drill using a 3/8 Irwin speed bit, designed for wood or plastic, and then thread the twine through the holes and tie it. I put the twine at about two and three feet from the ground, and we have never had any problems with the deer when using this arrangement. It is best to have a helper when setting this up, it makes it much easier

Another nice benefit to this system is that you can easily remove the PVC and the ropes by just sliding the pipe off of the rebar. That way you can easily mow, mulch, or weed as needed, and then you just slide the pipes back on and your trees are safe again.

I have tried spraying the trees with "Deer Off" type products, and it mostly works, but it is expensive and has to be applied frequently or you are going to lose some trees or growth. I have used deer netting, but it is expensive, hard to work with and not durable. I have also used t-posts and wooden posts with wire, twine, etc.... . This PVC, Rebar, and Twine Combo is the easiest and cheapest and best way I have come up with to keep the deer off of the trees. Plus all of the other ways make it difficult to get access to your trees.

Cleaning the Pen and the Social Order of Cattle

Today was a nice day to clean out a pen and spread the manure around the farm. We are keeping two Angus-cross steer, Doggie and Red in a large open pen in the barn because we have a small calf, Monty, outside with his mom, Annabelle, and dad, the Dun, and we don't want too much horseplay/cowplay around him.

We are afraid the steer and the bull might accidentally step on him when he is sleeping. They tend to push each other around and but heads and jump up on each other when they are out in the field. The cow never participates in their sophomoric behavior.

Well anyway, My son and I moved the steer into a small pen and began cleaning the big pen out using manure forks and wheelbarrows. They had been in the pen for two weeks, so we had quite a bit of manure and wet soggy bedding to remove. It took us about half the day to complete this task.

We hauled out the wheelbarrow loads of manure to many fruit trees and the gardens. The chickens were also out today helping to spread it around. It was about 50 degrees fahrenheit and partly cloudy with a nice breeze today, a rare December day on our mountain in Pennsylvania.

Once we got the pen all cleaned out we let Doggie and Red back into the big pen. They ran around and gave their cleaned out pen a good sniffing and started to eat their hay. Annabelle, the Dun, and Monty the calf all came in to visit them. They could hear them in the other part of the barn during the mucking out time, but they couldn't see them. They have adjoining pens, but the Scottish Highland family go in and out as they please.

We plan on having them all loose out in the fields again once the weather gets a bit better and Monty gets a bit bigger. We can't have them all going in and out the barn as they please because Monty would probably get hurt. Out in the field he runs like a deer and he can escape, but not in the barn.

Also, we can't have Doggie in the barn with the Dun. For some reason the Dun loves Red, but he always chases Doggie. We had to lock them all out of the barn this spring because the Dun just plasters Doggie up against the wall if he gets him trapped in the pen.

So in other words when the weather is nice enough to lock them all out of the barn again and when Monty is a bit bigger they will all roam the fields again together. I think I just typed a lot to say a little, but it was a long, good day today on the farm.

A Nesting Box Condominium

My Daughter and I Built this Nesting Box

We have been getting more and more chickens since my daughter and my youngest son have discovered the function of broody hens. Right now we have about 18 chicks. Yes we know it is the wrong time of year for that, but don't tell the hens.

A Buff Orpington

We originally had 24 chickens so we built 6 nesting boxes for them. We eventually ended up with 17 chickens and one rooster. Seven of our pullets turned out to be cockerels. The chickens were large breeds Golden Laced Wyandottes and Buff Orpingtons. We kept a Wyandotte rooster so we now get either pure Wyandottes or a cross that looks like an Orpington with a dark fringe around its tail and some dark feathers on its chest. They are nice looking hens.

A Golden-Laced Wyandotte

We had some extra space so we built two more boxes onto the end of the one group of three boxes and we were up to 8 nesting boxes which seemed like plenty. However, we have added an additional 13 hens from our eggs and broodies, so we wanted to add a few more nesting boxes so we wouldn't end up getting eggs on the floor.

Today's Eggnog

We didn't have much wall space left in the nesting area of the henhouse, so we built a double decker box.We used rough-cut 1 by 12 boards for most of the project. We also used some 1 by 4 boards. We screwed the boxes together with wood screws and mounted it onto a plywood wall in the coop.

A Wyandotte Orpington cross on the porch where she is not permitted.

We like bigger boxes than the standard size you get if you buy from a catalog or feed store. Our boxes are 15 inches wide and 15 inches high. They are 12 inches deep. The opening on the bottom is about nine inches for them to get in and it is only about a 7 inch opening on the top. The top is slanted for the roof. If you don't slant the roof the hens will roost up there and make a mess.

Waiting for a roof

The box hardly cost anything to build. We used one 1 x 12 x12 board and one 1 x 4 x 8 board. We also may have used some scraps left over from the wood pile, but I don't think we used much. The wood is pine from a bandsaw mill up the road from us and costs about half of what it would cost you to get the smoother wood from a Lowes or Home Depot or similar store. It didn't take a lot of screws, and these we had from other projects. I apologize for not being real specific on this, but we usually built stuff like this with whatever we can find on the farm combined with the smallest purchase we need to make to complete it. I know this project cost us less than twenty dollars to complete.

Ready to Install

We worked on it after school off and on for about a week or so. We used a circular saw and a drill. We also used a tape measure and screwdriver and a small t-square. It wasn't an extremely easy project, but it wasn't that hard to build. The final product was not perfectly square but nice and sturdy. We don't want to spend a lot of time on a nesting box- it's not furniture, but it works.

We also had fun making it and now like watching the hens get up into it and lay their eggs. We put hay in the boxes so they can have a nice nest, and we can clean the nest by just pulling the hay out occasionally. We also cut their lay ration sacks into squares that fit in the bottom of the nests, so if we get a broken egg in a nest it is easy to get it out quickly and painlessly.

Built to Last

Winter and Wood Ashes

We mostly heat our house using a woodburner. My son Michael loves to chop down trees and cut them into firewood and split it, all without using a drop of petrol. He is an axe and old woodsaw afficionado. I tell him that I can cut it a lot faster using my Husquavarna chainsaw and our gas operated splitter, really my brother's splitter that I have been "storing" for him for the past 10 years. However, he won't give in. I almost hate to burn the logs he produces; they seem like works of art to me. This winter our wood pile is entirely his creation.

The wood we use for firewood is mostly red maple and black cherry. We use the other woods available to us for other purposes.

This morning I cleaned out the woodburner and took the ash bin out to the old barnyard, that now is for berrries, trees, and our annual watermelon and canteloupe patch. I have two little beach plum trees that I've kind of overlooked for the past few years. The beach plum is native to the Eastern US. It grows to about 12 feet and gets a lot of small sized plums. They aren't so small that you can't fill up a bowl with them and put them on the table for your kids to eat whenever they want. They also require zero spraying around here, and they are delicious. The only thing you have to watch for is Japanese beetles, but if you pick them everyday, they bear for about a month, the beetles won't get them. They only like them when they are a bit overripe.

Anyway, the beach plums love wood ash. So I went out and scraped the snow from around their base with my boot, and made a nice circle about 2 feet in diameter around the trunk and dumped ashes about 2 inches deep into it. It was raining a bit as things are melting off a bit today, so the ashes will work into the soil nicely.

Some other things I use my wood ashes on during the winter are the asparagus patches and the rhubarb. Both of these love the ashes. I usually put a nice layer on/around them 2 or three times during the winter. I also put some nice fresh cow manure around them too around the end of fall. That way by spring it is worked in and I don't have to worry about any ecoli. The way my cattle are raised I don't really worry about it anyway. I think you could eat the stuff, but I have no desire to try. We usually just keep a wheelbarrow in the barn and we go out in the field around the water trough and scoop up any nice pies, and once we get a wheelbarrow full we use it somewhere in the yard/gardens & trees.

Another thing I use the wood ashes for is for sweet peas. Our soil is fairly acidic up here. bluberries grow wild, and I have never seen black raspberries grow like they do up here. These are ones that I plant in gardens, the deer will get them if they aren't fenced. I prune the black raspberries and red ones religiously, but they still grow to be six feet tall, I gave up on trying to keep them standard sized. They will get to be 8 feet tall if I miss some of them. And they are just loaded with berries. My kids live on them for about 2 months, the reds & blacks, in the summer.

The peas don't like acidic soil, so I always pick out where they are going to be in the garden next spring, and start dumping ashes there throughout the winter, The peas grow like crazy when they get their ashes.

I make sure I keep the wood ashes away from any of the berries and where the tomatoes will go next spring, they don't like them. But any tree or plant that likes sweet/basic soil will benefit from an ash deposit. I'm not very scientific about how much or how little to put down. I just use what I have, and try not to smother the rhubarb, it's always growing a bit through the winter down low and under the snow.

Wood ashes can also be dumped in places that your chickens can get to for a dust bath. They are said to prevent mites and lice. I have used this off and on with the chickens. I don't like putting them right into the coop, but if you have a place that is dry/under a roof that you can dump some ashes the chickens will bathe in them if they feel like it. Obviously you want to make sure there are no hot coals left in the ashes, and you would be suprised how long they can last in an ash bin. Since our chickens get out anytime the weather permits, they have plenty of their own dusty hangout to choose from.

If you have a woodburner, or like bonfires and roasting marshmallows, as long as you keep it clean, not garbage burning, your wood ashes are a valuable commodity around the farm.