Making progress

Winter is truly the time to hole in and do a lot of planning and organizing on the farm.  I am taking that to heart this year.  Revisions were made to my daily chores list and a new one has been posted to the refrigerator.  It still requires some tweaking but the house has stayed much more tidy this week as I endeavor to complete the basic tasks every night.  Many of the household chores were being neglected without something or someone to hold me accountable.  The month-to-month farm plan, while in its infancy, is also working well.  Spare minutes find me pulling it out and tackling a task to completion (like ordering my garden seeds for this year) or allocating time each weekend to ensure progress.  With an extra day on the farm this weekend I am hoping to knock out a couple of extra tasks weather permitting. 

In the past week:

• I have found the work bench in the back shop which was long ago buried under miscellaneous tools, associated scraps dropped there between one or ten quick fixes of various items, and any number of items left on the desk or kitchen table in the kitchen which were just dropped on the work bench as a place to get them out of the way before dinner.
• Two chickens were dispatched to the freezer to decrease our flock to a more manageable size.  New bedding was placed in the chicken coop. 
• Nest boxes were disinfected and placed in cages with two of the three rabbits which I bred this month.  Unfortunately one of the does discarded her entire litter a little more than a week early.  I am not sure exactly why as she appears very healthy but am thinking that she might have gotten scared or upset at something outside the garage.
• All of the pictures of Little man from birth to 24 months have been edited, cataloged and prints ordered.  There remain a few photographs taken by family members which I want to collect to complete a few photo collages, but otherwise, having gone through and edited over one thousand pictures is a pretty huge accomplishment for this girl!
• Garden seeds inventoried, old seed discarded, storage box cleaned out, list of seeds to order for our much smaller garden this year completed, online order placed for same, shipping notification received.  This past week of warm temperatures has tempted me to get outside and work in the yard or start seeds in flats in the basement, but it is still too early.  I resisted as temperatures are predicted to plunge back to the single digits and below zero over night next week.
• Semen located and ordering details ironed out and veterinarian lined up for the end of the month when, if my calculations are correct, pig will be ready to be bred.
• Progress has been made on the electronic filing which has backed up since our computer had hard-drive issues this summer.  Each night I have allocated fifteen minutes to catching up with all of this accumulated paper; at this rate I might be caught up by the end of May.

This weekend's goals include:

• Putting the plastic back on the hoop house as this past week's warm temperatures (for January) have loosened up the top layer of lawn providing access to the base of the greenhouse again
• Locating, cleaning, sharpening and oiling all of the tree pruning equipment and then finding a single location to store all of it so I can find it when I am ready to prune fruit and Christmas trees.
• Clean up and burning of the pine tree branches which are strewn around the back yard from the late December ice storm.
• Repair of the shed roof where Little man's father broke it while trying to get the tractor unstuck from the above mentioned ice.
• Repair of the roof on pig's house where a small leak has developed
• Thorough cleaning of the chicken coop and the rabbit cages.
• Complete the new chicken feeder which didn't get done last week as I got side tracked by an indoor house cleaning project.
• Making at least one batch of jam or jelly from juice which was frozen after harvesting berries this summer and fall.
• An hour or so to read a new book from the library
• Perhaps some time split between house cleaning and catching a glimpse or two of the NFL playoff games (a girl can hope).

If I can manage to stay on track and not get dissuaded by the big picture and continue focusing on this task based approach, I am confident that we will make progress this year.

Missed breeding opportunity and egg watch

As I came back to the farm last evening I noticed an unusually large amount of food remaining in pig's pen.  She is pretty good about cleaning her plate/bowl/bucket unless it is full of potato peelings - a girl can only eat so many potatoes.  There were oranges and a hunk of meatloaf - those are not items she would normally choose to leave behind.  A bit concerned, I turned the car with the headlights towards pig's pen and checked to make sure her path wasn't too icy or if she appeared injured in any way.  Immediately she popped up out of her warm hay bed headed straight for the fence grunting and squealing as she came across the icy pasture.  Exiting the car, I gingerly walked down the short but slippery slope to her fence.  I scratched behind her ears and rubbed her back thinking that she was a little stiff, I hoped she was staying warm enough.

Although the temperature was hovering around 12 degrees her water was mostly unfrozen so I headed back to the car.  I noted that her house was looking a little worse for the wear, like maybe she had been chewing or rubbing on it a lot.  I haven't been out to see pig much in the past week.  I had gall bladder surgery on January 2nd and am not allowed to lift anything heavier than 15 lbs for at least ten days.  Admittedly I have been lifting my son probably more than I should as well as toting out garbage and moving some bins full of holiday decorations weighing more than 15 lbs that await the end of the restriction period to be stored until next year.  Carrying five gallon buckets of water (weighting far more than 15lbs) across the door yard to pig has also been out of the question so Little man's father has done that chore since the New Year began.

Inside to evening chores and dinner, pig had settled into the back of my mind until Little man's father mentioned that she had gotten her appetite back eating more today than she had in the past three days.  It was then that I realized that we had missed this month's opportunity.

Pig came to us as a rescue from a farm that could no longer care for her.  She is a four and half year old Gloucester Old Spot. She has farrowed before and we are hoping to get one or two breedings from her to keep the farm in pork and perhaps generate a little extra income.  Our hopes had been to line up a heritage breed boyfriend for her before the end of last year.  Without the possibility of a local suitor, we have been monitoring her heat cycles planning to order semen and have her artificially inseminated.  I am hoping that my research and education in addition to participating with the vet to breed her this winter will allow me to do it myself for any sows going forward.  We do not currently have the facilities or fences to keep a boar on the farm and I have promised myself no permanent new additions until we catch up on all of the projects that are already in progress.

After dinner I went back out with a flashlight and talked to pig, and confirmed that she was in fact in heat.  Her back end was red and swollen and when I pressed down on her back, the stiffness I noted earlier was confirmed as her standing and bracing herself in preparation for the weight of a boar.  Other tell tale signs of a sow in heat include loss of appetite, chewing like the damage I saw on her house, demanding attention, and being very vocal.  Pigs go into heat every 21 days.  I have marked my calendar for 19 days to start watching for signs again and I will order semen on the 20th or 21st day depending on how she is acting.

If she comes into heat on schedule and the vet can come and semen is available then we should be breeding her by the end of the January for piglets around Memorial Day.  It will be fun to have piglets on the farm again!

Egg watch - two days of 11 and 13 eggs respectively, then back down to 7 per day.  With the warm weather predicted for this weekend I am hoping to add some chicken to the freezer and perhaps decrease the competition for the nest boxes.  The new feeder will also be completed this weekend allowing for them to free feed throughout the day and allow for less competition at feeding time.

Stepping into the new year, if only on paper

My planner of choice

The beginning of a new year is exciting, especially on paper, that brand new desk planner/engagement calendar is opened and the crisp clean pages lay open before you waiting for all the exciting new things this year will bring.  In late December or early January I put my old planner - now stretched, dog-eared, filled with snippets of paper or articles I wanted to save, notes made on cocktail napkins, shreds of paper, business cards, etc - beside my new planner.  Carefully I move from month to month copying down important dates and reminders and collecting all of the saved information to re-review and decide whether that egg-plant recipe or that craft idea were really something I still want to hold on to.  Often it is a journey in what I did wrong, or Did I really invest all that time on that? But this year it has been pretty re-assuring even with everything that didn't go right in 2013. I found a scrap of paper with a carefully planned out financial inventory of the costs of raising a pig from piglet to slaughter using store bought feed. On the same scrap included the costs of raising broilers for the same time frame. Somewhere in the midst of the chaos I was thinking things through.
Beside both this year is my new monthly list of farm chores and my farm to-do list from 2012.  Breeding dates for does, incubator dates for pullets and sales dates for farm items or livestock that I noted last year are added to my list in the months they occurred last year.  I make note that the borrowed chicken plucker from last year will not be available to us this year - Make chicken plucker - when to schedule and collect materials - is added to the bottom of January.   This is a project I want to accomplish before I purchase my broilers this year, but don't have a month to put it in yet and have no idea what materials I have lying around or have to procure.  Apple trees were added to the January list to look into - am I going to try and rehab the old, existing orchard which is 20 years over grown and will be at least a three year project to reclaim but has some amazing heritage apples or would I be better off clearing out some of those trees and grafting the old trees to new root stock?  I can't make an educated decision on that project until I get out to the orchard and see what shape it is in.  I thought better and moved that decision to February hoping that weather permitting I will be able to get out there and have a better understanding of their condition.  Right now I am having trouble getting my vehicle out of my driveway with all the ice; walking out through the ice crusted landscape, albeit beautiful, might not be the smartest decision as far as my safety is concerned.

There remain several items and scraps of paper or URLs jotted down that I still want to look up and see why I thought they were important and items like the financial plan for raising a pig/broiler which I want to transfer to electronic format for ease of calculation.  Those and the big 2012 to-do-list are folded into this week in my planner.  After having gall bladder surgery last week I am limited on the amount of lifting and tugging I can do around the farm so I am relegating myself to administrative tasks such as these.

One of the most re-assuring things that has happened through this whole process is that even though I didn't even look at my big to-do list at all last year, we managed to get a few projects completed.  While I will always be adding to it, there is some reassurance in knowing that we are still moving forward.  I haven't decided which is more dangerous, risking injury to my body or planning big projects which will inevitably result in more injury to my body.

Eggs

The winter solstice has come and gone and along with it our egg production.  Even in the coldest of days we were getting 10 - 12 eggs per day.  Over the past two weeks our production has halved giving us between five and six eggs daily.  We couldn't put our fingers on the cause.  Examining every possibility from water and feed consumption to length of day provided by the electric light and cleanliness of the coop, we couldn't narrow it down.

For the past week we have been closely watching every change we have made in the coop.  New bedding and clean nesters were the first test.  Our flock has doubled in size from last year so the coop isn't staying as clean as it could be.  Focusing on cleanliness, new bedding was added and nesters cleaned as soon as any accumulation of droppings were noted - no change in production.  Water has been carefully checked twice a day since temperatures have fallen and remained below zero.  We noted that the floor in the coop has shifted with the ice outside so the water container was leaking on the floor of the coop - no wonder it won't stay clean.  Balanced platform and steady water supply - no change in production.

Feed has been supplied twice per day since the chickens arrived on the farm seven years ago.  As the number of chickens increased, the amount of feed has increased.  Last night I stayed in the coop and watched the birds eat.  Three and one half pounds of feed were scattered on the floor of the coop to allow all the birds to eat without stomping on one another.  Watching them consume that 3 1/2 lbs in less than two minutes, I realized, they were hungry.  All the birds are still exhibiting good body condition, full breasts and good skin condition, most with large, moist vents.  Feed was the last thing we needed to try. Off to the good old search engine as the reference materials I have did not state how much feed an average laying hen consumes daily.  My search determined that an average laying bird consumes approximately 1/3 lb of feed daily.
To make sense of this, you need to know that we are up to 45 birds in the coop.  Four roosters and 41 hens.
Divide 45 by 3 - 1/3 lb per bird per day - and you get 15.
Divide 15 by 2 - feeding them twice daily - and you get 7.5 lbs of feed.

We were feeding them half of what they needed per day of feed.  They were maintaining their weight, but not getting enough nutrition to lay eggs.  I doubled their feed ration last night and they left some on the floor indicating that they were full.  This morning Little man's father fed them eight pounds of feed. 

If we get seven or more eggs today then we will have solved that problem.  I will let you know what we collect today.

2014 Planning

This is the time of the year when the planning for the farm begins/continues in earnest.  As we close December I look out at all the things that didn't get done.  The roof never made it back onto the greenhouse this fall; many tools and flower pots now sit under three to five inches of snow, two inches of ice and today's predicted two to four inches of new snow.  The same holds true for the lawn tractor, some tractor attachments and so much more.  Too many good tools and equipment now sit under snow and ice because we did not make the time to get them under cover.  Clean up projects remain on the list which should have been completed this fall but will now wait until Spring.  Attempts and efforts were made at the end of November and earlier this month, but too much remains outside.  Returning to full-time, off-farm employment in September brought fall preparations to a complete halt.  With high temperatures next week forecast to be below zero, it is looking like reclaiming these items might be a ways off. 

I could sit here and lament about all the things that weren't accomplished or I could pull up my big girl panties and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again.  Choosing the latter, I reached out to my local library for a book by Cynthia Bombach.  The Complete Homestead Planner takes all of the tasks and chores from around her homestead and breaks them up into a month-by-month to-do list.  An electronic version of this book is readily down loadable on line but I am an ink on paper kind of girl.  In New England ice storms like the one this past week I don't need to worry about a battery dying.  At the very least I hoped it might be a starting point.

What it did do was make me think about the whole farm.  This past year I have been putting out fires which I started for myself by taking on too many projects and not having a firm grasp on the time each would take especially with Little man in tow.  Laying things out over the span of a year and incorporating tasks into a monthly to-do list has allowed me to see, on paper or computer screen, the big picture.  Looking at some months, I can see that there aren't enough hours in the month to accomplish all that is listed there.  Some of those jobs will need to be reallocated.  This book was also written with heartiness zone 5-6 in mind.  Northwestern Vermont is located in zone 3-4 requiring a few changes in planting dates, seed starting dates, winter tire change-over dates, etc.

I could have done what Bombach did in her book all on my own and for that reason I would not recommend purchasing this book.  A trip to or request from your local library would be sufficient to get an grasp on what you need to look at for your farm or homestead.  There is also a lot of repetition in here as some chores you need to tackle monthly if not more frequently.  And, this is definitely not a how-to manual, it is exactly what it says, a planner.  A handy guide for beginners, those thinking about jumping into homesteading or farming from their perches in the city or someone like me who has let too many years of grand ideas get the best of her; this is certainly not for the established farm or homestead where things are running smoothly.

Over the next month I will refine the list for our scaled down farming ventures, incorporate some projects that require immediate attention and delete some that are not feasible given my time and budget.  As I look over my 2014 plan I realize that if I had sat down and created a business plan before planting thousands of Christmas trees or increasing the number of chickens in my flock, I probably wouldn't now be stepping back, reeling in and starting over. 

Lesson learned!

A Roof! - Almost.

This weekend tested my mechanical and general contracting skills, let alone stretched and worked muscles that I had forgotten I possessed.  My mother and grandmother recently bought a house in the next town over.  It has great bones but needs a few things to bring it into the 21st century.  This weekend I took out some baseboard heating in order to install a door directly from the garage into the main house.  Thanks to the invention of something called a Shark-Bite fitting, the average, everyday homeowner can get themselves into or out of some serious plumbing issues without the use of a torch and solder.  I was able to remove the base board and close the heating loop, and put water back through the system.  Unfortunately the spray of water from a pinhole leak stopped that project in it its tracks.  Thankfully this particular baseboard is on its own zone and in an extra room so it wasn't any big problem to leave the whole zone shut down until I can get back over there with another fitting.

I am lucky to have several generations of experienced contractors in my family, not the least of which is my father.  His knowledge base is extensive and I will often pick his brain for little things like, well anything wrong with the house or any huge project which I have decided I can tackle without the help of a professional and then realize I shouldn't have.  He is also great in assuring me that there are many things that I am perfectly capable of handling/fixing/repairing even though they scare me.  He introduced me to the Shark-Bite fitting and with them I was able to replace and repair several corroded copper pipes in my basement on the first try with no leaks.  Had that repair not worked there wouldn't have been any water at all in the house. 

A contractor has, however, been enlisted to install the new garage door since I have never attempted nor will I ever attempt to work with that huge spring which is under an enormous amount of pressure.  Electrical work which involves working in the circuit panel itself is also something that I will not attempt unless I receive additional instruction.  The very simple reason - electricity bites. 

Building projects around the farm have become old hat now.  I over-build just about everything and rarely I actually manage to get a completely level, square corner, but the projects are functional and almost always weather tight.  The roof is finally getting put on the rabbit shed.  I did not install the rafters and I am working with a lot of salvaged wood but it will be weather tight and will keep both the rabbits and the pig out of the weather this winter.  Next weekend we will finish sheathing the roof and square it up so it will be ready for metal roofing.  The forecast, budget and whether or not Little man's father gets his deer will determine whether the tar paper and metal roof will go on during the following week or wait until Thanksgiving weekend.

I might actually get my garage back before snow flies!

Meal planning Friday

I love to cook!  I would spend all day in my kitchen dirtying every bowl, dish, piece of cutlery, pot, pan, baking sheet, etc. in the quest to make the perfect meal (I might have said this once or twice before).  Unfortunately when you are working full-time and still want to spend time with your children after you get home from work, the perfect meal is not attainable every night.  Often dinner would be the last thing on my mind, neither Little man's father nor I would remember to take something out of the freezer in the morning, and then neither one of us would feel like cooking - dinner turned into yet another point of contention between the two of us.  After 30 minutes or more of thinking about what to make I would come up with something, head to the refrigerator looking for an ingredient that I knew we had three days ago, only to find it had been consumed in a snack while waiting for dinner to cook yesterday.

I set to the old, faithful, search engine and typed in 'meal planning' hoping that someone, somewhere would at least point me in the right direction to get started.  Salvation came out of that search - there are women who blog about just this type of thing - I knew there was something I liked about the blogging community.  My clicks landed me at thebettermom.com.  In addition to her strong faith and empowering woman through that faith, she publishes bi-weekly, gluten-free meal plans.  Each meal plan is accompanied by the recipes to cook all the meals therein.  This meal planning thing was going to be easier than I thought!

Needless to say I didn't go home, empty my freezer, cabinets and refrigerator of all my food and start with a monumental grocery list - although that might have been fun.  I went home and discussed it with Little man's father - if I do the planning, will you at least cook something from the weekly menu on your nights to cook dinner?  With a few grumbles and groans, he agreed to give it a shot.  Saturday morning, I inventoried the major food groups finding out what we had in the house and started to list a few basic meals that could be made with those items.  Then I thought about how to use up the left-overs; the roast chicken would make a chicken/cheddar/rice casserole or chicken and biscuits.  I quickly had a list of six meals for the following week.  I made out my grocery list with any items I was missing for those meals and then I added in a seventh - try-something-new recipe and added any missing items to the grocery list.

Getting the shopping done was only half the battle, dinner still had to be prepared each night.  Well, my internet search also yielded some pretty great tips, including some on involving your children in meal prep and clean up.  When I was single, I got tired of spending a fortune on lunch everyday so I used to cook up two family-sized meals on Sunday and parcel them out into individual lunch size containers and put them in the freezer for lunches during the week.  By the third week I had a pretty good selection of meals to take with me to work.  Meal planning involves the same kind of commitment on one of your weekend days, but it is centered around prep for the week, not necessarily cooking a week's worth of meals on Sunday while football is playing the background.

This past weeks menu looked a little bit like this:

Saturday - Pesto Pasta w/Italian Sausage, salad, garlic bread
Sunday - Roast Chicken w/oven roasted vegetables
Monday - London broil, baked potato, vegetable of choice 
Tuesday - Chicken/cheddar/rice casserole, vegetable of choice (made ahead or frozen)
Wednesday - Beef stew w/ herb and cheese biscuits (crockpot meal)
Thursday - Ham/potato/bean skillet
Friday - Parmesan chicken fingers w/ herb and blue cheese quiche, salad
Saturday - Tuna casserole, vegetable of choice (made ahead or frozen)

Sunday I made a double batch of cream of celery soup - 1/2 went into the tuna casserole which I made the same day and put into the freezer and half was put into the refrigerator for the chicken/cheddar/rice casserole.  Beef for the stew was cut up out of the roast that I bought at the grocery store and put in a separate storage bag in the freezer.  Carrots, onions, peppers, and tomatoes were cut up and placed in a covered bowl for Wednesday's stew. 

When meat is brought home from the grocery store, we now try to marinate it right away and freeze them with their sauce.  As the meat thaws it soaks up some great flavor.  Little man's father needed only wash a few potatoes and put them in the oven while finishing up chores or playing with Little man.  The meat and vegetables were started at the same time and in less than 20 minutes, a hearty, delicious and not terribly unhealthy meal was had by all .  While we were eating dinner, the rice was cooked for Tuesday's casserole.

After dinner on Tuesday, the meat for the stew was browned and added to the crockpot with the vegetables and remaining stew ingredients.  Wednesday before leaving for work, the crockpot was started.  The Parmesan chicken fingers were frozen after I made a double batch a couple of Sundays ago so we would have a quick meal option.  Quiche's can be baked ahead of time, frozen and reheated, unfortunately this didn't happen this week so the side dish for tonight's dinner will change on the fly.  Saturday, I try to have a quick and easy meal since I am usually running around trying to accomplish an entire weeks worth of chores in one day.

In the three weeks since we started planning meals for the week,  Little man's father and I haven't argued about dinner once, I have managed to follow the sales, stock up on local produce and meats when possible and have dropped my weekly grocery budget to right around $100.  This includes diapers, cleaning supplies, garbage bags, laundry detergent, etc.  This week's grocery shopping and meal planning has been sidelined by a trip to my mother's to check on an electrical problem, but tomorrow morning I will start anew.