February 2016 – Peacock Orchard

The joys of pigs

Last I wrote I liked the pigs a fair amount. You might even say I rather loved them. That hasn’t really changed. Some things have though. It’s warm out. Everyone is coming out of the barn and exploring the run now. The pigs are exploring the fences now. I was confident the fence would with stand the pigs. We built it for our dogs and they’re worse than pigs as they can jump 5′ easy. Like a gazelle, our great pyr is.

The fence is livestock fence fortified on the top and bottom with 2×4’s. They’re digging around it but haven’t made any holes I’m worried about as of yet.

The digging is quite impressive though. They have some massive spots getting tilled.

Our weak spot is the gate. We’ve had two escapes. Both on the same day. The first I was going out to do the morning feed with the kids in tow. I opened the gate and the pigs just bowled me over. I started chasing them in a panic but then common sense returned and I started rattling the feed bucket. They returned and we went about our business.

The second escape happened while the kids were outside chasing bunnies. The pigs come to the sound of our voices and scream like crazy demanding food. This particular day they must have been emboldened by earlier freedom as they started on the gate until it popped open for them. Wrangling them this time required the horse whip and a fair bit of running about.

Now we have the “tomb of the pigs”. The spool must be rolled aside to get access to the gate. I’ve seen plenty of testing of our new fortress but as of yet, no escapes.

It looks trashy at the gate now as everything that was once nicely stored in the barn is now outside the gate as the pigs were DESTROYING EVERYTHING!

To keep from getting bowled over at the gate I throw the scraps over the fence away from the gate before opening it and heading inside.

The duck pond extension fence isn’t quite as well fortified. Since i want them to gley the duck pond I’m letting them have run of the lot but….they’re pushing the corner out of it. I’ve stacked some rip rap around the base now and they haven’t escaped…yet. We’ll see.

If all else fails the electric fence is always available for routing around the base of the fence.

Now on to a few other animals.

The turkey is like this the ENTIRE time he sees me. He’s a real pain in my neck.

The ducks are glorious. I’m a real fan of ducks. I just think they’re adorable.

The pigs are good with the kids. Not great since personal boundaries aren’t their thing and they’ll bowl them over. However, the kids are smart and they wait until the pigs have been fed before going in to collect eggs (the pigs are fed near the nest boxes). They can pet them no problems. No biting problems. Hopefully this continues but if they start biting the kids will be sad as they do love their pig pets.

I like that the pigs can be trusted with all of the birds as well. Not a single incident aside from the day we brought the turkeys home. The male turkey made so much fuss that the pigs were chasing him about just for fun.

Review: Sugar Shack Enchanted Red and Drunken Goat Cheese

Wine:

Sugar Shack Enchanted Red

Description: A red dessert wine

Cheese:

Drunken Goat Cheese

Description: Goat cheese soaked in red wine.

Wine Review- A great introduction to wine. It’s almost like straight grape juice flavor. I liked it just fine. Certainly something I’d have no problem drinking. I probably wouldn’t buy it again though. Grape juice tasting wine just isn’t my thing. I think we’ve become too snooty for it. Too accustomed to dryer wines to appreciate this one.

Cheese Review- A pleasant cheese. Melts in your mouth pleasantly. There are a lot of Google pages dedicated to this cheese and we didn’t quite understand that. It’s not one of those cheeses that make you keep eating and eating. It is a cheese that won’t disappoint. It’s solid. Nothing special, nothing to complain about.

Indoor seed starting once again.

This years seed starting is a bit different form last years. For one it’s more low key than last years flurry of excessive seed planting. My set up is a bit different too.

Last year I planted in egg cartons, then moved to toilet paper tubes and then to plastic cups. This year I planted the big things right into the plastic cups and saved the toilet paper rolls for the thinner plants, like the leeks.

This year I’m starting in the fish tank as well. Last year the plants ended up there as I ran out of window space. Now that I know it’s a great space to start seedlings I’ve set them up straight away in it. The tank is also in the basement now, as the wall it used to sit against is now gone.

Fancy set up. Ancient fish tank, fluorescent lights, card table. Whoo boy! Works though.

Few pics of the planting session:

I suspect there is more dirt on the floor than in the cups, but they had fun.

I can’t remember if I shared my seed saving method last year. Well here it is. Coffee filters with pen. That pen didn’t stay very well. For the most part I’m guessing. This one is clearly “drought tolerant tomato”. These seeds are from the tomato I never watered. It made great sauce and I’m growing it again to see if it’s just as successful.

Lovely cups all labeled and nestled in their home.

Nothing germinated yet. Frankly I’m rather interested to see if any of the seeds I saved will germinate. It’s my first real attempt at it after all.

Stay tuned!

Mini-Kraters and Swales handling winter melt

The temperatures are rising and our snow drifts are slowly melting. Snow harvesting was a wild success this year. If you’ve followed any previous posts than you know that the snow is a problem for our driveway but the melt is the real nightmare. Our driveway and road turn into a mud pit. So last summer we trenched with our new excavator and the results have been amazing!

That is one fabulously dry road!

The trenches are full and the area immediately around them is saturated, but the driveway has been maintained fabulously. So far. We’ll let you know if I’m still confident about our earth works after a heavy rain.

All of the water kept off the driveway is then trenched to various places. Our swales receive most of it but we also have some retention ponds that get rather full.

The swales harvested a tremendous amount of snow and that’s melting off right now.

The harvested snow was wonderful for both insulating our fruit trees and now for watering them. The ground around the swales is amazingly saturated.

The kraters (some more than others) are still really full of snow. About 1-2′.

They are holding strong and I couldn’t be more pleased with our decision to dig them!

A downside of such heavy snow harvest is that the trees can be covered quite far up the trunk. We’ve suffered quite a bit of rabbit loss. My best, hardiest fruit tree was attacked. I tried to Dr. it but who knows if it will pull through the damage.

Doctor’d apple tree

Osage orange poking out of snow.

Blackberry. I covered them heavily this year as last year they were all entirely eaten away.

As always children running about with moisture inevitably ends with really wet children. I was taking a picture of the gorgeous ice designs in our trench when Son decided to go ice skating and…… well he learned to check the ice thickness before clambering on.

How to deal with challenges when remodeling

Drink. Ha! Post over.

No, no, I partially kid.

It seems when removing walls you should expect the unexpected. Random wires. Random water lines. Etc. Etc. I prefer to hope for the best myself. The plan for the kitchen was to remove the wall that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. We have these pillars there. The one on the opposite side of the house is load bearing. We assumed the matching pillar would be the same. Turns out the pillar is hollow. Aesthetic only.

The wall, however, load bearing. What a depressing discovery. I lost a lot of steam when I pried the dry wall off that obviously load bearing section of wall. We thought we may be able to move it into the pillar as planned but then I found another small section of load bearing wall on the other side of the pillar.

That wall is not coming down. Plans must be modified. There are cabinets on that wall already. Now we might as well leave them and expand them into an L. I really want a counter height sitting area so the kids can be with me while I’m doing kitchen stuff. I was also hugely looking forward to expanding the aisle between the cabinets and island. With the kids on stools and ladders helping, and dogs hanging out in the hopes of dropped food, there is no space to move around in our current kitchen. So, on top of the new L’d section of cabinets I’m going to remove our hideous current island and build a thinner wood island in it’s place. I now also have to patch up all the holes in the side of the wall I’d removed. That drywall would have been removed anyway, as electrical had to be changed, but I would have done smaller sections if I’d known I’d have to patch them back up.

I’ve lost so much steam over this discovery it’s been less exciting to continue. Still, the part of the wall that can be removed, is gone, and it’s glorious!

Before

After

Current plans are to strip and paint the remaining cabinets. Build a new island and remove old one. Tile the floor (laminate sucks!). Nap, possibly forever.

Here are a few pics of the wall removal, just for fun.

This part of the wall was never to be removed but I did have to remove the drywall so we could change the dinning room light switch from the wall that I removed to this. Thankfully the wire went over to this wall anyway so it was a simple fix, for my father. I claim to have done 0 of the electrical work here. My father is amazing!

Vintage Chick Feeder as herb garden

I’m so excited to have found this piece in an antique store recently. It is going to look amazing on the new island, or the table. I have options. I’ve started the herb seeds in it today. I’m interested to see how good I am at growing them indoors. I’m usually a pretty big failure at it. Anyway, take a look and keep an eye out for this amazing piece. Would make a great organizational tray, drink caddy, etc, etc.