Orchard Helper

Critters and Bugs, Oh My!

It has been an enlightening year on the farm. I am not sure if we simply had more bugs than ever or if I’m just noticing them for the first time.

We have always had a plethora of spiders hanging around the house. We don’t disturb them and they don’t disturb us. We get some massive Cat eye spiders on our front porch. The kids love to look at them and feed them the occasional pest. One spider that I was aware we had around, but had never seen so many of, is the black widow. I have had to give the kids a few lectures on not picking up bugs, don’t stick your hands in dark places, come get us if you see a black spider, etc. They freak me out honestly. I don’t relish getting bit but I can’t imagine what I would do if one of the kids got bit. Lose my mind I imagine. So, while we tend to have a lassez faire attitude with most bugs, but particularly spiders, I’ve been killing these.

These spiders were all found in and around the kids outdoor play equipment. Really upsetting for me!

Now this next bug is a complete mystery. I found a few of them around last year and have no idea what they are. They look like massive ants to me. This one was easily an inch long. If you have any ideas please leave me a comment.

We tend to have waves of grasshoppers around the property. One year it felt like a plague had descended upon us. You couldn’t take a single step without the things hopping about. Not so terrible if they didn’t hop into your shoe. Oh so disgusting! We have chickens now though. I think it has helped with our grasshopper population. Now we have enough to amuse us but not so much that going outside is a nightmare. Our son really enjoys the grasshoppers.

Now some bugs make perfect poultry food. Whenever we see “puddles” we make sure to grab them to take the the birds. Slimy little slugs. I might need more ducks if we keep getting so many. The birds really love them though! Another thing they love are grubs. I dug quite a few out of the garden last year. The birds love to see us coming.

Now our bids are free range. They just don’t tend to range all that far. They get a bit farther out every year. Maybe someday I won’t have to get rid of insect pests myself.

“puddles”

grubs

We had a very special visitor this fall. He was found on our sons bulldozer. I think he had an injured leg. I took a few pictures and then removed him from the kid danger zone. I hope to see many more praying mantis in the future.

One bug that I detest are the red biting ants we have EVERYWHERE. They are terrible things and they kill so much land with their mounts.

Not all bugs that we have are unwanted. In fact, I raise meal worms for the birds.

Now we also have some interesting critters about. I found a salamander in the chicken run once. Unfortunately it was quite dead. We found a small little lizard in the berms. It is the first time any of us had seen this particular type of lizard. Since our son was not with us at the time I made sure to hold it just until he could see it. He loved it! We also save frogs every year. As the puddles dry up we go around fishing the tadpoles out and bringing them home to grow out. Then we release them back to the wild. Everyone enjoys the frogs!

No Freeze, No Fuss, Automatic Poultry Waterer

As most animal owners know, water is the biggest issue in winter. I bought this Awesome Waterer after spending several winters miserably hauling water out to the barn in milk jugs. My problem is that I have ducks and chickens together. So, as soon as I bring out water the ducks dive in and splash it all out of the dish.

I bought the waterer and tested it through the summer. I wanted to see if it could handle the duck stress. It did so admirably. So the next step was winterizing it. To do that I needed to buy a very short hose. I tried to find one at a local box store but I waited too late into fall and could find none. So I ended up buying this 4′ Utility Hose. I then had to buy some heat tape to keep it all from freezing. This proved difficult again as I wanted an odd size of tape. I ended up purchasing this heat tape. It was just long enough. Home Depot does carry this brand of heat tape but I could only find 6′ and 12′ in my store. I needed enough to go over our spigot and run around the water dish. 9′ was just barely long enough. I then bought some pipe insulation and set it all up. I used electrical tape to tape it all together.

Here is my lovely finished product. I have always used 1/2 a dog kennel for summer watering so I put the dish inside it and filled around it with sand to keep down on the mess. I need to buy more sand to perfect it.

I did end up adding more tape to the section of hose that you can see in this picture.

My welshies hang about the water area. I just empty it out once a day. When it is really cold (in the single digits) I do have to go break the ice off the very top of it in the mornings. Otherwise it is doing really well. It has only frozen once, and then because someone unplugged the heat tape. I don’t want to point fingers but I have noticed a particular chicken that thinks it needs to perch on the extension cord.

This post contains affiliate links. I bought those exact products from Amazon and attest to their greatness.

Gardening in winter- Outdoors

It may seem like there is not much to do in winter. That you can sit back and relax until it is time to get busy planting in spring. The opposite is actually true. I feel like winter is the busiest time for me, but perhaps that is because it is unpleasant work most of the time. When you do not have a high cold tolerance going out in freezing weather just sucks. You might be wondering what I could possibly have to do. Other than the animals, which require more intensive and hands on care when it is cold, plants need winter love too.

This winter has been rather stressful for me actually. This is the first winter with the orchard trees and a bad one as far as temp, wind and lack of moisture go. Our windbreak/tree line is in bad shape. I’ve been watching conifers die all over the place but I was hoping mine were established enough to persevere. They aren’t.

Dying pine

The tree line did help keep snow. That makes me happy!

We went out on March 1 to see how things were surviving. I think it is safe to say none of the black walnuts have made it. Between my lack of attention and rabbits, they all died. The fruit trees are looking very good though. The swales have done a very good job of collecting what snow we get. I bent a branch back on every tree just as a bit of a test and all but 1 appear to be healthy. The bubblegum plum that struggled last year does not appear to have made it through the winter. I suppose I won’t know for sure until spring.

The grapes, who knows. I made a lot of mistakes with the grapes. I planted them wrong, they caught every disease they could and then I pruned them badly and transplanted them worse. I have more grapes coming this year and I am going to do a lot better by them, I hope.

Helpers

Bend test

This tree….the wind just keep blowing it over.

The blackberries I’m unsure on. They did really great last year but they are looking a bit rough now. I’ve fenced them but the wind and rabbits keep getting through anyway. I can tell they’ve been really chewed up. I’m interested to see how they spring back.

I enjoyed seeing snow collecting not on our entire driveway but just in the swales we put in last year. Very refreshing! My little helpers enjoyed this trek outdoors as well.

This is a low spot in the driveway and you can see the collection basin, full of snow, as well.

Driveway snow in swale

This is a water collection basin behind the house. It isn’t well done and has lots of hills of dirt. Our son loves that part of it.

Enjoy this view of the only time she actually walked while we were outdoors. I keep telling her I gave her legs….

Gardening in Winter- Indoors

Behold my propagation/seed starting winter garden. I have a lot going on. We only have 2 windows that get enough sunlight to grow plants. This is but 1 of them. What I have here is 2 Russian Pomegranates (black pots), lots of mint, Niagara grape cuttings being rooted, mulberry cuttings being rooted, Pineberry seeds that are hopefully growing, cold hardy kiwi that I most likely killed, tomato, Russian Almond (can’t see) and onion bulbs I was hoping to have go to seed before spring.

Now, allow me to break this process down.

Ebay, oh Ebay. I bought a ton of stuff off of Ebay. Most of them came in excellent shape as well.

This is a mulberry I purchased off of Ebay. I bought 3 different kinds of Mulberry. I potted this one up and stuck it in the window. It now looks like this:

It has taken off!

So have the Russian Almond bushes I have waiting in their cereal box planters

The grape cuttings are beginning to leaf out as well:

As are some of the unrooted Mulberry cuttings I’d purchased:

As you can see I have them in a sort of mini greenhouse. It is working just fine!

I haven’t taken any other pictures of my pomegranates. They have not done anything noteworthy since I got them.

I bought all of these things in mass, at once. So naturally they all arrived in the mail at the same time. This meant I had a busy evening ahead of me. Thankfully I have some very happy helpers.

Daughter is busily throwing dirt about, and occasionally getting it into a cup, while son is scarifying the hazelnut seeds for me.

Here they are. Pre-scarifying and then planted in their mini greenhouse, ready to go outside for stratification. They are outdoors now, placed in a new mini greenhouse as I broke the last one. I didn’t see any change in them. I’m hoping at least a few of them germinate. Who knows. I have a few grape seeds in there as well. I realize grape is said to be terrible to get from seed but I’m trying anyway as seen here:

I also bought some bamboo. It arrived very well packaged. And is doing quite well situated in our other available window. The great pyr tolerates many things, odd plants stuck in his food dish are just part of the package.

Here are a few pics of the mint I’m propagating. We have a lot of bare land so I have no problem sporadically planting mint about and seeing what happens.

Now for some of my odder projects. I get throw away produce from a local grocery store for my poultry. Whenever I’m sorting through and find something good I always try to see if I can save it. These carrots are part of that. They are organic carrots and I’m hoping to allow them to go to seed. They are doing marvelously. I started them in wet paper towels and when I saw enough roots I planted them into cups. I think I’ll just leave them in the cups now. I did the same with some onions. The onions are less pleased with my treatment though. I don’t know that I’ll get anything from them.

Some thyme that was also a grocery store save.

I also made my own rooting hormone from willow this year.

I will share my secret. I cut up willow, put it in a used Starbucks drink jar with water and then forgot it. Voila!

Quick look at my tomato seedlings. Just milk jugs with toilet paper rolls. They are doing well so far!

Stay tuned for my tree seed post and my outdoor winter gardening post. This just got too long to include anything else.

Chateau Maine D’Arman 2010 wine and Fontina Mauri cheese

This review has been updated HERE.

Wine:

2010 Chateau Maine D’Arman, Cotes De Bourg $12.99

[From the winery notes] A bourduaex blend. “70% Merlot / 20% Cabernet Sauvignon / 10% Malbec
This wine shows a dark ruby-red colour and develops a powerful and intense bouquet of candied fruits. The palate is warm and fleshy with elegant and pleasantly oaky tannins.”

Cheese:

Fontina Mauri $4.89

[From cheese makers website] An every day table cheese produced in Lombardy and adapted from the methods in Fontina Italy.

Wine Review- This wine was fine. Just fine. Not something that would make you put down your glass in disgust but not a wine that would make you lift your glass with glee. I had one glass and felt no need to get another. None of the things we set out to pair it with paired well.

However, We did see that red meat was suggested, so I decided to use the remaining wine in an abbreviated version of Beef Bourginoun. I browned the meat, carmelized the onions, chopped the carrots and simmered it all in the wine. I could not believe how heavenly dinner was. I used the meat juices to make gravy and it was the best gravy I’d ever had in my life. We really need to look at suggested pairings in the future because they were right on with this one. Fantastic!

Cheese Review- Like the wine we were not overly impressed with the cheese. I was putting a slice on bread and eating it with pepperoni. It was perfectly fine. Certainly a cheese you can use in your every day life. This cheese simply didn’t have the WOW factor our last selection had. On that I was disappointed.

Krater Garden? Oh yes!

gallatinmidway — photo from Zach Weiss of elemental ecosystems

Krater Garden finished construction

housekraterafter5 — photo from Zach Weiss of elemental ecosystems

Same krater garden planted and growing.

So what is a krater garden?

Sepp Holzer, The “Rebel Farmer” from Austria, developed the krater garden after a trip to Siberia. The crater garden is, well….a crater, with terraced sides. Water collects in the bottom of the crater and feeds the plants grown on the terraces. Krater gardens also create micro-climates in which plants that cannot normally be grown in a particular zone may thrive.

Why would I want to make a krater garden?

Well, why not? My land is pretty flat and pretty dead. I’m in a High, dry and windy area. I need to take advantage of wind protection and water harvesting opportunities. I also like the idea of increasing the square footage of my 40 acre property.

The plans:

Initially I was going to go big, really big. However, big earth works come with big price tags, also, permits. So after speaking with the local water permit person I was granted permission to do a small krater garden without requiring a permit. I had the honor of being the first person in Wyoming to mention krater gardens and I had to send a lot of krater garden information to explain what I was talking about.

http://www.elementalecosystems.com/phone/krater-gardens.html

http://www.permies.com/t/37563/sepp-holzer/Crater-Gardens

So the plan is to use the bucket of our small tractor to dig a krater garden that is no more than 3 feet deep and 14′ in diameter. Of course, that is the water harvesting portion of it. I didn’t hear them say I couldn’t do the terraces larger so I’m going with as big as I can with my limited earth moving equipment. You might be wondering how we came upon 3′ and 14′ in size. Well, the simple answer is that I’d dug a duck pond with the tractor before and from that experience knew that 3′ was as good as I was getting. The duck pond is also 14′ in diameter so it seemed like a good idea to get that approved since I’d dug it before I was quite aware of water law and regulation.

It is winter here right now but that is just fine as the planning stage is in full force. I need to pick the location for this garden and plan the plantings. I’ve been making the front of the house the experimental area, so now I need to pick which part will be cratered. If the crater garden does well I may expand the concept to the rest of the property. I am right now imagining 40 acres pock marked with 3′ deep craters.

I will most assuredly keep everyone updated with my krater garden progress.

Thanks again to Zach Weiss for granting me permission to use his photographs. Be sure to check him out! (http://www.elementalecosystems.com/crater-gardens.html)