how to – Peacock Orchard

A cheap way to acquire garden seeds

There are lots of ways to get things growing cheaply. You can save seeds. You can grow produce from scraps. You can join a seed or plant exchange, etc. I wanted to grow pinto beans this year. Perhaps a few other shelled bean varieties as well. The seeds seemed rather expensive though. $6 for an oz of seeds, yikes. So, like other growth endeavors I looked to the supermarket. I’ve previously grown quinoa and lentils from supermarket bulk bins. I’ve grown sunflowers from bird seed. Could beans be grown easily as well?

I bought pinto and black beans and the kids helped start the germination test. Simple paper towel and ziploc bag taped to the window. We started our watermelon seeds like this as well.

Germination has been a success. 100% germination for the pinto beans and 80% for the black. I’ll be buying a bag of pinto beans (10lbs for $14.99) and spreading it about in various places to find the easiest way to grow it. We eat a lot of Mexican food here so I’ll be excited not to have to buy canned pinto beans again!

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.

How to grow pear trees from seed

Last winter I had a good attempt at growing apple trees from seed. I actually did a pretty good job until summer, when I no longer watered my tree seedlings and they all died. This time around I will have more time and hopefully will not repeat my mistakes.

I’ve found the hardest part is finding pear seeds at all. Most of the store bought pears I’ve gathered have 0-1 seeds in them. I was lucky, though, and found organic pears from Colorado at our local King Soopers. Naturally, I bought two of each variety. They had a lot of seeds in them so I’m hopeful of success.

So, just like apples I cut the pears up, divided out the flesh to the kids and collected the seeds. I cleaned them and placed them on a clean paper towel in a plastic cup. Then I add a small amount of water to the paper towel, put the cups in a plastic bag and wait. I find times vary by seed, though 2 months is pretty standard. I check weekly to removne any molding seeds and plant out germinated ones. Once you see a nice root growing you simply plant out to compost filled plastic cups, water and voila, easy peasy.

Making your own Turkey Kill Cone

This is a guest post by my wonderful Husband who does far more farming than he ever wanted to do.

Readers Notes:

*If you are here solely for the supplies and instructions scroll on down for the TL;DR section of this post.

*Pictures were not taken of the original process. The pictures attached to this post are an example of what was done in smaller scale.

A couple of years ago we raised turkeys to sell as mostly organic, free range, farm-fresh, etc. turkeys. We harvested 12-15 turkeys that year, our first time. (The exact number alludes me, but it was a lot for a first time.) I was sorely unprepared for the killing part, the scalding part, the plucking part, pretty much every part, so I figured I’d improve that this time around.

Why would I make a kill cone? I hung the turkeys upside down with rope with pretty good success last time. Although once the turkeys get above 35 pounds, trying to put their legs in the slipknot of a rope can get tedious. After I took a couple of shots in the ribs from turkey wings I decided I didn’t want to deal with the pain and hassle of it this year. I figured it’d be easy to just slip the turkeys into the kill cone and let them calm down in there, plus they don’t move around as much in the cone as they do when they are hanging loose on the rope, so that’s another added benefit.

There are about 40 pages on google on how to make your own kill cone but all of them were for chickens. I had a problem finding actual directions on how to make a turkey sized kill cone. Reading through a couple different websites the best I could find was “well I’ve never made one, but if I did, I’d do this” and their dimensions were different from other sites dimensions. All the various chicken kill cone dimensions matched up, however.

I bought several pieces of 36″x48″steel flashing which didn’t list the gauge. I’m guessing this piece of sheet metal isn’t at that sweet spot of 26 gauge, as it felt like it was basically a piece of aluminum foil folded in half twice, or a little thicker than an aluminum can, but it worked just fine. I bought this at Home Depot, and the sheets were about $16 a piece. Most websites were saying to use tin snips to cut the metal. The tin snips this place was selling were $34?! more than the cost of the two pieces of sheet metal I was getting. I thought, “Screw it. I have a circular saw with a metal cutting blade, I’ll just use that.” Trying to cut a giant piece of basically soda can metal without a proper cutting work bench is a pain in the neck, and I wouldn’t recommend it at all. If you don’t have a pair of tin snips, don’t be cheap and just buy the freaking things (at the time of this posting we still don’t own tin snips, so listen to my “don’t be cheap” rant with a grain of salt).

The next hurdle I came up to was how to fasten the metal together. One site said to use tapping (self drilling) screws into a board, another said grommets (man, I really wish I knew how to do that) , another said rivets, and another one just said to use nuts and bolts. I bought tapping screws, which I didn’t use and some nuts and bolts, which I did use. Just buy the smallest size nut and bolt they have.

Now comes probably the hardest part if you aren’t good at math, which I am not: the trapezoid. You basically cut the metal into a trapezoid and roll it like you are rolling a newspaper to swat a fly, and that makes the shape of the cone. Now some sites will try and have you cutting these elaborate patterns that aren’t true trapezoids but a sort of trapezoid with some stupid looking tab you might see on a filing folder in a filing cabinet. You don’t need to mess around with all those extra cuts and curves, just cut a dang trapezoid, if you are lucky enough to cut on just two lines DO IT! But you’ll probably have to do three.

Now comes the difficult part of rolling the cone and putting whatever type of fastener on that you are going to use. For these turkey size cones, you will need help, trust me. Roll the metal, measure the head opening 7″ wide. Have someone hold the metal together, drill holes and insert your nut (flat side on the inside of the cone). Fasten the ends first. You can do the other 2-3 holes or fastening areas on your own.

And there you go, that is basically all there is to it. The “experts” on the other sites say you can do it in about 5 minutes. And you probably can, but for a first time without all the right tools, look at it being 15-20 minutes of your life to save you not having to deal with angry turkeys hanging upside down from rope.

Oh, and you’ll want to hand this thing up on a sturdy piece of anchored wood, to do that add a piece of metal from the scrap metal you have from cutting it. The metal I was working with felt too thin to use it so I folded it in half using an eyeballed 8″ x 3.5″ piece, I folded the metal and drilled that into the cone at the top of it so I cold use that tab to hang it on the beam. It worked OK, but if I had to do it again I might fold it 3 times so it’s thick enough to hold it without the threat of it ripping in half and the entire apparatus falling.

Picture of hanger for actual turkey cone

Size difference between turkey cone and chicken

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TL;DR section

Supplies

1 sheet of sheet metal (I used a 3’x4′ steel sheet flashing of unknown gauge)

1 box of 3/8″ nut and bolts (I got a 12 pack, but if I knew how, a steel grommet would be better)

Tin snips if you have them, something to cut metal if you don’t

drill and 3/8″ bit to make hole for the bolts if you aren’t using grommets

sharpie

screwdriver and/or ratchet for the bolts and nuts

Instructions:

Since I was working with a 48″ long piece of flashing I calculated 25.35″ and rounded up to 25.5″ for a final area of 25.5″ height x 24″ base1 x 48″ base 2

Draw trapezoid to fit the above dimensions with the sharpie or anything that will mark on the metal.
Cut the metal with tin snips or anything that will cut metal.
Roll the metal so that the opening where the head will go is ~7″ wide, the top of the cone will be wide enough for giant whites to fit in comfortably.
Drill the holes along the cone where the metal overlaps, people recommend 5 holes, I made due with 4, or use grommets, I don’t know how, so if you want to know google it.
Insert the bolts so the flat part of the bolt runs along on the inside of the cone (you don’t want the birds getting cut up by the bolts) and tighten.
There is a sort of ^^ since my sheet metal wasn’t long enough where the metal overlaps, I just tucked those down with some pliers and installed a hanger. to make the hanger I just took a long piece of extra metal left over from the cutting, folded it in half, and drilled a couple holes through the cone into the piece I made and put some bolts in there to secure it, and I put a couple more holes in the top part of it to attach a couple screws into the wood beam we were attaching it to.