It’s hard to see but this is Raymond, and the new chickens inside a wire pen. Everyone’s outside today because it’s sunny and warm, and both the dogs and the big chickens need to get used to the babies. I’m hoping to get the babies out of the cold frame soon (in part, because I need it) but for now, everyone’s just kind of hanging out out there, separated by a little wire. Raymond has the most trouble — he really really wants those chickens. For a while this morning he was lying down next to the pen, as if…
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Chicken Movie2 from Charlotte Freeman on Vimeo. I’ve been meaning to post a chicken update, but I was a little behind the curve on the whole video thing. So here’s a short clip of the chickens, in their new, expanded nursery which is, as you can see, made from recycled cardboard. Eventually I want to just let them run around inside the cold frame, but they’re still so small, and there are some crannies in which I think a panicky baby chicken could get stuck. The cold frame has worked out splendidly. It’s less drafty than the dog crate/tarp setup…
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New chickens! I was going to order from my new local feed store, but they didn’t realize they’d have to order really early, especially these days, and they called last week to say the hatchery had run out until May. So I had to drive over the hill to Bozeman and take my chances. I called to see when their chickens were coming in, and although they told me Monday, they actually came in yesterday, which means that once again, I won’t be raising Arucanas. They were sold out by the time I got there. So, the luck of the…
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Look what came in today’s mail — new seeds! This order is from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (I also have some herbs coming from my beloved Seeds of Italy). Of course, its snowing again today, but I did eat the first overwintered scallions out of the hoop house for breakfast, and the spinach, komatsuna, arugula and bok choi are sprouting out there so in a couple of weeks, greens for breakfast. Sigh. Can’t wait. In the meantime, I ordered a few new things — a couple of new tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Stupice, Koralik, and Reisentraube — all short season, all…
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Here’s the overwintered hoop house. The spring greens I planted a month ago are only now starting to sprout — there are teeny tiny seedlings of spinach, bok choi, and arugula in there among the overwintered scallions. I planted seeds a month ago, but I hadn’t expected another bout of subzero weather. So today I pulled the plastic off, watered, planted a row of Gai Lan (where I pulled out the kale that finally gave up the ghost) and replaced the plastic. The key to hoop houses, I’ve discovered, is 2-inch binder clips — they’ve held the plastic during even…
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A couple of weeks ago I took a stab at the Classic Rye Bread recipe that Michael Ruhlman ran on his site. My beloved likes rye bread, and had asked for a sandwich bread. The recipe was really simple, so I took a shot at it (minus the caraway seeds because neither of us really likes them). The first loaf I made was sort of heavy, and the crumb lacked elasticity. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t great. So this time, I did a mashup between the original recipe and the no-knead sourdough that I do weekly. I added a…
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With apologies to Anne Lamott, here’s what I’ve taken to doing with novel drafts. My local feed store ran out of wood shavings, so I’ve been using shredded office paper inside the coop. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before? Maybe because in Livingston’s famous winds this can sometimes get messy, but the girls really really like the shredded paper. They’ve been making little nests with it. And this is one way to keep oneself from getting too precious about “the work.”
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The famous Livingston winds hit last night — up at Choteau, near Glacier, the gauge clocked 114 before it broke into pieces — I don’t know what it was here, but it was the kind of morning where stuff is all over the yard. Among the things that blew askew was the cover that’s been on the hoop house all winter. Here’s how it looked inside — the scallions are pretty battered, but they look like they’ll come back strong. The chard, hard to tell? I pulled the deadest leaves off the surviving chard plants, and pulled a couple of…
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We’ve had about ten days of snow and temperatures, sometime daytime as well as nightime, in the single digits. We’ve had over two feet of new snow, which is good, because it insulated my one experimental hoop house where I planted cold-hardy greens. There’s one row each of chard, laccinato kale, bok choi, and arugula, plus I started komatsuna seedlings in mid-October (they’re tiny). I also transplanted a row of scallions between each row of greens, since they’re the one thing I buy most often during the winter. Here’s what the hoop house looked like before I dug up the…
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Winter has arrived with a bang here in southern Montana. That’s my patio furniture which is suddenly buried. The storm came in yesterday, but the real snow seems to have fallen overnight. I shoveled yesterday, and it was a only a couple of inches of powdery fluff; this morning, nearly a foot, and a little heavier (but I think that’s because the ground was still warm). I don’t dare peek in the hoop house, because it’s supposed to go down below zero tonight, and I’m hoping the snow will insulate. We’ll see if anything survives. It’s slated to run a…