A Choosing Time

Wow this came so fast.  I am calling this time on our tiny homestead A Choosing Time. I am guessing there will be more than one.

Choosing Chickens: 

We have had to choose our chickens.  5 Cockerels/Roosters went back to our wonderful breeder including the ever-fun foster chick I *rescued* at Recreation Park.   He was clearly a rooster from the beginning but we enjoyed him a great deal while he was here.  We may have one more that will have to be returned and one that may come back as time tells us more clearly who is hen and who is cockerel.  For now, we are down to 4 chickens and our coop and pen are much much quieter.  The hens are deciding on the new roosting options now that they have more room.  They were scared the first couple days, opting to stay in the coop tempted by their favorite treat, sour clover.


Choosing for New Crops and Next Year:

I have learned a great deal in just this few months about what has been successful in our gardens.  Good news: not many looser crops so far.  Bad News: I want more of everything and thus need more gardening space.  We are loving our large cache of Kale.  Love it.  I want to specialize in Dinosaur Kale but I will see how it goes over the winter.  Swiss Chard...lovely!  It is a big hit with us.  As a plant, it is a heavy feeder but I think we can handle that.

Along adding to the volume of the things I like, I want to try a bunch of new crops: Patty Pan Squash, Pumpkins, Potatoes and I want to try mushrooms. 


The next project will be to close the ends of our gardens in with more gardens to get the space I want. 



And Some Good News:

Obie was allowed to keep his tail for now.  The cyst/abscess nasty thing began to heal nicely in the time between the diagnosis and the scheduled surgery date.  Given the choice, I  opted not to hack it off.  That said, if it gets infected again, we're back to that question.  He did have two large cysts removed and did get the world's worst haircut but he has done surprisingly well. He does insist on walking our block clockwise so his naked patches don't show to the street. He is now back to being our 87lb rabbit eating sunflower leaves, lettuce and strawberries when he gets the chance.

First Havests have Started and a Flood

First Harvests:

We are feeling lucky to be starting to harvest from our gardens.  It is mostly greens but they are wonderful.  We have a couple kinds of lettuce that we love.  One is something called a Trout's Back lettuce.  The Butter Lettuce is especially bright right now. 

We continue to receive seedlings from friends including a series of heritage tomatoes: Purple Cherokee, Speckled Roma, Mr. Stripey and some others.  Our onions are now all in and the peas are starting to climb.  The squash are moving into larger leaves and they starting to reach out a bit.  Our broccoli is showing its head a bit.  On the whole we are pleased and are thinking about the next steps in converting our yard into our homestead.

As you can see the chickens continue to grow and look more and more like they will as adults.  They are curious about everything now that they are outside.  Robins and Blue Jays frighten them and they run back into the coop when one arrives.  I have not seen the hawks I saw earlier this year but I do have the outside run now completely covered in chicken wire and avian netting.  

We are particularly lucky because we had a deluge of rain that left most of our block with flooded basements and flooded yards.  So much so that I spent Sunday pumping out the flood next door so that our yard wouldn't get flooded.

The Flood of 2010 (so far):
The house next door is vacant.  They were long time-residents and a much beloved family here and the neighbors do what we can to keep it up until they are ready to put it on the market.  Including using our spare sump pump to move more than an olympic sized swimming pool of water out of their yard.  7 hours of pumping.

This was the same set of storms that did so much damage in Toledo, Oh and Dundee, MI.  We slept through the whole thing but we got pretty busy the next morning.  Some water in our basement but this pond...this one was going to do damage.  What you see is me standing with the electrical cord in my hand (dry and above the water) and the PVC pipe and pump leaning on my thigh as it pumps water out to the storm drains in the street.

I am pleased with my decision to keep the pump with a faulty on/off switch (always on) as a spare.  It really came in handy AND the new pump I replaced it with worked wonders.  I was even more pleased that I found a flat spot for the pump and I could get out of the water. 

And with that, I think I will take my chair out back and enjoy the evening.