At Summer's End

Well...it's hard to say that summer's ending here, when it seems it never really started. The last week has been gorgeous, but you can't help but feel the arrival of fall imminent in the mornings when the air is crisp and the dew heavy.
I know, I know...we've been terribly lax in posting the goings on here at Three Lil' Acres. Let me see what I can do to bring you up to speed!

Mike warred with the weather to keep the garden alive this year. He had a little more luck with the squash and cukes than last year, but they were still hit really hard by the plagues of various mildews that the cold damp summer encouraged. He had similar problems with the tomatoes and countless were lost to blossom end rot. We're finding that the soil here is rediculously out of balance and will be amending quite thoroughly this fall.

But, we had some successes.

An okra flower. This is an experiment to see if we like them. We're hoping to try some okra pickles!

These are the flowers for Purple Podded Pole Beans. Aren't they pretty? While these will never replace Kenntucky Wonder for flavor, they were still better than storebought and really neat to grow.

Now, one part of the garden that has been a resounding success is the peppers! Mike put in Jimmy Nardello frying peppers(the long red ones), Bull Nose and King of the North Bell Peppers, Czech Black hot peppers and Jalepeno peppers. We're still harvesting steadily on these, and enjoying them thoroughly!

The beans were another success. Mike has put up somewhere close to ten pounds of green beans, and that's beyond what we've been eating fresh. The tomatoes are producing, though not as well as we'd hoped, and the flavor is...well, flat. And that's for ALL of the varieties grown, Blue Beech, Rutgers, Cherokee Purple and Speckled Roman. We're not sure if that's because of the deficient soil or because it didn't get hot enough up here.

On other fronts, our new laying flock is freeranging and should be laying eggs in about a month. It looks like we got one rooster in the bunch - a Barred Rock that has been dubbed "Rocky"(of course). And I still maintain that there's nothing funnier to listen to than an adolescent rooster trying on his crow. Here in a month we'll sell off the extra pullets to bring us down to our 15 hens.

The three laying hens are doing well, though they do enjoy picking on the young pullets. They've been paying their own way(and then some) with egg sales since the spring and I can't wait for the pullets to start laying so we can expand our customer base. I've regular customers at work and a few others that buy eggs occasionally.

So...that's a brief rundown on the place! We'll try to get better about posting(I know...I say that all the time)!

Homegrown Goodness

Things are growing like mad for us this year, and what a relief that is! We're running like crazy as always, but that's the way we like it, most of the time.

So, here's what's doing on our three little acres.

The garden is almost entirely planted. Parsnips and eggplant will get transplanted this weekend, and we're aiming to get the corn in, too. Sweet corn, popcorn and dent corn, hopefully. After we get a couple more beds in, we have cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts to transplant as well.

As we've mentioned in previous blog posts, we've gone with raised beds to help combat the long cold spring. It's working wonders, and we've blossoms on peppers and tomatoes already, which is much better than last year. Of course, last year was a very cold, soggy one!


Here's our first pepper blossom. This is on one of our Jimmy Nardello pepper plants. Nardello's are a frying pepper and delicious!



This is the first of our okra sprouts. We've actually never tried growing okra before(or eating it, for that matter), but decided to after watching a show on it. We hope to at least pickle these, but we've a few recipes to try to see if we can conquer the infamous okra slime!



We don't have it fenced in yet, but this is the majority of the garden(we've one more bed to go for this year, at least). In the far left bed we have planted some cutting lettuces, spinach, chard, some head lettuces(you can't really see those), and Kentucky Wonder Pole beans. We ended up having to replant the beans, but now all of them are up and doing wonderfully. The first bed in the middle is our tomato bed. We have speckled roman, blue beech, and rutgers tomatoes in there, all three of which are paste tomatoes. Behind that is the root bed. Turnips, beets, and radishes, as well as some snap peas and a new bean for us, a purple pole bean. Those are all doing phenomenally well.
The first bed on the right has our peppers(two different bells and some nardellos), and will also have our eggplants(Diamonds and Rose Biancos) and possibly some edamame. Behind that is another root bed. Already there are celeriac(Root celery) and the rest of it will be planted with parsnips. You can't really see, but along the fence behind all the beds is an asparagus bed.

The strawberry tower is working fantastically. We've berries all over this puppy, some all filled out and working their way from green to white, soon to turn pink then red. We can't wait for those first berries :)



Can you spot the gooseberry in this picture? We transplanted our poor little bush this year, and it's coming on strong now. There are two berries on our little thorny gooseberry - one for me, one for Mike ;)


We have 25 red raspberry plants in this year that are coming on strong, but were we surprised to find some volunteer berry canes popping up around the property! We don't know what they are yet, but we're looking forward to finding out!


We did discover yet another benefit to having more than one bathroom in the house. 26 day old baby chicks arrived Tuesday, and after a long trek via truck, bike and air Mike settled them in the downstairs bathtub! The difference in their temperment is distinct, and they're doing well.



As for the rabbits, we've three litters in the growout cages totaling 22 fryers. I think we'll be butchering the oldest six in a couple of weeks, then the balance a couple of weeks after that. We will be culling a couple of our does when we do the first butcher, however, after hemming and hawing for weeks about it. We just don't need to have five breeding does.



And don't you know we work everyone around here hard? Willow just had to stretch out and take a nap the other day. You know, watching her dad work so hard is just exhausting!

The three day weekends

Well, Memorial Day is here at last! Mother Nature has gifted us with a gorgeous weekend, and we're taking advantage of it here. Yesterday was devoted to some necessary, though rarely enjoyable tasks.

The morning went to butchering rabbits - yes, even on a holiday weekend that has to be done! Thirteen rabbits, all of them with beautiful pelts and nicely sized. After than I ran into the Village for a much needed haircut, then back home to tackle the rabbit once more! All of the meat is now parted out and more than half of it is wrapped and in the freezer. I think I'll try to get the remainder done later today.

Mike's knee is healing, and he's been getting around without crutches since Monday. Some days are better than others, but on the whole the knee is better than before the surgery. Wednesday is the followup visit, and we'll find out where we go from here. Otherwise, he has exercises from the physical therapist with a couple more weekly visits before he's free to proceed on his own.

We had a wonderful dinner last night. Mike grilled up some chicken and rabbit - and we were both thrilled to find out that my treatment of both of them addressed the worry of overly dry meat! A little oil, my special spice mixture and Mike's careful grilling turned out mouthwatering spicy grilled skinless chicken legs and thighs and lean rabbit quarters. Yummy. Accompanying that was the first pasta salad of the season!

Tomorrow we're going to be grilling out again - brats this time! We picked up a watermelon, and a friend might be coming down from Buffalo to hang out for a bit with her dog. Pollux should love that!

On to some farm news.

On the poultry front, we have 25 day old chicks coming in a couple of weeks. We're getting 11 Barred Rocks, 11 Golden Laced Wyandottes, and 3 Delawares. Here's what will be populating the chicken coop here shortly.






Initially our intention was to get the 25 and perhaps sell most of the pullets once they reached laying age. Well, tragedy struck last weekend, the day after Mike's surgery. A fox and her litter wiped out all but three of our hens. We thought we had lost the entire flock - no one heard a thing until the the last Buckeye squawked and drew out attention to the goings on. Needless to say, neither of us were happy. We're going to be taking a trapping course this summer and over winter we will take advantage of the fact that we are permitted to trap on our property. The predator pressure has been increasing, with raccoon, opossum, coyote and now fox all sighted in our yard.

Starting next week, we're going to a schedule of four 10 hour shifts at work. So, for the duration of the summer, I'll have three day weekends! I'm positive that the long weekends will more than make up for the long days.

Today we're hoping to get the tomatoes and peppers transplanted into the garden, as well as some more seeds planted. We're going to give okra a shot this year - the seeds we picked up are merely 56 days to harvest, and the plants produce until frost! We've a few different recipes to try, and hopefully this is another vegetable to add to our garden permanently.

Well, time to make some blueberry pancakes and get going today!

Spring is here.

Spring has arrived in glorious fashion. The rising sun spreads a carpet of exploding dandelions across the lush green lawn, blossoms blushed with pink cluster on the apple trees, and the crab apples erupt like fireworks along the roads.

It is gorgeous and affirming, that once again we have made it through the winter.

The chickens scratch amidst leaf litter, announcing their finds with happy chirps and warbles. The rabbits have nests full of babies. A robin has a nest atop a post against the barn and scolds me daily as I go about my chores. Soon she'll be feeding babies from the bugs she finds in the yard.

The trees have finally donned their leaves. One can no longer look deep into the woods behind the house, between naked branches and trunks. Instead a brilliant wall of leaves has filled in - beech and poplar, oak, maple, cherry and birch. The canopies dapple the ground and sing as the wind moves through the leaves.

Soon, soon, vines will climb the trellises in the garden. Beans, snappeas, cucumbers. Seeds unfurl leaves and grow their roots.

It is spring, and I am renewed.

Spring is here.

Spring has arrived in glorious fashion. The rising sun spreads a carpet of exploding dandelions across the lush green lawn, blossoms blushed with pink cluster on the apple trees, and the crab apples erupt like fireworks along the roads.

It is gorgeous and affirming, that once again we have made it through the winter.

The chickens scratch amidst leaf litter, announcing their finds with happy chirps and warbles. The rabbits have nests full of babies. A robin has a nest atop a post against the barn and scolds me daily as I go about my chores. Soon she'll be feeding babies from the bugs she finds in the yard.

The trees have finally donned their leaves. One can no longer look deep into the woods behind the house, between naked branches and trunks. Instead a brilliant wall of leaves has filled in - beech and poplar, oak, maple, cherry and birch. The canopies dapple the ground and sing as the wind moves through the leaves.

Soon, soon, vines will climb the trellises in the garden. Beans, snappeas, cucumbers. Seeds unfurl leaves and grow their roots.

It is spring, and I am renewed.

Springtime at Three Lil' Acres

Well spring has arrived in startling fashion here in Western NY, and we're double-timing it trying to keep up. Over the past two weeks we've planted:
~Two apple trees
~Two pear trees
~Two Plum trees
~A sweet cherry tree
~Two heartnuts(one a seedling, one grafted)
~Three PawPaws
~One seaberry(more on the way)
~One Elderberry bush(more of these on the away)
~2 blueberry bushes
~50 willow starts(for a living fence)
~100 strawberry plants(two different varieties)
~25 asparagus plants(all male, so all will produce spears)
~25 red raspberry plants

We've also transplanted the peach tree, peashrub, cranberry and gooseberry to more suitable locations. Still to come are more seaberries, more elderberries, a corkscrew willow, and a buartnut.

Yes, we're planting like mad! And thankfully we're almost done with the permaculture additions for the year.

Last weekend was a busy one. I took Friday off, and it was devoted to the strawberry tower. After losing most of our strawberries(and plants) to deer and rabbits last year, when Mike found a plan for a strawberry tower, we were both gung ho to go that route this year! It took alot of scratching of the head to figure out all the angles, but we finally got it! So, Friday morning we moved it out to its permanent location and filled it with dirt and composted rabbit manure. That evening, after the heat of the day had passed(and yes, surprisingly, it was warm enough in April to be concerned about that!) we got the 100 strawberries planted.


Pretty cool, huh? They've been in for five days now, and are leafing out wonderfully! So far we're really happy with the way it's shaping up, and a nice side effect of the tower is that the base is merely 28 inches square, which makes fencing out chickens, rabbits and deer very easy and economical. Oh! And we're proud to say that all of the materials for the tower, like our coffee table, are recycled from pallets!

Today we're working on the garden. So far we've three 11 foot by 3 foot beds built and ready for dirt - that's next on the agenda, that and fencing the chickens out of both the new garden area and the asparagus.

Yes, I've taken today off, because we've a lot to get done in the next two weeks. On May 14th Mike is going in for knee surgery. It turns out that he did a lot more than just tweak his knee back in January, he tore the meniscus. That's the pad of cartilaginous tissue that acts as a shock absorber in your knee. He'll be laid up for six weeks after the surgery, so we're trying to get as much done between now and then as possible, so that hopefully it's just a matter of watering and weeding while he's recuperating.

So, that's that! I'll do my best to post pictures of the garden this weekend, but I can't promise anything at this point.

A full week ahead...

Or rather, a full week in process.

We started remodeling the upstairs bathroom over the weekend, spending a good chunk of Sunday pulling up the peel and stick tiles that were put down by the previous owner. A piece of advice - peel and stick tiles are nice, easy to use, no mastick to worry about and so on - but not at all the appropriate choice for a bathroom. So, Mike and I took turns wielding the heat gun and prying up the tiles, one by one.
By the time we were done, we found the original green mosaic sheet linoleum beneath - and, actually, if it weren't for the tears and such in front of the tub, it wouldn't be all that bad. So, Mike spent the greater portion of yesterday struggling to get the adhesive left behind by the tiles up off the floor - inch, by torturous inch. He's about halfway through the bathroom, and we're hoping that we can work on laying the new flooring down tonight. If not, we'll be making the trip downstairs to use the bathroom until probably this weekend.
So...we have that going on, we're expecting chicks tomorrow - after hemming and hawing most the summer away, we finally decided that we really need to increase our flock. So, we've got 11 golden buffs(one of the most common brown eggs layers - the hatchery was sold out of Buckeyes), and 14 meat birds coming out way. We'll have to get them settled, then we'll be off to the first of two days of hunter education class.
We also need to butcher rabbits this week, Saturday is going to be spent finishing the hunter ed class, and we're expecting a visit from the breeder we got our rabbits from. She's interested in Otter - we'll probably trade for one of her rabbits, which'll help us keep some diversity in our gene pool.
And, at some point, we really have to start working on roofing the garage, and doing some changes in the barn that will allow the new chicks to move out there in a couple of weeks, and let us increase our growout cage space for the rabbits. Oh...and firewood...and tear down the pool...and start prep work for next Spring's garden...and...boy...I'm tired already!

So...any family wanna come join us for a working vacation? We have plenty to do!!

A Much Needed Update

Yeah, I know...I've been slackin'.

So this is going to be a long one...just to warn you ahead of time! I thought I might just do a chronological update of the past month's going's on, but I think it might be easier to follow if I just go by topic. So...here goes.

Rednecks and Rememberance

Last weekend Mike and I made a trip out to my mom's last weekend to attend a BBQ held to honor my grandmother's last wishes. It was nice to get to see some of my family members, and to hear other's memories of gramma, and we all shared quite a few laughs and tears.

I think Gramma enjoyed watching over us all, and my mom made sure to give her the seat of honor, right up close to the bonfire :)

I hope Gram heard us ribbing my aunt, though...I really think she would have appreciated it! She always had a great sense of humor, and loved to tease.

So...take a look at this...Aunt Coleen and Jess are quite proud of their outhouse, since they have so many bonfires and bbqs and such.

But...check out the decorating on this puppy....talk about your nice digs! Jess said she wanted to make sure you knew you were using the restroom "under the stars" :)

Now...the funny part is....and I wish I'd gotten a picture of it...that the outhouse is finished, but their kitchen is still under construction!!!

Things around our 3 acres...

Well, we've been trucking along rather well, livestock wise, but the garden is struggling. The weather has been unseasonably cool this year, with an amazing amount of rain, and that has proved a bit much for our garden to overcome. Our cukes have given up the fight, and the rest of our squashes have just been shivering in the chill. Our green peppers have been handling it rather well, but we've pounds of tomatoes just hanging out on the vines, waiting to make the transition from green to red. We've been harvesting green beans rather steadily, and our canillini and hutterite beans are drying - we'll be pulling them probably in a couple of weeks. The corn's doing so-so...we've got ears developing on the Painted Mountain and Golden Bantam, and the Kandy Corn that we planted late in the season is puttering along fairly well.

All in all, it's definitely been a season of learning about our climate and soil, and I'm definitely hoping we fare better next year.

The rabbits and chickens, on the other hand, are doing phenomenally well. Our mama hen is doing a fine job of teaching her three chicks how to scratch for bugs and free range, and it looks like only one of those is going to turn out to be a cockerel, which is pretty awesome. We've got an order of chicks coming the second week of September - half will be meat birds, the other half will be a pullet run of Golden Buffs, which are a standard egg laying breed. We wanted to get more of our favorite Buckeyes, but they were sold out.

As for the rabbits, Lily was bred Wednesday, so about four weeks from now we'll see her second litter born. Her first litter is seven weeks old today. We'll weigh them in two weeks and see how they're doing...and will probably head to freezer camp that weekend.

Cocoa's second litter is three weeks old today, and there are some beautiful coats coming in on those babies! She had eight healthy kits, and we lost two - though we do think we know what happened there, and will endeavor to prevent that happening again! They're growing well, eyes fully open and I expect to see them start to venture from the nesting box sometime this week.

Last but not least, here are shots of Otter and Amber. They're the two does we decided to keep from Cocoa's first litter, and will be added to our foundation herd to bring us up to four breeding does and a buck. They're growing well, and we'll probably start breeding them come the end of October or beginning of November. The same weekend Cocoa had her litter we butchered the other three from her first litter, and found that to be MUCH different than processing chickens, and while it's not something I enjoy, I definitely won't approach it with anywhere near the dread I view butchering chickens with!

So....that's what's going on here. We've been working steadily on projects around the place, some small, some larger, and are looking forward to building the future of our 3 Lil' Acres. Our fruit trees are coming along nicely, and I can't wait to get the rest of what we have planned to round out the place.

I'll try to be a little more diligent in posting updates...depends on what's on our plate from week to week though!

The garden's growing...

Well, finally remembered to take the camera out to snap some shots of the garden. Now that we're finally warming up here and getting some sun it's starting to come on strong.
We're definitely experiencing a learning curve, though, and hopefully will find it much more successful next year.

We're growing: broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, beets, turnips, mangels(which is a livestock beet), radishes, cucumbers, a few different lettuces, summer squash, zucchini, spaghetti squash, delicata, pumpkin, cannelini beans, hutterite beans(a soup bean), peas, pole beans, tomatoes(4 different varieties), and peppers(a bell pepper, a frying pepper, and jalepeno).

Here are some shots of the garden...