This Years Seeds: Our Pre-Farm Garden

A while back I wrote about my dilemma this year: Deciding which seeds to buy.  As you may recall, if you have been following along, I wasn't sure exactly where we would be for this year's growing season and not knowing was causing a little bit of indecision for this gal.  You see, the seeds needed for our homestead garden would be VERY different from the seeds needed here in the city pre-farm garden.

Well, fate decided that we would be here in the city, for at least the beginning of the season, and that is perfectly OK.  Everything happens for a reason.  That meant, however, deciding between planting a garden that we may have to abandon and not planting a garden at all and...well... I can't imagine going with option number two.  Not having a garden of some sort just seems unhappy.  So, we decided to plant a garden, knowing that we might very well have to leave it should the city house sell before harvest.  My reason for this (in addition to not having a garden being unfathomable) is that an awesome garden might very well be appealing to potential buyers and in the very least, if an 'un-gardener' buys the house, they may love having it and I just might bring one more person over the the dark side... or green side.  Yeah.  Let's go with that. :D

So, what did I decide on, you ask?  Well, check it out:


I placed my order with one of my favourite Canadian Seed houses, The Cottage Gardener.  I love them because of their dedication to preserving old varieties, their cute old fashioned feeling catalogs, their interesting seed info and the fact that they do it all by hand and work with other people on the same mission.

Here's what came in the mail!


Paris Market Carrot- I love these carrots.  They grow small and round, like beets or radishes.  Excellent for container gardening.  I like to pick some when they are small and pickle them whole!  I'll find a picture from last year and show you. Maybe even a recipe!

Purple Dragon Carrot- So much fun, especially for the kids.  I love their expressions and teaching them that although we only see orange carrots in the grocery stores, carrots actually come in a rainbow of colours!  One thing I have found about this variety in the past is that the tops tend to break off easily when you pick them, so be careful.

National Pickling Cucumber- A must have for a pickler like me.

Brune D'Hiver Lettuce- A lettuce that turns reddish brown when it gets chilly.  A fun lettuce to have in a green salad to break up the colour monotony.

Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries- I fell in love with these when our local produce pack guy offered them.  You can make a jam out of them or just eat them raw!  You don't pick them, though.  You wait for them to fall off the bush, in their cute little paper lantern, pull them out and enjoy.

Canada Crookneck Squash- I can't wait to try this almost extinct variety of squash!

Double Standard Corn- I've grown corn the past few years and havn't been overl successful, so I'm trying again.  This is going to be my first time growing it from seed, so stay tuned to see how that goes!

Early Wonder Tall Top Beets- I don't know about you, but I like the beet greens just as much as I love the beets.  This variety grows lovely greens, that you can enjoy with your beets or in a different meal spread.  My favourite way to enjoy the greens is steamed with a little butter and salt.  Yumbo!!!

Albino Beets- Do you like pickled beets?  Afraid of staining?  Try these beauties.  I pickled some of these two years ago and they were a huge hit.  I had customers hunting me down for more.  They are very similar tasting to the usual red beet we are all familiar with, but with a slightly sweeter taste, I find.  Try Them.

Green Podded Asparagus Pole Beans- Amazing!  These beans are soooo long.  I can't wait to see the kids faces :P

Aurora Hot Peppers- So pretty!  A little ornamental bush of tiny peppers that grow to about an inch and a half long.  They ripen from orange to red to purple... yes purple!  So fun!  Awesome for a container garden.

Marconi Peppers- On the complete opposite end of the pepper spectrum, these monsters grow to be about 12" long.  Some say they are the biggest pepper. I can't wait to see them.

Early Jalapeno- Must have in our garden.  Hubby is obsessed with making bacon wrapped jalapeno shooters, plus the oldest wants to make his own hot sauce this summer... might as well pick them from our own garden!

Don't worry, that's not all!  I'll be picking up some started seedlings as time goes on.  I have some seeds started down stairs in my everything room.  I'll show and tell those a day very soon.  it's late and this chick needs to get some shut eye!

Our Son, the Chicken Whisperer

It's been a few days since my last post, and although I do have some interesting updates, and how to's to post about, since its late I'm going to post about our son and our chickens.

Since starting to work towards moving from the city to the country, we have been talking to our boys about what we will be doing and getting when we move to our new homestead.  We've talked about the different animals we hope to have, how they need to be taken care of and how they will work together to benefit the entire homestead.  Both boys have been interested, but since Bridgette has joined our pre-farm, our oldest has REALLY taken to the experience, so much so that I've started calling him the Chicken Whisperer.

This is the child who has been becoming more and more fixated on video games, so we had hopes to getting him outside and DOING something when we got to the country (and before).  Since Bridgette's arrival this is the same boy who has been getting up before the rest of us in the morning to eat and get ready so he has time to spend with the chickens before school.  He faithfully feeds and waters them before school and they are the first place he goes when he gets home.  Collecting eggs is a highlight of his day and he spends hours outside either talking to them, watching them of just playing out in the yard in their vicinity. They (yes they, as in more than one now ha ha) follow him around, eat from his hand, let him pick them up, and call after him when he leaves. Earlier in the week we took an hour and a half drive to go pick up two more hens.  I don't think they have had much human interaction, as they were pretty nervous around us (as well as the guy we got them from).  They hid in the coop for about a day and a half, but with his coaxing and patience, all three of them are now happy, co-existing and already laying!  It's been such a positive experience for him, and us as a family.

New therapy for video gamers- chicken therapy.  I do now declare that it's a thing.

A post on the newest residents coming soon!
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Doin' the Coop de Coop

The (almost) complete coop!

Since Miss B is now officially a permanent member of our pre-farm, she needed a coop!  Now, I do have many talents (tooting my own horn here), but my friends, carpentry is not one of them.  It's something I hope to work on and develop but as of now... well... it's comical.  It is for this reason my hubby came to the rescue this past weekend!

The (almost) completed coop!  Notice it is on patio stones.  These are at the foot of the deck stairs and right now the only dry and snow-less place in the yard, ha ha!  Once the snow drops in other areas and the water recedes, we will be moving it to a grassy area.  Right now she is having fun pecking between the stones and reaching through the chicken wire to grab little pieces of grass.  She`ll also be free ranging in the backyard when we are out there with her, to keep her safe...

Before we started I showed him a bunch of plans and pictures, everything from my dream coop to a tiny temporary coop.  I've done a lot of research before now on coop requirements, so I had a pretty good idea of what was needed.  Let's discuss what I deemed to be the requirements, shall we?

- Security.  It had to be safe so that Miss B could be safe at all times.  Although our yard is fenced in, cats are able to sneak under in places, which means that small raccoons could get under ( and bigger ones over).  There are also foxes around, so they need to be kept out as well.  

-Attached Run.  In addition to a secure coop, she needed an attached run which was equally safe.  A safe coop is useless if the run isn't safe!  The run MUST have a locking/ latching door.

-Weather and Water Proof.  She needs to be warm an d cozy.  A happy chicken is a laying chicken!

-At least Two Nesting Boxes.  A good rule of thumb is one nest box per three hens.  The maximum amount of chickens we are allowed within city limits is 6, so two nest boxes will suffice for  now.

-A door or hatch for easy access to the nest boxes.  We want to have our boys involved in caring for the chickens so easy access is important.

-A large access door.  This needed to be outside of the run so I can take a wheelbarrow right up to the coop to dump out the litter.  I am going to try the deep litter method (more on that in a post coming your way soon), but when the litter needs to be changed, I want it to be done right and done easily.

-A perch inside the coop.  Chickens like to sleep in various places and one preferred place is on a perch, so I want them to have this option.

-Off the ground.  This helps in keeping it warm, safe and also gives the girls a place under the coop to get fresh air with some shelter on rainy days.  It also helps to keep it accessible in the winter (as long as you don't get 14 feet of snow like we did this year, in which case you are still shoveling it out... ha ha!).

-A place to hand their feeder and waterer.  Keeping them off the ground keeps the girls from kicking litter, dirt and poo in there.  This is the feeder I bought for her and I can`t find a link to the waterer, so I`ll hunt down something soon to show you, but so far they are working out marvelously!

I also wanted it to be cute...  hehe.  

And so he went to work.

Hubby and  Dad Start the Coop!

He started with the frame.  Yes, that is my front yard full of snow on April 13th.  Booooo.....

We made sure that all materials were untreated wood.  No point in having free run eggs if pressure treated wood is going to leach into the ground around your coop, where your girls will be foraging.

See the Nest Boxes?

Then he started to close it in, and added the nest boxes.  Then we moved it to the backyard to finish, before it got too heavy (no coops in the driveway, folks!).

 Here on the left, my friends, are the roof trusses.  A peaked roof to allow for height, which allows for that indoor perch.  That fence in the background is a 6 foot fence.

On the right, the view from the large access door, showing the nest boxes.  The little lip in the from helps to keep the straw in and eggs from rolling out.

 B (oldest of our boys) helped his dad build the door to the run.  The backyard is starting to melt, so the deck is the driest area!  He actually helped quite a bit on this project.

On the right, Miss Bridgette tries out her new coop!  Hubby even sided one side, and we will side the others soon. We also will shingle the roof.

I think the hubster did a great job.  He came to my rescue... again ♥.

I`d love to hear what you think or hear about your own coop project.. or pictures!

Miss Bridgette's First Week on the Pre-Farm

Pre-Farm:  My new word for what our city home is becoming.  As spring has begun to ever...so..slowly...creep into our part of the world, our small window of opportunity to list our city home has come and gone.  With over 5 feet of snow left in areas of our yard, it now starting to melt, our yard has become a muddy lake.  Everyone wants a house on a secluded island, but not when the island is house surrounded by a muddy city lawn lake.  The plan now is to work steadily on getting the inside of the house ready so that as soon as the yard has dried, we can mulch the front garden beds and get the yard looking beautiful again and then list.  With the current schedule Mother Nature is keeping, I'm predicting a listing date of about early to mid June *sigh*.  Everything happens for a reason, right?

With the new timeline, at least my garden questions are answered for the year.  I purchased seeds to suit the city garden, I'll plant it and we will enjoy it either until it sells or the end of the reason, whichever comes first.  I keep telling myself that it might be a selling feature.  I know I would have loved to buy a house with raised vegetable gardens, a kitchen herb garden and random edible plants growing around.  Add on top of it all that there is will be an optional chicken coop... whats not to love?

This brings me to the title of today's post: Bridgette's First Week.  Let me tell you, she's a pretty cool bird.  After being left to fend for herself in an inner city neighbourhood and starving and freezing in a spring snow and rain storm, one would think that she probably wouldn't be in the mood for laying anytime soon.  Heck, some birds quit laying for weeks or months just because they went from one cozy farm to the next.  Well, Miss Bridgette is a resilient girl.  As of today, day 7 of the pre-farm, Bridgette has laid 3 eggs.  One per day since she started.
Now the first one was pretty speckled (bottom egg in picture), and not knowing her history I decided that we should wait for at least a week or two to see how their quality progressed.  Sometimes speckled eggs can be caused by nutritional deficiency. Not that I think there is anything 'bad' about them, but since is takes about 25 days for an egg to be laid (from the time is begins its journey inside the chicken), these eggs are a product of her past life.  We aren't sure where that was, or what she ate, so we're going to give her a few days to get that old life out of her system.  Since she has been with us she has been eating great, so she will be ready to go soon and I think the increasing quality shows that her new diet is working for her. The middle egg in the picture is from yesterday and the top egg is from today.  Today's egg is actually speckled in lavender spots.... kind of pretty!  I've read that some 'special' birds lay like this all the time.  We shall see.

Another interesting this about Bridgette's eggs is that they are brown!!  Now, brown eggs are totally normal, which I'm sure you all know.  The interesting this is that we were sure that B was a leghorn chicken... which lay extra large WHITE eggs.  Since she looks like a leghorn (right down to her white ears) I'm guessing that maybe she is a mixed breed.  Not sure.  She's cool and we like her just the way she is.  I am working on finding her a few friends, however, so she isn't lonely.  I have a few leads... let's hope one works out.... Let the pre-farm animal count increase! haha!

Coop construction has started.  My husband has really come through for me on this one and it is looking GREAT,  I'm going to do a separate post on it once its ready for the world to see.  B and her future coop friends will love it I'm sure.  I love how hubby is really embracing the pre-farm.  I'm sure he wouldn't be thrilled if he came home to a few goats, but he seems to like Bridgette and her future egg laying is going to make them buddies for sure :)

Split Pea and Ham Bone Soup- Yumbo!

With Easter almost a week behind us, perhaps I am a little late to post this.. but then again, maybe you are just finally getting through to your beautiful ham bone.  I just love a good ham bone.  So much potential!

Today I am going to share one of my favourite ham bone recipes, Split Pea and Ham Bone Soup.  I love it because not only is it easy, but it's delicious.  I'm not sure how pea soup got such a bad rap, but I'm blaming the same wierdos who set out to also shame brussel sprouts, spinach and liver (also some of my favourites, btw!!).  Pea soup is also lovely on a cold day and a great way to use up vegetable stragglers from your crisper box.  

Now, some recipes call for heavy cream or sugars.  I prefer to make mine as follows, so that you are getting a good meal that you can have seconds of, without feeling guilty.

Split Pea and Ham Bone Soup

In a slow cooker/ crock pot, add:

One beautiful ham bone, with some meat still stuck on it, if you'd like!

Cover that bone with water and set to high and simmer it for awhile.  Perhaps a couple of hours. 

Once you can see ham wonderfulness in the water, add:

One bag of split peas or about two cups.  Make sure there are about 8 cups of water for your peas in the crock pot.  Also, it's always a good idea to check them over before you allow them to enter the wonderful ham broth that awaits them in said crock pot.

Now, add some chopped carrot, some chopped celery, some finely diced onion, some garlic (depending on how much you like garlic), a couple bay leaves, some salt and pepper, a touch of sage and thyme.  These last ingredients can be added again at the end when you taste, to adjust your soup to perfection.

Let all these things cook long and slow, on low, for about 4 hours.  When its done cooking, you have a few options: You can puree it (after removing the ham bone) in a blender, for the classic pea soup look, or you can leave it as a broth.  Keep in mind if you do leave it as a broth, that your peas will be settled on the bottom, so be sure to scoop those when serving it up.  Also, if you do choose to use a blender, keep in mind that it is not advisable to ever blend hot liquids... although I do, in small quantities, with a tight lid.  I do love the consistency it gives the soup.  If you want it a little thinner, just add a touch more warm water, or broth if you have some on hand.  If you want to add some sweetness, try maple syrup- awesomeness!

Hope you enjoy!  Would love to hear feedback if you have any comments, questions or ideas!

Sweet Potato Slip Update!

So, awhile back I showed you how to start your own sweet potato slips so that you can grow them in your own garden and benefit from their delicious wonderfulness for a fraction of the cost of buying them at the supermarket.  Another great thing about this is that you can choose the type of plant, by choosing a good starter potato.  I suggest grabbing a local, organic or naturally raised potato if you have access to it!

SO!  Update time!  Here are some progress photos:

On the left, March 31st.
On the right, April 6th.
Started on March 11th.

As you can see that once they get going, they really take off!  There are about 2 slips that are ready to come off.  I`ll be snapping them off as close to the potato was possible and then putting them in a glass of water, so that they can root.

 This usually happens pretty fast and once they have a few roots, they can go in some potting mix ( use organic if at all possible, to avoid chemicals).

 I`ll be posting an other update and pictures when I get to that point.  I`m also hoping to post an update throughout the growing season...although I`m not sure when the outdoor growing season is actually going to start!  As I write this, it is flurrying outside.  Winter just doesn`t want to let go!  One good thing, is that although I`m going to have a huge amount of plants growing all over around my house, with them getting a good head start inside, there is a chance for them all to mature before the growing season ends ( fingers cross for a warm fall!!).

Meet Bridgette, An Unexpected Matriarch

Hello Folks! This post will be brief, as its late and I've had an action packed day, but I HAD to share with you.  Also, Happy Easter to those of you who may celebrate the holiday.

As you all know, we are in the process of moving from the city to the country, to pursue a more laid back and healthy, free lifestyle in homesteading.  Here in the city, our animals are limited to our cats and our dog, with plans to expand our animals when we move.  Well..... let's say that plan took a tiny little turn today...

Meet Bridgette.

Meet Bridgette.

Bridgette made a somewhat expected entrance into my life today.  Our plans for chickens have been to wait, much to my reluctance, but at the request of my husband.  Since he is ever so patient and supportive of all of my crazy endeavours, I was respecting his wishes... until the call came today.  There was a poor chicken wandering around one of the inner-city neighbourhoods.  She had been wandering for a few days, she was cold, wet and not fed and she probably wasn't going to make it through the night (late spring snow/ rain storm with below freezing temps).  No one had gone looking for her, so I went to rescue her.

This is Jenn (right), my co-pilot and partner in crime on many of my adventures.  Let's all say hi to Jenn.. HI JENN!!

Together, with a borrowed dog crate in tow (thank you to my other bestie Sarah for coming to the crate rescue) we set off to save the chicken.  Remember, this was all happening in a very shady part of town.  At Jenn's expert suggestion, we turned down a scary looking dead end road by a boat dock and viola! Two driveways later, there was Bridgette.  Cold, hungry but in good spirits.  Jenn walked up to her, Bridgette gave one chicken "BOK!" and Jenn picked her up. No running, no struggle... she seemed genuinely happy to be rescued.  We put her in a little box (for your future reference, Build-a-Bear boxes are THE most idea chicken rescuing boxes) and set off to take her home.  We made a pit stop for food, meal worms, a cozy blanket, pine shavings and dishes for her kennel.  Our chicken selfie was taken during our little trip.  We are both sans make up, with frizzy snow storm hair... the perfect chicken saving look.

Chicken feed and Kale.

Bridgette is snug in her kennel, after having a good meal, a good drink and drying out.  She's a very good natured, friendly leghorn, we think.  I'm going to confess this now: there is currently a chicken in my spare bedroom (haha).  She was soaked to the bone so staying in the garage or shed was not an option.  After a few days of rest and food, I'm going to give her the spa treatment (
a nice warm bath) and once she completely dries from that, we'll have a small city coop built for her.  I'm hoping in a couple of weeks to bring two friends to live with her, so she doesn't get lonely.  In the meantime, I need to find a vet that does chickens.  It should be fun.

I'll be back soon!