Homestead and Folly

A friend of mine gave me a jar of her crab apply jelly and I loved it so much so that when I passed by an apple tree full of crab apples set off of the road, I filled my nap-sack with semi-stolen apples and was inspired to make jelly. I acquired the recipe from my friend which seemed simple enough, but (unpeeled uncored apples, sugar, cloves and cinnamon sticks)  found out I needed way more apples than one nap-sack held, so I went and picked more. Still enthusiastic, and a bit smug with my free bounty, though growing suspicious, I got out my canning stuff and cute little jars and got set to make jelly on a Saturday. Step one was wash, remove sticks and cook apples. Done. Next step "put in muslin over a sieve, let fruit drip overnight and don't force through". Crap. So this is going to require more attention than I initially thought. I don't own muslin or a sieve. "wait, I know" thought I, I have that natural burlap bag from the "bag o' sprou...

We have new chicks! We have just picked up our meat chicks that we will raise for the summer and our broody layer hen is hatching chicks as we speak that will hopefully grow up to be good layers. I have been raising chickens for a few years now and am still in love with them. I was reluctant to get chickens. I knew they were an inevitability but I dragged my feet getting into raising them. My husband said "let's get them" and I said "let's wait". I was afraid of making a mistake and we did, lots but over time our chickens have trained us to be good caretakers. Okay, so the baby chicks are pretty cute and fuzzy but that is fleeting. What I really love is the simple joy of watching them socialize in their strange chicken ways. I love feeding them, and I love watching them work out the pecking order, I love seeing them turn into broody, obsessive mothers and I love watching them find something new. The first chickens we had were duel breed chicken...

Picture perect blueberry-lime jam in the making We are still selling the house but as that is not something I can actually claim as a job title we are going forward with all kinds of projects. I am looking for a truck or van to buy to make hauling easier and so I can get around.  We are about to get meat chicks, and then the next project is to build rabbit tractors as we try out raising meat rabbits. I have never had rabbit but am hoping to will myself to like rabbit. I was raised a vegetarian so like many of you thought rabbits were pets but the Globe and Mail says "r abbits produce 6lb of meat on the same feed and water as cattle will consume to produce 1lb" @ globeandmail http:// bit.ly/13UBjZr   . They taste like chicken and are easy to keep. That is good enough for me. Reading up on the subject I have discovered that rabbits are very easy to care for, having almost no diseases or illnesses, requiring no shots or antibiotics and I can tractor them outdoors m...

Ok, so we have this beautiful nine year old dog named Milli, who is a mixed breed German Shepherd and Lab. She is very smart, easy to train and loves to eat poop. Any kind of poop. The one thing we could never train her out of was eating poop. She can be seen on any given morning scouring the misty grass with her nose down to the ground hunting for those delicious treats. Porcupine poop, rabbit poop and especially chicken poop. Her favourite is late winter icy-poops. Yes, we call her a way when we catch her but as a country dog we can either keep her inside all of the time or let her go out and try to limit her consumption. Now, I know dogs eat all kinds of terrible things and they are somewhat designed for it but Milli gets sick the day after eating poop quite frequently. For years she has snacked poops, been fine for that day but then vomits twice the next day, seeks long grass to help the job and won't touch her dog food. It passes and she is fine after a day. We have ...

I was sitting at my kitchen table this morning checking e-mails and thinking of blogging when out of the corner of my eye I detected movement out of the window . I saw the red-blond colored back of a medium dog-like animal moving so quickly I could barely track it. Not a Fisher as previously thought. Adrenalin kicked in. Reddish-Blond,  and fast. It was very close to the house and my chickens were currently free ranging it nearby! Only one thing it could be. A fox.  I jumped up and slid my bare feet into the closest boots which happen to be my father-in-law's size 12 old rubber boots that somehow got left here. I grabbed the bowl of leftover popcorn from the night before (my chicken's favorite meal, next to Styrofoam, but that's another story) and ran outside. Of course we were having a heatwave and the chickens were busy dust bathing and trying  to stay cool so were quite oblivious to the bloodthirsty predator near by. I called and they would not be lured. Eventu...

Last week my seven year old son, Riley yelled "I just saw an animal!" We listened patiently but returned to eating not sure if he saw anything at all. A few minutes later chaos erupted and my husband yelled" Holy crap something got one of our chickens!"  We all flew out of the door and started to wrangle the chickens who were out free ranging in our yard. Afterwards in our excitement we started to investigate in a CSI fashion, recreating the events and following the evidence. In general we all think we are much more clever than we really are. There was a big pile of feathers from our missing Chantecler, no blood trail and no trail of feathers. My husband soon found her under a tree at the back of my old garden. Her neck had a chunk taken out but she had no other wounds, apart from being dead. We discussed what got her and decided not to leave her there to be eaten only because we didn't want to further advertise tasty chicken dinner in our yard. We deci...