Bike, Scarecrow, Hops... oh my!

A weekend of firsts:

A sixth (!!) birthday meant a first bike, and first bike-riding lessons, on a gloriously sunny Saturday over at the farm. He was so excited, and he had a phenomenally good time.

Pre-flight systems check

"Mommy, I did it all by myself and Daddy!!"

What are you looking at??

He and I also made our first scarecrow together, which ended up being a fierce viking to overlook the garden plot. The scarecrow's made of old clothing, an old pillow, yarn for hair, an old plastic viking hat, and a patriotic pinwheel to add motion and reflective light-play. I sewed in a hanger when I put him together, so  hanging him up was easy - we put a nail in a big stick, put the big stick in the ground, and then hung him off the nail. A length of yarn through his belt loops runs around the stick to keep him from flying away in a strong wind. We doused him with some stinky perfume and put a bar of Irish Spring in his back pocket to make him smell more "human", since deer are my main problem.

Admiring a job well done.
(For reference, the real one here is a solid 4' tall!)

Wheee! 

Grrr... What are you looking at?

We also got our very first "farm" crop ever into the ground! We've gotten a late start with the snowing and the raining and the flooding, but we put 6 "Cascade" rhizomes into the ground (from Thyme Garden, cost about $35 with shipping and handling). Later - next week? - we'll put up a PVC tepee trellis system to support the hops as they grow.

Hop rhizomes, after soaking

Rhizome in prepared hole

The circle of  planted hops, marked with flagging tape

Clarification of where the hops are: 7' radius circle, with rhizomes equally spaced at 6 locations around it.
Later, in the center, we'll place a 15-20' pole, with twine secured to the top.
Hop bines will later run up the twine, and it will be awesome.

Assuming that we didn't plant the hops way too late - I don't think we did - I believe we can hope for a hop harvest in October. It probably won't be a super-impressive harvest, as in the first year hops are mostly establishing their root systems and don't produce as much as they would otherwise. I'm very eager to see how much I get from these, though, as this is something of a feasibility study for further hop growth. I'm absurdly excited to be growing these, though, and I hope they do well. I'm already wondering if the guys are interested in Fuggle or Nugget for more variety next year. :-)

Chicken Math

One of the things my husband and I have been looking forward to when we move up to the farmhouse is having a small flock of chickens for our own use. We may also sell some eggs to friends and family, but this isn't intended as a money-making venture so much as a cost-reducing venture. Also, I have to admit I prefer the taste of a really fresh egg, and I like knowing what went into my food - these are all reasons that I'd like to farm, in general, so a small flock makes sense and helps diversify our "portfolio".

A note here - I firmly believe, after all my research, that the ability to diversify and add value is what will make this farm work. Too many farms in this neck of the woods are dairy, period, and so they're all tied to the ever-falling profit from dairy, and they can't easily regear. I plan to sell cashmere, wool, possibly angora (both handspun and ready-to-spin), but I also plan to sell breeding stock and freezer meat. A few highland cattle will help protect my smaller animals, cut down on parasites in the pasture, yield some tasty and potentially valuable beef, and possibly even give me an unusual yarn to market. I'm hoping to have linen to sell, which should make me stand out more in the market, but if I'm trying hops and brooms this year as well to see what production would look like there. Once I'm up at the farm I'm planning on adding two beehives to see about small-scale honey production, but the threat of bears means I'm waiting until the place reeks of humans. I also fondly remember raising geese as a child, and as an adult have realized they command an impressive per unit price - based largely on rarity and tastiness. Altogether, this somewhat schizophrenic homestead should be light on its feet and able to navigate constantly-changing economic paradigms without too much damage. Or, at least that's the plan.

At any rate, the chickens-
Between my husband and I, we seem to have settled on three breeds that catch our fancy: Wyandottes, Marans, and Welsumers.

Wyandottes are the all-purpose chicken of 1880s New York - really, quite appropriate to our historic farmstead! They're cold-hardy; generally considered winter layers; good layers of larger, tinted eggs; good meat birds; broody hens are excellent mothers; not particularly aggressive. They come in a number of attractive colorations, and have a beautifully proportional look to them - curvy and balanced.

Marans are a early 20th century French breed, very "au courant" at the moment, and known far and wide for their dark "chocolate-colored" eggs. They come in a couple colorations - I like Black Copper. They should be moderately hardy, respectable layers of large, dark eggs; but by all accounts they've suffered somewhat from their popularity, and the selection for hardiness, productivity, egg color/size, etc., have fallen off in favor of producing more birds faster. Hatchery Marans in particular seem to be suspect, with some owners talking about having hens that are indistinguishable from, say, a Barred Rock. They seem a bit risky to me, and very... fashionable, in a bad way (for instance, Martha Stewart has Marans), but the eggs do have a definite wow-factor and I'm willing to give them a shot. My husband's already decided the putative Marans rooster will be "Cadbury", and I can't argue with that. ;)

Welsumers (or Welsummers - I'm still not sure which spelling is "right") are a 20th century dual-purpose Dutch breed that lays large, dark brown eggs (not quite as dark as Marans eggs, but close!). Being dual-purpose, they're also good tasty meat chickens. They're quite hardy, but not winter layers like the Wyandottes. In general they're supposed to be reasonably docile but able to fend for themselves. They seem to only come in one color - known to chicken people as Red Partridge - but I find it appealing.

(Henderson's Chicken Chart has pretty much everything you might want to know about the not-bizarrely-rare breeds of chickens in a convenient comparative format. Bookmark it - it's nearly perfect.)

One of the difficulties, though, is where to get these future chickens from... They're not your run-of-the mill hatchery sex-link hybrids, or your standard egg productions breeds, or (heaven forbid!) the ubiquitous Cornish Cross that is so ill-suited to a homestead-type operation. I could maybe get them from breeders, but the thought of $7-9/chick, with a minimum order of 12 or 15 chicks, and $30 shipping on top of that (so, $120-$160 for 12-15 chicks, assuming I can get all three breeds from the same breeder... yow. Plus, they're sold straight run, so no assurances on sex ratios.) I could try and buy started pairs, but they're harder to come by and not cheap, either (I just saw a started pair of Black Copper Marans go for $80 at auction). Hatcheries are easy to come by and order from, but generally have a 25 chick minimum order, and are apparently kind of unreliable with the "specialty" breeds. Sand Hill Preservation Center gets some pretty good reviews from chicken people, and seems to be in it for the preservation of the breeds - there are maximum orders on the chickens, as well as minimums. There's a 25-chick minimum, and the breeds I want are $4 or $5, shipping is $35.... so $143 for 25 chicks?

This article suggest the way to house chickens is in deep litter on an earthen floor, which appeals to me greatly. I think they make some fantastic points - very convincing! (You should also read their article on bringing back the broody. Awesome.) The most salient point is, for the deep litter to work I'm going to need 5 sqft/chicken. If I'm ordering 25 chickens, straight run, I need to plan on 13 cockerels (possibly more, possibly less, but a reasonable estimate). I'll probably want to keep one rooster per breed, so that means I need to plan on putting 10 cockerels in the freezer and housing 15 adult chickens (requiring 75 sqft). It would be prudent to design a coop that allows for expansion - if I make the coop 1/3 bigger, it would be 100sqft (conveniently 10ft*10ft), and hold up to 20 chickens.

Obviously, if I do the deep litter/earthen floor idea, I can't do one of my favorite coop plans, the miniature gypsy caravan. But I think I can still do a charming and functional coop, perhaps one more in line with the rest of the farm buildings.

Expect plans here in the coming months.

Pre-ordered hops

Inspired, largely, by this manual *, and by my co-workers' continuing homebrewing successes, I've pre-ordered 6 rhizomes of "cascade" hops. My plan is to include small-scale hop production on the farm, producing more-or-less specifically for my coworkers' brewing needs. I'm convinced it will fit smoothly with the planned farm operations, adding another diversified income source. If production ultimately exceeds my coworkers' demand - which I expect will take several years - I hope to take my excess to local homebrew suppliers. I'm also generally  supportive of the whole concept of hop pillows, both for my own use and for sale. Maybe with lavender? Mugwort?

Hops made NY,  and NY can still grow hops. I can't see a market for buckwheat, which historically was grown in some quantity on this farm, but hops should do just fine and will certainly sell. While I don't brew, I'm certainly eager to try growing some of the older and less-common varieties of hops in the coming years, if my market base is amenable.

(I'm really trying not to look at how easy it would be to make small batches of malt to order. Almost absurdly so. Just.... not this year, guys. Ok??)

So, yeah. The upshot is that there will be organic (because, really: why not?) hops produced on the farm starting this summer. I've heard the first year's harvest is usually pretty small, but that suits me just fine - I've got my plate kinda full this year. I need to refine my trellis design a little, but I'm excited.

This coming week marks the start of Cornell's Northeast Beginning Farmer class, "What Do I Need to Do to Start a Farm Business?" (BF103). I imagine in a week or two I'll have something interesting to say about it. Also, the yak is spinning up nicely, but slowly. Pics will take awhile.


*Oh, who am I kidding? Really I'm being heavily influenced - in this as in all things - by Fred Gee's In a Place Called Chenango. I've never forgotten his song about Coy's hop farm in Smyrna. Actually, I don't think I've ever forgotten any of his songs - I've been his biggest fan since he came to sing at Oxford Academy & Central Schools for our local history unit in 4th grade, and again for Oxford's bicentennial (uhm... 6th grade?). Mr. Gee, if you're still out there, you're probably why I'm an archaeologist.

In the works

I've ordered seeds for this year's garden - my typically grandiose, even gleefully excessive, hopes for the garden's bounty, printed out in black and white and given a (hefty) price tag. It's a little more intimidating this way, than when it's merely my perpetually hopeful imaginings of bumper crops and fresh sweet corn... I've never in my life managed to actually -grow- sweet corn, though obviously many people do so sucessfully here and sell it at road side stands up and down this valley. Just not me. Yet still I buy it (this year, it's "Vision", from Johnny's Seeds, with 75 days to maturity and the most appropriate name I've ever seen).

In fact, this year I've purchased 37 varieties of seed for my vegetable garden, possibly a new record for me. I'm feeling very positive in general about planting in the new plot (even if we don't move this year, we're still going to plant the garden up at the farmhouse), with more room, better soil - and more sun.


I've also been working on designing a shawl pattern. It's the most frustrating thing I've ever done for fun, other than gardening. The shawl itself is a simple triangle, knit from the center of the neck down, with a lovely lace stitch called "elfin lace" covering the upper third. The problem happens when I try to switch to a thistle-pattern lace I've been designing, which doesn't want to play nice. Just when I think I'm getting the hang of it, it decides to go and do something totally contrary to what I thought was going to happen! I've been swatching and working on it in the off hours, so hopefully I'll have something to show you in a week or two.


The house progresses slowly. I had really hoped to be further along by now - since it's the end of January - but considering how sick we've all been, we're still making good progress. Even today, I've mostly been lying on the couch with the cat, sneezing and drinking tea and trying to ignore a fever. Working the problem from both ends (preparing the farm and getting this house ready to sell) is exhausting and stressful, and (with the winter weather) takes its toll on a body. However, I suspect that next weekend, we'll be ready to tackle some issues with paint and trim, which will feel like real progress!


I filed the taxes! That's progress I can make even with a nasty headcold.


I've been ignoring the spinning wheel, and I should stop. I miss it. I have a lovely bunch of orangey-red mixed wools (not my dye job, they came that way) that would brighten up the winter blahs and be a fantastic gift for one of my knitting friends.... And then I can practice my dye skills on some of the undyed wools in my "to spin" box.


I'll leave you, then, with some pictures of the Mocha Latte soap. At this stage (just barely three days in), the ammonia smell is gone, becoming instead a mild coffee/cocoa smell. The color darkened dramatically after I cut it, and it looks (to my eyes) almost exactly like fudge. It's sitting in an out-of-the-way place, separated for better air circulation, where it will cure for the next several weeks (I guess).

New blog, new year, new progress!

Happy New Year!

I don't know about you, but I have grand things planned for this year. If all goes well, by the end of August we'll have renovated the farmhouse of the historic Sannick Family Farm, and moved my family in. That will be the big change for the year - moving from our small city back to the more rural area I grew up in. But long before that, I'll be spinning a dyeing like a madwoman, filling out business paperwork, and generally doing whatever else I have to do to get my etsy store off the ground and start selling you deserving people my handspun yarns. You want to buy them, right??

I'm not stopping my plans there. I've been watching Richters, Landis Valley Museum, and Joybilee Farm for months now, wondering when I should order flax seed. This year I'm going to plant flax, harvest it, and process it into linen. Wonderful plan, isn't it? I'm wildly - probably pathologically - excited. I might even go to the flax demonstration at the Home Tool Textile Museum. I'm also - speaking of seeds - almost fainting with excitement over the possibilities for the sort of vegetable garden I could raise up at the farm, with its fertile soil, sunlight, and expansive space. It makes one giddy to think about the possibilities.

If I play my cards right, and things go smoothly over the following months, it's not unreasonable to think that I could even have my first few doelings by the end of this year. A couple of likely candidates, housed in the beginning of my goat-kingdom. Picture this barn, but with a goat-pen and four to six goats, instead of the random sheet metal:

So, happy New Year to you and yours! I hope your upcoming year is as filled with giddy, ambitious promise as mine seems to be. May 2011 - for all of us - be energetic, creative, passionate, fulfilling, happy, and a thousand times better than 2010!