Replanting

Semi Dwarf Plum and Nectarine trees.

    We really love fruit here, so it makes perfect sense to add as many fruit trees, bushes and plants. Recently I purchased a dwarf plum tree and quickly replanted it into a bigger container, as the pot it was in was so small it was mostly root and very little dirt. I would have put it in the ground but we aren't quite sure as to where all these fruit trees are going and I do not want to have to dig them up later. Since I was doing some replanting I thought I'd better check on our cherry trees as well. Sure enough they needed to be replanted into bigger pots.

   I also had time to spread some viola seeds I collected from last year and spread them around the flower bed out front in the bare spaces. I started working again on the area in front of the house where we plan to put stairs in with a pathway. It is not an easy task with little ones running around, plus the rain.

While surveying the front yard area, I noticed some flowers among the wild blackberry bushes. Turns out it is red elderberry. I hope to cut back the blackberry bushes there so I can dig out the elderberry and move them to a more ideal location. Nothing like getting free fruit, thanks to the animal that dropped the seeds there.

Have you ever had ideas as to how you want your yard to look like but don't know where to start or even have a bunch of different projects going on at once? That's me! With all these things going on, I would really like to knock out 1 thing so I can be finished with it and move on to the next.

Oh, 1 last update... The eggs in the incubator are on day 9, we are half way there to lock down. Which reminds me I need to get the laundry room cleaned up so we have a place to put the brooder for the chicks. 

Chicken Eggs and incubation

1st egg from our Sicilian Buttercup Hen

 
   

      It always amazes me, when I pick up eggs from our hens, at how different they all can be. We get a variety of colors, as well as sizes. We have a few hens who lay some super jumbo eggs. We are talking they are so big they usually come in at 4 ounces, now that's a really big egg! Lately though most of our eggs are small/medium sized, except for the pip squeak one we got from our newly laying Sicilian Buttercup hen. Not much bigger than a quarter.







  To give you a better idea as to how small this egg is, here is a comparison of the various size eggs I get next to this tiny little egg. It looks so little next to all these other eggs.

      It will be awhile before we will ever be able to hatch her eggs, as our roosters are extremely bigger than our littlest hen. Until then though we do plan on hatching some eggs instead of buying chicks this year. We plan on doing 2 hatches.

  
     Our first hatch is going to be an Easter Egger batch. Breeding our rooster Curly with 5 different hens, 2 other Easter Eggers, Brown Leghorns, Anconas, and Golden-laced Wyandotte. Needless to say it will be an interesting batch of chicks and we cannot wait until these babies are peeping, but that won't be for at least 3 more weeks as we just started them in the incubator this morning. 

      

      We collected eggs over a period of a week. Each egg had the date and the hen/breed who laid it. Of all the eggs, we placed 5 from our EE hen "Roo" (far right), 4 from our other EE hen "Muff" (just left of Roo), 2 from our Golden-laced Wyandotte "Lacey", 3 from our Brown Leghorns, 2 from our Anconas. In total we were only able to place 16 eggs in our incubator. Hoping for some pretty birds and mostly hens at that. 

 Will keep you posted as how things go and of course the peeps when they hatch!

Progress...

   I finally made some progress with the blackberry removal along the property line where are extension for the garden will go. Most of it was already dead canes but still quite a few green ones. Even with wearing long sleeved coat and jeans, those thorns can be vicious!

    As you can see from the picture above there are some decent piles of the brush and different levels of dirt. As it turns out the height of the dirt at the base of the property fence in some areas is 2ft higher than the ground where the piles of cut brush sits. This in itself can be a problem but I have already decided on a solution. I plan on making a wood retaining wall about 2 feet away from the property line and back filling it with all the extra dirt. This will give me a raised bed where we plan on growing Jerusalem Artichokes and Mammoth Sunflowers. It will be, we think, 48 feet long by 2 feet wide by 2ft deep. Hoping to have the tree cut down, fence and T-post fixed, with the rest of the area cleaned up soon so that I can get started on that retaining wall.

     Some probably think I am crazy for taking out wild blackberry bushes but as you can see, this is what happens when you leave them unattended. We have chickens and they loved digging through the bushes to get all the bugs but alas because the property line fence was buried and damaged in a few spots, they kept escaping into the neighbors yard. We constructed a barrier fence of 3ft U-post and chicken wire to keep the chickens out until I could get rid of the brush. Between the property fence and the barrier fence is about 10-15ft. Who in their right mind would want to give up that much yard? Add on that it is at least 75ft long, that's a lot of gardening space!
     If you are going to keep wild blackberries or even growing other varieties, you should make sure to cut the dead growth and dispose of accordingly. The plants will be healthier and produce better berries if you upkeep them properly.
     I am so excited to be this far into this clean up project! It is not easy to take out these kind of bushes when they start flowering, which is why I took them out before that could happen. The goal for this project is to have everything cleared, fixed, cleaned up, and fenced with the retaining wall up by this fall.


If you would like to see what this area looked like before, you can check up my other 2 post: http://thebornehomestead.blogspot.com/2013/02/yard-clean-up.html  and http://thebornehomestead.blogspot.com/2013/02/yard-clean-up-continued.html

Spanish Tortilla

Spanish Tortilla with sausage

     My DH found this recipe for Spanish Tortilla in a magazine, where that recipe went I have no idea. We make it so much now that we have added our own twist to this simple recipe that consists of potatoes and eggs. 

     Spanish Tortilla with Sausage and Peppers

• Oil
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• eggs
• sausage/ham/bacon*
• peppers/onions/mushrooms*
• cheese*

*(you can add however much of the items with the * or any other food you might want in your tortilla.)

 This recipe below is done up for 2 people but depending on how many potatoes, eggs, meat, veggies, and cheese you add it can be made to stretch for more people.

You will need to heat up enough oil in a frying pan/skillet (whatever you use to make scrambled eggs in) to cover the whole pan, on medium heat. While the oil is heating up, peel 1 medium potato and dice to the size of hash browns. Once oil is hot enough, add diced potatoes. You will need to cook these until tender, do not over brown. While the potatoes are cooking: scramble 4 large eggs, add to the egg mixture, 2 cooked sausage links that have been diced up (I use the precooked ones heated up in the microwave), and 1/4 cup of chopped peppers. After potatoes are cooked, remove from pan and let drain on paper towels. Reserve the oil to use for next step. Take drained potatoes and add to egg/meat/veggie mixture, stir. Add final mixture to remaining hot oil in heated pan and cook. Once it looks like it is almost cooked, then flip like a pancake and cook on other side. Depending on how much mixture you have, flipping can be tricky. I recommend if you are doubling the recipe or your mixture is almost double with what I have, then you will want to split the mixture in to 2 separate batches for cooking. 

I have done this with ham, bacon, and sausage. With peppers, cheese mixed in, and when we didn't mix  in the cheese we added it to the top when serving on plates. Choose whatever ingredients you like and create your own take on this simple recipe. If you have problems flipping or there is just too much in the pan, you can always just break it up and cook like you would scrambled eggs.

Warm weather makes for constant busyness

   

     It's been awhile since I last posted, due to being constantly busy. With Spring arriving, warm weather, conferences, and Spring Break chores around here have been slowly getting done. Of course with it being nice, we stopped at some nurseries to check out plants, trees, and bushes. Came home with more plants for the front yard and a bunch of seed packs. Cleaned up some more of the blackberry brush next to the property line in the back where the garden  is going and was able to burn a small portion of it. Still have over half left to pull out and move away from the property line so we can take out the tree that is growing through the fence. We did finally measure where the final garden will be, a whopping 34ft wide by 118ft long! We won't ever have to worry about not having enough room to grown everything we want, or at least I hope that is the case. However, so much more needs to be done before we can even start fencing it in and planting anything. Acquired some Stinging Nettle from a lady off of Craigslist, scored some really large pots from her as well. Finally dug up the holly bush that was growing in the yard and it's now in a pot since I cannot decide where it will go if I decide to keep it.
   

Since we have been busy with things around the house we decided to take a break and head off to Sequim, to the Olympic Game Farm. The kids had a blast feeding the animals and I got some pictures but realize that I definitely need to start shopping for a better lens.

Curly, our Ameraucana rooster.

 




   Now that things have cooled back off and the week is half over, it's time for us to get ready to start thinking about creating some hatching eggs. We currently have 3 roosters; a barn yard mix, a Rhode Island Red, and what we think is an Ameraucana rooster. We have a couple of Easter Egger hens that we would like to breed with the Ameraucana rooster. Then eventually do some sex-link chicks by crossing our Rhode Island Red rooster with our Barred Rock hens.

That's all for now. Hopefully soon I will be getting started on the Permaculture for the Blueberry plants, so I have something more informative to show you.