Farm, Garden, Ranch and Homestead : Makers au Naturel

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sixstringedthing

sixstringedthing

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  • #161
    Oh, I can see myself spending quite a bit of time in here.
    Who likes growing their own chillies and making stuff with/from them?

    Birdseye Hot.JPG scorpion chilli.jpg

    Hot Chilli_01.jpg IMG20240113171231.jpg

    IMG20240203192345.jpg another chilli photo.jpg IMG20240203192438.jpg

    I've had a go at growing my own tomatoes and various other kinds of veg over the years with mixed results, but my living situation right now is a little uncertain so I mostly stick with pot-grown varieties for convenience (being able to move them around to find a favourable position is super handy). I'd love to have some fruit trees, but that's a bit ambitious right now. Homegrown orchard fruit would be amazing though, so much to do with it re. canning, preserving, relishes, chutneys, etc. etc.
     
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    Tom the Melaniephile

    Tom the Melaniephile

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  • #162
    @Carhole is the chile growing and processing master, but they have been dealing with serious health problems and backed off Ars postings. Anyway, they've posted a lot about it - and search mostly works these days ;)

    Me, I have a chile pequin which is perennial here and sometimes grow serranos. I like refrigerator pickling the serranos, the pequins usually get thrown whole into a taco or something. This past fall I dried some of the pequins and pickled some of the pequins.

    Hoping to get a good fig crop this year. Summer 2020 was a huge crop (preserved, sliced and dried) - but we had nasty freezes 2 years in a row. This past winter has been the first mild one in awhile.
     
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    AmigaPhreak

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  • #168
    If it doesn't bother you morally, I feed scrambled eggs / hard boiled eggs to my hens and then crush the shells after drying them and feed those back as well. They happily will eat both. Even the rooster likes the shells, which I think is odd, but hey...whatever floats your boat.

    As an aside to the above...I never understood why chicken food advertises "100% vegetarian" as a selling point. I assume the concern is with respect to dead farm animals that would otherwise go to a rendering plant or whatever...as a source of diseased / rotten meat. But chicken are omnivores and they'll happily eat meat of any kind. If you want a vegetarian egg, get geese. :)
     
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    Drizzt321

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  • #169
    AmigaPhreak said:
    If it doesn't bother you morally, I feed scrambled eggs / hard boiled eggs to my hens and then crush the shells after drying them and feed those back as well. They happily will eat both. Even the rooster likes the shells, which I think is odd, but hey...whatever floats your boat.

    As an aside to the above...I never understood why chicken food advertises "100% vegetarian" as a selling point. I assume the concern is with respect to dead farm animals that would otherwise go to a rendering plant or whatever...as a source of diseased / rotten meat. But chicken are omnivores and they'll happily eat meat of any kind. If you want a vegetarian egg, get geese. :)
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    Not just that, but bugs. Chickens are definitely bug based omnivores as well. Frankly probably a good idea, if your chickens don't have a very big area to roam, to get some bugs to drop in there to give them needed protein and such. Unless you produce a ton of food waste/compost, you might as well just toss it all in there regularly and let the chickens get lots of their nutrients from the scraps. Obviously don't leave it sitting there for very long, so it doesn't actually start to really rot. Will also attract the ants and such, which the chickens can feed off of too :)

    A virtuous cycle!
     
    SunnyD

    SunnyD

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  • #170
    Drizzt321 said:
    Not just that, but bugs. Chickens are definitely bug based omnivores as well. Frankly probably a good idea, if your chickens don't have a very big area to roam, to get some bugs to drop in there to give them needed protein and such. Unless you produce a ton of food waste/compost, you might as well just toss it all in there regularly and let the chickens get lots of their nutrients from the scraps. Obviously don't leave it sitting there for very long, so it doesn't actually start to really rot. Will also attract the ants and such, which the chickens can feed off of too :)

    A virtuous cycle!
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    One would think. Unfortunately chickens DON'T eat typical house flies/black flies in my experience. But you know what they love to eat? Fly maggots. That's why we love our chickens - they go through the pasture, scratch the manure from the cows and pigs and pick through it. They spread out the manure and clean up some of the fly problem at the source.
     
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    AmigaPhreak

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  • #171
    Flies will take their revenge though...my hens seem to have a chronic issue with loose stools in the summer and if there's too much fluff back there and it stays wet, the flies find it to be a great place to lay eggs. Then you have maggots eating the chicken from the outside in.

    I had to trim back feathers and clean the area with warm water on at least 4 or 5 hens to stop the assault. Good times, let me tell ya...
     
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    Crackhead Johny

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  • #173
    AmigaPhreak said:
    Flies will take their revenge though...my hens seem to have a chronic issue with loose stools in the summer and if there's too much fluff back there and it stays wet, the flies find it to be a great place to lay eggs. Then you have maggots eating the chicken from the outside in.
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    I assume the shit is necrotizing the chicken first, as I understand maggots do not like live flesh.
     
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    AmigaPhreak

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  • #174
    Crackhead Johny said:
    I assume the shit is necrotizing the chicken first, as I understand maggots do not like live flesh.
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    That's an interesting point. Wikipedia says there are maggots that eat only dead tissue and there are maggots that prefer dead tissue, but will eat living tissue if left in place.

    Reading more about "fly strike" in livestock with fluffy/furry backsides, it seems clear that living or dead flesh will serve for the particular species responsible....if there's no wound there, one will be made.
     
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    Carhole

    Carhole

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  • #180
    Tom the Melaniephile said:
    Yay! It fell apart. No hail, about a quarter inch of rain.
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    We have nearly filled our second five gallon bucket with rain since mid March. About 4” (eyeballing the finger dip) more last night. This morning I just went out the master bedroom and stood there watching the water cascading over every single gutter system. Some really heavy clouds have been rolling through while definitely riding their own cold disturbances, no signs of even a single thunderclap. I’ve never gotten used to that last point after growing up with Chesapeake Bay thunderheads boot stomping our town.
     
    Carhole

    Carhole

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  • #182
    Drizzt321 said:
    5 gallon, or 55 gallon?
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    Just regular five gallon pails. We use them for all kinds of of stuff around the place and I always have anything slightly suspect of being combustible out in front of the shop sitting in the bottom, moistened, or hanging from the edge of a bucket while it oxidizes. My wife never picks them up when she uses them so presently it’s a gaggle of pails collecting rain. Oh and out back in the garden as well, some compost turned bio-stew 🫣
     
    Carhole

    Carhole

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  • #184
    Drizzt321 said:
    Ah, this makes a lot more sense now.
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    I’m afraid my laziness in wielding teh English may have confusicated: I’ve dumped out the one that I’m using as a rain gauge and it’s almost full again, so we’ve probably received over 20” of rain in the past 20 or so days as my unofficial tally. But yes, we do have a lot of five-gallon buckets collecting rain out front as Mrs. Carhole tends to leave them in odd collections with their own kind and others to make us look like classy folk.

    So does rain collecting in a bucket become impaled?
     
    SunnyD

    SunnyD

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  • #185
    .劉煒 said:
    And the chickens are laying now .. a dozen eggs in the last week. Gotta love spring chickens.
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    Moults finally over with, the sun has been shining more often than not, and about half of my girls are consistently laying again. It's nice.

    And then there's this...

    PXL_20240331_122334630.jpg

    Shirley here decided she gets to be the broody goose. She's sitting on probably a dozen or so eggs laid between both herself and Louise. I'm guessing another couple weeks and we'll have some goslings roaming about.

    Lastly, and somewhat surprisingly, Peppa Pig is finally bred as of today. Surprising, because we've been nursing her current bunk mate, Zippy, from probably being within hours of dying just a couple months ago. He's finally gotten his strength back after losing a lot of weight over the winter and fighting off some unknown ailment. Today, he did the deed. Bacon seeds have been planted after a very long and arduous saga with these pigs over the last three years.

    PXL_20240315_215514511.jpg
     
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    SunnyD

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  • #187
    Drizzt321 said:
    That's one mean, angry goose ya got there. Yowzah!
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    Naa, Shirley is just doing her job.

    Actually according to Buddy the Goose, I'm one of the flock. These guys are honestly pretty friendly as far as geese go. Pilgrim geese are some of the most docile and personable geese there are. Yeah, all three are happy to warn off when I get near the nest, but none of them are aggressive. Unless you're a white water bucket. Then Buddy has it put for you.
     
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    SunnyD

    SunnyD

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  • #189
    1Zach1 said:
    I got talked into a small(8) brood of chickens. We shall see how this goes, but they sure are cute right now.

    View attachment 77755
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    Adult hens are really fun too. They get their own personalities, and I am guilty of anthropomorphizing them. They do start talking to you and are somewhat expressive.

    Roosters can be a pain in the ass, but also can be the nicest chicken in the world too. Roosters have a habit of picking a person that they tolerate and everybody else can literally fuck off.

    That begs the question - did these come from a store (like TSC), hatchery order (I'm guessing not because most hatcheries have minimums of 10 or 15 now), or local farm sourced? If it's the former or the latter, I'm guessing straight run? Which would mean plan for half of them to be roosters. :) (Hatcheries are generally the only place you can consistently request/order pullets and actually get them consistently)
     
    1Zach1

    1Zach1

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  • #190
    SunnyD said:
    Adult hens are really fun too. They get their own personalities, and I am guilty of anthropomorphizing them. They do start talking to you and are somewhat expressive.

    Roosters can be a pain in the ass, but also can be the nicest chicken in the world too. Roosters have a habit of picking a person that they tolerate and everybody else can literally fuck off.

    That begs the question - did these come from a store (like TSC), hatchery order (I'm guessing not because most hatcheries have minimums of 10 or 15 now), or local farm sourced? If it's the former or the latter, I'm guessing straight run? Which would mean plan for half of them to be roosters. :) (Hatcheries are generally the only place you can consistently request/order pullets and actually get them consistently)
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    They are from Murray McMurray. I believe all of them were sexed.
     
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    Carhole

    Carhole

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  • #193
    Drizzt321 said:
    Hmm.... @Carhole, you still having slug/snail issues? Maybe some of https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3635146 will help out?
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    Yeah, thanks for the suggestion. It’s a lot easier to simply put some in an empty beverage bottle and lay it on its side with the mouth at ground level and body mostly buried and downhill grade for drowned snail containment.

    It’s so bad here that even multiples of these don’t suffice, so we use slug and snail poisons. It gets costly if you want to treat regularly (arguably the only way to get remotely close to making a disease-safe garden here) though more often we just raise young plants in containers, then transplant into the garden once able to handle snail attacks on their trunks.

    Leafy greens are a no unless it’s something that you consume after cooking. The risk of contracting Ratlung Worm Disease is too high. Hydroponics is the way to go for raw greens such as all lettuces and other low fruit level edibles that could be slimed or potentially contain hidden, baby snails or slugs.
     
    KT421

    KT421

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  • #195
    Asparagus bed stalled out due to a couple nights of below-freezing temps; the spears that were too small to harvest withered and curled, and there were no new spears for over a week.

    Buuuut temps are warmer now and the crowns are waking up! I got a handful on Wednesday and a handful yesterday, which we ate with dinner last night, and it looks like I'll need to harvest another handful today! We'll stop harvesting in mid May (one month of harvesting time for a 3rd year bed) or when we get sick of asparagus, whichever comes first. Next year and every year thereafter will be two months of harvesting, give or take.

    Sugar snap peas are sprouting, tomatoes and peppers ought to have been potted up a week ago but are still in the starter tray. I'll pot them up tomorrow. They've been outside for a few days now, but there's still risk of a frost where I'd need to bring them inside.
     
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    SunnyD

    SunnyD

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  • #196
    Carhole said:
    Yeah, thanks for the suggestion. It’s a lot easier to simply put some in an empty beverage bottle and lay it on its side with the mouth at ground level and body mostly buried and downhill grade for drowned snail containment.

    It’s so bad here that even multiples of these don’t suffice, so we use slug and snail poisons. It gets costly if you want to treat regularly (arguably the only way to get remotely close to making a disease-safe garden here) though more often we just raise young plants in containers, then transplant into the garden once able to handle snail attacks on their trunks.

    Leafy greens are a no unless it’s something that you consume after cooking. The risk of contracting Ratlung Worm Disease is too high. Hydroponics is the way to go for raw greens such as all lettuces and other low fruit level edibles that could be slimed or potentially contain hidden, baby snails or slugs.
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    We used beer traps (bud light in paper cups - we had fun supporting Anheuser Bush during their whole woke boycott thing - otherwise we don't drink beer) to fairly good effect other than the fact that there was just sooooo many slugs.

    This year we'll be lining the rims of our planter boxes with copper tape which supposedly reacts with slug slime to give them a shock.

    My only other suggestion is get ducks. Ducks love slugs and snails. Unfortunately ducks also love greens, so it may not work out that well in a garden ...
     
    Carhole

    Carhole

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  • #197
    SunnyD said:
    We used beer traps (bud light in paper cups - we had fun supporting Anheuser Bush during their whole woke boycott thing - otherwise we don't drink beer) to fairly good effect other than the fact that there was just sooooo many slugs.

    This year we'll be lining the rims of our planter boxes with copper tape which supposedly reacts with slug slime to give them a shock.

    My only other suggestion is get ducks. Ducks love slugs and snails. Unfortunately ducks also love greens, so it may not work out that well in a garden ...
    Click to expand...
    Oh our beer traps in bowls turn into demon stew really fast. They’ll be something like 80% slugs and tiny snails within a day or two, then the smell…oh yeah. Truly there needs to be something better than iron phosphate or the poison or ducks for highly, um, contaminated areas. I’d treat the entire property. The giant African snails are the worst simply because you invariably end up stepping on huge snails in your bare feet and get covered in slime and snail guts. Those things grow to shockingly large proportions which while cool to see, well they’re invasive like so many other things here. They get chucked like grenades down into the gulch.
     
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