CSA Week #1 & Spring on the Farm

Last week was the first CSA share pick-up of the season at Knapp Homestead.  It was a good early harvest of greens, mostly.

First share: head lettuce, baby radicchio, baby spinach, arugula, picnic radishes, kale, microgreens, and a potted herb seedling.

Other spring images from around the market garden...

Leaf and head lettuces planted out early spring in low tunnels.

Our personal potato crop is looking great this year.

We've also started a small strawberry patch of Seascape strawberries.  I'm looking forward to a long summer season of continuous harvest from these.

Den Renovation: Removing Black Mastic Again!

Although we did the lion's share of work on our hardwood floors last summer, there was still one more room left with tile and black mastic.  We put off starting this room for a whole month, and then we had to face the facts that if we didn't do this room now, it would be a whole year before we can get to it again.  (We do a lot of work during the summer because we teach school during the academic year.)

 Here you have it: tile, black glue, and beautiful floors underneath.

 I highly recommend using a mask, eye protection, and gloves when working on something like this.

Once the tiles are removed, we were left with a room mostly covered in black mastic (it's awful stuff for many reasons).  We know from last year that some of the mastic is surface, but that some of it soaks into the wood itself.  We also knew we (meaning Mike) would need to scrape off the surface mastic with a heavy dose of mineral spirits.  Again, we highly recommend protective gear and lots of good ventilation for this process.

Thanks to the awesome guys at our Home Depot tool rental, last year I was given a pep talk that I would be able to handle using a drum sander.  So once the surface mastic was up, I went down to HD to get my drum sander and A LOT of sand paper rolls.  I started with 36 grit, which is the exact aggression this kind of situation needs and went through about 10 rolls of sandpaper before it came out looking like this.

Sanded floors, pre-poly.

After the 36 grit removes the mastic and other imperfections, I moved to a 100-120 grit to smooth out all of the wood.  In addition, I used the edger from the HD rental to work on places where the drum sander cannot reach along the walls.  Once this step is complete, the room needs a really good vacuuming and tack cloth application to remove any dust and sawdust, and then you're ready for polyurethane.

Here are the restored floors after applying poly.

After about a week of letting the floors fully dry we will be ready to put down an area rug and furniture!

If you're thinking about gluing something to your hardwood floors -- STOP!  Don't do it!  At the very least, put down a subfloor to preserve the hardwoods for any future owners or future restorations.  There was no reason this should have happened in this house, and I blame it on the stupid house trends in the 1960s.

Redesigning the Chicken Coop

One of the outbuildings that came with our property was a chicken coop -- one with tongue and groove boards for the walls and ceiling.  Recently our neighbors (our house was his mother's house and where he grew up) stopped by and told us that the chicken coop was built in the 1940s and was moved from one side of the property to where it is now.

Back in November we got our first four hens because a friend was giving up the rest of her flock.  We kind of quickly got the coop in order (and discovered some cracked footing blocks in the process).  Since the ground was nearly frozen, we had no choice but to wait until spring to shore up the footings and we decided to cross our fingers that the coop would stand through the winter.  (It did, by the way...)

In February we got some new baby chicks to expand our flock from four to sixteen chickens!

Adding this many chickens to the coop meant we needed to redesign and really maximize the space in the coop.  I also really wanted to incorporate a permanent introductory cage for bringing futures younger chickens into the existing flock.  With the help of some ideas from Pinterest and my extensive artistic skills, I drew up a plan.

In the left corner I very much wanted to install an elevated, tiered roost over a poop deck, and build an introductory cage underneath.  The idea with the poop deck is that it catches the poop and makes for a tidier coop and easier cleaning.  I've also seen a poop hammock used, but with the added element of the introductory cage, the poop deck seemed to be our best option.

Before I began construction of the poop deck, I cleared out everything inside the coop -- bedding, nesting box, etc.  Then I screwed down some new plywood flooring (remember, the chicken coop is from the 1940s, so any way that we can improve infrastructure along the way is a good thing!).

As you can see the idea of the poop deck here is to catch the droppings in the bins lined with pine shavings and then I can remove the bins one by one easily and refresh the shavings.  It cuts down on poop all over the floor (although that still happens a bit) and it's much easier to clean.

(The pic below was before I installed the wire and panels for the introduction cage.)

                                     

Underneath is a caged off introductory area where we put the "babies" for about a week or so when they first went out to the coop.  The area has panels that slide out or flip up to allow easy access for cleaning the bedding and replenishing food and water.  They aren't in the cage any longer, but we've left part of the area open for when they need a break from vying for their place on the pecking order.  Competing for status is hard work for young chickens.

So far we have been working with this coop design for the past month or so and it has really worked out well!  The nesting box is directly across from the door, so we can easily peek in to see if there are eggs.  And the coop feels very roomy inside, giving each chicken the amount of space she needs to be happy.

Speaking of roomy, we've also been working on a new chicken run for the flock.  Full post to follow, but here's a quick preview of the beginning of the project.

                                      

Starting an Orchard

Part of the dream of homesteading is being self-sufficient as possible, right?  And part of having a blank slate of acreage is to create the vision, right?

However, the reality that comes along with digging six 3-foot holes in shale to plant an orchard is quite tiring and painful.  This is how we spent a handful of hours one spring afternoon -- digging holes, slamming the shale bar, and remarking at how beautiful that day was.

(The wheelbarrow is so old but the trustiest one we have.  Even the wheel is metal.)

Placement for these trees was also something important.  We had to take into consideration the slope of our back acres, where the water flows, and wind direction.

We got three kinds of apple trees, one apricot, one plum, and one pear.  We also got semi-dwarf trees so that we will be able to manage fruit collection (one day) and get fruit a bit earlier than with a traditional root stock.  I like to call it the future orchard, but I've been criticized that six trees don't make an orchard.  

Meh, I don't care.  If one day I get fruit from these babies, I will continue to call it an orchard.  If I end up killing all six trees, then we will pretend this never happened.

(There really is nothing quite like a flowering fruit tree.  So pretty!)

Garden Plan for 2016

We have a lot of plans for the garden this year.  For one, I am so excited that we actually get to participate in growing some spring lettuces and cooler crops -- last year we didn't get the garden in until early June because of the septic installation.

Taking from our experience in the garden last year and the crops we grew, we decided that we need to double the size of the garden.  We want to add about seven more raised beds to grow some other crops we haven't tried yet.  So by the time we are completely installed, the garden should be 50 feet deep by 50 feet wide.  I guess it sounds big, but there's also space to walk around and enjoy the experience of being in the garden... and that really excites me!  I would love to get a bench or something to put out there.

We also have some plans for installing a garden fence.  In the late fall I found a guy selling 200 linear feet of basic fence post with rails.  It was deeply discounted and the guy offered to deliver, so all winter we have had tons of fencing sitting in our garage.  I know we are both looking forward to getting that out of there to get the tractor in to work on it (that's a whole 'nother story/issue that hopefully we will be exploring in a few weeks...). But we should be starting garden fence installation here in a few weeks, which means digging post holes and lining up fencing.  With the amount of fractured shale we have around here, digging the post holes should be pretty interesting....


Ok, back to plants and gardening.

(I have a seriously nerdy way of planning the garden.  It must be the teacher in me!)

Last year we grew: 4 different kinds of tomatoes (but didn't have 100% success because of some blossom rot), lettuces, kale (lacinato & curly), broccoli, English peas, golden beets, red onion, carrots, herbs, collards, cantaloupe, butternut squash, radishes, tatsoi, nasturtium, cucumber, eggplant, red and purple pepper,

This year we are continuing what we grew last year, except for a few that we discovered we weren't that fond of, and adding: spaghetti squash, corn, sugar snap peas, strawberries, garlic, asparagus (we don't expect to harvest this for a couple years), ground cherries, pumpkin, and potatoes.

Last week when I planted the garlic, asparagus, some beets, radishes, and lettuces, I put some chopped up leaf matter in the beds, turned the soil, and then topped off with more of our stash of gardening soil.  All the current beds are ready for planting...

I also have my seed starting operation up and running in our basement, which is awesome!  I have a lot of seeds started, but I really need to start some more of the plants I need to wait until after Mother's Day to plant.

(Two shop light fixtures per row; one cool and one warm bulb in each fixture -- that way you get the whole light spectrum for the plant babies to grow up!)

How do you all start your seeds?  For the past few years I've been very must dependent on the lights-in-the-basement system, but I'd really like something more environmentally friendly.  I would LOVE a passive green house, but a hoop house is probably a good intermediate step?  Not sure about these options yet, but I would be excited to know what others use and have found to be the most efficient.  Obviously hoop houses and green houses serve different purposes (extending season v. seed starting), but I'm just looking for some anecdotal evidence from people who use them.

Cheers!
~L

Raising Baby Chicks

We've been so excited to get our baby chicks.  Surprisingly, they come in the mail!  We ordered 15 chicks -- Barred Rock, Easter Eggers, Rhode Island Reds, and White Leghorns.  We were a little unsure about where we would keep them, but a good friend assured me that playpens in the basement or garage were best.

Here are our cuties eating some chick food to help them get big and strong.  Sadly, though, we lost all but one of our White Leghorns in the first week -- one was DOA, and the other two died shortly after.  It was pretty sad to experience these little babies' deaths, but it's all part of keeping livestock on the homestead.  (At least we don't have kids yet to become attached to any young animals!)

A few pro-tips: 

• Don't put them in your basement.  EVER.  Even if it means having to wait a couple of months to get the babies.  I would never EVER keep them in the basement again.  Everything quickly became dusty and I had to do a VERY thorough cleaning of the basement after we moved them to the garage.
• Death is all a part of this process, so if you want a certain number in your flock, over-order by at least five chicks.  Although our flock is 15 now, which is a good number, I still wish it was closer to 20.
• Don't use pack n' plays as baby pens unless you have them laying from rearing a few children.  We used them and now they are pretty beat up and I'm not sure they'll be useful again in the future.
• Do learn how to sex your chickens -- we ended up with one rogue rooster after we became attached to him, mainly because we thought he was a she and the most natural leader.
• Try to find a local supplier -- it's not ideal to get chicks through the mail, but it's the only way if you want to start rearing them in the middle of winter.  I would wait until March or April next time and get them from a local place. 

Dining Room Dreaded Black Mastic

When you are ripping things up and out of an old house, you just never know what you may find.  We had a good hunch that the entire house had hardwood floors, but what we didn't know is what exactly we would have to do to restore them.

When we began ripping up the tile in the dining room we found this somewhat thick layer of black mastic directly on the hardwood.  After a lot of internet research and a failed attempt with heat guns, I tried applying some citrus mastic remover.  After hours and hours of hand-scraping a small area, I had made minimal progress.  The next thing I tried is when I had the square buffer sander for the upstairs floors, I decided to try it out on the black floors here.  Didn't work.  The sand pad became immediately gunked up -- heat + friction = no sanding off glue.

As the days passed and we made great progress on lots of other projects, we began to fret about this one -- how the hell were we going to get this black stuff off the floors.  I called a couple of professional companies and they were not interested in doing the work -- for one, they wanted to sell me engineered hardwood instead; and two, they were afraid of doing more damage to the floors.

Then Mike came up with a great plan to use mineral spirits.  These are strong, but not as strong as some of the other products out there.  So we ventilated the room well, taped it off from the rest of the house, and then Mike spent two nights (up all night kinda nights) scraping the mastic off after it soaked in mineral spirits.

After as much of the mastic was scraped off as we could, I went over to Home Depot to talk to my tool rental guy.  I had my heart set on getting the random orbital floor sander (it has three sanding discs on the bottom), but there were none left.  He only had square buff sanders (way too weak for this job) or the feared drum sander.  I showed him the pictures and he was pretty skeptical that any sander could fix the floors, but he convinced me to go with the drum sander.

Working with the drum sander was a lot like the first time I rode a roller coaster -- at first I was terrified, and then I was completely thrilled!  When used properly and carefully, a drum sander can be your best friend.  However, if you're not paying attention, it would take literally 10 seconds to screw up the floors completely.

The drum sander is exactly what we needed for this job.  It didn't make it simple -- I still changed the sandpaper at least 10 times because it kept getting gunked.  But the drum sander is what got us down to the original wood.

Here are the floors after polyurethane -- we decided not to stain any of the floors because just the natural hue with poly looks amazing.  Also, if you look closely, you can see that in a few spots there is a little haunting black mark -- these floors will never look like pristine brand new hardwood.  But the great thing is that they are original to the house and we worked our asses off to restore them!