Our Insectory is Doing Fine

I have a very busy life. I've mentioned in previous posts that we own and operate a couple of small businesses, and because of this I am approached through out the day in a plethora of ways (land line phone, cell phone, e-mail, web site, calls patched through from my answering service, potential clients just stopping by to see what Farmhouse Furniture is all about, and more than once I am handed a napkin or piece of scrap paper with an idea for a piece of furniture).  Well, my wife is one of those two-dimensional-napkin-drawing people wanting a piece of furniture for some corner of the house.

Well, she did it again!  After taking a class at Longwood Gardens this past winter, she informed me she wanted me to make her an INSECTORY.  Of course I told her that I could... if she would just tell me what an insectory is. She proceeded to explain that an insectory is a garden with specific foliage designed to attract pollinating insects to your garden. An insectory is highly beneficial to any garden home because it attracts foraging bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and of course, the night pollinators too!
By inviting the pollinators to your insectory, you are welcoming bees, the necessary component in every garden, to pollinate your tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, and zucchini.  Our insectory is directly opposite our victory garden and as a result,  we noticed a big difference this year as our veggies multiplied tremendously.

If you weren't aware before,  our honeybees in this country are suffering from CCD (colony collapse disorder).We are losing our bee population at an alarming rate, and no one is quite sure why. I will make sure to get into this in more detail in a future post. But for now, enjoy a few photographs  documenting the progress of our insectory. And if you get a chance, plant a few bee-friendly flowers or plants because every little bit helps.

I started by tilling a 4 x 25 ft. area between the chicken coop and vegetable garden.






Then, I dug out four granite posts I found back in the woods last year, and I put one in each corner to outline the area.

I framed the granite posts with 2" x 8" white oak and filled it with some rich soil.

An early stage.

This is a fine shot of a perennial called Yarrow

Purple Salvia - A favorite of bumble bees!

Garden Pinks are  a favorite for any insectory

Then, we added a whimsical bee hive to welcome our new guests.

We thought we had a hummingbird but it turns out this insect is called a Clearwing Moth Hummingbird.

Salvia and in the background, White Coneflowers!

Thanks for spending some time at The Farmhouse.

A SAD DAY AT THE FARMHOUSE

The farmhouse family lost a  hen the other day. She was one of the first chicks we bought. I don't know why she left this life because there weren't any signs of illness. I checked on them the night before like always and she was laying in one of the nesting boxes as usual.  I know they say don't let your chickens sleep in the nesting boxes, but it really didn't make a difference one way or another and it made her happy. When I went out the next morning, she was laying in the nesting box with her head tucked down in the corner on some hay. There were no signs of any thrashing around or discomfort, it looked like she just laid her head down and passed on peacefully. I don't know the lifespan of a Rhode Island Red, but this girl lived four very comfortable years. Even though we didn't formally name our chickens, we knew each and every one of them. We miss her every time we call "Chickens!" and only four girls come running up to the fence to greet us .

She was always close by, but not too close.

She was one of our biggest hens.

A lazy day sunning herself.

Here she is giving orders to one of the other hens.

Spring has sprung at our farmhouse

It was a long winter in the workshop. We were very busy with our furniture orders, one after another. But I did have some time to build a few new birdhouses and garden beds. And as you can see they are both thriving.

I put up six new birdhouses around the pond and the garden.

This was early spring, and as you can see our root vegetables are doing well.

Our geese have come back for the past five years to nest by the pond. Here you can see the female sitting on the nest of eggs.

Most of the new nesting boxes were occupied within a few weeks of hanging them.

And once again we have a new farmhouse family.

I caught this cardinal watching a bluebird getting comfortable in her new house.

Home at last.

As I was cutting the grass I noticed this young northern flicker that must have just left the nest. I had to mow around that spot, the bird would not move out of the way and was not bothered by the noise of the tractor.

Our Farmhouse Family Grows

We have been very busy around here for the last few weeks. Our population here at the farmhouse grew by two since my in-laws moved into our place next door. I didnt think it needed any work since it was a rental property, but as a house for family I am told it needs a "complete overhaul." My in-laws have been busy painting and unpacking boxes, and I jump in when I can because I am busy in the woodshop working on a big bedroom set we just started. You will soon be able to follow this on our farmhouse furniture website. My wife and I  are at the stage in our lives were we are raisng children and starting to look after our parents.



Living room & kitchen at in-laws house







Dining room at the in-laws

On one hand, we feel fortunate to be living in our dream house however, with this great house and property comes a responsibility to share what we have with the people we care about.Even though it's usually only my wife and I in the main house, our dinner table is always overflowing with friends and family.  It seems that between family, friends and our woodshop group everybody always migrates towards our cozy kitchen.

Our country kitchen

My wife's excellent baking ability doesn't hurt. She is well known for her homemade cookies, pies and cakes. While I am siting here writing this, my father-in-law just wandered into our family room  from next door looking for one of the cupcakes my wife made yesterday. It seems like whenever our ovens are going, the aroma reaches the far corners of town, and people seem to stop by just at the right moment and are greeted with a hot cup of coffee or tea and some fresh baked goods.

Setting new raised beds

We expanded our garden, and we hope to raise more chickens this year. I added a few more beds in the vegetable garden, and I'm thinking of getting a few more hens which means I need to get started on a bigger coop (that blog soon to come). So the addition of my in-laws also means more veggies, more eggs, and a few more at our table. My cup runneth over.

L I G H T S - O U T ! ! ! !

     And the refrigerators out and the heaters out and the well pumps out and the waterfall in the koi pond went silent."Did you see that?" questioned my wife  at 2:30 am on 2/2/2011. She should have already known the answer since she had to wake me up to ask the question. "No," I said, "What was it?"

      It looked like a Fourth of July display in the front of the house. A tree limb just fell from the weight of the ice and crashed through the power lines. We had just experienced a terrible ice storm that made its way across the country. The news said it affected one million people, taking out numerous trees and power lines. As I lay there for the next few hours, I thought about a few things: Is the basement filling up with water since the sump pump is now rendered useless? Is the propane heater in the woodshop still heating our equipment which can't go below freezing or we will have a major problem?

     It's still dark and the freezing rain is pelting the roof, but it must be morning because the rooster is crowing. I lay there with a thought... it doesn't matter to the dogs or the chickens or the squirrels eating out of the bird feeder that the electricity is out... it only matters to us.

     Knowing the inconvenience an electric outage causes, I anticipate the next few hours with my wife.  She gets out of bed and hits every light switch in the house like one of the dozens we have will magicaly illuminate a light bulb without any electricity! She asks me to put the news on so we can see whats happening with the weather. All of this leads me to believe she just doesn't get it.  She doesn't realize that getting ready for work today is going to be a little different from other days. No shower, no blow dryer, NO COFFEE,  no oatmeal for breakfast.   She now informs me that she is going to my mothers to get ready for work.

     At this point I realize the power could be out for hours and I have to get the house heated, so I go out to the wood pile to get some kindling. I decide to light the fire place in the dinning room because it is centrally located in the house and should heat the kitchen and the second bath. As I get a flame going in a fireplace that has been around for over two hundred years it gets me thinking of how it was when this house was first built.

     The house is quiet and dark except for a few candles my wife lit and the glow of the fire. I pull up a chair, grab a book I have been trying to finish and I start a journey of days gone by. As I sit there reading,  the dogs take there place in front of the hearth, the only heat in the house. It's still early and the sounds of the modern world have not started because of the ice on the roads. No lights,  no cars,  no phones ringing,  no glare from our computer screens. At this point I truly feel like this is how it was back in the 1800's. I read for at least an hour before my wife comes in and breaks the calming silence thats now fills the house. She laughs at the site of me sitting in front of the fire reading the morning away, but after all there is nothing I can get done in this weather. She grabs her bags and heads off to work. The dogs settle in once again and I get lost in the crackling sound of the fire and the words of a good book.   I must have been sitting there for at least two hours before I hear the sound of a few large utility trucks out on the road and I know now that my peaceful time in the past is coming to an end.

     The electric company trucks are in front of the house ready to fix the problem and to bring my neighborhood back into the present. I try to get back into my book, but the dogs start running from door to window barking because they hear the voices of the workmen out front. It takes them about an hour to fix the problem, all the while my dogs are barking. Then it all comes to an end as I hear the heater heave its first big breath, then the compressor on the refrigerator starts to hum and the computers start beeping and grinding as the lights on the tower begin blinking. Well, its over and I feel like I just traveled through time. As I walk around the house blowing out the candles I am thankful to have experienced our house as it must have been in days gone by.

What you may or may not know about chickens

     It all started about three years ago when my wife and I decided to get a few chickens. We thought it would be nice to have a few fresh eggs and they were so cute (or so my wife thought). Well, there were a few things we weren't aware of like housing, feed, watering, cleaning the coop, the weather, predators.... and so on!  Since the chicks were so young when we got them home, I had to build a brooder.  A brooder is a small cage that is kept at about 90 degrees while the chicks are young and then the temp is brought down about five degrees a week until the temp inside the coop is the same as your temperature outside.  Like I said, there was a lot we didn't know!

     I had about three weeks to build a coop before our girls were ready to come out of the brooder. We had an old wood shed out in the coral that came with the house. I thought I could cut in a few windows, frame out a door and I would be done. Needless to say, my wife had a different idea of what a chicken coop should be. I found a great website called "Back Yard Chickens". It was full of great information and photos. The more I read, the more I put into the coop.
 

    Not only did  I cut in the windows and frame a door. I also insulated the walls, put contractors mesh on the floor then covered that with 3/4 inch plywood to keep predators out. I put wire over the windows, to keep predators out. I built a run 16 feet long by 5 feet wide by 5 feet high covered in wire to keep the predators out. I put a roof on the run to keep the predators out. I dug a one foot ditch around the perimeter of the run and filled it with 30lbs. of nails and broken glass before I buried the fencing in the ground TO KEEP THE PREDATORS OUT! And finally, when winter hit and the cold weather moved in, my wife thought the chickens would be cold, so I put in a heat lamp. All of this was so I wouldn't have to share my house with them..if you know what I mean!

   As our girls grew, we noticed one of the four was quite bigger than the rest. Then, while working in the garden one day, I heard a strange screeching noise coming from the coop. At this point I wasn't sure, but I thought we might have a rooster! Well, in a few weeks there was no question about it, one of our girls was indeed a big, beautiful rooster. 

     Not knowing what a rooster truly meant in the pecking order of a flock, he quickly let us know. Now a rooster's job is to defend his ladies from any threat, including the people that feed them and give them fresh water and clean up after them. This bird was always ready for battle. Eventually, to go in the yard you had to have not one, but two weapons of mass destruction to DO BATTLE. My weapons of choice were a rake I could use to distract him and a broom to hop him in the ass while he was busy attacking the rake. This became a daily ritual that we both looked forward to. He was like a dino rooster!   But, in the three years we had chickens we only lost one bird and that was because she left the fenced-in area. I attribute the luck of the flock to this rooster's ability to do battle with everything that moves within his domain.

     You must check your flock on a daily basis. Our chickens live the good life.  They have feed and clean water daily, plus my wife makes them oatmeal on cold mornings and they get a treat of yogurt with raisins in the afternoon!  During the winter their water freezes, so you have to keep up on it because they drink a lot.   Chickens do get sick and occasionally you must medicate them. I built an enclosed feeder that holds 30 lbs. of feed, so I only fill it about once a month. Chickens love to eat and table scraps go a long way with them.  Our chickens love spaghetti, yogurt, raisins, carrots and just about any leftovers from the dinner table.

     I can't go over or even remember everything I have learned over the years, but if you have any questions about starting a flock or about an existing flock feel free to leave a comment and I will gladly reply.

Until next time....  

A Long Winters Rest

We put our vegetable garden to rest for the winter. You would think there is nothing to do in the garden at this time, but my wife and I are very active planning for next spring. We are looking through seed catalogs every day and trying to plan our layout. If the winter is good to us we are planning to purchase a greenhouse so we can start our growing season earlier than spring. We will keep you updated on the progress of this project.

This was  our third year planting a garden. The first year we had six inch raised beds which worked out well, but they were spaced to far apart. We had a large path between each bed which took up a lot of valuable planting space. We had only four 3x10 ft. beds.

On the second year we mounded the dirt to a higher level than the walking paths. It didn't work out to well for us. By the end of the season the lines between the planting area and the paths were blurred. And it was hard to weed and water. So this year we switched back to raised beds that are 16" tall, this should make it easier to weed and maintain. We made them wider and we still fit two more beds than we had before.

 I constructed the beds out of a few white oak logs that we milled right here on our property. We run a few small businesses her, one being a saw mill. I milled the boards to 2" thick x 16" wide x 10 feet long. I figure we should get about ten years out of these beds.

We added an insectory for this spring. Once this comes to bloom I will post some photos. There is a method to our madness. We plan on starting our first bee hive this spring, and the insectory should draw the bees to the vegetable garden. The extra pollinators should give us a better yeild from our garden.

A Long Winters Rest