Good Afternoon Everyone from Birch Creek Farm

Good Afternoon Everyone from Birch Creek Farm    

by Kathy Osborne

Here I am taking another stab at blogging my garden experience.

2021 was a year of loss and learning for me. I started out well, taking photos and getting my garden pens in order. But we had some setbacks due to COVID and the ensuing heat wave became problematic for not only me but farmers everywhere. Still, there were some valuable learning experiences.

Among the things I learned:

1.       Don’t plant nightshades near a walnut tree. I lost my entire tomato crop last year and the
potato crop the year before due to this ignorance.

2.       Deer are opportunists. Don’t underestimate them. If they can’t fit through the hole, I swear,
they send in the kids!

3.       If deer get the chance to mow the potato patch, it will not necessarily recover. The plant
above the ground will, but not the tubers.

4.       Garlic needs to be moved to a new location every year to thrive.

5.       Carrots and beets love each other

6.       Compost is even more important than gardeners wildly emphasize that it is. Sigh-

7.       Bears do in fact climb plum trees, and break branches and leave poop in the orchard.

8.       Cedar Waxwings and Robins are beautiful to look at and love my Rainier cherries as much as I do.

9.       Once tomatoes suffer heat shock from too much sun it is very hard to save them.

Well, there is more but it mostly has to do with weed control which I hope to write about after I have a chat with Chase from the Bonner County Weed department. As much as I hate to kill anything, the weeds have overtaken my hay fields and I must deal with them – Red Sorrel, Oxeye Daisy, Yarrow, St. Johns wort, and a wicked thick lime green grass thing that creeps along the ground and creates a mat worse than anything I have ever seen before. I can’t find it on the invasive weed list so will probably have to dig up a square and take it in for identification. Thank The Good LORD I don’t have Knapweed.

Quite a few good things happened in 2021 and there was much to be grateful for.

I learned to prune a fruit tree properly. All of the fruit trees I planted in spring 2020 lived through the winter and came back quite vigorously. My small pen garden system, dividing the garden into smaller 8’ x 16’ or 16’ x 16’ pens with livestock panels helped control the deer. Only when I left the gates open was there any sort of problem. Sigh-

Drip irrigation is the bomb! This is so great I plan to implement it throughout all my garden spaces over time. It was so hot last year that everywhere I watered with fan sprinklers just seemed to dry out faster. It was the pens with compost and a direct watering device that did the best.

That’s about it for this first post. I will have pictures next week as the garden will all be in just in time for the next round of rain. And that beautiful space beneath the walnut tree that kills nightshades and dahlias? I am turning it into a meditation space! I found one of those big wood spools and put it in there along with some chairs I found cheap. With a table cloth and a vase of flowers, this spot will be perfect for resting between orchard and garden chores.

Back to Eden Gardening - Hot but Growing

July 12, 2021

As I write this we have been several weeks without rain here in north Idaho. So far I have been able to keep the lawn and garden watered but it has been a challenge. I often water very early in the morning and after the sun has set in the evening rotating between the yard and garden. This has really helped.

My Beefsteak tomatoes are suffering from physiological leaf roll as they did last year, presumably from weather stress. They are well watered and I have added calcium to the roots. It has been helpful to know that even if the stress is removed, the leaf curl will not go away but neither will it hamper production. The plants are growing like crazy and flowering as well. They just look so sad!

My Brandywine tomatoes are doing very, very well! They are in two patches: one is in a fully mulched, clay/loam soil in Ponderay. It is on a little hillside in full sun and so far the plants are happy and have set bloom. The other patch is in layered soil, mulch, peat moss, more mulch and composted barn cleanings. These plants have also set bloom. Both patches have marigolds nearby for pest control. And I am watering at ground level to keep the leaves dry. Strangely, the Brandywine tomatoes are not suffering from leaf roll to any degree.

My squash and pumpkins have all set flower and are responding to the heavy mulch treatment. The potatoes are sending up spectacular, strong stems. I am now in the process of hilling them with more compost and mulch.

As the hot summer continues I have made use of a sub-irrigated grassy area. My horses will not eat this particular grass as it is rough to the tongue. So, I am mowing it and mixing it with barn litter. I then spread it between the garden rows to help retain moisture. So far, so good.

My small engine repair guy is not able to get to the wood chipper for a tune-up. So for as much as I wish wood chips were in my immediate garden future, they are not. This is sad as I was hoping to get that part of the project in place early. But now it looks like mulching with grass, barn litter and shredded Japanese Knotweed debris will have to do.

Japanese knotweed is an invasive weed in Idaho and was already present when I purchased the property. It shades the south side of the farm house and I keep the stand severely mowed for control. The shredded dead stalks pose no threat to the garden. However, one day an excavation of the area will be required to remove the plants and their aggressive root system. It is a great space to plant grapevine and possibly build an arbor out from the south facing windows to provide shade until the nearby fruit trees can take over.

This last week I took the first greens out of the garden including Butter lettuce and beet greens. The garlic scapes were delicious. So the layered garden concept is working in my herb garden as well. I plan to keep it up all summer and into the fall.

Winter on the Farm

The garden is put to bed, the horses have donned their winter coats, the canning is finished and it is time to slow down here in the north Idaho/western Montana area. Well, for some folks. Winter on the farm is a little different.

Those of us who have animals know they require just as much attention in the winter months as in other seasons. Our horses and cattle, goats and sheep must have the proper forage foods and clean, available water as in other seasons.  Sometimes that means dealing with the occasional frozen hose or hydrant.These days most folks have traded in the old faucet/heat tape combo for frost free hydrants. I have used both and frankly, I was thrilled the day we went to all frost free on the farm. My dad was relentless in his water planning. We have frost free hydrants in the barn and the chicken house. And I hate dealing with frozen hoses so much that I unhook and hang them up to drain after each use all winter.

This year my chicken flock was joined by two Pekin ducks. They were the last two left after chick days and I like ducks so I took them. Both turned out to be males which was a bit of a surprise, but even more so, they turned out to be guard ducks. Not only will they engage any dog that intrudes into their territory, they also break up fights between hens and roosters alike. Who knew?

I have had ducks before and overwintered Pekins as well as regular mallards. But Pekins have a habit of turning the area surrounding a  water fountain into a swamp. That is OK during the summer, but in the winter it can make a real mess in the chicken house. So this year I gave them their own open water space. The chicken house already has a sand floor so I just built that up with more course gravel, with small rock as a top layer. The water pan goes on top of that with a heat lamp overhead to keep it from freezing. We are now three weeks into this project and so far, no swamp! It is draining great! The chickens have their own water fountain on the other side of the house.
This year in September we had a garden wide freeze at the farm and it took out the tomatoes as usual. I had been told that I could just pull up those tomato vines and hang them inside the greenhouse and the fruit would continue to ripen. It is true. However, damaged fruit will also continue to rot. So, in the future, I may use this method but will remove any fruit with any freeze damage. But the better way is to hang the vines before they are frosted. I have done that successfully and had ripe tomatoes well into early December.  

Also new this winter is my greenhouse experiment with growing beet greens. When I put my beets in the root cellar I noticed that a couple of them continued to send out leaves. So I planted them in the greenhouse and they are doing great, producing tasty leaves under the grow lights. The beet roots are fairly large, about 4" at the widest point. I look forward to seeing how long they continue to grow. And I wound up with three very vigorous eggplants. They bloomed in the greenhouse but failed to fruit up. Still, they are healthy right now, just drinking up the sun and growing well. It will be interesting to set them out next summer and see what they do.

Birch Creek Farm is always running an experiment of some sort. We finally won the battle of bare root tree deaths. Birch Creek is on very sandy soil. So without a lot of mulch and extra soil to hold the water, a bare root tree just will not take. So, we started putting bare roots in 5 gallon buckets of dirt from the mulch mountain and leaving them in it all summer to create a decent root ball. We have not lost a new tree in three years. (Note: these buckets DO have drainage holes. Very important.)

As we move into the true winter months we will be keeping an eye on wildlife habits and threats to the farm. I saw an owl in broad daylight the other day and coyotes continue to move ever closer to a unsuspecting meal. As farmers we have to learn to live with the wildlife around us and respect it. So, we will provide a little corn for the turkeys and some suet for the birds. Deer and elk will try to get at the hay and the salt lick.  They have already eaten what cornstalks and pumpkins we had out for decoration. We will likely find a moose in the corral one day and promptly head the other direction. They are interesting but nothing to mess with. And we will continue to enjoy winter on the farm.

Dealing with the Broody Hen

This is one of my Feather Legged Banty hens. She was actually hatched on the farm herself three years ago. These are her Buff Orpinton/Rhode Island Cross babies, hatched June 2, 2014 at Birch Creek Farm.

Chickens are a staple of the small farm. They "talk" to us. They are where we get the social concept of "the pecking order" (who gets to rule the roost).  They give us eggs, manure for the garden, and a reason to go out and do that final check of the farm each evening when we shut them in for the night.

Anyone who has had a flock of chickens  for any length of time will eventually experience the broody hen.  She is easy to spot: she won't leave the nest. Period. Or at least it looks that way. In reality she does leave the nest for food and water- just not when people are around. She is nesting and cannot be swayed from this effort.  She will sit there until she produces a chick. This can be a good thing.

New baby chicks can cost anywhere from $2-3 each in the spring time. Once purchased, baby chicks need food and water continually and special chick starter food. They need to be kept warm with a heat lamp during the cooler seasons and sometimes, for no apparent reason, they die. A farmer can be into this project for $50 quicker than you can say "Oh, honey....they are so cute!"

If you have a broody hen and you want to add birds to your flock, let her set. If you have roosters, the eggs she is setting on  are likely fertilized. I would remove her from the rest of the flock to a space with a covered nesting box. If she continues to be broody, giver her 4 eggs you know to be no more than 1 day old. Mark the date down in a notepad and count 21 days - that is the due date. make sure the hen has food and water.  Then go on about your farming business.

On the due date check the hen for babies. You don't even have to touch her. You will hear the unmistakable sound of "peeping" the moment you enter the room if any have hatched. Baby chicks hatch with the yolk sack still inside which they consume for the first two days. After that, they need food and water so make sure the feeders and waterers are short enough for new chicks to use. The hen will show them how to drink and eat. In fact for this purpose I use a shallow baking pan and just dump some chick starter in it and it doesn't even have to be medicated.The hen and the chicks will all just jump in there and eat all they want. After about a week, if you can safely turn the hen and babies out into a fenced space/yard, the hen will teach the babies to "scratch" for food. They will follow her around and go under her if they sense any danger. Just FYI: should a snake appear looking for a meal, the hen will make very quick work of it. At the end of the day, the hen and her babies will go back into their space and sleep for the night. You need only shut them in. 

By the time the chicks are 3 -4 weeks of age their mother will have already taught them to roost so be sure and have a bar of wood fixed up off the floor for this purpose. A simple piece of 2" x 2" will work fine. If the new family can stay in their space for several months, until the chicks are full grown, this would be the time to introduce them to the rest of the flock. Watch for any chickens who try to hurt the new babies. Sometimes this attacking behavior only lasts until they all get to know each other. However, any repeat offenders go to the butcher. There is no good reason to put up with mean chickens.

This early summer, between three hens I have 11 new baby chicks. That is enough to replace any laying hens and odds are some of the chicks are males so they will go to the freezer for winter.

I hope this has helped those of you who are dealing with broody hens. It is easy once you get the hang of it. And really kind of fun! If you have any questions just email Kathy at kathy@coopgasandsupply.com.

Continued Dry and Warm

It would appear that summer has arrived here in North Idaho. Of course it officially arrived on June 21st, but the last few weeks we have been experiencing 90 degree temperatures. Normally June can be counted on to be one of the rainiest months of the year. So far, that just isn't  the case. Our last serious rainfall was May 25th and we had about 10 minutes of rain last week. Yesterday we had a lovely downpour that was dried off the streets in about 20 minutes.

I bring this up because of the Old Farmer's Almanac. I have been reading it and referring to it for about 15 years. In  the past the OFA has been pretty accurate. But not this year. June 1-9 showed showers and cool north if we go by the Intermountain Map, and showers & cool if we go by the Pacific Northwest map. Both are wrong. In fact, based on what I have noticed from year to year the accuracy is changing. It's hot and dry out there! So what happened?

The Old Farmer's Almanac has been around since 1792. That is a long time! The publication has a ton of interesting and useful information, folk lore, customs, cultural information and some fun features. It also has what's going on astronomically every day of the year. That is my personal favorite. But when it comes to weather, the almanac is only about 80% accurate. While the OFA writes that their weather predictions are based on a highly guarded mathematical formula, most people can arrive at a fairly accurate weather prediction of their own by keeping track of average temperatures & dates, and whether we are in an el nino or el nina cycle. This information can be found on the web. And of course "there is an app for that" giving those with phone access to the web and up to date weather report.

It's July 14th today and we have finally be gun to cool down from those three weeks of 90 degree temperatures. Because I have so many things in the hopper right now I was late getting my garden in. By late I mean the first week of June. But guess what? This warmer soil, hot temperatures and lots of water are germinating the seeds faster and my garden is responding faster. In fact everything is growing so fast! Even the Autumn Beauty sunflowers have begun to bloom. So beautiful.

The long range forecast for the inland Pacific Northwest is continued drier and less than average moisture well into winter 2015-2016. This may be great for summer activity enthusiasts, but it is bad for farmers, hay farmers, forest conditions, huckleberry pickers, skiers & boarders, and people on a city water meter.