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Category Archives: construction projects

The Birds & The Bees

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by danteskitcheninferno in chickens, construction projects, Food, Gardening, honey bees, The Finger Lakes

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barn cats, bee hive, beeswax, bloomfield ny, brooder, chicken coop, chicken run, chickens, family farm, finger lakes, Gardening, herb garden, honey, honeybees, hot peppers, kittens, new farm, old barns, rochester ny, summer project

The birds are getting big. There is one Rhode Island Red who still needs a name that is particularly interested in me. Each morning she reminds me that they are big enough to get out if they try really hard. I change the water, fill up the feeder, climb in the box and give them a treat, then sit next to the brooder with my cup of coffee to observe them for a while. She hops atop the feeder and takes a literal flying leap to perch on the edge of the box beside me. So far she’s happy just to survey the lay of the land in this manner, but I’m taking the hint. They now go through a full trough of food and almost a gallon of water each day with no difficulty whatsoever. The dominant rooster is noticeably larger than the rest, and with the exception of one runtish Cuckoo, they’re approaching the size of softballs. In short, they need to get out of the house.

My friend Rebecca helped me put up a simple run right behind the house – very centrally located so they’re easy to keep an eye on. I then proceeded to corner 27 chickens, one at a time, and transport them by Rubbermaid tote to their outdoor space. This is hilarious! “Hurding cats” is the description. They were utterly mystified at first. Grass. You both step on it and eat it. If you’re a chicken you can step on it, poop on it and then still eat it. Awesome! 15 minutes later, they’re fighting over the only dead leaf on the ground, and rolling in the dust, happy as pigs in you-know-what. I will let them out for a few hours a day for the next week or so, then they can move into their coop. 

The bees. So I know I set up for this big dramatic story of removing the hive from my barn wall, and swarming bees, in only a tiny room, and prying back the walls etc., etc… so believe me, no one is more disappointed than I am in the completely anti-climactic absconding of the bees from their hive the day before we went to remove them. It was equal parts amazement and depression, when we pulled back the walls of the hive to discover that they were all gone! They left behind a section of comb a foot high, 6 feet wide, and 6 inches deep, but no bees. Le sigh.

I took the comb out and drained the honey, then rendered the beeswax. Ugh. So. I went to the bathroom, and in the 2 minutes I was gone the beeswax boiled over. Let me tell you, this was a kitchen fail of epic proportions…epic…rivaled only by the time the lid flew off my blender full of hot Sicilian fish soup. I can be amused now that it’s clean, and I have honey and beeswax to show for it.

Well, I have everything I need except the bees, I’m not giving up now! Vern, my new beekeeper friend, quickly called the place he orders from and snagged me a couple of spare nucs. So once again (like the chicken coop), this was supposed to be my own free bees, but it now cost money. Deep breaths. In this department, for all of my best laid plans, things are happening to me rather than by me. Just go with it Stacie.

In the gardening department, the so-called tomato patch (which is going to fall short of my dreams this year and actually be the everything patch) has been turned over. I ordered a compost mix and managed to spread all 5 yards of dirt by myself in a few hours. My arms were unhappy the next day. A big shout-out to Ariane for her help getting the hot pepper patch expansion onto the herb garden. Looking forward to some hot sauce & pickles!

And lastly, in the department of random and unplanned stuff, a couple of very tiny kittens fell out of the barn roof. They can live with the chickens.

A big “THANK YOU” to the great people who helped me out this week!

Next week: the bees move in to their hives, plants that have survived the wind storms get planted, and kittens learn to eat solid food.

Spring is Finally Springing

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by danteskitcheninferno in cherry, chickens, construction projects, Gardening, honey bees, orchard, The Finger Lakes, tomatoes

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bloomfield ny, brooder, cherry trees, chicken coop, chickens, family farm, finger lakes, food, Gardening, honey bees, new farm, old barns, priorities, rochester ny, summer project, tomatoes

Spring has finally arrived, and it’s gonna go fast. This past week was again frustrating, it snowed again, it poured, the sun came out, rinse and repeat, yay Rochester! I spent most of my free time working on the chicken coop and I’m dying to move on to a new project, but – I am really happy with it. It has roosts, access to the spring water, a way to sweep the litter straight into a compost pile and as soon as I get some milk crates it will have a shelf full of nest boxes.

Good thing too because those chickens are growing fast! I knew they were starting to get crowded. I went out with some friends on Saturday night and received a text from Matt that simply said “they can get out.” Ha! Having severely underestimated the difficulty of acquiring a refrigerator box, I constructed a new brooder downstairs out of several boxes. It’s a little cool down there, but they seem much happier. It won’t be long before they can escape from this one as well, so I’ll have to cover it with some chicken wire soon. Those Rhode Island Reds are sorta camera hogs.

Back in January my lovely in-laws gave me a gift card to a garden store for my birthday. Having learned a lesson last year, I went very early this year and picked out the best cherry trees. I picked them up this week and walked up and down the hillside for the 50th time thinking of where to put them. I’m trying to imagine the overall finished area. When the trees first go in, it may look silly and random. But that is priority number 3, because…

This coming week’s adventures include the tomato patch and the bees. I’ve begun work on the tomato patch and started hardening off my tomato plants, which are huge as a result of the late spring. Usually I’d start putting them out sooner. Oh well. I have next to choose a location for my beehives and level the ground off. They are being extracted from the barn this weekend – I’m excited and nervous about this. I keep imagining being in a swarm of bees and restraining the impulse to swat. Stay tuned for the episode where I take my life in my hands with a beehive in an 80 square foot space.

The daffodils are up, the currants are budding, the fava beans are in the ground, the neighborhood is emerging from hibernation and I’m looking forward to an 80 degree Wednesday tomorrow. Yay, Rochester!

Disaster Recovery

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by danteskitcheninferno in chickens, construction projects, The Finger Lakes

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Tags

bloomfield ny, chicken coop, compost, family farm, finger lakes, ideas, new farm, old barns, priorities, rochester ny, summer project

Deep breaths, aaaaaand begin again. I rolled around in my thoughts for a full 24 hours. I was really anxious because this was supposed to be cheap, and now it would cost money. I finally settled on an entirety different approach. I was trying to put something together fast and cheap until I could build the tractor I really want. But I really want to stick to the principle of working with what I already have, so I decided to convert an area in the big barn…which is a mess.

Old cheese boxes, skis, bird nests, homemade creations, giant wooden spools, safety gasses, building materials, farming equipment that hasn’t occurred to you before, owl pellets, soup dispensers, tools, adopted stray cats, and vast quantities of petrified poop. A variable treasure trove of trinkets reflecting life from the very founding of our nation (this home was build by a Revolutionary War veteran) to this day. Fascinating. Now they will hold chickens again.

I chose a stall that was used to hold grain. It is covered in flour. Task number one is to empty the things people have been flinging in it over the years and clean it out. It was one of those jobs that once you complete, you tip toe straight to the laundry room to strip down, throw your clothes directly into the washer, and then march directly to the shower. I strategically completed this during the small one’s nap time, so it was ready for construction the next day.

The plan is to convert the entire north end of the ground level in phases. Phase one:

The construction of a wall with a door to enclose the inner stall

The rehabilitation of an aluminum storm door that was laying around in another barn

The installation of a cheap vinyl floor for easy clean-up

The running of hose through the floor to the spring spout

The construction of a shelf of bucket nest boxes

The installation of roosts

Phase two:

The removal of bees from the wall of the outside stall

The installation of a real window in the barn wall

Second verse same as the first to expand chicken housing down the road

Phase three:

The conversation of the space directly in front of these coops into an organized garden shed. I don’t have steps for this yet.

All I need to start with is phase one. While this will not be done in the leisurely pace I had imagined when I first started throwing the busted up outdoor coop together, I am well on my way to having it completed by the time the chickens are large enough to move out of the brooder. I’m happy with this outcome and even pleased that it’s given me a reason to get started on the large barn and get my gardening tools out of the basement.

I’ve also managed to get some compost bins together this week, which has been bugging me for months. I simply nail several pallets together in a stall formation and rotate their use. This is compost system number one – I’ll get into it more once the big gardens are in.

The only other thing I’ve have time to do this week is get started on the leftover weeds in the tomato patch. This is not an exciting job, but they can’t all be as glamorous as decomposing kitchen waste and cleaning poop out of a barn.

This Week on the Homestead

03 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by danteskitcheninferno in construction projects, Gardening, The Finger Lakes

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barn wood, bloomfield ny, cabbage, chicken coop, chickens, family farm, fava beans, finger lakes, Gardening, herb garden, historic house, new farm, old barns, priorities, salvage, seedlings, summer project, time

This cold spring is no fun. The fact that the sun hasn’t been out long enough to dry anything up means I can’t dig my new garden without getting the tractor stuck. There is more cold in the forecast later this week, so I dare not try to pry the wall back on my barn bees. In fact the bee shipment has been delayed due to the cold anyway. I’ve been building a chicken house in one hour increments because that’s how long my fingers can go without gloves on the nicer days. So this week I’m going to try my best not to get depressed, but to focus on parts of my plans that can be accomplished on the edge of spring. So this blog may not be terribly interesting, sorry, it’s more for my own benefit to help keep me motivated.

Side Note on Barn Demolition – over the one nice Saturday we had a barn razing. To the north of the house there is a small barn that actually pre-dates the house. The cool thing is the history of it, the down side is that it’s right in the view. Since the roof of this barn is beyond repair, and over the years other owners have covered it’s sides with sheet metal, and the groundhogs have completely undermined its foundation, we’ve decided to take it down and salvage the nicer wood. The beams are beautiful, and the main sliding door is perfect for a loft apartment somewhere. Most of the siding that hasn’t been destroyed is very thin, too thin to plain. We’ll save what we can for some wood shop projects. More on that later.

So here we go! It’s Monday and it’s freezing, but the sun is out so Im working on the chicken coop. I finished putting the metal on my chicken house roof. Since making money on eggs isn’t really a thing, I’m not investing much in this structure. I’ve spent a little on hardware, but mainly it’s constructed from a hodgepodge of materials the previous homeowner left behind in the barn.

Fava Experiment – at some point over the winter I read someone else’s method of starting fava beans indoors if you weren’t able to sow them direct the season before. I decided that I would give it a try but not take it too seriously. I used some older seeds and sure, they popped up healthy, but even a fava bean won’t like this weather and I left them in the tray longer than I knew to be good for them. They are tall, spindly and root bound, but I’ve hardened them off over the last few days and now the brief reprieve of sunshine gives me the opportunity to put them in the warm-ish ground, stake them up and drape them with a row cover. I’m not expecting much, but I’ll report back on that later.

My cabbages are ready to plant now, but I don’t have a place for them! I had plans to expand my kitchen garden anyway, so I’m going to go ahead and get started on that and use it to save my seedlings instead of waiting to plant herbs in it. The cabbage will be finished early enough to successively put herbs in. I can also use the tomato patch location for this. I’d rather use an alternate tomato location than lose the cabbage. So I’m going to go ahead and start hardening these plants off today. The snow is finally gone, so we can FINALLY start digging out the new garden this week.

Tomorrow, it’s supposed to be 38, rainy and super windy. Yuck. I’ll take care of the seedlings, start a few vines indoors and maybe give the dog a haircut.

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