Mulberry Foraging

There's a big mulberry tree close to G's work that's plumb full of berries. 

Jaron and I stopped by today and picked for about an hour. Jaron loved being able to stretch an arm out and grab berries to eat while I picked. Sometimes he squawked at me because I wasn't close enough to the tree for him to reach a berry. 😂 I'm not sure how many he ate, but a few fell out of my carrier when I took him out at the end. 

We picked roughly a gallon. The trick is to "tickle" the berries and they fall into the pail.

Mulberries are pretty delicate and don't last long fresh, so I'll freeze the bulk of them. Last year I dehydrated them and we didn't love the texture (probably because I over dried them 😅). Freezing is easier, so we'll go with that! 

Foraging Compost

Mama chickens teaching their chicks to forage the compost pile. 😊 (Blurry picture due to morning sunlight and not wanting to get too close and spook them). 

That's one of the best things about chicks hatched by a hen instead of via incubator - they learn how to be chickens from chickens instead of needing to figure it out themselves. 
 

Freezer Refresh

Monday night we arrived home from a vacation to the Baltic Sea (a post for another day, stay tuned!). 

It's always good to be home after a long trip, and Monday was no exception. Jaron had fallen asleep in his car seat on the way home, so even though I was drooping with exhaustion myself, I took the opportunity to do a few things, like check our animals and bring the suitcases inside (G arrived home about an hour after me). 

I went into the laundry room to turn on the water- due to a leaky outdoor faucet we had shut off the water to the whole house while we were gone (our chore people turned it on and off every time they came). I noticed a strange smell in the laundry room, kind of like rotten eggs. That didn't make any sense because the diapers had all been washed and hung to dry before we left, and all of the eggs had been cleaned out of the incubator. Nothing should have been stinky in there. 

Uh oh, water on the floor. It was near our upright freezer, not close to anything that could be leaking. 

My first thought was that one of us had left the freezer door open a tiny bit (it happened once before 🤦‍♀️). But the freezer opened normally. I shut it without registering the puddle of water at the bottom. Oh no! 

It's a pretty old freezer, so I thought it had died. What actually happened: it was plugged into the same breaker as our water softener. Because we had shut the water off to the whole house, when the water softener went to run, it blew the breaker because there wasn't any water to run through it. The breaker obviously shut off power to the freezer. So our entire vacation, everything in the freezer was melting. 

Thankfully, it wasn't packed full. I threw a lot of vegetables on the compost pile, which the chickens appreciated. The last of my stored breastmilk was also dumped on the compost pile. It was expired, and I wasn't planning to feed it to Jaron, but I had plans to try making soap / lotion with it. Bummer. 

The meat was the worst loss. Thankfully, some of the meat still had ice on it, and we separated that from the totally thawed items. Our dog Jip will feast like a king! We actually refroze some of the completely thawed meat to be labeled and fed to Jip another time. 

G and I were both so exhausted, we only took the time to move the items into the fridge or compost pile. The cleaning had to wait for another day. Our basement isn't baby-proofed, which made cleaning it out quite tricky with Jaron underfoot. Finally I brought the baby tower to the laundry room and forced him to hang out in there. Not his favorite thing in the world.

I tried magna tiles on the drier (worked for a while), soapy water and bath toys in the utility sink (he ate the bubbles), and finally snacks on the drier. Between all of those, I got the job done. 🥳 

What do you mean I can't eat soap?

Not pleased to be trapped (also battling jet lag).

Okay, I guess I'll play. 

Using towels to soak up the standing water. Gross, but none of the shelves can come out. I washed them right away and they came out just fine. 

Did one wipe down with soapy water, then a second wipe down with vinegar/vodka as a disinfectant. 

Hopefully good as new!

Dirt Montage

My little planting buddy. 

He has a pail of dirt with "tools" in the garden to keep him entertained. Further entertainment was provided by the puddle of rainwater caught by the cardboard box.

He went back and forth between this bucket and a pot of lemon balm (in a pot because it spreads so quickly). I ended up taking out the lemon balm seedlings temporarily because he dug it up so much. 

That excitement quickly wore off and he wanted to use my tool, a hori hori knife. Nope. Mine. But every time I set it down, Jaron was watching like a hawk to grab it. When he tired of that he "helped" collect all the plant starts I had laid out in the garden. Thanks buddy, please leave them there! 

I'm trying to teach him to watch his feet and that some plants and okay to step on and some aren't. Slow progress. 😅 He kept stepping on the herbs I just planted. I think they'll bounce back though. Thankfully I had cages around my peppers, so he wasn't able to step on those. They aren't nearly as forgiving. 

Planting Basil

We go through dried basil pretty quickly, so I wanted to plant enough we could dry or even freeze dry for the rest of the year. 

Not sure which variety I like the best, so better plant a bunch! I have six different kinds- Genovese, cardinal, purple, Thai, lemon basil, and sweet basil. 

I lined them up on the outside of the trellis between the tomatoes and potatoes. 

My sister gave me the idea to put cups over the seedlings when adding mulch so it doesn't crush them. Worked like a charm! 

Next time I will mulch as I go. It was a little tricky to maneuver the wheelbarrow between the rows of mulched potatoes/onions. If I had done it as I planted, I could've gone straight up the wide aisle without squishing plants. 

All's well that ends well though! 

 

Green With Envy

We're downsizing our goats; six is too many for our space. We are keeping Gerda and her daughter Senka. 

It's time to get them ready for pasture. You can't just open the gate and let them out. Well, you can, but it could cause health issues. They're not used to the luscious, fresh grass, so their bellies can bloat and they can die from the trapped gas. 

The solution is to let them eat fresh stuff for small amounts of time so their stomachs can adjust. 

The other goats about to be sold were jealous. 

The day before the sale, we loaded Chai, Sage, Brighita, and Mina in one of G's work trucks. We contained them in an upside down metal basket that goes around a water tote. 😂 

Panic hit once we were on the road. The sale was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Would we run into trouble being from Minnesota? I did a little searching. Nope, as long as your goats have scrapie tags. 

Scrapies is a genetic disease that effects sheep and goats. I remember learning about it in my 4H days of showing sheep. It's a bad enough disease the government tracks it. Producers are supposed to register with the government, they give your farm an ID number, and you tag your animals with special ear tags that have the number on them. 

I hadn't realized goats needed scrapie tags. 

So. What to do? 

It'd take too long to register and have tags sent; the sale is the next day. No vet office was open at that time of day. Maybe the sale barn would have some? Or, better yet, maybe Dad has some tags leftover from our sheep days... 

He did. Whew! 

We were able to stream the sale the next day. 7am start time. 

They split our four into two groups, the young two and the old two. The young ones went first. They weighed 75lbs total, roughly 38lbs a piece. Prices are per pound (or hundredweight). I had advertised Chai at $50 and had no takers. He and Mina brought $77 each, which I'm content with. Mina is probably worth more as potential breeding stock, but we didn't have time to sell her individually. And given the poor results we've had selling animals on Craigslist, I didn't think we'd have much interest. That's the same reason I didn't try to sell the mama goats privately. 

The stockmen didn't have the babies out of the ring before they let Sage and Brighita in. Mistake. The kids turned around to rejoin their herd. It took three guys to get everyone sorted out. 😅 The mamas brought $165/head. 

We bought Sage for $150 originally. Brighita was free (born to Svetlana, who we got for free). Granted we have feed costs put into them and the salebarn will take a commission. But still, I was satisfied with that price. 

It's strange how little action is in the goat pen now. Cutting the herd in half will do that though. Next step is to find a billy to borrow or rent. 

Mulch and Seedlings

Mr. Toad is back. 

He surprised me when I watered the plant starts. I wasn't expecting a giant toad! 

Garden work is happening slowly. The past two years my vining plants all got mildew and died. They produced a little even so, but I'd like to avoid that of course. 

Mildew avoidance attempt #1- I've put a ban on overhead watering. 

Mildew avoidance attempt#2- plant at least one watermelon far away from the former mildew area.

The internet had mixed reviews of whether the mildew will remain on the trellis, so I'm taking a chance that it'll be okay to plant vines there again. 

Cantaloupe experiment - three varieties is more than I want, but I don't know which I'll like better. So this year I'll plant three and do a taste test. 

Gotta take careful notes when working with different varieties!