Funny Farm Update

We're in full swing now. The flower field is busting loose with a riot of color. The sunflowers must have tapped into the moisture and nutrients in the septic drain field. They're huge. 

The front garden is starting to produce. We had some problems earlier with a magnesium deficiency. I was able to correct it with a foliar spray of epsom salts and soil applications as well. The leaves of the peppers were all curled up but they are fine now and starting to bloom.

 The neighbors have come around to our side now as they watch the garden grow. People who walk by are always complimenting us . A woman driving a school bus stopped one day and said she will be back to buy tomatoes.

Damn squash vine borers are taking out the squash now. I'm on guard to protect the zucchini. I started the squash in the green house to get a head start on the borers and it worked well. We harvested lots of squash before the infestation. I'm cutting them out of the vines and destroying them to reduce future populations.

Now that Kitty is gone the chipmunks are eating the strawberries before they even ripen. Penny needs to come out of retirement and get to work on that situation. Fat chance of that happening.

Wild fermentation is in full swing with kraut and more hooch, sunflower this time. I tasted some of the young hooch yesterday and it is pretty tasty and strong. 

MY landscape crew is building a deck down by the pond in anticipation of my 55th birthday celebration coming up on July 19. 

Promises to be a fun time for sure.

Hooch0ff 2008

Yesterday our friend Robert "Hoochman" Hamilton came out to the Funny Farm to teach a group of us how to make hooch. Robert has been sharing his outrageously delicious and potent hooch with us at gatherings throughout the past year or so. His work is comparable to the finest wines or port in the world (at least according to our uneducated, inexperienced palates). We have sampled hooch made from pineapple guave, jasmine tea, buttermilk and many things in between. Some are sweet and full-bodied, some are dry and fruity, some are simple in flavor some are quite complex.
We felt it was time to learn a new skill. Seven of us chopped, mashed, and/or juiced 6 different ingredients or combinations of ingredients from which to make our first batch of hooch. We did Carrot/orange/star anise, Cantaloupe, Mango/Lime, Strawberry/lime/chocolate mint, Red Tea, Black/blue/raspberry, Pineapple, Banana/strawberry. Robert's method is very simple. Mash the fruit. Add enough water to be able to pour it into a bottle (boil the water to get rid of the chlorine so it won't kill the yeast). Add 2 pounds of sugar per gallon of fruit and water. If you are not using any acidic ingredients like citrus you add some Acid Blend (available at your favorite wine making supply store) 1 tablespoon per gallon. Pour the mixture into the bottles leaving a little space at the top for some yeast. If needed add a tablespoon of When the temperature of the mix is between 90º and 75º add in distillers yeast , 1 teaspoon/gal. mixed in a little water. Turn the bottle over a couple of times to mix in the yeast. Cover the top of the bottle with a folded over paper towel and secure with a rubber band.
Robert says that in about 2-3 weeks the major activity of the yeast will be complete. Here is the point to taste the young wine to see if it needs more sugar to bring out the fruit flavors or (if you like it dry) to allow it to finish fermenting as is. At that time we will plug the bottles with an air lock and allow to finish fermenting for about 2-3 months. When to bubbles stop flowing through the airlock we will remove it and cork or otherwise seal the bottles for further aging (or guzzle them down immediately which is what many of us will probably do).
At our annual Winter Solstice Party we will be breaking out our hooch for sharing and comparing. Someone will be crowned Hooch-maker Numero Uno and will win a prize (to be determined at a later date)
If the shit hits the fan and we have to hunker down here at the Funny Farm we figure we'll be able to use our hooch as trading stock to get things we need. Everybody needs hooch!

R.I.P. Kitty

It is a sad day here at The Funny Farm. We awoke to find our beloved Kitty had been killed during the night. Could have been one of the mean dogs that we have seen wandering loose around the neighborhood. Could have been the fox that has been spotted out by the pond  I guess. Anyway whatever did the deed cannot be blamed. It was doing what comes naturally.

Kitty was a killer too. When we lived in the city she killed many chipmunks and proudly left them for us at the door. Out here on the farm she took out many voles and mice down in what came to be known as the killing field. She was doing us a service by eliminating what we think of as pests.

I buried her in the corner of the killing field so she can continue on with the eternal hunt.

The circle of life goes round and round.

We miss you Kitty!

Worm Wrangling Update

We've harvested 3 times so far and started 6 new bins. There are still worms squeezing up through the screen. How many more are there? I wonder about the drive and commitment
of these laggards. Will they do their jobs and eat quickly and efficiently or are they better suited for fish or chicken food?
Time will tell!

Worm Wrangling

According to my meticulous(?) records i have no idea when i started my first 2 worm bins. However a search through my previous posts revealed that i started them on April 19th which was 32 days ago. Wow, those worms were hungry! I predicted that it would take 60-90 days for them to finish off the materials in the bin. Some digging in the bin at the end of last week revealed that it is time to harvest them and start some new bins. The method i used the last time i harvested a bin was to shovel the material onto a table, let the worms crawl to the bottom to escape the light (they hate light. Can worms hate? I hope not!), scrape off the top inch or 2 of castings and repeat over and over until most of the castings have been separated from the worms. 

It took hours to do each bin!

Will Allen at Growing Power in Milwaukee showed us a much simpler method which i employed this time. Since the worms have consumed almost all of the food in the bin they are looking (hoping? Can worms hope?) for something else to eat. So the idea is to put some food on top that the worms will crawl up into to begin eating. Here is the amazing part!

One puts a window screen on top of the bin and then places the fresh food on top of the screen and, believe it or not , the worms will squeeze up through the teeny tiny little holes in the screen to get to the fresh food. 

After as couple of days one can then dump the worms into a new bin and start the process over again. When i removed the screen there were lots of hungry worms waiting in line ( well not really in a line) for their turns to squeeze through the screen and get to the food so i replaced the screen and covered it with some more food. We'll wait and see how many times it takes to get all of the worms out of the old bin and into new bins.

I can only imagine how hungry they must be after having all the contents of their guts squeezed out as they squirm through that teeny tiny little hole. More poop for me!

Bugscaping Practiced Here

We like to encourage our friends to do our work for us here at The Funny Farm so we provide them with food and drink as an incentive to help us out. That's why we practice Bugscaping!. We grow specific plants to attract beneficial insects to do battle with the evil pestilence that comes out of nowhere to devastate our crops and piss us off. We're talking about flowering plants, particularly those whose flowers are in the form of umbels (you know shaped like an umbrella). Okay who has umbels? Dill, yarrow, queen anne's lace are some who do.  We want flowers with lots of nectar for the beneficials to feed on easily. Other good ones are goldenrod in the late summer (not an umbel), garlic chives, cilantro as it transforms itself into coriander. The key is to grow lots of different flowers and have something blooming in all seasons. We grow greens through the winter here in Georgia so in early spring we let some of the kale and mustard go to seed to feed the early appearing beneficials. We adapted this from Dr. Richard McDonald's farmscaping concept, scaling it down to garden size. He has a crazy but informative web site that explains the concept in detail and has lists of good plants to grow.

Whom do we want to invite to join our army? Wasps, flies, lacewings, beetles, bees, lightening bugs ( that's right they are predators too). And don't forget the birds. They eat lots of insects like beetles and worms. When we gardened in the city there were lots of mockingbirds around. I once saw one pluck a tomato worm right off a tomato and swallow it down. How cool is that? Birds need bushes and houses for nesting sites so keep some areas wild for them.

Who needs chemicals when there is a huge army out there just waiting to enlist in our army. Fight bugs not people!

Oh yea, the Nanking cherries are ripe. Yum!

All We Need Are the Chickens

We finished up the hen house and chicken run. We divided the run into 2 paddocks so one can recover while the chickens churn up the other. We made nest boxes accessible from outside for egg gathering and there is a hinged board on the outside too that drops down so the boxes can be cleaned from the outside as well. The pop out door can also be opened from the outside by pulling a rope that runs through a pulley. Can you tell i want to spend as little time as possible in the hen house?

Does anyone know how old they should be when you clip their wings to keep them from flying over the fence?