August is a busy time on the homestead.
Yeah, I know it’s our first year as an official tiny homestead, but still… it’s time for preservation, doing inventory on what we have for glass jars, and do we have enough, determining what needs to be restocked and where it’s resourced from. Then it’s the planning to obtain, prepare and preserve.
Our own garden – well it is still a work in progress. I can look at it as “oh crap it’s really a hot mess” or I can say “Hey! we got stuff growing this year and we’ve learned more than we’ve ever done before. I think I plan on looking at it in the latter vs the former. We saw our Rhubarb come up – and I’m thrilled. Same with our 2nd-year Asparagus. The concept of Hugelkulture worked out, even if the practice was iffy. We will need to enclose the beds in more than just chicken wire, and that’s going to be a fall/winter project. We have a couple of ears of corn that have come up, but our potatoes were the bigger winner. I am going to have to do a take-two on a lot of things because of the chickens deciding I was growing fodder for them, vs food for us. Their mansion (really – you will see pics of this coop and it’s a mansion compared to what they had) is under construction and will be an 8 by 8 “A-Frame” with a loft for them to bunk in, lay eggs in, and a lot of opportunities for them to play when it’s completed. We will be building a tunnel run later for them behind the greenhouse, but this had to be done first. It’s almost there but you’ll see below why it’s been delayed a little.
I learned a lot this year though. Even after being attacked by Bald-Faced Hornets that led to my first ambulance ride in nearly 20 years as I am horribly allergic, and being unable to get too close to the quail cages and my garden for now… (Thank heavens for Gary doing a large part of that for now until we get them eradicated here, but as you’ll see shortly it’s not without risk to my dear husband.) Part of the things I learned was how to protect our garden from bugs that weren’t beneficial to humans or the plants, and part was better-growing practices. Next year should be even better and I will be mixing some Boric Acid, Diatomaceous Earth, and Mycorrhizal Inoculant into the soil.
Why these things? That helps keep the ants out, and we lost one grow bag of potatoes to tiny little ants. The Mycorrhizal Inoculant is a fungi that helps create a network of nutrients between plants and is essential in a healthy garden. In the meantime, we’ve just put an experiment together on Boric Acid, Apple juice, and soda cans as a Bee and Quail safe alternative to having an exterminator deal with the hornets with harsh chemicals. Gary was stung on the eyelid checking on the quail this morning, and he is alright now – but it was pretty concerning given the location. If it was the kids at home or myself, it could have meant a hospital trip, so he definitely took one for the team, although I don’t recommend anyone be stung by one of these crazy creatures.
I’ve learned you can start yellow squash in coffee, and that I need to plan the garden beds better, next season I will know what I plan on planting per growing season, and get certain things started as early as mid-January. These will be started inside moving them to the greenhouse in March, for planting in the soil in April. I have a binder now for seeds and will fill it in and label each section by season with a “plant X in month Y” label on the plastic insert the seeds are put in.
Somewhere along the way, I’ve become a mentor to a lot of folks who raise quail and I love that honestly, while expanding my own knowledge I am able to help others and that’s priceless… I often start and finish my day with a text or phone call asking me about someone’s birds and advice on rearing them or treating them during injury. I haven’t stopped learning about them myself though and can be found combing through studies and other resources in relation to Coturnix quail. This in combination with returning to my other business now that my knee and shoulder are allowing it – as a Doula in the St. Louis and Southwest Illinois area has kept me busy in a teacher mode, and I can’t say it’s something I don’t like, as I do love helping folks learn things that will help them in their own lives.
As I type this out, we have a living room full of hatchlings that will be having graduations in the next day or two. The newest ones started hatching Monday much to my surprise, as I thought we had until today at least. Some will go to the grow-out cages in the greenhouse, and some to brooders inside as a new batch of babies have all made their way out of the shell in our incubators. These are Pearls and Rosettas mostly, and are adorable… and 1/3 of the hatchlings we’ve gotten from MyShire Farm for this hatch will stay with me. The other two-thirds will go to dear friends who are also Quail Mamas in about a week or less. There will be a harvest of birds for ourselves for food this coming weekend too, and I’ve gotten pretty proficient at it.
We’ve learned that while we are waiting to get our lines established so we can go for not only being NPIP certified but becoming those who do the certification, we will have a lot of eggs we don’t hatch, so I am going to look into seeing about officially selling them to specialty food stores locally, we already have plans to donate to the United Way’s local food banks (eggs only, not the butchered quail – those are for family consumption only.) Our freezer is starting to get a nice stash built up of quail in shrink wrap bags for the winter to feed not only those of us here living under our roof but for our adult children and their families. I’ve become proficient at a fast and clean dispatch of the quail we decide to send to freezer camp and can butcher them in no time flat.
So this week we’ll do a lot of that. It’ll be graduating from one stage of quail life to the next for many birds, getting the yard hornet and wasp free, and a continuation of caring for my family without slowing down.
Good Grief…
August you are a busy month.
Annie is a semi-retired homebirth midwife, the Director and head doula trainer for the MattieMarie Traditional Birth Studies program, and a Farmer’s granddaughter. It all ties into her mad plan to be as self-sufficient as she can while returning to her roots.