The Colors of Fall

Autumn in New Hampshire means colors. Leaf peepers come north in droves to view the trees; I line the shelf with jars. For the leaf peepers, the colors are deep reds, oranges, bright yellows. Crisp. For me, they are jewel tones more suited to a typical summer palette: pinks, purples, greens.

In other words, autumn means jelly.

All summer, I have been putting up berry and peach jams, tomato you-name-its, and beans. But autumn brings the jellies: apple, mint, grape. As a kid I made grape jelly with my mother every year, and I miss the arbor of Concord grapes with their deep, staining skins and sour middles, and the color of the jelly: black until you hold it to a sunny window, when the sun would strike cobalt through the jar. This year the grape jelly is sorely lacking, as there are no Concord grape vines running through my back yard yet, but we did liberate some grapes that were vining up an old maple tree at the local apple orchard. Their seeds are overwintering in the fridge and will, with luck, be next year's baby grape vines, and the future's jars of purple goodness. The mint is running amok through the herb garden and will be put up soon, with its yellow-green topaz color. This week is for the apples.

We picked up a bushel of apples last week through the local CSA, and have enjoyed our fill of pie and sauce. Now that the skins are starting to redden to the point of overripe, it's time for jelly-making. This year's batches jelled in the pot before they even reached a boil, there was so much natural pectin, and the house smells heavenly.

And then there's the color, pretty even today with the rain beating down outside. It's closer to a watermelon color than apple, thanks to the overly red skins. Maybe it's what it represents to me that really matters - warmth, memories of canning with my mother, the promise of fresh jelly through the winter - but there is nothing quite like the color of apple jelly to warm a chilly day: soft pink, translucent, its bubbles suspended perfectly. It's the little things. :)

Chicken Little

I have always wanted chickens. When I was a little girl we had horses, and my mother dabbled in other farm animals: a steer named Moo that we ate the following year, pigs for three years in a row (and I still remember all their names, and how delicious they were), ducks named Mike and Ike that we finally got rid of because all they did was poop in the yard. But never chickens. We tried once. Mom came home with a beautiful Bantam rooster (Henry) and five chicks. I spent countless hours in the barn playing with the chicks as they grew, hoping I could figure out whether they were hens or roosters, convinced they'd lay eggs any second and I'd miss it. Then one morning they were all perched on the barn beams with old Henry, crowing with adolescent voices for all they were worth. Yup - five new roosters. What were the odds?

Off they went to their next home. I don't know where they ended up, actually, but I was so disillusioned by the lack of cuddly egg layers I didn't really care.

The desire for chickens - well, hens - never left. Throughout my adulthood I have eyeballed each place I've moved to, trying to figure out how to coop a few birds. With my transient lifestyle, it has never been practical. So imagine my enthusiasm when we moved in here, with ample barn space, a coop already set up (my mother in law's long-time residents went into the freezer last year after they stopped laying), and the relative permanence to establish a flock. I admit, I went a little crazy, even for me.

We were late into the game. The pre-ordered chicks were already spoken for everywhere I looked. After a month of searching, I had just about given up on having chickens this year when we got a call from Agway. Our first acquisition was a chance set of three guinea keets that Agway had as leftovers. We named them Parsley, Sage and Rosemary, and I spent quite a bit of time gazing at them in their plastic tub. When they were about four weeks old, along came the first of the chicks: a set of five a little boy in the next town hatched from eggs, but couldn't keep. The kids and I named them Barley, Penelope, Puffin, Quiche and Chickadee, and they took up residence with the herb birds. It wasn't long before they all outgrew their little plastic tub, so out to the barn they went, heat lamp and all. There was now space in the brooder box, and my chick mania was in full swing, so 13 new chicks, hatched for me by a woman on Craigslist, went into the plastic box. Colin tried to name them all after condiments, but unlike our first five, who are all different breeds and easy to tell apart, these are all yellow and black barnyard mutts, and pretty much identical. He resorted to randomly pointing and saying, "That must be [ketchup/mustard/relish]." A week later we were in Blue Seal and heard the unmistakable sound of new keets peeping. With our meager flock of three guineas at home, I couldn't resist buying six more. Sam started rolling his eyes. When it rains, it pours...chicks.

About this time, we learned that the coop in the barn needed to go. My father in law is building an office above it, and the keets, as they reached their teen weeks, had started to squawk. Loudly. Beyond loudly. They'd put a construction site to shame for all the noise they could make with little to no provocation. We selected a smaller barn across the property, what used to be the blacksmith shop. It took us most of the summer, what with kids and schedules, but we finally managed to complete a new coop in there just last week. Now the issue was how to move 27 birds, including three adult guinea hens the size of turkeys?

With the help of a huge dog kennel and our neighbor's daughter, nicknamed "the Chicken Whisperer" for her ability to calm even terrified birds, the feat was managed with minimal damage to us or the birds. It took six trips - all the chickens went in two loads, then the six new keets, then one trip each for the three adult guineas, a feat that involved a blanket, a tunnel, and a lot of yelling and patience, and that probably would have won us a Funniest Home Videos award. They now reside in their outbuilding, squawking to their hearts' content. They still haven't been allowed outside, which pains me, but they need to establish roots in their new home first. I haven't built their fence yet, anyway.

left to right: Chickadee, Barley, Puffin, Quiche, and Penelope. Background: Parsley, Sage and Rosemary

Barley and Chickadee

But what is it about these birds? They won't lay for another couple of months, so there really isn't any purpose to them yet. They poop a lot, they are noisy, and they don't like to cuddle - in fact, they're downright alarmed by our presence most of the time. But I love them. I could stand in the coop and watch them for an hour if it weren't for the demands of my actual children. Sam found me last night at twilight, eye to eye with Barley, our one definite rooster, just chilling. We stared at each other for a good ten minutes, and I was loathe to leave. There's a peace in watching them go about their chicken business and act out their chicken politics and drama. There's such simple beauty in their innocent little bird eyes. I love the lay of Chickadee's feathers around her neck. I'm fascinated by the iridescent colors of Barley's tail. Penelope carries her leg feathers like a southern belle's ruffles. I really hope by some miracle the odds will stack the same way they did when I was a kid - impossibly to one side - and we won't have any more roosters; I don't know that I will be able to bear the freezer journey. At least my favorites, the first ones with names, are safe: one rooster, four hens. Perfect.

Winter Gardening

 Living as we do in the heart of New England, the concept of winter gardening involves greenhouses and cold frames, both of which we're keen to work with and get running this winter. In fact, a recent acquisition of four grape plants just went into the garden quite late in the season, so Sam built frames around them and mulched them to the point of live burial in anticipation of an early frost. It's been down pretty low the last few nights - 43 this morning - and in another month we can slap an old window over those newly transplanted roots and hope they'll weather the winter until they can take off in the spring. But a greenhouse is a long way off for us, and anything more than spinach might be a long shot as far as things we can eat from still-in-the-infant-stage garden this winter.

Unless the garden is in the basement.

Sam has been working hard to get our aquaponics system running in the basement in time to have plants producing for the winter. Not a small feat, but give Sam a project and he runs headlong into finishing it...and once again, succeeded. After a month of researching and watching Murray Hallam's videos to the point of memorization, and after weeks of puzzling over construction and siphon issues with his Dad, the system is working.  But now, what to plant?

His parents already had some plants in four hydroponic tubes, and those found themselves hooked into the system and are already doing well, but they were already established. The strawberries I picked up at Lowe's on the clearance rack in July, which had maybe one green leaf a piece, look like this a month later:

Yes, strawberry plants blooming in a basement in September. Woot! And I'm not sure what this plant is that his mother put in there, but it certainly is taking over the works:

But the aquaponics beds - really just 3' x 4' bins filled with gravel and a constant feed of rise-and-drain nutrient-rich water - have been sadly empty for a week or more, waiting for seedlings to sprout. There's not much that's more frustrating to a gardener than a garden waiting for plants that are unwilling to hurry up and be big enough to put in.

On a trip to Blue Seal for chicken food the other day, Sam wandered into the outdoor plant section. This time of year, the highlight is the display of mums, but we're all about edible plants this year, so Sam wandered by. At the far end of the section, he found a table of dilapidated Charlie Brown tomato plants, really nothing more than leggy stems with a few miniature tomatoes trying desperately to reach maturity in a mad gasp for the next generation. He asked what the shop owner wanted for them, and she said, "Take them. They're headed for the dump." Really? Is there anything else heading for the dump? Our ears perked, we peppered her with questions about the other plants out there. She, no doubt relieved not to have a dump run in her future, loaded us up with four grapes (the aforementioned cold frame residents), eight yellow pear tomatoes, two Jerusalem artichokes, a pot of chives, and two rose bushes. I would have taken the other three roses, but we were in the golf cart with the kids and it was all we could do to fit everything in. Jackpot!

Tonight the tomatoes had the honor of being the first plants to go into an aquaponics bed:

They're leggy and spindly, and one still had its fruit (thus the noose to hold it up!), but this is fine. The idea here is that they grow up rather than out, so with luck we will be training them up around the light frame soon. The chives went into the corner of the bed, the artichokes will go into a field that will someday house pigs (they are excellent fodder) so they can spread on their own, and the roses will decorate the new chicken barn.

All in all, a winter garden with some promise.

Back on Track

A lot has happened in two years. Three moves, a new baby, and suddenly we find ourselves back at the site of the original garden (abandoned last year due to a move that took us an hour and a half away), but for good this time, not just to visit. In May we moved into the old section of the farmhouse Sam grew up in, and have made the first push into putting down official homesteader roots.

We dug a new garden in the yard - easier to water and get to, but more Japanese beetles. So far we haven't seen any squash bugs or Colorado potato beetles - perhaps they all stayed in the old plot - but we don't have much for variety that they might like to eat, either. Due to the late-season move and my lack of time to get anything done with a baby on my hip, the garden is rudimentary to say the least. That's okay; it's a start.

Despite a small planting, we have a bumper crop of tomatoes and cukes (I put up about ten gallons of crock pickles before the powdery mildew made off with the late season cucumber crop), and will have a decent crop of soup beans and soy. This year we only planted Dutch brown and Jacob's cattle for soup beans. My goal next year is to increase that to two more varieties, as the beans make such an excellent storage crop. Today's picking pulled in a fairly good haul of green beans along with the first round of dried-on-the-plant brown beans, ready for the kids to shell:
 

Sam has invested a lot of time into permaculture research, and to that end we ordered but have not yet received several varieties of nut and fruit trees. They should be here this fall. We put in elderberry and strawberries already, and hope for a good yield next year.

On the non-garden front, we have started a new flock with 9 guinea keets and 18 chicks. They're still young, and still waiting for us to have time to finish their new coop in an outbuilding closer to the garden (where the guineas will be able to eat all the Japanese beetles they can handle). More on them, and on our progress, in future posts.