A Grape-y Canopy

Our back deck is covered in a wood pergola on which several grape vines call home.  In addition to providing a beautiful shady spot, our vines produce a surplus of edible grapes.

 The predominant grape variety we grow is called Montreal Blues.  When mature, our grapes resemble those of the Concord variety.  They are red grapes that smaller and rounder than table grapes.  The grapes are not ripe yet so they are bright green.

The grapes are not very good for eating off the vine since they are tiny, pretty sour and full of seeds.  However, we have used them to make delicious grape juice and grape jelly - think Welch's but better.  The grapes do sweeten up very late in the season but by then most of them have been devoured by either the birds or the hornets.

The key to a superb grape harvest, you ask?  We have it figured out - it is essential to trim the vines right back to the main stem after the growing season.  This is a tip we picked up from visiting the vineyards in Niagara in the off season - all their vines were pruned right back.  We figured if it works for them, it might work for us too - and it did!  Here's to a very grape-y summer.

The (Very Slow) Growth of the Sugar Maples

When we first moved to Gael Glen Farm we decide to prioritize improvements to the property that would require a long time to grow before they would provide the benefit for which they were planted.  As such, one of the first tasks we undertook was planting a bunch of new trees.  In addition to the apple and pear trees we planted in the orchard, we also planted four sugar maple trees bordering the driveway.  Our hope is that one day they will be big enough to tap to make maple syrup - though, at the rate they are growing that day is likely a very, very long way off.

Our four sugar maple trees.  We have big plans for these little guys!

While making our own maple syrup seems like a bit of a pipe dream at this point, we have friends who live on a property nearby with mature maple trees that they tapped for the first time this spring.  They boiled down the sap on their kitchen stove and were able to make their own homemade maple syrup!  We have yet to taste test the fruits of their labour but we think it is so cool that they did it.  DIY maple syrup - who would have thought?!

A Pond Full of Flowers

Every spring we usually spend a substantial amount of time and effort manicuring our backyard pond.  This involves one of us stripping down to our underwear in the backyard (thank goodness we have no close neighbours) and struggling into Ian's hunting hip-waders.  The unlucky gardener then eases themselves into the frigid, murky waters of our chest deep pond.  Once in, we arrange the pots of lily pads on the bottom, cut back the cattails and trim the water irises.  This spring we did none of the above.  For some reason this rather unpleasant yard work task usually falls to me (Ian says he doesn't do flower gardens - only veggies) and I was too pregnant to fit into the waders - besides I was afraid the ice cold water might induce early labour.  As such, no hipwaders, no wading and no pond plant pruning.

Would you believe that the pond looks the best it has ever looked?  The plants are the healthiest they have ever been and we have had more flowers on the irises (a spring flower so no photos of these), spikes on the cattails and water lilies than ever before.

We may have had to undergo a forced eradication of our garden lilies in order to battle the Japanese Red Lily Beetle; however, we still have our water lilies!  Finally a type of lily the beetles don't like!

I guess sometimes a pond just needs the freedom to run wild.  In this case a little neglected yard work has worked out very much in our favour.

The Case of the Escapee Crickets

As our dedicated readers know, Avery our chameleon, eats crickets.  In the winter the crickets live in their Cricket Keeper cage in the basement storage room.  They kind of stink though so during the rest of the year, they live out in the garage.  It is kind of smelly in there already, so what is a little added cricket odour?

Lately; however, it seems the crickets have been disappearing from their cage.  We always buy 100 crickets at a time, which should last (give or take) two weeks.  The mystery is that after about a week, the Cricket Keeper is empty.  There are a few dead crickets at the bottom of the cage (which is expected) but nowhere near 50 dead ones.  Where did the missing crickets go?

After careful observation, I have come up with a few clues.

Clue 1: I keep seeing rogue crickets running willy nilly around the garage.  Especially irritating is the cricket that sits right in front of the garage door all day and only runs away when I open the door to go out the feed the chickens.  He is taunting me.

Clue 2: The bucket to catch drips from the hose faucet in the garage is full of drowned crickets.

Based on the available evidence, it seems reasonable to conclude that some of the crickets are (rather unsuccessfully) attempting to live in the garage.  This leads to my second query: how on Earth are crickets escaping from the Cricket Keeper?  It is supposed to be like the Fort Knox for crickets and besides, why weren't the crickets escaping when the cage was in the basement.  (Uh oh, maybe they were and I just didn't notice and now we have a herd of rogue crickets living in the basement...ew.)

The mystery continues....

A Chicken Consolidation Effort

It is time for the (not so little) chicks to join the rest of the flock in the chicken coop.  It is crazy to think that just three short months ago these little ladies were the size of an egg!

Baby chicks and ducklings back in April in their set up in the mud room.

Everyone is snoozing here.

 The ducklings grew way faster than the chicks so they have been with the adults birds in the coop for over a month now.  We taught the ducklings to swim in the kitchen sink and now they are loving their outdoor pond (aka kiddie sand box filled with water).  They have turned out to be good company for Kate.

Ducklings learning to swim in lukewarm water in the kitchen sink.

How many ducks can fit in the pond at once?  Let's see...

 This week it was time for the baby chicks to follow the ducklings and make the transition into the big coop.  We have found that the best method of relocating chicks from their starter house to the big coop is to do so in the late evening when the adult hens are already roosting.  We then carry the chicks one by one to the big coop and place them on the roosts beside the adult birds.  Hopefully then everyone goes to sleep.  When everyone wakes up in the morning they look around and say, "Hmm...there seem to be new birds here but it doesn't seem to be a big deal." And then everyone just goes about their normal business.

Normal business = eating and pooping.

So far the hen consolidation has gone really well.  There has been a bit of squawking over pecking order which we expected.  In particular the lowest bird in the old pecking order (an Americauna with no bum feathers) has been showing dominant behaviour (e.g. standing up really straight, puffing out her feathers and lunging) with the new chicks since she doesn't want to be at the bottom of the new pecking order too.

I also notice that the big chickens are pecking at Crooky when she tries to eat.  In fairness, Cooky pushes her way into the center of the food saucer with no regard for the fact that there are chickens twice her size already eating.  Hopefully Crooky will learn to wait her turn and then she can eat her fill when the bigger hens are done.  She'll endure much less pecking that way.

I think it is safe to classify this chicken consolidation effort as a success.  We will keep our eye on everyone but so far, so good.

Introducing...Crooky!

We have been finding it more and more difficult to name our animals.  The new chickens are especially tough to name since we can't really tell them apart.  We have three or four of each type of bird and they all behave exactly the same so differentiating between them is extremely tricky.  Sadly, we have resorted to addressing them by feather colour: "Here [insert feather colour + "ie" e.g. Blackie, Brownie, Goldie], that's a good chicken."  I sure hope they don't find this discriminatory.

There is one exception, an extra special little bird whom Ian named Crooky.

Crooky is a New Hampshire Red hen with a very crooked beak.  She began to show this abnormality called scissor beak several days after we brought her home and it got progressively worse for quite a while.  We think she has stabilized now with her bottom beak at a 90 degree angle from her top beak.

"Scissor beak, also called crossed beak, is a condition in which the top and bottom beaks do not align properly.  It can be caused by genetics, an injury or the inability to maintain the beak's length and shape by normal honing on rocks or other hard surfaces." (Source: http://www.the-chicken-chick.com)  We think Crooky's condition must be genetic.

While Crooky still manages to eat and drink independently, she does find eating challenging and time consuming.  She can only eat mashed up grain granules since she relies on her tongue to pick up the granules since she can't scoop the food up with her bottom beak like the others.

In spite (or perhaps because) of her unusual condition, Crooky is our friendliest chicken.  She is the first hen out in the morning and is ecstatic when we pour the grain into the food trough.  She is so excited to eat that she gets all tangled up in our feet when we try to feed her.

She is also the last hen in at night since she will peck away at the food until the wee hours - long after the others have gone to bed.  Even with all her efforts, she is still a bit smaller than the other hens.  She does get picked on a little bit but so far it isn't too bad.

Unique and resilient animals like crossed beak Crooky and our half blind duck Kate always seem to find a special place in our hearts.  They may be a bit unusual but we love them all the more for it.

A Little Snooze Goes a Long Way

Quality sleep time is a little hard to find around the farm lately so we are all catching some shut eye when the opportunity presents itself.  Here are some priceless napping moments that have been caught on film...

You'd think from the photos that all we do is sleep but I promise you that is definitely not the case.

Another Egg Producer!

Our chameleon has joined the ranks of the Gael Glen Farm egg layers.  We expect our hens and ducks to lay eggs but I admit I was a bit surprised to find several Jelly Belly bean sized eggs in the substrate of Avery's terrarium.  Obviously her eggs are not fertilized since we do not have a male chameleon, so there are no baby chameleons in our future (thank goodness).  However, it was neat to find them just the same.

Chameleons lay 12 to 80 eggs in a clutch.  We are trying to give Avery lots of quiet time since we've read that egg laying is very strenuous on female chameleons (no kidding - up to 80 jelly bean sized eggs in one go?!  Holy cow!).  Apparently if the chameleon gets stressed out during the egg laying process it can cause her to become egg-bound.  Becoming egg-bound means that she is unable to expel all the eggs inside her and it is usually a death sentence for the lizard (unless you are willing to pay a veterinarian to do an X-ray on your chameleon to confirm that she is egg bound and then do surgery to remove the eggs - I bet that would cost a pretty penny).

We are waiting with fingers crossed that Avery makes it through her ovulation in one piece.  Only time will tell.

The Great Lily Extinction

Would you like to know the bane of my existence?  Japanese Red Lily Beetles.  I hate them.

These horrible bugs start attacking my lilies in the early spring when the lily shoots sprout from the ground.  The adult beetles over-winter in the soil at the base of the lily plants and then emerge in the spring.  Japanese Red Lily Beetles have lots and lots of sex with each other.

The female beetles then lay little red eggs on the underside of the lily leaves in the signature pattern below.

These eggs hatch into larvae that then feast on the young lily's leaves and defecate disgusting piles of poop all over the poor plant.

The larvae then turn into the adult lily beetle (that also eats the lily leaves and petals) and the whole cycle begins again.  These bugs seem to breed like nobody's business and they absolutely destroy the lily plants on which they live.  They eat every last leaf to the point that the plant sometimes can't even bloom because it can't photosynthesize properly without any leaves.  Below is what is left of my (hypothetically) beautiful lilies.

Seriously...just a stem.  No leaves, no blossoms.

As far as I know there is no pesticide that kills these horrible bugs; garden stores sell traps for them but seasoned gardeners swear the only way to get rid of lily beetles is to pick the adults off by hand and then scrape and squish all the eggs before they hatch.  This is a ridiculous amount of face time for a few lily plants but I hate to let things die when intervention is possible, so for four long years I have picked these beetles off my lilies.  Well, I've had it.  No more.  I admit defeat.  My lilies have to go.

I have dug up all my lilies and thrown the sad looking plants and all the bulbs into the compost.  I will no longer be a slave to the Japanese Red Lily Beetle.  Life will have to continue on Gael Glen Farm without lilies.

A Very Veggie Update

Even when we are not blogging, our garden is still growing...thank goodness, since we've been a bit remiss in the blogging.  We blame the baby; he is time consuming.

While we had a rainy start to the season which made our veggies slow to take off (and the mosquitoes in the garden ferocious!), thanks to the plentiful sunshine over the past few weeks, our garden is looking incredible and already producing some healthy and delicious food.

Words can't do justice to our beautiful veggies, so behold...(note: the absence of virtually all weeds in the big garden which can be attributed to Ian's incredible vigilance in the weed pulling department - kudos!)

Rows and rows and rows of tomatoes.  We're not really sure which kinds (red, yellow, beefsteak, heirloom, cherry etc.) are growing where so it will be a surprise when they begin to ripen.  Right now there are tomatoes on almost all the vines but they are all small and green.

Broccoli.  Did you know the more frequently you harvest the broccoli crowns from a plant, the more they grow?
No excuse not to eat broccoli now!

Cabbage.  No cabbage patch kids growing in there though - I checked!  Coleslaw here we come.

A row of kale.  Perfect for smoothies, in omelettes and baked into kale chips.  Kale chips - too healthy to be called chips but tasty just the same.

Cucumber.  Lots of flowers just waiting to be pollinated by one of our honey bees (if they'd ever get back to business and stop misbehaving - a subject for another post)!

Zucchini plant.

Zucchini blossoms on a zucchini plant.

Baby zucchini on a zucchini blossom on a zucchini plant...and the green grass grows all around, all around and the green grass grows all around.  (If this doesn't make sense to you, then it is likely that you have not spent the last several weeks racking your brain for any and all children's songs buried deep in your memory in an effort to amuse a fussy infant.)

Rows of red onions.  Perfect as scallions now or we can let them grow into big red onions (patience required!).

The mint corner. Varieties: apple mint, mojito mint and chocolate mint.
We tried to make mint iced tea the other day; sounded like a good idea but tasted like toothpaste.
We poured it down the sink.

From left to right: peas, carrots and onions.

From left to right: swiss chard and turnips.  Turnips have turned out to be our bargaining chip this year -
no one else grows them but everyone is willing to trade for them!

Green pepper.  Yes, it is tiny.  Our peppers really suck this year.  Even though we have at least a dozen pepper plants, this is the only pepper that is growing so far.  Did I mention that our peppers suck?

Garlic.  Ian is the Garlic King - like the guy in the Ottawa Santa Claus parade but without the truck with the glass dome in the roof.  I bet our garlic would win at the Carp Garlic Festival if we weren't too cheap to pay the exorbitant entry fee.

So, this is what we are harvesting right now.  We'll try to keep you abreast of new developments as the season progresses.  We have lots of happy and healthy eating ahead of us!