I still exist.

A warm break in the weather drew me outside despite the drizzle. I ripped up several pots (2-one gallon, 2-four gallon and a flat) that I had planted "Nugget" variety hops into. I left lots of roots in the ground to resprout and split up the crowns for repotting. I've got a couple gallon bags in the refrigerator with vermiculite and root cuttings ( Read more... )

Seems I forget about mushroom cultivation until the natural mushroom blooms begin. Then, yearly, I get mushroom cultivation fever, only, at the wrong time of the year. Spring is the best time to inoculate wood chips and logs with mycellium since that is the time when the sap is rising into the wood. Wood chips and logs should be inoculated soon ( Read more... )

Damn. It froze hard last night and I hadn't brought in the plants I wanted to put into the greenhouse. The morning temperatures have been hovering right around 40F for the last couple weeks and I told myself "as soon as they drop to 39 I'll take the plants in." We skipped right down to 31F this morning. The chicken waterer was iced over and I'm ( Read more... )

I heard a rat in the attic space last night. Around midnight I put a trap just inside the access hatch. This morning there was a young male rat in the trap.
Where there is one there are ten more.

We got about 3 inches of rain the 22-24.

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One of our silkie hens laid an egg today. We bought six silkies and only two of them turned out to be hens. We are down to just the two hens and one rooster now, the others turned out to be very tasty with Frank's red hot sauce ( Read more... )

Another chicken got eaten last night. Someone left the little door on the hen house open and the critter got in and grabbed a hen right out of its nest. The trail of feathers went right past our bedroom window ( Read more... )

I saw a Wilson's warbler (tiny yellow bird) feeding a fledgling brown-headed cowbird twice its size this morning. I saw an adult brown headed cowbird later on in the day looking hungrily at bees flying in and out of our hives ( Read more... )