Elderberry Workshop

Yesterday, we attended another workshop at the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture.  This is the second one we've been to at the Kerr Center this year.  The other one was on attracting native pollinators.  Here is the blog I wrote about that one.

Native Pollinator Workshop

The workshop we attended yesterday focused on growing elderberries.  I was aware of elderberries and knew you could make jelly and wine from them, but I had never eaten one or even seen one in "real life" before yesterday.  Here's the agenda for the workshop and a brochure about elderberries they gave us.

As it turns out, elderberries grow wild all over the U.S. and there are many native varieties right here in Oklahoma.  As shown on the brochure above, elderberries, grow in bunches and they are not very large, only a little larger than BBs.  I was surprised that they are not all that sweet.  However, they contain tons of antioxidants, over 3 times as much as blueberries!  It is for this reason that interest in them has skyrocket in recent years.

Another interesting thing is, until recently, all the domesticated varieties of elderberries available in the U.S. came from New York or Nova Scotia.  As you can imagine, these varieties may not do well here in the Midwest.  So, research is now being done, most notably at the University of Missouri, to develop varieties adapted for this part of the country.  To date, several varieties have been developed. Bob Gordon, Wildewood 1 and 2, and Ranch are some of the varieties now available.  Ranch is a variety developed in Oklahoma.  Below is a map showing the varieties the Kerr Center has planted in their test plot.  Adams is one of the New York varieties that was included for comparison.

At the end of the day, we went on a tour of the elderberry test plots at the Kerr Center.  Here's a picture of the actual planting that corresponds to the map above.

Believe it or not, the plants above were started this past spring from cuttings that were only about 4 inches long!  These are fast growing plants! 

There was ample opportunity to visit and ask questions.

The great thing about this workshop was there were several speakers who already grew elderberries commercially and we got to hear their stories of how they got started in the business, things they did right and things they did wrong when starting out.

I don't expect us to get into growing elderberries on a large commercial scale.  However, we do plan to plant 6 to 8 bushes.  Just enough to have some to sell at our farmers' market with some left over for me to make jelly from and maybe try my hand at making elderberry wine.

Chicken Story

This story is about our newest chickens.  These are the ones we got this past March.  The link below is a blog entry that contains pictures of them when they were just baby chicks.

New Chicks

Here they are now.  Can you believe these are the same chickens as the little black fuzz balls in the link above?  They sure are beauties!  

The ring-leader of the bunch is the solid black chicken on the left.  Her name is Blackie.  She is also the smallest of the four, but she makes up for that with her pioneering spirit and her passion for exploring new things.  Here's a close-up of her.

Next is Goldie.  She has the most gold feathers.

The other two look almost the same. In fact, I can barely tell them apart unless they are standing next to each other.  This one is Sprite.

And this one is Stubby.  Stubby's tail is not quite as "full" and upright as Sprite's tail. 

Now for the story.  As I said before, Blackie is the most inquisitive and willing to explore new things.  Earlier this week, Tom found her in our hoop-house.  That's the big plastic-covered structure where we grow winter greens for the farmers' market.  In warm weather, we keep the door open to help with ventilation and that is how Blackie got in.  Tom has some beautiful bell peppers in there.

Blackie discovered them and decided they were good to eat!

Tom shooed her out of the hoop-house, only to come back a while later to find ALL of them in there joyfully chomping away!  Who says chickens are dumb and can't communicate?  Obviously, Blackie went back to the gang and told them about the treasure trove of peppers in the hoop-house.  Shooing them out was not going to work for long.   So, now we have taken action and barricaded the door to keep them out.

Just hoping Blackie doesn't figure out a way around it.

Moon Flowers and Wasp Stings

While on our recent trip to New Mexico, we went to a park where the landscaping was made up of native plants.  I fell in love with the Moon Flower bushes we saw there.  I forgot to take a picture of them, but here is a picture of what they look like.

This picture is from a website that has more pictures and information about them.

Moon Flowers

I had to have some of these for my garden and made a mental note to buy some seed next spring.  However, as these thoughts were going through my mind, I noticed a seed pod down inside one of the bushes.  What luck!  Here was an easy way to obtain seed for free.  So, into the bush I reached to pick the pod.  The seed pods were covered with bristles and, when my thumb began to hurt, I thought one of them had jabbed me.  However, it was quite painful and the bristles didn't really look that sharp to me.  When I pulled my hand out of the bush, I found a wasp on my thumb!  OUCH

Over the course of the next few minutes, my thumb started swelling and after an hour the back of my hand was swollen, as well.

Here's what my hand is supposed to look like.

It hurt a lot and I got a cold water bottle out of our cooler to hold on the sting.  This helped to relieve the pain and, after a while, it quit hurting so much and just felt stiff and numb.  The next day the swelling was gone, but it itched a lot.

The moral of this story is "Nothing is free!"  I paid the price for these seeds.  All 18 of them!

Garlic Baskets

We just got home from a much needed vacation.  This summer has been hot and humid and we are a year older.  The hot weather and farm work was taking its toll on us.  So, we decided to let the garden go and take a road trip.  Weeds have taken over a lot of the garden and about all we had left were tomatoes and peppers which were suffering from the hot weather as well.  So, it was not that hard of a decision to make.

Years ago, we went to Santa Fe and decided we'd like to go back. We had in mind to go through the Georgia O'Keefe art museum and spend some time in that area of the country.  While we were there, we saw a sign about the Santa Fe Farmers' Market.  It is held on Saturday and Tuesday mornings. The Tuesday market worked into our schedule perfectly.  

It is held at the railway terminal, hence the rails in the foreground. There were lots of booths with all kinds of beautiful produce.

Tom spent a lot of time checking out the tomatoes.

And, it was all I could do to keep from buying some of these heirloom tomatoes.

This being New Mexico, of course they had all kinds of peppers.  In one booth, they were roasting them and selling bags of them.  I couldn't resist and bought a bag to put in our cooler to bring home.

There were even decorations made with peppers.

And, there was garlic.  Here is a booth that specialized in it.  

They had hard-necked garlic tied up in bundles.  Almost too pretty to eat!

They had several varieties that we have never grown.  So, Tom picked out a few nice heads and bought them.....not for us to eat, but to grow this fall.

And, I bought some pretty baskets to put it in next summer at our farmers' market.

New Nest Box

Our youngest chickens have started laying eggs.  They are so much smaller than the older chicken eggs.  It is pretty amusing!

The first of these eggs we found was not in a nest box.  It was out in the grass.  Then we found one on the floor of the coop.  Obviously, these young ladies were new to this and needed to learn what the nest boxes were for.  So, I caught each one separately and stuck them in one of the nest boxes to give them a chance to look around and, hopefully, figure out the appropriate place to lay an egg.

However, the next day, I found yet another egg on the floor of the coop.  Then, I noticed that all the nest boxes were in use by the older chickens.  Hmmmm.  Could it be that we needed another nest box to accommodate everyone?  Tom built the first set of nest boxes, but  we truly do not have room for another set that big.  We hardly have room for even one additional nest box.  Plus, it is a busy time in the garden and I didn't want Tom to feel he had to spend a lot of time building a new nest box.

I had seen already-built nest boxes somewhere and decided to go "nest shopping".  I found one at our local Atwoods farm store.  It is made of plastic and will be easy to keep clean.  It was also easy to install with only 4 screws required.  Here it is.

As soon as it was installed, I went through the routine again of picking each young chicken up and putting her in the new nest.   I was rewarded the next day with this.

So far the only eggs I have found in it are little eggs laid by the young girls.  I think perhaps it is too small for the Rhode Island Red chickens' liking.  They are a large, heavy breed and the opening to this new nest box is a little smaller.  So, I really do not expect them to use it.  However, that is okay.  It is just perfect for the young chickens and they will have their own special box.

Peacock

A few weeks ago I posted a picture on our Windy Acres Facebook page about our new arrivals, a pair of peafowl.  A peacock and a peahen to be specific.  

The peacock is on the right.  He has a longer tail, but has yet to develop his full plumage because he is only a year old.  They do not get their full set of tail feathers until they are 3 years old.

These were a gift from my middle child who decided we could not have 5 acres without a peacock to go with it.  We had to build a shelter for them and were told we should keep them penned up for several months until they were used to the place and knew they could come back here to find food.

They were both rather wild when we got them from the breeder, having been raised in large pens with lots of other peafowl where they were often chased down and captured with large nets when a buyer came to purchase one of them.  This wildness caused them to become frantic and fly around the enclosure in a panic when we went in to give them food or water.  And, unfortunately, after about a week, the female escaped when she flew against the door while Tom was in there to take care of a spilled food container.  She flew over the fence and into the tall Johnson grass on our neighbor's property.

We were both just sick about it and, although Tom went to look for her, it was a hopeless endeavor.  There is a creek with some tall trees beyond the grass and there is no telling where she might have gone.  We left food outside the pen, hoping she would come back to eat, but that did not happen and we have not seen anything of her since.

There is a silver lining to this story, though.  With the female gone, the peacock has settled down considerably.  She was definitely the wilder of the two and got agitated at the slightest thing.  The male has tamed down so much, in fact, that I can now enter his pen without him getting agitated at all.  Isn't he a beautiful boy?  He is an India Blue Pied.  The regular India Blues do not have the white feathers.

We bounced several names back and forth.  We agreed his name should start with a "P".  I was all for calling him Pete, after the OSU mascot Pistol Pete.  But, Tom felt he should have an Indian name, like Piscine, the name of the boy in the book Life of Pi.  In the end, we decided to call him "Petey Pi".

Although you can't see it, the front of the shed is covered with chicken wire.  It serves two purposes, one to keep him in, but also to keep predators out.  Believe it or not, peafowl, as large as they are, can fall prey to raccoon, coyotes and owls.  In Petey Pi's case, he is more susceptible to predators at night because of his white feathers.

As soon as we can, we plan to build an outside enclosure attached to the shed to allow him outside access during the day.  Later this year, we hope we will be able to let him out to free-range.  The only problem with that is he will undoubtedly stray over to our neighbors, too.  So, we'll have to see how that works out before we make it permanent.

Garden Disaster

In January of 2012, I wrote a blog entry about the severe drought we were having here in Oklahoma.  

Reflections on the Drought

Later that spring, the rains came and we were officially out of the drought for several months.  But, the rains stopped and the drought again crept into our part of the state so that by January of 2013 we were back in a severe drought.

During those dry times, we struggled to keep the garden alive and producing.  I dreamed of rain and lakes and rivers full of water.  Well, my dreams became a reality this spring when Oklahoma received record-making rainfall.  Here's a Mesonet map of the rainfall totals that have fallen in the state in the past 90 days.

 Unfortunately, this has caused more problems for us than the drought.  It was so wet for so long that we didn't get our crops planted in a timely manner.  Many of our potatoes rotted in the ground.  And, worst of all for me personally, the raised beds that I normally take care of got overtaken by weeds.  Here is an embarrassing picture of what it looks like.

Normally, I would have mulched the beds with leaves before the weeds got such a foothold, but this spring it was wet and muddy and I just didn't get it done.  Now, the weather is hot and humid and I've found that I cannot handle the heat this summer, so I've sort of given up for now.  Maybe I'll try a fall garden.  As Scarlet O'Hara would say "Tomorrow is another day!"

I am trying to be optimistic and put a positive spin on this whole deal.  I planted some Mexican Sunflowers that are beautiful, towering above the weeds and holding their own.

If you look closely, they are covered with butterflies and bumblebees..

I also have a lot of Thai Basil that came up volunteer from plants I planted last year.  Although, I don't use this herb much, I like to grow it for the pretty purple flower stalks it produces.

So, all is not lost and life goes on.  That is the nice thing about gardening, tomorrow is another day!