~~Growing Firewood~~

Beechwood fires are bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year,

Chestnut's only good they say,

If for logs 'tis laid away.

Make a fire of Elder tree,

Death within your house will be;

But ash new or ash old,

Is fit for a queen with crown of gold

Birch and fir logs burn too fast

Blaze up bright and do not last,

it is by the Irish said

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,

E'en the very flames are cold

But ash green or ash brown

Is fit for a queen with golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke,

Apple wood will scent your room

Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom

Oaken logs, if dry and old

keep away the winter's cold

But ash wet or ash dry

a king shall warm his slippers by.

The firewood poem was written by Celia Congreve, is believed to be first published in THE TIMES newspaper on March 2nd 1930.

 

We scored some Ash trees for $10 each. We are now growing our own firewood!! (just a little excited about that, I get excited easily) We picked the ash tree based on the poem, no not really. :)  We picked the ash tree for our woodlot because we've read that they grow pretty fast and that they are excellent to burn. The poem just confirmed what we had read.

 Dusty and Austin are out in the rain planting them right now. We picked up 10 trees to start but hope to get a few more in the future.

 The trees are 7-10 feet tall. We will be staking each tree for added security. To keep costs down we picked out some wood scraps from our scrap pile and will use them as stakes.

 We picked an area of the property that isn't currently being utilized. Dusty installed irrigation piping in that area last year so watering shouldn't be to hard.  We hope that each tree will grow big enough that we will be able to harvest at least a cord of wood per tree.

Cost breakdown: 
$10 per tree
Irrigation water $1-$2 per tree per year (approx)
Electricity to pump the water. (I really don't know, probably a few bucks a year as we only water in the summer)
Total cost per tree for the first year:  $15
Total cost per tree each year after: $5 or less
If we grew each tree for 5 years and then harvested, assume we got a cord of wood from each tree that would make the total cost per cord $40 or so, plus we wouldn't have to spend the gas money driving to Timbuktu for firewood. We would be able to harvest in our own backyard.

We have some unused space between some fencing and the lawn, while I was out running errands today the boys planted some snow peas. Great use of space!!  

~~Spring Is Here~~

If there comes a little thaw,

Still the air is chill and raw,

Here and there a patch of snow,

Dirtier than the ground below,

Dribbles down a marshy flood;

Ankle-deep you stick in mud In the meadows while you sing,

This is Spring.

~~Christopher Pearce Cranch

 Growing green onions

 We started growing some heirloom zucchini, cucumber & lettuce.

 Hopefully by planting heirlooms we might actually save our seeds this year.  

 We've got lettuce growing outside right now.

The baby chicks are growing FAST!

 We've got a growing light attached to one of our bar stools.

 Kaianah wants to help.

Who doesn't wanna play with dirt in the house??!!

~~Preserving The Harvest~~Part 2

~~~Sarah D, this is for you!~~~~
I should have mentioned how to use the dehydrated bell peppers and onions. :) Once the items are dehydrated you can store them and use them anytime you want. They can be tossed in soups, casseroles, or whatever dish you are preparing. You would use them the same as if they were fresh from the garden.

I store mine in mason jars since I have a ton of them and I like storing my items in glass. Since I've dehydrated the bell peppers, about a week ago, I've used them in dishes twice so far and they add wonderful flavor. I just grab a hand full and toss 'em into a dish.

 You can rehydrate the peppers or onions at any point by simply tossing them in a small amount of water. They rehydrate perfectly.

If you wanted you could throw the dehydrated onions in the vita-mix and make your own onion powder. You can do the same with the bell peppers. I just sliced the onions raw and then directly put them in the dehydrator.
You can blanch the onions after slicing and then dehydrate them if you want. If you choose to blanch them then add the sliced onions to boiling water. Boil for 1 minute and then remove, rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process. Then put them in the dehydrator. One reason people blanch onions is because sometimes the onions turn pink, that is due to the sugar content of the onions being to high. HAPPY PRESERVING!

~~Preserving the Harvest~~

We've been busy preserving the harvest. We've got sage taking up an entire wall in our kitchen, due to lack of dehydrator space.  I could think of worse problems to have. :)

Clothes pins on a piece of fabric is my high tech drying system with a box below to catch anything that might fall in the drying process. So cutting edge...wink, wink

After we dry the sage, we just throw it in the Vita-mix for a little spin. Comes out looking, smelling and tasting just like store bought sage only better.

This is the reason I have no room in my dehydrator. Bell peppers, bell peppers and more bell peppers. 15 lbs to be exact. We took the advise of a a friend and tried dehydrating them this year. We are getting creative with preserving the harvest because of lack of freezer space. Between the turkeys, Bacon the pig and with Tri-tip the cow on deck for the next addition to the freezer we can't put much more in there.

After the bell peppers were done the onions were next in line for the dehydrator. I only got 2 trays loaded before I quit due to massive tears shed in the onion chopping process.

Our cost effective storage system, 2nd year running. The tops of our kitchen cabinets! Yes, yes I know this is not where you are "suppose" to store canned goods. I know you "should" store them in a cool, dark place. BUT, this works just fine, I know what you're thinking, I'm such a rebel. LOL

Random photo taken from Kaianah's birthday, round 2.

~~HONEY HARVEST 2010~~

Well this marks the second year of being beekeepers! We are still learning about beekeeping ALL the time, it's much harder than we thought it would be but we absolutely enjoy fresh raw honey that we harvested.

 Here's a picture of Dusty uncapping the frames to prepare them to go into the honey extractor. Beekeeping supplies are very expensive so here you'll see the poor mans version. Most beekeepers own an electric uncapping knife (usually around $100 a pop) here you'll see us using a knife that we've dipped in boiling water. We alternated between 2-3 hot knifes.

 The caps contain honey so here's a picture of the caps falling into a strainer. The caps stay in the strainer and the honey falls into the bucket. Commercial beekeepers own a machine that does all this for them, (costing around $3,000) but not us, again, the poor mans version.

 This is funny. Yes, that is a PetZoom. I picked that up on clearance at Fred Meyer for $4.90 that is the poor mans version of a capping scratcher. That scratcher opens up the capped honey that the knife couldn't get. You can find those capping scratcher for pretty cheap, about $10 or so. This PetZoom was just a cheaper version plus I didn't have to pay shipping.

 We are in the process of converting our old clothes washer into a honey extractor. In the meantime we borrowed this from a local farm. Usually farms don't loan out this type of equipment, that machine is a 20 frame extractor, probably valued at $1500-$3000 or more. The farm loaned it to us for free. Thank you Lord!

 This is a picture looking from the top of the extractor down into the machine. We've loaded 1 frame so far. 1 down 19 to go. :)

 Here's Dusty loading more frames.

 All loaded...now ready for a 10 min spin.

 Spinning...

 I had been watching the honey fly off the frames. I'm also trying to stabilize the machine a bit.

After the honey is extracted it still has to be strained. Lots of wax would be in the honey otherwise.

For the health benefits we've choose to preserve our honey in the raw form. The wood burning stove was still a little warm from the night before so we are using it as a straining station.

 We didn't have filters or cheesecloth so we are using our jelly bags to strain the honey. It worked well!

TA-DA!! It's done.

(2 days later and LOTS of messes to clean up) We got approx 3 gallons of honey.

We expect more next year. We bottled up the honey in jars of all sizes. We learned last year that it's better to have a few small jars around for bartering purposes and gifts.  

~Grape Juice In The Making~

A whole lotta grape juice going around here! We were blessed with an opportunity to harvest grapes for free. A sweet elderly man opened up his garden to our family. We picked and picked and picked. All the while telling us stories about how he started his grape vines back in the 1960s. He also educated us on how we could start our own vines! With all these grapes around we've been spending our days making grape juice. I was given a steam juicer for Christmas last year and we've put it to the test this year. Along with the grapes we've also made a batch of apple juice. Here's some pictures.

 Concord Grapes

 Lots and lots of grapes

 Load the grapes into the steam juicer...

 Needs to steam for an hour or so.

 An hour later...all steamed and ready to be bottled.

 Bottled Concord

Bottled Red Globe.

~~Davis Pumpkin~~

We got one pumpkin before the squash bugs took down our pumpkin plant.

The girls are happy to have a pumpkin. It's a little early but we'll take it!

~RASPBERRY JAM~~

It's raspberry harvesting season here on The Davis Farm. Every year we yield a pretty large raspberry crop and every year we make raspberry jam. Our goal is to can enough jam during the harvest season to carry us through until the next harvest. We came real close last year and ran out about 2 months before the harvest.

By doing this ourselves we really save money throughout the year by not buying jam in the store. Since we reuse our jars every year we have very few expenses in making jam. The average cost is about .20 cents a jar. That .20 cents is the sugar, pectin and a new lid. We buy our sugar in bulk at Costco and the rest of the supplies at Winco.

(I found this picture online and thought it was so cute!)

Another reason we do this is because we love knowing where our food comes from and what was added or not added into our food. We don't spray our raspberries with any chemicals and our fertilizer comes from our cows. We do toss a bird net over the raspberries to discourage fat birds. LOL 

I can hear that old Mary Poppins line "Feed the birds, tuppence a bag". 

~~Homemade Strawberry Jam~~

We planted strawberry plants this year, 16 plants to be exact. Planting them this year means we won't have strawberries until next year, so in the meantime we purchased some strawberries from a friend who buys them in bulk from a local farmer every year.

Strawberry Jam is Austin's favorite, so this year I decided to make some jam especially for him. (Of course he'll have to share with his brothers and sisters.)

I made 2 batches...

Apparently strawberry jam is suppose to be made in small batches or it won't set up right.

I decided to use our ole faithful tamale pot and can the jam water bath style.

Yummy!!

Raspberries will be ready for harvesting very soon, and we have LOTS of raspberries.

~The Davis Farm~

The Davis Farm Update:

~4 Head of Cattle

~7 Turkeys

~20 Chicks

~17 Chickens

~2 Piglets

~2 Bee Hives

~2 Blackberry Plants

~TONS of Raspberries Plants

~2 Blueberry Plants

~6 Fruit Trees

~Newly planted organic garden of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, watermelons, pumpkins, zucchini & cucumbers

Austin got a good close up shot.

Bacon & Sizzle are doing well.

Kaianah was helping me at the fruit trees. She said "I smell it"

Can't pick anything yet!

More pics to come soon, when I have a chance. It's a little busy around here.