Michigan Sustainable Gardening & Living

Spring?!

2010-03-17T12:06:00.001-07:00

Today I dedicated the bulk of my day to getting the back cleaned up and getting ready for my garden. I had my cell with me, because I found out my grandpa had gotten his regular bloodwork done, and his platelet levels were way down. I was sort of torn on whether or not I should go. I figured the first morning there it may be crowded so I decided to go tommorow morning instead!

I ended up tearing down my hoop coop. Despite all my preps, something had dug under the heavy fence I had at ground level. Sigh, back to square one. I think I am done with birds for the time being. My dad has been interested in rabbits for a while and I must admit, I have been too. I used to have a small herd of New Zealand White's. Maybe it's time to revisit that experiment...... hm.........

I am thinking of a small colony. one buck (and probably borrowed as needed) and 3 does. The large 6x8' flight cage I got last summer will be the start of my project.. and I had rescued 6 fence panels that were used as gates... so they are 3x5'. I was thinking of putting those to the left of the large cage in a [_] shape and putting heavy 2x2 wire over the top. That way I could remove the wire as needed if I need to run the bunnies out of there and into another spot.

Now they need a den right? Hm... I am thinking a few rubbermaid totes with holes cut in the bottom.. And the large flight pen? Probably get a camo tarp to cover it in the summer time, a black one for the winter time. Keep the food dry, and garbage out of the water. Oh yeah, did I forget the bedding? Lots of hay and straw :)

Lazy Saturday -

2010-02-20T11:01:00.001-08:00

Today has been a lazy day. It's 2pm and I'm still in my jammies. I'm still full from dinner we had last night :) We made from scratch home-made pizzas!!

Ok, ya'll probably know I'm a gadget geek in general so I decided to use my bread machine to make the pizza dough.
1 cup water
3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons of bread yeast.

Ok that takes care of the pizza dough enough for a 12-15" pizza depending on how thin you like it. after you put your machine on dough and pull it out 10 minutes later lightly flour it. Toss, press, stretch it out. Then let it stand for 10 minutes. The yeast makes it rise a bit, so I push down the crust all around except the very edges. Then your pizza sauce, cheese, and any other toppings..... Bake for 15-20 minutes and you'll be drooling!

Metroid 3 Prime Corruption for the Wii.... Playing that with my son. Will give a review tommorow when we've beaten it ;)

Feb 18th

2010-02-18T09:05:00.001-08:00

Well, today is shaping up to be a great day. I woke up on time, had my coffee and checked my morning emails. I am thinking of making a couple of lean-to type structures to keep my outdoor toys n tools in. I've know about this site for a while, but http://www.snapclamp.com/ is where I am fixing to order some snapclamps for 1" and 1/2" PVC pipe. The 1/2" stuff is going to be row covers, and the 1" will be used in the construction of the lean-to's. I am thinking about doing something similiar to the carport shown on the website except put some walls on it on two sides. Keep the sun and rain off it at least.

I also forgot to add, I've got 16 strawberry plants set in peat pots filled with worm castings. I've never had any luck getting strawberries by seed, so this will be a first for me. I also got 4 cherry tomato plants started. I am hoping to transplant those into pots and have them on the back patio this year... Either that or I'll try that Topsy-Turvy thing I picked up on clearance at the Home Depot last fall. $8.99 ... Hm........

More projects for this spring............

Build a large clothes hanger for outside. Use heavy duty 1/2" coated steel braided cable. It'll help to have somewhere to work if I get a bunch of Cornish Cross's...

Put two new leads out for the dogs. Beast the wonder mutt broke his last one... And Lassie the JRT terror always gets tangled up on hers... what to do what to do......

Sleep - When too much hurts!

2010-02-17T10:39:00.001-08:00

Ok so last night I didn't get to bed till close to 1am. Not too late for me, but I slept in. Till 11:30. Woke up feeling headachy, light sensitive, and loud noises bug me. ACK! By the time I got home last night I tried to catch up on emails and my favorite message board but it wasn't to happen. I was out cold before I got comfortable. And slept like a rock.

So this morning (ok, afternoon) I am finally getting caught up on stuff. Hopefully a project I've been working on will be finished tonight. I'll also have my foster daughters give me a hand with some other stuff I want to get done around the house. We'll have a little work, a little fun, then I have to plunge out the dishwasher YUCKO!

Anyways, ya'll have fun. Wife is making goulash tonight. Guess I'll have to put my diet off for one more night... good thing I have plenty of carrots and celery to fill the empty spot in my stomach that isn't occupied by coffee!

I'm Back!!!!

2010-02-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

Well I sort of gave up on trying to keep up with this last year. The garden didn't turn out great. We had a very cool summer, with lots of rain. More than once I had to replant things because it was drown. This year I am thinking of doing raised beds for the most part. I know it won't be as big as my row garden, but I'll be able to plant sooner, more control over the soil conditions (I have hard clay as it is) and I could do my own starts right in them if I plan things out right. Here's to starting over!!!

Things in the hopper this year...

Dani's Graduation & open house
Building raised beds and filling with well composted material
Small hoops to cover them so even if we get a bunch of rain in late march all april I can control how much hits the soil I want it to
Cornish X's
New Zealand White rabbits... Something my father and I have been talking about a bit.
Moving the hoop coop and add electric fencing with a better system to get in and out.

More Pics!

2009-05-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Decided to snap some pictures of the chicks since it's been a while. I ended up with a total of 12 quail that hatched and lived beyond the first few days, and 4 mixed breed chickens (BR & BO). Thought I'd give you a couple of pictures. The quail I am showing is a Tuxedo, sort of a pattern that looks like a penguin. After taking the chicken's picture, he didn't want to go back into the brooder, so I took him outside for a short while :)

Hatching Day AKA Babies!!!!!!!!!

2009-04-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

So far I've had 10 coturnix quail hatch. Ya'll know how I love pics so here ya go! Not sure if they are going to be called McNuggets, or Tasty Yummy Egg Makers!!!!!

LG Incubator Mod's

2009-04-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

Here's just a coupla pictures on some minor Mod's I made to my Little Giant Still Air Incubator.

I got an oldskewl thermo/hygro and disassembeled it. That is the one with the 2 dials. No batteries, and the temp on it changes about the same pace as I would imagine the inside of an egg does........

2nd one is an Induction fan from the bottom of a scrapped out laptop. It sucks air in, and blows it out the sides of it's built in air vents. This kept the laptops bottom from overheating, catching fire etc...... Well insteadof blowing colder air across eggs, i figured it would be better to gently suck it towards the fan and discharge on the sides making a convection type of action.

Anyways, here ya go with the pics

Quail!!

2009-03-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

I know it's hard to see, but of the 10 button quail eggs I set in the incubator, two hatched. Two more died while trying to hatch and the other four didn't do anything.

This is more than likely a result in me being new to incubating quail, but I am happy with the two little peeps I got rolling around right now.

I wonder if they have enough running room in that big cage? :) I'll admit, these guys were funny for the first day or so, run like greased lightening and love to run and jump. I sort of raided my son's old snake tank and added some ceramic decor, as well as the heat rock (they love this too!) as well as all sorts of areas for them to run and hide in.

I also got in my shipment of coturnix quail eggs today. They are a variety of coturnix, including Jumbo's, Texas A&M White's, Pharaoh's and on and on :) Since I am new to quail I can't tell you which egg hatches which bird (not sure if i ever will) but I set 49 eggs about 30 minutes ago.

I know this looks full, but the incubator will actually set 120 eggs in the quail size, and 42 chicken eggs by switching out the cups.

One last thing. Not sure if anybody realizes this, but quail eggs are about 1/3 the size of chicken eggs. I know I've probably gone on about this in other blogs but these guys are going to reach sexual maturity 6-8 weeks after they hatch. That means when a chicken would be getting full feathered, I'll be eating a nice brace of quail for dinner, or use these guys for breeding stock to increase my flock.

Quail need a little higher protein than chickens do. A 28% protein turkey starter is recommended, as well as grit and oyster shells as I am not going to free range these tasty morsels the way I would my chickens. I am going to build a nice sized grow out pen in the garage that can be movable inside or outside, have the droppings fall through easily, and protect the birds from predators and the environment.

And when I get done with eating my fill of birds, well you know me, I love eggs, and these things sure do look like they would eat good :) Here's a pic comparing the size between a quail egg, and one from my Easter egg hens.

Back from Texas -- Critters n Plant Updates

2009-03-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

Got back in from Texas yesterday. Tried to catch up on some sleep, instead caught up with some computer work. No eggs had hatched at that point so I went to bed and overslept till this morning.

My seedlings have done wonderful while I was gone. Here's a pic or 3 :) As you can see, I was trying different media to see what worked best for sprouting.

Then this morning my wife and daughter came in to tell me we have critters in the house. Bleary eyed I jumped up and was thinking bat? Squirrel?

Nope, the took me over to the incubator where one of the quail had hatched. There is another one peeping through a crack in the shell, so I'm hoping I'll have 2 live ones for sure by later. Since today is the 18th day, I am going to run the incubator for the rest of the day, and take out whatever didn't hatch and see what went wrong. Here's a pic of the 1st baby.. thinking I'll name it ... food?

I've talked about critters, now lets work on the garden eh?

2009-03-02T07:54:00.001-08:00

I know I've talked enough about critters, but I have quite a bit of gardening prep work all ready. On the left here is a Jiffy tray. This is a 72 pot tray, and I've got it planted with all kinds of loot. I actually keep diagrams on my trays so I know what is planted where :P

This tray I started almost three weeks ago, and my tomato's are already coming through! I actually got a lot better germination than I thought I would... So there's about nine beefstake tomato plants. The left of those I planted Okra. God I love Okra. slice it up small, fry it up yuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmm!!!!

This is the left side of the tray, where you can see one lonely shoot of Okra. The next two trays directly above it have green peppers (sweet) and the one above that has a Fiesta blend of sweet peppers.

Most of the rest of this particular tray has berry plants. Raspberries, blackberries, strawberries etc.

You are probably thinking I have a huge garden already.... well....... not yet. My current one is approximately 30x24 or so, and I am going to leave that one the same size, and add raised beds! If you've ever heard of the square foot gardening method you'll probably figure out what I have coming :) I want to build ohhhh about 8 or 9 raised beds that are approximately 10x4 by about 8 inches tall.

I've got a couple reasons for doing this. #1 is that I have waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much clay and it is hard to break and work the ground. #2 is that the clay soil sucks. No way about it. I throw my compost in the garden and till it year after year, but I would love to try a different method with a third of compost, third of manure and a third of topsoil all mixed together. The 30x24 area that the original garden is will be for the vine(y) type of plants. Cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, zuchini, melons and stuff.

I've called around, I can get compost or topsoil delivered very cheap (much cheaper than the limestone i needed 2 weeks ago to fix the driveway) and I'll have enough left over after the raised beds to finally level out my backyard (figuring on 20-25 yards of material) With all this construction and expansion, I'll still have room around my fire pit, about 30' by 150' for the kids to run and scream in the backyard, or if not enough go play in the front. I'll have enough room to pretty much make all the food I need (hoping anyways) and wanting to see if I can come up with close to a $0.00 grocery bill. What I can't produce, maybe I could trade for.... say some chickens or quail for some beef/pork? I know I'll still be buying bread and milk. I don't have the patience to make my own bread and who can complain for a buck huh? Other than that I'll be eating and living healthier than I have in a Looooooooong time.

Pictures of Brooder/Breeding cage!

2009-03-01T08:27:00.001-08:00

The cage dimensions are approximately 5x2x2 and I am ready in advance for the baby quail! All I have to do is place the brood lamp and I'll be all set! Cant wait for the 10th.

2009-03-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Ok, here I am on the 1st of March. I am hoping that by the 9th or the 10th I'll have a 100% hatch rate of my 10 quail eggs. You know what they say, wish in one hand and sh...... well, you know what they say!

Here are a couple pictures of my incubator. If you look close at the one one on the left hand side you'll see the thermometer and 10 tiny little eggs. the reason I've decided to try to raise quail VS. Chickens is a couple of reasons. #1 would be variety. I eat chicken. A LOT of chicken. I love it. I wouldn't mind something different every once in a while. Another reason is that quail have a two to one feed conversion ratio... Unless you are raising mutant chickens, they get a 3 to 1 ratio, and rabbits are close to a 4 to 1 feed to meat by weight ratio.

did I mention they lay eggs? Yup. The cortunix quail I am going to raise average from 200-300 eggs a year. As long as you have a rooster for every three hens, you should be able to incubate all the eggs you want, grow out as many little friers, and rotate out your breeding stock in a small amount of space. My parents were cleaning out their barn and gave me a small critter cage, and I am going to use that as a brooder/breeding cage.

A little bit about me!

2009-03-01T08:06:00.000-08:00

I've lived in the State of Michigan for my whole life. I visit friends and family in the Texas area whenever I can. One thing that really gets me though, they started their gardens a month ago!

So after getting back from visiting with my sister and mother I decided to get a jump on my projects as well! I've been saving and sorting seeds for a while, and found a great deal on Ebay for close to 200 packets of seeds for around $35 so I bulked up there as well.

My other interests and experience is with poultry. I've got 7 Buff Opringtons and 2 Arucana laying hens. They give us 6-8 eggs a day and with me letting them free range, a 50 pound bag of feed will last me for almost three weeks or so. I know 6-8 eggs a day sounds like a lot, but my wife, two foster daughters, foster grandbaby, and my two sons.... well I have a full house! I still have enough left over to send a couple dozen to my Dad whenever he needs them so It's been a great producing my own eggs, free of chemicals, and free range critters produce much healthier eggs!

My latest project has been incubating some. In 8 days they should be starting to hatch. Crossing my fingers! I will branch this blog off into a few different areas as things progress and see if starting early I'll be posting some pics soon also!!!!

=-Boyd-=