What's Cooking in Your Garden?
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This fall we harvested & processed our organic (never been sprayed) apples. We made fermented apple cider vinegar, applesauce, cider, hard cider, apple wine, fruit roll ups this winter from the applesauce and all the mash was recycled to the chickens or dehydrated for winter gruel.
16 bushels, 5 trees pruned and weeded and 125 #'s of mash.
Littlemisscruciferious.com for a recipe to make your own fermented apple cider vinegar from apple peels. ( I had to use search to find it.)
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What do you do with the apple mash for winter gruel?
I am still harvesting lettuce and cilantro! We have had a super warm fall, and I have one bed of fall lettuce that I covered with a floating row cover. I have lost some outer leaves to hard frosts, but most is still great. Nothing beats fresh butterhead lettuce in December!
My girls (hens) are laying 3 eggs a day for 6 hens. I started the winter light a week ago, not uptick in eggs yet. I should see it in the next week. I have a 60 watt LED on a timer from 4-8am. The days have been 40's and 50's, and the girls spend the whole day outside digging and eating and their yolks are still dark orange. Yum.
I have 3/4 a bushel of storage apples left (only got one bushel this year, poor planning on my part). And my lettuce. In all other areas we are eating down the pantry and freezer.0 -
It's going to be in the mid 60's here today ... in December. Hooray! So jealous you're still harvesting, although row covers are great idea. My garden isn't chicken proof so we need a new plan for next year. It's evolving slowly to include patches of alfalfa and a big patch of nettles.
A lot of the used mash was dehydrated for inclusion in winter gruel and our flock gorged on apple mash for a month.
Most of our free range chickens don't lay this time of year. Last year we started to cook our scraps with rice and oats. The winter was brutal, snow abundant, I was worried. Figured warm gruel in morning will jumpstart their cold blooded bodies. It seems to calm the flock. I use an herbal supplement mix I found on frugallysustainable.com. combined with rice, oats, scraps and left overs. It's delicious, smells and tastes amazing in rice or porridge. The chickens go from hysterical anticipation to contented purring instantly.
If you can't find the recipe sent me a message and I'll find it for you. Thanks for sharing about your girls. We ran heat lights last winter for our quail and they laid all winter, but it wore them out. Keep me updated on how that's working out , please.0 -
So far I have no idea how it is working, because the high was 67 today! In Ohio! What the heck?
My girls are pullets so they should be fine to lay all winter. I incorrectly called them hens because most people have no idea what a pullet is, so I tend to just call them hens. We will see. So far they are eating a ton more feed, even though they are out all day and the ground is still green. I think there is not enough new growth and not enough bugs around to fill them up like in the summer.
Still harvesting lettuce and cilantro, probably only 1 or 2 more pickings until we are out.0 -
Sorry suzan, been some time. How are your pullets? Did they lay through short days? I found an herbal supplement at sustainably frugal.com that i fed all winter. Every morning i cook up a big pot of gruel for our flock. Using herbal mix, our compost, fruit, vegetables, 6 cups rice, 6 cups organic steel oats and spaghetti. They love spaghetti. I started last winter which was bitter cold, to help jump start their metabolism. It really works. We have an abundance of eggs, their feathers lustourous and they see calmer. Normally they get corn and herbs (weeds) when that is available, so shortly they are going to be disappointed.
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Beautiful! Mine are still laying, although not quite as strong- I think they are sick of winter! I am getting 4 to 6 eggs a day from 6 girls. 7 chicks have been ordered for end of March!
I just finished a pantry clear-out for the chickens- they add down a bunch of applesauce that no one liked (I left peels on and the picky kids did not approve!) and a bunch of wheat berries that I ordered accidentally instead of flour. They LOVE pasta and wheatberries.
I started seeds in a friend's greenhouse- Mizuna is up already. I will go next week and start another round of lettuce. Hopefully I will put lettuce in the ground at the end of March. Spinach and other greens maybe mid March. That is "too early" compared to what most do around here but I find the plants hang out and wait and don't die, even if they don't grow much for a few weeks. Plus I am impatient.0 -
Beautiful! Mine are still laying, although not quite as strong- I think they are sick of winter! I am getting 4 to 6 eggs a day from 6 girls. 7 chicks have been ordered for end of March!
I just finished a pantry clear-out for the chickens- they add down a bunch of applesauce that no one liked (I left peels on and the picky kids did not approve!) and a bunch of wheat berries that I ordered accidentally instead of flour. They LOVE pasta and wheatberries.
I started seeds in a friend's greenhouse- Mizuna is up already. I will go next week and start another round of lettuce. Hopefully I will put lettuce in the ground at the end of March. Spinach and other greens maybe mid March. That is "too early" compared to what most do around here but I find the plants hang out and wait and don't die, even if they don't grow much for a few weeks. Plus I am impatient.
I have never grown my own leafy greens but want to this year. Indiana weather is crazy, so I'm not sure when to plant. I want to plant spinach, but I'm not sure what else. What do you like and have success with?0 -
Spinach can be tricky because as soon as it gets hot, it gets bitter. You have to plant early. I have good luck with lettuce of all types, spinach if I plant early, all Asian geens (mizuna, tatsoi, bok Choi) kale, collards, arugula. and Swiss chard. If you like Swiss chard it is great because it goes nuts all summer, while most greens get bitter when it gets hot. I personally don't care much for chard, I wish I did, because nothing eats it and it never dies.0
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The Great Maple Syrup experiment has ended. Want to tap maples and birches this year. A delivery truck broke a branch on my Maple tree in January. When the exact moment arrived for the sap to rise it poured out of the wound. I call the first pic redneck maple syruping.
We tied a bucket
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My son added diatomaceous earth and our filtration abilities could not remove. Otherwise syrup was very light. I don't mind a bit of disadvantageous earth every now and then.
Our Spring Celebration table.
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