Tag Archives: food

Cabin Life – #106

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The wild winter weather has continued.  Tonight it’s so warm that even The Rock Voleseveral hours after the sun went down, there is still a steady drip-drip-drip coming off the roof.  In the forties tomorrow, the season just can’t seem to make up its mind.

That’s not to say that it has been an easy winter.  And to me, there has been a recurring theme out here at that cabin that demonstrates this better than anything else.  I have had a steady supply of small rodents around the house looking for food.

When I moved into the cabin a few years ago, Amy not so light heartily called it the “Mouse House.”  Since then, it has been cleaned up significantly.  With Ed and Herbie running nightly patrols, the mice moved out and other than a very occasional rustling in the walls, I have not had to deal with any other rodents inside the cabin.

That is not to say that there is a lack of small rodents at the cabin.  Red squirrels used to attack the bird feeders on a regular basis and there is a family of mice living in the outhouse.  There are certainly plenty of places for them to hole up for the winter out here.  Unfortunately, they seem to have decided to try and spend nights in a couple of buckets I have.  This has resulted in me finding more dead rodents in the last month than I’ve seen in well over two years.

The first one was a mole that for some reason climbed into the open bucket in the outhouse that holds the lime.  The lime is the off-grid version of a vanilla candle, and is essential to using the facilities.  I was not surprised to find the little bugger frozen solid in a bucket that offered no food or shelter even though I had no idea why it went in there.  I buried him… Unceremoniously.

About a week later, I spent a nice comfortable night watching TV and soaking up electric light and flushing toilets at my girlfriends, and when I got home in the morning, I found what I think is a rock vole frozen to death.  This was in another small bucket on the porch in which I keep some chicken food.

I use a combination of store-bought chicken feed and winter wheat, and when I was making a mix of the two, I had a small amount of the wheat left over.  This is a bucket that I can understand the rodents trying to get into at least.  It was frozen solid, and since there was only a little wheat left in it I just tossed the vole and wheat into the woods.  Hopefully something eats him before he thaws and smells and Pico eats him.

And even though there was only a little wheat frozen to the bottom of the bucket, the very next day there was a deer mouse in the bottom.  This was the first of the three rodents that was still alive when I found it, and since it hadn’t been living inside my house, I decided to let it take it chances back out in the wild.

As I laid the bucket down out front, the mouse scampered off.  It went a few yards down the trail towards the chicken coop, and then stopped.  I went inside to get the camera, and when I came out again, it was making a big loop over the snow back towards the woods.  I watched it run and leave a neat little trail across the snow.  I got cold and went inside, knowing that I wouldn’t get a good shot of the mouse now.

Later, as I made my way to the outhouse, I noticed that the mouse tracks went right under the shed.  I took a little solace in the fact that it’ll be around for the rest of the winter.  I like having the wildlife around, even if it does require me to perform funerals on occasion.

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Cabin Life – #103

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I can freely admit that I am not an expert in basically anything, but let me The Chickens Insidegive you some advice:  Don’t share your four-hundred square foot anything with a dog, a cat, three hens, and a rooster.  Now, nothing against the chickens, but they are noisy.  And stinky.  And no matter what, the rooster will crow whenever he feels like it, regardless of your sleep schedule.

With temperatures predicted to be about thirty below zero without the wind chill, I decided that the time had come to let the chickens have a nice warm night inside.  Now, keep in mind that the chickens had not ever been inside my cabin.  Nor had Pico ever been separated from them by nothing more than a blanket.  Needless to say, I did not get much sleep last night.

For instance, did you know that roosters crow all the time, not just in the morning?  I did, but I did not realize how often Midget would crow.  I did not realize that every time he crowed, Pico would answer with a round of barking.  I also did not realize the scope or variety of odd, obnoxious, and just plain weird sounds that the chickens would make when they spend the night just a few feet from my bed.

It has been an absurdly cold winter, and even though the chickens had made it this far with nothing more than a little frostbite, thirty below turned out to be the line I drew in the sand.  I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon trying to decide the best way to house them inside my cabin.  Not having a dog cage or anything of the sort, I had to improvise.

I grabbed the large black sled I use for hauling firewood and brought it inside.  I commandeered an old blanket and draped it from the sink down to the sled to create a chicken tent inside my cabin.  Then I spent the better part of half an hour rounding up and corralling the chickens so I could catch them.  Midget and Brownie were easy, and even though Blondie tried to hide, she was still relatively easy to get a hold of.  Whitey, on the other hand, is sketchy.  I mean seriously sketchy.  She reminds me of one of those movie characters who thinks the government is on to them, and goes to extreme lengths to avoid being caught.  Except in this case, I actually was trying to catch her.

I managed to get my numb hands on her after quite a while of trying.  She was not happy about it, but when I deposited her in the chicken tent she seemed to settle down.  There was food and an unfrozen bowl of water in the sled, along with her compatriots.  Midget however, was not so fond of the tent.  I could hear him clucking and occasionally crowing.  I could also see a small part of the blanket moving when he walked around inside.

Now, this tent was not set up to be a perfect place for them to live.  But it was a necessity, and managed to keep Pico and Herbie out, while somehow managing to keep the chickens in.  For a while.

This morning, I decided that I should put them outside, but not until the sun came up.  Unfortunately, even after the sun came up, it was still well below zero outside, like twenty below zero.  I had to run to town, and decided that Pico should come with me.  He’s not a killer per se, but I have no doubt that he would have found his way into the chicken tent and caused havoc.  Best case scenario if I left him home:  Chicken crap everywhere in my house.  It was not a risk I was willing to take.

So off we went, while the chickens camped out in the balmy interior of my cabin.  When we got home, I was torn on whether to put them outside.  It was sunny and deceivingly nice looking outside, but the temperature never really got above zero.  With Midget and Whitey showing frostbite on their combs, I decided that I would not subject them to the move from seventy degrees to ten below zero.  But that was before Blondie and Midget found an escape route.

I was sitting at the table chatting with my girlfriend when we heard some commotion and looked up only to see Blondie strutting around the carpet at the front door.  Midget popped out as I was watching, and Whitey was trying very hard to follow suit.  I shoved Whitey back into the tent and grabbed Midget and Blondie and put them back too.  The sounds that followed convinced me that they would benefit from some fresh air and freedom.  I may have also figured that I would benefit from them getting some fresh air.  I again grabbed Midget and Blondie and transferred them outside.  After an hour or so, I figured that I may as well put Brownie and Whitey out too.

Now, I wasn’t trying to torture them or cause harm, but the outside space seemed to do them some good.  They got a few hours out in the sun, and I managed to round them up with less effort than yesterday.  Now they’re back in the tent, making crazy sounds and stinking the place up.  Luckily, the weather should be getting warmer in a day or two, because honestly, they are not good roommates.  I’m not sure how this reflects on me, but they are also not the worst roommates I’ve ever had either.  I guess I’d rather listen to a rooster crow at five in the morning than listen to some guy scream at a video game at four in the morning.  You know what, this doesn’t reflect on me at all.  At least this time I’m in control of when the obnoxious roommates move out.

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Cabin Life – #101

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Well, the low temperature last night was still above zero for the first time in Fresh Eggsa week.  It’s not much, but it’s something to look forward to.  And then tomorrow they’re saying that the highs will be above freezing.  It has been a wild winter so far, weather-wise.

While the rest of the nation was experiencing record cold last week, we were watching the snow melt and the ruts in the driveway disappear.  Then we had bone chilling cold with nasty wind.  So much so that if I didn’t check the chicken coop every hour or so for eggs, the eggs I did find would be frozen and cracked.

One nice development out here at the cabin is that Brownie the chicken has started laying eggs too.  Nice light brown ones that make the egg carton look so pleasant.  With Whitey and Brownie laying now pretty much every day, I’m getting more eggs than I can eat.  At least when I find them unfrozen.

But back to the weather.  It was so windy the other night that I actually had to prop one of the chairs up against the door to keep it from blowing open.  The corner of the old woodshed roof lifted and had to be repaired (the people who built it only used about twenty screws for the eight sheets of metal, so no wonder it pulled away from the shed).  I’ll have to keep an eye on it the next time it gets windy like that.

The one upside of the wind is that I had several trees come down.  I could hear the popping and crunching of branches falling all night a few nights ago, and when I took Pico for a walk to check on the upper cabin, I found about a half dozen green ash trees down.

This was a huge bonus for several reasons.  First, they fell right across the road to upper camp, making them very easy to get to.  I can use the sled to bring firewood back or let it sit until spring and use the four-wheeler.  Either way, it’s a bunch of wood that I don’t have to work too hard for.  For once.

Second, and more importantly, with the ridiculous cold we’ve had, I am burning through wood faster than ever.  And it’s not the stove.  The new stove is far more efficient.  I get about eight hours of burn time with three big logs in there when I put it on the most efficient mode.  The old stove would have needed six or seven logs jammed into it to last that long.  But, it’s just been so cold that I can’t have the stove shut down all the way for the most efficient burn.  I need some air getting in there so that the temperature in the house stays comfortable.

With the wood shed about halfway empty, and three solid months of non-stop burning left in the winter, I’ll be dipping into next year’s firewood before the winter is out.  It’s a good thing I started working on that in the fall.  I already have about three cords tarped and split, so when the shed gets empty, I have a little safety net.  It’ll just mean more work and more money next winter, but I can’t stop burning wood and just turn on the furnace.

I have to admit, I kind of miss the days when the heat was just on.  It didn’t require any work or effort, just had to set the temperature and go about your day.  And sure, the wood stove keeps it steadily comfortable in here, but at what expense?  Year-round work trying to find and cut and haul and split and stack and carry and burn wood.  It’s a ton of work, and then add to it the unpredictable length of winter and it becomes a lot of stress too.  Luckily for me, one of my favorite ways to relieve stress is to cut trees up with my chainsaw.

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The Chicken Coop

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Cabin Life – #99

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My off-grid, simple living, homesteading lifestyle can sometimes lead me Midget, aka Little Jerry Seinfeldand my thoughts down very different roads than most people.  For instance, if you had asked me five years ago, heck, if you had asked me five months ago what would be occupying my thoughts this winter, chicken diapers would not have entered my mind.  But here I am, wondering if and where I can get myself some chicken diapers.

Now, I don’t just go around thinking about chicken diapers.  I actually have a very good reason for shopping around for just such a thing.  It turns out that one of my chickens is in actuality a rooster.  Poor old Midget, who is no longer so little, started crowing the other day.

I had noticed some odd behavior a few days ago, but thought that maybe she was just being a jerk to Whitey.  I was watching the chickens in their run through the window, and saw Midget jump right on Whitey’s back.  Whitey is the one laying eggs, and maybe Midget was just a little jealous.  Nope, (s)he was horny.

And much like adolescent males of our own species, Midget’s mounting fiasco was awkward and over quickly.  I didn’t really put a lot of thought into it until the next morning.  I had let the girls out and was back inside when I heard an odd sound.  It happened again quickly, and I easily placed the noise as that of a rooster crowing.  I ran to the window to see Midget all puffed up and strutting around.  Then he crowed again.

It was not the regal, wake-me-up-for-chores crowing, but unmistakable nonetheless.  It sounded like he was going through puberty, with his voice cracking and the crowing kind of unfinished.  Instead of cock-a-doodle-do, it was more like cork-a-do.  But he was persistent and actually made some progress by the end of the day.

I’m not going to lie, I like Midget.  He follows me around the yard when he’s out and has never run when I’ve gone to pick him up.  But I don’t want a bunch of little chicks running around either.  There’s no way they’d survive during the winter anyway, and I definitely don’t want a bunch of little chicks stuck in a box in my cabin.

And this is what brings me to the diapers.  I’m wondering if there is a contraption that will help Midget keep it in his pants, but if not, I’m only left with a few options.  Eat him, give him away, or keep him.  I could keep him alive this winter, but it will be tough.  Without the other chickens to cuddle up to to keep warm, I’ll have to take some extra steps to prevent him from freezing.  But I would like to have some more chicks in the spring.

Keeping Midget is the option I’m leaning towards right now, but if I can’t find some chicken diapers, I may end up with big pot of Midget soup.

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Cabin Life – #89

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The fire is crackling, the dew is settling and the full moon is so bright that I Applescan clearly see the two does quietly munching on fallen apples in the lower field.  They don’t seem to mind that Pico and I are outside, and quite frankly, I’m happy that they don’t.

Fall is here.  About half of the hardwoods around have either lost all their leaves or are changing color as we speak.  I think it’ll be a poor year for fall colors.  Too many trees have already changed, and there are still plenty that are solid green.  The colors are changing too slowly for there to be any real “peak” this year.

The other very noticeable change is the amount of daylight we are having.  It’s starting to get dark around seven-thirty at night, as oppose to the nine or nine-fifteen of a few months ago.  It’s more tolerable now, with the solar panel powering a couple of nice LED lights.  But still, winter is coming and it won’t be all that long.

I’ve got a good stockpile of wood, well over two full cords, but I will still have to buy some to get me through.  A few face cords should cover me, and I’m hoping that once the new wood stove is installed, it will prove to be more efficient than the old on.  Even if it’s not, it will still be an improvement.

The shed is two-thirds full, and once it is really stocked up, I will feel much better.  There’s a certain comfort in knowing that no matter what, I will at least have enough wood to get me trough my third winter out here.  Plus, I have some extra in the old shed, acting as a security blanket, as well as insulation.

I’ve started picking some apples too.  They’re not all quite ripe yet, but those that are have for the most part been good.  Some are sweet and meaty, while two other trees are producing big apples that have a pleasant tartness to them.  It’s fun to taste and look for good apples, and to know that pretty soon I’ll be filling my weekends and evenings making apple sauce, butter, jelly, and cider.

Well, the peaceful serenity of a crackling fire and chirping crickets has come to an abrupt end.  Pico noticed (finally!) the two deer only a few hundred feet away.  He barked as he took off after them, like he always does.  He stood absolutely no chance of coming anywhere near catching a deer, but it was valiant, though loud, effort.  Luckily for him and them that he doesn’t need to hunt for food.

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Cabin Life – #87

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Every once in a while, I reach for the faucet to turn on the water.  This usually happens The Girlswhen I’m brushing my teeth, but even though there’s a dish rag hanging on the spout and I haven’t had running water in almost two years, this old habit dies hard.

Summer, on the other hand, is dying a very easy and quick death.  As I walked out into the front yard this morning, I noticed a small maple that was almost entirely red.  The birches are beginning to turn yellow and even the big cherry tree in the yard was not so green anymore.

The days have been warm and the nights cool, feeling more like the heart of fall than the end of August.  This is my favorite type of weather, but I’m not quite ready for it yet.  I still want some summer.

Even though we had a late start to summer and what looks like an early end to it as well, I have gotten a lot done, and had a lot of fun.  The wood shed is built and half full, I got the house shed cleaned up and organized, and the chickens are happy in their coop and run.

But really they might not be that happy.  I put them out in the run every day so they can eat bugs and plants and stuff like that.  Every morning I open the coop door and they all fly right in to the run, and in the evening they hop back up the ramp and into the coop to roost for the night.

Since they’re only out during the day, the run is not built as a completely predator-proof structure.  It’s very safe with chicken wire and metal roofing, but the end that I let them in and out of is just a mix of some wire, a piece of wood and some old plastic insulation.  Like I said, this is built to keep them, not keep predators out.  Still, every day when I get home I look into the run on my way up the driveway just to make sure all the girls are still there.

We had a pretty nasty thunderstorm come through yesterday while I was at work.  I thought of the chickens, but was not too worried about them.  However, when I got home, I noticed the insulation flapping in the wind.  I had tacked it shut like always, but the wind had blown it wide open.  There were no chickens in the run.

Pico was barking and Ed was crying at the window, and it had been a long day for Pico and the cats.  I had gotten a flat tire on the way home and so they had been cooped up for ten hours or so.  But I knew that if I let them out, there’s no way I would be able to catch the missing chickens.  That is, assuming the girls hadn’t been eaten yet.

Even though I had kind of self-vowed not to get too attached to the girls, I was worried about them.  There are so many wild animals out here that could easily snatch up a chicken and trot off into the woods.  Chances are all I would find would be a couple piles of feathers to tell where the girls had been eaten.

Then it dawned on me.  All along, when I fed the chicks, I had always called out “Hey Ladies!” ala the Beastie Boys.  I was hoping that Pavlov was right and the girls would associate my call with the presence of food.  I called out and within a few seconds, Midget and Brownie came out of the tall grass and trotted right up to me.  I smiled and grabbed them and tossed them in the coop.  I called out again and both Blondie and Whitey came out as well.  I had to chase Whitey as usual but I finally caught her and put her in the coop as well.  Blondie jumped in on her own when I opened the door.  I tossed in a handful of bird seed to keep them happy.  After all, my distinct chicken call had worked well, so I guess I want to keep them coming to it.

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Cabin Life – #86

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Well, it’s finally happened, I have electricity.  Granted, it’s not much The Panelelectricity, but it’s a start.  I don’t need enough to run appliances or a whole house, just enough so that my phone and computer don’t go dead, and hopefully a light or two to read by.

A few months ago I got an email from a reader who said he had an old solar panel lying around and didn’t need or want it anymore.  It was mine, he said, if I just came and picked it up.  You never know who you’re meeting through an email, so I was a little wary.  So, fighting the urge to tell everyone where I was going and with whom just in case I didn’t make it back, I drove the little ways to his camp.  I did bring my girlfriend with me, you know, for protection.

He was nice enough to pick us up at the boat launch and give us a ride out to his camp.  It was a nice place, bigger than mine, but much better set up.  He had running water, internet, and a beautiful location right on the water.  We got the solar panel and hung out for a little while, then headed back to the car.

I’m sad to admit it, but that was almost three months ago.  For three months, I’ve had this solar panel sitting in the cool shade of my shed, doing nothing.  I even had the charge controller and a deep cycle battery, but was too busy (lazy) to get around to hooking the thing up.

So this week I pulled everything out to the yard and set I up just to see what would happen.  The charge controller showed a charge, and I was angry with myself for putting off what turned out to be a ten minute job.

I left the panel out all day in full sun and went to town to buy an inverter.  I picked up a nice one and did some other errands before getting back home in the evening.  I was excited and ripped open the package for the inverter and hooked it up.  It immediately started flashing and beeping, and not in a good way.  The charge was too low on the battery to power the inverter.

No big deal I thought, it’ll take a couple of days for the battery to get fully charged.  But, since everything else seemed to be working, I set the panel up in its full-time place on the south side of the porch.  I moved the battery onto the porch and drilled a couple of small holes for the wires to run through.  I then fed the wire through, and the positive wire was about eight inches too short.  Of course.

The next day I went to the hardware store (again) and picked up some wire.  The thing was now fully set up and actively charging.  But not fast enough.  I took the battery to work the next day and plugged it in to the trickle charger.

Now, the battery is fully charged, the panel is up and running and hopefully it will be enough juice to keep the battery charged.  It’s a big step up in the cabin life, and the prospect of having light this winter is very exciting.

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Cabin Life – #80

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I love it when a few moments of laziness lead to something good.  I had weed whacked all First Strawberriesaround the big fire pit and hammock a couple weeks ago, but there was one section of lawn that I just buzzed through quickly, and I did a poor job on about a ten square foot area.  Last night as I was moving some junk wood into the new wood rack, I caught a glimpse of some bright red in the slightly overgrown region:  two wild strawberries.

Only one of the very small strawberries was ripe, so after taking a couple pictures of the first strawberries of the season, I popped the ripe one in my mouth.  That was the first strawberry I’ve had in quite a while, and man was it delicious.  There was enough flavor packed in that little pea-sized berry to make all the rain worthwhile.

After I stacked the wood, I sat back on the porch with a beer and put my feet up on the chicken cage.  The little girls are getting bigger, and spend about a third of their time stretching their wings and preening the down feathers they’re losing.  The other two thirds of their days are split evenly between eating and sleeping.  They are having a good life so far.

When I brought them home earlier this week, I introduced Ed and Herbie to the chicks.  I held Herbie over their cage and let him sniff and watch for a few minutes.  He seemed to lose interest and eventually just wanted to get down out of my arms.  Ed, on the other hand, when confronted with the chicks for the first time, recoiled and was wary of the chicks.  They are tiny, but Ed was a little freaked out.  For all his posing as a killer, he’s still just my little man who would have no idea what to do if he saw the girls outside of their cage.

As I sat on the porch letting the beer wash away the taste of the strawberry, I glanced out over the yard.  The apple trees are starting to get heavy with small apples, and I can see the lime green berries starting to form on the blueberry bushes.  With the drought last year, I got no fruit off of the property, but this year is shaping up to be a banner year for all the strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry plants.  I know it’s early and anything could happen, but I have a feeling that I will have more wild food than I know what to do with.

I’m hoping that my friends with kids will come around later in the summer to help clear out some of the berries and apples.  Besides making jam, apple sauce, cider and hopefully some applejack, I don’t really have any idea what to do with the bounty of fruit coming my way.  Add to this the chicken eggs and garden veggies that will be appearing in the next couple of months, and I am facing a glut of food.  Obviously, this is not a problem that requires any serious deliberation.  I’m ok with apples and berries getting eaten by deer and other animals.  I just hope that some of the bears around don’t get too cozy here.  I may be facing a surplus of wild food, but a hungry bear could easily wipe out a lot of my apples, berries, and even the chickens.  I don’t mind sharing, but a bear coming in here and eating all my stuff is not something that I would forward to.

Cabin Life – #75

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Well, I woke up to pouring rain this morning.  It’s really coming down, to the Apple Blossomspoint where my alarm didn’t wake me up, the pounding of the rain on the tin shed roof did.  All the windows are even closed due to the cold temperatures, and the rain was still loud enough to break my slumber.  But at least it wasn’t snow coming down like this.  The forecast has called for a chance of snow for the next few days, and while it wouldn’t be a major inconvenience to get some snow, it would be a little depressing.  Plus, I’m worried about the apple trees.

Last spring when the warmth came early and was followed by a month of cold, all my apple blossoms were killed.  In October, I found a whopping grand total of seven or eight apples.  These meager offerings were spread out amongst almost twenty trees, and not a single one was edible.  I only found one apple that wasn’t obviously bad, but when I bit into it, there was no sweetness or crunch.  Just mush and blandness.

Last week, the apple trees really started to go crazy.  After some unseasonably hot and dry conditions, spring sort of normalled out for a few weeks and gave us warm days, cool nights, and plenty of rain.  Actually, up until the snow storm warnings, it’s been nice weather, and the plants are definitely noticing it.  I got no apples, blueberries or raspberries last year due to the drought.  The apple trees are white with flowers and the light green blossoms of the blueberry bushes are starting to emerge.

But now I’m worried about losing the entire apple crop yet again.  I’ve only been able to taste a few of the apples out here, but a lot of these trees bear very different fruit than you find in the supermarket.  Some were dull pink on the inside and others were bitter but smelled magnificent.  I’m looking forward to seeing the whole range of non-homogenized fruit that they’ll produce.

But if we get more stupid snow tonight, I’m afraid the blossoms will go un-pollinated or freeze altogether, and I’ll be left with a weak and pathetic harvest.  There are a few trees that haven’t bloomed yet, and I’m beginning to feel like those might be my safety backup supply.  Hopefully they won’t be the only ones I get.

When I moved in to the cabin a couple of falls ago, the apples were a little too far gone to be of much use, and I had a lot of other things to accomplish that were more important that eating apples.  I was excited with the variety but not prepared to take advantage of it.  Now it just seems like a cruel hoax.  I got that sweet first taste, and then they were taken from me without permission.  I hope that last year was payment enough for them to come through this year.

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