Renee Wilkinson's Blog, page 34

Visit Me At Powell's

Come say hello and talk homesteading with me! This Sunday, April 17th, from 4:00p-6:00p I will be signing my new book at Powell's downtown location on Burnside. It's such an honor to be invited for an event at Powell's. I blush just thinking about it and need to pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming.

I am fortunate to have a really supportive community in Portland and I am thrilled to kick off the launch of my book, Modern Homestead, surrounded by friends and family. It would be great to see some of my readers there as well. I always enjoy meeting fellow homesteaders, swapping stories and continuing to build this vibrant, green community together.

If you can't make it this weekend, I have a few more signings in Oregon over the next few months. I'll be in New York at the end of May and possibly Denver next Fall. I am so excited to share the book with the big, big world and keeping the homesteading community growing.

Ducklings Bath Time

The ducklings are getting so big so fast! We change their bedding out about 2-3 times a day now. When I come home from school it smells remarkably like a barnyard. Not the most welcoming smell I could imagine coming home too…

The other day I thought they looked kind of dirty on their bellies. The yellow duckling was starting to look brown on her belly and I felt so badly that they had gotten dirty. I decided to let them take a bath to clean up and then realized they were not actually dirty. Instead their grown-up-duck-feathers are coming in on their bellies, making it look darker than the rest of them. The yellow one is a white/fawn duckling and apparently her belly is the fawn color!

They still enjoyed the big adventure in our bathtub (see video above). After the initial fun splashing around, they started focusing on grooming themselves. They dive into the water to splash it up onto their backs. It is really cute, especially when they stand up and "shake it out".

Their tail feathers look like they are starting to grow in as well. In just three or four weeks, they have grown leaps and bounds. We keep increasing their brooder size, but pretty soon it will just be time for them to move outside to a bigger space. That assumes the weather stays warmer and their all "feathered out".

I have to say they have been easy-peasie to raise so far. They are still not totally sure of us, but we bribe them with food and all their fears seem to vanish. Our chickens are excited to meet their new cousins and we are looking forward to some supervised play in the backyard soon. We also plan to decide on names  later this week!

2011 Vegetable Varieties

It is always fun to see what fellow urban homesteaders have growing in their backyard. After carefully sorting through my many seed packets, I narrowed down the list of what we are growing. Here is a recap of the varieties I am planting this year:

Arugula
Beets, Early Blood Turnip-rooted (from Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants)
Beets, Gourmet Blend (includes golden, Chioggia, Detroit Dark)
Broccoli, Early Green
Cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield (from Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants)
Carrots, Cosmic Purple
Carrot, Royal Chantenay
Spinach, Bloomsdale
Kale, Red Chidori Hyrbid
Lettuce, Buttercrunch
Lettuce, Brown Dutch (from Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants)
Lettuce, Mesclun Blend (includes Lolla Rossam Marveille de Quatre Saisons, Redina, Red Oakleaf, Red Salad Bowl, Rouge d'Hiver, Ruben's Red)
Radish, Cincinnati Market
Radish, French Breakfast
Radish, Icicle Short Top
Strawberry, Alpine (from Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants)
Tomato, Large Red (from Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants)

All of the seeds from Jefferson's Monticello estate are growing together in the SE corner of the garden. They are from the TJCHP Kitchen Garden Sampler which I received as a gift from a super-sweet friend. I am really excited to try them out in our Pacific NW climate and see what these old time favorites end up looking like. Their names are so clunky too. Who would want to pick a "brown" lettuce off the garden store shelf?

I still have eggplant, more tomato and some pepper varieties to decide on. The plants on this list though are all now in the ground! Now comes the waiting game to see which ones pop their heads up first.

Planting Plan

We are working with a small space for our garden this year, which is always a fun challenge. I have plans to plant potatoes, summer and winter squash, onions and more in flower beds next to the house. The garden beds are reserved for everything else and I felt like we needed a plan to make sure we maximized that space.

I did an inventory and I currently have almost one hundred packets of seeds. How does this happen? Well… I have lots of friends that I swap seeds with, I get "garden fever" in plant stores and make impulse buys, and I travel to amazing gardens that have fun seeds in their gift shops. The first step to making the garden plan was deciding which varieties from all these options to plant this year.

The next step was deciding what should get planted where. Here are some considerations to ponder:

companion planting – which plants would benefit each other by being close together?
protection from the backyard livestock – which ones can stand the chickens or ducks walking over them and which ones are hardier?
sun and shade – which plants don't mind a little shade from a taller plant, which ones will get big and shade others out, which ones want full shade

I made a scaled plan because I'm anal. The circles are all based on the plants' mature size and I moved them around until I found a combination that worked well. I grouped heirloom vegetables from Thomas Jefferson's estate together to make a little Monticello garden and I'm really excited to see how these historic plants turn out.

In addition, I put together a spreadsheet to get an idea of when we will be reaping the harvest on these veggies. It helps me plan for a continual harvest and to consider which plants can be re-planted mid-summer for a fall harvest. It takes careful planning to stretch the harvest through the winter.

I would love to hear how you put your garden together. Is it random or planned? Do you tend to stick to a plan if you have one? It's always fun to trade stories about how we all tend our homesteads.

Garden Design

I have been carefully prepping our garden bed in anticipation of the growing season for months now. Back in the fall, I sheeting mulched an area of lawn at the rental house we are in. Over the last couple weeks I started finishing the prep for spring planting.

The sheet mulch layers consisted of dried leaves, used bedding/chicken manure from our hens and some compost. That has helped killed the grass in the garden area and add in lots of new organic matter. Although it has broken down pretty well, it's not fine enough soil to plant seeds directly in yet.

Luckily we had the foresight to start our compost bin within the first week of moving into this rental house. I shoveled out the finished compost from the bottom of the pile and spread it evenly over the sheet mulched layers. Our seeds now have a great new, healthy place to call home.

It's hard to stretch your arms over beds that are more than four feet wide, so I improved our bed layout by adding paths. The bedding from the ducklings and chickens were used for the simple paths. I moved our cool, rusty wire-dome-thing into the middle for a focal point and a pea trellis.We should now have an easier time accessing the planting areas.

It looks pretty snazzy for a pieced-together garden, if I do say so myself. I can't wait to plug some seeds in. I anticipate it will look even more amazing when it's actually fill with food!

 

Growing Ducklings

The baby ducklings are blossoming into awkward adolescents. Gosh, it seems like just yesterday they came home in a little box all new and fuzzy. Today they look like lanky teenagers getting their first little bits of scruff (mostly on their tail feathers).

Their brooder has been upgraded in size about three times since we initially brought them home. They each had about one square foot to start and are now somewhere around two square feet per duckling. In another week or two, we will probably increase that to about three square feet per duckling.

Our house is beginning to smell like a barnyard, despite changing their bedding 2-3 times a day. They absolutely love to splash water all around themselves, which becomes problematic by getting their bedding too wet. We are using pine shavings as bedding because we can fluff it up between changes to let the wet parts dry out a bit.

Over the last week, they have been introduced to grit, some new tasty snacks and being held more often. Just like our chickens, they seem to love pasta and gobbled up some leftovers. I have also been chopping up other kitchen scraps like parsley, mushroom stems, and lettuce leaves. They also got to try some english daisies and clover I picked from the yard. Here is a short video of our blue duck being held while the others play in the water.

I am really looking forward to this weekend when I can bring them outside for a few hours. We will need to watch them closely of course, as their small size makes them susceptible to curious cats. The weather should be warm enough for them during the day and I'm sure they will love exploring the big world of bugs in our backyard.

Share Your Homesteading Tips

The fine folks over at Fulcrum Publishing are offering a giveaway for my book, Modern Homestead. All you need to do is comment on their blog or Facebook page offering one of your best homesteading tips.

Tonight at the dinner table I was talking with Jay about how I approach moving into new digs. Step one is to set up a compost system. The compost bin can quietly collect your food scraps and break them down as you slowly unpack all your boxes. By the time you are moved in and ready to start on the garden, you will already have a heaping pile of finished compost ready for the garden bed.

Step two is to plant an herb garden asap. Herbs are generally fairly cheap (especially if you use cuttings from a friend's garden), they establish themselves quickly, can tolerate poor soil and many are drought tolerant as well. Plant an herb patch before you've hung pictures on the walls. In just a few months they should be grown in enough to spare some fresh sprigs for dinner time.

See, coming up with homesteading tips is easy as pie! The folks at Fulcrum will pick a winner and send them a free copy of the book. I would love one of my blog readers to win so I can hear what you think of the book. Leave a comment on their blog post or their Facebook page. Good luck and I hope you win!

Naming the Ducklings

It has been a great week with our new homestead addition: the darling foursome of runner ducklings. They have grown really fast in such a short time, and it's high time these ladies had proper names. What better place to go for ideas on names that you guys! I would love your suggestions. Let's introduce them one at a time.

First up is the largest of the flock. She is going to grow into a white and fawn colored female duck, or hen.

Perhaps our most curious and friendly duckling is a midnight black color. I am temporarily calling her "Pepper" and we'll see if the name sticks. It's kind of deviating from my routinely old-lady-names, but that might be okay.

Our chocolate brown duckling will probably get deeper in color as she ages. So far she is the next in line for friendliest duckling, but we're trying to handle them all frequently so they get used to people.

And finally we have our blue duck, which will grow into a blue-gray color. I am really excited about this little lady because I have always thought that delicate color is pretty cool. She is probably the skinniest of the girls, although they are getting bigger everyday. Currently she looks more tan in fuzzy feathers, but her blue-tinted nose gives her away.

Leave a comment with your name suggestions! Looking forward to sharing more duck tales as the weeks ahead unfold. (No ducklings were injured during the shooting of these pictures, but there were a few baby poops to clean up on the bed)

My Book: Modern Homestead

I am very excited to share the news that I wrote a book that will be released shortly! The book is called Modern Homestead: Grow, Raise, Create. The book is designed to give readers everything they need to know to get their homesteads up and running or expand their current homesteading horizon with new, fun projects.

My inspiration for the book came from you guys – this wonderful online homesteading community we have built right here. I started this blog initially to act as a resource for others on this modern homesteading journey. I wanted this to be a place where we could share projects, stories, tips and offer support when the homesteading road gets bumpy. I get questions and comments from novices to well-seasoned homesteaders, and I wanted  this book to extend that knowledge even further.

The book is divided into three main sections: growing your own fruits and veggies (siting the garden, all about soil and compost, starting seeds, etc), keeping urban livestock (chickens, ducks, milk goats, bees, and supporting native wildlife), and preserving the harvest (drying, canning, freezing, eating fresh). In addition, each section weaves in lots of ideas for getting involved in your local homesteading community.

Check out the interview I gave Fulcrum Publishing which has been posted on their blog. They ask some tough questions! Answering what my favorite part of the book is had to be the hardest one… There were so many parts I enjoyed writing and new projects I really loved building.

Hopefully you get a chance to flip through it the next time you browse your local bookstore or suggest it to a friend. Whether you are looking for inspiration on maximizing food production in your small space or can't remember how long you to blanch your veggies before preserving, it's a great resource for the novice and the pro. Thanks for your support!

Newest Homestead Additions: Ducklings

Are you ready to see the cutest things ever? Meet our newest family members: four adorable Runner ducklings. We are just head over heels in love with these rubber-beaked beauties.

After much searching, I discovered the Urban Farm feed store in SE Portland was carrying a huge assortment of both chicks and ducklings. They somehow managed to get ducklings that were already "sexed", which is amazing. Everyone else I talked to was selling them straight fun (meaning they don't know if they are girls or boys). Their staff was helpful, friendly and they had healthy and perky looking birds.

Being a modern homesteading chick, I care about aesthetics in our backyard barnyard and therefore selected one duckling in each color. So we have one in black, chocolate, blue (grayish), and white/fawn. These upright gals will be quite the striking combo as they grow up.

Check out this short video I made of the ladies right after they moved into their temporary brooder. They have already up-sized to a larger rubber bin with pine shavings. I find that bedding works better than straw, since you can fluff it up more to keep it dry and clean.

Next week I will introduce them on their own and hopefully you can help me name them. Keep your eye out from another big announcement from me early next week! Expect a million more cute photos and some big, big news.