It has been nearly a year since my last post...

With that being said, what is new with the Idaho guy?

The sprouting test that I did proved to be good, the garden did fair, considering that we did not get the garden boxes done and the planted until July, because of weather.

We have since built another chicken/hen house, larger, to accommodate all of the chickens that my wife brought home.We now have 12 chickens (2 Black Jersey Giant hens(Carliqua & Shaniqua), 1 Rooster (Ed), 3 Amber Star hens(Penelope, Miss Clucky, & Alice); 1 Blue lace Red Wyandotte (Liberty), 1 Blue laced Red Splash Wyandotte (Crookie, special needs chicken), 1 Blue laced Red Rooster (RooPaul), 1 Barred Rock (Betty), 1 Rhode Island Red (Rhoda), and 1 Arucana/Americana (Anastasia). We gave 5 Silver laced Wyandottes to a neighbor to be with her 60 hens. I hope they all work out for her. I gave one (SL) rooster to a wonderful lady from Washington, she has offered to share hatching eggs with me this spring. We have one of our hens that has gone broody on us, mid-December, which she still is sitting in the nest thinking that she has eggs. I have taken them all from her, I know it seems mean but I am concerned about the babies in the snow. If she is still broody come Spring, I will let her hatch the eggs from the Lady in Washington.

We also added Ducks to our collection of farm animals, which meant another house. We have one male Jumbo Pekin "Big Ducky"; one fawn and white Indian Runner "Miss Bossy"; one Cayuga "Aunt Jamima"; and one Khaki Campbell "Molly". They have brought us great joy, they are so entertaining. We spend evenings in the summer on the porch feeding them watermelon, they love it, almost as much as they love dandelions and peas.

Our travels have been limited since my position elimination September 2011. We are thinking about close trips this year, things that are not going to cost a lot of money. With the farm also it makes it a little harder. We know that the family would be more than happy to take care of them for a few days, but we just feel that it is our responsibility since I wanted them and the wife brought them home.

I am very thankful for the WIA program that I was able to get into, which is helping with my schooling to become an RN. I have Spring semester and Summer this year and then hopefully I will be able to apply for the RN program and start that in the Spring of 2014 and graduating Fall 2016. I know it seems like a long way off, but really when you are only looking at 16 weeks per semester, it really is not that long. Semester starts next Monday, and again I am very thankful that I will not have to drive every day to the College, it is about 170 miles round trip.

I will get updated photos of all that is going on here. We are talking about a root cellar and a small barn this year, on the cheap, with as much salvaged materials as possible. Check back soon.

Sprouting test...

I have had garden seeds stored in my refrigerator for several years (for some) and only a year for the others. I thought this year instead of planting a lot of seeds and getting nothing to grow and having it to late to start over, I have decided to sprout test my seeds.


I first found an old (probably as old as some of my seeds) cookie baking sheet (in the garage), I put a double layer of paper towels (for moisture) the length of the pan then I poured water in to wet the towels. I then started to carefully place the seeds (3 each) in a line down the pan and writing on a separate sheet of paper in the same order, the name and the source of the seeds (if I knew). For now I will just wait until germination, if this happens, if not then I will toss the rest of the seeds and start with new this year. This may not be the best way to do this but I am going to give it a shot, and maybe instead of putting the seeds that don't grow in the trash I will pour them into the compost heap and see if there is one or two or 20,000 that still grow, that way I can still get the harvest.




I will re post in 7-14 days to show the progress or the failing of this test.

Update:

The sprouting is going great, I have several that have sprouted and a few left to go. I will give them a few more days but frankly getting tired of looking at the tray... :)