Baby food!

Our first batch of homegrown baby food made especially for our young friend on 12-14-13.  Shown here: Autumn Harvest carrots in the 3oz. jars and Purple Haze carrots in the larger jar.  Same-day harvested, steamed, pureed, and packaged.

Mystery Eggs.

Yesterday we had one of our youngest hens lay an egg; but who?  Today, we found another mystery egg. The first one we attributed to one of our two Cuckoo Marans. Todays egg could have been laid by the same hen as the first, or by the second Maran. (If these two eggs come from the same hen, it would represent more variation from a single layer than we are used to seeing.) These Marans arrived at Habitat Farm as chicks, just several days old, back on June 10th (right alongside Buffy). We think they are the layers in question because Marans are known for a darker colored egg. Check these out:

 

 Laid 12-8-13.

 

Laid 12-9-13.

Cordial.

Remember all those plums we harvested back in August?  Well, we ate a bunch, gave big handfuls away to the neighbors, made plenty more into plum butter... and used eight pounds of them for plum cordial!  After three months, it's ready for sipping.  It was worth the wait.  We had some with Thanksgiving dinner, we'll give some away as gifts, and we're taking a bottle of it to game night tonight.  (We created the labels by hand, using calligraphy pen and ink, marker, and gold pen.)  But one of our 4-quart jars will sit on the shelf for a while longer.  Maybe this time 2014 we'll open it up and see what kind of magic happened while we waited!  In the meantime, here are some photos to savor.

 

In print!

Remember the short essay we posted here back in September?  It is now in print!  You'll find it in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of Oregon Humanities Magazine.

Snow day!

It snowed today!  But this was a rare snow for Portland: dry, very cold, and very windy.  The chickens handled it admirably, huddling around their water trough and drinking gladly as we filled it again and again with steaming tea kettle-fulls of hot water.  Some of the girls just refused to come outside at all, it was so cold and windy.  As for us, we did go outside-- just long enough to get some photos to share.

 Snow-covered cress.  

Rememeber what it looked like the other day?

 A strawberry plant in the snow.

Snow on the bench.

Frosts.

This week the temperatures dropped and the hard frosts arrived in earnest.  Temperatures have remained at or below freezing during the day, and the ground underfoot feels like concrete.  Most of the crops on the farm are protected from these conditions, thanks to our efforts.  But those with leaves above ground don't so much mind it: strawberry plants, kale, cress, leeks.  Here are some photos of frosty leaves snapped this week.

 

Upland cress.

 

Red Bor kale.

 

Giant Musselburg leeks.

Covered.

Earlier this week we finished covering all of the beds with straw before the major frosts hit.  We do have crops growing in the garden right now; some for spring, and some for winter harvest: garlic, fava bean, spinach, carrots, turnips, peas, onions, and chard are all holding in the ground waiting to spring forth in warmer weather this spring.  Meanwhile, arugula, spinach, carrots, kale, chard (under cover), tatsoi, and leeks are holding their own in this winter weather, still offering the occasional harvest during the dark months.   We also have a couple of rows of beets that we started late; in the spring we will thin them down, allow them to flower, and harvest the seed.  Here are a couple photos of the farm under cover.

 

Looking south.

 Looking northwest.