Welcome!

Hi everyone! My name is Brian. For those who don't know me very well, I am the type of person that when I have an idea, I like to take it to extremes. So after very little debate, I decided to try my hand at raising a few Pheasants in my yard. Mainly for conservation reasons, but also because I thought it would be fun. So with that simple idea, I ran with it a little, and figured that if I'm already going to be rasing pheasants, then whats the difference if I raise some chickens and plant a garden. This blog is going to be a continuing documentation of my back yard farming adventure! Hope you like it, and if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Flowers for sale

I'm about to thin out my flowers. Probably this Sunday or Monday. After internal conflict, I decided to offer them up for sale. Only because I want to get rich quick the prices are as follows. $1.00 per plant. $5.00 per 6 pack. (per plant is per flower pot. Carrots are about 18 or so per pot, where as sunflowers a 1 per pot). I can easily mix and mach. All plants were grown by me, and are stictly organic. Organic meaning only organic seeds, and organic soil. (mixed salad greens may not be organic seeds)
Here is a list of what I have and am about to get rid of.
Mixed Salad Greens
Gourds
Summer squash - Walthem Butternut and Burpe Bounty Hybrid
Spinach
Corn- Sweet and sunglow
Radishes ( ask quick because they are all pretty much spoken for)
Pepper- red and green. Your guess is as good as mine
Potatoes- Red, Russet, Yukon Gold
Peas- Snap and Sweet. I cant tell the difference so it is what it is. Learned not to label them both "peas"
Lettuce- Iceberg and Romaine
Onions- red and yellow. Mixed
Asparagus- 2nd year plants. Should produce stalks, but unsure
Strawberries- Not for a few more weeks
Garlic
Cucumbers
Zucchinis
Assorted Green Beans
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Thyme
Basil Rosemary
Cilantro
Oregano
Parsley
Chives (common)
Tomatoes -Sweet, Cherry and Neopolitan. Again your guess is as good as mine which are which
Carrots
Brussels Sprouts
Japanese Maples- TBD. Probably late June. ( Ill charge a bit more for these) Have to see what my father wants to do. His hard work.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Maple Syrup Operation

Apparently, It takes 44 gallons of sugar maple sap to make 1 gallon of pure maple syrup. This boils down (haha get it) to about 2 baby food jars of syrup or maple candy per week / 10 days.


2 of my 9 taps

Starting off the boiling process outside


Getting ready to strain the suspended sugars out of the syrup


The sugar content needs to be 67-68% in order to create syrup. This equates to 7.2 degress hotter boiling point that unstrained sap.



 Notice the amber color when the sugar content start to out weigh the water content

Assorted Pics

 Bath time for the Ducks


 Pool is closed. They were voicing their opinion of this!

The updated indoor green house




The Chicks are getting lots of feather at 2 weeks old.


They still are babies and you can see they like to sleep

 Matlida. 

Matilda and I watching TV


"Aww they are soo cute" Then they shit in your hand!!!!!