So Much To Do So Little Time!

Miss Kitty on her throne!

I guess I need to explain the title today. What has happened to me I imagine that has happened to so many. You retire and for a short time you wallow in the fact, “hey I’m retired, I don’t have to do a thing but enjoy my retirement”, well it doesn’t always work exactly that way. You sit and find that it is hard not to look around and see this little thing that could be done a little better. Then there is that spot in the yard that could use a bush or that other place that just needs a flower to brighten up that corner. You put in a chicken coop and before you know you are eating eggs that are so much better. Arrrg, the leaf cutters are eating all the new plants, you spray and spray then one day you pass a booth selling all kinds of birds and chickens and oh, oh, are those guineas???? Yep they sure are and you take a couple home and in a few days you notice no leaf cutter ants, the guineas have cleaned them up. You finally decide the bush/trees, the golden dewdrops (that were planted fro wind breaks), aren’t growing as fast as they were said to grow so you see your neighbors have nice bush/trees and ask what they are and before you know it you have planted 50 Mapolas and several Trueno bush/trees hoping they will eventually shield the dewdrops (as wind breaks) and all of them attract hummers, butterflies and birds. Oh, of course there is the garden you keep doing things with, 5 minutes here a half hour there. You know the story of Miss Kitty and Daniel and Aly who now also take some time. Today as I have been trying to do when the weather is nice I grab a cup of coffee and sit in the backyard at sunup and just watch all the antics of the cats/kittens, the chickens and the yard clowns, the guineas. Of course while watching, this cat or one of the others comes for some lap time and scratches. Oh yeah, I also am feeding the fermented chicken feed which doesn’t take but maybe 15 extra minutes to fix and feed. Then you run to the clinic, go to town to fill prescriptions at the hospital or the CCSS pharmacy, stop by the vets place where you were told might have the heat lamps and shields you are looking for to use when the new chicks arrive (setting up an area in the coop as a brooder), nope don’t have those but we have some fertile quail so you bring home a pair of those and another plant. Oops, forgot that you moved the spinach plants that you got from your friend, Trish, and planted them in their own raised bed so they drain well (lots of rain) while I redo the garden. And so it goes, retired???? from what, oh yeah from that work-work thing, but not from the pleasure of living and for those like me always tinkering with something or planting, so much to do so little time!

Oh, this and the photo above shows Miss Kitty and the little stool she has claimed for herself. I had used the stool to stand on to get something down and had set it by the door till I was to put it away later. Well when I went to put it away Miss Kitty was sitting in it so I let it set for a while longer. The next time I thought of putting it away she was asleep on top of it. Then I notice that when I went in the kitchen to cook or whatever, she was either in or on top of the stool so it was decided that it should be left there as her very own special place (we have another stool). It is also good that when she is on the top it is easy to reach down and give her pets. 

  As always there is a time for sitting too. We don't just go and go, we stop and sit a spell (oops, just had to run out to the coop one on the new keets was out of the brooder area and hollering its little head off), perhaps to do as I am doing now, putting something in my blog (needs more new photos doesn't it?) or emailing folks about this or that. It is what I love about being retired, I do as I want, when I want and with those I share my life with. I put work-work behind me, what I do now isn't work-work, it is pleasure, it is Pura Vida, the attitude of enjoying life.

Art

So much to do so little time!

A First, Second Post This Week!

OK, here is a first, 2 updates on the blog in 2 days. Shocking isn’t it? Well it is the weekend, Saturday, and I’m thinking most folks won’t mind as I’ve taken some photos of our backyard to show how much things have grown since I started the blog and of course Miss Kitty and the kittens, Aly and Daniel (Caroline and Ginger snuck in for a few shots too). There are some shots which sort of show the garden but only because it is in the background; it is a mess as I am cleaning out more of the huge tomato plants hoping that the last two will keep providing some tomatoes.

This is part of the area just out our backdoor, the milk crate is covering a small rose plant to keep certain two kittens from mauling it. There is mint just behind the crate and to the left is doing great. Caroline tops it a few times a week and makes tea with it. She says that between the tea and ginger root it has helped her stomach a lot. On the left in front of the huge aloe is a begonia with the largest leaves I’ve ever seen on a begonia (only in Costa Rica).

On the left above the rocks are several caladiums, just center behind the rocks is more mint and up a little on the left is lemon mint, it is yummy. Back along the garden wire is ginger that is off to a good start. In the background the ol’ garden is still trying to produce a few tomatoes, I’m hoping I still can save some seeds for friends.

Looking east just beyond the fence is where the fellas play ball. I’m hoping to get a couple of rubber coated hard balls for them, the balls get wet a lot which ruins the leather, they end up taping the balls trying to keep them together. They can hit the ball way out to the big tree in the middle where the grass is very tall and wet.

In the middle against the fence is a butter fly pant which is doing very well and is attracting butter flies and a couple of hummers.

These Mapola trees/bushes will grow up to 5 meters and 5 meters wide which will make a good wind break for the garden so we can remove the white cloth, it has served its purpose and requires cleaning often with bleach. There’s Juan the rooster behind the clothes line post with a couple of our good hens.

This golden dewdrop is blooming and also has a few berries on it. If you look hard you can see the blooms (upper left) and berries (upper left and in the center).

Now you see why the crate is over the little rose (I uncovered it and sat the crate to the side to give it more sun).

Caroline and Ginger (she (ginger) is still a little camera shy). Notice Caroline has my garden clogs on! Je!,Je!,Je!

There are many more photos which I will post later this week. Hope you enjoy them.

Art

So much to do so little time!

Life is Pura Vida!

Miss Kitty and the kittens are doing fine. Every day I am so happy that Miss Kitty is here. I have been humbled by this young lady. Even though her vision is like looking through a tunnel she plays hard. She climbs the fences but does not climb out of the yard. She is slowly making friends with the other cats and has started to play with a couple of them. She is also very bold but not stupid, ol' Desi has challenged her but instead of running or fighting she hugs the ground while still holding her ground. It works, Desi just ups and walks away. Miss Kitty has become so familiar with the area in which she spends most of her time outside that a new plant gets a good checking out almost immediately. She knows there is something new in her domain, she must give her approval. The kittens are growing fast as kittens do. They play so very hard it is so entertaining, many, many laughs from them. Miss Kitty will sometimes bowl one of them over but they bounce right up and go after her. She will wrestle with them when she wants to play. She will also swat one if she doesn't want to play but no one ever gets hurt or very mad. She still wants to be a hair dresser, she really gets involved in Caroline's hair. She just pats me on the head and feels sorry for me. Both she and Daniel have something going with my left ear. They will get on the back of my chair and either reaches out with a paw or nibbles on my ear, sends chills all over me. Oh, Daniel has a thing for my feet too, he will attack them when I walk by and sometimes if I’m just standing. Sometimes when I'm walking he tackles my feet. Hard to keep your balance with a surprise attack like that.

Miss Kitty and the kittens. Those who don't know the story email me and i'll send you the marvelous story behind these very happy cats.

  As to the ol' garden, well it is still growing a few tomatoes and some very hot little peppers that look like jalapenos but are much hotter. I am trying to save seeds from the tomatoes for friends but the first batch didn't dry right, they molded, now I'm hoping to get a couple of large tomatoes to try again. I'm going to get a load of horse manure and pile it on the garden, not to mix it in but to cover it with black plastic to burn up any seeds or bugs in the garden soil so it will be good for planting come fall. That should really get hot, I'll lift the plastic every now and then and wet the manure down to keep it as hot as it can be. When I am ready I’ll shovel the manure off and scatter it around plants and trees, it should be very good after being heated on the garden.

 Something new I’ve been doing for the feathered flock is fermenting their feed, mainly cracked corn. Fermenting feed, referred to as FF is very beneficial for the chickens. I started out with some of the regular feed, some cracked corn, a little yeast and some sugar to get it working fast. I found out about FF on the Backyard Chickens forum. Folks had been feeding it to their meat chickens and were having so many benefits from it I decided to try it with my laying hens. When I posted that I was feeding it to our hens more folks responded that they too were either feeding it or were going to try it with their egg hens. The benefits are much better eggs, they look better and cook better, the yoke is a bright red/orange and the whites don’t run in the skillet as much. Because the cracked corn has absorbed water it is easier for the chickens to digest.  Not only that it being fermented the sugar in the corn is converted and much better for digestion. The chickens don’t require as much water trying to digest the dry corn. Their droppings have become more solid and aren’t as smelly. The chickens also seem to be filling out better and their feathers are much fuller/neater. A big thing is for me and my small flock is the ease of the whole process. With my set up I can easily feed a flock of 20 chickens but the only time I'll have over 10 chickens is when we raise some meat chickens.

This is what the mash (the fermenting corn and water mixture) looks like as it is fermenting. Notice what they call mother, the brownish layer on top of the mash. There are also lots of bubbles from the fermenting process which is CO2.

Notice the liquid that has condensed on the lid of the fermenter. It is actually alcohol (yep, alcohol, I tasted it) from the fermentation process.

This is basically is my set up that produces the mash the chickens love. I take the mash in the bucket (they are actually 10” tall plastic trash cans) on the right then pour some of it in the strainer which drains into the bucket on the left.

 The strainer fits the empty fermenter like it was made for it. This is what makes it so easy, there is very little mess and it takes so little time. When I pour some of the mash in the strainer I go and do more of my morning chores. I let the mash drain somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour.

 The top for the fermenter is actually a regular plastic diner plate. It fits the fermenter just right and being that it sits loose it relieves the CO2 build up. Put on a tight fitting top and you could have a big mess when the fermenter bursts.

  Right now I have 3 fermenters going giving 36 hours of the fermentation process to each fermenter, not long enough to cause the mash to taste bad to the chickens and also so it takes up a small amount of space which is the top of our fridge where it is nice and warm so the process is quick. When I move the containers I may have to add another fermenter as it will be cooler and slower to ferment. I’m also looking for some oats to add to the mash. I don’t really like the regular feed as it contains a lot of soy beans, which I am not found of. I know, the chickens like it but I keep reading about soy beans not being the best thing for feed but until I can find oats they’ll have to do. Once started there is no additional cost for fermenting feed just a little time. Getting a proper setup cuts the time down to a few minutes so I think it is well worth the effort. I’ll post more photos and how things are going.

 

Art

So much to do so little time!

A Renewed Blog!

Folks,

  It has been way too long for me to put up a new post. I could come up with many reasons for not updating but you've heard sorry excuses before. What I thought of and am changing on my blog besides adding to the name is adding new content in what would be called everyday life. I have been busy with emails about this and that and that is very time consuming what with me being a two finger typist. So what I am going to do is to add that to my blog. Not only will that keep me adding to the blog but also cut my time on emails. I will include the email that I have been sending about Miss Kitty and the two kittens, what is happening with the garden and all the other plantings going on. I’ll toss in just some general comments about daily living which I also send in emails to certain folks. As always folks are most welcome to post comments on the blog. It is easy to get an RSS feed to the blog for those who think it is worthwhile, for a little time I will send a quick email to my email list that a new post is up on the blog and the link to the blog. There is new anti-spam features on the blog system so you won’t have to worry about getting placed in a spam list when you post a reply. I do hope you enjoy the “improved” blog. All comments welcome.

 For those of you who have not read the story of the nearly blind Miss Kitty and the two kittens, send me a note and I will gladly send you the story, it is very moving.


Art

The Garden Has Begun Again

Well it is time to being again. I, oops it was Juan, has located some good black dirt for the garden. Juan and I went with my 4X8 trailer and got a load. While using the tractor to transport the dirt from the trailer out by the road into the backyard I had a pin hole open in one of the tractors hydraulic fittings. By the time I moved the last load I must have lost a gallon of hydraulic oil. The whole plan was to take the top portion of the garden’s mostly compost and mix it with the new dirt. OK, that was a good idea which had a hidden benefit. The sugar cane compost was in very hard clumps which got broken up almost to the bottom of the raised bed. Also added with the dirt was a large amount of wood shavings which will help with the tilth of the garden.

Heaped the dirt high and it is now heating up to further break down the clumps and kill the weeds.

 So now seeds are being started with anticipation of bumper corps of bell peppers and awesome tomatoes. Of course there will be other peppers along with maybe one okra plant and right now lettuce. Also there will be lots of garlic planted all-round the edge and some marigolds for some natural pest control. There will be other veggies planted just to get used to how to grow them in Costa Rica.

 Now for something that will be a challenge for some of you, Caroline has potatoes growing in 5 gallon plastic buckets, not 1 bucket but 3 and they are doing extremely well.

I think the bucket on the right was first.

 Of course we’ll post how much she gets from her buckets O’ potatoes. We haven’t peeked so we have no idea just how many or how big they will be. She started them in the compost and added lots of wood shavings plus chicken droppings and some compost each time the plants grew about 6”. The buckets were started at different times so we’ll be able to see if that makes any difference. I’ll see if she starts another bucket for the summer season.

 So that sort of brings you up to date with the garden.

Here (near) are the 2 egg chicks that Henrietta hatched, she should hatch 3 more on the 22^nd.

A sad note sort of, the turkeys are gone. They were just too much for our small backyard. One thing to weigh when trying something like raising turkeys is that tom eats a lot of food for what he does. The hen eats well too so to justify a tom you would need to have something like 6 to 8 hens then he pays his way. I don’t know the breakeven point on the feed verses the numbers of turkeys raised but it would be way more than we could raise here. They have been replaced with meat chickens, 6 of them raised by our ever faithful silkie hen, she took to them as they were her own and raised them till they were able to take care of themselves (they were day old chicks when hers started hatching, we just added them under her). They are growing like weeds, good food and free range will give us some fine good meat, no bird full of medications or antibiotics.

Here are a few of the meat chicks and one of the guineas.

  Henrietta started laying eggs some time back and decided to start setting on the 1^st of the month, we just happened to have 3 more of Juan’s good hen eggs that were put under Henrietta the same day she started setting. We’re hoping this time we’ll get a nice rooster for the flock so we can raise our own replacement egg hens from the egg hens we have. We will pick one of the egg hens and put her in the brood pen at night so we can collect her egg each day. As soon as she lays her egg each day she will be let out to free range.

Anyway, this brings you fairly well up to date on the ol’ garden and such. This coming week I’ll be doing things around the garden area to make it ready for the new plants. Cleaning up the area from all the rains we’ve had so when those new plants are ready for transplanting the garden will be ready for them. I’m planning on at least a bi-weekly update for the garden.

Take care and happy gardening.

Art

A Garden in Paradise Update!

This week I purchased some calico (calcium) and sulfato de magnesia (Epsom salts) as foliate sprays for the few plants still in the garden. I was advised to do so from someone who had lived here before and found that there was a shortage of needed nutrients even in good compost. I have sprayed the plants leaves with both in solution and waited.

 Today I noticed that the leaves look like they are responding to the sprays.  I was also told that the soil needed the calcium so I soaked the top layer with the calcium spray. I will look for calcium in a powder to dig into the soil and also for gypsum (calcium sulfate) to help the overall condition of the soil. The peppers are doing good as well as the garlic.

 The peppers of course are for our table and cooking whereas the garlic is mostly for bug deterrent. The garlic is doing so well that when the blubs are ready for harvest I will share them with our neighbors. I will keep planting garlic and being that I received chive seeds in error I will plant those too. I have been looking for Napa cabbage seed for when I have remixed the soil and start planting things in a controlled pattern as is shown in the Square Foot Gardening book. It will be very interesting to see just how much produce we will get from our size of garden.

  I’m getting lots of potatoes that are sprouting which are unusually as most I thought were treated for storage which keeps them from sprouting as well. I have been saving some as well for planting them to get more seed potatoes for growing in half barrels. It is also good to be able to check how the foliage sprays work on them too. The garden is becoming more interesting with each problem solved and for each step forward. Now as things progress I will be doing a much better job of documenting what I do and what the results are. I’m also planning to try and do an update every week, they may be short till things really start to happen with more photos.

This little pepper plant keeps producing but its leaves a yellowing, I’m hoping that the calcium spray will change that. 

Oh, before I forget again, the pepper plants are all sprouting new leaves and growth. I’ll keep updating on that till they are removed for the soil remix. I’m guessing that is due to the removal of many of the other plants, mainly the huge tomato plants that were growing huge but not producing much in the way of tomatoes (see the first photo for the new growth). The blue flower is on the sword bean plant (notice the huge pods hanging on the sword bean).

This blackberry plant is doing real well as is the sword bean plant behind it (that is cilantro in the lower right).

I just had to show this pepper plant, it broke off the main plant a few days ago, I just pushed it in the soil, it now has new leaves popping out. I’ve cut off many of the old leaves as they were turning brown. Across on the left is a start of lemon grass.

  Oh, the new lady in the house is a rescue cocker, Ginger, someone lost a very good dog. She had so many ticks on her when she was rescued that her hair had to be almost shaved off to get them all off and for her to heal, she has been with us 6 weeks now.

She is very camera shy, she will hide if she sees the camera most of the time. We are very happy that the lady, Carmen, who rescued her needed to find her a home as Ginger and her dogs didn’t get along. Funny though, she gets along with our 6 cats, turkeys and chickens and even the over excited Buddy (outside dog).

Well I’m done for another week, happy gardening!

Art

Latest Garden Update!

  Well it has been sometime since I've updated my blog. I guess it has been something like trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong that has kept me busy (and a bunch of other projects). Something that got me into a frustrating situation was too much compost in the garden. I had plants that were huge but no veggies. One tomato plant had lots of fruit but the plant was growing so big that it had to be constantly trimmed back. It was a volunteer which should have been taken out to begin with, it was most likely a hybrid which wasn't very tasteful and it developed all kinds of problems. The tomatoes at first were OK but then they began to have problems like partly ripening and starting to rot on the vine. Some tomatoes grew OK while others started to rot while they were green. Some of the tomatoes grew big and were OK while some were half size and maybe OK, maybe not. The squash plants grew huge but no squash. The one watermelon plant had some melons but they never grew to any size, one grew about the size of a softball. Even some of the flowers that were put in the garden temporarily to get started stunted or died. Well it turned out to be too much of a good thing. The compost is so good the plants over did it and or just died (perhaps they were burned up by too much available nutrients). Whatever, I am now removing all the excess over grown plants and amending the soil. I didn't want to use the local dirt as it is red clay but so far it is all I've got so I am mixing it 50/50 with the coffee and sugar cane compost. I may take and heat the clay soil to kill the weed seeds and other stuff I don’t want. I have plenty of free fire wood so I think that will be the best way for me to go. I've been saving egg shells to add calcium into the soil. I will grind those as fine as I can get them with a blender and mix that in at the same time. Once I get all that mixed in thoroughly then I will see where I can send a soil sample for testing. It doesn't pay to get into too big a hurry. I have a sword bean plant that I want the seeds from. As soon as the pods are ready to take then the plant comes out and everything else in that half of the garden. I’ll mix in the red clay and top everything off with a generous amount of egg shell powder.

 I plan on going to the Ark Herb Farm the 30^th for plants and will stop elsewhere and look for some 3” pots for starting transplants. I’m hoping to get something done on my starting soil block press now that other projects have been completed. Once I get the kinks out of that then no more needing of starting pots. I’ve been sprouting parakeet seed in aluminum baking pans for the parakeets in my window greenhouse and am very happy in how fast they sprout. With the compressed starting soil blocks the sprouts won’t ever get their roots disturbed, once the plant is ready to transplant the whole block goes into the garden soil.

  Oh yeah, the chickens and turkeys are doing great. It is time to pen up the holiday turkeys and plump them up. Besides that the two toms are fusing over the hens and that can get very noisy.

  I’ll get the camera out and take photos of the ongoing projects.

So much to do, so little time!

Art