Cider Mania!

And I thought tomato mania was bad...

Today Jeff and I set out to grind and press apples into cider to eventually make hard cider. For his birthday, I bought Jeff what I was told was an antique apple grinder from the local flea market. Last year we had a bucket and two by four that we beat the apples with. This year we thought we had it all set with our new grinder and ever so confident in ourselves, we out and bought 7 bushels of apples. Can you see what happened here? Yes, the new fancy pants grinder didn't grind a thing. Sure, it beat up the apples but barely any of them actually went into the grinder; they just bounced around on top of the scary looking metal teeth. Sadly Jeff had to go back to beating the apples with lumber again. Regardless we wound up with 4 gallons of cider and a bushel and  a half of apples still to go. 

Chickens Are Your Patriotic Duty

So ironic that at one point in time the government viewed keeping backyard chickens as a war time patriotic duty...

http://www.treehugger.com/green-home/raising-chickens-patriotic-duty-uncle-sam-says-so.html?campaign=daily_nl

The government might have changed their stance on the subject, but I think they had it right the first time. 

The Chicken's First Coop Guests!

One of the best things about urban farming (other than the amazing food!) is the cool, passionate people you get to meet. Today one of our blog readers, who happened to live on the other side of town, came by to visit the girls. Their baby chicks are coming Tuesday, and we hope that we were able to help them out with some of the lessons we had to learn the hard way!

I have also been very fortunate to find a "bee mentor" who has been invaluable help for the first year of the hive. We meet John at a local gallery's showing of a bee documentary. He has come over to the hive several times to show us how to work the bees and has introduced us to the local bee club. I don't know how we would have gotten the bees through the summer without him.

As so many of us are trying to get back to craft of yesterday within the constraints of our modern, urban setting, it is really awesome when we can all help each other learn something new. 

Master Composter

While I have heard of master gardeners, I was surprised to see a program for Master Composters being offered by our local cooperative extension. This sparked my interest, and I quickly signed up before really contemplating how much work this might be! It felt like high school biology and chemistry class rolled into one; it surprised me how much science knowledge was involved. Of course, I should've realized that nine hours of training would go beyond just throw stuff in a pile and let it rot! It was a wonderful course, and I feel so much more prepared to handle issues that have occurred with our compost piles. The class also taught us how to set up a new worm bin so now our basement hosts two worm bins! When I came home from the class, I announced to Jeff who was in the bedroom,"honey come out to the living room to meet the new members of the farm!" After a brief pause, "Dear, what did you bring home now.....?"

Check out this great web site for a ton of resources to help set up your composting game!
http://www.cce.cornell.edu/Environment/Pages/WasteManagement.aspx

Key Lime Tree!

Forever attempting to ignore the fact that we live in Upstate NY, another citrus tree has been added to the homestead-key lime (as a lovely birthday present from Mom.) We did some more research on caring for this tree and wanted share...

Rocks in the bottom for drainage

Here's the interesting part- who knew there was soil formulated for citrus?
I am sure we could've amended a general potting mix but sometimes the lazy way rocks!

There Really is an App for Everything!

This really made us laugh- there is an app to help you select the best chicken breed for your situation. The ultimate in urban farming!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pickin-chicken-breed-selector/id360977737?mt=8

Everyone's Day At Work

This is the sight that greets us when we get home from work and check on our micro-flock. While we were busy at work, so were the girls! (The golf balls are in there to prevent the girls from pecking at and eating their own eggs. Yes, it looks weird, but it works)

So we work for this...

and they work for seeds!

"Hey, we should ask for a raise!"