An Official Maine Chiots
Lucy, the resident chiots and the namesake of the blog, became an official Mainer on Monday night. She ran the gauntlet of the porcupine and came out the other side plastered with quills. Of course it happened right as we were getting ready for bed.
Mr Chiots and I worked quickly, pulling them out with pliers. Luckily, her front left quarter panel received the brunt of it and she only had 3 in her face and 4 in her paw. She stayed fairly calm through the extraction process, which took about 5-10 minutes. I don’t know if it helped, but we read on-line to snip the ends off the quills and pour some vinegar on them. It seemed to work, although I’m pretty sure the quick extraction was of most benefit.
We had avoided an encounter with the baby porcupine that was lurking around when we first arrived. We are now thinking that perhaps we should have let her learn her lesson with the little one instead of the HUGE one.
She was back to normal the next morning, hopefully a little wiser. All in all, this wasn’t as bad as her encounter with a skunk, which lingered on for almost a year. Poor Lucy is having to learn a lot of new lessons in her old age.
Do you have porcupines in you area?
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Quote of the Day: E.B. White
“I also ought to stir the litter in the henpen in the barn where the Barred Rocks are, and in the henhouse where the crossbred birds are; and then fill some bushel baskets with shavings and add them to the litter in the places where it needs deepening. The dropping boards under the broody coops need cleaning and I should do that at the same time, since I will be out there anyway. As far as littler is concerned, a man could take and rake the lawn under the maples where there is such an accumulation of leaves and add these dry leaves to the litter in the houses for the birds to scratch around in. Anything to keep their minds occupied in healthy channels.”
E.B. White (from the essay Memorandum: October 1942 from One Man’s Meat)
We’ve been having beautiful weather here in Maine, perfect for getting all those fall chores buttoned up. Yesterday, I spent the day mowing up mulch to put on the chicken run. The ladies were quite excited with their new digs.
Today I plan on making more mulch and adding some inside the chicken house too, hopefully it will give the chickens something to pick through on the chilly snowy days ahead. I plan on making a pile of extra leaves/grass clippings up by the coop to throw in on occasion to keep them busy in the winter.
We also spent some time getting our electric net fence up for the little ducklings. It will be ready just in time, they’re really outgrowing their other little fenced in area.
What’s on your to-do list today?
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Around the Run
On Cultivate Simple, our podcast, we have an Around the Run section each week. In this section we talk about what’s been going on around here. For those of you who don’t listen to the podcast, I figured it was time for an update. The weather is leaning more towards winter on the scale than fall. It’s been getting COLD, down into the 20’s at night and in the high 30’s during the day. There’s a burning bush out front that is still blazing red, the last remnants of fall in the garden. On Monday I noticed a few snowflakes falling from the sky. It won’t be long now until we’re snugly tucked under a blanket of snow.
Now that there’s a nip in the air, I’ve been working to cover my fall crops with my low hoops. So far, only the celery and Japanese bunching onions have been covered. Hopefully the rest of them will be put up by this weekend. (if you’re interested in how I made these hoops, here’s my how-to post).
I’ve also been busy cooking up delicious seafood, making sourdough biscuits, staying warm by the wood burner, and putting in many hours of work in the office. Truth be told, most of the meals we eat don’t take long to prepare since they’re fairly simple. When you have fresh scallops what more do they need beside searing and generous amount of butter?
I still need to get my garlic planted. The plot is prepared thanks to some help from the chickens, but the garlic sits on my table waiting. Hopefully that will in by this weekend. It’s a good thing garlic is so forgiving.
Sometimes, I wish fall wasn’t this busy. I’d love to have a little more time for hiking and exploring the new areas around me. I’ll have plenty of time to do that this winter and over the coming years. That can wait, the garlic can’t.
Do you have any impending chores that need done ASAP?
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Making Do
When we arrived in Maine last Saturday, I wanted to put the ducklings outside but I needed a fence to keep them contained. At first I was going to use my compost bin, but the holes were too big. Then I remember we had some shelves in the garage that we haven’t put up yet.
With a little bit of wire it became a duck tractor. The ducks are loving spending the days outside basking in the sun and the rain. We put a little heat lamp out there for them to warm up under if they get chilly. Every day we move the fence to a new spot so they can eat the dandelions, violets and other greens they enjoy.
At night we’ve been putting them in the office in a container. Thankfully, it looks like they’ll be getting their feathers soon so they can stay outside. I also think I’m finally starting to see the gender of a few of them by their size. There’s one dominant male for sure and two small females. A few of the others could go either way, I’ll be watching.
Mr Chiots will be building them a little house soon, probably about the time they’ll be able to stay outside all day/night.
I also get so much satisfaction when I can make do with something I already have instead of having to buy something!
Have you made do with something recently and saved yourself some money?
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Sweet Success
Last year, my mom and I didn’t grow sweet potatoes. Since we had lost our entire crop to the voles in 2010, we decided to take the year off. This spring we optimistically planted a large row in the garden hoping for the best.
It was a hot summer, just what the sweet potatoes ordered. All summer we kept wondering what we’d find when we harvested our patch.
Low and behold, it was a banner year; our sweet potatoes produced like mad. Most of them were nice sized roots, with the occasional mammoth one. We also ended up with a small bucket of the tiny ones, which will become dog food.
We won’t be eating these beauties right away, they need cured for their sweetness to come out. Sweet potatoes like to be cured in warm temperatures (around 85) for about 2 weeks. We decided to try curing the sweet potatoes in my mom’s greenhouse where it’s warm and toasty and around 85 on most sunny days. Half of them may be covered with a towel to see if this helps raise the humidity a little since they appreciate a high humidity during curing. It should be interesting to roast them for Thanksgiving next month and compare.
That’s part of growing root vegetables, you never really know what you’re going to find at harvest time. Most of the time you will find a great harvest but every now and then it’s a big disappointment. This year we’re enjoying our sweet success!
Have you ever had a disappointing root vegetable harvest?
