Cold Frame Construction

If one wishes to grow any reasonable sort of garden in the cold climes of NW Wisconsin, a means of extending the growing season is a must. One such means is a cold frame - a low structure with a transparent roof (old windows work great) that can be opened and is typically slanted towards the south. It protects plants from frost and cold and the transparent top lets in sunlight while trapping the heat inside, thus keeping the soil and plants warm. By slanting towards the south, the cold frame is able to catch the early spring and late fall sunshine, thus allowing one to start plants earlier than usual or keep them growing late into the fall.

Here are some picturs of our efforts at constructing a cold frame.

The Garden and The Never-ending Winter

As most of you are aware, we have a very large garden prepped and planned for this growing season. The preparations began last fall with the razing of the shrubs and grass that had taken over the old garden site. Then we tilled and "weeded" the paths (which consisted of hacking out sections of sod where the paths used to be, shaking out the pea-gravel and discarding the grass and roots). We weeded the rhubarb and asparagus beds, which are perennials so we couldn't till there, and divided one of the largest asparagus crowns. There were also two raised boxes from years past that we weeded and made ready for the earliest of spring seeds to be planted.  Other than the amazing compost bin Chris built, that was about all we got to in the garden last fall before the snow and cold came, but it felt like a good start.

Our first major snowfall came on my birthday - November 13th. We got about 5-6 inches - a beautiful first snow, covering the brown earth in pure white. The next few months little thought was given to the garden, but by the times the holiday activities were coming to a close, my attention was lured back to the fertile patch of land, sleeping under the blanket of snow.

For Christmas I received a very nice garden hoe from my in-laws, which whetted my appetite considerably. I was also given the book "Guide to Wisconsin Vegetable Gardening" and my sister-in-law Trish recommended "Square Foot Gardening," which I checked out from the library. For the next several weeks I poured over both books, planning the garden space, making a list of the types and varieties of seeds to buy, figuring out what seeds could be started inside and when they should be planted - basically dreaming of all things green and growing while we waited for the cold and snow to pass.

As is typical in NW Wisconsin, we had a slight "warm" spell in early January, known as the "January thaw." We had some melting, even a day of rain, but the thaw didn't last long. By the end of January we were back into the negatives, and the biting cold persisted through February and into March. Along with the cold came copious amounts of snow. It was one of the snowiest winters on record for the Twin Cities, which means it was for Magdalen Farm too.

However, undaunted by the weather, I ordered seeds in late January. Our friends Andy and Amanda were kind enough to organize a bulk order with some of their friends who are real farmers. We ordered from Seed Savers Exchange and Johnny's Selected Seeds. Waiting for the seeds, I was like a kid before Christmas.

The seeds finally arrived!

Seed packets sealed in jars for storage

When the seeds finally arrived it seemed like a blow had been delt to the dark, cold winter. In early March I started onions and leeks from seed in the basement under grow lights. When the wispy seedlings emerged, I was certain that the death-grip of winter was surly loosening. On March 20th cabbage and kale were started indoors, and as the fuzzy leaves opened I knew winter was in its last pathetic gasps.

Leeks, kale and cabbage under grow-lights

Kale and Cabbage

By late March the huge piles of snow were finally melted, though temperatures were still hovering around freezing. In early April we took a trip to La Crosse and Chicago and while we were gone spring sprung at the farm. I couldn't wait to get back and start digging and planting in the garden. On April 6th I planted peas, beets, lettuce and carrots in one of the prepared beds and covered it with an old window, thus protecting the bed from frost and helping heat the soil by trapping the suns rays under the glass. I also started some of the "warm-weather" plants inside - tomatoes and pumpkins - and started hardening-off the onions.

Three large pumpkin plants and several tomatoes

Alas, the warm weather was just a teaser.  For the next 2 weeks winter seemed very much alive. The sky continued to spit snow and sleet, the sun refused to shine and temperatures remained in the 30's-40's. An occasional day of 50 or 60 degree weather would burst forth, only to be consumed by snow and frigid temps. Yesterday, April 27th, big, soft snowflakes flew from the sky. And this morning, April 28th, when we peeked outside, wet snow covered the ground! It certainly makes it hard to believe that warm, sunny weather even exists this far north.

Needless to say the seeds I planted outside have not done very well. The carrots didn't sprout at all, and only 3 peas are up. The beets and lettuce are more cold hardy and have sprouted and even grown well in the cooler weather. The plants in the basement are doing well, although a few of them are getting pretty big and are ready for transplanting.

I read that this spring has had average temperatures, but it's been unusually wet and overcast, which means the soil has not had a chance to dry, which in turn has delayed tilling and planting.  Although the average date of planting corn and other crops has not passed yet, there is concern that the prolonged grasp of winter will delay the growing season.

But, hope springs eternal - tomorrow is supposed to be in the 60's and sunny and I'm ready to do some planting!

Welcome Hildy!

You'll forgive the absence of updates as we gave up as much computer use as possible during Holy Week. Nevertheless, we do have some fairly big news here on the farm.

Last Thursday, between work and our parish's Holy Thursday service, we drove over toward Grantsburg to pick up our puppy. A mixture of two traditional European guardian dogs (Mastiff and Maremma), the pups raised by Love Tree Farms are ideal guardian dogs for medium to large homesteads. Our only concern is that our property and the level of activity will be too small -- we'll stay tuned to that.

Love Tree raises a great deal of sheep and goats and some cows, in addition to making their own breed of guardian dogs. They also sell homemade cheese and pizza too. It's a neat place; check out their blog sight.

There were four or five pups left from the litter of ten when we went to pick our dog up. The three in the pen we were dealing with seemed sad to have bid adieu to their siblings in recent days. Our selection, whom we've named Hildy (after St. Hildegard of Bingen), was one of the smaller pups in the litter. She was terrified about being removed from her companions and was only consoled by being held and gently petted.

We chatted with Mary, the helpful breeder, and got some tips about training and feed, etc. Then Steph got in the back seat of the Civic holding Hildy and I chauffeured the gals home. Earlier that morning we finished a fence around the chicken coop so that we had a decent sized enclosure for Hildy to bond with the chickens in.

The reason we got Hildy is to guard our chickens and other future livestock, but that means she needs to be attached to the animals and not to us. This is well and good in the abstract, but the first few nights when you walk away from your incredibly adorable ten week old puppy and she cries and tries to dig her way out of her pen to be near you it tugs pretty good on the old heartstrings. Not yet a week into her tenure as the boss at Magdalen Farm, Hildy is already very happy to be in her pen with her little flock. For a few days she and the chickens wanted nothing to do with each other, but now they share water, food, and space quite happily.

She is a wonderfully good natured little pup whom we've come to love a great deal already. We were glad to introduce her to much of Steph's side of the family yesterday. She was pretty scared, but warmed up to everyone as they insisted on petting her -- though she did pee on both Jared and I in the process.

For now she is sleeping in a big plastic drum, turned on its side, elevated off the ground a bit, and lined with some raw wool kindly donated from Love Tree Farm. The wool is both warming and comforting as it smells like her former wooly friends.

If you're in the area, stop by and meet all of our new farm additions! In addition to two cats, we're now raising one dog, four pigs and 27 chickens!

Habemus Porcum!

Four porci, to be exact.

After a few days of preparations (see below), and a number of phone calls looking for piglets at the right price, we made the 45 minute drive south through the rolling hills of Polk County to New Richmond and the pork operation of a nice farmer named Paul.

We'd secured the use of Grandma and Grandpa Irkhe's truck last week so all we had to do this morning was fill the bed up with straw and hit the road. The drive was beautiful. A heavy dusting of snow fell last night and covered the mostly brown countryside.

Farmer Paul's four friendly sons walked us over to the hog barn and showed us the pen from which our four grunting little piggies would come--little did I realize what an ordeal extracting them would be! They chatted with us while they waited for dad to come down and point out which pigs were to be ours.

"I got those two at an auction in River Falls," one of the boys offered. "I'm going to raise them myself."

When farmer Paul didn't appear the lads decided to take us on a tour of the building. There were a great number of pig pens set up throughout and pigs happily grunting away everywhere. We got to see a few dozen of the farm's sows: enormous mothers, some with a dozen newborn piglets suckling away eagerly on their swollen teats.

At last farmer Paul arrived and the tour came to an end. He brought us back to the first pen and pointed out our pigs: a large red one, two pink ones and a black one with a pink stripe around her midsection. Then the fun began. Two of the boys hopped into the pen and poised themselves for the struggle. Ungreased though the hogs may have been, they were still elusive as could be. When the boys were able to catch them the hogs uttered horrible, piercing shrieks, something akin to the screams of the ring-wraiths.

The boys deposited the discontented piglets in the truck, we paid farmer Paul and headed on our merry way. We took the turns on the winding road more gently on the way home. I don't know what a car-sick piglet looks like, but I can't imagine it's a pretty sight.

When we got home we put some feed in their trough and water in their dish and steeled ourselves for more shrieking. We took the big red one out first, whom we have named El Guapo, since she seems to be the ring leader of the newly formed quartet. Then the black and pink: Dusty Bottoms. Then the male pink: Ned Nederlander. And, finally, the female pink: Lucky Day.

Our cute pigs in the back of the truck

Once the piggies were in their building they stood huddled in the far corner -- nervous and a bit chilly. The timid creatures wouldn't investigate the new digs while we were watching so we went to check on the chickens. When we came back and peeked through the window they were eating away happily, so we came back in and gave them a few scratches.

We're really stoked to have made this big addition to our farm today. The pigs seem to be healthy and to have settled in pretty well in their first afternoon. We'll be sure to provide plenty of pictures as the little herd grows.

[4/18 -- Update: I am delighted to report that it turns out El Guapo is in fact a male after all. He and Ned, are of course 'cut' as the euphemism goes, so there is no need to worry about piggy progeny popping up at any point.]

Porcine Preperations

I'm not going to bother with a big history of our farm, I think most anyone who ends up at this site will have followed our story at my blog and Steph's.

Instead, I propose to give the people what they want: an update on what's going on at our farm these days and, more so, lots of pictures.

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The chickens are doing well. We've sadly learned that the old adage 'good fences make good neighbors' is profoundly true. Or, perhaps, bad fences make bad neighbors--at least when the neighbors have dogs.

In any event, we're working on a major fence to keep the chickens totally safe. We spent last weekend getting posts in the ground for our permanent fence around the chickens' front yard.

3 of the 5 posts

Putting that picture up made me realize how shoddy the south side of the coop looks. We'll have to work on that this summer...

In any event, the hens have kicked their egg-laying into high gear as of late. Steph collected something like 30+ eggs in the last two days. We're hoping to sell around 10 dozen or so this weekend when we head into the Twin Cities for a birthday party.

Nota Bene -- In addition to our desire to grow and raise our own food, we hope to supplement our income by selling the surplus goods.

Anywho, here are a few pictures of the birds.

The hen in the foreground is 'Henny Penny', the poor hen whom we operated on in the basement a few months ago. The rooster pictured is the dominant leader of our flock, 'The Bard'.

Steph took a short video of the chicks grazing in their front yard. If you crank your volume up you can hear there contented chatter over the din of the frogs in our pond, both pleasant sounds indeed.

This afternoon, after I finished my 10th and final article of the week (phew!) and after Steph had more or less finished our taxes, we headed out to work on getting the pig pen and building ready for our little piglets. Last fall, we'd cut down all the scrubby brush that had grown up over the years, so that made our work much easier. 

Our stock building: Pigs door is on the right, workshop on the left

The ground slopes away from the pig's building rather steeply, so an aesthetically pleasing fence was sadly out of the question. Instead, we stair-stepped each section down to the low point, which is pictured on your left. We bought green treated planks of 2x8'' lumber last weekend at Menards, so all we had to do was ready the posts by removing all the old screws and nails, cut the pieces to length and nail them in. 

Yours truly prepping the old posts

One complication was attaching the last section to the building, the bottom of which is just concrete. To accommodate the lowest fence planks we attached a few scraps of green treat to the building, and then fastened the fencing onto that.

When we were done with the fencing, apart from adding the wire mesh, we unloaded the pig feed we'd picked up this afternoon and spread a bale and half of straw in the pig's building. We sure hope they'll be happy in their cozy abode.

I'll be sure to take more pictures of our renovations soon!

Other news from this week: on Monday evening we visited Love Tree Farm to pick out our guardian dog.  We haven't decided on a name for the pup yet, but one frontrunner is Hildegard -- after St. Hildegard of Bingen and a clever pun on her guardian duties. By the way, the fence that we're building around the chicken's front yard will also serve to keep our pup safe until she gets big enough to ward off assailants and will also promote her bonding with the chicken flock.