Photo update, part 2

And now, photos of everything other than flowers!

Three-week-old broiler chicks hanging out in the starter house. Most of them have enough feathers now that they don't look too ugly. Yesterday we opened up the door and let them have access to pasture. We're thinking of not using our little huts this time around to make it easier to feed and water. The chickens will still have access to the outdoors, but they won't be rotated around. We'll see how that goes. These chickens are bred to do two things: eat and grow. As a result, they aren't the most active critters and they make a lot of manure. The biggest advantage to the huts is that the chickens move to clean grass twice a day.

The first year we were here we planted black and red raspberries and blackberries. We haven't had outstanding berry production so far, but this year they are finally coming into their own. I have picked black raspberries twice. We made custards and cobbler with the first batch. If the second batch doesn't get used tonight, they are going in the freezer so they don't go to waste. The red raspberries have produced just enough for eating straight off the plants - a super delicious treat!

 The garden is all planted and coming along nicely. I tied up the tomatoes again yesterday and they are looking really good; lots of blooms and some small fruits already. The beans in this picture look a little sad. This was about a week after planting, and the lima beans (in the middle three rows of this picture) didn't have the best emergence. I replanted them and they are looking much better now.

We have a lot of mint and every year I think I should make mint jelly. But I never get around to it. This year, I actually did it! I canned 9 half pints, which should go really well with lamb dishes. I also made some mint-infused ice cubes so we can enjoy minty additions to food in the middle of winter. The same evening I also picked oregano for drying. Usually I put this off until the end of the season. That works, but by then the leaves are all bug-eaten and the stems are really fibrous. This young oregano was tender and very easy to work with. I need to remember to pick early every year!

The butterflies are starting to appear more and more often. Saturday I spied this one, which I believe is a Zebra Swallowtail. I have never seen one of these before, but they are really striking with their vertical stripes and long, long tails.

I believe I mentioned a while back that we had been working on the basement. We haven't done much since that initial push, but here are two photos to show what we have accomplished so far. This first one is a little sample of what the basement looked like before we started. On one side this wooden shelf/bench ran the entire length of the house. It wasn't bad as a work surface, but it didn't provide much help for organizing and storing things. The walls were bare block, and the floor was bare concrete. Pretty much a blank slate. 

This is the corner that will become the basement kitchen, to be used for all of our various canning, meat processing, sausage making, beer and wine making, and so forth. Plus we will be building a pantry for storing canned food and storing all of the various pieces of equipment that go along with all of these ventures. We used a masonry paint to seal the wall and an epoxy floor coating. This picture was taken right after one of the epoxy coats was applied, so it looks uneven, but it dried to a perfect finish. Next step is framing in the two walls that will separate this room from the rest of the basement. Who knows when we'll get to that, but we will...eventually!

Whew! Now all the photos I've taken have been sorted, filed, and uploaded (if blog-worthy). It seems I haven't taken any lamb photos in quite some time, so I will have to remedy that.