Heather Kay

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since Aug 21, 2019

Biography

Hi there fellow human! My name is Heather and I'm trying to live the homesteading dream in a less than ideal location - a treed marsh in an agricultural mosaic in a prairie. Since moving to a lovely home in the countryside I feel like I can finally start homesteading in earnest - I have 5 acres of lawn, which I'm trying to convert from mossy grass to something resembling pasture or prairie, and 28 acres of bush, aspen/willow/oak dominant forest, and a semi-wet marsh. Lots of lovely wild plants, wildlife, and a bear that's recently moved in and become a nuisance (luckily my malamute is fearless and has so far kept me safe).
Hardiness zone is a 3b but due to extreme prairie weather I play it safe by assuming I'm planting in a 3a. The soil profile across the 5 acres of cleared land is a mix of Dark Grey Luvisolic (then sandy loam, then gravel, then white clay), Gleysolic (then gravel, then white clay), and Organic Mesisol (organic layer is peat, then a thin gravel/sand layer, then white clay).
I started off with a house, a sports car, a partner that's out of town working most of the time, a dog, and no other infrastructure, so the process of getting my dream of an expansive garden/orchard/food forest, bees & apiary, chickens & chicken coop, some milking sheep, a couple of milk goats, and a barn... it's going to take a while. But that's okay!
During the first year after we moved, I familiarized myself with my property and the surrounding areas. I kept track of how water pooled and drained from the yard, found my dryer spots, my wetter spots, ID'd my soil types and did research on what plants would do well, which would get destroyed by deer, what would be safe to plant where, and went on a rampage of carefully removing and destroying all water hemlock in areas that could harm me, my family, and future livestock and noting where they grew so I could keep coming back to monitor for regrowth. Once I learned and did all of that I spent my spare time at work fiddling with my GIS tools and plotting out what areas of my 5 acres would be dedicated to what and making maps.
The second year after moving I purchased my first livestock, a breeding trio of NZ rabbits for meat and pelts. They currently live in my garage, however I had a nice predator-proof, easily cleaned, ventilated, climate-controlled shed built for them to move into once my new cage wire arrives. The dedicated Rabbitry shed can safely accommodate 12 adult cages, 4 grow-out cages, my 2 temporary compost bins, up to 6 bales of hay, as well as a shelf to store their pellet buckets and water jugs. All that in an 8x12 ft space! I also got 15 of my 21 fruit trees put in the ground on the driest part of my yard, and got 2 of my 20m hugel beds excavated next to them. I was collecting deadfall from the woods on my property to fill it, however a black bear recently moved into the woods and it's no longer safe to pull the deadfall out until I get a gun and the bear gets shot or trapped.
My plans for year three are to have an ATV with a blade attachment, winch, and cart attachment, a chainsaw, get the last few fruit trees I want in the ground, and build a semi-permanent fence around my little orchard so the deer stop eating everything and I can start my food forest in earnest. I'm also going to start experiments to convert some of my lawn and thinned out forest into pasture, although the water hemlock will be an extremely large hurdle to overcome.
For the future, I'd like to get my poultry and a coop within 5 years and have some slightly larger livestock (debating on whether to go for sheep, goats, or mini cows) within the next 10 years. Alternatively, I might just save up and build a micro barn that can serve as poultry and dairy animal housing within 7 years.
Every day is a new learning experience, and any sage advice or other help is always greatly appreciated ♡

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Southeast Manitoba - Zone 3a, slightly acidic clay soil

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Recent posts by Heather Kay

Manitoba Permies?

Late to the party but I figured I'd add myself to the list :) I currently raise rabbits and am constructing my hugel beds in a rural area NE of Steinbach, and just got about 1/2 of my orchard planted this year. Within the next 10 years I'll hopefully expand to getting bees, poultry, some sheep, and finishing off another few hugel beds as well as getting my last 13 trees for my orchard. Once my beds and trees are all in place then I'm going to get a permanent fence set up, then turn it into more of a food forest - all the bone sauce and deterrents in the world won't keep the deer, bears, or wild rabbits away sadly. I'm always looking to learn from other people - I'm especially interested in learning more about micro barns/multi-purpose animal housing, wild foraging, and food preservation. I'm also happy to teach people about raising rabbits for meat if they're interested! If anyone wants to contact me, shoot me a PM on here and we can exchange emails.

5 years ago

great white north

When is American Hazelnut ready to harvest?

Mk Neal wrote:Thank you for sharing this! I especially like the pictures. I have been thinking of planting hazelnuts, looks it it will be a lot of work to get much out of them, though.

These were wild ones growing along a trail in the bush - they're fairly small (partly because they're wild, partly due to poor growing conditions) and surrounded by the wildlife that want to eat them. If you want to plant some, I'd recommend looking into filberts - they're a cultivated variety so you'll have a better bang for your buck, and I've read that if you keep light netting over the bush you'll prevent the grubs from getting into them.

5 years ago

wild harvesting

Is it possible for me to pasture my rabbits?

Kc Simmons wrote:Based on the challenges you mentioned, I feel like the risks far exceed any potential benefits. I've had poor results in trying to pasture/tractor grow-outs, and my environmental factors aren't as extreme as yours.
I rarely get snow in the winter, but I suspect that the ground being covered in snow would defeat the purpose of feeding on pasture, even if they didn't freeze from the wind. My issue is the winter is just cold enough to keep most vegetation killed down in winter, and the sun is so intense in the rest of the seasons that it's hard to make a tractor that's large & covered enough to protect them from the different angles of the sun during the day's progression.
Weather aside, the predators are an issue. Since Mother Nature made rabbits to be the ideal prey for so many different predators, she basically designed them to reproduce quickly and die easily. So, even if you made the tractor bear-proof, there's still a good chance that the rabbits would die anyway from a heart attack or something like that.
Honestly, while I feel pasturing the grow-outs would be an awesome way to produce the rabbit meat, I suspect it will be easier and safer to simply spend a few minutes each day to gather a bucket-full of weeds and other forage, then distribute it to the rabbits in the cage.

Well, it's at least reassuring to know I haven't been the only one having these issues - now that the frost is gone I've been collecting a big handful of grass, dandelions, and thistle every day to add to everyone's hay so I guess that's the closest they're going to get. Oh well lol.

5 years ago

rabbits

Is it possible for me to pasture my rabbits?

Carla Burke wrote:Personally, I'd go with my gut, and not do it. That *seems* to be your instinct, too...

The gut instinct is no, I was just hoping someone found a way to make it work ;-;

5 years ago

rabbits

When is American Hazelnut ready to harvest?

Long overdue update!

When we last checked in I was in the process of husking the hazelnuts, and had finally separated the obviously inedible ones from the possibly edible ones. I set up a drying station which consisted of the nuts spread in a single layer on top of paper towel over top of an open camping cooking rack, propped open with a glass and a paper towel roll, with most of the edges leading to a towel-lined box so the grubs would emerge, crawl off, and be collected somewhere they couldn't chew through to escape. While they were drying, I took a random sample of 12 nuts and smashed them open - 1 in 6 were edible, the rest had been chewed through by grubs to some extent. At the very least, it's easy to tell the edible ones apart from the inedible ones due to colour, texture, moisture, and probably taste (that said, I didn't eat any of the inedible ones so I can't confirm that but I think it's safe to assume).

After two weeks, the grubs were bagged up and given to some friends in exchange for some fresh eggs, and I went through the remaining nuts by hand and removed any that had any holes, were too small to contain anything, or were still green. Similar to the sample I took a couple weeks prior, only about 1/6 of the nuts that sunk in the sink test ended up being edible.

Would I do it again? Probably not - in addition to receiving hundreds of mosquito and tick bites while out harvesting them, there's so many wild critters also looking to eat them that very few of the ones I picked were edible; about 20% passed the sink test, and 17% passed the drying test, for a whopping result of less than 4% of what I picked being edible. They tasted lovely but so much work for such a small return just isn't worth it when not in a survival situation - I'd have been better off picking chokecherries and making some jam or wine.

That said, I'll post my updated American Hazelnut Harvesting guide here:

1) American Hazelnuts (usually) ripen faster than most other nuts, usually ready by mid/late summer to early fall, that is, between mid-July to early September depending on climate and species/cultivar.
2) American hazelnuts can be picked when the involucre (outer casing) is starting to turn brown up until it has completely turned brown and peeled back, but can be eaten raw when still green. The longer you wait, the lower your chances of it being edible.
3) Unlike beaked hazelnuts, you can safely yank them right off the branch, although twisting/snipping them off will cause less damage to the plant.
4) If they have holes in them, they've already been eaten by grubs and are inedible and can be left on the ground for other animals to eat or composted.
5) When peeling off the casing, place a batch of hazelnut clusters in hot water, then remove the casing (place aside for composting) and leave the nuts in the water. Remove any nuts that float and add to the casings to be composted.
6) Place the remaining nuts in a single layer on a drying rack to air out for 1 to 2 weeks, with something underneath to catch any emerging grubs. Alternatively, the nuts can be dried for 2 to 4 days in a dehydrator, removing any emerged grubs daily.
7) After the hazelnuts have sufficiently dried, remove any nuts that have holes in them or are blemished, any nuts too small to be edible, and any nuts that are green but still hard.
8) Crack open and enjoy, or keep for up to 6 months, after this point they'll start to dry out and become less palatable.

5 years ago

wild harvesting

Is it possible for me to pasture my rabbits?

I know everyone wants to yell "YES!" but I'm worried about losing any rabbits I leave outside due to extreme weather and predators. Winter is a no-go for pastured rabbit where I live as the weather drops to -40C regularly with at least a few days of -50C which would kill even the most cold-tolerant domestic rabbit that isn't getting a heat source, plus the grass is buried under a metre or so of snow. Spring is also a no-go as my property is mostly flooded and tends to stay that way until summer finally hits. Even for that 7 months of the year that I would be able to place a rabbit tractor outside, they would have to contend with flash floods, humid 30C to 35C heat in the height of summer, an unrelenting horde of ticks, biting flies, and mosquitoes, and a variety of predators including black bears, coyotes, feral/roaming dogs and cats, raccoons, foxes, weasels, as well as bald eagles, harrier hawks, and kestrels. There's also plenty of wild cottontails here so there's a disk of disease transmission, albeit it's a lesser concern since they tend to stick to my treed portion of my property; my lawn is like 75% grass 25% moss, which is another barrier to pasturing them as what forage is available is pretty poor.

I really want to try pasturing my grow-out rabbits (I'm still keeping my breeding stock and wee ones indoors for aforementioned reasons), but I don't know anyone that's been able to successfully pasture them in a tractor here - something always kills them. If anyone lives in a similarly inhospitable area I'd love to get some insight on if it's possible, and if so, how you do it. I'm hesitant to start constructing a tractor just to have some critter rip off the walls or have the rabbits die from other causes.

5 years ago

rabbits

When is American Hazelnut ready to harvest?

Mike Jay wrote:You're on your way! It's hard to tell from the picture, but if any of the hazelnuts have small round holes in them, they probably won't be good. Before you dump the floaters, I'd crack a dozen open and see what they look like inside. Maybe the same for the sinkers and the ones with holes in them.

I only managed to process about 1/4 of them last night but I'll crack open a few tonight when I finish the rest and see how they're looking - I'm going into this assuming about 5% of what I picked will be edible for humans. If I'm finding a lot of live worms I'll likely just give the infested hazelnuts to my friend's chickens as well as whatever crawls out from the drying rack.

6 years ago

wild harvesting

When is American Hazelnut ready to harvest?

I filled a 5 gallon bucket with them last night and had to give up on the twisting, it just took too much time. I think the twisting/snipping was a commonly recommended technique for beaked hazelnuts (which have sharp hairs on them, yanking would just embed them in your hand), or for hazelnuts growing in an orchard where you want to cause the least damage to the shrub possible, or for people who didn't like the feel of american hazelnuts. That said, I doubt even when I yanked off a cluster of nuts along with a twig and a couple leaves that I caused anywhere near as much damage as a deer or bear would have.

After picking them they got dumped in a sink of warm water, husked with the husks and any floating hazelnuts thrown in the large metal bowl for the compost (no chickens here yet), and the nuts that stayed at the bottom of the sink (shown in the white bowl) are currently drying over a lined box. Any little grubs that emerge will get collected in the box and go to a friend's chickens if they emerge in a large enough quantity.

6 years ago

wild harvesting

Have you tips to prepare sour fruits to be less acidic to teeth?

Growing up, my mom would take crab apples, peel and slice them, add lemon, cinnamon, sugar, and salt, cook it in a pot until it got kind of gelatinous, cool it then freeze it in medium-sized bags (I imagine cans would work fine too). Boom, pie filling.

Unfortunately, turning the acidity into something sweet is the only option I know. As Ellendra said, neutralizing the acid will alter the taste of fruit by a fair bit.

6 years ago

cooking