The latest building project here at my Bedford, New York farm is nearly complete - a new coop now designated for 13 growing turkeys.
The poults were incubated and hatched in the feed room of my stable, where they remained until they were big enough to move outdoors. But turkeys grow fast, and I decided they needed more room and a bigger coop where they could live, roost, and nest more comfortably. My property manage, Doug White, is a very talented craftsman and carpenter. Along with the help of Pete Sherpa from my outdoor grounds crew, the two took on the task of building the structure in a separate fenced in area of the chicken yard. The coop is made from diseased ash trees that were taken down here at the farm and then cut into usable lumber with my portable sawmill. This project took several weeks to complete, but it looks great.
Enjoy these first photos of the building process.
These are two of 13 turkeys I am raising here at the farm. These cute babies hatched earlier this summer. Raising baby turkeys is a lot like raising chickens. Both birds need good quality feed, fresh water, safe living spaces, clean bedding, adequate roosting areas, and nesting boxes.
But they grow very fast. Here they are shortly after they moved into their new outdoor enclosure.
And here they are now. I needed to build them a bigger coop in a larger space.
To build the new coop, we used wood that we already had. We lost a lot of ash trees at the farm due to the emerald ash borer larvae which kill ash trees by tunneling under the bark and feeding on the part of the tree that moves water and sugars up and down its trunk. I am happy we can still recycle and repurpose the lumber.
Pete cut the lumber to the appropriate sizes. This new coop measures 10-feet by 10-feet.
Pete is using this sawmill to cut the wood down to size. Some time ago, I decided to gift myself with a portable sawmill, so I could cut the lumber right here at the farm when needed. It’s a Hud-Son H360 Hydraulic Portable Sawmill.
Doug and Pete already created the foundation on a bed of 3/8-inch native stone gravel.
As with any construction project, there is a lot of measuring. Here, Doug measures the wood for the floor and framing of the coop.
And here’s Pete installing the floor – the two work very efficiently together.
It doesn’t take long before the framing is up for one of the walls. Doug lines it up carefully…
… and then Pete secures the pieces.
Within a couple of days, the duo gets the framing up for two walls. They also put in one of several windows. The windows are from an old house I took down in Maine next to Skylands. They are perfect for this project.
Next, Doug puts up temporary braces to hold the framing together until all four sides are done.
And here is the coop with the framing in place.
Next, the roof. Here, the two stop for a quick photo. Looks good, guys!
Doug and Pete install the joists and collar beams. Here is Doug making sure the eaves are perfectly spaced.
The coop will have lots of room inside for the turkeys to roost on a handmade ladder. It’s now looking more and more like a coop.
Once the entire frame is together, Doug and Pete start putting up the planks for the walls.
Here’s Fernando Ferrari, a longtime member of my hardworking crew. He’s getting a head start on the painting – Bedford, gray, of course.
Here’s Doug at the front of the structure working on the roof. The roof requires many different parts to create a system that will protect the turkeys from the elements. Doug makes sure all the rafters are properly installed. The rafters connect to the ridge board and support the roof. They bear the load of the roof.
Pete installs the horizontal slats on the roof. The shingles will be nailed into these slats.
On one side, a door – turkey sized. In addition to the large barn door in the front, the turkeys will be able to walk in and out of the coop through this smaller doorway and down a ramp. The turkey coop is coming along. Wait until you see the end result. It looks great. Stay tuned.
Many of the flowering plants around my Bedford, New York farm have past their prime, but there's still a lot of beautiful and interesting foliage to enjoy.
Some of the most beautiful growth is behind and around my Tenant House, where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit. In these areas we planted Epimediums, ferns, Syneilesis, wild ginger, hostas, lady's mantle, and other shade-loving specimens. They're surrounded by a variety of some of my favorite trees - Stewartia, Cotinus, and Japanese maple. And at one side of the garden bed is my stand of tall and stately bald cypress.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
If you didn’t already guess, I named this garden behind my Tenant House the Stewartia garden because I planted several Stewartia trees in this space. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring, white flowers resembling single camellias in summer, and colorful foliage in autumn. Some of the varieties in this garden include: Stewartia gemmata, Stewartia x. henryae, Stewartia pseudocamellia ‘Ballet’, Stewartia monadelpha, Stewartia rostrata, and Stewartia henry ‘Skyrocket’. And do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
This garden is located to one side of these towering bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum – a deciduous conifer. Though the bald cypress is native to swampy areas, it is also able to withstand dry, sunny weather and is hardy in USDA climate zones 5 through 10.
The leaves are compound and feathery, made up of many small leaflets that are thin and lance-shaped. Each leaflet is less than two inches long, alternating along either side of a central stem. They are a medium green now and turn russet brown in fall. Like trees with leaves, bald cypress trees drop their needles in the fall leaving the tree – well, bald.
Down below, we planted Cotoneaster in one corner of the garden. Cotoneaster is a vigorous, dense, evergreen shrub with soft arching stems studded with leathery, glossy, rounded, dark green leaves. These plants work well for a low hedge – I only wish I had planted more.
Its leaves are spreading, arching to horizontal, alternate, simple, and willow-like in appearance.
This area also includes Japanese painted ferns – beautiful mounds of dramatic foliage with luminescent blue-green fronds and dark central ribs that fade to silver at the edges.
In contrast are the ostrich ferns – a light green clump-forming, upright to arching, rhizomatous, deciduous fern which typically grows up to six feet tall. I grow these in large masses throughout the garden.
Pasang weeded and groomed this entire garden. As he works, he neatly piles any cut debris and takes it to the edge of the carriage road, so it can easily be loaded onto one of our vehicles and taken to the compost yard.
Asarum europaeum, or European Wild Ginger, is a slowly spreading ground cover that is primarily grown for its glossy, leathery, heart-shaped, dark green leaves.
These are the shiny green leaves of Solomon’s Seal – a hardy perennial native to the eastern United States and southern Canada.
These plants produce dangling white flowers, which turn to dark-blue berries later in the summer.
This is lady’s mantle, Alchemilla mollis. It’s a clumping perennial which typically forms a basal foliage mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edged, toothed, pleated, soft-hairy, light green leaves.
Epimediums are long-lived and easy to grow and have such attractive and varying foliage. Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop’s hat, and horny goat weed, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.
Astilboides is an interesting plant with huge, bright green leaves that are round and flat and measure up to 24-inches across. The effect is dramatic, and beautiful among other hardy perennials.
I always look for the most interesting plants to add to my gardens. This is Syneilesis – a tough, drought-tolerant, easy-to-grow woodland garden perennial that prefers moist, well-drained, slightly acid soils. If in the proper environment, syneilesis will slowly spread to form an attractive colony.
Syneilesis is commonly called the shredded umbrella plant and describes the narrow, dissected leaves that cascade downward like an umbrella.
This plant is another great one for mass planting, which is essentially a method of filling in garden area with flower groupings of one or more kinds of plants. This helps to minimize weed growth and to add texture and interest to the space.
These are the dainty leaves of thalictrum. Plants in this genus are native to stream banks, shaded mountains, and moist meadows. It grows best in moist, humus-rich soil in partial shade. Thalictrum has some of the most beautifully textured foliage. The name Thalictrum means “to flourish,” and it does, with elegant, finely cut and rounded compound leaves.
The hostas are so lush with their varying leaf shape, size, and textures. Hostas have easy care requirements which make them ideal for many areas. I have them all around the farm. Hosta is a genus of plants commonly known as hostas, plantain lilies and occasionally by the Japanese name, giboshi. They are native to northeast Asia and include hundreds of different cultivars.
Here is another hosta variety with its darker, more defined leaves.
This heuchera was planted earlier this summer. It has lively peach and orange tones on large leaves. The plant grows into a full mound that is exceptionally heat tolerant. Dainty flowers appear on spikes above the foliage in spring. Heuchera is a genus of largely evergreen perennial plants in the family Saxifragaceae, all native to North America. Common names include alumroot and coral bells.
Here, Pasang trims the foliage of a smoke bush. I have several Cotinus in this bed. Cotinus, the smoketree, or smoke bush, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs.
Their smooth, rounded leaves come in exceptional shades of deep purple, clear pinkish-bronze, yellow, and green.
This garden bed continues to be a work in progress, but I love how it looks. Every year, more and more plants cover the space and create a lush, green carpet of beautiful foliage.
There are so many delicious fruits growing here at my Bedford, New York farm.
Fresh fruit is one of nature's most delicious products. In midsummer, we pick boxes and boxes of raspberries, blueberries, and currants. In late August, we pick delicious peaches fresh off my trees. And soon, we'll be picking bounties of apples, pears, and other autumn fruits. Here at Cantitoe Corners, I have an orchard around my pool filled with a variety of more than 200 different fruit trees. I also have fruits growing on espaliers and in groves - on trees I've planted and on trees that are original to the farm. It will be a very fruitful fall.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
This orchard surrounds three sides of my pool. I wanted it filled with a variety of apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees, peach, pear, and quince trees. Many were bare-root cuttings when they arrived and now they’re beautiful mature specimens producing an abundance of fruits.
I planted several types of Asian pear, Pyrus pyrifolia, which is native to East Asia. My trees include Hosui, Niitaka, Shinko, and Shinseiko. Asian pears have a high water content and a crisp, grainy texture, which is very different from the European varieties. They are most commonly served raw and peeled. Some of these are ready for picking.
This year, the trees are laden with beautiful, sweet pears. Here’s a close look at just some that are weighing down the branches on this tree.
The other pears in this orchard are ‘Bartlett’, ‘Columbia’, ‘D’Amalis’, ‘Ginnybrook’, ‘McLaughlin’, ‘Nova’, ‘Patten’, ‘Seckel’, ‘Stacyville’, and ‘Washington State’.
The pear trees, and all the other fruit trees in this orchard are planted in full sun, with good air circulation and well-drained soil.
In another area of the orchard are the fruits of the medlar, Mespilus germanica – a small deciduous tree and member of the rose family. These fruits are not ready yet – we’ll pick them in late October or early November.
Many are not familiar with the medlar. This fruit is about one to two inches in diameter, and ranges in color from rosy rust to dusty brown. Medlars are native to Southwestern Asia and Southeastern Europe. The fruits have to be eaten when almost rotten in a process called “bletting”. And, because of this, they either have to be eaten right off the tree or picked early and put aside for a few weeks to blet. The medlar is very pulpy and very sweet. Its taste is similar to an overripe date with a flavor similar to toffee apples or apple butter.
And of course, I have a large section of apples. I already grow hundreds of apple trees here at the farm – some of my apple trees were here when I acquired the property and others I planted soon after moving here. These newer apple trees include ‘Baldwin’, ‘Black Oxford’, ‘Cortland’, ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’, ‘Esopus Spitzenburg’, ‘Fuji’, ‘Golden Russet’, ‘Grimes Golden’, ‘Honeycrisp’, ‘Liberty’, ‘Redfield’, ‘Roxbury Russet’, and ‘Windham Russet’.
Just outside the orchard and near the old corn crib are quince trees – three of the many.
Are you familiar with quince? Quince is a fall fruit that grows like apples and pears, but with an unusually irregular shape and often gray fuzz. These fruits turn a golden yellow when ready to pick in fall.
Next to the quince trees is this “ancient” apple tree, which is original to the farm. The upright supports on the left are holding up old, heavy branches.
Last year, I decided to plant a maze of hedges, espaliers, and shrubs in the pasture across the carriage road from my Winter House terrace. My living maze is a puzzle of tall plantings – tall enough to prevent those walking through from seeing the paths ahead. The maze includes rows, openings, and various dead ends, but only one true route leading to the center. These apple espaliers are planted in one row of the maze – look at all the fruits.
Espalier refers to an ancient technique, resulting in trees that grow flat, either against a wall, or along a wire-strung framework.
This espalier is filled with green apples – one can walk through the maze and pick a fruit.
Outside the maze are six Gravenstein apple espalier trees. I planted these in 2010 when they were about five or six years old. Malus ‘Gravenstein’ – is well known for cooking, sauce, cider, and eating out of hand. The fruit is large, with crisp, white flesh and a distinct, juicy flavor.
These apples are in the dwarf apple espalier behind my carport. These trees are also very productive this year. Apple trees need well-drained soil – nothing too wet. The soil also needs to be moderately rich and retain moisture as well as air. And the best exposure for apples is a north- or east-facing slope.
Behind the main greenhouse, I have a grove of pawpaw trees. Asimina triloba, the American papaw, pawpaw, paw paw, or paw-paw, among many regional names, is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada.
These are the developing pawpaws – greenish-blackish fruit, usually three to six inches long.
The taste of a pawpaw is a mix of mango-banana-citrus all in one. It’s a big favorite for some here at the farm.
There is always something growing here at my working farm. I am so very proud of how it has developed over the years. I’ll share more photos at harvest time – it won’t be long now.
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