Pie Safe

19th Century Style Pie Safe

I know that this is not your usual farming project but if you think about it it was a necessary one, even an important one. Due to the fact in the early 19th century there was no refrigerators or ice boxes or a way to keep the critters out of the food that was prepared and needing a cool down. When you cook your food from the garden that you have worked very hard to maintain and on of your little indoor animals gets to it before you do it can be very frustrating. So in order to allow the hard earned work of growing the fruit and making a pie and not go to waste the pie safe was the first line of defence against Murphy's law.

Some things were considered important when building the pie safe. It needed to be sturdy and it had to let the steam and heat out without damaging the cabinet. The solution was to either put punched tin on all the openings or chicken wire. I chose to use chicken wire for my first completes Pie Safe. The pie safe is 60 3/4 inches tall, 40 inches wide, and 13 1/2 inches deep so it can handle most of your baked goods.

I got the plans from a book in the library called "Building Classic Antique Furniture With Pine". I highly recomend that if you use this book that you need to pay close attention to what you are building and not what the book says exactly or you will have to make the parts more than once in order to make everything fit properly. The ideas is great but the plans if made the way it says will have less than desirable results.

I used Chicken wire to allow goods to breath

Two fully functional Drawers

That being said here is my version of a pie safe.

Plenty of storage space

Saffron the worlds most expensive spice

How would like to grow the worlds most expensive spice? It must be exotic you say, it must be imported you say, I say poppycock (I just wanted to use that word) you can get the spice out of your own flowerbed. You see the spice come from a species of plant called a saffron crocus which is a bulb that blooms every spring. The flowers have a brown-Orange stigma that is within the petals usually 3-4. When added to food gives an earthy flavor. It is common in the middle eastern cooking as well as Asian.

Saffron can be substituted with Turmeric but the flavor of the turmeric may overpower the dish that requires the saffron.



Plant the bulbs 3-4 inches deep and 5-6 inches apart in planters or in the ground in the fall. wait for spring when they bloom and collect the bounty.

I had the pleasure of recently going to my local Kroger an found that the  cost of this spice was almost $20 for less than 1/2 oz. So you can see the value of growing it yourself.

Good luck and happy urban farming.

Chicken and Food

What do chickens eat? Chickens are like goats if it is not fenced off, barred up, caged up they might try to sample it… ask my dogs. They love to scratch around looking for pebbles to aide their digestion which does put your garden at risk of being terrorized. However you can use that to your advantage when the growing season is over because they are excellent cleanup specialists. In a couple of weeks they will have completely cleaned and cleared the garden if you allow it.

Well here is some information for people like myself that are not Vets and are 1 year or less in the chickens. If you want to stop your chickens from laying eggs start feeding them the wrong things. Also lighting is a major factor in egg production as well.

I recently have learned that fruit will stop the chickens from laying on the normal schedule. Citrus is especially bad for egg production. After a long conversation with the Meyer Hatchery in Polk Ohio I found out fruit is not a good thing even as a treat. If you are getting fresh vegetable for treats make sure that you cook them thoroughly it aides in their digestion as well make it less likely to spread disease.

A chicken needs 14-20 hours of light per day or their production will dwindle. With the winter coming on that is not possible to get natural light so you need to introduce another light source. A 40 wt light bulb is all you need to extend the light in the morning but if you use it in the coop you can help to warm thing up a little bit for them.

One other thing you must do is supplement their diet with the proper nutrition. Here is a list of vitamins in a good feed or can be added in other ways. Protein, Carbohydrates, Fats and oils, Vitamin A, Vitamin B complex, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, Calcium and Phosphorus, Zinc, Manganese, and Iodine. These are the primary thing for your bird’s health. So check out the feed bag and make sure there is a sufficient amount of these healthy elements in it. Remember you get what you pay for.