Weeks 14 & 15
12 November 2012
Well, guess our big surprise of the week? Yep, that's right. A new baby chicken was born this past week, ugly, covered with goo, and screaming like everything ... just like normal. This is Gus or Gussy depending on whether or not it's a girl or boy, which we won't know for a few months yet. I'm hoping girl because we need to start replacing layers.
After the last three sets of eggs we've had haven't hatched, we were beginning to think that maybe we should give up trying to use our homemade bators and wait until we could get a "real" one, but given the cost of commercially made ones it was going to be a long time before we could afford one. So, when we lost our beautiful duck, we still had some of her eggs and decided that we were just going to set all of the eggs we had to see if we could hatch some and just to fill up the bator I threw in some chicken eggs as well. We went 21 days (which is when chickens should hatch) and two of the three chicken eggs were no longer alive but this one was still moving around so I left it alone. I kept checking it everyday just to see what it was doing and everyday it was still moving. So the day it was born I had been busy busy and hadn't checked the bator all day. As I was getting ready to go to bed, I heard some peeping. At first I thought it was on the TV my husband was watching but then, as I realized he had the TV muted, I realized it was coming from the bator. My daughter and I opened up the door and this chick popped out of its egg.
Here it is at 24 hours old. Looks a lot better huh? Today it is all fluffy with a black spot on top of its head, eating and drinking and hopping around pecking at things. Of course, it thinks I am it's mother which might make the transition to yard life a little difficult later on, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Nice tomatoes, eh? My five tomato plants in my greenhouse are just loaded with these nuggets. Have I mentioned how excited this makes me? I am so stoked that I am growing tomatoes in November in northern Oklahoma. And not just tomatoes ... I also harvested a huge zucchini this week too and have several more on the plant as well as 2 quarts of green beans. We decided it was kind of funny that any more we get more harvest in the fall, winter and spring than we do in the traditional garden time of summer. If the summers continue to be 110 + degrees for weeks on end, it could save us a lot of hassle, water, and energy if we just plan to not grow stuff over the summer. Hmm, we'll have to think on that for a few weeks as we eagerly await the arrival of seed catalogs for 2013.
Pineapple anyone? We found a great sale for 99 cents a piece so we bought a bunch of pineapples and canned our own. Isn't it beautiful? It's so nice to be able to just grab a jar off the shelf and know exactly what is in it. We also canned another round of beans this week too, since we seem to eat them a lot as refried beans in burritos for lunches or as a side dish for a mexican meal. Next up ... canning chicken!
