20 October 2013
Well, I proved to myself that I could blog every day on another site so I should be able to keep up with a little more prolific blogging here - not that the garden and critters need a blog everyday, but it seems routine is my friend.
So, I discussed the goats yesterday and Vincent's antics. Today he was in fine form as we took them out on their leads. First thing he managed to do was climb underneath my lawn chair. Yes, completely underneath. Head, tail, and everything in between.
No, full grown goats don't really fit under lawn chairs, thus the antics to remove him.
On the gardening front, most things are winding down. We had a brief freeze the other night but it didn't bother anything. The tomatoes are still going and so are the peppers and eggplant. Most of the garden has been converted at this point into fall/winter garden mode.
Broccoli, savoy cabbages, and brussel sprouts are starting to become distinct plants rather than spindly seedlings. The peas are growing great although they didn't germinate well so the rows are kind of straggly looking. The lettuce, spinach, and collard greens had to all be replanted due to the escape of a chicken while I was away last week.
I was not thrilled by the rogue activity but am hopeful that my new seeding will have time to grow before the heavy frosts and freezes show up.
What I am thrilled about, although somewhat puzzled by too, is that my artichokes and Mexican Sour Gherkins are finally growing. Hmm. I planted both in the spring in various places. Neither have been eaten or scavenged during the growing season. However, neither of them has grown at all.
The artichokes seemed to have completely died off and we were about to give up hope of ever being able to grow them this far north. But about three weeks ago after a rainy spell, two plants came up in the straw bales and another came up in a pot out front.
The Mexican Sour Gherkins were planted in the Thomas Jefferson bed, which was a flop with the exception of producing white patty pan squash. The gherkins held their ground but never produced and all but one plant died off in the heat of August. I decided to transplant it then and have kept it watered well. And today, I have 6 itty-bitty teeny-weeny cucumbers set on the vines.
It's almost amusing, all this time and all this work, and all the prolific amounts of other produce we managed to harvest, but here I am excited about 6 of the most miniscule cukes I've ever seen in my life.
Why?
Because gardeners get excited about things like that. Cucumbers that most people have never seen or heard of and most people would have given up on by now or pulled as a weed, that will produce enough for a snack for one, are my pride and joy this year.
Thomas Jefferson grew this cucumber in his garden, 200+ years ago. That's just amazing to me.
For all of our food savvy tv shows and magazines and our hugely varied diets, our meals are still basically the same things people have been eating for hundreds of years.
And I grew it in my backyard.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Goats? Oh, yes, goats.
19 October 2013
This year at the county fair some friends of ours were helping in the petting zoo. They had brought two of their young goats to be petted on and one of them kept eating my shirt through the fence. As I stooped to pet him, we were informed that they were for sell.
My husband looked at me with a sparkle in his eye. "Goats are magical creatures" that glint said. "Goats will solve all our problems" it hinted. I knew I was beat right then and there. I knew come the end of the week we would be bringing home goats. So I said, "It's up to you, dear. But you're taking care of them." What else could I do.
I wanted goats. My children and I are allergic to cow's milk and when I lived overseas I came to love goat's cheese, so I've always wanted a goat for milk and cheese. I had researched the ones I wanted, too. Nigerian dwarf goats - little ones that give lots of milk, that start out the size of cats and stay smaller than a black lab, that don't eat a million pounds of food in one day.
But did we get Nigerian Dwarf goats?
Noooooooooooo.
We got Boer goats, big ones that are grown for meat. Big ones that eat a fifty pound sack of feed in a week as well as good grass hay and alfalfa too. Big ones that can knock me over even though they aren't full grown.
Sigh.
I named them after artists. It seemed amusing at the time. Vincent van Goat was just too good to pass up, so of course the little girl had to have an artists name as well. She is Artemisia Gentleschi, a 16th century painter from Italy. Artemisia fit her name from the start. She is very gentle and shy, every bit a little lady even if she is a goat.
Vincent, well, he's certainly grown into his name. The list of his escapades, you ask? Read on my friends, read on.
1) He figured out how to open the door between the chicken house and the garage, get into the feed bins, and help himself to a smorgasbord of chicken feed, rabbit feed, and goat feed.
2) He learned to unlock the hook and eye latch on the gate to the yard with his lips so he can wander through the garden and eat at will.
3) He managed to bump the rabbit feeder enough that it pulled away from the cage and then he opened the lid and poured out the contents. He really likes rabbit feed.
We've only had them for a month now, so I figure with enough time he'll figure out even more things. Lol. If he'd only figure out how to stand up to our bantam rooster that runs him off from the food bin and chases him out of the house, he'd have it made.
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| Artemisia, our sweet little girl |
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| Vincent, our naughty little boy |
This year at the county fair some friends of ours were helping in the petting zoo. They had brought two of their young goats to be petted on and one of them kept eating my shirt through the fence. As I stooped to pet him, we were informed that they were for sell.
My husband looked at me with a sparkle in his eye. "Goats are magical creatures" that glint said. "Goats will solve all our problems" it hinted. I knew I was beat right then and there. I knew come the end of the week we would be bringing home goats. So I said, "It's up to you, dear. But you're taking care of them." What else could I do.
I wanted goats. My children and I are allergic to cow's milk and when I lived overseas I came to love goat's cheese, so I've always wanted a goat for milk and cheese. I had researched the ones I wanted, too. Nigerian dwarf goats - little ones that give lots of milk, that start out the size of cats and stay smaller than a black lab, that don't eat a million pounds of food in one day.
But did we get Nigerian Dwarf goats?
Noooooooooooo.
We got Boer goats, big ones that are grown for meat. Big ones that eat a fifty pound sack of feed in a week as well as good grass hay and alfalfa too. Big ones that can knock me over even though they aren't full grown.
Sigh.
I named them after artists. It seemed amusing at the time. Vincent van Goat was just too good to pass up, so of course the little girl had to have an artists name as well. She is Artemisia Gentleschi, a 16th century painter from Italy. Artemisia fit her name from the start. She is very gentle and shy, every bit a little lady even if she is a goat.
Vincent, well, he's certainly grown into his name. The list of his escapades, you ask? Read on my friends, read on.
1) He figured out how to open the door between the chicken house and the garage, get into the feed bins, and help himself to a smorgasbord of chicken feed, rabbit feed, and goat feed.
2) He learned to unlock the hook and eye latch on the gate to the yard with his lips so he can wander through the garden and eat at will.
3) He managed to bump the rabbit feeder enough that it pulled away from the cage and then he opened the lid and poured out the contents. He really likes rabbit feed.
We've only had them for a month now, so I figure with enough time he'll figure out even more things. Lol. If he'd only figure out how to stand up to our bantam rooster that runs him off from the food bin and chases him out of the house, he'd have it made.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Produce totals, rainy July, and making hominy
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| Some of the summer's harvest |
Growing a garden, raising birds, and generally keeping up with life is a time consuming task. After the last two years of drought and horrendous heat that killed our garden pretty much before it had a chance to start, we were determined this year to put measures into place to get a good harvest. We planted early, we used a greenhouse, we set up water saving devices, and we've just been seriously devoted to keeping it going. Of course, this year has been COMPLETELY different weather wise. Sigh. We had a dry warm winter with hardly any precipitation we allowed our greenhouse vegies to grow pretty well but then spring came and instead of getting warm and staying warm, it got warm for a few days and then we'd have a freeze ... then it got warm for a few days and then we'd have a freeze. This continued all the way through April and into May so instead of planting out all of the started vegies we grew early, we moved them into and out of the greenhouse every single day, morning and night until all of the freezes subsided.
That was nutso but also explains where a lot of our time went.
Surprisingly, I sat down today and did produce totals for the month of July and we harvested over 300 eggs and more than 32 pounds of vegies. At this point I'm getting a bucket load of these beauties every single day.
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| Eggplant and onion pizza with homemade ranch dressing ... yummo |
So, with all this produce we've been accumulating we have been canning and preserving everything we aren't using right away. This has lead us to some experimentation. Some have been complete successes, like our sauerkraut (which I don't eat, ha), dried basil, and dehydrated potatoes. Others have been a headache ... and backache, foot ache, stomach ache, etc ... Hominy is one of those such projects that I wouldn't recommend trying. It not only took forever to make, I don't think our canning efforts worked very well either, so we probably won't ever get to eat any of it. We only did a small batch luckily, so we didn't waste a bunch of food but I can guarantee we will never be making hominy again.
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| Boiling the hominy |
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| Using up those eggs |
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| Our little girl silkie we named Hoshi No Hikari |
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| Some of the baby buns enjoying the grass and the sunshine |
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| One of our many many melons - although we aren't sure what kind they are. That's what we get for planting six varieties all in one big raised bed. The vines just grew everywhere. Love the melons though. |
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| Our extremely odd red potatoes that were sprouting while still growing attached to the mother plant. |
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| A butternut squash growing along nicely |
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| More eggplant ... anyone need some?? |
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Straw bale gardening, fodder for the poultry, and gardening with Thomas Jefferson
Well, we have embarked on yet another gardening adventure ... or is it two more gardening adventures ... or is it three?? hmmmm Whatever the count, we are moving forward with our usual blind leading the blind way. Nothing is too difficult to achieve. Is it?
Gardening adventure #1 - straw bale growing. This is essentially exactly like it's name suggests, growing things in a straw bale. Sounds simple, right? We thought so plus it was an inexpensive way to use the vast expanse of concrete that was our driveway as a gardening area without the work of tearing up thick concrete and building new raised beds. So, off we went and bought ourselves some straw bales. They are cheap here. $5 each. (Sometimes it pays to live in farm country.) Then we did some research and some more research and some more research ... and decided it maybe wasn't quite as simple as we thought but it was still simple enough to try.
We set the bales up in the driveway, grain ends up baling wire wrapped around the sides. At first we put three in a long line and began the week long process of getting them ready to plant. For three days, we watered the bales. Yep, you heard me right. We watered the straw bales. And yes, I felt completely ridiculous doing so. Our driveway is visible to at least six neighbors without them even leaving their properties so I guess it's a good thing that they all think we're nutso anyway. Then for five days we fertilized AND watered the bales, as if watering the bales wasn't goofy looking enough.
Finally, we used the sawsall and cut v shaped trenches in the top of each bale about six inches wide and deep, filled them with some garden soil, and plopped in some of those overgrown squash plants along with a trellis. And true to Oklahoma weather, two days later we got freezing temps. So, then we wrapped everything in plastic sheeting and added some hot water bottles and believe it or not, several freezing nights, a freak snow storm, and a day of sleet later, the squash are still growing strong. I'm impressed even if you aren't. Lol.
Gardening adventure #2 - growing fodder for the birds. This was a no brainer decision. We've been spending way too much money to feed all those critters who've moved into our hearts and minds and had to find a new way to feed to lower our costs OR get rid of some of the critters. Getting rid of critters, needless to say, was not going to happen so ... We found fodder. Basically fodder is grains that are allowed to sprout and grow for six days and then fed out. Supposedly it has a higher nutrition value and is more easily digested than other forms of feed. I don't know about all that scientific stuff. I'm the black sheep artist in a family of scientists, after all. But I do know that my animals LOVE it. They swarm me to get their share. We started small just to see what was involved by just sprouting in bowls in the kitchen but have now moved to growing in large plastic trays and buckets.
Our logistics involve around 350 lbs of animal and we feed out at a 4% rate. So we start with 3 lbs of grain (we mix oats, wheat, sunflower seeds, and a mixed plot spike) and end up with around 12 - 14 lbs of feed. It makes a huge relief in our feed bill.
Gardening adventure #3 - a Thomas Jefferson garden. We both read "A Rich Spot of Earth" by Peter J. Hatch recently, cover to cover with enthralled rapture and it sparked the idea to dedicate one of our raised garden beds to growing just vegetables that were grown by Thomas Jefferson. It's been a fun project to research but there are a lot of books that I'd like to own and read about his gardens, especially the one that includes his diaries and journals. We included in our bed tennis ball lettuce, mexican sour gherkins, costoluto genovese tomatoes, scarlet runner beans, asparagus beans, and white scallop squash which Jefferson called Cymlings. It's all planted now so fingers crossed it all grows and produces. The scallop squash I started about three weeks ago, so they are nice and big now but everything else went in the ground as seeds today. I'll have to post pics as everything fills in.
Probably the most interesting thing about this project has been the research into what we now call "heirloom" seeds. There is a raging debate among gardeners here in the good ol' USA about the use of heirlooms, hybrids, or GMO's. Personally, I think there's a whole lot of hype in the arguments and not much truth being given out. I try to stay out of it because some of the ignorance gets me hot under the collar. But it has made what I've found through research into seeds and gardening and ancient seed varieties so much more interesting. Like - Did you know ...
- all orange carrots are a hybrid that were created in the Netherlands in the 1500's. Before that carrots were purple, white, and occasionally red. Hmm.
- cabbage and all it's variants have been eaten for over 5000 years and have been being hybridized for that long too.
- most of what we consider garden staples today like potatoes, tomatoes, and beans weren't commonly grown until after the 1700's. Before that they were unknown to most of the world and were widely considered poisonous until the mid to late 1800's.
I could go on and on but I guess I'll end this for the night. No pics this time. Nothing real exciting to see except piles of dirt and straw bales. Hopefully next time I post I'll have more visual matter to include. Night all!
Gardening adventure #1 - straw bale growing. This is essentially exactly like it's name suggests, growing things in a straw bale. Sounds simple, right? We thought so plus it was an inexpensive way to use the vast expanse of concrete that was our driveway as a gardening area without the work of tearing up thick concrete and building new raised beds. So, off we went and bought ourselves some straw bales. They are cheap here. $5 each. (Sometimes it pays to live in farm country.) Then we did some research and some more research and some more research ... and decided it maybe wasn't quite as simple as we thought but it was still simple enough to try.
We set the bales up in the driveway, grain ends up baling wire wrapped around the sides. At first we put three in a long line and began the week long process of getting them ready to plant. For three days, we watered the bales. Yep, you heard me right. We watered the straw bales. And yes, I felt completely ridiculous doing so. Our driveway is visible to at least six neighbors without them even leaving their properties so I guess it's a good thing that they all think we're nutso anyway. Then for five days we fertilized AND watered the bales, as if watering the bales wasn't goofy looking enough.
Finally, we used the sawsall and cut v shaped trenches in the top of each bale about six inches wide and deep, filled them with some garden soil, and plopped in some of those overgrown squash plants along with a trellis. And true to Oklahoma weather, two days later we got freezing temps. So, then we wrapped everything in plastic sheeting and added some hot water bottles and believe it or not, several freezing nights, a freak snow storm, and a day of sleet later, the squash are still growing strong. I'm impressed even if you aren't. Lol.
Gardening adventure #2 - growing fodder for the birds. This was a no brainer decision. We've been spending way too much money to feed all those critters who've moved into our hearts and minds and had to find a new way to feed to lower our costs OR get rid of some of the critters. Getting rid of critters, needless to say, was not going to happen so ... We found fodder. Basically fodder is grains that are allowed to sprout and grow for six days and then fed out. Supposedly it has a higher nutrition value and is more easily digested than other forms of feed. I don't know about all that scientific stuff. I'm the black sheep artist in a family of scientists, after all. But I do know that my animals LOVE it. They swarm me to get their share. We started small just to see what was involved by just sprouting in bowls in the kitchen but have now moved to growing in large plastic trays and buckets.
Our logistics involve around 350 lbs of animal and we feed out at a 4% rate. So we start with 3 lbs of grain (we mix oats, wheat, sunflower seeds, and a mixed plot spike) and end up with around 12 - 14 lbs of feed. It makes a huge relief in our feed bill.
Gardening adventure #3 - a Thomas Jefferson garden. We both read "A Rich Spot of Earth" by Peter J. Hatch recently, cover to cover with enthralled rapture and it sparked the idea to dedicate one of our raised garden beds to growing just vegetables that were grown by Thomas Jefferson. It's been a fun project to research but there are a lot of books that I'd like to own and read about his gardens, especially the one that includes his diaries and journals. We included in our bed tennis ball lettuce, mexican sour gherkins, costoluto genovese tomatoes, scarlet runner beans, asparagus beans, and white scallop squash which Jefferson called Cymlings. It's all planted now so fingers crossed it all grows and produces. The scallop squash I started about three weeks ago, so they are nice and big now but everything else went in the ground as seeds today. I'll have to post pics as everything fills in.
Probably the most interesting thing about this project has been the research into what we now call "heirloom" seeds. There is a raging debate among gardeners here in the good ol' USA about the use of heirlooms, hybrids, or GMO's. Personally, I think there's a whole lot of hype in the arguments and not much truth being given out. I try to stay out of it because some of the ignorance gets me hot under the collar. But it has made what I've found through research into seeds and gardening and ancient seed varieties so much more interesting. Like - Did you know ...
- all orange carrots are a hybrid that were created in the Netherlands in the 1500's. Before that carrots were purple, white, and occasionally red. Hmm.
- cabbage and all it's variants have been eaten for over 5000 years and have been being hybridized for that long too.
- most of what we consider garden staples today like potatoes, tomatoes, and beans weren't commonly grown until after the 1700's. Before that they were unknown to most of the world and were widely considered poisonous until the mid to late 1800's.
I could go on and on but I guess I'll end this for the night. No pics this time. Nothing real exciting to see except piles of dirt and straw bales. Hopefully next time I post I'll have more visual matter to include. Night all!
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Gutters gardens, baby turkeys, and growing squash in the living room
5 March 2013
So, how long has it been since I posted a blog entry? Well, my friends, I guess that's just too long since my husband has been bugging me to post again for a couple of weeks. And now that we aren't in the depth of a cold dark winter, and I have plants growing and babies popping out, I guess I have something to post.
So, I guess biggest news first. BABY TURKEYS!!! Thanks to our new incubator we got for Christmas, we have been able to hatch babies successfully for the first time and we are so excited. We set 24 eggs initially and replaced 2 of them a few days in when we discovered we had a couple that were cracked. Within 10 days we had 19 babies growing along well and removed the eggs that weren't fertile. Now turkeys are supposed to take 28 days to hatch so we were preparing to unplug the turner and move the eggs to cartons on day 26 along with raising the humidity to help with hatching to about 65%, however, on day 25 we were candling the eggs to see if they were all still alive and we discovered 4 eggs had already internally pipped.
After scrambling around and resetting the incubator with stationary cartons to hold the eggs in an upright position (the best for hatching success) and adding sponges to raise the humidity quickly, we put them in "lockdown" early. Within 24 hours we had our first eggs pipped externally, and 24 hours after that we had babies like the one pictured above. The one looking up at us was #1 and the one laying down was #2. Of course, while most hatched easily and well on their own, we had a couple we had to help out. The biggest ones seem to have trouble turning around in the shells to be able to completely "zip" the top of the shell off so we ended up finishing the zipper for them and let them pop themselves out. All said and done we ended up with 15 live babies from 19 eggs.
They are now two week old working on three weeks old and we've had no losses, which is a huge improvement over our shipped birdies that we've had in the past. So all-in-all it's been a major success. Now, if we could just sell a few and make a little money ... Oh well, all in time. Here's some more baby pics to enjoy.
My other project of late has been starting vegies for the garden. I've started tomatoes early numerous times in the past, but this year I expanded my experience and started tomatoes, melons, cucumbers and winter squash as well. Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch ......... I NOW know that starting these things indoors is a great idea only I shouldn't have started them at the same time I started my tomatoes. We have winter squash in pots literally everywhere and some are starting to put on blooms!! So we are scrambling now to get them planted outdoors ... somewhere, anywhere, that we can artificially keep warm until we quit having snow and cold. A friend of mine suggested that we just build trellises in our living room and let the squash grow at will with the added bonus that we would avoid the dreaded squash bugs that our warm summers bring. I think I'll pass for this year and just hope we can keep them at bay long enough to get a harvest.
And newest of all the projects, wedged in between giving spas to cold wet chickens, splinting a broken turkey leg, and building nest boxes for rabbits that will hopefully kindle soon, is building a gutter garden. It isn't done yet so maybe, if I post next week, I'll have some pics of the in process and finished project complete with strawberries ... Just a little teaser for you. And a few more pics for your viewing pleasure -
So, how long has it been since I posted a blog entry? Well, my friends, I guess that's just too long since my husband has been bugging me to post again for a couple of weeks. And now that we aren't in the depth of a cold dark winter, and I have plants growing and babies popping out, I guess I have something to post.
After scrambling around and resetting the incubator with stationary cartons to hold the eggs in an upright position (the best for hatching success) and adding sponges to raise the humidity quickly, we put them in "lockdown" early. Within 24 hours we had our first eggs pipped externally, and 24 hours after that we had babies like the one pictured above. The one looking up at us was #1 and the one laying down was #2. Of course, while most hatched easily and well on their own, we had a couple we had to help out. The biggest ones seem to have trouble turning around in the shells to be able to completely "zip" the top of the shell off so we ended up finishing the zipper for them and let them pop themselves out. All said and done we ended up with 15 live babies from 19 eggs.
They are now two week old working on three weeks old and we've had no losses, which is a huge improvement over our shipped birdies that we've had in the past. So all-in-all it's been a major success. Now, if we could just sell a few and make a little money ... Oh well, all in time. Here's some more baby pics to enjoy.
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| Pushing off the top of the shell |
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| Drying off |
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| Zippering |
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| two weeks old with feathers |
My other project of late has been starting vegies for the garden. I've started tomatoes early numerous times in the past, but this year I expanded my experience and started tomatoes, melons, cucumbers and winter squash as well. Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch ......... I NOW know that starting these things indoors is a great idea only I shouldn't have started them at the same time I started my tomatoes. We have winter squash in pots literally everywhere and some are starting to put on blooms!! So we are scrambling now to get them planted outdoors ... somewhere, anywhere, that we can artificially keep warm until we quit having snow and cold. A friend of mine suggested that we just build trellises in our living room and let the squash grow at will with the added bonus that we would avoid the dreaded squash bugs that our warm summers bring. I think I'll pass for this year and just hope we can keep them at bay long enough to get a harvest.
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| Winter squash two weeks ago |
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| one of over a hundred tomato plants |
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| Our five new baby khaki campbell ducks |
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| Taking a swim in the bathtub |
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| dehydrating potatoes from our 50lbs |
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| Seed pack design - made for a seed swap but I was playing with logos for the farm and like this one |
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Week One 2013 - new babies and everything
Okay, before you say it, I know it's been a couple of months since I posted anything. Life just seems to have a way of getting in the way of sitting down and writing things out to share. So today, for the first time in two months I have a Wednesday afternoon that I'm not tied down doing anything in particular so here's a new blog post from me.
Filling everything in since my last post would be a nightmare I think. I'm not even sure I remember what I had for breakfast yesterday let alone what all has happened since November. But I'll give it a go...
Let's see, sad thing first - we lost all but one of our ducks to an opossum. Stupid thing killed two of our male ducks but didn't even try to eat them. We were not happy. However, our surviving female has integrated well with the chickens and turkeys in the coop so alls well I guess until we can get more in the spring. Hehehe, just today as I was feeding them greens from the garden bed (broccoli plants that overwintered well in the greenhouse) I saw Silver snatch bites of food from one of the chickens beak. Every time the chicken would pick up a piece of broccoli leaf, Silver would take it away and swallow it. At least she's holding her own.
We also have raised two sets of meat birds and processed all of them. What a chore between feeding them fermented grains, cleaning their pens, processing them all, freezing, canning, making stock ... Jeepers. But now my freezer is FULL of chicken, and my pantry is FULL of chicken and stock plus I have several jars of homemade bouillon. Think we'll get tired of eating chicken soon??? Lol. After paying for the feed, the birds, the shipping, the straw, the cleaning stuff, and the electric bill I'm pretty sure it would be tons cheaper to just buy it at the store. Oh well, at least we know what they ate and how they were treated in the process of their short lives.
Christmas we spent at my parents house with my sister and nephew. Got a new Nook HD and the first session of a writing course that will start this spring that I'm really looking forward to. If I could just afford the other several months of it ... dreams I guess. At least it's a start and maybe we'll come up with the funds for another couple of the sessions if we sell enough turkey poults and eggs this year.
New Years my dad then took the whole clan of us out for dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and then we went to see MannHeim Steamroller in concert. It was awesome and a great start for a new year.
In other news this month, we hatched out 4 baby turkeys from a set of 5 eggs. All of them started out fertile but one "quit" the day before lock down. It happens I guess. Supposedly even the big hatcheries with all the fancy incubator systems only get between 70 and 80% hatch rate so I think we did pretty well in our new little incubator. I've started putting out feelers for selling eggs and baby poults in places so hopefully we'll have some buyers before too long. We set another 25 eggs yesterday that should hatch in the mid February. It would be great if we could sell ALL of them.
So here's a pic of the babies!
And in the gardening arena, I have three 72 cell seed flats planted with various items. Over 100 cells are tomatoes (not sure where they are going to all get planted ... hmm, maybe I can sell some of those too) and almost all of the tomatoes are already up and sprouted. I also planted peppers, parsley, basil, and some squashes along with 36 cells of artichokes. Warm weather better hurry up and arrive for good! My green thumbs are itching!
Filling everything in since my last post would be a nightmare I think. I'm not even sure I remember what I had for breakfast yesterday let alone what all has happened since November. But I'll give it a go...
Let's see, sad thing first - we lost all but one of our ducks to an opossum. Stupid thing killed two of our male ducks but didn't even try to eat them. We were not happy. However, our surviving female has integrated well with the chickens and turkeys in the coop so alls well I guess until we can get more in the spring. Hehehe, just today as I was feeding them greens from the garden bed (broccoli plants that overwintered well in the greenhouse) I saw Silver snatch bites of food from one of the chickens beak. Every time the chicken would pick up a piece of broccoli leaf, Silver would take it away and swallow it. At least she's holding her own.
We also have raised two sets of meat birds and processed all of them. What a chore between feeding them fermented grains, cleaning their pens, processing them all, freezing, canning, making stock ... Jeepers. But now my freezer is FULL of chicken, and my pantry is FULL of chicken and stock plus I have several jars of homemade bouillon. Think we'll get tired of eating chicken soon??? Lol. After paying for the feed, the birds, the shipping, the straw, the cleaning stuff, and the electric bill I'm pretty sure it would be tons cheaper to just buy it at the store. Oh well, at least we know what they ate and how they were treated in the process of their short lives.
Christmas we spent at my parents house with my sister and nephew. Got a new Nook HD and the first session of a writing course that will start this spring that I'm really looking forward to. If I could just afford the other several months of it ... dreams I guess. At least it's a start and maybe we'll come up with the funds for another couple of the sessions if we sell enough turkey poults and eggs this year.
New Years my dad then took the whole clan of us out for dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and then we went to see MannHeim Steamroller in concert. It was awesome and a great start for a new year.
In other news this month, we hatched out 4 baby turkeys from a set of 5 eggs. All of them started out fertile but one "quit" the day before lock down. It happens I guess. Supposedly even the big hatcheries with all the fancy incubator systems only get between 70 and 80% hatch rate so I think we did pretty well in our new little incubator. I've started putting out feelers for selling eggs and baby poults in places so hopefully we'll have some buyers before too long. We set another 25 eggs yesterday that should hatch in the mid February. It would be great if we could sell ALL of them.
So here's a pic of the babies!
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| Pipping it's shell |
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| Coming out, wings first |
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| Getting his head out |
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| It's so hard to stand up when you're first born |
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| 2 days old |
Monday, November 12, 2012
Surprise packages, winter produce, and a bit of canning
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!
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.
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