6AM

These are the images I wanted to have accompany my last blog post, but the day I wrote the post it was cloudy and yucky. The next day, the day of these images the sun was perfect. When I getup and do chores, it is my favorite part of the morning. The sun is so warm, the air so clean, and all the poultry so happy to greet the morning. 

If you are wondering how our flocks are doing, they are growing. We have twelve new chicks in the kitchen. The library hatched chicks for the second year and I told the librarian that we were interested in taking a few. She called me and asked if I'd take all twelve. They camp from a farm, laid naturally, and kept in an incubator. My Dad read that we have a 50/50 chance of them being roosters. If they are roosters then they will probably end up in the crock pot. I'm hoping that at least half are layers, they are going to be so pretty. 

The ducklings are growing so fast! They are huge! The broilers are nearing the end of their growth. It looks like we won't get a chance to get this batch outside. Hopefully the next batch will go out. We have fences to move and poles to place. And turkeys are coming next month! The chickens in the photo are the "Sixers" they are so fast! We are looking forward to putting all of our chickens together in a month. Our flock will be huge then!

On Eggs

I've been doing a little research here and there on chickens and the benefits of farm fresh eggs and I thought I would share them with you. First though a quote from my brother-in-law "I don't really like store bought eggs, but I can't get enough of yours!"

From Williams Sonoma:

"What should you look for when buying farm fresh eggs?

You should look for pasture-raised, if possible.  The grass diet helps give the yolk a deep, beautiful orange color. They should be free of cracks and fresh (eggs can be sold as “Fresh” for up to 30 days from the time they are placed in cartons–or 45 days if a “use by” date is applied).   If you can get them within a few days of being laid, they are even better – another reason to develop a trusted relationship with a farmer or farm. Interestingly, it’s actually better to have eggs that are a week old or so for hard boiling.  The pH changes, allowing the egg to peel much more easily.  Hard boiled eggs with a dash of salt are a perfect snack food!  "

An interesting video on store-bought organic chicken eggs

From simple bites:

"You may be thinking, “I buy organic, free-range eggs from the grocery store”.  This is a great start, however, with the demand of “organic” and “naturally” raised products, more companies are jumping on board to sell you what you want.

This is great.  Our demand of good nourishing food is being met.  However,many standards are truly not what you may expect.

In order for eggs to be labeled “free-range” a chicken needs to have access to the outdoors.  This usually means hundreds of chicken confined to an industrial chicken house with a small slab of concrete to walk outdoors if they’d like.

Your “free-range egg” chickens are really spending their lives indoors in a ventilated area and will not have the nutrient levels as described above.  If you’re buying “vegetarian-fed eggs”, this is a sure sign that they do not have access to pasture as real chickens are not vegetarians.

Chickens live and thrive on a variety of worms and bugs outdoors which only a pasture can provide. "

 Some notes on our chickens and their eggs.

1) In the winter our chickens are kept inside and grain fed.  However, in the spring-fall our chickens live outside in a large fenced in area where they have access to grass, worms, bugs, and dirt to scratch in.

2) Our chickens have lots of space and light. If you would like to see where they live in the winter, please ask! We don't mind giving a tour! In the spring-fall in addition to their yard; they also have a coop large enough to sleep and lay in.

3) Due to cost our eggs are not organic or non-gmo. If we were to raise chickens on organic feed the price increase of buying organic feed would be passed on to you, our customer. If this is something you'd be interested in us doing, let us know.

4) During the winter we do expect our chickens to lay (some farmers don't) and provide them with adequate light to "trick" their normal rhythms into laying an egg daily. [For some additional reading check out this article by backyard chickens] Our reasons for doing this (as outlined in the article) is because our chickens are not pets.

5) When you purchase a dozen of our eggs you will find some are "funny" colors. That is because we have "Easter Eggers" in our flock and the shells of their eggs are blue!

6) Our chickens are laying about a dozen eggs a day, so if you need some eggs let us know!

Around Here

We've been keeping busy around the farm. Between picking up pears, peeling pears, canning pears, and eating pears we've been making salsa, playing with our turkeys, and receiving a new batch of broilers in the mail. Nothing like a little work to make your day go faster!

Stomper loves pears. He eats four a day when he's outside. It's a treat for me to watch him pick one up from the ground and just take a big bite. The pears have really cut down on the grocery bill! The turkeys really like the pears too. If we throw just one in they will chase each other to get it! It's pretty funny. I feel certain that one of the reasons God gave us animals was for entertainment purposes. We love to watch our turkeys run. Mom thinks they look prehistoric and I agree!

We bought a second batch of broilers. Our freezer has one chicken left in it, we are saving it for our Harvest Party in November. Mom has a chicken soup recipe she wants to try and it will be perfect for our harvest celebration!

This week-end marked the first day in preparing for a new adventure. Dad would like to try and raise sheep. The first step is to clear the field. We rented a bush hog and set aside two days to cut, trim, and clear the field. The men managed to clear about half the field. The rest they will work on as they have time. Maybe, just maybe, in a year we will have sheep!

Good Morning

Good morning, how about a little tour and update? We have a few new faces around the farm. The sun was perfect this morning and so after chores I took my camera out to take a few snapshots. 

You can see one of the four Toms slightly puffed up on the far right. Yes, you read that right, four toms. Out of nine turkeys we figure that four of them are male. Daily they strut their stuff to figure out who is boss, but they don't fight. We are hoping that Thanksgiving will come before they feel like fighting. Otherwise we will deal with them accordingly.

The pumpkins are growing, but we did not get as many as we wanted. Dad was really hoping for enough to let the daycare kiddos come out and pick their own. It looks like we will have just enough for our own needs. Jason's grandfather (who is an exceptional gardener) says that his didn't do too well either and wonders if we wound up with too many male plants. 

This is our rooster, Charcoal. Neighbors down the street from us had two roosters and didn't want any fights and asked if we'd like one. We were hoping to get a rooster in the batch of six that we bought this spring and so we happily said "Yes." Little Sister named him Charcoal after the black plumes on his tail. He is adjusting well to having so many ladies to himself, but he has not asserted himself yet over the older twelve hens.

This last month we added in the new six layers, the rooster, and removed a chicken who was pecking the others and it stressed out our flock quite a bit. They aren't laying as much as they used to, but they still are laying. We are getting between 6-9 eggs a day which is just enough for us to eat and sell a few on the side. Hopefully in the next week everyone will relax and get back to laying. The six new hens won't be laying until mid-September or early October.

The hens have not reduced their pen to dirt which has surprised us. They don't eat everything in sight either. The turkeys will eat everything down to stubble, but it seems like our hens are a little more picky. It has been interesting to learn which birds will eat what. For instance: the turkeys devour apples, the chickens just peck at them and the chickens devour bread while the turkeys just peck at them. Also the turkeys don't put themselves to bed a night we have to go out and encourage them into their coop, but the chickens go in as soon as the sun goes down.

 

This is Kee-La-La, Elle's kitty. The kitty is living here on the farm until my brother and his wife find a new apartment. She isn't too sure about the farm animals or my dog Vinnie. This morning she called me to her and I obliged in pets and rubs.

The garden is doing all right. We got sidetracked with our trip to MI and NY and then the wedding so it didn't get tended to well. We have a nice crop of tomatoes and I will be making salsa this year and some spaghetti sauce. It will be a nice change to do some canning around here. The pear trees are loaded so we will also be making tons of pear sauce. We have really missed pear sauce over the last year, since last years crop didn't do so great. We cannot complain since we don't prune, spray, or pick them, just let nature take its course.

This has been a summer of change and loss for us. Little Sisters kitty passed away in the beginning of the summer and her bunny passed away this week. One evening Jason came home with the above bunny for the daycare kiddos. The kids really enjoyed feeding Sara bunny so I thought it would be nice to continue to keep a bunny for them. Jason's bosses kids participate in 4H and one of the boys raises bunnies. He gave this one to us. Mom named her York Peppermint Patty.

I hope your day is lovely. I'm off to check for eggs and make lunch!

List Making

Layers in their new yard 

"Easter Egger" 

...Pig Piling Turkeys...

Silver Laced Wynodette 

"Broiler" Cornish-Rock Cross

In March I posted about our to do list for the spring. It was a little lengthy and quite daunting. This is what our list looks like now!

• Fence in the barnyard :: there is quite a lot of debate on to what that exactly means. The only decided part, put up a fence near the road, and do it sooner than later. -DONE >> read about it HERE
• Move the ducks to this coop area in the dog house - turned duck house - turned chicken coop and now back to duck house. -DONE >> read about it HERE
• Move duck house and turn it into a chicken coop then build a fence around it tall enough so the chickens stay out of the daycare yard.  -DONE
• Decide where the turkeys will go. -DONE
• Move rabbits into Rusty's old stall
• Clean out winter chicken coop to put meat birds in it -DONE
• Get brood box ready -DONE >> read about it HERE

It feels incredible to have some much done! It took longer than we planned, but we all have other jobs to do other than our growing poultry farm.

I was thinking, as I helped Jason with the fence, about our failures and successes over the past year that for people who have no recent experience with poultry, we're doing pretty good. Last year we lost quite a few of our broilers in the first few weeks, maybe half all together before we butchered them. This year we lost one broiler and one turkey, I think that's quite an improvement.

We also have fences. I had no idea how much I would love a fence until we put ours up. We only have one more fence to go, for the turkeys, but we have a little time before it becomes a real problem. The real beauty of the fence and our preparedness is that next spring when we buy chicks they won't need to be on the porch!

Here is the next list:

• Butcher 5 Rabbits (so we can stop feeding them and because I really want to make rabbit stew)
• Move Rabbits
• Plant Garden
• Finish Turkey Coop
• Finish Turkey Fence
• Fix Chicken Coop to fit in the nesting boxes better
• Plant Garden
• Plant New Blueberry Bush

I am assuming that this list will take us through the next few months.

The other day Mom and I sat down and planned out the garden. Our inspiration is this garden from Better Homes and Gardens.

Source

This is what we came up with:

This is in an effort to plant what we can handle, not what we want to eat. We will also have a vine garden in near the poultry yards in the middle of the "L" shape that their fences make.

How is your Spring going?

A Good Fence

Jason managed to work his 40 hours in four days in order to have Friday off to work with Dad on the fence. The fence. This is the much debated fence: where to put it, how big to make it, how tall, ect. We've been debating all winter and we finally came to a conclusion. The fence will start where the play yard stops and will stop at the rock wall. Then we'd make an "L" shape to leave room for the vine garden. The men decided that Friday was the day.

Friday morning I took Stomper and the other daycare kiddo to the library and then for a surprise picnic in the park. When I left around 10, Jason was getting ready to go out and work with Dad. When I returned I assumed I would come home to find them half finished. I drove past the yard slowly and was surprised to see many tall fence poles!

When they came in for a bit to eat around 1 I asked them how close they were to finished. Jason told me they had three or more poles to go! That's ten holes dug and ten poles set in less then three hours! I am impressed and proud of our men.

The chickens and turkeys are going to have lots of space to roam and peck at. In a perfect world they'd be free range; but with neighborhood dogs and cats, and two busy roads near-by we think fenced in poultry is the best. 

It is fascinating to me how thirteen poles can make us all feel more accomplished and more put together. At least Mom and I feel that way. We were out in the barnyard at the recently relocated chicken coop and we were commenting how good the fence poles were making us feel. What the poles represented for us, a sense of completion, that we weren't winging it. That we do, in fact, know what we are doing.

The photo below is our yard. I am standing at the rock wall the marks the beginning of some over grown fields. To the left (not pictured) is the duck pond. To the far right beyond that row of pine/evergreen trees is the street. In the background you can see a bright yellow slide, that is the play yard, with our house sitting in the back of the photo. The chicken yard takes up the bottom of the "L" shape with the turkeys receiving the "leg" of the "L". I cannot wait to take photos when there is fence up and chickens in!

New Arrivals

You know that you crossing over towards farm enthusiast when you get excited about a fence.

Thursday after work Mom and Dad put up a fence 3/4 of the way around the pond (the rest will be done soon) to keep the ducks from wandering away. A few years ago when Little Sister had a pair of Peking Ducks they managed to waddle out from behind the house, across the busy street, and to the trailer park across the road. Dad is afraid, rightly so, for the ducks safety. The fence will go a long way to keep the ducks and a certain little boy who likes to help with chores safe. This Mommy worries every time he goes out beyond the daycare yard to "help" with chores; I fear him falling in. With the fence up everyone can breath a little sigh of relief.

We got the call today that our chick order had arrived at the farm store. We picked them up this afternoon. The final tally: 1 White Barred Rock, 2 Silver Laced Wynodettes, 3 Araucana, 25 Cross (meat birds), and 10 Turkeys. The porch is quite noisy. 

Under the Snow, Waiting for Spring

This is what our garden and outdoor coop looks like.

There are so many plans in the works for spring. There is a growing list.

• Fence in the barnyard :: there is quite a lot of debate on to what that exactly means. The only decided part, put up a fence near the road, and do it sooner than later.
• Move the ducks to this coop area in the dog house - turned duck house - turned chicken coop and now back to duck house.
• Move duck house and turn it into a chicken coop then build a fence around it tall enough so the chickens stay out of the daycare yard.
• Decide where the turkeys will go.
• Move rabbits into Rusty's old stall
• Clean out winter chicken coop to put meat birds in it
• Get brood box ready

And that it just what needs to be done in April.

(Above) This is where the chickens (the layers) new home will be placed and built,

(Above) This the is brood box turned chicken roost that needs to be changed back into a brood box. It's buried in the snow. We need it ready by the end of April ... no pressure.

(Above and Below) Even though we are feeling a little pressed for time we can still see the light. These little someday blueberries will bloom and grow with out our help. At least we have that taken care of...

And if that is not enough to boost our spirits, below is a photo collage of last year.

Top right :: freshly tilled. Top left :: slowly growing

Bottom right :: a forest of weeds. Bottom left :: fall