Progress on the Homestead!

We've made a bit of progress towards getting the spring work caught up, but we didn't get competely there.

Friday evening:
A valiant attempt to come home from the day job early fell flat, but it was a beautiful evening even if it started late.  Friday is usually date night but De and I had several mini-dates through the week, and decided we'd had enough of eating out for the week.

The evening was spent getting some 2' tall chicken wire in place along the bottom of the woven wire cattle fence between us and the neighbor.  Some of the girls have been squeezing through the weave and roaming around the neighbor's yard.  They are wonderful neighbors (He's a cousin) and really don't care if the birds are there or not, but they have a relatively new young dog who is still very "puppy" and are not sure she is "chicken safe" yet.  Before I got home, one of the Red Stars had gotten stuck in the in fence and managed to rub off a patch of feathers under her wing, putting up a noisy fuss the whole time.  De and K (the neighbor lady) came to the aid of our avian damsel in distress.  Then somewhere along the line the puppy apparently got worked up with the chicken squawking and K's grandkids yelling, and took an obligatory nip at the bird.  We think she broke the skin, but there wasn't much damage.  De and K freed the bird, sprayed some Blu-Kote on her injuries, and held on to her until things quieted down.  The bird seems to be just fine, and K the neighbor is recovering nicely.  She felt so bad for the bird, we got texts over the weekend asked how the bird was doing.  In any case, we had the chicken wire and we got down to doing the job.

Saturday:
Saturday AM we cleaned out some more garden beds along with pitching the coop and starting another compost pile.  It was kind of one of 'those' mornings.  I had hoped to do a bit more mowing but the  tractor had a charging system warning light on and needed some 'love' it wasn't going to get that day.  I needed to do some tilling, but the tiller had a flat and I could not for the life of me find the tire inflation attachment for the compressor (I now have three and a desire to find a manual pump) so that section of the garden got worked up with the hoe.

Saturday afternoon we went into town to pick up chicken feed, a bale of pine shavings, and garden plants.  Sadly, late May is early for us to get the plants in.  Usually it's mid-June and finding just the varieties we want can be challenging, so we often settle for "that ought to be fine".  The good news is, at least this year, the other folks in the county are worse slackers than I am and we got all the varieties of all the plants we wanted.  We came home and got the plants in their newly 'made' beds, and also the opportunity to feel every last muscle we had that evening and the next morning.

That means we have in the ground:

• Potatoes
• Onions
• Peas
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Egg Plant
• Brocholli
• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Sweet Potatoes
• Cabbage
• Brussels Sprouts
• Green Beans
• Strawberries
• A bunch of herbs

To go are:

• Corn
• Carrots
• Parsnips
• Beets
• Zucchini
• Yellow summer squash
• Stripetti Squash
• Butternut Squash
• Cantelope
• Maybe kale

Never seem to have a problem getting a team to fall out for bed clearing duty!!

Our first year for sweet potatoes.  We haven't a clue what we're doing.  Six starts (slips? plants?) in the ground.

Getting the tomatoes in!

The 'ol man taking a "breather"

Sunday:
An 'off' day spent worshiping in the morning and enjoying time with family.  No garden work got done, but we're both ok with that.  Family time is great and we need a day to 'heal' anyway.

Monday (today):
The tractor got fixed, the tiller got fixed, we got a few more seeds it the ground, and some of the garden tilled up before we got rained out.  We used the day to go a local Amish/Mennonite dry goods (and cheese and some produce) store where we stocked up on some need grocery items.  Then we went to an Amish/Mennonite hardware store and picked up a combined Mother's Day/ Father's Day gift to each other.  We bought a 'hand powered' reel mower.  Not real as is 'actually exists' (or the 'real' apposed to 'imaginary' for all you math and science folks).  Reel as in the blades are curved reel instead of flat.  We wanted something to mow a bit of the lawn near the house without having deal with a pull starting push mower or the tractor with the 60" deck.  Odd I know, but its a wonderful thing and we love it!

De with out new "Power Tool" - People power,  that is!

In other homestead news, Houdini (our escape artist) the Easter Egger has gone broody!  We're letting her set on three eggs, one of hers and two Red Star eggs, and will see how it all works out.  We haven't had a chance to candle them yet.  We see Fred (yes - he's still among the living) doing his rooster thing with the Red Stars and Orps, but not so much with the Easter Eggers.  I'm scrambling to get something around for her to hatch her eggs out in, since the nesting boxes sit about 18 inches off the floor of the coop.

Houdini all puffed out and doing the Mother Hen thing

With all the garden work and shopping and all, I still took a few quiet moments to remember friends from the Corps who never made it home, and all those gave all for the country and the rest of us who stood shoulder to shoulder with them.  Semper Fi, my Brothers and Sisters, from all branches!!

All in all it was a good weekend.  I'm looking forward to the time when the homestead can be my full time endeavor.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

Eggs! And an innocent walk to the garden.

First six of the day

So the day has finally come!  Today we got eggs from more than 50% of our 13 hen laying flock.

We've been getting 3-4 brown eggs a day for a couple of weeks.  We're pretty sure the Red Stars were the first to lay.  We think one of the Buff Orpingtons is laying, and today we got 4 Easter Egger eggs and 5 brown eggs.  Six were found in four different laying boxes around noon by daughter #2, who delights in beating her Mom to the eggs.  Later one more EE egg was found in on the floor of the coop, another EE egg was found in a box, and a yet another was found under the Chicken Veranda. We have 3 EEs, so one is likely a day old or so.

One on the coop floor.

This brings up an interesting thing.  When we first talked about getting chickens, the deal was they would be mine to look after and take care of.  I've posted before that De has adopted the layers.  They are essentially hers now.  She knows it and, oddly enough, the birds know it.  The interesting thing is that K (daughter #2) is now getting in on the act.  She comes home on break from the Daycare Ministry where she works around noon, and rushes to the nesting boxes to collect the eggs.  If De doesn't beat her to it, she checks later in the day, too.  K says "It's like Christmas!" By the way, if an egg isn't nicely 'deviled', K doesn't eat it.  Odd...

 

As I said, the birds know who there primary 'owner' is.  We were giving the birds a supervised outing and several hopped up in De's lap to say 'Hi', expecting to be rewarded for their politeness with a little scratch.  The shop paper towel is there 'cause one of them did something decidedly impolite a little earlier.

Finally, while D and K were watching the girls,  I decided to go see if any of that sweet corn I was expecting to be a total loss was going to do anything at all.  It's clear I'm a poor judge of what constitutes a "total loss".

I think that's about 3 dozen ears.  There will be about that much more ready by Saturday, and probably another 5 - 6 dozen a few days after that.  Obviously, if you're in the garden you have to check the whole thing, thus the yellow squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers.  I didn't find any zucchini, but you know it's there.  The whole time I had an audible 'image' of the deep, maniacal chuckle of some hidden zucchini with aspirations of getting big enough to take on Zyla the dog and win 2 out of 3 rounds.

Anyway, once again we were blessed where we thought there would be nothing.  God is so faithful!  There will be plenty of sweet corn this year.  Oh, and eggs too.

Col. 1:9-14,

Mark

Supervised Outing

De and I gave the chickens a bit of a supervised outing this evening.  I'd heard on a recent 'The Survival Podcast" episode that a good time to let them out for the first time was a short while before they went into the coop for the night.  I did this yesterday but was a bit late and most of them were already in for the night when I opened the gate to the run.  Tonight we opened the gate around 7:30 and they went in for the night around 9:00.  It was quite a good time for them and us!

Bugs were chased and caught, a number of the little bitty frogs we have so many of this year (does anyone else have these?) met an early demise, and a good part of yard was looked over.  Mostly though they hung around the outsite of the run and just acted like chickens.  Zyla the dog (who proved herself to be a bit less than completely trustworthy with the birds) and I made sure they didn't find their way into the garden.

First real "free-ranging" outside the run.

The whole thing made Fred the Rooster a little nervous and he spent part of his time herding hens back toward the run.

He was definitely watching our for his girls, who were clearly enjoying themselves.

It was supervised outing, with De and Zyla the dog (on the leash) sharing in the supervisory duties

Zyla did get one little nip at tailfeathers of one bird before there was a correction.  Overall she was pretty good considering the hens got right in her face.

De worked at getting some close-up pics of Fred.  The evening light really brought out his colors.

Electra "photo-bombed" one shot.

She finally got the shot!

Lessons Learned:

• Evening is a good time for supervised outings.
• Zyla the dog and Abby the cat will NOT get the keys to the Crooked House Layers Club.
• Teaching the birds to come when called (at first using some scratch as a reward) makes it easy to have the birds out of the run and handle them well.
• Fred has the early appearance of becoming a good roo for the flock.
• They really are entertaining!

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

And so it begins...!

I apologize to all for dropping off the face of the earth (or at least my blog) for a week.  I did manage to keep up with comments on all the blogs I follow, but have been shamefully reticent in getting posts on my own blog.  It seems life picked up the pace for a little bit and I was consumed keeping up with it all.

That being said, this morning we had a big first.  Or perhaps a smallish first, but a first nonetheless. 
We collected our first little egg from our flock of 13 pullets and one cockerel!   It was in one of the laying boxes right where it belonged.  We're not sure who presented us with this little gift but we're guessing one the Red Stars, and De is further guessing it was the one named Gemma.  All the Red Stars are named for real stars.  Gemma the star is a white main sequence star in Corona Borealis some 75 light years away.  (I know, yaaaawn!)  Gemma the chicken is one of four Red Stars in our 18 week old flock.  Her Red Star sisters are Aurora, Bellatrix, and Electra.  In any case, we knew it would be soon and sure enough, today was the day.

Then there is Esther.  Esther is one of our three Easter Eggers (her sisters are Dovey and Houdini) and the only white bird in the flock.  Esther came out the coop this morning and effective said "Please trim my flight feathers!"    She didn't use those words exactly but I'm pretty sure that was the message.  And how did our avian wordless wonder communicate such a thing?  Immediately upon upon exiting the coop, she flew straightaway six feet up to the top of the 'people gate' going into the run.  She did seem a bit disturbed to be there and only a small amount of castigation was required to get her back where she belonged,  but I still got the message.  I didn't get to it today, but tomorrow I'm going to get smart on trimming flight feathers and cut Esther's aspirations of soaring into the blue off at the wingtips.  Sorry Esther, but no chicken altitude records for you!

A quick garden update  (I'll get pics in tomorrow):  The green beans are going gang-busters,  the tomatoes are growing and slowing going from green to red, the zucchini and yellow summer squash are coming in, and the bell and banana peppers are starting to pile up.  Then there's the corn; 3-5' tall, and tasseling out.  There are few tiny, tiny ears with lots of silks but mostly nothin'.  Time for us to get to the Farmer's market, I suppose.

All in all though, far more good news than not-so-good so we're thrilled with the whole thing.  Take care all, I'll get those garden pics in tomorrow.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark