Spring!

So excited to see spring springing. I was talking to my dad on the phone the other day, and as I was gushing on and on about the first leaves popping out on the apple trees I bought and planted, he responded with a "what did you expect to happen?". So he's not the most outwardly sentimental of folks, but dammit if nature doesn't surprise the shit out of me every year when it does EXACTLY what it's supposed to. I don't feel like I emerge from single digit temps as enthusiastically as my plants do - I seem to have to spend some time licking my wounds and reminding myself that it's a whole 9 or 10 months until I have to go through that again. Our plants, with their lack of dwelling on the past, just burst forth and make the most of the turning tides of weather. Gosh darn it I gotta take a hint.

But I'm trying. I almost finished hemming in our meadow garden this year, although putting in 3 rows is more than enough (so says my back) for now. My trapezoidal gate is awaiting chicken wire and then it's done. The onion starts are ready to go in the ground, and I've got rabbit-poopy hay to go between the rows and mulch/fertilize. My starts up in flats are ready to be joined by more starts of the warm-weather variety. Holy hell it's gonna be a busy growing season!

Handsome dog amongst the flowers

Embarrassed to say I'm not sure what this sweet little white flower is. Damn you eastern flora!!

Three rows. 3!! About 10 more to go...

Not everyone has a trapezoidal garden gate. BOOM. Lucky girl, this one.

Red maple.

Bradford pear.

Vinca.

Daffodils + vinca = Spring!

Onions!!

Blink and You'll Miss It

...so there went that plan. It really does seem that farmsteading, and life these days in general, is all about taking a giant leap forward, and then getting knocked several steps back. It's frustrating, it's annoying, it's heartbreaking, and the few victories that you have (however brief) are so addicting you go back for more. In this day and age it would be easy enough to hide my head in the sand and not do ANY of this. No garden, no chickens, no rabbits, no house building... just do what 99% of our countrymen and women do - work, pay rent, watch TV, sleep, rinse, wash, repeat....

But I can't. I'd be miserable. I have been miserable without my garden DESPITE my being preoccupied with being pregnant, giving birth, and not sleeping taking care of my baby. I've been miserable not PRODUCING anything here off the property, so I have chickens, a rabbit and will put in the garden this year. All is peachy.

Except this morning, when I went to check on the rabbit and chickens in the pre-dawn gloom... no bunny. Wide gaping hole in the side of the pen, and a few tufts of fur. I'll save you the gory details, but it wasn't our dogs, although it was something comparable in size and potentially smarter. (Sorry guys)

Got back to down where our dogs are, and the wall of skunk smell hit me. Looks like Luke got skunked, although it's still fresh enough it could be either of them - you can't tell. And then I saw a small body in the driveway behind my car. Obviously my first thought was that it was the bunny and something and dragged her 1000ft down the driveway and left her behind my car. Upon closer inspection, it was a possum. I sat and tried to tell in the light of the flashlight on my iPhone whether it was dead or just playing dead.... it was dead. No idea by what. Dogs won't go near it, but Zora is walking very stiffly this morning which usually means she ran hard the previous day. her poor old arthritic bones can only take so much....

We will rebuild and try again. I feel terrible about the rabbit. It is so easy to get lulled into a false sense of safety... we've been so lucky so far. The only animal massacre we've had was in broad daylight when a fox (we think) got several of our chickens and our poor dogs were tied up and couldn't get to them... and our chickens have always been secure in their coop. But just because they have been safe doesn't mean they ARE safe. We will persevere. Lesson learned.

Sadness

Our chickens bring us such joy. We love them so very much. Even the ones we ended up eating.

A few days ago, we came home to a gruesome sight - most of the 'pet' flock lay dead in our yard. 7 of the ten were gone.

We *think* it was foxes. Or maybe a neighbor's dog. It wasn't ours... they were tied up at the time... just out of reach to save them.

We still have a flock up top in the meadow. We still have the 8 babies and 4 turkeys. We still have Waddly Wanda, Mystery, and our Silke rooster Fluffernutter.

But we lost two of the original girls that I got oh so long ago, on sale, my first spring here. We lost Cindy.

And we lost Henrietta.

We miss our chickens :(

Henrietta, poised.

When she was all molty and having issues, we gave her an epsom salt bath and got to spend the night inside with us. She even got blow-dried.

Henrietta was a great companion while I waited for Mr Snarkles to arrive. (Those are my really pregnant feet)

The morning I went into real labor, I walked up by the meadow with my mom and the meadow was covered in beautiful mist... and chickens.

No matter how many times Mr Snarkles yanked on her feathers or her comb, she never pecked him. Not once.

Fast friends.

Cindy indignant stare while she molted was quite the thing...

Awkward stage...

Lookout scouts.

Henrietta looking for Mike. Per usual.

The first few weeks of her laying life, she would only lay eggs on the couch...

...and I would come home to this...

... and sometimes this.

Holiday Layaway Plan

With housebuilding, working, 3 kids to shop for, etc, etc, by the time Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around the thought of shelling out some serious dough for a bird for the table just seems to hard to do.

This year, I'm going with a layaway plan:

Baby Turkeys. Cute. For now.

Four baby turkeys. I only wanted 3 but the nice young man at Southern States held them for me and I couldn't help but feel bad to leave him with just one.

And before you get all "oh but they're so cute and if you name them you can't eat them" and blah blah blah on me, yes they have names, and YES we will eat them. Their name are: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Alternate-In-Case-We-Fuck-Up, and.... (wait for it)... Bob. Everyone should have a turkey named Bob.

Since I was firing up the brooder anyway, I got 8 Easter Eggers:

Baby Easter Eggers. Floooooofy.

The child put them in their new home:

Hard at work

The two groups are mingling fine and getting along well!

Hello?

Bob

And for no reason at all:

Mr Snarkles!

Oddly looking forward to the holidays this year!

Cindy

Cindy is one of our original batch of Tractor Supply Rhode Island Reds. She came home with me with 5 other peeping little furry bodies in a box with holes in the sides, despite the fact that we had some New Hampshire Reds ordered to come in the mail, because I could resist a sale (they were on clearance!).

To alleviate fears, let me state that Cindy is not dead.

K. Cindy was always the fattest of the 6, and stands quite a bit taller than the other girls (we ate most of the boys). She also has the deepest red color of them all, and I *think* the Acorn's Sissypantstacular named her. I think.

A couple of months ago, Cindy - despite her product chicken origins - decided to go broody. She sat in the nesting box, stole everyone's eggs, the whole nine yards. With 4 clutches of eggs hatching out this year, the last thing we really wanted was another group of little cheep-cheepers running around everywhere. Especially with the brutal winter winter we're expecting. (because we're experts, the house isn't finished, and, you know, we're due) We tried to break her of it - dunked her in cold water, ran her out of the nesting boxes repeatedly... nothing. I should mention a Wyandotte and an Australorp went broody on either side of her at the same time, and so we were triply eager to break them of it. The girls only use 3 nesting boxes (they are provided with 9....) and now they were all occupied. The Australorp took one swipe out of the nesting box and decided her heart wasn't in it. Thankfully. It was her THIRD TIME THIS YEAR. The other two, not so much.

Eventually the two birds took refuge in a part of the coop that we really can't get to (when accepting a free chicken coop, inspect even more carefully for design flaws. Lesson learned). The hunkered down on the ground and soldiered on. We did our best to rouse them out daily - I think we gave up on breaking them of broodiness, but I at least wanted them to get a fighting chance at eating and the like.

Th Wyandotte didn't make it. She just would not give up the broodiness, and it is our fault for not making sure she had something to hatch. If she had, she would have been triggered out of the broody trance when the chicks started peep-peeping. I am sorry Miss Wyandotte.*

Cindy did finally make it out of her Broody state, although the lack of eating, exercise, and sunshine has surely taken its toll. She has red sores/lesion thingies on her face, and is so so skinny. We weren't sure if they from laying in the dirt on the floor of the coop (and therefore transmittable to the other chickens) or not, but it is clear that her compromised immune system couldn't fight whatever it is off. We have her in the brooder by herself where she has her own food and water and is close to us for observation.

Cindy's older flockmates all started gradually molting over the past few months. You don't notice it in our flock immediately - you kind of suspect egg production is down and feathers on the ground are up, and then one day you realize you have NO EGGS (AGH!), your driveway looks like chickens have exploded on it there are so many feathers, and you can see spikey little new feathers here and there on your chickens. No biggie.

Cindy has apparently decided to catch up all at once on the molting front. The poor thing looks like she lost 75% of her feathers all at once, and has turned into some half-porcupine, half-chicken thingy:

They don't hold still when you're trying to take unflattering pictures of them

Or ever

We love her dearly, though, and the number of huge brown eggs she has given us over the past 3 years means that should she not recover from this latest bout, she will still have a home with us until she is no longer happy.


Which by the looks of it, could be a very long time. She eats and drinks with gusto, and woe to the unassuming chicken that tries to get some of her food through the chicken wire...

Hen-brained

Our chickens are flipping nuts. Pancake chicken went broody in February (January? Too tired to search through the archives here...) and started this whole mess. We have had broody chickens and baby chickens seemingly non-stop since. We hatched out QUITE a few - first because it was so new to us, second for the chicks, and the third batch was really just because we missed our window of opportunity to break her (Pancake chicken, again) of being broody. The eggs were already developing so we let them be born into full-blown chicks.

And then a few weeks ago Cindy (one of our original Rhode Island Reds from Tractor Supply) and Pancake chicken (jeesh lady!) and another Australorp went broody all at the same time.

In our more populated coop (we have several), there are three nesting boxes. All three were populated with a broody hen. This was NOT OK. We scooped all three of them out and plopped them on the ground unceremoniously and took their eggs away (like 21 or so?). The unknown Lorpy got the idea and never looked back.

I have been chucking Pancake chicken and Cindy out of the nesting boxes daily ever since.

Kerplunk.

Yes. There are ways of 'breaking' them of being broody. The most popular method seems to be putting them in a small cage (like a rabbit cage) with nothing under them and no nesting material so their belly and nether regions cool down and they snap out of it. Some people say that dunking their lower halves into cold(ish) water will do the trick; again bringing their temps down so they snap out of it. The latter doesn't work - ask me how I know - and we are so busy that I'm afraid if we put them in a wire cage we'll forget to let them out before something bad happens.

So every day I go down and pluck them out and set them on the ground all floofed and upset and bawk-bawking.

This warmed my heart, though:

Broody and offended. Together.

They are hell bent on hatching something. Or nothing.

Good Things Come in Threes

Last Saturday, I took this picture:

PC2

It is of Pancake Chicken 2, stoically sitting on her batch of eggs. It's down to 3 - she kicked one out a week or so ago. I have no idea how chickens know when a chick isn't developing, but they do and they don't waste any resources on trying to hatch a dead egg. (although they will go broody and sit on golf balls, fake eggs, etc. Go figure)

The next day, I went out and peered into the hutch at about 8 am and sat very quietly to try to tell if I could hear an pipping sounds. I couldn't.

Aparrently my hearing is bad, because an hour later I asked the Acorn to go feed th critters, and next thing I know I hear an excited "THE BABIES ARE HERE!" over and over.

Last time we missed this hatch by about a day, but this time we couldn't have missed it by more than an hour. When we went out to inspect, the little bitties were very much very wobbly on their legs, and their down was still slightly damp. So cute!

First we took the babies out to see if they were ok

Then we took mama out to get her out of the way. Then we checked to make sure there wasn't an unhatched egg we didn't know about (there wasn't)

Then we stuck mama hen back in and let the bitties go back themselves

*heartmelt*

A day later, they're zooming around cheep-cheeping, just like they should be. It never ceases to amaze me when animal babies left alone do exactly what they're supposed to. It kind of restores my sense of right and wrong in the world...

And a bonus video of the chicks going back in under their mama for the first time:

Number Two

No. This post is NOT about poop. Regardless of the fact that my life revolves around poop. (Did he? When? What color? How much? Is he working on one now? Oh get over it. Someone's days revolved around your poop at one point, too)

No. Now that the baby chickens have been out of the brooder for almost six weeks now, we have yet another Australorp that has gone broody. Many people find this to be an annoying trait in a chicken - they have to be sequestered and so take up space, they don't lay during this time, they're often nasty as hell... but I am super excited about it.

For one thing it means I get more chickens this year. I had wanted to add meat chickens and a few more easter eggers (especially now that Road Runner is no longer with us... *sob*). We decided not to this year due to the arrival of the bebe... But I got the 3 baby chickens, and now Pancake Chicken Part 2 is sitting on 4 eggs.

...and it means that we will have more babiness to ooh and ahh over soon. Love it!

The Redneck and the Acorn moved them into the conveniently now available brooder coop yesterday, and that will be PCNT's home for the next several weeks. We have hopefully learned from our mistakes and this time around *should* go smoother.

Pancake Chicken #2

Pancake Chicken, the original

Not Another Baby Blog

This is NOT going to turn into a baby blog. I promise. Not like when I promised that this wouldn't become a chicken blog. No. This is for realsies. Hence you haven't heard a lot from me. The Little Squeaker is taking up all of my time and energy... and will continue to for a little bit longer. Can't help it. I will be going back to work in a few short weeks and I want to drink him in while I can :)

Eek!

Zonked out bebe. I know that I should put him down and nap myself, but it's too hard to resist the little snuggly guy

However, we have managed to get out into the garden...to look. Haven't planted a damn thing this year. (thank goodness for volunteers!) But it's nice to know it's *resting* (sure. 'resting'. Let's go with that...) and waiting for me for next year!

Irises! Thanks to the best Godmother, ever

Could be a bumper crop!

Rosemary and Sage are choking out the mint. Really.

Last year this was the strawberry bed...

Muscadines!

The wild grapes are thriving, too.

Never Rains But It Pours

So... we're not getting any new chickens this spring. Other than the 3 bitties we have that hatched, that is. But odds are at least 2 of those will be roosters, so my point is: we're not getting any significant number of new egg layers this year.

What this really means is that EVERY hen we have now will go into a molt and stop laying for the late fall and winter months this year. Which means no eggs. (or very, very few). Last year we didn't get any eggs for about 2 months. I even *gasp!* bought eggs. (From the co-op. Pastured.) As close to MY eggs as I could get. And worth the price to not be too greatly disappointed by the difference in quality.

And now that it is springtime every hen we have is in laying overdrive. For a while a few of them were laying off in the woods (as you may know) where we couldn't find them and all was OK in the world. This week everyone has gone back to laying in one of our 10 nesting boxes (although I keep getting hens coming out of our new shed with no door squawking their egg-laying achievement... I just can't find any...) and we have more eggs than we know what to do with. As in 8 - 12 eggs a day. Oh boy.

But the chest freezer (best birthday present ever! Thanks Lone reader!) comes in here to the rescue. You can freeze eggs. Woohoo!!

My favorite method is not below. Because my favorite method involves cracking one egg each into the well of an ice cube tray, freezing them, and then popping them into a big old ziploc bag. Wash, rinse, repeat. That way you can pull whatever number of eggs you may require at a time and use as needed.

Alas, I currently don't have any ice cube trays.

And I can not find one with big enough wells for a whole egg (and I don't live in the bay area anymore so those awesome Asian dollar stores that always carry this sort of thing is beyond my reach...).

So my second favorite method:

Figure out how many eggs you want to put in each bag. Label said bag. Use a big sharpie. You know you want to.

Put the bag in a cup, bowl, tupperware - anything that will hold the back with its contents. Flip the fastener portion over the sides to hold it in place, and to help keep from getting egg on said fastener. You're welcome.

Break all yolks. You don't want to add air - just bust them. Why do you do this? No idea. But anyone I've ever spoken to who freezes eggs does this. If you know, let me know.*

Lay flat, and put in freezer flat. That way they will both freeze and defrost faster than if you leave them in a clump. In fact, whenever you freeze anything in a bag, you should do it this way. Again. You're welcome.

This pile of eggs (plus another 8 I pulled from the fridge)...

...turns into this pile of shells.

I freeze them in 6 egg chunks because that's the amount I use most frequently. I don't bake a lot of cakes, etc, anymore - but I make a lot of fritatas. And when I do it's usually in 6 egg increments. So really whatever works.

What to do with the shells? You can do any number of things. I dry them out, grind them up, and feed them back to my chickens. It's the best way for them to absorb calcium back into their systems, and that way we don't have to buy any other supplements for them.

They're also great in gardens. Many many plants do well with a calcium supplement (brassicas and tomatoes are probably the most famous...) and you can grind them up finely and sprinkle on top of the soil, or in the bottom of your transplant hole when putting in seedlings. Or you can grind them up more coarsely and sprinkle around the base of your plants to help deter slugs, cutworms, and a number of other garden pests that might not enjoy crawling over such a sharp surface.

Some people with more time and energy than I blow the eggs out and use the shells for crafts. (I wish I had the energy!).

Or toss 'em in the compost pile.

*If you freeze the whites and yolks separately, you do need to add a scant amount of salt or sugar to the yolks to keep them from coagulating. These two things may be related. My chemistry's not so good. And my copy of Harold McGee is in storage and I can't get to it. So. Again. If you know, let me know.