Baby fluff balls

Our fourth of July was special this year because we watched two chicks hatch. Words can't express the awe and cuteness of the experience, so we'll just share some pictures.

Farmer's breakfast

First it was strawberries and lettuces, now it's sugar snap peas, cucumbers, and the first eggplant and baby broccoli crowns.

"Sugar snap peas for breakfast?" you ask. Sure! And cucumbers too, although we juice them with a few apples and carrots for a refreshing healthy breakfast juice.

And of course, a bunch of eggs we collected yesterday.

With sauteed chives, garlic and baby broccoli. Mmmm. This is the richness of the gardener's breakfast. Of course, it also matters what we didn't eat.

Do you see the two little cracks on each of the eggs? We can't wait to meet our newest feathered family members. To me independence is all about having having secure, safe and sustainable food and energy (here's looking at almost 14 megawatt-hours of solar energy generated). Happy Independence Day!

Little farm miracle

Today we had a lot going on as usual but after our walk Savannah spotted something new while collecting eggs. Our broody hen was off her nest and two of the eggs were cracked. After a bit of searching we found something sticking out from our broody girl's breast.

Can you see the sweet not yet one-day-old baby chick peeking out from beneath her mama's feathers? Here's another close up just in case.

Welcome baby! We are eager to see the colors of this one as it grows since it is half Buff Orpington and half Rhode Island Red. But this wasn't our only surprise. Then we discovered a second baby that had fallen outside of the coop, it was running around frightened and cold. As soon as we caught her and she felt our warmth, she quieted and fell asleep. We decided to bring her in the house to raise her in the brooder.  That way we can be certain she will have food, water, warmth and will not fall out of the coop again. And, she'll imprint on us.

Even Aunt Megan got to hold our new baby fluff ball. But there was another surprise. William had been asking over and over for milk while I was preparing the brooder. When Kevin went to the fridge to get his milk, he heard peeping from inside the fridge! He brought out our bowl of freshly collected eggs and I quickly did the water test on them. Two of the eggs floated right to the top so we scooped them out. Aunt Megan heard the peeping from inside one of the eggs too. I made a little "nest" for the eggs inside the brooder where it was warmest and guess who wanted to snuggle with her sisters?

The first egg on the left already has a small crack in it from baby sister's egg tooth. Tomorrow we expect to have two baby fluff balls in our brooder and possibly a third if the last egg was also fertilized. For us, this is quite the miracle because our rooster Lucky (who is lucky to be alive in the first place) has half a brain and doesn't exactly know what he's doing when he mounts a chicken. We see very few fertilized eggs. Ever. So we thought our poor broody girl was nesting in vain. We left her alone though to do her thing with her clutch of eggs and now she's got one lovely chick to raise as her own and we have two or three to raise our way. Tonight or tomorrow we expect to see the miracle of hatching. And soon enough all the siblings will be together again, grazing the land with their mama and each other.

Day on the farm

There's much going on everyday now in the garden, so I need lots of helpers. While I garden after dinner, I keep everyone else occupied to keep them nearby and out of trouble. My water-obsessed boy loves to water the asparagus bed. (Our mantra: Water plants, not people!)

The sugar snap peas have already grown up to the third level of my trellis, and are begging me to add levels four and five.

My solution to never having to weed the garden - weed cloth used in mounded up rows with straw around the perimeter. I roll up the weed cloth in the fall and re-use it for 3-4 years.

We've already picked some fresh lettuces from the garden for our salads. Nothing beats tender fresh garden lettuces. This is a head of Ithaca.

 And an heirloom favorite from France, merveille des saisons.
 

My big girls helping out in the compost pile to turn the pile for me so it cooks more evenly. Thanks girls!

 Blueberries springing up on a bush that Kevin thought was dead. I guess my special compost mix and two years of TLC revived it. We used to get a few dozen blueberries from this bush, now there are hundreds and this is our smallest blueberry bush!

Savannah works her magic touch with the babies. Even the more high-strung Americaunas love her and jump into her lap in the evenings before bedtime when she's in the hammock. She can be found after dinner with two or more babies on her lap, nestling into her warmth and enjoying the snuggle.

Spring chores

It seems that as soon as the ground thaws, there's a long list of chores needing attention around here. Fortunately, with good weather over the weekend, I could get some odd jobs done outside while the kids played ball, chased the chickens, and climbed trees. I was able to build two of the three raised cedar beds I wanted for the garden this year. We are trying out some new gardening techniques with the crops we've had difficulty with in the past years - mainly because of critters eating them. Mine are constructed from 1 x 4 cedar lumber in 8 foot lengths because it's cheapest to build them with these materials and because 8 ft is the maximum length I can fit in the car. These beds are 2 x 6 feet and 11" high so they are easily portable. I used a cedar 2 x 4 for the corner supports.

Of course, right after building these, I discovered another design that I fell in love with. The main difference is simply that this raised bed plan anticipates critter problems so it includes covering the bottom with hardware cloth to prevent moles from digging through the bottom and uses PVC tubing to create hoops to drape bird cloth over the top keeping out birds and many insects as well. You could alternate using bird cloth with frost cloth to extend the growing season as well. In the above photo, you can see I've installed the PVC piping in one of the raised beds already. Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that you can't bend 1/2" PVC tubing across a 2-foot span - it's simply not flexible enough. So, I will be using traditional metal hoops for the cedar beds that fit inside the PVC instead.

I decided to adapt this hoop method to the strawberry fountain, which our chickens and the crows like to get into once the strawberries appear. I can't wait to fill the new raised beds with soil and compost and get started but we're not yet past our last frost date. At the moment I have the greenhouse filled with baby seedlings waiting to be transplanted. With the hoops over the tops of the new raised beds, I'm considering trying to keep them covered with frost cloth to protect them from frost and transplanting early, we'll see how brave I get. (The greenhouse is also filled with fluffy baby Buff Orpington chicks!)

After all the rain from last week, the ground was perfectly soft and soggy for digging holes for planting new blueberry bushes and raspberries this weekend. I set one new blueberry plant in digging a much larger hole and layering soil, straw, and chicken manure compost in the bottom of it. I always separate the root bundle and splay it out to help encourage the roots to grow deeper. I also planted three Heritage raspberry plants to expand our patch and replace some of the canes that didn't make it from last year. One of my favorite things about summer is taking the children to the garden to have their snack. They love picking the fresh raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries for themselves. They pop cherry tomatoes in their mouths like candies and wonder why tomatoes from the store don't taste like these. They eat all the sugar snap peas so that they never make it to the house. This year, I'm expanding our sugar snap pea patch by four fold so some will surely make it to the house, I hope.

Farmer genius

There's a certain kind of genius that only experienced farmers possess. That genius has come from years of making mistakes, back-breaking work, and age; age that makes you work smarter because your body can no longer work harder.

After doing much research on chicken waterers, I discovered a chicken farmer who makes his own waterers and feeders for about 10 bucks each. They keep the water clean and full for about two weeks for a flock our size. So, I couldn't resist, I had to make my own because anything that makes my life easier, is a blessing.

First I tipped my 5-gallon bucket upside down in the pan to mark the height of the side of the pan on the bucket. Then I turned it back over to drill 3/8" holes below this line (when turned over).  I filled it up, tapped on the lid,  and turned it over set outdoors for a few hours to be certain there was no leaking before introducing it to the coop. The girls are thrilled with their new watering system! Placed on a cinder block, they can't kick up their bedding into the water.

The feed bucket has 1 1/4" holes drilled around the base of the bucket (again below the side of the pan). I also drilled three 1/4" holes in the bucket and using screws, washers and nuts, bolted them together so it wouldn't tip or get pushed to the side. As the girls eat, their feed refills itself. I only wish I had done this sooner!

Gratitude

November is a month of gratitude for me for a number of reasons, so I am always sad to see it go. For four years now I have participated in Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, and each year that I pull a novel out of thin air (working on it only after my work is done and the children are in bed), I'm surprised and thankful. Thankful because I'm doing something I love and have a carrot and stick to make me do it.

November is also the month that we spend more time indoors together. There's less to do outdoors. The garden doesn't need tending anymore and has been tilled back into itself to feed itself for another year. The fruits have been mulched and fed with a rich layer of compost and the chickens are quieter now and appreciate our company more and food scraps with fewer grubs and bugs to eat.

Lucky, our handsome one-eyed rooster.

November is the month that comfort foods start appearing on the dinner table; warm and creamy squash dishes, vegetable casseroles, roasted chickens, hearty potatoes and root vegetables, soups, and sweet apple crisps and warm puddings. We begin to open the jars of jams we set aside in summer, blueberry jam from our neighbors' blueberries, strawberry from the orchard down the road, cranberry grape jam for turkey and chicken dinners. A homemade pie crust can be filled with anything in November; a savory quiche, a pumpkin pie, a chicken vegetable stew, sweet potatoes, cinnamon apples with crumble topping, or vegetables and cheese.

The wood stove cranks out enough heat to keep two stories of our house very warm and suddenly we're wearing T-shirts again. With the shorter days, we spend more time at home inside the house as a family, tickling, giggling, talking, snuggling, reading books, and rascaling (that's an actual word in our vocabulary).

Savannah reads William his favorite book, Each Peach Pear Plum, on the sofa in pajammies (another Sara word) before bedtime.

We also prepare for the Christmas holiday by beginning our annual decluttering. We pick up our stuff and ask it when we last used it, whether it makes our lives easier or more beautiful, whether it or the space it occupies is more important to us. Space that can be used for practicing Taekwondo, for dancing to the Backyardigans theme song for the 10,000th time, for entertaining guests, now that we're indoors so much, or for chasing, or tickling, or driving toy cars around.

William making art at the easel.

November is a great time to begin star gazing again. My favorite constellations are prominent in the early night sky and Venus always shines brightly. There are meteor showers and they start early enough that the kids can see them before bedtime, just in time to wish on a star. Yes, November is among my favorite months, so I am always sad to see it go, but grateful that we experienced all it had to offer.

Compostalicious

We really like compost around here. Any of my plants that grow outside in our garden flourish in it, especially when compared to the plants in my greenhouse that are grown from organic soil arriving in bags from Agway.

There are many styles of composting, usually dependent on the composter. I happen to be a lazy composter - that is, the type of gardener who piles things into the compost and lets them simmer on low for a full year, without doing a thing. The chickens are very helpful in this department, as they regularly till the compost with their capable feet, seeking bits of food scraps and juicy worms to supplement their diet.

The old scrap wood compost bin on the left and the new scrap wood compost bin on the right. Once we till last year's compost into the garden soil this fall, we'll face both the bins in the same direction.

But one thing we do not like about composting with chickens is that they flatten out the pile so that instead of a neat mound of compost, (with a hot middle) you end up with bits of corn husk blowing around your lawn after the chickens have clawed through it. So, it was time for me to build another compost bin. With the slim bits of scrap wood left over in our barn for the task, it was much more of a challenge this time than last time. I solved the problem by using a middle support beam so that I could use smaller scraps of wood. I still need to add one or two thin boards to the bin. Kevin shoveled and raked up all the compost, which was as rich and dark on the bottom as chocolate cake, into the new bin. Let's hope it holds up for a good few years against the chickens!

Gardening with chickens

The view from my kitchen window is of a terraced rock wall partially shaded by pines and with a crab apple tree and forsythia at one end and the chicken coop on the other. Sounds lovely, right? Except that time has taken its toll on the wall so that little of it appears beneath the piles of pine needles. I vowed to reclaim the space this spring after who knows how many years of neglect.

Savannah is my little helper. I suppose William is too since I garden with him in the backpack and he has to cooperate so I can work. The chickens also help! They are eternally curious about the goings on of their human family so whenever we garden outside, they keep us company. As I rake away the pine needles, Scarlet and Penny stayed within a few steps of the rake so they could eat up any tasty morsels uncovered by the rake. Savannah feeds then grubs whenever one is unearthed. As the girls eat grubs now, it means fewer insect problems in the coming months.

I had to pry out of the earth many of the large stones that had toppled over years ago and find a new spot for them along the wall. Each time I lifted another stone Scarlet would run over and eat up any worms, ants, pill bugs, etc that she spotted. The chickens till the soil with their feet. They have powerful legs and claws and scratch the earth much better than I could aerate it with a garden fork or cultivator. Our soil is a very thick clay so I really appreciate the help!

As we work the soil and the girls eat their fill of all natural protein, the boys keep guard. Coburn keeps guard on top of the rock wall while Lucky keeps an eye out from below.

We love our girls (even if two of them turned out to be boys). Three days into my terraced wall project, I've restacked two levels of the wall and removed nine wheelbarrows of pine needles for composting elsewhere. Some of the bulbs I planted area already much happier and the crocuses have pushed through.

Bright and shiny

To brighten up our suddenly white, white winter wonderland, we have a dozen balls of fluff to take care of. They arrived bright and shiny, right as the storm began to hit. This year I wanted to be sure to have one of the earliest shipments of chicks because I want layers by late fall, instead of the middle of winter. I also wanted the girls to be able to be fully grown to enjoy free-ranging safely before winter and to be able to help me in the garden. My big girls will be helping me "till" the garden this spring as soon as the ground thaws. They will also be charged with eating all of the grubs that have overwintered there so they won't hatch and eat my plants, a chore they have been dreaming about all winter!

The babies mesmerize us with their antics. Suddenly a chick will be in a hurry to get somewhere but halfway through its run, will pause for a nap, eventually toppling over and waking up again.

Some will tunnel into their food and feel they are in heaven. Others aren't content unless they are seated on top of another, or have one foot in the water dish.

We have four of each, Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, and Silver Laced Wyandottes, all excellent egg layers, all large sized birds (a deterrent to aerial predators when fully grown), all cold hearty and friendly, and hopefully, all girls. It's hard to imagine at this moment, seeing the chicks in their coats of pure fluff and knowing the long road of care that lies ahead for each one of them, but if one does turn out to be a roo, I most likely will have to play the role of Alice's Queen of Hearts ("off with his head!"). At times there can be little room for sympathy on a farm, even an organic one. So let's hope the chicken sexer is profoundly good at his or her profession so we can enjoy the eggs and company of all of our little fluff balls for many years to come.

Savannah kisses a RIR chick that fell asleep in her hands. They often fall asleep as we cradle them - we like to think it's because they're imagining themselves under the warmth of their mother's wing.

Farm Fresh

Look what we started collecting this week...

...our own farm fresh large brown eggs. What to have for breakfast is an easy decision.