When we first decided to get chickens, they were just for us...for eggs. But out of the first 6 we got, two were roosters. After getting so few eggs the first winter, we decided to get more hens. We had to wait awhile, but we started getting more eggs and then ended up with two broody hens! Well...broody hens don't lay eggs...they sit on them with the full intension of hatching them, they want babies. I let them hatch eggs the second time my Rhode Island Red went broody. Her name is Brown Racer, her partner in crime is an Easter Egger named Ms McCluckinson. They were so intent on being Mothers, I got eggs from my neighbor and let them sit on them...they didn't hatch, and my hens laid eggs in the boxes, so I let them keep laying eggs after letting my Rhode Island Red out for fertilization. After sitting on those, they both became Mothers! Those chicks are teenagers now. They were born just before Easter. The same two hens are broody again...and they had just started laying!
I have made a double Decker Brooder to house the baby chicks. I made a grow out pen to house the Teen Chicks...but I still need more places to put full grown chickens. So, we are building an 8'x16' coop with a 16'x16' covered run. So far we have semi-leveled a spot to build it, and made the base of the coop so far. I do have most of the materials ready to go, but I have been getting help from my husband on this project and he only has a little bit of time working six days a week. The materials are pretty heavy and some of the wood I just can't move by myself without my husband and the truck, there are also large sheets of decking and the siding is metal and heavy also.
I am hoping this weekend to get the framing materials moved to the build site, and possibly getting the framing started. Because, now I have two hens sitting on eggs, eggs in the incubator, chicks from almost 4 weeks old (19 of them), chicks 6 weeks old (7 of them) and my teen chicks are about 11 weeks old and there are 13 of those! I need the coop built before they start laying eggs!
I am looking into selling the eggs, the chicks and possibly selling hatching eggs too. I need to do more research on it and maybe get some egg cartons. I stopped by the Farmers Market yesterday and no one was selling eggs!
Friday, June 27, 2014
Planted my gardens but...
I have three gardens planted now. I started seeds thinking that if they were started the birds could not eat the seeds...I was wrong! I lost a row and a half of corn and about the same with the green beans...they just pulled all of the plants up and out of the ground. I bought some plants and after tilling again, got them planted too. I have all kinds of stuff growing now, not sure how much of a harvest I will get, but I have stuff planted.
I am going to assume that the soil is fertile in my gardens, I actually have 4 garden plots...only three are planted because when we get a lot of rain half of one floods. Weeds grow really well in my gardens, it is hard to keep up with weeding them. The tiller I got can go between the rows, but it has no reverse and next year I will need to remembr to leave more space between the fence and the planted rows...so I can use the tiller to weed!
I have harvested Mexican Plums and Dewberries. I made jelly with those, my first attempt at jelly making...so I ended up with more of a Dewberry syrup instead of jelly. After talking with a local lady, she said that it is always trial and error. My plum jelly turned out really good, jellied like it was suppose to. Dewberries and blackberries don't have any pectin in them so it takes much, much more...drives me crazy that none of my Dewberry jelly is really jellied.
The only other thing I have harvested is green tomatoes. My plants got so heavy it broke the metal tomato cage on one. I also saw a number of tomatoes with blossom end rot an deformed tomatoes from the way they laid on the ground. I have a bunch sitting on the counter now some starting to ripen. I dried my eggshells and ground them up to a powder and added some Epsom salt to an old huge Parmesan Cheese shaker and mixed it up really good and sprinkled the mix around all of my tomato plants. I hope the calcium and magnesium works wonders and fixes the problems. I need to apply fertilizer to the rest of my gardens, that is where my chickens come in handy.
I am going to assume that the soil is fertile in my gardens, I actually have 4 garden plots...only three are planted because when we get a lot of rain half of one floods. Weeds grow really well in my gardens, it is hard to keep up with weeding them. The tiller I got can go between the rows, but it has no reverse and next year I will need to remembr to leave more space between the fence and the planted rows...so I can use the tiller to weed!
I have harvested Mexican Plums and Dewberries. I made jelly with those, my first attempt at jelly making...so I ended up with more of a Dewberry syrup instead of jelly. After talking with a local lady, she said that it is always trial and error. My plum jelly turned out really good, jellied like it was suppose to. Dewberries and blackberries don't have any pectin in them so it takes much, much more...drives me crazy that none of my Dewberry jelly is really jellied.
The only other thing I have harvested is green tomatoes. My plants got so heavy it broke the metal tomato cage on one. I also saw a number of tomatoes with blossom end rot an deformed tomatoes from the way they laid on the ground. I have a bunch sitting on the counter now some starting to ripen. I dried my eggshells and ground them up to a powder and added some Epsom salt to an old huge Parmesan Cheese shaker and mixed it up really good and sprinkled the mix around all of my tomato plants. I hope the calcium and magnesium works wonders and fixes the problems. I need to apply fertilizer to the rest of my gardens, that is where my chickens come in handy.
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