Hard Work Makes For Rich Rewards, Not Always!

It may take me awhile, but I get things done eventually.  I have been incubating and hatching chicks, ducks, turkeys and geese...but, not very many.  Well not as many as you might expect with a poultry farm.  Right now I just have three turkey poults, four goslings and about 9 chicks.  I sold a few goslings and ten chicks, but I have more chicks starting to hatch.  One of my incubators broke, it wouldn't heat up, my husband replaced the element...it still will not heat up.  I bought another incubator, but ended up sending it back...the turner was missing parts and it didn't reset like it was suppose to.  I have not purchased another one.  I really just need to make a cabinet incubator.  A man I sell eggs to, that hatches them, is hatching some turkeys and ducks for me.  They should be hatching by next week, if I remember right.  I gave him 47 duck eggs and 43 turkey eggs to hatch and offered a female turkey in return of the newly hatched turkeys, and to grow another one up for him for the ducks.  We shall see what happens.

I still need to create the dividers on my breeding pens, I am trying not to hatch many, if any mixed breed chicks.  I have a handful of Salmon Favorelles in my back porch brooder and set some of their eggs and I have some Jubilee Orpington's also separated out to start hatching their eggs too, my Dominiques have always been separated...those are the majority of chicks I have at the moment.  

I have been rather busy as usual.  I have two garden areas this year!  My garden in front of the house, I have been adding composted chicken manure into it, crushed eggshells and need to sprinkle some Epsom salts...but I have tilled it multiple times and planted some of my plant starts...at least the ones that survived my green house blowing over.  About that...we had some pretty bad storms a few weeks a go...tornados within 12 miles or so of us, we experienced some very strong wind gusts.  Well, this greenhouse is basically like a tent made out of a kind of milky white translucent reinforced plastic.  The wind picked it up and rolled it over, it broke one of the stakes off and the ropes broke or came loose on the others.  I had a shelf full of plants I had started from seeds, some of them from seeds I saved from my last years harvest...I guess I did them right, most of them...including the corn, sprouted.  They were tossed around and mixed up, some destroyed...well a lot destroyed.  But, I salvaged what I could and got a lot of the non-vining plants in the ground yesterday.  I will have to start some more from seed.  It was rather disappointing, but I planted more than I really needed anyway...but, I was hoping to sell some of the plants.  Not going to happen now, I could sell tomato plants, but I don't know which ones are which.

I was doing so good this year...the past few years I didn't get anything planted until late May or early June.  I am ahead of the game this year at least.  I may have some tomatoes by the time the Farmers Market starts, I will have to restart some cucumbers...I can't tell at this point what the vining plants are...except the watermelons.  Not sure if what I have left is pumpkins, squash, cantaloupe or cucumbers...but, I have more seeds...so, I will plant more and stick these plants in the area my neighbor tilled for me.  I still need to build my potato towers, so far I have only been able to produce a few tiny potatoes...most have died or rotted because of too much rain.  It is a learning process for me...that is for sure!