My...it has been awhile since I posted anything! I have been so busy I have not had the opportunity to write. I have done a number of things this year and it seems like time has sped up on me. We had to take a break from bathroom remodeling to take care of the yard, the garden, the orchard, picking, canning and the critters. I was not going to hatch anything this year until the bathroom remodeling was complete, but people kept asking so I relented and started hatching chicks...then ducks...then geese...and a few turkeys. I took away a bunch of eggs from all my broody hens and have the last of them in a brooder in the house now....soon to go to the back porch brooder.
I am not sure what is going on, but I have had an extremely high rate of males hatch! I need females. I sold all but maybe two that I hatched last year, so I have been trying to hatch enough to have twenty new hens by winter...laying. Several of my oldest chickens died this year when the temperatures reached 106 and the heat index was 111. Five year old broody hens sitting on eggs, and temperatures like that do not mix very well. Even a few of my five year old roosters have died too. I lost a bunch of babies to the heat, did some reading and found out chicks are 75% water...if they stay over a hundred degrees for very long, they cannot get enough water to stay hydrated. I was trying not to keep brooder lights on in the house, so I had moved them to the back porch brooders to take advantage of the heat instead...it was a mistake I will not repeat. I had fans going and the porch was cooler than the yard, but apparently they just can’t regulate heat at all and were too young to handle it, or it was too much heat for too long of a period. I have moved three batches of young to growout coops in the yard, the first two batches...there may be two females in the bunch. The third batch, I think maybe eight? I am growing the males out and we may try butchering some this year, I will probably keep a few so I have some young roosters, I believe I still have three left from last years hatches...but most of my roosters are two years old or older. I hatched ducks hoping to get females too, I purchased some Saxony eggs and they were damaged in shipping...only two hatched, both males! I put something like 30 of my duck eggs in the incubator and only five hatched, then two from broody hens and I have four more in the incubator due to hatch in about five more days. We have too many males still, so we may try some duck soon too. I have four African geese that my geese brooded up to a certain point...when I found a dead baby goose in the coop, I took their eggs away and finished hatching them in the house. They are fully feathered and adult sized now probably close to five months old. I have four turkey babies and a guinea too, young but not full grown yet either.
Anyway, the burden of hatching and brooding the variety of poultry is time consuming. The cleaning of brooders, feeding and watering multiple times a day takes a big chunk out of my day. Tohat and they make a mess out of my back porch. I have two swimming pool brooders with ducks in them, a large 30”x8’ brooder that has three trays I have to clean and three waterers, and usually two or three feeders...then two 2’x4’ brooders with pine shavings, with multiple waterers a feeders, then usually two brooders in the house. I had three incubators running and keeping those going with the broodies eggs and candling them constantly and rotating ones out to a hatching incubator too, making sure temperatures and humidity is adequate so alarms aren’t going off constantly and bad eggs are pulled out as soon as possible (so they don’t explode). I want to make a large incubator and hatch larger quantities at one time so I don’t hatch as long and they are grown before temperatures get too hot in the summer. I have some of the parts, I just need the time to do it!
Enough about poultry! Lol, it is a good part of my days...but, not the only thing I do. This year I actually had a decent harvest of plums, apples and peaches from trees I planted! I got plum jam made and a plum liquor. I made apple pie filling with most of the apples, but shredded some and made coleslaw with apples in it and just picked a few more for eating. I had three trees produce this year, not a ton of apples, but not bad for a first harvest from 3 to five year old trees. I just finished harvesting peaches too, I need to figure out how to peel them quickly and work on them today. I lost a peach tree and half an apple tree this year. Ants have been awful and many of my trees have some kind of big red ants crawling along over them, I need to spray the trees and try to get rid of them...I think some may be Carpenter Ants and they are destroying one apple tree...burrowing into the wood. I sprayed some Organicide on them but may have to do a stronger spray after I finish harvesting the apples. I had a great crop of blueberries this year. I need to move a few of my bushes though...again. There is something going on with certain areas of the land and the trees and bushes I planted in spots are doing terrible, I need to transplant them before they die. One of the Almond trees I planted is doing really well...it has doubled in size since I planted it...the other has not grown at all...it may need to be moved too. I am learning about taking care of fruit and nut trees, trying to keep them alive out here is a bit of a challenge. I only had 3 pears develop this year, the tree that they developed on had fire blight last year, so I am lucky it is still alive. I did plant more pear trees in the spring, they are just not very big. I may be waiting five years for a crop from them...but the varieties are suppose to be mosre resistant to blight and other diseases. I planted more peach, necterine, elderberry and a pomegranate too.
Because I planted my garden late again this year, I decided to get some shade cloth to cover a good section of it as an experiment. It has worked better than expected, the cucumbers and peppers have been fantastic, no bitterness and bumper crops. The tomatoes did not do as well, but they are not burned up either and part of the fact that the harvest has not been great may be because of the amount of fire ants in the garden. Everyone out here has been having major issues with fire ants this year. I have to figure out how to beat them! I have been bitten so many times while trying to harvest veggies that I have been walking around with pustules on my hands and ankles most of the summer. They ate the blooms off of many of my plants, so no blooms...no veggies. It wasn’t until I mixed up some Borax, powdered sugar and water together and put dishes of it out that I started actually getting things like green beans and tomatoes at all. I put out ant stakes too recently and am going to try cornmeal and refill the plastic lids with more of the mixture. Ants ate most of my first corn crop too, I just recently planted more corn seed...hopefully it will have time to produce and I will be able to get rid of the ants before it produces ears of corn. It is so disappointing to have beautiful healthy looking corn plants only to discover ants inside most of the ears of corn!
I have been getting anywhere from 20 to 40 cucumbers every other day off of my three cucumber plants, I finally grew dill this year and made some lacto-fermented dill pickles that are edible! Lol, the chickens have also enjoyed a lot of cucumbers, because if I don’t get out there to harvest them they get huge and yellow...and not suitable for human consumptio. I have gotten a bumper crop of hot and sweet peppers too...which reminds me, I need to get the smoker going today and smoke some Habanero peppers, I need to pickle and can some jalapeño peppers too, and probably some Serrano and ghost peppers. I made some hot sauce a day or two ago and need to add cilantro and get it canned also. I also need to pull up watermelon vines and plant more things for the fall garden! So as you can see, I am a very busy women.
I also have a husband to take care of, he hasn’t been feeling well and finally went to the doctor. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, so I am going to have to learn a whole new way of cooking. He loves his meat and potatoes, rice and gravy...I must figure out a way to make healthy food that he will eat taste good enough that he won’t miss his potatoes so much. I went to the store searching for low carbohydrate foods...it is a good thing he likes the green beans I grow so much...and broccoli. I just need to find the best flavored varieties and go from there. He loves his pasta too, I am going to try spaghetti squash as a substitute...hopefully it will be good, because I will be eating the same as he does, I just happen to like more of a variety of vegetables. I found information on the diabetic exchanges and we shall see how this goes. He loves his deserts too...I am going to have to adjust my thinking too, he even told me not to make his favorite arrow cake for his birthday! We got some information from his daughter who is an RN and teaches about diabetes and we will adjust and adapt and hopefully everything will be alright, he is already feeling better. It will just take time.
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