Category: Learning

The Chicken Chronicles

Just like yesterday’s post, this one is two weeks in one.  I forgot to schedule both of them last week.  DUH!

The Welsummers are now about 13 (now) 14 weeks old, and they are FINALLY starting to venture out with the big hens some.  Up until this point we have wondered if we made a mistake putting them into the coop with the older hens, and perhaps we did, but now they seem to be coming out of their shell (pardon the pun) a bit.  😀  We are still cornering them by themselves in a separate cage almost daily to give them time in the sun without having to worry about the older hens picking on them.

One of the issues we have had with the Welsummers is that they just roost on top of the nesting boxes instead of the roosting bar.  Last night I put a branch in there near the nesting boxes and was happy to see a couple of them on the branch when I opened the door to the run this morning.


The laying is going full steam, and we have been able to bless family and neighbors with several dozen eggs so far.  It sure is nice to see the smiles on the faces of folks when you bring them a dozen fresh eggs, especially those who really enjoy them.

Speaking of eggs, the silly Welsummers are roosting on top of the nesting boxes, so there ends up being a mess in the boxes all-too-often.  I need to get another roosting pole put in the coop in an effort to prevent this – it’s not happening this week though.

Speaking of chicken projects, I also need to get the roof patched.  There are a few leaks, which aren’t causing trouble now, but I sure don’t need them to continue.  I doubt I will get to that this week either.  And that isn’t it.  I have another project I have been putting off for a while, though I will save the details of it until later.

Happenings Around the Homestead

WEEEEELLL – it helps if you hit the post button.  😀  This week you will get a double update.

It’s been a bit of a slow week around the homestead, at least outside.  Inside I have been drying some herbs, both oregano and mint.  It might be better to air dry these both outside, but I prefer to use the dehydrator on low (around 95 degrees) because it is consistent.  When things are dried outside I have to keep a closer eye on them to ensure pests aren’t getting into the items I am drying, and I have to watch for the rain.  I don’t have either of those worries inside.

The oregano I am drying is a nice, strong, True Greek Oregano, whereas the mint is Chocolate Mint (my favorite), Orange Mint, and Spearmint.  There is something special, I think, about herbs that have been dried at home.  I don’t know whether it is simply knowing where they come from, or if there is a quality difference (I am sure of that, btw), but I sure do like it.

The plants I started last week are all doing well though.  I am so hopeful that the sweet potatoes take off and grow well.  My biggest concern is the deer.  Once they find these plants, they will certainly eat the leaves off of them.  They always do.  I probably need to get a covering for them as soon as I can to try and keep that risk down a little.  I may put the tomato cages over them temporarily until I can get something more appropriate.

I am a little surprised that the brassicas I planted early in the spring haven’t all bolted yet.  They are in a part of the yard that gets afternoon shade, so it may be that this is enough to keep them from bolting, but it is also enough to keep them from growing like I want to see them grow.  Even so, I don’t mind the plants taking their time as long as they don’t bolt.  🙂

Since I originally wrote this, last week, I have successfully finished drying the mint and the oregano.  Today I plan to put Feverfew on the dehydrator.

Perhaps the item of most interest this week is that some of the winter sown plants have just been happily living in their milk jugs since winter.  My oldest son has been wanting to plant some things, so I showed him where to move them yesterday.  That means I now have Skullcap, German Chamomile, and two types of Echinacea in my raised flower bed.  Woot!  Here, let me share a picture or two:

German Chamomile

One of the new flowers/herbs in my garden, German Chamomile.

Chocolate Mint

My Favorite Fresh Mint: Chocolate Mint

The Chicken Chronicles

There is not a whole lot of new things happening with the chickens.  The biggest news right now is the babies (Welsummers) and the older ladies (Rhode Island Reds, primarily).  The Reds sure do pick on the Welsummers, so much so that they Welsummers stay in the coop away from the other hens.  This week we have taken the step of putting the babies back in the baby coop and a separate run when we can.  It doesn’t work so well when it rains, which it has been doing this week, but it is nice to get them outside.

One thing that is encouraging is to see the Welsummers testing one another.  No, I don’t relish the fact that they are establishing a pecking order amongst themselves, but I do like knowing that they are getting tougher and stronger, which means they will be able to hold their own with the older ladies soon enough.

The biggest problem with the Welsummers is they are roosting on top of the nesting boxes, and in fact they stay there much of the time, which means their droppings are falling into the nesting boxes.  We have to make changes because of this.  It isn’t hurting anything, but it is making the eggs more dirty.

One of the nice things about the hens right now is how they are fertilizing the garden for us when they are out running.  I like one way I have heard it said: chickens are a compost factory that just happen to lay eggs.   Surely they are not providing all the compost we need, but they are helping.

The Chicken Chronicles

Well, I meant to post this last week, but for some reason I forgot about it.  So, you will get last week’s post and an update to last week’s post.  🙂

Another week, another chicken problem. It seems Red has hurt her leg somehow. Red, by the way, is any one of the Rhode Island Reds, as we cannot really tell them apart. Anyhow, we have had to separate her to keep the others from picking on her, and to keep her from trying to go up and down the stairs in the coop. We’re also giving her half a baby aspirin at least two times a day. Right now she is avoiding standing on that foot, but I cannot see anything wrong with it. That leads me to believe she might have sprained it somehow.

 In other chicken news, we built a small coop for the babies (the Welsummers) so they can start staying outside all the time. The silly girls wouldn’t go into it the first night though, acting like young kids the first time they try to camp out. 😀 We finally decided to bring them in after listening to crying for an hour. Maybe they will get used to it decide to sleep in it. It won’t be long until it is time to integrate them with the rest of the girls.

 We had a good week of laying both weeks, including one day where all of the older birds laid eggs – that hasn’t happened often at all.

This week’s update: Red is doing much better.  She is now back in the coop with her sisters, and while she is still favoring her leg, she is much, much better.

Since last week, we have put ankle bracelets on three of the Rhode Island Reds, and amazingly we can now see who rules the roost!  There is one of them, tentatively named Pink (because of the pink bracelet) who is obviously at the top of the pecking order, and it seems Blue (you guessed it, a blue bracelet) who seems to be #2).  The Easter Eggers seem to not really care either way, but they do recognize Pink’s authority.  It’s funny how we could never notice that without some identifier of who was who.

The most exciting news this week, and a far change from what I expected given the update above, is that the babies, the Welsummers, ran into the big girls’ coop one day when they were out running around, and they showed no interest in coming back out.  The older ladies are picking on them some, but they seem to be holding their own, so this is where they will stay.  🙂

Happenings Around the Homestead

Work and a special photography project I have been working on have kept me busy enough lately that there hasn’t been too much activity from me around the homestead outside of the chickens (more on that tomorrow), but some things of note have happened.

  1. Cicadas!  Wow, these things came out in force this past week!  I don’t ever recall seeing so many that they were on car tires, grass blades, small plants, and anything else they could latch onto.  Wow, this is a bumper crop this year.  😀
  2. Sweet Potatoes – despite not putting much of a garden out this year, I am putting out sweet potato slips.  They arrive this past week, and I neglected to get them out over the weekend.  I’ll try to do that Tuesday of this week.  This year I have purple, white, and orange.  Hopefully some will grow this time.
  3. Volunteers – Again, despite not putting out a garden this year, the leftover seeds in the compost had a different idea.  We have at least three volunteer tomatoes growing that we will let continue to grow.
  4. Grass – We have a buch of grass peeking its head through our new woodchip covering on our garden.  Time to move the chicken pen to let them take care of it.

Finally, I ran across a good article about Ten Things We Can Learn From Old Homesteads.  I really liked this list.  Is there anything you would add?

Metal Wizardry

Stop. Take ten minutes and watch this video. Wow. My mind struggles to understand this even after seeing it.

Simple as Riding a Bike

Riding a bike is simple, right?  Not so fast, hotshot!  It seems it is far more complicated than we think, and there is a lot we can learn from that.  Check this out:

Happenings Around the Homestead

How I love this time of year!  The weather has just been amazing!  The plants are coming out everywhere – I love it!

One of the biggest pieces of news around the homestead this week is the number of apples on the apple trees!  I cannot believe this!  We have had these trees since we moved in here, and while they have made one or two apples a year, it has been truly pathetic.  This year, as you may remember, I pruned them heavily.  I can’t say that made all the difference, but I have to believe it made the bulk of the difference.  There seems to be hundreds of tiny apples now growing on the trees.  Check it out:

Growing Apples

Growing Apples

The other big news of the year is my almost-firm decision that I am not going to put out a full garden this year.  I have decided that there is wisdom in letting your soil rest periodically, and with us having just converted to a new type of gardening, this is a fine year to let it rest.  I have already ordered some plants, and I have already planted some things, so anything that grows from that will be permitted to grow, but we aren’t going to do anything else.  Basically, this means we will have garlic, some greens, some popcorn, and sweet potatoes.  The rest will be left to rest.  (I sure hope we can find someone with plenty of fresh tomatoes this year!)

One of the nice things happening in the garden right now is the portable chicken coop is allowing our chickens to fertilize the garden like mad.  😀  We are moving it around the garden regularly, and they are not only eating any grass that remains there, but they are stirring it up, fertilizing it, and helping to prepare it for next year.

 

The Chicken Chronicles

I have to begin this week’s post with some unfortunate news.  For those of you who know my wife, I would ask that you not talk about this around her.  She is still taking it a bit rough.  We lost our first hen last week.  Snow White had become egg bound, and to make a long story short, she died from it.  Believe me, there is more to it, which is why my wife is not keen on discussing it, but it ws a good lesson for us.  In the future any hen who gets egg bound more than a couple of times in their first year of laying will be removed from the flock.  It seems this is a strong sign that there is something physically wrong with the hen, which ended up being the problem with Snow White.  This is why I want to add one or two birds a year to the flock though.

Speaking of new birds, the Welsummers are coming along nicely, and they are spending most of their days outside now except when the weather is bad.  They are loving it.  We still haven’t mixed them in with the rest of the flock yet, as we are wanting them to grow some more first.  In fact, I hope to make a make-shift small henhouse for them today so they can stay outside more, but still in their own cage.

Egg-laying is coming along nicely, and even with the reduction of one laying bird, we are still keeping up with our typical totals of 49 eggs per week or 5.44 eggs per bird per week.  I can’t wait to see that number go up when the Welsummers start laying.

Speaking of the Welsummers, how about a picture?


Aren’t they getting big?  It seems we bought them around the first of March, so they are nearing eight weeks old.  Lately they have been trying to establish their pecking order – it is almost like watching a bunch of teenage boys.  😀

Happenings Around the Homestead

Spring is here!  Trees are blossoming, flowers are popping up everywhere, and the beautiful Cherry Blossoms have already passed their peak.  I love this time of year!  However, it also means it is time for the work to begin.  In fact, many people have already put out some of their summer vegetables, something I am hoping to get to this weekend (writing this on Saturday).  If my schedule works out as planned, I hope to have popcorn and some other vegetables planted this weekend.  UPDATE: I did get the popcorn planted, but that was it.  I hope I can find the time next weekend to do some more.

Perhaps the most exciting news here at the homestead this week has only indirect ties to gardening though.  I am now a beekeeper!  Don’t be expecting honey anytime soon though, as I don’t have honeybees.  This week my first shipment of native bees, Blue Orchard Mason Bees, arrived!  Did you realize that honey bees aren’t even native to the United States?   Nope, they were imported to the United States from Europe in the early days of this country.  Blue Orchard Mason Bees, however, are native to the US, along with many other bees of which you may have never heard.  I’ll be sharing more about this in coming posts, I am sure.  🙂

This doesn’t mean I don’t have an interest in honey bees.  I do.  However, my primary reason for bees is better pollination, and the native bees are better pollinators than the honey bees.  Of course, honey bees have the added benefit of honey.  For some reason, this reminds me of the chickens.  Let me explain.  I often say, jokingly, that I whisper to the birds, “It’s either eggs or meat, your choice.”  However, I think the better way to think of chickens is as fertilizer factories that control pests and produce eggs as a side benefit.  With the bees, they are primarily pollinators, and if they produce honey, that is a great side benefit.

So, how about a few pictures?

First off, this is the kit:

Mason Bee Kit

Mason Bee Kit

Here are the bees right out of the box.  They are still groggy, but yet they have all emerged from their cocoons.

Groggy Mason Bees

Groggy Mason Bees

 

Here are some nice macro shot of the bees.

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee peering out at me.

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee preparing to fly.

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee and a good view of the tubes

Female Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Female Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Female Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Female Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Finally, here is a shot of their new home, which I placed on the eastern side of a tree in our yard.  I might move this to a different location next year, but this seemed like a good starting spot.

Mason Bee House

Mason Bee House

Rest assured, this is not the last you will hear about Mason Bees.  😀  More to come, perhaps even later this week.

 

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