Summer Twenty-Twelve

Whew, it’s hot out there! We’ve had so many record-setting days this summer that I’ve lost count. Our garden, which is largely resting this year while we adjust to baby number five and patronize our local CSA, looks sad, sad, sad. The six tomato plants we did plant (we usually grow 40) are short and pathetic. But there are green tomatoes on them, so I have hope of doing a little canning. The orchard is suffering from high heat and neglect; the strawberry patches are dead and dry, as are the blueberry bushes, raspberry canes, and Asian pear trees. The pear trees have some life in them and will likely survive, but I don’t have a lot of hope for the rest of them. The chickens are still laying, but not as much, and we have a huge hawk problem this year (this deserves another post). But the heat! I’m incredibly thankful that our circa 1975 central air conditioning is working this year. Though our July electric bill is a doozy…

Silas Five, 10 weeks old, napping on the living room floor.

Silas (11 weeks old!) gave us a scare last week when he woke up at 4:30 a.m. Sunday with a temperature of 103.6. We ended up rushing him to the ER, being admitted, and subjecting him to all sorts of painful and scary tests (bloodwork, lumbar puncture, catheterization). We are blessed and thankful beyond words that he is alive and healthy today. While we will probably never know what he had, we know it was a nasty virus that caused something that resembled viral meningitis. I have only been that scared one other time – when Ellery, then 3 weeks old, had RSV.

Being a parent can be hard on the heart! But the rewards are so worth it.

Despite the insane heat, we have managed to find plenty of time to play outside. (Just not between the hours of 10 and 2.)

Peekaboo! Mommy bought us this great little playset for $50 off Craigslist.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Getting a good picture of all four of the mobile kids is not an easy task! They have been having a great time with this playset, even though I wasn’t sure the bigger ones would love it. They create circuses and plays all the time. Mostly circuses. 🙂

“Ta-da!” [Cal (2) and Ellery (7)]

My two brunettes,  Asher (4) and Maya (9) 

At first, they were content to sit on top of the walls. Now they all try to STAND on top of the walls. Guess how comfortable I am with that.

Maya treed this little (Big! Huge! Fat!) fella the other day. She chased him from the pasture near the chickens; we saw him prowling around the coops and thought he was a cat or other menace. Turns out he was just a scared-outta-his-mind herbivore.

Two staples. This is what happens when you are a wiggly, impulsive two-year-old and you sit backward at the edge of your parents’ bed while your mother is holding your baby brother so her arms are too full to quickly grab you. You smack the back of your head on the floor and your mother feels terrible. You might get a popsicle out of the deal, though.

This is my handsome Asher right after his last t-ball game of his first season. He is SO PROUD of that medal.

First Chick of 2012!

We have a baby! Our first little chicked just hatched around 3:30 p.m. today. There are six other eggs pipped, one zipping. The little firstborn is very noisy, and he is doing a great job entertaining my children with all of his cheeping.

Here’s a hatch, from pip to out:

This is what a pip looks like (second egg from the front on the left). This is not the egg that you will see hatch below, but one nearby.

This is our first chick "zipping--" that is, pipping all the way around the top, as if he's unzipping himself. Then he'll pop off the top and come out.

That's a chick tush right there! And his leg on the right.

He's mostly out!

He's out, but exhausted. Being born is hard work.

Here he is, minutes later, completely out of the egg. He's been alternately napping and cheeping right on top of the other eggs. In this incubator (a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco), there's not a lot of room. (Neither is it roomy underneath a mama hen, I might add.)

I will post fluffy chicks later, once he’s dry.

Incubating Chicks 2012

Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco incubator

I started a new batch of chicks in our Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco incubator on 3/10/12. Tonight marks seven complete days; 14 to go. Babies due on 3/31/12!

(We bought the incubator last year and successfully hatched 10 Bourbon Red turkey poults and 5 homegrown Buff Orpington chicks.  To read more about our experiences, click here.)

Buff Orpington chicks, hatched on our farm under a broody hen in June 2010. For more cute pics of these chicks, click here.

I saved eggs for four days and ended up with 26 Buff Orpington eggs and 4 Buckeye eggs. The only reason I didn’t save more Buckeye eggs is that so far, they hadn’t been fertile. (You can tell if they’re fertile by looking for a faint bullseye in the yolk when you crack them to cook them. Then you can predict what ratio of your eggs are being fertilized before deciding to save them.) But they day before I started the incubator, I cracked open some Buckeye eggs for a batch of scrambled eggs, and they were all fertile! So I saved the four from that day and added them to the batch.

Buckeye Chicks (source)

On saving eggs for hatching: I kept them on the counter in egg cartons and tilted them up on one side. Then I tilted them on the other the next day. You have to store them point-down (big side up). I’ve heard you can store them for up two weeks before hatching and still be successful, but obviously, the sooner, the better. Ideal temps for storing eggs for hatching are 50 – 60 degrees; our kitchen was consistently around 65 or less during this time. (It is now much warmer, due to the weird warm weather we’ve been having!) In order to try and keep the breeds separate for now, we only let the breeds out one at a time to range during the day. I’m not sure we did this early enough, though, as it was only a week before collecting eggs that I stopped letting them out together. So it’s possible we’ll get some barnyard mixes in there, which is fine. I think a Buckeye-Buff Orpington cross would make an excellent homestead bird, and hybrid vigor is also in our favor. I just want to make sure to keep a pure stock of Buckeye going, in case we decide to raise more of them.

Brinsea Ovascope for candling eggs

I candled our eggs tonight using the Brinsea Ovascope that my elementary school teacher friend, Annie, let me borrow. (She hatched some of our chicks with her class last year!) I tossed two clears (eggs without developing embryos) and marked one with a question mark. But that only brings us down to 28 eggs – in an incubator made for 24 chicken eggs! I had initially fit the 30 in there by removing the divider bars, lining them up in a running bond, and stacking two on top. I used waxed paper to cushion any open spots to keep the eggs upright and not jostling around. So now we’re down to just one level of eggs, 7 columns of 4 eggs each, in a running bond. I’ll candle again in a week and see if there are any more to toss. I’m thrilled to have so many chicks developing! We need more layers, and the boys will be meat birds, so nothing gets wasted. I’m just worried about all those chicks in that little incubator come hatching day…

Why did I decide to incubate chicken eggs right now, you might ask? Amidst an unplanned kitchen remodel and at 32 weeks pregnant? Because we want/need more layers, and we also like to raise the excess males for meat. I want these chicks hatched and through the little baby phase before my own baby makes his arrival. Plus, the incubating is the easy part – I simply rock the Brinsea three times a day, check the humidity every few days, and wait. It really couldn’t be easier. (Well, it could be, if I had a broody hen. But even with the insanely warm weather, there are no broody hens around here in March! Last year, we had to wait until June for a broody.) I prefer for a hen to raise babies for me (so much easier!), but that would mean the new babies wouldn’t lay until late next winter. By hatching new babies this month, I have a chance at eggs by September/October this year, which is what I really want. The new chicks will be inside for a week or two, out in the garage for another week or two, and then into the big outdoors in our juvenile chicken tractor. We like to get them outdoors as soon as possible.

Stay tuned for a kitchen update, and perhaps a 2012 garden post (I started seeds this week)…

Fall, Farmer’s Markets, Fruit.

I love fall. Favorite season. I think it started as a child, because of course, my birthday is October, so I always looked forward to fall. But I loved the leaf piles, the pretty colors, the cooler weather, Halloween. Now, as a grownup, I still love all of those things (except maybe Halloween, which we do, but not the spooky stuff), plus more. I hate being sweaty hot, so the cooler weather is more welcome than ever. The fall colors are still a favorite, especially on a cool sunny day. Brilliant. As a gardener, I love the last of the fall harvest coming in, the abundance, esp. all those winter squash. My birthday? Meh. I could take it or leave it. Two of my children also have birthdays in October, so there’s always a lot of excitement in the air this month, whether I’m excited about leaving 31 behind or not. 😉 Jason’s birthday is in eight short days, as well, and let’s just say he’s even older than I. But he takes it all in stride. I think about aging more than he does.

We went on vacation last week, and after we returned (9/26/11), I noticed the swans were no longer hanging out at the pond down the road. Gone south for the winter. We’ll see you next March, swans. There are some beautiful white crane-looking birds hanging out in area ponds still, though. I wish I knew what they were.

This morning, we divided and conquered our gardening and harvesting. With frost predicted tonight, Jason took the big kids out to the garden/weed patch/rabbit and small rodent sanctuary to get the last of the tomatoes. They are already pretty dead from blight, but there were still a lot of them left (both green and ripe). I will be canning sauce and green tomato relish (really more of a salsa, and a family favorite) so that we can use our counters and dining table again. We also have potatoes, dry beans, cabbage, and onion/garlic (if they are still out there amidst the weeds) left to harvest. I think those will keep, as tonight’s low is 32 and probably won’t get down that low until morning. But the tomatoes will be all done. And the next few nights aren’t supposed to get nearly as cold, so we buy ourselves some time. I just brought lunch out to the garden, and the kids are having a blast harvesting potatoes. They are filthy dirty and elated at all the delicious looking spuds. I guess they are harvesting potatoes after all. The beans should be “fun” to harvest, as we never trellised them, so they sprawled all over and climbed weeds and fences as necessary. “It’s kind of like a game, finding all the pods, ” Jason said. He’s such an optimist. I would be whining.

My part of the harvest this morning was to take Cal with me to the farmer’s market. I love that place. It’s only 3.5 country miles from our house, so maybe a 5 minute drive with absolutely no traffic, and I’m able to stock up on things I didn’t or couldn’t grow this year. I always chat with farmer friends and enjoy a muffin and/or coffee. It was freezing this morning; I wrapped Cal in a blanket in his stroller and stuck his hands in, figuring he wouldn’t keep them under the blanket but it was worth a try. He kept them under the blanket the whole time! For a toddler, that’s pretty amazing. It was that cold. We were on a mission to buy some things we didn’t grow this year: squash, peppers, beets, and even a watermelon. I figured it was the last week for peppers, so I’m glad I got some. Lots of pretty butternut squash on display, and I bought from two of my favorite organic growers.

I used to think that my goal as a homesteader was to never need to hit the farmer’s market. But I’ve since changed my thinking. No matter how avid of gardener you are, no matter how much time you have to tend your plants, things happen. Blight takes the tomatoes, squash bugs decimate your pumpkin patch, mice take the potatoes. Whatever happens, there’s likely another area gardener/farmer at the market who didn’t have that problem. So you buy their’s instead. This was a difficult year, Cal being a handful, and a wet, cool spring that provided rain and wet soil whenever we had a free weekend, so I didn’t plant my pepper seedlings (I let them die, sniff), and we didn’t even plant winter squash. I know. It makes me really sad. I still have a little butternut squash from last year’s harvest – over a year old! That is one hardy squash. I love our butternuts; they taste great and last forever. I know the soil they grew in, I know that they were cured properly for best flavor, and I can make sure they’re stored to the best of my ability. And it’s way cheaper than buying it. But it didn’t happen this year, so I’m happy to buy from those who had a better squash year than I did. I can still make sure they’re cured, and they’ll taste great, even if I had to pay for them. 🙂

And it’s apple season! I forgot that that’s definitely one of the top five reasons I love fall. Apples are my favorite fruit, and living in the Fruit Belt means that there’s a lot to choose from around here. Most of it is conventionally grown, for sure, so we do a lot of washing and peeling. And when we u-pick, we only go organic, so no pesticides on the kids’ hands. There are a few organic options around here, thankfully. Organic apples are hard to grow, so I’m thankful for those who do it. We hope to go picking in the next couple of weekends; here’s hoping the harvest holds out until we can get there.

Our own fruit trees are growing, slowly but surely. We have two Asian Pear trees, and they are still small. But one had dozens of flowers on it this year! I didn’t want it to put all its energy toward fruit (at the expense of the roots/tree growth), so I removed all but 10 buds, figuring spring storms would blow some more off. It worked. We ended up with four tasty-looking Asian pears, just enough to try our first harvest without compromising the growth of the plant. Before we left on our trip on 9/19, the four pears looked delicious, but not soft enough, so I left them. Upon returning, they were gone, and I was really sad. I figured a deer got them? But if he did, he left no trace. Weird. Then Jason and the kids went to the garden today, and behold, the four pears were just sitting on the ground! They were so ripe they fell off. And they were in perfect condition – no bruises, no bugs, nothing. Asian pears are known for being extremely pest resistant and for storing well, and I can testify to that now. We immediately peeled them up and ate them for lunch, and they were  THE BEST ASIAN PEARS I HAVE EVER EATEN. It’s true. I can’t wait until those trees grow bigger and give us more! We don’t do a thing to those trees – haven’t pruned yet, don’t spray anything – and so I know this is a fruit that I chose well. (We don’t have an apple tree because I’m pretty sure I won’t take care of it properly, and I won’t spray, so we’ll just be feeding worms and deer. =)

It’s days like today that make me so happy to live here. Yes, the house needs work, and it’s not a style I would have chosen, but this land – it’s amazing. The turkeys are getting nice and fat, roaming around and eating grass and bugs, and the chickens are pecking through the dirt and roaming the woods, some looking tasty enough to eat (soon, soon). The garden harvest, even in a year when the garden was largely ignored, is abundant and delicious. The eggs we get, though few due to molting, are so flavorful and full of nutrition that I don’t think I can even return to store bought eggs. I’m so happy about the choices we’ve made and the blessings that God has given us.

July: The Month I Love to Hate

Ah, July. I dream of thee all year – thy heat, thy tomatoes, thy mulberries, thy fireflies, thy warm summer nights.

Thy mosquitoes, thy weeds, thy thunderstorms, thine humidity.

*Sigh*

The past two years, our first tomatoes have been July 7 and 9, I believe. This year, it is July 25, and I’m still staring at a whole lotta green tomatoes. We were late planting just about everything, and now we’re late weeding, so the weeds are just killing me (and everything in the garden). The nightshades are actually doing alright, because I mulched them heavily with straw, so the weeds aren’t too bad. But the onions will have to be sacrificed to keep the weeds from going to seed (and the weeds, they are abundant). We actually bought two large straw bales for mulch this year, and it was a brilliant move, except that we haven’t had time to use it all.

It’s a familiar story – great expectations, and then the let down when I realize how behind I am in the big garden. I could start smaller, but well, I just really like having all those tomatoes and potatoes. I suppose when your husband works two jobs and goes to graduate school and you yourself have four young children to homeschool, you ought to set your sights a little lower and/or have a little grace when it doesn’t go your way. But I’m pretty hard on myself, so I’m feeling down about the garden (again). It’s okay, I’ll be alright – it’s this determined and wild personality that gets the results I like when things do go my way – so I’m learning to take the good with the bad. If I was laid back, I wouldn’t be me, would I?

The poultry are doing fine. The turkeys are gonna taste awesome.

The dog (Jupiter) is really a perfect family farm dog. He’s got some puppy pep in him (jumping on you when he’s really excited), but otherwise, you couldn’t ask for a more easygoing dog for children and chickens.

I have been having health problems for about three months or more. If you pray, do pray for me. I’m okay and it’s nothing serious (at least I don’t think!), so don’t worry. If you’re a friend and want to know, feel free to email me and ask. But for now, let’s just say that it’s been a tough spring and summer, but I know that things are going to be just fine.

I am doing some hardcore homeschool planning today (this blog post is my stalling), so I’m going to get back to that. I usually have our curriculum in hand by this point in July, but again, it’s been one of those years…so I have to hit the books and plan our year to come. I will have a third grader, a first grader, and a couple of hooligans/preschoolers to wrastle. What fun!

Late June Homestead Update

Well, it’s officially summer and that is the season of the neglected blog. But I like to keep my homestead records here, so you know I’ll be popping up every once in a while. No pictures today, sorry, but I anticipate more in the coming weeks.

• More Baby Chickens – Our broody hen hatched out seven baby chicks on Sunday 6/19/11. We were surprised, as the babies weren’t due for two more days, and even though mama-hatched chicks are often earlier than incubator-hatched, I expected maybe 6/20, not 6/19. (And 6/19 was just when we first saw them; they don’t come out until they’re dry and ready to walk around.) We moved her into the play house in the front yard, as that is the only structure left on the property that could easily be made predator-proof. Just lined the bottom with cardboard and shavings, and stapled 1/2″ hardware cloth over the windows. It works great. Today we finally set up a little yard for them to peck around it, and they seem thrilled to get out and about outside. The run is covered with bird netting to protect them from hawks.
• No Hawk Attacks – We have learned the secret of keeping the hawks away: don’t free range them until they’re adult-sized. Plain and simple. Last year, we let the babies range with their mamas and some juveniles range alone and had a ton of hawk losses. (But I have to note that none of the losses came from the chicks being taken care of by their mama; it was mostly mama-less juveniles. Even so, there were attacks on the mamas and their babies, which is stressful for the chickens.) This year, we have made sure all small poultry are locked up until adult-sized, and though we’ve had low-flying hawks, they have yet to even try to attack. Our new puppy, Jupiter, could have something to do with this, but we didn’t have any trouble prior to his coming, either.
• Jupiter – Speaking of the dog, he’s doing very well. He had tick problems, bad, within the first week of being here. I spent one afternoon with the dog and tweezers, picking over 20 ticks off of him, and not even putting a dent in the tick population on his body. It was really sad. So we went to Sam’s Club and bought the Frontline Plus generic that they sell, Jason administered it, and no tick problems since. I hate to use a pesticide, but with an outside working dog in tick country, we don’t have a lot of options. The most recent pest problem he has is flies during a string of hot days, but these cooler days seemed to have gotten rid of that problem. I’m watching him and seeing if the flies return. He is doing well, healthy and active, and tolerates children and being brushed and combed once a week. We have to keep on him about not jumping on kids, which is he is prone to do in his puppy-ness, and are teaching him to sit, stay, and come. Hopefully he’ll learn quickly.
• Garden – Gosh, there’s a lot to say, but I’ll try to keep it brief. Basically everything’s that’s planted needs to be weeded and mulched, and everything that’s not needs to go in this weekend or else not at all. We’ve had horrible weather this year, with a cool, wet spring, and every weekend day that we have been free to garden has rained. We took one beach day recently, which is rare, but other than that, all nice days have been “wasted” during the week (when we are so busy we can’t garden much, at least not until Cal is bigger and Jason is done with school). This weekend, we hope to do that weeding and mulching, trellis the beans, till up a new patch for winter squash, and plant a lot of stuff. The weather is finally cooperating, but we are operating at a young family’s pace, and you know how that goes.
• Fruit – The strawberries are just about done and have been wonderful. We have three 4 x 8 beds, and for a family of six big strawberry eaters, I’m finding that this is enough to keep us in fresh strawberries for about 3-4 weeks. In order to preserve (freeze, can, dry), we’d need double the beds. So that’s good to know. We so enjoyed just eating buckets of strawberries for dinner and not worrying about saving some for jam this year. Just eat, eat, eat. As for other fruit – the mulberries are just now ready to pick, so we can move from one berry to the other. After mulberries, it will be raspberries, maybe a handful of blueberries (they’re still small), and a few (less than 10) Asian pears that I let grow this year.
• Other Poultry – The turkeys are doing great. They are growing fast and eating and pooping a ton. Can’t let them free range yet due to those hawks, but it won’t be long before they’re bigger than our chickens and we can let them out. Big turkeys tend to be hawk deterrents, too, so I look forward to seeing that. We’ve had a wild turkey hen hanging around the property, really close to the turkeys and the house, the past week. I wonder if she hears the turkey poults and wants to see what’s up? I also wonder if the wild turkeys will be a problem for our turkeys, stealing them vice versa. I guess we’ll see. The Buckeye chickens are doing great, and I let them out to free range in the evenings every few days, but not more often due to hawks. They are a little less skittish than before, but they still won’t roost.

That’s it for now. Lots to do, and we’re trying hard to enjoy it (instead of causing stress by thinking about all we have to do). We do love to garden and take care of the animals, so that helps. It is difficult to homestead/small scale farm when one of two adults in the family works two jobs + takes graduate classes, and the other takes care of four children, a household, and homeschools. Our time is limited. I’ve been reading a lot of farm tales lately, books about urbanites buying their first farm and chronicling their first years, and it’s always interesting. I’ve noticed that they really resonate with me, and I can identify with the hard work that they describe. But I find myself wishing we could throw ourselves into the farm and have no other responsibilities, at least paid work outside the home. We could get so much work done if farming was our primary occupation, even with the children being young. But it’s not to be, so I will keep trying to do the best I can with what I’ve got. The good thing is, the garden often grows and yields in spite of my neglect, such that even the worst weeding years give us bushels of organic, home grown produce to eat and preserve. I’m banking on that, and thankful to God for all of this bounty.

Imagine what success we could have if we actually kept up with the planting and weeding! One of these years…

Around the Homestead

A few snapshots of life around here, using my teeny-tiny little refurbished but new-to-me point-and-shoot camera and handy dandy Eye-Fi card (click any image to enlarge):

Do you know how difficult it is to get three or four kids plus a dog to look at the camera at the same time, much less smiling? Very. Very, very, very. This was the best I could do. But aren’t they cute anyway? See how much they love Jupiter? He cries when they leave; he loves them, too.

For now, Maya can pick him up. He just lets her. The only annoying habit he has is jumping up on the kids when he sees them, and that’s just him being a puppy. We are trying to patiently train that out of him. His jumping isn’t even bad – considering how big he already is, it’s a very gentle jump. He’s just great with the kids. For now, I try to be firm in pushing him down and saying, “Down, Jupiter!” when he jumps. I have also rolled him onto his side (like a mama dog would do to her young if they were doing something she didn’t like), holding his muzzle, saying, “Down!” Do you have any puppy training tips for me? We will be working on leash training this week, walking him around the pasture that will one day be his to roam, trying to teach him how to walk on a leash and learn where his territory is. I am so new at training a puppy, much less a livestock guardian dog, and I need help. Books? Tips?

Jupiter is currently in a 16′ x 16 pen formed by cattle panels and chicken wire, doubled up (because he can sneak out the holes in the cattle panels until he gets a little bigger). We get him out for exercise daily, and try to go in and pet him every time we do poultry chores (twice daily, usually).  This is just temporary until we figure out a bigger run for his first year. He can’t be left alone with the chickens, so we can’t let him have the whole three acre pasture until he’s older and more trustworthy (and until we’ve actually fenced said three acre pasture). He has a plastic house and tarp for shade/lounging. Guess where he chooses to sleep? On the ground, under the tarp. We have put his food inside the house just to see if that helps him figure out that he can sleep there, but he only goes in to eat. I did see him in the house during a particularly heavy rainstorm, so at least there’s that. Great Pyrenees just like to be outdoors! I’ve read and heard that they rarely go in their shelters, even in winter.

This is our unheated hoophouse, 6′ x 6′. Those are all my seedlings that should be in the ground weeks ago. Negative farmer points for Serina.

Our new Buckeye chickens! They’re juveniles, around 2-3 months old. They don’t like or trust me yet, so they huddle in the back of their chicken tractor every time I come near. They are so docile and less jumpy than any juveniles I’ve ever seen or had. Any juveniles that we’ve had in the past would be jumping on those roosts and playing King of the Hill all day; I have yet to see one of these Buckeyes get on the roost of its own volition. We have tried putting them on the roosts after dark, but they’re always huddling on the ground by morning. I know they’ll figure it out eventually, but I can’t believe how un-jumpy these chickens are.

Our pole barn. I don’t think I’ve ever shown it. It looks so picturesque in this shot, and it’s really a very nice setting, but it needs work. Lots of work. The roof leaks, the sliding doors need relocating, and the dirt floor inside is so hilly that you could sled on it. The barn has been empty of animals for probably 10+ years, but has been a junkyard for the previous owners since then. It’s still their junkyard now; they took one truckload out of the barn after we requested that they empty it, but they never came back for the rest of the junk. So we have a lot of stuff to toss. (Very little of it is reusable in any way, which saddens me.) There are also lots of wasps nests, both abandoned and live. Our neighbors recall that the previous owners housed five large horses in this barn (built for three medium ones) at one time. It shows it – it’s quite beat up. At the very least, fixing the roof and leveling the floor will give us a place to start. I’d like to have poultry and dog pens in there by winter, with attached fenced runs with gates for free ranging.

Happy Memorial Day!

Broody Hen Watch 2011

We FINALLY have a broody hen! Our first of the year. Today, Mon 5/30/11 (Memorial Day!), Jason saw a hen in a nest box when he went to close in the chickens after dark. I went back out later this evening and counted her eggs; she had been sitting on three reals and two wooden eggs. I moved the three reals + 7 more reals just laid today into the dog crate nearby (all marked with an “X” with a pencil, just in case), gently and quickly moved her into it, and put the door on. She didn’t freak out and stayed on her 10 eggs, and even pecked at me when I tried to add more fresh bedding, so here’s hoping! Since she’s locked in the crate, I’m hoping she’ll stay there.

I’ll go out tomorrow and give her a chick feeder and waterer inside the crate, and I’ll plan on opening her door once a day to see if she wants to get out and stretch her legs (and poop, to be honest, because I don’t want to clean broody poop out of the dog crate). I’m also going to spread more wood shavings and diatomaceous earth inside the dog crate after dark tomorrow.

If all goes well, we’ll be due to see some broody-hatched chicks on the evening of Monday, June 27, 2011. Mark your calendars! 🙂

I’m overdue for a poultry count post. There’s a nice variety around here now!

Jupiter

Yesterday evening, we received an awesome gift – a puppy! Not just any puppy, but an 11-week-old purebred Great Pyrenees, a livestock guardian dog (LGD) of the best sort. He was born and raised on a farm with chickens, and his mom and dad are chicken guardians. The breeder, a very kind and generous fellow, wanted us to have him, and we were delighted to accept. While getting a LGD wasn’t in the plans for another year or two, moving up the timeline was no problem.

He is ADORABLE. Can’t really say it any other way. I don’t have any awesome pictures (it was a crazy day, and we got home late), but here are a few I snapped before we drove home (you really must click to enlarge so as to enjoy his adorableness fully):

The kids LOVE him. We managed to keep it a secret until the puppy showed up at our meeting place. The kids thought we were buying chickens, which we were (we have eight new Buckeye chickens, too!), so that’s how I explained away the dog crate and towels and such (we keep dog crates for moving chickens or housing broodies). When the puppy was brought out, I asked the kids, “What do you think about bringing a puppy home?” And their eyes got really wide, and Maya said, “Really?” She initially thought it was just a last minute decision – that someone brought a dog and we decided to keep him at the last minute – but I told them the whole story on the way home. They were all smiles and can’t wait to spend some time playing with him today. Asher is very shy around dogs, so he stayed back and didn’t want to touch him. Ellery, who used to be deathly afraid of dogs and was jumped on by a dog as a toddler, was not afraid of him and really enjoyed petting and hugging him. Cal thought the dog was awesome until he licked his hand, and then his crazy laughter turned to crazy crying. (The laughter was always a little on edge – like, “this dog-thing is cool, but I’m not sure I like him, but there’s so much energy here that I can’t help but giggle a little maniacally–” and when the puppy licked his hand, I laughed so hard. Poor Cal. It was just so funny.) Maya thinks he’s the best thing ever.

His name is Jupiter, “Bringer of Jollity,” after Holst’s The Planets. I lobbied for Gus, but was outnumbered, and Jupiter really is a fine name. (The girls really wanted to name him Watch, from The Boxcar Children, or Friendly, “just because he’s friendly,” but everyone liked Jupiter.) He is great with the kids so far, loving and kind and gentle, and did great his first night. He will be a working farm dog, guarding the poultry and enjoying the country, and will live in the pasture with them. He went straight to the pasture for his first night and did wonderfully. I was worried, as he has only lived with his mom, dad, and aunt, but he didn’t cry or bark at all. He’s in a pen right next to the chickens. We hope to get the barn fixed up so that all the poultry and the dog will have stalls by fall/winter.

As for the chickens, they are eight juveniles, 2-3 months old, two cockerels and six pullets. They’re gorgeous and will be the beginnings of our Buckeye flock. It’s a great dual purpose bird, and threatened, so we will be benefitting from their wonderful qualities and helping to preserve the breed all at the same time. They lay well, have great bodies for meat, are sturdy and forage well, and have teeny little combs that make them great for winter in Michigan.

And for those who have inquired, the new Bourbon Red poults are doing great. All 10 are thriving, and the four Buff Orpington chicks that are in the brooder with them are also doing well. We had a scare when the power went out this week, and the turkeys all started crying and huddling and getting cold, and I worried because “cold poults are dead poults.” But we (Jason) were really clever and used my dad’s car with a converter box in it to plug the brooder lamp in until the power came back on a few hours later. Such a blessing that the car “happened” to be here, though I’m sure it wasn’t in my dad’s plans (his radiator was pierced by a huge branch during a storm, so he had to have it repaired before he could drive it home).

Things are good and crazy here at Mulberry Lane Farm (we have 10 Mulberry trees along our driveway!). Now I need to tend to the humans.

Turkey Day! (Babies, That Is)

We have babies! Starting at 10:30 a.m., we have had a series of poultry babies hatch out in our incubator. It has been so fun for the kids and I to watch, and the little birds are adorable. As I type this, we have five poults and two chicks, plus a couple of poults zipping. We are just now entering the 28th day for the poults and 21st day for the chicks, so some of the babies have been slightly early.

(Some terminology for you: pipping is when they first break the surface of the egg, and is usually just one small poke. It can be 10 minutes to 24 hours before the bird actually comes out. Zipping describes what happens when the poult/chick breaks a ring around the egg, hopefully at the large end, starting at the pip spot. Then the top of the shell pops off, and out comes a wet, exhausted, adorable baby!)

I will have tons of fluffy pictures coming later, after I move the babies from the incubator to a brooder. For now, they are still in the incubator, as it’s important to maintain humidity throughout the hatch, if possible. If they haven’t all hatched by tomorrow morning, I will move the babies to the brooder quickly, spray warm water in the incubator, and hope the remaining eggs hatch just fine, if a little late. They are very squished in there and are playing some serious soccer with the unhatched eggs.

The following slideshow should actually be quite educational. The first series is a poult, from pip to cute, directly followed by a chick, from pip to cute. Then you get a couple of bonus shots, including one of the first poult and first chick together. Enjoy!

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