Fall Garden

 Fall is my favorite time of the year. The weather has been great....warm days and cool nights with little rain unlike our "summer of the rain." I haven't posted any pictures of our girls lately. We lost two this summer. Both died in their nesting boxes so must have been egg laying problems. We have a couple molting right now as you can tell by the near naked Americauna on the lower left hand corner of the picture to the right and the feathers all over the ground.

Their laying is slowing down with the shorter days.

This is our Phoenix chicken, Cleo. She's my favorite. She's little and makes the sweetest little sound. She is broody a lot and I often find her in a nesting box with all the eggs tucked under her little body. If I call her, she'll come out to eat a treat with the others.

Ritch decided to try another planting of some produce in the garden. He planted some more zucchini, peas, lettuces, and beans. He also tried some beets, brussel sprouts, and sweet potatoes. There are a couple tomato plants and potato plants growing on their own.

The garden looks great...way fewer weeds in the fall than in the spring! Now if the first frost will hold off until about mid-November we'll be good!

Here are our very first sweet potatoes! We're going to allow the other plants a bit more time to grow but we wanted to see what was down there.

                                                     Here are some beets and brussels.

Late Spring 2013

We've had some wonderful weather here in our little area of the country. Our garden looks amazing. We were going to plow under our strawberries this year because they were about 4 years old and didn't produce well last year but I think they heard us because they gave us so many huge strawberries this year that we've had our fill of strawberry shortcake and my husband canned 16 jars of jelly and we have over 16 bags of berries frozen in the freezer for winter. (They make great syrup for pancakes....yum!)

Our raised beds are filled with herbs, different salad mixtures, arugula, spinach, and radishes. The garden is planted with lots of 3 different kinds of potatoes (purple Peruvian, red Kennebec, and Yukon gold), turnips, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, carrots, kale, and kohlrabi. Plus there are raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry bushes growing. In the yard we have apple trees and fig trees all growing beautifully.

Our "girls" are laying between seven and twelve eggs a day.

Had to add this cool picture of Haley taken by the photographer from The Daily Journal.

Our home school year has wound down a bit....

Haley's writing and Civil War class have ended. She is going to continue working through Life of Fred Beginning Algebra this summer and do weekly problems from the first half of Saxon Algebra to keep her brain working. She is doing some Critical Thinking workbooks and we need to finish up Chemistry...have about 4 chapters to go.  She is also enjoying Uncle Tom's Cabin right now and will probably read The Borrower's series this summer because the group with whom she took the classes this spring will be doing a special craft night based on the series in the fall.

Poor Chicken...

One of our beautiful Black Australorps, Crow, was attacked by a neighbor's dog yesterday.  Haley and Daddy were home all day except for about 20 minutes when they took Newt to his friend's house so they could drive him to wrestling practice. They returned home and noticed a huge pile of black feathers in the front yard. Ritch thought for sure a chicken had gotten eaten by a chicken hawk or something. He never expected to find her scared and standing next to the fence. The neighbor came over and explained her dog had gotten away from them and attacked her.

A few of the chickens just started getting out now and then the past couple days and need their wings clipped again. Not sure if Crow was out of the fence prior to the dog coming into the yard or if the dog running to the fence scared her out. She is missing feathers on her tail, back, and neck. Part of her wing near the top has been eaten off and she has some puncture wounds on her back. We've separated her from the rest and covered her in antibiotic. Hopefully she won't get an infection. Wish her luck!

No pictures today...it isn't very pretty.

Eggs!

 Our chickens are laying! Not sure if they are all laying but yesterday we had a record number of 10 eggs! Usually we get somewhere between six and eight eggs. Most of the chickens are laying in the nesting boxes but one Americauna keeps laying in strange places. We now know how they came up with the idea for Easter Egg Hunts.

I love to hear the girls after they lay crowing to let us all know what they have done. We all love to go out and check for eggs...I wonder how long until that becomes a chore. We have a Buff who has been laying huge double yolk eggs. Haley likes eating the "twins" for breakfast.

Today is our first day to sell eggs. Wish us luck!

Chickens...

Our Phoenix, who was laying a tiny egg just about every day, went broody this past week. We had to banish her from the coop and after a couple days ended up dipping her in a cold water bath to get her back to normal. When taking her from the nesting box to banish her to the dog run, I found a bluish-green egg that one of our Americaunas had laid that day...her first. The Phoenix hasn't laid an egg since. Not surprising since they aren't known to be the best layers.

Yesterday, we had a Black Australorp and an Americauna wandering around on the back patio. I chased them off four times then took Haley to have lunch with a friend. An hour later Newt called to let me know both chickens had laid an egg on the grill though one rolled off and broke. Newt saw the other come out and caught it before it fell.

We have been chasing chickens off the patio all day today since the grill is not the safest place to lay an egg. Newt placed the Black Australorp in the coop this morning after finding it wandering on the porch and closed it in. About a half hour later there was an egg. The Americauna is still trying to get onto the patio but has still not laid. I am sure more chickens will be laying very soon. They are such funny creatures.

We have eggs!!

 Our little Phoenix chicken, Cleo has been laying eggs since last Thursday. It took us a few days to figure out who the mystery layer was but yesterday Daddy caught her kicking around in a nesting box and making a lot of noise. A few minutes later she'd laid an egg and continued to make a lot of noise. She was so proud of herself! She has laid about an egg a day...5 little eggs total. They are light tan in color and a lot smaller than a regular large egg but she is a little chicken. You can see in the photo below three of Cleo's eggs vs. a store-bought extra large egg.

Our other chickens should all start laying in the next couple weeks. Soon we will never have to purchase store-bought eggs again. All of our chickens got their wings clipped yesterday. I spent the morning herding them back into the fenced backyard area because they had found the delicious ripe grapes in the yard just on the other side of the fence and were flying over for the snack three or four at a time. I am concerned about them being on the other side of the fence because our neighbors all have dogs. So, Daddy and the boys trimmed everyone's wings and today they all stayed in the fenced area so I guess it worked.

Catching Up Post....

Buffy chillin'

 I have been so busy this month and haven't had any time to keep my blog updated with all that's going on around. I hope to catch up with myself in the next few days. First off, our chicks are growing. They have been enjoying free range of our large fenced in back yard for a few weeks now. I let them out of the coop when I get up every morning between 5:30-6:30am...yeah, I know I am up early. They roam the yard, dust bathe in the raised beds, and hide from the heat in the trees along the front fence. First thing in the morning, they follow me back up to the house and spend a bit of time looking in the sliding glass door or hanging out on the furniture. Around 8:30pm, they all head back into the coop.

Here are some funny pictures of the girls I took last week....

Checkin' out the patio.

Hey, whatcha got there?!

Cleo the Phoenix...still the smallest and prettiest chick.

Chicken Update...

 Our chicks are growing up. We've had some really warm days and started putting them outside during the day.

The first day we put them in, we thought they could not get through the chain link fence so after watching them for about 20 min. I went inside to practice with Haley. I looked out about 20 min. later and half the chicks were outside the enclosure really close to the fence while some were coming out then going in. Daddy had to put chicken wire around the bottom of the enclosure so they can't escape.

They are so funny in the outside enclosure. When we first put them in, they flit around flying short distances and hopping like they are so happy to be able to spread their wings. Then they get to work pecking and scraping at the ground.  They have been picking on the Buff Polish so we separate her in a fenced in area when they are enclosed so she can heal but when in the outside cage, they do not mess with her or else she is able to get away from them.

Here's our Columbian Wyandotte eating out of a hand. She acts shy and afraid but once you have her on your hand, she doesn't want to get off and likes to sit there looking around.

   Their first chance to peck and scratch at the ground in their new outside enclosure. Aren't they getting        so big! Hard to believe they have grown so much in a few short weeks.

                                                                Coop and enclosure.