Tis the Season

For hatching chicks, starting seeds and SNEEZING!  Yup, the trees are mating and sending their pollen everywhere.   A GREAT way to deal with the seasonal allergies without drug is to use local honey.   Make sure it comes from a source within a fifty mile radius of where you spend most of your time.   A teaspoon every day (or even once a week) really does help.  And it's soooooo sweet too.

The hubby finished my new compost tumbler.   It's loaded up and ready to make that rich organic fertilizer!

Some of our new Dominique chicks, now four weeks old.  Those with more white in their barring are likely to be males.  So far it looks like three boys and seven girls.   We'll have to wait and see how they mature.

And Heathcliff's first group of offspring is now almost two weeks old.   They are just starting to get that downy bump where the crest feathers will come in.    So easy to tell the boys from girls with this autosexing breed.  Four males and seven females.  Can you pick out the boys?  There are also four black Langshan youngsters in the brooder too.

End of September

This is it, the last day of September.   Pumpkins, sweet potatoes and the last of the tomatoes have been harvested.  The okra is still chugging along even though we have harvested enough seed pods to supply three farms!   Green manures have been seeded and the garden is ready to settle in for its winter rest.   Next year we hope to continue the harvest with winter crops.

 

Our Euskal Oiloak breeding pen is going well.  We have a dozen eggs sitting in the incubator with more on the way.   The Crested Cream Legbar cockerel we purchased in July is doing well too.   I can't wait until the Spring to see how he finishes out and what this group will produce.   We've heard rumors that Greenfire has imported some Jill Reese legbars from the UK and that they have cleared quarantine.  Hopefully we can add some of these chickens in 2014 or 2015.

 

Heathcliff -- 10 week old Crested Cream Legbar cockerel

And finally, after much research, we have ordered 20 rose comb Rhode Island Red chicks from Gary Underwood for Spring delivery and are on a waiting list for 18 White Dorking chicks from Yellow House Farm.   It is going to be a very busy spring!