My tiny u.p. farm

A Nice Autumn Day

October 9, 2016October 9, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

It was a bit chilly today, but the sun was out. We have had colder temperatures lately, and the garden is mostly done. We had a couple of watermelons that just were not growing anymore. My son asked if he could pick them today, so I said yes. I figured they weren’t ripe, but when we cut into the largest one (the one we’d set up a sling for, from previous posts), it actually had some pink to it. And it was surprisingly sweet tasting. So this was our first ever successful watermelon:

For some reason (maybe the sunshine), I got the bright idea to let the chickens and ducks out of their run today. We have had so much rain, and it rains so often, that we just haven’t gotten a chance to mow our lawn in the last couple weeks. So I thought, since they’ll eat grass, and they’re hanging around in a semi-wet / muddy run, maybe they’d like to hang out in the yard for the day. It wasn’t that unwise, I suppose. It was just a cluster trying to get them back in. They wanted to hang out in the woods, and they found the sand pile for some much-needed dust baths, and didn’t want to give that up so easily. They didn’t really do much “mowing” for us, but they enjoyed themselves. We got some good pictures:

yard-birds — The slow spillage into the yard. We just left the door wide open – it didn’t take them very long to figure it out.

yard-birds-2 — Here they are, wandering around. They don’t usually stray too far from their home.

chickens-everywhere — Here they are near the sand pile.

dirty-ducks — The ducks had fun too. They rooted around a bit – you can see one of them has a huge mudpile on her bill. I tried to catch her to clean that off but she was not cooperative. It came off later.

general-and-the-girls — Here is the General with some of his older-hen harem. They were weeding / de-bugging the strawberry patch.

We also moved the adult rabbits to their winter home, inside our entrance shed/mud room. We got some new cages, and my husband has been putting them together and setting them up for us. Last winter was really hard with our old setup, so we wanted to make it easier this year. Here are photos:

rabbit-cages — Here is the setup in our shed. They are all about chest high. We had to make sure they are taller than our dogs’ noses.

wind-day — Here is wind (now “Day” – we somehow changed their names in recent weeks).

fire-night — Here is Fire (her name is now “night”)

The cages are pretty nice, we got them from KW Cages. They have a slide-out tray for easy cleanup, which should make it really nice. The rabbits are getting settled in – they weren’t so sure at first but they seem to be relaxing more tonight. We have a gate to the shed, so we can keep the nosy dogs out (Especially Atat, who is almost as tall as the cages, and very curious). I think this will work well for winter. We’ll get them set up outside again in spring.

Harvesting the garden…

September 28, 2016September 28, 2016Jen Powell3 Comments

This year’s garden is starting to wind down. Our growing season is not typically very long. I’m hoping we’ll hold off on getting a frost for another month, but a lot of plants are done producing anyway. I pulled out our yellow squash, and picked most of the tomatoes. There are a few straggler tomatoes left on the vines. My son harvested about 8 ears of corn from his 10 or so plants. We still have a few things waiting to be picked, like beets, kale, chard, eggplants, and zucchini. Take a peek at our recent harvest:

tomatos — I grew five varieties of tomatoes this year: Early Girl, Druzba, a Blue type, Cherry (very tiny) and some Romas. We got a good crop of them this year.

canned-tomatoes — My first attempt at canning tomatoes! I think it went alright. The half pint jars were a little small, I have realized. I will do pint jars for the next batch I can.

green-tomatoes — My canning book talks about picking tomatoes green and letting them ripen on the counter, maybe so they all ripen at the same time? We picked most of what was left. I keep worrying about frost anyway, so this way I don’t have to rush out and cover anything.

yellow-squash — One of the last yellow squash we picked. We got a whole lot of these. I had three plants, which was too many for us this year. We froze a lot of this.

backyard-sunflower — One of my sunflowers from our back yard. This was several days ago, when it was still standing tall, before we got days and days of rain…

weepy-sunflower — Here it is today… looking very sad.

tiny-pumpkins — Our tiny pumpkins. The plants are done for this year. I really like these, and will grown them again next year, along with a little bit bigger variety.

tiny-eggplant — A tiny eggplant. These plants grew wonderfully, but didn’t flower until late August. Now they have tiny fruits on them. They are not ripe yet. Hopefully they will get bigger and ripen before we get a freeze.

Our Kale, still going strong. I’m going to attempt to leave these, and see if they will come back in spring. I have heard that Kale (and Chard!) will grow as perennials. We will see if they come back in spring. I have been cutting, using/freezing, and then waiting for more to grow, like cut-and-come-again style. We have a lot of kale frozen for winter.

garden-9-28 — Here’s my garden today. It’s still very green but there is not much in terms of vegetables left.

September in the Coop

September 25, 2016September 25, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

We’ve had a lot happening in the chicken/duck coop lately. The ducks are doing well in there with the chickens. It has been a little more humid when I open the coop in the morning, but some of that could be the fact that we are constantly getting rain – this summer was abnormally wet, and it has continued into September. Luckily the temps are more autumn-like. We started with straw bedding a couple years ago, which turned into cob on the floor – thanks to the ducks, the humidity moistened that cob layer so I was able to finally get it all off the floor today. They now have a super-clean freshly cleaned coop floor. (We switched to pine shavings and it’s been really nice – it doesn’t turn solid on the floor and it smells nice when you lay it down).

We have been getting eggs from the 2nd batch-hatch hens, and are up to about a dozen-plus a day. My third batch chickens are only 2 months old, so they will start laying later.

We have a whole lot of roosters, and more coming up. I gave one of our youngest, from the third batch, away to a friend who needed a rooster. With some of the youngest chickens it’s still hard to tell which gender they are, so we’ll have to see. We will have to cull some roosters, and I was planning on doing that a couple weeks ago, but I ended up waiting – they are still with us for the time being. We’ll probably start culling some when it gets a little cooler. I sold our lone bantam hen to someone who had other bantams. One of our large roosters mounted her and I was afraid he was going to kill her, so I rehomed her quickly.

Here are some scenes from the coop:

twin-barred-rock-roos — Two barred-rock-looking roosters. (They have feathered legs, so we’re not sure what kind they really are).

short-butt-general — The General perching with some of the ladies. He’s missing his tail feathers (just went through a molt recently) so he looks really short.

no-butt-general — Here’s the General with his tail-featherless butt.

easter-egger-roo — This is the Easter Egger rooster.

copper-maran-roo — Our black copper maran rooster.

big-white-roo — Our white rooster from the first batch (our test batch) this year. He is on the short-list for freezer camp, but he’s actually a really decent rooster, so we’ll see. That’s part of why we’re waiting to cull anyone: indecision.

coop-perch-gang — Some of the perch-gang. Most of these ones tend to hang out in this room of the coop. There is our frizzled chicken (who is ALSO a rooster, we found), on the right. Our brahmas and speckled sussex from last year are on the left, and the others are Easter Eggers and some kind of crested hens. The black chicken in the front is a Black copper maran.

red-and-brahma — One of the Brahmas (from last year) and a production red hen (who is 2 years old).

older-ladies — These are some of the older ladies. They like to hang out in the front room of the coop.

021 — Eggs! On top are the chicken eggs, and the bottom are all duck eggs. We are not getting any blue chicken eggs, just olive. We are not supposed to get blue duck eggs (we have pekins) but we do get them. So at least we get blue eggs from somewhere.

The coop is a very exciting place!

Clucks and Quacks… and chocolate eggs

September 5, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

Yesterday, my plan was to harvest all 10 ducks. Their pen was a big muddy mess, and we’ve been planning on doing it for months but things get in the way. Early yesterday, I got everything ready. I culled the three males first, and then one of the seven females. We decided to skin them because it’s (supposedly) easier than dealing with duck wax and everything to get the feathers out, and then you don’t have all the duck fat to deal with. As the day wore on, and I was working on the fourth duck, my husband thought maybe we should stop at the four we’d done. He said “why don’t we try putting the rest of them in with the chickens?” I agreed to that – doing all 10 was a daunting task – just the four we did wore us out and took a big chunk of the day. The big reason I wanted to harvest them all was their horribly messy pen – they make lots of mud, and slogging through that each day to feed and water them, and to get their eggs, was really hard. The house we built was really low also, and they loved to lay eggs way at the back, so we’d sometimes have to crawl in there to get the eggs. We would put new bedding in each night and by morning it would be sopping wet, so you’d be kneeling on sloppy old mucky bedding to get the eggs. The remaining ducks, now in the chicken coop, are not getting a pool. I may fill a small one (not in the pen) and let them play here and there, but they are not getting one in the run.

The ducks when we first put them into the coop.

They are getting used to being with the chickens.

The chickens are curious but not trying to add the ducks into their pecking order.

So far, the ducks are doing well with the chickens. Their pens were always right next to each other; they’ve been neighbors all summer, so they were somewhat used to each other already. We were worried the chickens may pick on them, but the ducks are larger than even our largest rooster, so the chickens are mostly keeping their distance.

Tonight, the ducks were starting to get the hang of the bedtime routine, and it was easier to get them to go in the coop with everyone else. We collected the chicken eggs and found that one of the Black Copper Marans is now laying eggs! We got a small, chocolate colored egg.

A normal sized chicken egg on the left, and our first chocolate egg on the right.

The old duck pen is going to be reclaimed back into the yard. It’s a soppy mess right now, since we drained the pool and then it rained last night, but I piled up all the “furniture” on the duck house, and then seeded it with a “chicken forage blend” which has clover and other stuff that will do nicely in our yard. Our yard is a little bit of grass, and a whole lot of other stuff anyway, so this should work fine.

old duck mess — The old duck yard, after I seeded it and put on some straw to keep the seeds in place.

seeded — Here you can see there are some big puddles. We’re going to have to fill some of the holes the ducks dug with some top soil. We’ll eventually take the fence down and use it somewhere else.

We’ll see how this works with the ducks and chickens together. So far it’s going ok. If it doesn’t we’ll start talking about taking out the rest of the ducks. For now, they lay a lot of eggs, so they are “earning their keep.”

Late August around the farm

August 31, 2016Jen Powell4 Comments

We’ve been very busy this month. I had family in town for a week or so, and we just have had a lot going on. Here are some pics of what we’ve been up to:

My carrots and beets. I picked all the carrots, may plant more and see if I can get them before we freeze. (Carrots that go through a freeze are sweeter anyway). I still have some beets to pick. This is the best carrot crop I’ve ever gotten (the most I have had at once) so I’m happy.

lots of eggs — Lots of eggs! Our ducks are laying – we have 7 females, and they almost are laying better than our chickens. The eggs on the left (blue/white) are all duck eggs. The ones on the right are chicken eggs.

duck butt egg — Some of the ducks are laying like 2 eggs a day. We find the regular, hard-shelled ones, and then strange soft shelled things. We found this butt-shaped egg. It was very soft, but I still would not have wanted to be that duck, trying to get that thing out.

I’m getting some ripened tomatoes now. Yum! Here are some romas.

Our tiny pumpkins. These are “Wee-be little” – I did not realize they would be THIS small, but they are very cute. First success I’ve had with pumpkins.

tiny olive egg — We are starting, in the last couple of days, to get eggs from some of our olive/easter egger hens that I hatched from the hatching eggs I bought. We’ve gotten a smallish olive-tinted egg each day for the last few days, and today we got 2. Here is the first one we got, next to a white egg from an older hen.

watermelon sling — I have this watermelon growing, I was worried about it falling off the vine, so I made it a sling. If they come unattached they won’t keep ripening. It’s about the size of a large grapefruit now.

daniel corn — The ears on my son’s corn plants are getting big. He only has about 6-7 plants, but he should get enough corn to make him happy.

My sunflowers. These are the first two to bloom.

The chicken flock

August 16, 2016September 28, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

Our chickens are doing well – with the babies added, and minus the roosters we’ve culled so far this year, we are at 51 currently. We moved the smallest chicks out in the coop in their own side now (they are just over a month old), and the rest of the flock is smooshed together in the main part of the coop, with the larger run. When I was moving the chicks out there, I added some roost space in the main side because I wasn’t sure how everyone would fit. We have way more chickens now than we have previously. This time of year, they pretty much only go inside to lay eggs and to sleep. Going in there the first morning after the chicks moved in, I could see that it is going to be just fine – there is plenty of roost space, plus some of them roost up in the rafters anyway – not where I want them, but they go up there, so it’s kind of extra space. Once the babies are large enough, I will integrate everyone and then they will all have run of the whole coop, so they’ll be able to spread out a bit more. We also will be taking out more roosters as the year winds down. For now they are snug in the house, but not cramped. Here are some pics of my main flock as it stands now:

chickens_dorko and brown hen resized — One of the red hens (either production or the buckeye, hard to tell here) and my Dorking rooster, General Dorko. (My husband took these pics, since you can see me feeding the chickens).

chickens_dorko resized — Here is The General again. He is the only year-old rooster we still have. So far he is on the keep list, but he’s been showing some aggressive tendencies lately. He hasn’t pecked at me but he follows me around to see what I’m doing, like he’s suspicious of me. I think he’s just freaked out because we take roosters out and they never come back.

chickens_australorp resized — One of my older Black Australorp hens. She is two years old.

easter egger roo resized — Here is our easter egger (Americauna?) rooster, hatched this year.

specs resized — Here is Specs, our Speckled Sussex hen. She’s a year old.

frizz 1 resized — Here is our frizzled chicken. I think this is a hen, but we are unsure since she seems to be developing a large pea comb. I have not noticed any male-typical behavior though (crowing or mounting others) so for now, she’s a hen.

chickens_older white resized — One of our 2-year old white hens.

chickens_frizzle and bcm roo resized — Here is the frizzle hen and our Black Copper Maran rooster. He’s from this year’s hatch as well. I’m hoping to keep him.

bantam and friends resized — Here is the bantam hen and two of her friends. They were from the hatching eggs I bought as well, but I don’t know what they are – maybe wellsummers? The lady gave me blue, dark chocolate, and bantam eggs. I did not see the parents. I think they are some kind of crested-something. They are all getting a crest thing where the feathers on their heads stick up.

young black hen resized — Here is a black hen – I think this is Esky’s daughter, or one of the Marans.

bcm hens resized — Here are some of my Black Copper Maran hens. I’m excited for their eggs later this year.

Mid August Garden

August 14, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

The garden is starting to really produce now. I have already harvested one tomato! An Early Girl from my grafted plant. That tomato is the only one that has ripened yet, but a lot of others are on their way. We are getting beans and squash and kale and chard – lots of it. I’ve started freezing beans and zucchini already. I have gotten some nice cucumbers already and have started some refrigerator pickles. Here are some pictures of the garden lately:

garden mid august resized — Here is the garden

garden mid august 2 resized — View from the other way. On the left the dark leafy and green leafy things in the foreground are beets.

corn resized — The corn in my son’s section of the garden is coming along nicely. It’s almost my height.

artichokes 2 resized — My artichoke plants are really doing well.

artichokes resized — Some of these artichokes are getting ready to pick, I think.

zinnia resized — Here is a zinnia in the garden.

tiny watermelon resized — A tiny watermelon. This plant is actually planted several feet away, and wound its way through the tomatoes to the fence. I knew it would wander but I didn’t know it would go that far. I’m not very experienced with watermelons.

sunflower tall resized — This sunflower is towering over my head – it’s probably a good 7 feet tall or so. It does not yet look ready to bloom. This is a giant sunflower, so it will get one very large flower head. And then it will droop way down.

nastrurtium resized — A nasturtium in the garden. My son insisted we plant these in his part of the garden because the flowers are edible. He likes to eat them.

processing vegs resized — Here you can see beans and squash chopped and ready for freezing. In the basket on the upper left is kohlrabi and cucumbers, and a test carrot (I pulled one up to test how they are doing). I’m trying to freeze and process things as they are harvested so I don’t feel overrun with too many vegetables.

Mid-summer on our farm

August 5, 2016July 30, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

Here are some pictures of the goings-on around our tiny farm:

My zucchini and yellow squash are going nuts. These plants are huge!

zucchini with cat — Here you can see them with Wizard in front, so you get a little more idea of scale. There are 5 plants in that mess, plus some sunflowers sticking up in back.

Here is a picture of the chickens. I love the variety of colors we have.

My husband got this cool picture of our dogs. Atat’s tail is curled around Downey. Nova thinks the camera is some type of food.

Tiny bunnies

August 3, 2016July 30, 2016Jen Powell1 Comment

We have a lot of tiny bunnies – 13 at the moment (11 with Wind, our white rabbit, and two with Fire, our black rabbit). They are growing pretty quickly, and they are so cute.

There’s a space behind the doors of Buddy/Earth (the dad) and Wind’s cage, and her babies keep going over to visit. At first I was worried that he’d hurt the babies, and then I realized that he was being nice to them. He would lick/clean them, and they kept going over to visit. But then he started getting too excited – actually looked like he was humping the air near them – so we are not letting them over there anymore. If we find them over there we move them back with mom. They will be moving into their own cage soon, once they are all weaned from her milk.

bunnies 2 — Here’s a gray one – he’s a bit bigger than everyone else.

Hollyhocks

August 1, 2016July 30, 2016Jen Powell3 Comments

My parents planted hollyhocks several years ago, and they keep coming back every year. And each year before they bloom, I forget that they aren’t all the same color, until they bloom. They are beautiful. Here are some pictures:

hollyhocks 1 — Here are the hollyhocks – different shades of pinks and purples

hollyhocks 3 — They are all in the corner outside our shed and bathrom windows