duck eggs – My tiny u.p. farm

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:

carrots and beets — 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.

newt — Here is a newt my son found one day.

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

pumpkins — 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.

sunflowers — My sunflowers. These are the first two to bloom.

Mid July on the farm

July 16, 2016July 16, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

We have been very busy. Last week I went camping. While I was away, it seems that my garden has exploded. (It tends to do that when you don’t see it every day). I hatched hatch# 3 of chicks a couple days ago, and we found our first duck egg today! Here are some pictures of the latest happenings:

garden 7.16 — Here is my garden. I get to do some weeding today.

greens — Here it is, growing away. The red bits on the right are some beets.

tiny artichoke — A tiny artichoke. It’s about an inch tall.

sunflower — A sunflower. This is only about 2 feet tall right now.

roma — Roma tomato.

pumpkin — My pumpkin plants!

kohlrabi — Kohlrabi. First time growing this – we are not sure if we like it yet. We will be trying it when it’s ready.

daniels garden — My son’s garden. His corn is doing well. There is a zinnia blooming.

early girl — Our Early Girl tomato. This was a grafted plant I bought. I somehow forgot to plant seeds of my Early Girl tomatoes.

hatch 3_2 — Here are the newest chicks! We have 14, they all hatched on Thursday, and they are from my own chickens’ eggs. We now have 57 chickens all together. That total will go down once we cull the extra roosters.

hatch 3 — A chick’s eye view of them.

hatch 3_3 — Another chick’s eye view.

barnyard — Here is the bird yard. You can see we have Pekin ducks here.

blue duck egg — We got our first egg from the ducks today. It’s about the size of a chicken egg. Not sure why it is bluish. Pekins are supposed to lay white/cream eggs.

duck egg — Here is the egg again. Like a large chicken egg – I figure its a starter eggs for the ducks, so they should get bigger soon, and probably change to the cream/white color. Not sure if we’ll eat this one since it’s a weird color. I know it was laid this morning / last night, so it’s fresh, but it’s still not the color they are supposed to be from the ducks.

Exciting times!