Finally!

Well, I guess our chickens were waiting for Mike and Tomeia's birthday to get busy and lay eggs. On a funny note, my parents sent Greg Chicken Run for his birthday, which we watched last night. I swear, the chickens are organized!

Visitors

Our chickens had a some new friends a few weeks ago. Greg's eldest brother and 3 of his kids came down to visit. It was a fantastically fun and busy week. One of the highlights was an evening chicken visit. Greg would let the girls out into the yard, and help the kids catch a couple to love.

Holding them like babies.

Trying to get away.

Very exciting!

Very, very exciting! This buddy was sure he would catch a purple chicken.

The mosquitoes seemed to like the fresh food supply at dusk, too.

Welcome To Our Jungle

I took this picture this morning. It's just slightly overwhelming. The bushy looking stuff in the front is asparagus, hopefully they will be wonderful next spring. The next row over is full of two types of strawberries - I think they took rather well. The empty space was full of carrots. We had a decent harvest, most were not damaged. We harvested them when it was too warm out, and they are a bit bitter raw, though they cook up nicely. The tall vine is lima beans, and I also spotted our first bean! We grew bush beans, but we have a clever rabbit that loves to chew them down to the ground...no bush beans for us this year (I only just now appreciate the irony of the Disney version of Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh). We've also had some strong thunderstorms, which have blown over our corn. None of the stocks are broken, and the roots seem to be in tact as well. Greg is planning on trying to tie them up this week. The row after corn are tomatoes, and they are going crazy. They also seem to be our rabbits next favorite treat. We got in the habit of throwing partially eaten fruits to the chickens while our nieces and a nephew were visiting, which they LOVED (both the kids and the chickens). One poor tomato will be bum rushed by 25 crazy chicks, and devoured in less than a minute. So, even though we lost all of our squash, things are mostly going well.

We also planted a line of sunflowers. Most of the plants that survived the bunnies and birds are this dark variety, which Greg grew in Michigan. Only this time, each plant has multiple blooms!

The one yellow sunflower that has survived, plus a bee (we finally started to see bees about 1 month ago!!!!!)
Onion harvest - currently curing in the garage (which now smells wonderful).

And a chicken update - they managed to peck the string that holds their little door to the coop open to death, snapping it, and locking themselves out all night. Of course, the run has no human access, and Greg was at work. So I called my Dad and we finally came up with the idea of holding the door up with scrap wood. Crazy chickens. I hope there is a correlation between craziness and tastiness.

Weekend Update

So immediately after posting the last update, I was sitting at the computer and heard some loud clapping and yelling from our neighbors. I looked outside and saw a chihuahua running around the backyard chasing the chickens. Two houses down from us lives a number of dogs including this little chihuahua. He came and visited us once last year when he got out and that was it. So I ran out the backdoor and had to chase the stupid dog out of our yard. He didn't do any damage, thank goodness. Most of the chickens booked it into our mass of tiger lilies next to the garage. We then had to herd them out of there afterward which was pretty funny. I hope he comes back in a few months, because chihuahua vs. 25 full grown chickens and maybe 2 turkeys may not turn out so well for him.

We've been having perfect growing weather down here the past few weeks, hot, sunny, with perfectly interspersed rain showers, we haven't had to water at all, and everything had just been exploding. We did have one issue, with of all things, zucchini and summer squash. The two plants that I expected to do nothing too and have them overflow with produce...oh no. We're apparently lacking pollinators in our yard, as we are now hand pollinating zucchini and squash. This definitely means we're getting bees next spring. Other than that everything else is doing very well, we harvested 35 garlic bulbs this past week which are drying in the garage, and making it smell delicious.

Onions

Lima Beans
Cherry Tomatoes
Summer squash, hand pollinated...

Weekly Update, half a week late.

Here's your pictures for the week. We did actually take these the other day, I just hadn't put them up yet. The chickens are bigger now then when we took these pictures a few days ago. We've been letting them out most evenings and they are in no way hesitant to go outside now, they still don't roam very far, but they love to go outside. Hopefully in a week or two they'll be big enough that we can let them into their run all day without worrying about them being able to sneak through the fence. We've been debating about keep a couple extra layers around since we've received a number of inquiries about selling eggs, we'll see, and if that doesn't work out, into the oven! We might be getting a turkey or two also. A guy at work has chickens and turkeys and he's currently incubating 20 turkey eggs and asked if I would want any, he apparently keeps his right with his chickens, so a nice turkey or two sounds delicious. He's also hatching peacock eggs, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Chicken Update

Here's this week's growth update. They are getting enormous, they look like little birds now, not little fluffy chicks. They have almost all their wing feathers and little tail feathers too.

We left the coop door open for a while after work tonight to see what
they would do. They were all a lot more hesitant than I expected.

Only a few brave ones jumped out and poked around for a bit.

Their roosting instincts have definitely kicked in, they have free run of the coop now and can pretty easily jump/fly from the ground to the top rung.

Farm News - Week of May 30, 2010

We lost one more chicken this week, it was another one that had never really grown at all. The rest of them have grown much bigger this week, I think we should be in the clear now. The garden is flourishing right now with all of the rain and hot, sunny weather we've had this past week. I had to build some trellises today for the beans and tomatoes. Our celery and cauliflower got decimated by a rabbit this week, I need to step up the defenses and try and keep the little punk out. I have some fence up, but it's not quite small enough to keep the baby bunnies out, yar. He's lucky we don't live in the country...

You can see a little better in this one, they're a handful now.

I expanded the brooder to give them some more room to run, they
attempt to run and fly with their little wings, it's pretty hilarious.

Turnips poking through.

Gigantic Lima beans and their new trellis.

Chickens

The chickens are all doing well, except for the free bonus rare breed chicken they send with your order, which I'm pretty sure is just their way of dumping extra chicks off on people. That one unsurprisingly died, I have no idea what it was, I couldn't match it to anything on their website. It didn't look very good from the beginning, the rest of them all look very healthy though. They're pretty hilarious to watch. Here's the rundown on what we got:

18 Rhode Island Reds - Brown egg/meat combo

3 Buff Rocks - Brown Egg Layers, suppose to lay well through the winter.

3 Black Australropes - Prolific brown egg layers

2 Araucanas - They lay a mix of blue/green eggs, are suppose to
lay well straight through the winter as well.

So that's 26 total, one I owe to someone as a trade for the heat lamp they gave me. Then we'll probably keep around 8 for laying.

The Invasion

Of cuteness (and future deliciousness)!!!
The red light district of Seattle Dr.


Rebecca: Clara, what do the baby chicks say?
Clara: CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP!!!!!!!

Our little birdies arrived around 8:30 this morning, Greg was, of course, at work. Thankfully, he had the pen ready, I just had to get the birds, then feed and water them. They are pretty much adorable, but really stinking hard to take pictures of!

Greg will get off work in 2.5 hours, and I'm sure the first place he'll go is to the coop. I'm sure there will be more/better pictures to come, probably accompanied with what species of chick is shown.

Chicken Coop

I've been slaving away on the chicken coop in order to be ready for the chickens to arrive. They're scheduled to be here this Monday or Tuesday. I finished fencing in the garden also, we're now protected from the neighborhood rabbits.

The attached run that the chickens will be let out into everyday. We're planning on planting some blackberries in front of this to help hide it a little bit.

The rolling plains of 562 Seattle Dr.

Nesting boxes; these are accessed by the two fold down doors for snatching eggs out of.


The brooding area set up with heat lamp. In other news I went to a Tractor Supply Company store for the first time the other day. It was full of delightful things, I wish we had one closer into town.