Boy George, The 7th Rooster...

Forgot to mention that the 7th Roo that was spared in hopes that it was a girl...

Yeah, it was a boy, and it was really stupid and sort of mean. Sometimes it ran away from us, sometimes (I think if it didn't see us coming) it would charge at us and he was getting pretty big. I feared for S's eyes...

I was able to get our nice chicken farmer friend to take and "process" him for us. She even gave us a dog cage to bring him to the farm in. So we put him in the cage, piled him in the car and dropped him off. They fed him to their dogs...

Goodbye, Georgie boy!

We're back!

It's SPRING!!! Hooray!

We have had a long, snowy winter, and it seems like the memory of cold weather is already fading away. We have had some beautiful, sunny weather and are preparing for another round of bees, garden, cows, OH MY!

Our chicken girls did well this winter, cooped up. They have been churning out eggs so fast we don't know what to do with them. 7 a day really add up fast. We have started selling them to a couple of friends and also give them to some others. It's nice that the girls can get outside now and forage around the yard, you can just tell how happy they are! They were going through the feed so fast, but that should slow down now that they can munch on bugs.

We will be trying bees again this spring, and I have secured a beekeeping mentor for myself, which I'm really excited about. We're going to do an experiment - we'll put a package of bees into the top-bar hive, and a nuc into a Langstroth hive and compare. Should be pretty interesting. Maybe it will make it easier to know if the package/top-bar bees are on track since I can keep track of the nuc/Langstroth bees easier because there is more literature and information about that set up.

The garden is going - we have teeny tiny onion and tomatillo sprouts in the windowsill. Not so sure about the peppers I tried starting, if they will come up at all! We might have to buy some *GASP* starts at the nursery in May. I just bought a big bag of onion sets and will put them in tomorrow (we're expecting a thunderstorm today!) and see how they do. I haven't tried onions from sets before, so that will be good to see how they do compared to starting from seed. I think I'll put some carrot, radish, beet and pea seeds in too. It's early, but what the hell, it's worth a try.

Our friend and farmer that we get our raw milk from has not been milking for several months now (we've been buying milk from the grocery store) and will not be doing any major milking for awhile because she is going to have a baby in September. (Congrats Sara!!) So, we are planning to milk once or twice a week and be able to take as much milk as we need, which will be nice. I can't wait to get back into the routine of being with the cows!

Let us know what you're up to - are you ready for spring/summer?

Another month gone by...

We have many updates for you, and some fun pictures!

The beautiful magenta pickled beets and turnips were TERRIBLE! They were so salty, they were inedible. In other pickling news, I have put up Asian beans, Dilly beans, Dill pickles and Bread and Butter pickles. We've been busy in our kitchen!

The bees have failed, and I have failed the bees. I opened things up a few weeks ago and saw that there was no brood (babies), no honey, very little comb and very, very few bees. So, we think the queen did, in fact, escape when we installed the colony into their hive and the majority of the bees probably swarmed. Bummer... We plan to try again next spring, this time with one Langstroth hive and our cool top bar hive side by side, so we can compare and contrast.

We went to a potluck recently for a group in our area called Transition Town. The group is working toward a more self-sustaining society. At the potluck we met many great people, including a local small-scale farmer. We got to talking about chickens and she invited us to observe/help her process her chickens the next day. I went and learned all about killing, plucking and eviscerating chickens and it was easier than I thought it would be. All those dissections in biology class really paid off.



A and I processed 6 of 7 of our boys the very next weekend. (One looked different, feathers, comb and wattles, and acted different, so we decided to spare he or she just to see how things turn out.) Ours were pretty skinny it turns out, but they were cock-a-doodle-dooing, so we needed to do the deed. It went pretty well, and we even had a little fun. Some friends stopped by to check on us and their dog helped with the clean-up...


We made a stock with all of the necks and then made risotto with the stock - YUMMY! It was awesome. Our six little guys are in the freezer, we're not quite ready to eat them just yet.

The next day, we finally had the pleasure of naming our remaining girls and suspect-girls. We now have a flock of 8 and their names are: Little Pickle (he/she's had a name all along, it's S's little black cochin bantam pet), Cantelope and Watermelon (Barred Rocks) Buffy and Clementine, or Clemmy for short (Buff Orpingtons) Sheila (our hot Australian chick, Australorp), Sunny (Wyandotte) and Boy George (the possible girl in the flock of boys, Light Brahma).

Earlier this week we found a clutch of 3 tiny little eggs in the corner of the coop, and they could be from none other than our Little Pickle! All this time I was sure LP was a boy, so it's been quite a tough adjustment to start calling him a her. I showed her the nesting box and she took to it right away! The eggs are beautiful and delicious. Hopefully the others will follow suit soon, as they're only a week younger than LP.

In garden news, we have a MILLION GREEN tomatoes. They are just not ripening, I hear because we have had a lot of rain and not enough sun. On the advice of a friend, I picked one of the big green ones and wrapped it in newspaper to ripen it. We'll see how that goes!

Ah, big sigh of relief to get another post out... hopefully the next is not another month away...

Love,

A, R & S

It's been too long...

Hi all,

I'm sorry we've been away from the bloggy world lately. It's just been so busy around our little farm.

Here's a quick update -

The chickens are getting HUGE! They are starting to actually go "cluck" which is pretty funny. No "cock-a-doodle-doo" yet, but it' s just a matter of time. We're hoping to whack the boys soon, but we need them to be a little bigger.

We have been getting a lovely bounty of things from the garden. We picked 10 turnips last week and so we made tacos with sauteed turnip greens, beans and grass-fed ground beef from our favorite real farm down the road and they were amazing!! We also made a shepherd's pie with mashed turnips on top instead of potatoes and beet and turnip pickles, which are pickling in the sunny window in the kitchen. They are the most gorgeous shade of magenta! They are supposed to sit in the sun for 2-3 weeks, and then we can taste them. Can't wait! Today I picked about a pound of yellow wax beans, another of snow peas and mowed down a pretty head of Rouge d'hiver lettuce.

The bees have been left to their own devices since the last posting (no, not only because they stung me!!). I still peek in the window and they're doing their thing, so I'll just let them do it.

A has been plugging along on his Rocket stove, which we will use to scald the chickens to de-feather them, and to maybe do some canning in the great outdoors and boil down maple sap this coming winter/spring. We picked up bricks this weekend and he poured the concrete slab for the base and that's curing now.

Yesterday I picked tons of yummy blackberries at our friends Z & J's house. I plan to go back in another day or two to pick more. They are so sweet and delicious and there are tons still ripening!

We'll try to be better about keeping you posted. Leave comments, it will be so much more fun!!

Love to all,

A, R & S on our little OAID

Cross comb

Yesterday I opened the hive for the first time since the bees have actually drawn out any comb. The comb is so beautiful! Unexpectedly, though, it's wavy and crossing over onto more than one bar. I ended up breaking a piece off (sorry girls) which I left inside the hive so they could maybe recycle it and take the brood out, or let them hatch, or whatever they will do with broken comb. I want to let them do their natural bee thing, but I also want to be able to open the hive to inspect things and eventually harvest some honey, so I found this posting (http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2763) who's advice I think I will follow. Basically, I will move all the crossed comb all together further back into the hive and give the bees empty bars toward the front to try to start straight and I will check more often to try to help them along.

It's a beautiful sunny day today with at least 4 rainy days to follow, so I will give this a try today while I can get in there. I'll keep you posted on the project.

Tires + Potatoes = Something

It's a pretty simple story actually: R drove around town for awhile and eventually found 4 tires on the side of the road. She then went to the local natural market and bought a bunch of potatoes that were untreated so they'd sprout if given enough time. We left them on the counter for awhile, they sprouted and then we planted a bunch in the bottom tire. As they started to sprout through the tire we then added the next tire with more sprouting potatoes and so on. The theory is that we'll have potatoes growing all through the stacked tires and when we're ready to harvest we'll just kick over the tires and enjoy our bounty. Judging by the info we've read on other blogs this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. We'll see. (Regardless the tires are a beautiful addition to our yard!)

Udderly awesome

I have recently gotten myself a second job as a part-time cow milker at the farm where we buy our raw milk and grass-fed beef. I went over to the farm for the evening milking today for my 3rd installment of training and I brought the cows in from the field all by myself and I got to actually do the milking!! My farmer friend says I did a great job and she was impressed with my handling of the equipment and cows! It was so cool. One of the girls just had a new calf on Monday and I might get to help name him. I will try to post some pics of my cow friends soon :-)