Tag: chickens

Sunday Thankfulness and Fun

After two days of hard work with eldest son, as a family we decided that today was going to be a fun day before they caught a 3 p.m. bus back to Vienna, VA, leaving their son, our eldest grandson, now 9 years old to spend most of the summer with us. Summer care for him was both expensive and hard to come by but also difficult to fit with their schedule as our daughter in law leaves for her Art Camp teaching gig at 6:50 a.m. and returns to the house at about 5 p.m., our son leaves on his bicycle to ride to campus at 7 a.m. so that he can make the 45 minute bike commute and get a shower at the Aquatic Center to be at his desk by 8:30 and he doesn’t get off until 5 p.m. and has to make the 45 minute bike commute home. We adore having grand-kids with us and love that we are trusted to keep him until mid August when the Art Camps are over and he and his mom will travel to Virginia Beach to spend a week or so with the other grandparents prior to school resuming for everyone.

For our fun day, we decided to hike to the Cascade Falls, a 2 mile uphill hike to a beautiful view followed by the return 2 mile hike back down to the car. The hike included a swim in the icy water by son and grandson and an extensive trash pick up by all of us that we carried back down in my bag. There were about 45 incoming freshmen from a local university that had hiked up and they seemed to be mostly responsibly for the trash. I gently confronted the group about what we had collected and was met with denial that it wasn’t them, but when they got up and left, they failed to pick up several GatorAde bottles, a gallon water bottle and 25 zip lock bags along with granola bar wrappers, candy wrappers and other debris. We collected all of that also and hauled it back down the trail to the trash cans at the parking lot, collecting additional wrappers on the way down. It baffles me that they could be so inconsiderate and wonder where they thought their plastic, cellophane, and mylar was going to go.

Rhododendron season, these are traditional pink, but most of the ones we saw today were white.

The pile of debris we hauled down from that beautiful falls and stream.

While hiking down, I got a call from our neighbor asking if we saw his big brown dog, the chicken killer down here again. Fortunately, I was a bad chicken keeper today and had left them cooped up when we left for our hike. He apparently walked down looking for the dog and couldn’t find him. Later he texted that the dog was in the house and we let the chickens out.

This afternoon, we put our son and his wife on a bus home and we brought our grandson home with us. He helped me extend the 4 foot fence up to 6 feet by putting a lighter weight garden fence secured with fiberglass poles to the top. This will prevent the youngs from flying out and hopefully will discourage Brown Dog from getting in.

July 6, 2014
Tough week for the chooks

This has been a tough couple of days for my flock. Yesterday morning, a neighbor’s dog who is generally chained up slipped his chain and caused enough damage to the chicken tractor where the culls were for them to escape after which he caught and killed two of them. This necessitated a change of day’s plan and eldest son and I went to work to make the coop pen more secure, start the work to make a more secure cull/meat bird pen with the chicken tractor inside of it, and to start planting posts to run the electric fence not just around the garden, but also around the two chicken pens.

Today was the day we had planned to kill and clean the cull birds, now down from 8 to the 6 we did get in the freezer. They were the original chickens I bought last year before I settled on the Buff Orpingtons and I called them my U.N. flock as there were 6 different breeds represented. We put 18.75 lbs of chicken away today.

After clean up and dinner, we decided to go into town for ice cream and while we were gone, the same dog again got loose and got one of my young Buff Orpingtons. This is now a problem as the dog has discovered he likes chicken and they are easy to catch. I don’t see any damage to the pen, so he can either jump a 4 foot fence or one of the young buffs got out and he caught it on the outside. We hadn’t finished setting the posts for the electric fence yet, so that barrier wasn’t there to deter the dog. The dog’s young owner is upset that his dog has killed 3 chickens in 2 day and I am perturbed about it but only to the extent that the dog isn’t secured well enough to not wander down the country road to our farm and get the chickens. I had thought about some free range time, but can’t do that with the dog in the area.

I don’t know what to do now. Son and I will see if we can figure out whether the dog can get in the pen and I guess I will have to cover more of the top with netting to try to keep the young buffs from flying over the top until they get too heavy to escape.

In our freezer camp event today, we also killed my rooster as he had gotten too aggressive with us and with the hens. This also presents a dilemma as I wanted a self sustaining flock and though the hens lay eggs without a rooster, they obviously won’t hatch, so I will either have to buy another rooster and hope that he is less aggressive or buy fertilized eggs when a hen gets broody to let her sit to hatch. I don’t want to have to keep buying chicks every few years and raise them in the brooder. We already have to deal with the brooder for the meat birds once or twice a year.

We currently have only two mature birds to provide us with eggs. Hopefully the 17 and 19 week old pullets will start laying soon, assuming I can keep Brown Dog out of their territory.

July 5, 2014
Olio – June 27, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

The Raspberry jam salvage was a success. It is spoonable, spreadable, and isn’t so sweet it makes me gag. A win. The wild Blackberries are so thick with fruit this year, I have a dilemma. I don’t need any more jam. My daughter who LOVES blackberry jam made a pantry full of Strawberry Jam when the berries were ripe in Florida, so she doesn’t need jam either, but I can’t resist foraging for blackberries on the farm. I can freeze them and use them in smoothies, cakes, and cobblers, but we aren’t dessert eaters unless we have guests and then hubby would rather I make apple, lemon or pumpkin pie rather than cobbler. What’s a girl to do?

The rain held off long enough for me to get everything that wasn’t hayed, mowed. Jeff is coming a few times a day and hauling off 9 bales of hay at a time on his lowboy trailer pulled by the behemoth tractor. There are still 45 bales to go. The mowing was a priority as I am off to babysit for 5 days then bring RT and L back here with me on July 3. We will send 8 chickens to freezer camp, hang a gate, watch fireworks, and feast for the two days RT is here, then he will catch a bus back home to be back at work on Monday. L will stay with us for about 7 weeks of his summer vacation.

The teenager chicks are looking like I may not have to wait until August to get eggs from them. Many of the girls combs and waddles are growing and turning red. It won’t be long before I start seeing wind eggs in the coop and then pullet eggs in the nesting boxes as they figure the process out.

They are hiding from the heat, the culls are dustbathing to keep cool.

I dragged the chicken tractor to a new spot to give the culls something fresh for their last week. Jim will be in charge while I’m gone.

The last of the spoiled bale of hay needs to be moved over to the garden and some areas remulched. We had a chicken escape and they got in the vegetable garden and the new flower bed and made quite a mess. Between that, some thin areas that are starting to show weeds, tomatoes and peppers tall enough to mulch around, I need to get that task done before I leave also. I might actually welcome a rain shower while that is being done to cool things off a bit. The garden is thriving, the kale is winning.

The sink is full, the chickens got at least this much and there is plenty to take to Northern Virginia for them when I go up.

First Tomatillo. Can’t wait for a crop of them.

The peas are almost done. If I cool off enough from working out there, I will pick a meal’s worth for tonight.

It amazing me how quickly the raspberries ripen. I picked the bushes clean yesterday and treated myself to a hand full while I was weeding. I save a hand full to have with my yogurt tomorrow.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

June 27, 2014
Bambi in the Chicken Pen

Happy Father’s Day to my wonderful husband, my Dad who is an inspiration to us all, to my sons by birth and marriage and all of my readers.

Our overnight guests departed for home half an hour ago, facing a 7-8 hour trip in Sunday traffic on Father’s Day, but he has his youngest son on break from college in Pennsylvania with him and his wife to help share the driving.

We were sitting on the front porch in the sun, it got quite chilly last night, watching them depart when Jim started pointing to the east and repeating, “Look, look.” I didn’t see what he was excited about and ask and he said it was a solo fawn, probably only a month old tearing down the side of the driveway and around the house. I jumped up and ran through the house to the back deck to see if I could spot it before it reached the tall still unmowed hay to be and realized that the little guy had somehow gotten itself through the fence to the chicken cull pen. That fence is not very well set and he was terrified, bleating and slamming his little body against the more stable chicken run fence that makes up two sides of the cull pen. This in turn had all 22 chickens upset. The cull chickens and Cogburn hid in the chicken tractor squawking like they were being attacked. The teenagers who were in the run were flapping and escaping over the 4 foot fence, others in hiding under the coop or in the coop. Fearful that the little fellow was going to injure himself, we quickly pulled down the cull pen fences and stood back as the fawn took off across the back yard for the woods. We don’t know where Mom is. Perhaps our cousins leaving separated them on the road and the fawn ran down the driveway while Mom ran back into the woods. Hopefully Mom wasn’t killed or injured last night and the little fellow is alone as it is much to young to survive.

The fences are back up, the escapees captured and put back in the pen, the chickens have settled, breakfast is cleaned up and the dishwasher is running so now we will just settle back and enjoy our morning before we figure out where to hang Jim’s Father’s Day gift.

And later drive to “the big city,” Roanoke to buy him a Father’s Day meal at his favorite Mexican Restaurant.

No fawn rescue photos, it happened too quickly, but the little fellow was so cute and so afraid.

June 15, 2014
A Week on and off the Farm – June 14, 2014

This week, two of our grandchildren celebrated birthdays. Our eldest, son of our eldest turned 9, our first granddaughter, daughter of our youngest, turned 3. Though we didn’t actually get to spend their birthday with either of them, they are special.

The garden is growing. The garlic looks like it is ready to harvest and cure. Agree?

I never did make garlic scape pesto. Oh well, there is always next year as it is a crop we plant annually in quantity to share with our kids. The peas are or so close to being ready for the first batch of lightly steamed or sauteed fresh peas. My mouth is watering at the thought. The raspberry patch is starting to ripen. It is really going to be a challenge to bring enough in to make jam or smoothies with as I graze as I am in the garden, they are so delicious fresh.

A few weeks ago, while in Lowes, I purchased two new garden implements, a hoe with a two tine rake on the other end and a loop hoe. The loop hoe is an okay tool in bare soil. The other implement bent the very first time I used it and it will be returned to Lowes along with a wire brush they sold us for our new grill that has coated cast iron grates and specifically says DO NOT USE A WIRE BRUSH ON THE GRILL PLATES. A few days after I purchased them, I received a copy of one of the only two magazines to which I subscribe and they had an article on must have garden tools, one of which is a new Rogue Tool Hoe that has a tapered, sharpened end, flat at the end and a 3 tine rake on the other end. It is American made, forged and solid. I ordered one and was notified that they were backordered and it would be several weeks. I okayed that and two days later, was notified that it shipped. It is a great tool, well worth the money and the wait. Used on its side, it cuts right through the weeds. The end cuts deeper for heavier rooted weeds and the rake grabs even young tap rooted plants and pulls them right up. The wooden handle is thick and well balanced. They aren’t paying me or giving me anything, but I highly endorse their products.

This is the first week of the summer that we have had house guests. Jim’s cousin and his wife spend Thursday night with us on the way to Pennsylvania to pick up his youngest son from college and will spend tonight with us on their way home to Georgia. They brought us two bags of Georgia peaches to enjoy along with pecans and a lovely loaf of bread. Some of the peaches were very ripe and after they left yesterday morning to finish their trip north, I prepared about half of them for peach jam.

In 25 or more years of making jam and jelly, this was my first experience with peaches and it didn’t set up properly. Last evening, we went to town to purchase more fresh pectic, new lids and while there, I bought another case of 1 cup jelly jars and reprocessed it last night with a bit more lemon juice and a new package of pectin. It turned out perfectly and they will get to take a jar home with them tomorrow along with a couple of jars of berry jams from last season, some of the cured garlic still left from last year and a dozen of my fresh eggs to enjoy once they are home.

I subscribe to a delightful magazine called taproot. It comes out 4 times a year, contains no advertisements, often contains a gift, such as a small notebook or some notecards with artwork from one of their many artist contributors. It always has wonderful recipes, craft ideas and generally a knit, crochet or sewing pattern in it. This issue has infused vinegars and three fermented mustard recipes that I want to try. Today while making a vinaigrette from it for our salad tonight, since I already had the small blender out, I made the Horseradish mustard to sit and ferment for three days before adding in the last two ingredients. Once it is completed, I will divide it into 4 oz jars and share the finished product with our kids that want to try it. (It tasted delicious even without the fermentation and last two ingredients, so I bet it is going to be great.)

There are two more recipes for other mustards in the magazine, but I bet it will be hard to beat this one.

I must have been born in the wrong century. I love preserving, growing a garden, spinning yarn, knitting, and cooking from fresh ingredients. As we await their return for the night, I am preparing a meal of roasted radishes, turnips, yellow squash, garlic, spring onions, rosemary from our garden and the Farmers’ Market. Local grass finished beef kabobs with Monterey seasoning that I make. Shrimp with mustard basil marinade. Salad with local vegetables added and the vinaigrette from taproot magazine with fresh from my garden thyme.

Life is good here on our mountain farm.

June 14, 2014
Olio – June 10, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

Nine years ago today, we received a call from Asheville, NC, a tired, satisfied and obviously in love voice announced that we had our first grandchild, a boy. It hardly seems possible that he is now 9 years old. The young man that I visit several times a year to provide day care for when his Mom’s and Dad’s school/work schedules require someone else to step in. He will be spending 7 weeks with us this summer, in the house where he spent his first few years as they moved here when he was only 9 weeks old to supervise and do all of the stone masonry and finish carpentry in our home and then we all moved into it together for several year.

Taking a break at the zoo in April. Happy Birthday, Loakum.

It seems that the teenage pullets think I am the Pied Piper. Each morning after I open their coop and let them loose in the pen with fresh food and water, at least half of them then follow me back down the run to the gate. I don’t know if they think there will be a special treat for them if they do or if I’m just Mama as they came to me as tiny chicks and were raised in a brooder in my care until old enough for the coop.

The garden is starting to brim full of good things to eat and other things to dream about.

Chard and kale, peas with plumping pods, bushes of raspberries and blueberries slowly ripening in the sun. Peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, winter squash, summer squash and sweet potatoes getting larger with each rain storm and sunny day. Garlic almost ready to harvest and cure.

Yesterday was a busy afternoon. After having a skin cancer removed a few years ago, I make an annual visit to the dermatologist for a full body check, that visit was in February, but a few spots appeared that caused me some concern, so a return visit started the afternoon. Everything is fine. Once home, Jim and I finally tackled the cleanup of the burn pile from a few weeks ago. We were concerned that it would start filling with weeds, making the task more onerous than it already was. Upon burning the wood that was there, we discovered a significant pile of large rocks. I remember than eldest son had discussed putting the chicken coop there when the garden was much larger than it is now and he hauled that rock in his pick up truck from remnants of building the retaining wall, to use as a foundation for the coop. With much grunting and groaning, the use of the tractor bucket, we moved the largest flattest of those stone to the culvert on one side of the driveway.

Where it will be turned into a guardian/warning wall like this one on the other side of the driveway.

These are to warn folks that there are car and tractor eating holes on either side of the drive that feed and drain the large culvert under the driveway and prevent it from washing down into our garage.

Once the rocks were removed, several tractor buckets of charcoal, nails and screws that had been in the wood, and rocks too small for the wall were scooped up and dumped where unsuspecting tractor or truck tires haying or hauling hay won’t meet with a flat. The area was then leveled as well as it could with the edge of the tractor bucket and the surviving rake. Once eldest and family settle into their own house after degrees are complete, I guess I will have to buy myself a new rake as the surviving one is his that I am storing. Mine did not survive the burn pile control as it proved to have a plastic fitting.

On each pass from the burn pile to the culvert, I mowed a swipe through the orchard and back on the return trip. Once the burn pile cleanup was complete, I just had to finish the job I had started and mowed the yard and orchard as close as I could with the tractor. After a quick late dinner from the grill and a salad, the lawn mower was hauled out and the finish work around the fruit trees, chicken pen, garden and close to the house was done, just as the sky was darkening with the chickens settling in for the night. With them closed up for the night, personal cleanup of bodies and laundry and a rest were in order.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

June 10, 2014
Mountain Farm Morning

Where is the camera when you need it? I opened the back deck door to let the dogs out and caught just a flash of movement across the side of the deck. It’s size told me it was either a mouse or a chipmunk (the farmers up here call them ground squirrels). Below that edge of the deck is the retaining wall that son and DIL built during construction. It is a beautiful piece of stonework that gets covered each spring and summer with Hairy Vetch and Virginia Creeper. The doors out onto the deck are a full story above the ground, though the deck itself is only 3 steps up.

Beneath the deck there is loose rock tossed in to help with erosion and to keep the weeds down. I’m sure that it is a great hiding place for all sorts of wildlife, more or less protected from the cats. As I stepped to the edge of the deck to see if I could spot the little critter, the chipmunk scurried quickly across the deck and through a space I can barely stick my fingers through and down under the deck. They are cute, but destructive little critters, I hope it doesn’t take an interest in the Direct TV cable that is fastened to the front leg of the deck, travels along the lower edge of the deck then follows the flashing across between the basement and ground floor of the house to where it enters.

Breakfast prep was started as I put some of our fresh eggs on to boil for the pups and me. My morning ritual includes cleaning up their feeding area, two plastic trays on a bath mat to catch at least some of the food and water that the big guy slings around when he eats or drinks. His tray always has a cup or more of water and a dissolved kibble or two floating around on it.

Once their area is cleaned up I call them back in to eat, only as I stepped out to call them, leaning around the west end of the house from the front porch as that is where they always return to be let in, I heard a racket of turkey chatter and dog barks and spotted the dogs both chasing a wild turkey across the near hayfield as the hen took flight and landed way up in a tree on the edge of the field. Shadow once she stopped bounding, couldn’t even be seen in the tall hay waiting for good days to cut and bale. Ranger continued to stare longingly up at the tree where the hen continued to cluck. Hopefully they didn’t disturb a nest, but if it is in the hayfield it will suffer destruction as soon as Jeff comes to mow the hay. Finally I got them back in the house and breakfast eaten.

Then it was chicken care time. I filled the pans with mash, millet and sunflower seeds to take out to the two pens and just as I stepped out, I heard the rain moving over the ridge and through the trees in my direction. Raincoat collected just as a torrential downpour started. Chickens had to wait for it to subside at least a bit. We are in for a stormy day. A good day to sew, knit, spin, and read. Tonight is Knit Night, hope it isn’t storming too badly when it is time to leave.

June 4, 2014
A benefit of Retirement

When I used to be employed outside the house, housecleaning and laundry always had to be done on weekends or in short spurts after work. This past weekend was spent in doing more enjoyable things, going to the farmer’s market, playing outside in the dirt and with two big dogs that live in the house, there is a constant need to vacuum and dust.

Today, while Jim went off on his motorcycle for a ride, I tackled all three floors of our house. Sweeping, damp mopping, dusting, cleaning and scrubbing, floors, tables, bathrooms, kitchen. It looks good, but I know that by tomorrow, there will already be dog hair and dust again.

The injured pullet is still hanging in there, but I am afraid she may still fail, her injuries are so extreme. She misses her siblings and perks up when I walk past her crate. There is no way that I can put her in with them. The Americana, in spite of me having clipped a wing, still is figuring out how to get from coop pen into the cull pen over a 4 foot fence. I don’t see anywhere that she can get under it, but she shouldn’t be able to fly over. If she is so desperate to be with Cogburn, I’m leaving her there until he gets moved back with the Buff’s.

June 2, 2014
Payback Day

Yesterday I played, all day. After the spin in and potluck, I came home and finished the last few yards of the Finn X Jacob roving and started plying it with the Red Tunis. I ended up with 230 yards of lovely yarn to add to the 202 that I had previously spun.

Today Jim took off on his motorcycle around 10:30 a.m. and I started on some house cleaning, trying to rid the house of a few pounds of dog hair. I took a break for lunch and then tackled outdoor chores. Mowing first on the tractor around the house and between the house and barn, then with the lawnmower to get closer to the house, around the garden and chicken pens and also around the fruit trees. The tractor will do most of the orchard, but not close to the trees.

Yesterday at the spin in, one of my friends gave me a handful of sweet potato slips, both white and orange and I put them in water overnight to perk them back up.

I wasn’t sure where I still had space in the garden and I still hadn’t planted the Seminole Pumpkins and the winter squash and while I was working I had a flash of inspiration. Last year when I started raising chickens and bought straight run chicks from Tractor Supply, I ended up with more than my share of cockrells and needed to do something about them until our eldest son could come build the chicken tractor. I lined one of my 4 compost bins with chicken wire, put a tarp over the top and fenced in pen in front of it. I was delighted that they cleared all of the weeds out of it. This year when I got the 10 Buff Orpington chicks and divided the coop into keepers and culls, I again employed the compost bin idea, but put the chicken tractor in front of two of the bins then used two sides of the coop run as two sides of the cull pen and added some more fencing to give them a run too. Again, they cleared all the weeds for me. There is still more than a foot of good composed horse manure mixed with chicken manure. I moved the chicken tractor parallel to the coop, changed the fence arrangement, taking away some of their space, but still giving them a good grass area and two compost bins to scratch in.

This opens up the two compost bins that they have so kindly cleared for me, leaving me only two young pokeberry and one burdock to dig out. The bins were forked deeply to blend the chicken manure into the compost and to turn any seedling in and planted 14 sweet potato slips in one bin and the pumpkins and winter squash in the other.

Two more 5 X 5 foot beds instantly with nice rich soil. Now hopefully, the flea beetles will leave the sweet potatoes alone and the squash borers will leave the pumpkins and winter squash alone. They will all be nice additions to the fall harvest. The chickens are doing a nice job of breaking up some large stalks in the other two bins and dispatching the weeds. I do need to dig out some pokeberry and burdock in them.

Tomorrow, I am finally going to put the tomato starts and most of the pepper starts in their beds.

For now, I’m tired. Tomorrow is another day I can work the garden while Jim rides his motorcycle to meet our youngest son and maybe his family for lunch a couple of hours from here.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 25, 2014
Garden Day

The afternoon had a 60% chance of rain and after lunch it was mostly overcast. It seemed a good idea to at least attempt to finish getting the garden cleaned up and planted for the season. Between yesterday’s burn and today’s 4 + hours in the garden, I should have my quota of Vitamin D, however, due to a prior bout of skin cancer, I stay totally covered with a wide brimmed hat, long sleeves and long pants. Much crawling around on my aging knees and rooting around in the dirt with bare fingers, the weeds are cleared.

Cleared beds and a ground eye view of the raspberry bed as I inched along that path pulling weeds. After my efforts, 4 rows of black wax bush beans, 1 row of lemon cucumbers, 1 row of spacemaker cucumbers, a small patch of carrots, and several hills of yellow squash have been planted. I still need to transplant the pepper and tomato starts and get a thick layer of spoiled hay in the paths to try to keep the weeds down and to get a bit more around the raspberries and grapes. I still have a space between the garden and the chicken run that is full of tiny stones and some weeds that needs attention, but I gave out and it was dinner prep time. Wouldn’t you know that the rain chance has diminished to 40% without a shower and the sky has alternately cleared and clouded while I worked.

The chickens love my efforts as I take armloads of weeds and bugs to them to peck through. Everytime I go to the fence they come running to see what the load contains. They particularly like when it is full of chickweed or if I dig up a grub or two. I was rewarded with 7 eggs collected in my hat as I quit for the day.

My hope is to try to stay ahead of the garden this year and not be faced with a later season weeding as I usually have to do. As soon as the garlic is harvested, a second planting of bush beans and a fall planting of kale and cabbage will be planted in those two beds. I still haven’t figured out where to plant the pie pumpkins and winter squash, but I am leaning toward putting them near the berries and let them run where they can’t do any harm.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 20, 2014