Raising Chicken Teenagers



Honey bee taking advantage of the sage blossoms in the garden.

Time flies by and our darling baby girls are now teenagers with attitude (I'm not kidding)!  They are getting personalities as well as all of their "big girl" feathers.  They are still on chick grow feed.  At the farm store the other day, I learned that some people actually keep their girls on chick grow until they are about fourteen weeks, then they switch to mash.  After several batches of chickens, I am still learning!

Along with growing feathers and such, their smell also grows!  I am having to change their house about twice each week and that still isn't enough.  Lucky for me, I am able to keep them in the garage.  If they were in the house, we would be in trouble.  For such small little fluffy things, they can sure be foul (haha).

The building of the new coop, "Cluckingham Palace" (complete with pink chandelier), has been put on emergency status and we have been working on it each Sunday.  The walls were put up today, the roof is next followed by chicken wire and inside structure.  I will post pictures for all to see as it is built.


Gigantic head of broccoli!

As for the rest of the farm, things are really starting to go with the heat.  We have been in a mad rush to eat lettuce so that it does not bolt.  We have eaten salad every day for the last two weeks (sometimes twice a day) and I love it.  I picked and shelled about eight cups of peas (my fingernails are green) and have been so excited to add them to our meals.  Last night we had fresh fettucini with Romano cheese and peas, topped with fresh basil.  It was heaven!  About 90% of our meal was picked or made fresh that day thanks to our little farm and the farmers market.  I get really excited when I think of the amazing vitamin content that the fresh food has compared to what we buy in the store (I know, I am a farm nerd).  The difference is significant and it will make a difference in my children's lives by feeding them farm fresh food.


Heirloom variety of cauliflower called Veronica...alien plant!!!

Our broccoli and cauliflower is also coming on.  We are going to be so sick of it by the time it is all eaten!  I picked a broccoli head that would rival all others in size (about 10-inches diameter).  It was much larger and more colorful than the heads at the grocery store.  In fact, I am always taken back the first time I steam homegrown broccoli for the season.  It is so much greener and softer.  The difference is so noticeable.  I smiled last night while my two-year old gobbled broccoli and then proceeded to tell my five-year old that it was sooooo yummy!  It's little moments like that which make all of the hard work and calluses worth it!


Blossom on one of the heirloom potatoes "Carola"

Happy farming and harvesting!  Go get dirty girls...


Potatoes growing beautifully.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Raspberry Cream Crumble Pie...

Image
Raspberries, creamy filling, crumble topping, and delicate pie crust.  Can you handle this?  Wow!  This is one of those fantastic recipes that I will make each year during the height of raspberry season, yep, it's that good.  I am completely in love! I have to say that the raspberries are the most important piece of this puzzle, it requires very fresh, ripe, and sweet raspberries.  A farmer friend of mine was able to get some glorious little jewels from a farmer friend of his in Oregon yesterday.  These berries are divine, ripened in the sun and carefully picked.  I know that they are not local, but really, they are from a friend of a friend and a small sustainable organic berry farm.  It doesn't get much better than that!  Make sure you get berries grown on a farm that were picked a day or two ago at their peak.  You will have an amazing tasting pie if you do! I switched the original recipe just a bit.  The crust wa...
Read more

Keeping Bees Through the Winter...

Image
With all of this snow and cold temperatures I have been concerned about our bees.  This is our third year keeping bees, and we have not been successful through the winter.  Our first year, we got a swarm very late in the season, and they were not well established when winter hit.  The second year, the hive was blown over in a horrible wind storm with 103 mile-per-hour winds. This year, so far, so good.  We knocked on the side of the hive this morning and the bees buzzed back.  I am so hopeful. I wanted to share what we did to improve the chances of survival for our hive.  People say that you don't need to do anything for them in the winter, but with the luck we have had, we decided it was better to be safe than sorry.  We put three bales of straw around the hive with a gap between the bales and the hive to promote air flow.  We get so much snow at the farm (we usually have at least 3-feet before the winter is over), we thought it would be ...
Read more

Chicken Tractor...

Image
How many of you have heard about a chicken tractor?  If you are not in the know, it is a marvelous idea: a mobile home for chickens that you can move around a yard (large or small), giving your chickens opportunity to range without wandering far off.    We have seventy chickens at the farm.  With so many girls, we occasionally get an injured or picked on bird.  These girls need a sanctuary away from the pecking order that can become vicious and eventually deadly for a chicken that isn't quite normal.  These girls that need a little extra TLC end up in my backyard.  If they can rehabilitate they are eventually moved back to the farm.  We have a few that can't go back, and they become permanent residents.  We have a blind chicken named Helen and a chick with hip dysplasia named Dot.  These two girls will stay here forever.  I have a small yard, 0.25-acre, and these rehab girls make a marvelous mess of my little plot.  We als...
Read more