on our way home
Seems like one egg per day is hatching now. There are 8 eggs left to go. We may end up having to candle them if hatching slows down since it’s possible that the embryos have died, though so far everything seems to be going well.
Mama bring her babies to the grain tray
What's left in the nest
Two little ones
Little one getting grain
Mame back on the nest with little ones milling about
One new bird hatched today and we had to clean out the nest after she pooped on the eggs. So far everyone seems healthy and happy.
Mother hen and two baby chicks
Another shot of the mother and her two baby chicks.
Newly hatched yellow chick under its mom
The no-dig beds we constructed seem to have caused our tomato, basil, and pepper plants to take off running. We’ve got a lot of tomatoes coming in and more flowers blooming every day. We didn’t really follow a strict guideline when putting them together, just the general idea. Started with a bunch of cardboard to cover the ground, then dryleaves, grass, compost, hay, loam or dirt, and finally more hay. We used dry leaves from around our house which was a good mix of leaves and pine needles, and hay from the floor of the barn that had been rotting in large piles after this years barn cleaning a few months back.
We covered the ground between the beds with a heavy layer of cardboard and hay to keep the weeds down and mulched most of the beds with lots of hay to prevent weeds from growing between the plants and to retain moisture.
This is where we’re at now with everything:
Coming out of the bedroom and into the garden
Our no-dig beds, this years addition to the garden
Our tomato jungle, planted wide row style in our no-dig bed
Our cucumber mound. We started these plants from seed inside and transplanted them last month.
Cucumbers ready for harvest
Our kale and chard
Taryn N' Onions
Our onions are starting to die and put their energy into increasing the size of their bulb (the part we eat!). A few have shot up flowers like this one. Generally, if you allow the flowers to grow the bulb will be much smaller so it's advised that you pull your onions out of the ground when a flower develops. We're letting a couple send up flowers so we can try to harvest seeds. They should all be dead and harvested in a month or so I think.
We’ve had a mother hen sitting on a nest now for a couple of weeks. She’s almost a year old and suddenly just showed an interest in being a mother. Taryn and I wanted to see how much the mother hen would do without our help, so we just cleaned the nest box and added a few more eggs under her and let her do her thing.
At around the same time she started sitting on her nest we received a fresh batch of babies from McMurray Hatchery. We used chicken wire to section off a third of the coop for these baby chicks. When we built the coop last summer, we made multiple human and animal access doors so that we would be able to divide up the inside and still be able to get in and do what we needed to do.
Today when we went out to check on those new birds- which are just getting into that awkward half feather half fluff technicolor dream coat stage; we noticed a small puff ball curled up next to the grain feeder. Clearly this was a new baby, no more than 24 hours old. We scooped up the little one and dipped its beak in water (since chickens are not born knowing how to drink) and it started peeping up a storm. The baby was able to squeeze through the small holes in the wire wall and into the area where to new birds had food and water, but it was unlikely that it would be able to find its way back to its mother. So we brought it back to her and she nudged it under her wing.
As most of you know, I’m a sucker for free stuff, and if it’s on craigslist I’m all over it. So a couple of months back when I saw a free rabbit hutch 30 minutes from my work I went and got it. I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d use it for, but if it’s free it’s me and I don’t turn down nothing but my collar. It was one of those, “I’m not home but it’s in the backyard, just go back and take it” type of pick-ups, which always make me feel like there’s a chance I’m stealing from someone as part of some vindictive neighbor’s plot. It’s a normal home-made rabbit hutch that someone, probably a small child, scribbled “Hoptimus’s House” across the front of… the plot thickens…
In any event, we moved the mother, her baby, and her eggs into it this afternoon so she could have some space with her babies. A lot of books and articles advise doing this right when she starts sitting on the eggs, but we were curious what would happen if we just let her do her thing. In general she would leave the nest most mornings for a little while to eat and drink, spend most of the day on the nest, and pop out again at night for some more water and grain. Sometimes while she was out, another hen, usually the same one, would go in and spend some time sitting. I never noticed any aggression when the main hen returned, the surrogate would just get up and leave the coop.
Since we’ve moved her into the rabbit hutch at least one more baby has hatched and she’s in increasingly good spirits. A few of the eggs were wiggling and cracking as Taryn was putting them in the cardboard box nest we put in the hutch.
A mama hen pulling an egg underneath her.
Recently hatched baby poking its head out
We have two roosters that are brothers and keep the girls in line. The hen is missing those feathers from her back as a result of an overactive libido
The rear door of our nest boxes. Before being relocated to the hutch, she occupied the center box. Each nest box is 12"x12"x12"
After we relocated her to the hutch, we moved grain crumbles and water close to the nest, so her and her babies could acess it without having to move too far.
Our free rabbit hutch from craigslist
Our landlord gave us to go ahead to expand our garden into the sheep pasture next to our house. We took down a large oak tree that was shading a good chunk of our new and existing garden area and cleared it all out. Now it’s just a matter of making the gardening beds. Since last years harvest turned out to be kind of a bust we decided this presented a perfect opportunity to experiment with a different idea. We figure, everyone’s expectations are decently low at this point, so what better time to take a chance?
In this new garden space we’re going to try to set-up a “no dig garden”. The idea is one that lots of people have gone over and over in their own gardening and farm blogs, so rather than rehash the whole thing I think it suffices to say we’re going to give it a go.
We’ve got lots of old dry hay and leaves in the barn leftover from lambing season and we shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking down grass clippings either. Maybe we could have a head to head battle and build a no-dig bed alongside a double dig bed and see which does better (read: less poorly). Wish us luck!
Here’s a cool video that outlines what we’re talking about here:
Well, winter has come and gone and we’ve been quite busy. Taryn and I are working on becoming a certified organic mushroom producer. At first we were worried about all the bureaucracy and the costs associated with getting organic certification. Fortunately for us our state (and a few others) have certification reimbursement programs that refund 75% of the costs related to organic certification up to $750. This program is actually a federal one that is administered by our state’s Department of Agriculture. We have until October of this year to complete all the necessary paperwork.
In actuality, we’re finding the costs to be pretty reasonable even without the reimbursement program. I think this is mostly due to the process by which we’ve chosen to cultivate mushrooms. We’ve opted for traditional log cultivation. As such, the process itself has a very small amount of what the USDA classifies as “inputs”. We’re cutting down small hardwood trees in coordination with good forestry management practices, inoculating the log with certified spawn, and sealing it with approved wax. This simple and natural process minimizes the number of regulations that affect us and cuts down on costs associated with lab testing.
We do need to have our artesian well tested for potability, but this is mostly routine as it is our main source of drinking water and not just an additional irrigation only well. Being an artesian well and almost 500ft down it is also not as susceptible to ground water contamination, meaning we only need to be tested once rather than every year as would be necessary with a shallow well. Regardless, the costs of this test is minimal, on the order of $40 or so.
Investigating suppliers of spawn and tools has been our biggest challenge, as we need to make sure the supplier is certified organic and that all their paperwork is present and current. This is really just administrative work, but because of the nature of shiitake farming, one wrong move means the entire crop could fail certification. Since each inoculated log will produce for several years this would be a great set-back. The challenge (read: nightmare) of just starting again and having an organic and non-organic crop isn’t worth the cross contamination risk and also drastically increases our chance for running into trouble during the certification process for the new crop.
Fortunately for us we’ve been working with a local organic certifier that has really been a dream. Bay State Organic Certifiers handles certification in the Northeast and I can’t say enough nice things about them. Don has literally been an organic encyclopedia, explaining to us the process and answering all our questions in an incredibly timely and patient manner. For two new farmers that are even newer to understanding the ins and outs of organic regulation this resource is invaluable.
Couple that with our landlord giving us his blessing to get the operation up and running and we really feel unstoppable. Our friends have offered to come and film inoculation day with their HD cameras so we’ll make sure to keep you all updated.
So we got about a month of rain around these parts. This really matted down our hay onto the lazy bed. Not thinking about the fact that we were basically creating a compost pile, we didn’t add more hay onto the bed and as a result a lot of our vines composted in the rotting hay. Major bummer. We only harvested 5 potatoes.
Looks like we’ll have to try this one out next year and stay on top of the moisture. This article suggests that giving the bed a slight grade can help with drainage in the event of heavy rain: http://www.gardenguides.com/plants/info/Vegetables/potatoes.asp
Round two begins today. Our alarm goes off at 6:00am but as usual we were sleeping in. Around 7 I got the call from the post office saying that they had our chickens. Luckily Taryn had taken a personal day from work and was going to stay home and make sure they were getting on okay. This time we were able to pick them up at the local post office instead of having to drive about an hour to the central receiving post office like last time. Having them come in the middle of the week instead of Sunday probably helped a great deal in that regard.
The Aracauna, or actually Americana chickens are doing well. Apparently a true Aracauna is too fragile and dainty for poultry farming and since the 1800’s they’ve been bread to be hardier and more prolific. One thing is for sure, they come in all kinds of colors. Right now we’ve got at least two or three differently patterned Americana chickens. One that looks sort of “owl like” and another that is solid yellow gold, like a coloring book easter chick.
Here’s some pictures.
Our Antique Brooder (thanks to Uncle Chris!)
Bunch of Chicks
Puff Ball Weirdo
Easter Chick
Holding the Easter Chick
When I got home from work today I took a walk around the pine grove where I met the fishers in the morning. Moving through the area I was able to identify the feathers, wings, feet, and bodies of about 11 of our birds. Suffice to say the other 4 are out there somewhere, also in pieces.
Being that all the carnage is located out there I’m thinking that the fishers arrived before the chickens had made it into the fenced in yard for the night and drove them into the woods where they could be picked off one by one. Looking at the trampled fern bunches and haphazard arrangement of mayhem, it seems to be a logical explanation.
So it seems we’re back to square one; though I guess it’s really more like square two because at least we have the chicken coop built. We’re going to try and not waste much time getting “back into the game”. The question we’re grappling with now is how to keep them safe until they are a bit older.
They slowly expanded their range into the woods over the last few days, and unfortunately, were still not really “street smart”. They were at that awkward stage between peeping and making real chicken sounds that has them mostly mute. The roosters had no spurs to enforce the law or voice to call their girls to order. But how do you tell a chicken not to wander too far?
We’re in the market for some more chickens and may toss in a few other heritage breeds for some variety. We’re having a party this weekend that we hoped would be a “welcome to the farm” party, and allow us to introduce our flock to our family and friends. Between the total loss of livestock, and the constant rain drowning our garden we don’t have a huge bounty to show.
I sort of feel like Forrest Gump when he tries to be a shrimp boat captain.
This morning I was out for another walk around the property when I found a single chicken leg. The few feathers still left on it indicated that it formerly belonged to one of our Rhode Island Reds. While I was checking this out I heard a curious scratching coming from the top of a large nearby pine tree. I got to the base of it, and looking up noticed two fisher cats scratching around. Turning to continue my exploration I noticed another fisher cat on a stump, about to climb the neighboring tree. I looked him dead in the face as if to say, “you eat my chickens, bub?”. Strangely it didn’t reply but instead just started climbing the tree. As if three fisher cats weren’t enough, as I was coming out of the small pine grove I noticed another fisher cat on the forest floor. He looked at me for a while and I looked at him and then he took off into a thicket.
Now, from what I understand when a fisher cat takes a chicken, or any bird it leaves feathers everywhere. It’s not uncommon for fishers to get “blood lust” and continue to kill more than they could ever eat (like this fisher that killed 69 turkeys) but they generally don’t take the time to carry all the bodies away. Though it’s possible that a mother brought the bodies back as food for her kits. Fishers are solitary animals, so the only explanation for so many being so close together is that a mother is raising her kits in the pine grove.
Fishers give birth in April/May and mate again shortly thereafter. Due to a process called delayed implantation the kits will take a year to be born. Usually, the kits stay with the mother until fall. While it’s possible that the mother killed all 15 and brought the bodies back, I’m thinking that the fisher(s?) showed up, scared the chickens, killed at least one, and the rest just took off running. The lack of mayhem in the coop makes me skeptical that all 15 could have been killed there. No blood, no feathers, just empty.
For those unfamiliar, a fisher is a large member of the weasel family. They make their homes high up in trees and occasionally in burrows or rock cavities. Males can range from 7-20 pounds in extreme cases, while females are usually between 4 and 6 pounds. Fishers have large feet with five toes and retractable claws. They can rotate their back paws 180 degrees and climb down trees headfirst. Females have a range of about 10 square miles, while males have a range of up to 30. They are very capable predators, but despite fear mongering in the media pose no real threat to humans, I’ve been face to face with them a few times and neither party has ever felt very threatened.
The problem with all this of course, is that the chickens could flee a spot they consider dangerous for days. Each day they are gone the fishers have the chance to hunt them on their turf. Again, work took me from a full on search, but between this evening and tomorrow I hope to able to find some definitive evidence so we can decide on a course of action.