Chicken Diaries: New Romance

Robert Rooster loves Paulie.  They hang out together a lot.  He keeps extra-close watch over her while she's laying her eggs, and they just seem to have a good time.

Robert Rooster and Paulie Newman

All this hand-holding and fraternizing has been good for Paulie; this sweet girl has been giving us gorgeous blue-green eggs for several days now!  I've caught her in the nest box doing the deed a few times.  

Paulie's grown into quite the young lady.  A few months ago, she seemed very shy.  She never came to greet me and kept to herself most of the time.  Now that she's all grown up, she seems to have become more gregarious.  She's my best feathered friend now.  Sorry, Stevie.

 Stevie.  We used to be BFF.

Paulie, the girl with the teal eggs.

Because I'm so thankful for the beautiful eggs we've been getting,  I wanted to give the chickens a fun snack.  I remembered that there was a winter squash with a tiny little patch of mold in the basement.  I had meant to give it to the ladies and gent a few days ago.  Perfect snack.

Amish Butter Squash

I took the Amish Butter squash up to the kitchen for dissection.  As soon as I cut into it, I knew that it was just too good to give to the chickens.  It was so incredibly aromatic that Thurgood woke up from his nap, hopped out of the bed, and trotted into the kitchen looking for a treat.  It smelled just like a sweet cantaloup, and Thurgood loves melon.  The juicy-sweet smell lingered in the air as I scooped out the seeds and put them in a bowl for the chickens.  As for the flesh, I put that on a cookie sheet, and into the oven it went.  It will roast until it's mushy soft, then I'll sprinkle on some brown sugar and let it caramelize in the oven.  After cooling, I'll peel the squash halves and puree them.  I'll put the squash into the freezer and use it later in a pie, soup, or beer.

Chicken Salad?

For snacktime, I paired the squash seeds with leftover sweet potato fries.  I garnished with nasturtium leaves and flowers.  It was pretty popular.

Nancy and Denise seem very interested.

They went for the squash guts and sweet potato immediately, but weren't too excited about the nasturtium.  Typical.

Thurgood Thursday: Why We Eat Watermelon Outside

Chicken World Today

We've been given our first blue egg thanks to Paulie, Stevie, or Alex.  I'm not sure which Ameraucana has started laying, but Ben says he believes it's Stevie.

A blue (That is blue, right?  Looks sorta greenish.) Ameraucana egg and a brown Wyandotte or Australorp egg.

Paulie, front and center.

The Ameraucanas and Wyandottes are the same age, so I guess it is also possible that the Wyandottes are laying, too.  It's hard to tell because we'll get brown eggs from both the Wyandottes and the Australorps.

Precious.

We have three Golden-Laced Wyandotte hens, three Ameraucana hens, and ten surviving Australorp hens.  Our rooster, Robert, is an Ameraucana.  Right now, we're getting one to three eggs per day.  I'm hoping that one day soon that number will rise to an even dozen.

Robert Rooster

I love Robert.  He is the best rooster I could ever dream of having.  He's got a great attitude and a lot of character.  His crow is so righteous that it demands an "Amen, brother!" in response.  I love Robert.

Preciouses

Robert is performing all of his duties; he welcomes the morning, afternoon, and evening with his musical greeting, he loves his ladies right, and he generally keeps everyone on their toes.

Where deposites are made.

The girls have been religiously laying their eggs in the next boxes.  I'm so glad we don't have to go searching high and low for eggs every day.  Each box has been used, and the eggs stay clean and safe until we can collect them.  It's almost too easy.

We had figs for snack time today.

I don't know what we did before we had chickens.  They've been in our lives for six months now, and I don't remember what things were like without them.  Just as I know I'll always have dogs in my life, I hope we will never be without a backyard flock of chickens.

2012 Strawberries: Full Speed Ahead!

Ben had a four-day weekend for the Labor Day Holiday.  He worked three of those days.  This is how it went:

The strawberry plants arrived from Lassen Canyon Nursery on Thursday.  We ordered 1,000 Jewel and 1,000 Gaviota bare root plants.  I had to store them in the refrigerator until Saturday.

We received two of these boxes.  Both arrived in great condition.

We had prepared the outside of the high tunnel by tilling with the tractor, hoeing up six rows, and laying horse manure.  We mulched the pathways with a layer of cardboard with shredded bark mulch on top.  The rows are mulched with straw.  We planted 1,000 strawberry plants here.

A row of rawberries growing outside of the high tunnel.

Ben had put down chicken manure on the inside of the high tunnel several months ago.  Before putting in about 900 plants, we rototilled and hoed up the rows.  We mulched with a thick layer of straw.

Not including the months that led up to this, Ben and I worked on the strawberries nonstop from Saturday through Monday.  When Ben had to go back to his job, I worked Tuesday and Wednesday to complete the project.  My lower back was screaming at me!

High tunnel plants

As for the garden magic part, I watered-in the plants with a dose of seaweed and fish fertilizer.  They sprang to life immediately.

I had a few plants leftover, and those went into the kitchen garden.  No Plant Left Behind!  Not only did I not want to waste any of the plants, but I also think it's a good idea to have some of each variety planted in several different places.  This way, if some disaster happens, like an insect infestation or deer attack, we'll be sure to have back-up plants.  These back-ups can be used to repopulate the high tunnel area if needed.

We'll get our first harvest next spring.  The strawberries inside the high tunnel should ripen earlier than those planted outside.  We're looking forward to harvesting our first asparagus and strawberry crops next spring!

If We're Gonna Starve, It Won't Be This Year

Summer has been good to us.  We dug up our sweet potatoes a little over a week ago, and it was a chore.  We had planted 200 slips, and I do believe that each and every one of them put out.

The Queen Mother (I mean the potato).

I didn't expect such an early harvest, but they were ready, indeed.  Ben had seen one poking up out of the dirt, and that was that.  I prefer them on the smaller side for baking whole, and the majority of them were just so.  However, we did have quite a few giants.  The one pictured above was the biggest.  Potatoes that size will be chopped up into fries for used in roasted root vegetable mixes.

The potatoes were cured under the carport for ten days.  During the curing process, starch is converted into sugar, and the result is a sweeter, creamier potato.  Now they're waiting in the basement for me to very gently wipe away the dirt.  Ben is building a few storage bins for them.  The bin we used last year just won't do.  We planted twice as many slips this year as we did last year, but we got about five times the potatoes.  The deer and a late frost did a number on them in 2010.  I estimate this harvest at about 1,000 taters.

Thurgood Morsel says, "I'll have mine baked and cut down the middle lengthwise with a farm fresh egg cracked on top, please."

He also says, "Get out mah face wit dat camera.  Cain't you see I'm nappin'?  Stupid biotch."