Trying the Turkey Trot

All I know this far is that raising Turkeys and raising Chickens is similar but they cannot be co-mingled. The two turkey poults that we ordered arrived earlier than I anticipated! Yikes!  They are not much larger than the chicken pullets at a few days of age. So that's good, because I don't have their coop put together yet. Yikes! Yikes!  We do have a few weeks to put it together. I had a hard time getting any good photos. 

They are the Black Spanish, which actually originated out of Mexico when Spain invaded South America. They took the black turkey back to Spain and England, then the colonists brought it back to America! Ha Ha! Any way, the Black Spanish is considered a Heritage breed. It is smaller than the turkeys eaten at holidays and they can be bred naturally (no artificial insemination needed). We will see where this goes. 

I have heard that this breed of turkeys is very friendly and easy to handle.  They will fly, especially the females because they only weigh about 15-18 pounds at maturity. They have been reported to fly onto roofs of houses.

These turkeys are supposed to be good forages, eating slugs and bugs, as well as grass and grass seeds. This will be perfect for our upper portion of the field. 

Everything that I have read indicates that the babies are prone to die off during the first two weeks, and then again around 6 weeks.  These are the vulnerable transition periods. Even the experienced turkey farmer reports about 25% die off of their chicks.  I am hoping for the best! 

Gardening Fun in the Spring

Gardening in the spring is fun and challenging, especially when we have unseasonably hot weather for a week, then back to spring temps for a week or two, then the hot again. Let's see, the updates on the gardens.  We have three raised beds, One bed is mostly garlic and onions with a row of early spinach in there.  The 2nd bed is currently lettuce (variety), spinach, carrots, and dill. The 3rd bed is reserved for the corn. The hothouse has starts in it of parsley, basil, peas, lavender, cucumbers, bell peppers and rosemary.

Then we have several five gallon buckets of peas, blueberries, strawberries, greek oregano and lavender. Plus, we have four 35 gallon black garbage pails with red, blue and gold potatoes. Whee! But the weather is causing some really crazed events, like the thunderstorm with the potential for hail the size of a quarter. So we quickly placed tarps over everything that was out and established. Luckily, we were on the outer edge of the storm with only a small amount of hail and lots of rain and lightening.

Here are some photos of the garden beds and the bucket garden brigade, so far.

Will be Corn	Onions/Spinach/Garlic
Red Potatoes	Blue Potatoes
Basil	Red Spinach
Peas	Purple Garlic
Blueberries	Strawberries
Re-pot of Lavender	Oregano

The Mystery Plants of Spring

Every year, we discover an/other new plant(s) on our property. Some years, they are noxious, and poisonous weeds. But sometimes, they are productive plants.  Then, there are always the plants and things that come back year after year, no matter what we do. Such as Blackberries.  The fact that the winter temps hardly dipped below freezing this year, the blackberries are growing faster than we can dig them up. We will need to get a backhoe to get these beauties! We have almost acre of berry coverage. Ugh! This is a view of about a third of the blackberries.  I don't know if you can tell, based on Lucky, but these bushes are up to six feet tall in some areas. Ugh again!

 

We found an interesting blooming tree in our field that we had not noticed until this year. It's an Apple tree!  We assume that Lucky (the horse) planted and nourished that tree in a pile of horse apples. hahaha  I think we have another young apple tree out there.  We will see if Lucky lets it live.

 

We also discovered an ash tree that has survived the horse in the field.  Most times, the young trees don't survive because Lucky loves to chew on the bark, push on the tree as a scratching post, eat the leaves, etc. To see these trees growing quite tall out there is an unusual find! We also have holly trees and some types of sticker bush trees that Lucky avoids and we try to pull them out at least once a year. 

 

Today was a beautiful spring day. Not too hot and not too cool. Gentle breeze and the garden is loving it. This is a photo of my favorite shade tree. It's a maple tree.  I guess I just never realized just how much pollen this tree produces! Wheeee! All those yellow buds are enough to cause me to sneeze. 

Late last fall, we threw out some ground cover seed where we pasture the chickens and the other discovery today was a bunch of oats! Oh boy, are the chickens gonna love this new plant. 

That pretty much brings you up to speed on the findings for the season. 

Garden is great. Strawberries, Blueberries, Peach, Cherry and Apple Trees (that we planted last year) survived the winter.  Garlic survived. Onions did not. I had to replant from seed and they are so tiny that I opted to purchase a handful of onion bulbs for this year. Red and Blue potatoes have good growth. Yukon and White potatoes are planted, but not out of the ground yet. Spinach is doing quite well.  Lettuce has just started. Peas are late. Got a late start and I think something ate most of the seeds out of the soil. I planted some more, in the green house to try to get more for replanting. Planted first row of carrots and dill. Starting basil and parsley in the green house. Got another garden area ready for planting corn in a month. Will plant more carrots, plus beans at that same time. We have our gardening thumbs on. 

No chicks this year.  We are going to wait until next spring to get some more.  We have eaten the old hens and they were very flavorful! The Wellsummers and the Orloffs are producing very well this spring. The wet sloggy winter cut down on the production. We ended up adding pro-biotics to their water for a few weeks to get them to feeling better. 

We do have request for a couple of turkey chicks at the farm store this year.  I decided we would try to raise a couple of turkeys for the holidays. So that will be our "adventure" for this year.

Tenth Anniversary of a Cat Rescue

Our lovely Harpo was rescued ten years ago, today, from a local animal shelter. If you can spell her name backwards, you will know that she was named after a celebrity who has this day as her birthday. We do not know exactly how old Harpo is. We think that she is probably closer to 11 years old. She is a very nervous, shy soul who loves to sun bathe on her back in the afternoon sun when the coast is clear.

 

She loves a nice sized box. Not too large and not too small. She was enjoying her celebratory box. Yes, her eyes really are that golden.

A little sneachta with that New Year

Our "official" winter, thus far, has been cold but not a lot of precipitation in our area, so that's been nice! The east winds have been whipping through with 30 mph gusts that drop the temps from barely freezing to brrrrrr. So we put up wind break panels on the chicken runs. You may notice that we have clear plastic strapped on the top parts of the pens to allow sunshine in but keep the elements off the center of the runs. This only helps on snowy days, like today, or when there's a light rain.  Heavy duty rains, of course, can turn the run into a real muck fest, so we throw out some hay to keep that manageable. 

Also, you may be able to see a block on top of a garbage can lid near the corner of coop two. That's to help protect the power cord connections from the elements to bring light and water heaters to life on these dark, cold winter days.  Coop one, in the background of coop two is empty. If you look in the "space" next to the wind break of coop three, you can see one of the Welsummers peeking out to see what's flashing?  :) 

Coop 2

Coop 3

Checked on the garlic and onions.  Garlic stems look fine.  Can't find any onion stems. Hoping that's normal and they will be back in the spring. We will see.  I have enough seeds left to plant more onions in the spring, if necessary.  That's it for the New Year 2016 update. 

Update on our efforts to combine the Welsummers with the remaining Russian Orloff in coop three.  I think it was about November 10 that we shoved the Welsummers into the coop in the dark of night and kept our fingers crossed.  While two of the Welsummers did fairly well with the transition, the smallest of the Wellsummers was bullied by the primary Russian Orloff.  We kept that Orloff because she was the best layer of the group. And, she still is the best layer, laying almost every day after finishing the molt. The smallest Welsummer even pushed her way out of the pen one day to get away from the Orloff! She was a mess! She ended up with a bloodied comb, losing all her tail feathers and neck feathers. We were not certain she was even going to make it through the week! Although she still avoids the Orloff, she is now being allowed to roost with the other three hens at night together. She has regained her feathers, her weight and is no longer getting beat up. She even laid her first egg since the transition on December 31. So, all in all, it took some time, but the hens are all back in action as a new flock.

Welsummer Layers are Back

Despite the troubling start to merging the one remaining Orloff with the three Welsummers in coop 3, the distress appears to have settled down. The smallest of the Welsummers is regaining her tail feathers and has found a spot on the nightly roost. That Orloff has been literally laying an egg per day for the past week! The Welsummers have been leaving us one to two eggs per day since December 18, so I think we are back to getting a decent number of eggs.  Of the eight layers that we have, we are getting at least three to four eggs per day!  So we are short a couple eggs per day, overall, but that's fine. We still have enough eggs left over to sell off to friends. One Orloff in coop two continues to lay her eggs in the corner of the coop, just outside of the nesting box. :)  

Weather continues to be a sloggy mess, but the winds have been coming in from SW making temps stay above 40F in our area. We may get some snow in a few days.  

10-week Molt in Coopdee Three has Come to an End

The remaining Orloff in Coop three laid her first egg post-molt today. We received four eggs today from both coopers. We actually got three from coop two, which, essentially indicates that all the hens in that coop are back to laying. The Welsummers are still not laying eggs. I'm hoping that now with the lone Orloff in coop three back in laying form, they will pick back up with theirs too. 

We're a soggy mess in our region. Normally, for the month of December, we get about 6 to 7 inches  of precipitation, usually in the form of rain, the entire month. But, in the past week alone, we had approximately 6 inches, with a lot of flooding in some areas. Hillsides are collapsing, roads are getting washed away, new pot-holes are forming, roadways are under feet of water. It's not good. Our ground is saturated beyond the point of draining and our poor chickidees are slogging around in the muck. We threw out some grass hay (not straw) to help minimize the amount of muck, but that's not perfect. It's just the best we can do for now. 

Onions and Garlic might end up rotting in the garden due to the warmth of the air and the amount of rain. Oy Vey!