Happy Harvest Blog
Pig Innovations
What’s going on here?
Is that what I think it is?
Yep.
Pigs….
All of them are different!
This is the first one who’s ever thought that …
Perfect Day
I forget how wonderful the first day of having the coops outside is. It’s a threshold day, the anchor of the seasons, when the chickens come out and the purpose of the greenhouse is transformed from winter housing (Poultry Palace) to growing food. The coop roofs, dusty and pooped on, will be washed in the next rain. It’s the real beginning of the growing season.
Coops Out!
So tired... but I had to bring the coops out of greenhouse in order to plant in there (only three weeks late). It has to be done.
The coops in and coops out days are benchmarks of the season. The beginning of summer, and the beginning of winter. Important, marker days. Like spring cleaning, the GH gets everything pulled out of it and then transformed, in purpose and appearance.
Vector & Little Mama
Vector and Little Mama made it all the way out to the house! I was surprised to see them out the front window, toodling around together.
Snow In May!!?
Quite a surprise to wake up to several inches of snow in the morning.
Gorgeous, just unexpected for Mother’s Day.
The pigs were non-plussed. Maybe they’ve seen snow before, but it doesn’t seem like it.
The squirrels were very funny, bounding around in the snow, tunneling and popping up through it like gophers. Competition is heightened since I blocked squirrel access to the bird feeders, and…
Rain Washing
I set all my houseplants out on the “patio” in the rain for a good washing. They are dusty and due for a spring cleaning.
And then there’s my Big Mama Aloe. I didn’t know that an aloe could get so large. I don’t even remember where I got her as a baby, just that she was an unremarkable size, and she’s grown to resemble a pineapple plant.
Shantytown
OMG, broody hens!
They went broody on the same day, and after a couple of days occupying the nest boxes in the coop, I figured they were sufficiently committed to broodiness and I could move them.
I carefully prepared their accommodations in the evening. Two chickeries close together, both entirely wrapped with canvas and paper feed sacks (hey, we’re not going for cute here, obviously), but with the wall between them not visually blocked. This backfires later in the story.
Two moms
We have our first Silkie chick. Cute little thing, brown spider markings, so it will turn out brown. The neat thing is that two hens are parenting it. I've never had this happen before. The hens sat on eggs next to each other in one of the apartments in the coop, always eager to swipe eggs from the other, but also always jammed in side by side.
Another Silkie Chick
We’re getting a rash of only, early chicks. Here we have an unexpected Silkie chick. As much as they are the most vulnerable chicks and have a lowered chance of survival, they do surprisingly well with the roulette wheel of reaching hatching at all. I don’t “help” my Silkie hens keep eggs, ie., I don’t isolate them with a set of eggs and food unless I mean for them …
Guess Whoooo
"I was startled heading out at night to close the chickens when something swooped out from the pig house past me and landed in the tree right next to the house. Like, these trees almost brush the house. This is a very bold owl, unconcerned about me, that's for sure. I was worried about the guineas, who had been out late, but they were all fine, perched up in the GH.
Nuthatchery
There's a nuthatch that seems interested in this birdhouse, that's right next to the house… I hope they stay and nest here…
The least eventful arrival of piglets event, ever.
It was kind of a long car ride, but they were almost worryingly quiet, and hardly stinky either. We’re home! Yeah, yeah. Not excited. I wheelbarrowed their kennel over to the new home, and they rode that journey like champs, sitting up, their sniffers working overtime. Just as fast as they could, smelling everything about the new environment. The wet, sprouting field, the damp forest. Me. SNIFFSNIFFSNIFFSNIFFSNIFF!
Ready for piglets
The piglet yard is all set up and ready to go. Right by the house, so I can keep an eye on them. This is from the porch. I’ve never put the pigs this close. They come tomorrow. I am overwhelmed with my own cleverness here, designing this for a water trough they can’t flip over. That means I’ll probably be lucky to get two weeks before they conquer it. It’s always unwise to think you’ve outsmarted a pig.
My scarcity mindset expresses itself in mulch
Last month when All This was bearing down on us, and seeing that isolation was coming – the thing that made me anxious? I don’t have enough mulch!! I went out of my way to panic-buy a load of hay, and obsessively made trips to the sawmill to bag wood shavings (the best free resource!), especially happy that I can get in and out with my little car stuffed with wood shavings without contacting anyone at all.
It's a sitting in a tree kind of day
The girls have been hanging out in the pine tree like they did when they were chicks. They remember.The weather is beautiful. Sunny, and it’s warming up – any day the bugs will come out of nowhere and the fun will be all over.
Another Only chick!
So glad. They have different mamas but will grow up together. This little chick got off to a tough start. I found her in the middle of the Silkie greenhouse after breakfast, peeping at the top of her lungs (which is quite loud). I popped open the coop and nudged all the sitting hens, to see who would accept this chick. Apples did, and the chick burrowed right in. Phew, crisis averted. Then I moved them out together to a box and chickery to start chickergarten together.
Greenhouse living and the drama of the popcorn string
This has been a good winter to be a chicken around here. The winter was mild, and I don't think there was ever a time that the birds were truly locked in for more than a week due to snow. Any time there was bare ground, they got released for at least some hours of foraging entertainment. And of course, they had their side yard always accessible, although all the birds tend to stay in when there's snow. So morale was good this winter, not much cabin fever.
An Only chick
Only one baby hatched:( I think it's just too early for chicks; too tough for them to survive and egg cooling happens too rapidly this early in the spring. I thought only chicks were super sad, growing up alone, but they do get intense one-on-one attention. Little Mama gave the other eggs a couple of days, then strutted out all Alright kiddo, time to learn to scratch! I moved her abandoned eggs down the line, to the six Silkies currently broody in the Silkie coop.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
