Happy Harvest Blog
Double trouble
Occupied. They were just hanging out, prepared to stay for the long haul. This is not a problem I was expecting to have: The squashes swarmed the fence, and the frost revealed the bounty. Stuck to the fence. The frost wiped out the morning glories, too, and the zinnias. Inky and Velvet are so beautiful (and so sweet). Inky still insists (very, very determined) on going to bed in the tree, but she might give a little chicken hug (neck snuggle) when you move her.
Serious frost
We got a proper frost last night. I ate a tomato and it had ice crystals in it (unpleasantly cold first thing in the morning), so lots of tomatoes are frozen on the vine in the greenhouse. I think the cucumber and melon vines are finished too. The basil is finished. I worked all day yesterday to prepare for the frost, so it wasn't a surprise, except I thought the basil would be ok. Mom, it's cold! She's in her full polar bear.
Apples is an unfit mother
It's very disappointing. I wanted her to pass on all her gentle characteristics. But it seems she's not interested in passing anything on. This morning she was up, and there was a tiny chick! White with some brown, I think a Silkie. Since she was up, I moved them all to a chickery, but she was noticeably inattentive to her chick, not warming it (and it was a cold morning). I repeatedly placed her on top of her chick and the remaining eggs in a box, and she'd just squawk.
Chicken jackets
Now that the weather is cooling off, it's time to put jackets on my chickens. No! That's a joke. A few of my hens need jackets because they're molting or have their feathers damaged from mating. Chicken aprons (so-called because they look like an apron when they're flat), or saddles (for the rooster to ride) are for protecting their backs while their feathers grow back. Cheeks has bare raw patches on her shoulders from mating, but what can you do? She doesn't have to always be with that rooster. I made a version with shoulder protectors.
P. Petit and his best girl, Cheeks
Philippe Petit and his girlfriend, lounging in a shady patch by the path. He likes his ladies bearded.
Young Roos
Oscar and Orlando are buds. The young roosters are growing up, and they are big! They're going to be big boys. They've come almost into their full rooster shape, but still, have awkward bits sticking out. Not so cute anymore, although the hens might think so. Pepper, front left, is a Silkie Barred Rock cross, and that turns out to be an unfortunate combination. Very funny looking, with strangely green legs. And he's a rooster. He might have to season a pot before he seasons the gene pool:(
We lounge hard
Chickens do an awful lot of lounging. They lounge under trees, in the sun, lots of time on the paths, and in dust baths. Their favorite seems to be dappled shade. Big group lounge under a secondary pine tree. Early post-breakfast perching is common. Big dust bath near the house. Barred & Brahma lounging. The birds have this odd tendency to sort themselves out by colours, like laundry. The darks.The lights/colours. There's some big boys emerging out of the tweens. It's adorable how much they cuddle.
New hen boxes
The hens with chicks got an apartment reno. It was time to retire those battered old boxes. So I set up a new condo system, each with a little bed of hay. But will they use them? All the other chickens came and inspected of course. Well, I left the most popular box, double occupancy in a pinch. Oh! A promising amount of attention.Look, Mom, we found a new place!They approved. 2/3 were occupied, and it was much nicer to transport these boxes with closed lids
Mr Tomato Head
Look at that tomato. Eggs (normal and Silkie) are there for size context. It's very large. A Persimmon. They are so good. The surprise of the year. I was expecting a normal-large tomato, not one tomato the size of a loaf of bread! Meaty, and delicious. When the hens get a bucket of scraps, they pick out the orange persimmon bits first. In the tomato fermenting pots, the process is rolling right along. Look at that scum of mold - perfect. Outside, the morning glories have come, vining up with the volunteer tomatoes.
Epic pig move
The pigs got another big move yesterday. And they're acting like they did all the work. The space they have with the two strands of fence is vast (not literally, but it seems pretty vast, and it's plenty big enough for them to get totally concealed). I walk around looking for them and it's like Wild Safari. Can you see them? Is that something moving over there? Well, there's a spot where pigs have been.I'm not moving. Maybe my eyelid. One lazy pig. Spot the pig? The other two are in there.
The five aren't afraid of bees
The famous five, in fact, love to rummage around around the hives, and jump upon them. That is the back of the hive, but they rummage equally well in the front. They go underneath. I've seen one jump up on the bee door closure stick. Meeting behind Pansy building! (My hives are plumb; the camera is tipped)I've thought one would get stung, and that would be over, but no. It's always just a little tribe. They have the place to themselves.
Overcrowding
I went out at bedtime to close everyone up, which means picking up the cardboard boxes that the wild chicks and the moms they're still attached to have retired into, and carrying them into the safe box in the greenhouse for the night. There's a lineup of three boxes. One was empty. Oh, great. Foxy and her set have found someplace to sleep outside. I put the other two boxes away, did a quick low crawl to look around the base of the brush piles where they like to rest (wow, they've got a proper labyrinth in there),
An experiment in chick freedom
Ursa Minor was protesting the confines of the chickery, so I tried something. I let all the moms and chicks loose. This is not rain day, these are the tiny chicks in their first few days of life, that are typically in chickeries in the greenhouse (warm and dry), before they go out to chickeries on grass for a few days, before they run wild with their moms (a staged transition to free-range). So I propped up the chickeries so they could leave, but still, get back in their familiar box.
Pig bribery
I've got some rowdy pigs. Specifically, the female. She's a bit of a loner, happy to be apart from the boys some of the time, and she doesn't respect the fence. She knows how to get under it, rooting under a post (the bottom strand isn't electrified), and then tossing it up, where it will flop down on her back and she can charge underneath, getting only a modest shock on her thick back. I haven't seen her do this all the way through, but I've seen her start into the process very deliberately.
Chick party in the greenhouse
Rain day! It did not start well. The forecast, usually accurate to the hour, was predicting rain starting at 9pm tonight. At 6am, pat. pat pat. patpatpatpatpat! I leapt up. I needed to give the pigs access to their house. Yesterday I'd moved their house (thank god!), but I hadn't cut out the path to reroute the electric fence around it. Really crappy work that I planned to do today before the rain (plenty of time!), as I was so tired and sore yesterday.
cool days, cool Moms
It's chilly in the mornings. The chicks are around with their shoulders shrugged up. The leghorn twins went back in the box. The cardboard is warmer on the tiny naked feet. Do you know what's really warm on the feet? Mom.Until she starts walking away - whoa! Ursa Minor surprised me with chicks this morning. She had that I've got chicks, ya know the face. And then there was all the peeping. Oh! there's a little leg, and it's attached to some black feathers! Yay, another black one. Oh, there's a whole little butt, already dry and fluffy.
Tomato seeds
Pretty colours! I set up to save seeds from most of the tomato varieties I grew this year. They've each got annotation on size, flavour, and vine behavior ("disobedient", "excessive suckers")Each tub has the ripest, spoiled on the vine where possible fruits, and they're going to rot down into a soupy mess with a scum of mold on top, yay. I may not keep them in the house for that. Last time I was ferment-saving seeds I forgot about them in the camper and they were perfect.
new chicks
Clever's chicks made it! (sort of). I didn't expect them to because the eggs were poopy, and that can choke off the exchange of air and humidity to the developing chick. She rolled one egg away from her a week ago, and it was rotten. I should have known she knew her other two were alive. However, one died after hatching. This is quite rare, for a chick to die after hatching under a mom, and after being alive long enough to dry out and fluff up.
those feather askew blues
One of Foxy's (the oldest of the small chicks) chicks has a feather issue today. This sometimes happens, more often to the Silkies though. Can you spot it?What?It has little outrigger feathers growing sticking straight out from its shoulders. It's so funny. It's like only two feathers are committed to flying. They'll be gone in a couple days. Guineas doing their guinea thing. They're growing so fast. Galahad has a feather stuck on his face. A keet is about to notice and pluck it off for him. It's the most beautiful time of year.
Apples and corn
I had the first cob of my corn tonight - ever! I haven't been able to grow it before, but next to the greenhouse, it worked. Bit of corn earworm, yuck, but good. Sometimes the bees spend the night stuck on the sunflower heads. They hang down, sheltering like an umbrella. Apples the house chicken is broody! I keep almost saying "pregnant". Not pregnant. Sitting on eggs like a perfectly normal hen (how far she's come)! Just one of her own.
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