New guinea keets

Only two guinea hens remain from the six guinea keets DS received from a neighbor almost two years ago.  Without a guinea cock, all their egg-sitting this summer was for naught.  But they're still here and don't wander too far so I wanted to add to the flock while these two are still around to show the new guys how to survive. (I hope!)  Plus, I kept imagining how sad the lone guinea would be if something happened to the other one.  Too anthropomorphic?  Maybe, but I really like having guineas--they're excellent at bug patrol and extremely entertaining, too.

This past weekend I went to the monthly poultry swap held in the Harrisonburg Tractor Supply parking lot and came home with guinea keets: 9 three-months-old adolescents and 14 two-days-old keets--all pearl greys.  The older ones are in the chick brooder pen for now while the little ones are in a dog crate set under a table on the front porch.  DH lined the crate's walls with cardboard and hung the heat lamp in one end.  I spend half the day running outside to "check" on them--nothing's ever wrong, I just can't resist watching them. 

They're so young that when they fall asleep, they almost fall.  They drop right where they stand and, unless another keet runs over them, they'll stay like that till they've had their short nap.  Then it's back up and going. 

Two of the older keets escaped from their pen--it has flight netting over the top so I think they squeezed out where the door doesn't fit tight against the frame.  We keep a bungee cord stretched tight over a piece of chicken wire used to bridge the gap, but the bungee wasn't fastened so there was an opening just waiting for a determined guinea keet or two.  DS found the escapees when he went out this evening to close them up.  They were hanging around trying to figure out how to get back inside so we took advantage of that desire and used an old window screen to trap them, returning them to the brooder house with the other keets for the night.

The story of E.B. and her 3, 4, no, 5 chicks

Once upon a time, Echa, a Turken hen with an attitude and the indisputable queen of our laying hens, hatched a chick. 

Echa and E.B. in August 2010

It was her second time at being a mama hen.  The first time ended badly as she lost the days-old chick to a skunk.  The next time the baby chick survived and we named her E.B., short for Echa's Baby.  When Echa decided her work as a mother was done and dropped E.B. at a couple of months old, we moved her back to the portable chicken pen with the other laying hens and she returned, quickly, to being "top chicken."

Usually we move the pullets to the portable pen once they start to lay but E.B. grew into a pretty black hen and established herself as one of the backyard flock.  Even DH, who's always pointing out the backyard flock isn't supposed to increase in number but instead serve as a chick brooder staging area, couldn't bring himself to move E.B. 

We've observed that the hens who are hatched and raised by a broody hen are more likely than the hatchery-provided ones to go broody themselves.  So when E.B. (with Mrs. Badger's help) hatched Solly last year, we weren't that surprised.  And DH had noticed E.B. was showing signs of being broody again this spring.  But when he went to gather eggs at lunchtime on Thursday, he was little surprised to find E.B. sheltering three baby chicks in a corner of the backyard coop.  (I'd swear it was only 10 days ago that I saw E.B. out on walkabout in the front flower bed with Bronwyn...)

DH was in a hurry as he still needed to eat lunch, have a shower and pack his supper before heading off to work but he took time to prep the dog house and chain-link dog pen we use as a brooder and move E.B., her three chicks (two black and one chipmunk) and the rest of the eggs she had underneath her into their new home.  DS and I were off working on backdrops for an upcoming play he's participating in at our homeschool co-op and got a call from DH to let me know we should check out the new arrivals when we got back home later that evening.

But there was more to come.  When DH was back in the kitchen preparing his food, he kept hearing a sound, like a cheep-cheep, coming from somewhere in the kitchen.  While he'd moved the eggs E.B. was sheltering into the brooder with her and her hatchlings, he'd taken the eggs from the other corner of that coop and carried them into the kitchen in a basket.  Turns out the cheeping was coming from one of those eggs.  So he tucked those eggs back under E.B., hoping the one, at least, would go ahead and hatch out.

It must have worked as Friday morning we had four chicks. Then, Saturday morning E.B.'s sporting five chicks under her wings. 

E.B. is very protective of her chicks.  Her tail feathers stay ruffled and she continually makes a sort of low growling sound the whole time people are around.  Makes for interesting times changing out the water and feeder.  To get these pics I had to bribe her with treats (crumbly cornbread, this time) because she prefers to keep the chicks in the house if someone's outside the pen.

So far, then, on the "good mama scale", she's scoring high.  But writing this post reminded me of last year when she and Mrs. Badger hatched Solly and E.B. gave up mothering way early so she could re-join the backyard hens in roaming the yard.  Hope we don't have a repeat as Mrs. Badger can't be counted on to pick up the slack this year and I don't want to raise five chicks...

Another broody hen comes through with two cute chicks

Echa hatched two chicks and I think Snowball's envious.  Or maybe she just wants her pen back...

1 chick, 2 mama hens

This is a conundrum almost worthy of King Solomon.  We have one chick but two hens who are each sure the chick is hers.  The chick doesn't seem unduly worried either way.

It started a few weeks ago when DS reported that Mrs. Badger, our grey Silkie bantam hen, had gone broody.  Then after a few weeks we realized that E.B., a black hen, herself hatched in the backyard last year, wasn't out-and-about as much as usual -- reason?  She was broody, too!  And seated right beside Mrs. Badger in the corner.  They even seemed to be sharing eggs. When one would take her daily break to eat and drink, the other attempted to cover all the eggs. 

We were busy with other things (mainly garden and end-of-year homeschool activities) and instead of separating them and giving each a clutch of fertile eggs from the pastured girls as is our wont, we left them to it.

Well, late last week, DS went out to check for eggs and discovered there was a tiny chick tucked under a hen in the backyard coop.  Problem was, we couldn't tell just which hen was claiming the chick.  He (tail could indicate a cockerel but not sure yet) would pop out from under first one black wing then another.  (Mrs. Badger, though known as a grey Silkie, is more of a charcoal color -- nearly indistinguishable from E.B.'s coloring except in bright light.)

Snowball and her two-month-old chicks were still in the baby pen so first we had to relocate them and re-situate the pen on fresh ground.  Snowball still isn't happy about that -- she sits right outside the gate apparently waiting to be let back in though she did lead her chicks into the big girls' coop from the first night on.  Since we couldn't tell which hen had hatched the chick, we decided to move both hens with the baby.  We figured once they were in the baby pen, the "real" mama hen would take over and the other would want to be freed to roam again with the other backyard girls, guinea fowl and Badger, the grey Silkie bantam roo.

But that's not the way it was.  Both hens would call the chick and he went to either; they all slept in the little house together.  However, after a few days, E.B. seemed to want out -- she was pacing the pen, eyeing the other chickens in the yard as though she was ready to re-join them.  Mrs. Badger and the chick just watched her from a distance.  We thought "Aha!  It's Mrs. Badger's chick and E.B.'s ready to give up and re-join the rest of the flock!"  So DS let E.B. out yesterday afternoon and all seemed fine. Mrs. Badger called the chick to her when I gave them some treats and E.B., though she hung around the yard near the baby pen, ranged with the other girls.

Until evening, that is.  Mama hens and their little chicks often go in for the night long before the rest of the chickens.  Around 6:30 or 7:00 last night, well before the 9:00 bedtime the other chickens adapt this time of year, E.B. began to terrorize the other hens and Snowball's two chicks.  I'd tossed out some leftover cornbread near the baby pen and the big girls were all enjoying their treat except for E.B.  She would pick up a few crumbs, then charge an unsuspecting hen from the rear -- pulling tail feathers and seeming to ram into them before they could run off.  Then she'd go back to pecking for crumbs.  She's always been a bit of a bully so DS and I, watching from the deck, didn't think too much of it except that there was no cause.  She had access to as many crumbs as any other chicken.  I'd scattered them far and wide over that area of yard.

When the cornbread crumbs were mostly gone, E.B. began pacing, then practically loping around the chick pen.  And the chick was trying to keep up with her on the inside.  Mrs. Badger just sat quietly by the door to the little house and watched.  Finally DS and I got the idea -- E.B. wanted in the chick pen.  (We can be pretty dense sometimes.)  So DS opened the gate and shooed her around the pen till she could see it was open.  That's all it took.  E.B. ran into the pen and almost immediately she and the chick were inside the little house settling down for the night.  Mrs. Badger joined them in a few minutes and scooted right up to E.B. with the chick sort of in between them at the rear.
I tried to get a clear picture but only the hens were visible.  DS suggested he take off the house's roof in order to spot the chick but that just stirred everyone up and they all hopped over the side walls fussing up a storm.  Or maybe that was due to me using the flash -- hard to spot a little black fluffball between to big black fluffballs without proper lighting...
So for now, we have a chick who has two mamas.  Perhaps one hen will get tired of the process and give up but no sign of that yet.

Yield: 1 pullet, 1 cockerel

Snowball, the white Silkie bantam hen, hatched three eggs (gathered from the pastured hens) in late April. They were all Turken chicks. One was lost to an unknown cause about a week after hatching. The survivors have grown and are 10 weeks old now.

They're taller than Snowball now thanks to their long legs and probably weigh a little more, too. One is definitely a cockerel and, I'm pretty sure, the other is a pullet.
I love how her black-and-white patterning makes it look like she's wearing a cool cap. Sometimes Turkens just look like Woody Woodpecker to me so I like to see one that appears almost fashionable.

It's definite

Smokey, the grey silkie bantam, hatched last year is a cockerel.

Determining whether a chick is a pullet or a cockerel can be difficult unless they show specific sex-linked traits like feather barring or color.  Smokey was pretty androgynous for the first 6-months.  Then between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he began to crow.  Good to finally know but bad because we've learned it's rarely a good idea to have two roos in a small flock.

We raise chickens for eggs but we are not vegetarians.  We usually process extra cockerels for the freezer.  Neither DH nor I wanted that to be Smokey's fate, however.  The main reason?  Because he's part of our backyard flock -- more pet than livestock. (For additional reasons, see note at bottom of post.)  So we needed to find a new home for Smokey.

It needed to be a place where he wouldn't be penned with a full-size rooster as that would be potentially worse than here with us where he only had his sire, Badger, to contend with.  We were in luck, tho, as the first person I told about the predicament had a co-worker who might be interested.  Another homeschooling family, they were in the process of adding silkie bantams to their homestead flock and offered Smokey a home with a half-dozen silkie bantam pullets.  They already had a flock of full-size hens but had built a separate coop to house the silkies.  And since silkie bantam roosters are often not as aggressive as full-size roos may be, they were interested in adding a rooster to the bantam flock.

So Smokey moved to his new home last week.   And his new family have promised to provide regular updates on him as he settles in at his new place.  Good luck, Smokey!

(I love a happy ending.)


Note:  More practical reasons for not consigning a silkie bantam to the freezer exist.  He probably won't top 2 pounds in weight and he's still growing, not there yet.  Another reason is that silkies exhibit melanism where dark pigmentation extends into their connective tissue and even bones.  This goes beyond the range of what people call white and dark meat in poultry -- more like a grayish-black or almost purple bruise color.  Not palatable-looking to many of those accustomed to the only offer being "white or dark meat?" when chicken is served. Check out the silkie entry on Wikipedia for more information and photos of prepared dishes.

Snow!

After watching at least two snowstorms pass by this winter, including one that missed us but left 10 inches of snow in Virginia Beach(!), we finally have a lot of our own.  8 inches as of an hour ago and heavy snow still falling. 

Except for the fact that DH still has to drive home from work through this stuff and get the truck up the hill to the house, I'd be ecstatic.  As it is, I'm merely happy, happy, happy.  I think DS was on the same wavelength until a few of the backyard chickens decided to hide out under a deck.

Chickens don't like snow (anyone remember Owl?) and when it started snowing at noon, the backyard girls ran under the deck.  At dusk a few refused to come out even though DS had shoveled a path and was coaxing them with a bucket of scratch. 

So DS had to catch and then carry each stubborn hen (plus, Badger, one stubborn silkie roo) to their coop.  The last one out was Turkey, one of the naked neck chickens.  I guess I can see why she doesn't like the snow...

Guineas

Last spring we had a guinea fowl, Newt Guinea, drop by the pastured poultry pen for a few weeks.  He came and went as he pleased and eventually moved on for good.

We learned Newt came from a neighbor's about a mile down the road.  They had stopped by a few times over the last couple of years to check out our movable chicken pen and eventually gotten chickens of their own.  Plus a few guineas including one hen that's turned out to be a good guinea mama.

This past summer and fall, those same neighbors hired DS to care for their poultry and dogs while they were away from home a few days.  The last time, in addition to paying him in cash, they offered him half of the latest guinea hatch.  So in early November, DS and DH brought home 6 little guinea keets.

We set up the tallest chain-link dog run we had, put in a small house with a red-bulb heat lamp (these guys were only a week or two old) and the usual accompaniments.  I asked DH to put flight netting over the top of the pen, but because it was 6-feet high, he thought it could wait till the keets were older.  The first full day they were here, a Cooper's hawk scared the keets causing one to fly up and out of the pen.  It roosted about 15 feet off the ground in an arborvitae, too high for DS or me to reach even with our ladder, and DH couldn't spot it late that night when he got home from work.  No sign of what had happened to it when we searched the next morning.

So DH put flight netting over the top of the pen.  And a piece of chicken wire between the top of the pen and the top of the door where there was a large gap that another keet managed to escape through when the Cooper's hawk returned later that week.  That keet was luckier than the first as he managed to hide under the deck with the backyard chickens, finally emerging with them after the hawk took off in search of easier prey.

We used the heat lamp for the first couple of months.  The nighttime temperatures were pretty low for November and December here in Virginia. Some nights saw single digit temps which we don't usually experience till later in the winter.  After last week's more moderate temperatures, they've weaned themselves from the heat lamp.  It's still in place in case we head towards 0º again but their body heat in the small house,  insulated by straw bales along three of the outside walls, seems to be plenty for now.

Fed on turkey starter, the guinea keets grew fast.  With the excitement of getting them settled, safely, in their new home, plus the usual holiday activities and the bitterly cold daytime weather (and snow!), we didn't even get a picture of them till New Year's Eve.  Which is a real shame because when they're little, the shape of their heads combined with the feather coloring makes me think of little snakeheads slithering to-and-fro.  (Guineas always stay close and seem to move as one.)  Of course, that's another reason they didn't have their photograph taken sooner -- every time I did go outside with the camera, they promptly hid in the far corner of their house.  They aren't as sociable as chickens.

For Christmas, I received a book about guineas by Jeannette Ferguson titled "Gardening with Guineas: A Step-By-Step Guide to Raising Guinea Fowl." Ferguson's book discusses a few things that set guineas apart from other poultry but I wish it went a little further in the details.  For now I guess we'll learn as we often do -- on the go.

They grow up so fast

Chickens, that is.  (Kids, too, but that's another post.)

Smokey, the grey Silkie chick, (cockerel, we think) is now 10 weeks old.  His mama hen, Bandit, a first-timer on the hatching circuit, is like many mothers -- she wants her freedom but she can't quite drop the chick. She's a flyer, always going walk-about in the front yard, visiting the compost pile, that kind of thing.  And motherhood didn't change her.

She flew the chick pen the day after Smokey hatched.  Fortunately it was warm weather so he wasn't left alone AND cold but we had to put a wire cover on their pen, forcing Bandit to stay in.  And that was difficult for Bandit.  She paced the fence of her small enclosure, squawking almost constantly about her internment.  Poor Smokey spent most of his early days running alongside her trying to keep up so when she did settle down he could scoot underneath for a bit of warm "mama hen time."

DH listened to me debate with myself over whether to leave Smokey in with his seemingly dysfunctional mama hen or foster him in the garage.  (He didn't debate because he was not in favor of a chicken in the house.  Thin end of the wedge, you know.) I debated because as often happens with our livestock, I'm torn between the food-production side of life and the pet side plus nature vs. nurture -- difficult philosophical subjects here, people!

After the first couple of  weeks, we tried letting them both out into the backyard with the other backyard girls (and Snowball's one-week-older chicks) but Smokey couldn't keep up with Bandit's long legs and certainly not with her wings when she would go up and over the fence for a quick compost reccon.  So they went back in the closed pen till about 10 days ago.

Then, at almost 9 weeks, it seemed time to let him out with the flock to take his chances in our relatively safe backyard while still, somewhat, under Bandit's tutelage.  The neat thing we discovered was while Bandit may head off on her own as usual, Smokey's better able to keep up and, best of all, Bandit is now keeping a protective, if laid-back, eye on her older chick.  Now if Smokey cries out -- like when DS picked him up for this photo -- Bandit comes charging to his rescue.  Forget the times when she left a newly-hatched chick on his own in the chick pen, she's remembered that she has a responsibility.  It's cool to watch their interaction and that of Badger, the grey Silkie roo, who steps in to herd his ladies and any of their chicks as he thinks necessary.

Badger is definitely Smokey's sire and while Mrs. Badger, the other half of our grey Silkie pair, laid the egg, Bandit is his mama hen.  Together they make a great chicken family with some human parallels that make for interesting chicken-watching conversations on a slow summer afternoon.

Badger protectively watching over Bandit and a mostly-hidden Smokey -- even Happy Lamb turns from the camera...

Badger and his "other" families including Snowball and her then-11-week-old chicks: the Turken Twins, Dion the Wanderer and, in front, TBD or the-chick-to-be-named-later.

(Sort of makes me feel I'm reporting for a celebrity rag chicken-expose on polygamous roos but then I'm back to anthropomorphizing...)

Surprise! Look what Bandit hatched.

Yes, it's a chick but it's still a big surprise.  We only noticed Bandit was broody last week.  Bandit is a backyard girl, a 9-mo pullet who was herself hatched by Fifi late last summer.

Apparently she was stealthily broody long before last week.  (It takes 23 days to hatch a chicken egg.) And she's an egg thief, to boot.

Unless we swap out the backyard girls' eggs with some likely-to-be-fertile eggs from the hens in the mobile coop, their eggs won't hatch.  Well, except for Mrs. Badger's eggs.  She's a little grey Silkie we added to the backyard on April 30 along with her mate, Badger,  He halfheartedly tries to cover one or two of the fullsize backyard girls but let's just say he hasn't gotten the hang of it yet.  So Bandit must have swiped one of Mrs. Badger's eggs and added it to her nest.

So what Bandit hatched is a little grey Silkie.  What a turnaround.  In one chick pen we have Bandit, a full-size hen, with her suspected bantam chick.  And next door, in another chick pen, is Snowball, a little white Silkie, and her now-2-and-a-half-week-old chicks who will grow up to be full-size chickens.  (Looking like 2 cockerels and 2 Turken pullets but time will tell.) 

And we can't forget Echa, the 3yo Turken and first-time mother in the mobile pen, who decided it's never too late to try hatching an egg. She sat on four eggs in one of the raised nest boxes in the wheeled coop but only one egg hatched. Mama hen and chick are doing fine in the third chick pen we set up, this time inside the electric netting. 

DS is ecstatic that we have Turken chicks. He's hoped for that ever since we got the three original Turkens (Turkey, Echa and Misha) as part of a day-old chick order. DH is very pleased that "his girl, Echa" came through with a chick after several weeks of impatient waiting. And I'm trying to figure out how we can set up another two chick pens because Mrs. Badger, the grey Silkie in the backyard, and Amelia Earhart, one of the new Turkens added to the mobile pen April 30, are both determined to brood their eggs. When it rains it pours.

4 and counting...

While the sheep feigned indifference, Snowball, the white Silkie pullet, came through her marathon broody spell with 4 chicks hatching today.  Poor thing started out brooding almost 5 weeks ago but every day when she left the chicken house to grab her once-a-day meal, another hen would add an egg to her nest.  Soon she had over a dozen eggs and she couldn't keep them all covered.  So we cleared those eggs out and gave her 6 fresh eggs and a house of her own on May 1.  May 2 we added one grey silkie egg from our new pair.

Around mid-morning today we spotted this little black-and-white Dominique chick poking his (her?) head out from under Snowball.  By noon there were three more chicks added to the brood: 2 Turkens and a chipmunk-looking one which is probably a green-egg layer.  (All the full-size eggs placed under Snowball were brown but in addition to Cappy, the Dominique rooster, we had Brownie, a green-egg layer rooster, in the pen from which the eggs came.)

One Turken is a yellow-white fluffball and the other is very similar in coloring to the chipmunk-looking chick except it has the trademark naked neck. Maybe it will be a green egg layer, too?

Snowball wouldn't come off the nest even to eat today so I'm thinking there might be one or more eggs she's waiting to hatch. Stay tuned.

The guinea who wouldn't leave...

Mr. Guinea is still here. He roosts in the smoke tree every night but gets back in the pen before we're up at daybreak to open the portable coop doors. He spends his day mixing with the chickens though the roosters tend to give him a wide berth.

Yesterday the neighbor from over the hill came by late in the afternoon to let us know one of our guinea fowl was over at his farmhouse. Wait, we don't have guineas.

After explaining the situation and discussing where the wanderer could possibly have come from initially, I went back to hanging clothes in the backyard. DS agreed that the guinea had come to us on the move and that was their nature so we were saddened but reconciled to losing Mr. Guinea.

When I finished with the laundry I came in grabbed a pan of extra buttermilk and a few oats I'd prepared for the chickens and headed out front with it. DS went along to turn off the charger. Surprise! Coming around from the back of the pen was Mr. Guinea (or Newt as DS's taken to calling him). He'd come "home" in time for tea.

DS swung the netting gate open and I led the way into the pen with Newt right behind. He immediately went for the buttermilk just like the hens while the roosters hung back though I did see Brownie with a white mustache after a few minutes.When should we stop considering Newt Guinea a guest and assume he's a resident?

Just like her mama?

Snowball, the white silkie in the backyard, went broody this week. DH slipped a few fertile eggs taken from the electric netting flock under her this morning so we may have chicks by the end of the month.

She's still just a pullet, not quite one year old, but she's already following in her mama's footsteps. I'm so proud.

Can we keep him, Mom? Please?!

Yesterday morning we heard a commotion coming from the chickens in the electric poultry netting. While DS and I went out expecting to witness an imminent predator attack, we instead discovered a guinea fowl walking around the yard near the chickens penned on the garden.

The roosters were trying to get the hens under the portable coop or feeding station and were glancing nervously over their shoulders at the marauder who was answering their danger-danger squawks with his own loud chit-chits. Once we were on the scene the hens began to quiet down and came out for their share of the chicken treats DS had grabbed on his way out the door. The guinea cockerel came closer to the electric netting and, after DS turned off the charger and I held up one of the fiberglass posts, went into the pen with the chickens.

Well, I didn't know what else to do with him and that seemed like a good option at the time.

After watching them for a few minutes and determining the guinea wasn't planning to take advantage of his size and bully the chickens, we went back to our regular chores. Throughout the day we checked on the guinea and I called a couple of neighbors to see if we could locate the guinea's owner, even calling the SPCA in case he'd been reported missing, but no luck.

The guinea made his chit-chit call almost all day. It was loud enough to be heard in the house but didn't seem to indicate any distress on his part. He mainly paced along the half of the pen the chickens alloted him. Once or twice he wandered near the feeders and waterers but mostly kept his distance. The roos definitely kept theirs! Anytime the guinea moseyed their way, the roosters practically ran over the hens to get out of his way. But he never offered them any violence or really seemed to notice them as individuals at all. By evening we'd discovered he particularly liked chicken scratch and that he stopped making his call while eating.

At dusk, DS and I donned long-sleeve jackets and gloves, expecting we'd have to bundle him into the portable coop when it was time to close the doors. But DS spotted the guinea near the top of the smoke tree when we went out. The smoke tree is near the garden but well outside the netting so he had to have flown over the fence and then up into the tree. He was about 15 feet off the ground and close to the end of a slender branch. Of course, the leaves aren't out yet so he was very exposed but we decided to leave him there for the night.

It stormed here last night. Lots of wind. Caused Holly-dog to push our bedroom door open and squeeze into her favorite spot for riding out storms -- under the bed. I woke up worrying about the guinea. DH promised he'd go looking for him in the morning.

This morning just after sunrise when DH went out to open the coop, the guinea was already down from the tree and back inside the ring of netting. He's decided he likes it here, I guess. And DS has gone from asking "Can we keep him?" to "Let's order some guineas when we order the baby chicks!"

Below is a video I shot when he first went into the chicken pen yesterday. Even with the sound of the breeze, you can clearly hear his chit-chit call over the usual clucks and crows from the chickens.

Seed-starting, take 1

We intended to start a flat of seeds last month but the ground was still covered with snow and spring seemed a LONG way off. Now it's March, Saturday was sunny while Sunday was sunny AND warm with a high of 61ºF. DH could no longer resist the urge to plant.

On Saturday, he planted 72 pods with a combination of seeds including cabbages (red, green and savoy), cauliflower, broccoli, and lavender. On Monday there were tiny cabbage seedlings pushing through and today the flat looks like this. From left to right, the flat shows sprouts of three different cabbages (Ruby Perfection, Early Jersey Wakefield and Savoy Ace), Early Snowball cauliflower, Calabrese and De Cicco broccoli, Parris Island and Jericho lettuces (romaine or cos lettuces), and a couple of bunching onions in the last two fully visible columns. With 72 cells, DH planted 6 of each variety. Nothing on the right side, out of view in this photo, had sprouted as of this morning but the flat's sitting on the landing near the woodstove and according to the thermometer resting beside it, the temp is a constant 75ºF. so the remaining sweet onions and lavender should be coming along soon.

Sunday's warmer temps encouraged him to weed a couple of beds in preparation for the real spring planting to come. Hopefully in another week, this bed will have sugar snap peas planted at the foot of the wire trellis.
He also put covers on any open cold frames. The soil temperature should rise to allow direct planting in there later this week. Some years we leave the covers on all the cold frames but this year's snows (30", 22", 9" and several lesser ones) didn't seem to melt before the next one hit so DH was worried the weight of a big snow might break the glass in the old window sashes we use for covers. Plus with the nightly temps hanging around 0ºF. and sometimes down to -9ºF. the frames weren't as helpful in prolonging the growing season as they've been in more moderate winters.
The only thing we had to winter over in a cold frame was winter rape. Immediately after taking this picture I picked some and added it to the fried rice I made for lunch. We also like it in a green salad or on sandwiches. For some reason I think egg salad sandwiches are a particularly good fit with Hanover salad as it's sometimes called.

The chickens are still pastured on the rear garden plot, planted with potatoes and pumpkins last year. Usually by this time they'd be on the front beds but, again, the snows caused us to deviate from the regular plans and it's on the ground in areas (notice background in photo below). We'll move them to the next section before the week's out and then on to the last garden area before it's time to plant in earnest. Letting them roam over the garden beds has made a huge difference in the amount of bug damage the garden suffers each summer.

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." -- Isaac Asimov

Fifi, the white Silkie hen, went missing this week. All we've found are clumps of fluffy white feathers in a long trail leading away from her favorite egg-laying spot towards the fence. She had taken to laying her eggs near the old apple tree in a little leafy spot she created just for that purpose instead of in the chicken house. It was off to one corner of our field-fenced backyard, away from where the other backyard girls and chicks typically hang out.

Our neighbor's farm pond hosts a fox den. He can watch the kits play there every spring. We've heard the local band of coyotes howl on the other side of the field behind us -- maybe 1/2 mile away. DH surprised what he thinks was a speedy coyote in the fenced backyard late one evening. Andy, the guardian llama, makes sure the sheep are up near the open barn when it's time to turn in at night. He positions the sheep between the barn and himself so he's always on guard. DS and I found a young skunk in the chick pen and, on another occasion, a full-sized skunk inside the electric poultry netting when we went out to close the houses up earlier this summer. We had a feral orange cat this summer who tried to catch the small chicks on occasion. There are predators all around us.

But secretly I've always believed they wouldn't kill any of our animals. You know, I suffered from a variation of the NIMBY or not-in-my-backyard syndrome even though earlier this summer, Petrock Trelawney's hatchmate, a little cockerel who wasn't around long enough even to secure a name such as Stewpot or Potpie went missing, too. We never found feathers or any sign of what happened to him but he and Petrock (photo on left) had developed the bad habit of hanging back instead of going straight into the house at night. DS and I would have to shoo the two of them in, sometimes resorting to waiting till they had settled into a bush or low-hanging tree branch then plucking them off their perch and stuffing them in the house. One night we couldn't find the cockerel. Either he was well-hidden (to us, at least) or he'd already been nabbed. Whichever way, he was still missing come morning so we concluded he had been devoured by some hungry animal.

Fifi will be much missed. She was the best mama hen we've had. Regularly setting on a hatch even in the coldest weather. Always shepherded her fledglings with the stereotypical "mother hen" approach. She stood up to the "big girls" and kept them from bothering her chicks. Even taking on Turkey, the naked neck hen and backyard leader, for their sake. Fifi's sometimes feisty attitude towards other chickens, her blue bill and earlobes (typical of Silkies) and her general cocky yet friendly stance towards us, her people, made her stand out amongst the other backyard girls.

At not quite 6 months old, her daughter, Snowball, hasn't yet shown any indication of broodiness or the strong personality Fifi exhibited but I hope she grows to fill the space her mother left not only in our hatching scheme but in my heart. I miss Fifi. We all do.

Chicken update

Here's a picture taken September 1 of Fifi's latest brood of 4 chicks which hatched August 11. Mr. Fluff and Valentine, a pullet Fifi managed to hatch in 0°F. weather this past February, are also featured. At least one of the chicks, the silvery one, is a cockerel but we're hopeful the other three are pullets.

This photo was taken this morning and shows the chicks out-growing Fifi. She still takes them under her wing (literally!) and shelters them from the rain, tho. And when we had a hawk scare on Tuesday, she sounded the alarm and the chicks stayed put, hunkered under the sweet annie and peonies around the deck, until the still-hungry hawk left the area.

Fifi and family live in the backyard rather than in the portable electric netting we use for the 2 full-size roosters and their hens. She shares the small backyard coop with another of her hatchlings, a green egg layer now almost a year old, known as Bronwyn. Bronwyn is well-known to our closest neighbor as she enjoys going on walk-about regularly. Every time we spot her out of the fenced backyard, she quickly heads home without any fuss on our part but she's determined to check out the surrounding green space at least a couple of times each week.

Dolly and Turkey are two more of the backyard girls. Turkey is an extra-large Turken who sees herself as a pet instead of a laying hen. Oh, she comes up with an egg regularly but apparently believes her main purpose in life is to set on one's knee and be petted and fed tidbits. Sort of like Holly-dog with feathers. Dolly makes a very distinctive coo-ing sound and sometimes finds herself being trailed by Mr. Fluff. He usually leaves the larger hens alone but has decided Dolly's the hen for him.

Fifi rocks! Or, how to hatch eggs in the worst winter weather.

Late last spring we bought a bantam silkie pair and dubbed them Fifi and Mr. Fluff. Fifi almost immediately began to lay and went broody. In early June she hatched one bantam silkie pullet, Peep, two DominiqueX pullets, Brayer and Ares, and one AmeraucanaX cockerel, Squirrel. (We added fertile eggs to her clutch from the chickens in the portable electric netting as Mr. Fluff doesn't seem up to the task of covering the full-size backyard girls.)

After weaning* the first batch, Fifi went on to set another clutch resulting in two more DominiqueX pullets, Checkers and Chess, and one AmeraucanaX pullet, Bronwyn, hatching out in mid-September. Those are just now beginning to lay. Every day or two we find another mid-size egg (between Peep's bantam-size egg and the regular backyard girls eggs) in the nest box.

In mid-January, Fifi became broody again. She began gathering eggs, mainly hers and Peep's, around her and seemed prepared to set another batch. My mom was rather disappointed that we were unwilling to allow Fifi to keep her own eggs for hatching but as we can only house so many chickens around here, we wanted to increase the chance that any hatching chicks would be able to stay "at home" and not have to be sold as would be likely should we hatch more bantams. Thus DH gathered eggs from the electric net chickens and subbed them for Fifi's stash.

He was concerned that the eggs he placed this time, tho fertile, wouldn't have much chance of hatching, tho, as only one was still warm when he gathered it. The temps that week were hitting 0F. at night and seldom rising above 20F during the day. We had at least one egg freeze in the nest box before it could be collected. Didn't seem like the best time to be hatching but try telling that to a broody hen!

Fifi did her job as usual, however, and on Wednesday of this week DH spotted a little yellow head popping out from under her wing to see what was going on when he gathered eggs. It wasn't until Friday that we knew for sure she had two chicks. (DS is holding Fifi and DH has the two chicks in the photo.)

She'd started out with four eggs but late last week I found one egg pushed out of her nest, a foot or more away from her. It was cold and she made no demur when I picked it up. I wasn't positive it even had been under her until I checked it's contents and found what to me appeared to be a perfectly formed chick. Since she didn't object to my taking the egg I have to think she'd discarded it for some reason but don't know that for sure or why she would. And Wednesday, when DH spotted the first chick, he also found a still damp but out-of-the egg chick that was no longer living. Again, we don't know what happened to it tho we'd found one in the same condition from her second hatching, too. Nature can be hard sometimes but I wish I knew if it was something I could prevent in the future.

For now, Fifi and her two chicks are doing fine and we moved them into their own pen this morning so they can go in and out without worry of stray cats or other wildlife which can get into the backyard even tho it is fenced. Plus the other hens won't bother them nor eat all their feed as they're wont to do.

Our recent snow is melting as temps are expected to hit 55F. or even 60F. by tomorrow. If nighttime temps drop back to the teens, we can put a heat lamp in Fifi's house but when I looked out a few minutes ago she had already led the little chicks outside for a browse in the sunlit grass. Since this is her third time in the chick pen, I think she's comfortable with it and will go on to raise another fine brood of chicks. I'm just hoping they're both pullets...

*What is the correct term for when the mama hen begins to ignore her rapidly growing chicks?

Sausage balls: quick breakfast, tasty snack or soup accompaniment, and, um, spur-of-the-moment chicken treat?

A Christmas gift this year included homemade pork sausage. The presenter gave it already frozen in pint-size glass jars and we knew from past years' batches it would be perfectly seasoned with a good balance between lean and fat. In other words, a perfect sausage for making breakfast patties, sausage brunch casseroles or quiches, combining with ground venison for sloppy joes or meatloaf and for making not-too-greasy sausage balls. Yesterday was the day for sausage balls.

Serve them warm from the oven with a flavorful mustard (we like Nectarine Mustard) for dipping and they can be stored in the refrigerator for a few days -- reheating as needed in oven or microwave. Also great for freezing, either before or after baking. I rarely freeze before baking simply because my sausage is often frozen before preparation but either way works great.

A few sausage balls make a great quick breakfast with a glass of juice or bowl. And always a good choice for a snack -- they often show up at parties because everyone likes them and they're so easy to have on hand in the freezer. They can even serve as a chicken treat as happened today when I was caught outside by our backyard girls without any readily accessible treats.The chickens, particularly Turkey, the large reddish-brown turken gobbling down her snack, are as bad as the dog when it comes to begging for a treat. Heck, Turkey doesn't even beg, she demands. Failure to produce a treat often leads to her jumping up to sit on your arm or shoulder as she squawks her frustration at being denied a treat. So today, in the drizzling icy rain, I didn't want to get into a discussion of poultry nutrition with her so I gave in and shared a bit of sausage ball I was munching on while gathering eggs. Madame President, the silver-laced Wyandotte, was quick to share, too. Dolly and Jabber, the white hen, even managed to get a bite. Seemed to rank right up there as treats go.

Yesterday DS did the mixing by hand but if you don't have a child around who likes to mash things together when cooking, just use an electric mixer on low or a few quick pulses of a food processor to do the messy job. I've also heard of cooks putting the ingredients in a large plastic bag and kneading it thoroughly from the outside of the bag. If you use a cookie scoop to from the sausage balls, you never need get your hands gooey.

Bisquick is a traditional ingredient in the simple sausage ball recipe but we mainly eat fresh ground whole wheat so I tweaked the recipe as usual. Plus, I think the whole wheat flour adds a richer, nutty flavor to the mix. And the butter is optional -- the sausage usually provides plenty of fat without the added shortening. (I didn't use it for this batch and can't tell any difference in texture or taste.) If you do use Bisquick, just substitute 2 cups of the regular or low-fat version for the first four ingredients listed below.

Sausage Balls

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons butter, lard or shortening
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pound bulk pork sausage
1 small onion, diced (optional)
1/2 pound sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
up to 1/2 cup milk or buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cut fat into flour with pastry blender as when making biscuits. Add other ingredients except milk and stir to blend. May use mixer or food processor as described above. Sometimes it's easier to add sausage in small bits and then stir in shredded cheese last. YMMV. Add up to 1/2 cup milk or buttermilk slowly to mixture to help bind ingredients.

Form batter into small balls, no larger than 1-inch in diameter. Place on baking sheet with low sides. If you're not sure of the low fat content of your sausage, line baking sheet with aluminum foil and turn up foil edges to help contain grease that may melt from balls while baking.

Bake at 350F. for 15-20 minutes. This makes about 3-4 dozen sausage balls at 1". Mine are soft when I take them out but upon breaking one open, the sausage has changed color and the dough is similar to the inside of a biscuit. If baked too long, they will become hard and almost rock-like after cooling.

For more good ideas (but maybe not chicken snack recipes) check out Kitchen Tip Tuesdays at Tammy's Recipes.

One Local Summer challenge - week 8 (and weeks 6 and 7, too)

I know the premise of the One Local Summer challenge is to eat at least one completely local meal each week, excepting spices and oil perhaps, and report the details for compilation in weekly regional report. But given the last few weeks, I think it almost would be easier to report what we ate that WASN'T local.*

Our garden is supplying the basis for every meal. Green beans, four kinds of potatoes, zucchini and yellow squash, green and red cabbage, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, beets, onions, chard, sugar snap peas, blackberries, blueberries, garlic and all kinds of herbs (even bay leaves) come in to the kitchen fresh every day. The pantry still has 40+ pounds of local wheat ready for grinding and baking in our twice-weekly bread batches and the freezer's stocked with local meets like beef, venison, chicken and a bit of lamb. We collect over 2 dozen eggs every day and my sister has kept us supplied with local fruit as it comes in season -- this week it's been donut and regular peaches, earlier in the month it was sweet cherries. All we've had to pick up at the store the last few weeks has been local milk, a box of orange pekoe tea, and a bag of granulated sugar to make sweet tea -- I like mine unsweetened (heresy, I know) but I can't convince DH and DS that it's better that way tho we all agree adding fresh-picked mint or lemon balm/verbena is a good idea. As for the milk, I keep telling DH we need a cow or at least a couple of dairy goats but so far no luck.

Today was the first day for regular eating tomatoes. Lunch was a couple of red ripe tomatoes on toasted homemade whole wheat bread spread with homemade mayo. A sprinkle of kosher salt and black pepper made the sandwiches perfect. To go along with them we had Harvey House slaw from our own cabbage and onions, sliced cucumbers and a bowl of just-picked blackberries with a spoonful of top cream from the milk jug. Now that's a local meal.

*Non-local foods or ingredients used in our kitchen over the last few weeks:
-oils (olive, sunflower, peanut, sesame)
-coffee
-tea
-sugar (DH uses it in his coffee every day and it's always in the pitcher of tea otherwise we mainly use local honey, maple syrup and sorghum for cooking)
-unbleached all-purpose flour (baked a couple of cakes for the local fireman's lawn party fund-raising effort)
-rolled oats or old-fashioned oatmeal (tho farmers around here grow oats I haven't been able to find a local source for rolled oats)
-dried beans (pinto, kidney, garbanzo and black beans -- DH has grown kidney beans before but it's been a few years)
-seasonings and canning supplies like salt, black pepper, mustard seed, vanilla beans, distilled white vinegar, and pickling lime