Friday, July 31, 2015

July 2015 Garden Update

I haven't posted a lot about my garden this year. That's mostly because I'm not growing a lot.  I got frustrated last year when most of what I grew sat on the kitchen island until it started to rot.  The chickens ended up eating a lot of it.  As a result I didn't put as much effort into the garden this year.  On top of that I lost several plants and what is left hasn't produced much.

I have gotten a lot of cucumbers.  They are the one thing that has done really well.
We got a hand full of carrots.
My blackberries have done alright.  They never made it into the house.  I need to plant more to increase the quantity that I get.
Growing the cucumber vines up paracord worked really well.
I had a lot of lettuce grow, but we didn't eat it before it bolted.  It's too bitter now to be eaten.
We had a bad thunderstorm come through that took out my trellis.  I was actually kind of surprised that it didn't come down sooner.  I need to come up with a better solution for next year. 
I haven't planted anything or started any seeds.  I don't know that I'll have an update in August. 

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Baby chicks at one month.

It's been just over a month since our baby chicks hatched.  We started with 11.  We're now down to 6.  I'm really hoping that all of the ones we lost were roosters and than that the remaining birds are all hens.  What are the odds of that being the case?  Probably not good.

They're quite a bit bigger now, so hopefully the rest of them will make it.
They still stick close to the mother hen, and she's still pretty protective.  Supposedly at some point she'll lose interest and just let them fend for themselves.  At that point she'll be done being broody and go back to laying eggs. 

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

An update on the remaining chicks.

I was away last week.  During that time my wife found the mother hen on the wrong side of our fence a few times.  We think she was chasing away a hawk.  I don't remember how many times it happened, but we are now down to 7 chicks.  We started with 11.  That's better than we did last year (so far).
I count 8 chicks in this picture.  One of them has disappeared since it was taken.
The chicks now sleep in the coop with the mother hen.  There were quite a few nights when they would just honker down under the coop by themselves.  I had to go out several nights and chase them out from under there and manually move them.  Eventually they figured it out.  I find it odd that the mother hen didn't seem to care that they were outside and she was inside.  Chickens! 
Somehow they got up here.
They're pretty quick to get out of the coop in the morning.  They make a mad dash for the feeder before the big birds get there and push them out of the way.