Again? Seriously?

This started up last week:

Jeremy of course is beside himself with giddy joy. He is a crazy man. I'm actually surprised the mama didn't go crazy when I was filming her. I think her first or second day of broodiness she snapped at Jeremy when he opened the door on her. I had to pet her a little just to get her hackles to rise a bit. So, in another two weeks or so we'll have another bunch of chicks. I'm not sure how many she is sitting on - the other chickens haven't been able to kick her off like the last time. Actually, I'm not sure if this is the same hen or a different one.

This batch of hens will be one year old at the end of September and the first batch of chicks are just over 2 months now. Some of them are the same size as the silver leghorns; getting hard to tell them all apart.

We did lose one rather tragically last week. I was fiddling around in the yard and heard a chick sound that was unusual. Like someone was being picked on...a lot. I went to investigate and realized the sound was coming from inside the annex. I went in and peeked inside their little entry door. What I saw made me flip out and, luckily, gave me the dose of adrenalin power I need to lift the whole roof of the hen house and pull down the front wall so I could rescue the chick. She must have been attempting to roost on the ledge of the open window in the coop, fell, and got one foot caught in the opening of the window. I suspect it broke in her struggling. Then her lovely flock-mates came in and had pecked her head raw and bloody. Little savages.

The poor thing! I lifted her out and realized pretty quickly that there wasn't much we could do. I'm sure we could have patched up her head; but her leg was pretty bad and it didn't seem like she could hang on much longer. Thank goodness Jeremy had just gotten home from the farm. I did not want to wait long to take care of her and I didn't want to do the deed myself. I'm just glad I got to "rescue" her and comfort her for a moment before we dispatched her - instead of her dying in the coop being cannibalized by her siblings. Savage little beasts.

I've got a few more videos here for your viewing pleasure...or to pass the time if you don't have anything else to do. The first two were an attempt at getting a video of bedtime. I'm glad this phase is over. This would last for what seemed hours every night for weeks. Momma hen would wander around making her "y'all come to bed now" clucking sound and many chicks would follow. She head up the ramp, some would follow, some would go in; she'd go back for more, the chicks who went in came out; back and forth and so on. Then finally she'd go in and inevitably there would be 2 or 3 chicks left out that would suddenly realize mom was gone and they would peep miserably, and at the top of their tiny, not insubstantial, lungs. Many nights I'd go out and chase them around trying to coax them into the hen house with mom. It got really fun when they started escaping the run and I was chasing them around the yard half a dozen times a day. Grr. In one of the videos you can see a chick getting a piggy back ride from mom. ADORABLE. One of the cutest chick things I've ever seen.
Then the last one is from about two weeks ago, so they're much bigger - but still peeping away adorably. Enjoy! It seems like not much is going on around here of interest...well, perhaps it is...I just don't have time these days to blog about it!

Makes you wish you were convalescing...

Some friends of ours had a baby recently and Jeremy got signed up on the list to bring them a meal. Tuesday was our day and Jeremy went all out (of course).

 He started with a medley of dried mushrooms. I don't think he actually dried them, I think they dried on the logs. These are shiitake, oyster, and nameko (all grown by Jeremy). He thinks they look beautiful - I think it looks a little.... gross. (You know you're a mushroom farmer when...)

 

 Then he sauteed them (most likely in some bacon fat)



 Then tossed them in (store-bought, the horror!) crust along with sauteed onions and some chunks of cheese.  Gruyere maybe? I can't remember.

 

 Then in goes the egg mixture, then bake, and voila!
 

We also heated up half a baguette (store-bought) and Jeremy cooked up a bunch of kale from our garden with sesame seeds, sesame oil, and some garlic. He can never make enough of this stuff to make me happy.

 

 And finally a little package of homegrown raspberries from our yard.



Our friends were very happy to receive their dinner (though I think it was all mostly too weird for their 1 1/2 year old).

 Kind of make you wish you were convalescing and needed someone to cook you dinner?

So many berries

Our berries are doing quite well this year (except our blueberries of course - not a sign of them at all!).

A couple weekends ago Jeremy made pancakes for breakfast and I went out and picked raspberries and strawberries for topping.  It seems the tulle netting has worked well and we are getting lots of strawberries all to ourselves.



Nothing seems to eat the raspberries and there are tons of them. Black, red, and golden. I picked a lot Saturday and made a big cobbler out of them.




It looks nice, but the biscuits didn't rise much or turn out like they should have. Oh well - throw some whipped cream on and everything tastes better!

We have discovered though, one of the absolute best things to do with raspberries is make ice cream. Wow, that is some tasty delicious stuff!

The secret to success

I think the secret to growing food really well is not liking it.

Case in point: we grew wine cap mushrooms last year and did not like them at all. Now they are growing all over the place, spreading far beyond where they were planted. At least they look pretty.



The other thing is ground cherries. They look like tomatillos, little berries that grow in papery husks and are sweet. They're not bad, but they weren't our favorite. I think we had two or three plants on top of the terrace. Now we have ground cherry plants popping up EVERYWHERE. They're in all the garden beds and more. It's really quite amazing.

Maybe if we focus on not liking tomatoes our tomato plants will start growing!

chicky pics

Aren't they just so adorable!?! Poor mama hen: we like to go peek on the babies all the time and she is still not all that happy about it.
Looks like there are still some unhatched eggs under her - I'm guessing they're all white ones. Those silver leghorns... let's just say they won't engage in any funny business with the rooster!

Babies!!!

This morning when Jeremy went out to open up the coop he heard some mad peeping and there were babies!
We have been wondering how this would go: the nest is up kinda high in the hen house and I don't know how the babies are going to get up and down from that spot. So when Jeremy went out there one of the chicks was down on the floor peeping away - and probably a bit chilly. She/he must have fallen out of the nest. I'm glad the rooster and hens didn't gobbler her up or step on her. =/

Jeremy spent the morning building a little platform and ramp so they could have food and water close by and, maybe, be able to get down if they wanted. But so far they are staying put under mama hen. We've only seen evidence of two chicks - and it sounds like there are more than a dozen eggs under mama still. So we'll see how many more hatch.

Pictures soon!

expecting!

Before a whole lot of people go crazy, I am not expecting! Our chickens are! (But yes, I put that subject line in anyway just for the response. =)

Anyway, up until a few weeks ago I was thinking how funny it was that in all our chicken years we'd never had a broody chicken. Ever. And then one day I went out to check eggs, rather late, and there was a chicken on the nest. That seemed odd to me. Maybe she was sick?
But she was there again the next day. It slowly dawned on me that she was broody! And boy do broody chickens protect their eggs! Just check out what happens when you try to peek in:


The poor thing was kicked out of the nest by the other birds for several days running because they wanted to lay in the box too. So the eggs kind of piled up under her. I think there are at least a dozen, if not more. You may remember the chickens preferred not to use the other nest boxes in the chicken annex. Jeremy hung up a "privacy curtain" in front of those other nest boxes and voila! They started using the other nest boxes. So now our mean mama is left in peace.

I'm sure it has been three weeks since she went broody. I didn't write down the actual date so it could be more or less. So either she's going to hatch those eggs out any moment now, or we have an infertile rooster. We shall see. But in the meantime, between Jeremy and I, that poor hen is checked on three or four times a day! And she is usually not very happy about it.

This is a rather happy subject for my 400th post on this blog. I'm sure if I'd been blogging more regularly in the last year I would have reached 400 long ago. Oh well. We can only do the best we can do, right?

Keep your fingers crossed that we get some baby chicks - 'cause how cute would that be!? Of course then we'll have to sell or give them away because we really don't need more than 20 chickens!!