A Snowy Morning For Chores

     The seasons seem to change quickly around here.  Looking back at my farm notebook, it was a sunny 56 degrees just two days ago, and today we awoke to snow falling from the gray clouds above.  December has been a hectic month being in the midst of another holiday season, and had some fairly abnormal weather, but today all was calm when I stepped outside to do the morning chores in my new insulated bibs that I got for Christmas, with farm cats tangled at my feet.  

     Dashing through the falling flurries, the farm cats, as always, were quick to help this morning, and grab a snack in the warm dry shed of some of the turkey feed.

     Since I've checked in with everyone last, a bit has happened around here with our turkeys.  A week ago, we moved the turkey trailer to its new location by the chicken coop inadvertently creating a sort of barnyard for our animals past the old Pennsylvania Barn up on the hill.  

     It's a rather haphazard barnyard created with bits and pieces of whatever we could scavenge up: an old shed door propped up with tomato stakes to act as a windbreak for the chickens, chicken wire and garden fencing zip-tied to the runs to give the chickens some extra space and new areas to scratch, and an overabundance of white string used to tie newspapers together, now tightly strung in a 6-8" grid to create an aerial barrier between the turkeys and freedom.

     Unfortunately, this aerial barrier has failed us.  Again.  You may recall the turkey hen on the greenhouse roof from the last post.  Well, after just hours outside the second day (at their new location), she was promptly seen checking in with the chickens from our window.  I gathered her up, and stuck her back in the enclosure, and then spent the next thirty minutes securing the place she escaped through around the tree (witnessed by the turkey down stuck in the string nearby).  

    An hour after the repairs, she had escaped yet again.  Again, I stuck her inside their enclosure.  As dusk was now approaching, I decided to grab the hunting seat, and sit outside in the barnyard to watch vigil over the turkey hen to make sure she did not escape again.  If, somehow, she did, at least I would know how she did it, and in theory, be able to get her back inside quickly.  

     Without missing a beat, at dusk, she glanced upward through the strings, and tried to catapult herself through to freedom.  She hit the strings and flapped back down, defeated.  Yes!  It worked!  She had been using the tree for leverage after all!  After a few more failed attempts, I was satisfied that she would have to sleep in the trailer tonight.  Just as I thought she had given up, she mustered up enough wing power for one last ditch effort, and through she went!  

     I spent the next ten minutes chasing her around, while the gobbler now tried to desperately hurl himself through the aerial barrier.  I finally managed to wrestle her back in, but before I could turn around to secure her escape route, out she went again.  This time she found herself on the trailer's roof (where I could not reach), and was eagerly eyeing up the mulberry tree above her head.  

     The Mr. had fortunately pulled in at the landlord's (past the white barn behind her in the above picture) around that time, and I was able to frantically call him and get him home.  He climbed up to the trailer roof and grabbed her off, then promptly put both her and the gobbler to bed for the night.  Presently, they are stuck inside for a few days until repairs are made to the enclosure that will hopefully keep them inside!  

     With the turkeys out of the garden, the Delaware cockerels are now down there alone in their chicken tractor, working up the ground and eating up the tall and small weeds.  Our aim is for them to make it to the end of the garden before it gets too cold, and then they'll head off to the freezer so we can have some more chicken throughout the year.  

     As they work up the garden, we are finally starting to plan for next year's garden, but a little differently than before.  In years past this was a quiet winter break where all the planning could take place for two months before seed starting began.  This year, the greenhouse and cold frame are both still producing so there's only a limited break from the gardening.  Who would have thought that I would have to weed in winter?!  In December, we've harvested and eaten radishes, carrots, parsley, celery, and even tomatoes, though the plants of the latter are now pulled up.  Although the plants inside were bit by the cold, both the greenhouse and cold frame are certainly extending our season!  

     So on this cold and snowy day, it looks like I'll be finishing up some of the year-end totals, and perhaps get to work on a new garden layout plan for the coming season as I've already managed to inventory all of our seeds earlier this month.  After all, we can't harvest a seed that was never sown.  

Feeding Time At The Farm

     I know, I know, it's supposed to be "feeding time at the zoo," and some mornings it certainly does feel like a zoo around here as you trip on farm cats running at your feet to help with the morning chores.  This morning I wanted to give everyone a sneak peek at our new additions that I've been dropping hints about on Facebook, and if you take a walk with me through some morning chores, I'm sure you'll quickly discover just who they are!

     So, let's start out down at the garden with our Chicken Tractor, which we just finished construction on last month (not even a whole month ago!), that's complete with laying box and roosts and the eight Delaware cockerels who are acting as our self-powered manure welding lawnmowers.  They sure do get feisty when they see their morning feed coming, clamoring at the door to get to it.  Currently the Chicken Tractor has a temporary blue tarp for the roof until we get a white or tan one to replace it, and has two pieces of plywood that are acting as windbreaks in the chillier temperatures we are reaching at night.  Before too much longer these cockerels will be heading to the freezer as our temperatures really begin to dip.  

If you look to the left of the Chicken Tractor you'll notice Purrball is being a big helper this morning and cleaning up the chicken's feed bucket!

     Next, I head up the hill to the main coop, or the Pastured Poultry Palace as I like to call it.  Go ahead, roll your eyes at the name.  Plenty do.  This coop was completed in the summer of 2015, and presently holds our laying flock of five (Plymouth Barred Rocks) and breeding flock of eight (Delawares) for meat birds.  At the moment we are collecting eggs from both flocks until the spring when hopefully someone will go broody and we can get some chicks around here!  The Barred Rocks are now over a year old, and are presently going through their first molt, although their egg production is doing okay at the moment, and believe it or not, up from this time last year.  We'll see how long that lasts though.  The Delawares just started laying last month, and have finally made it over a dozen eggs between the seven ladies.  Their extra small eggs make cooking rather interesting.  

Mr. Roo always knows when feed is on the way, and keeps track of the camera for the ladies.

This morning's breakfast for everyone is chicken porridge!

     Next, we're heading back down the driveway and towards the house, whistling away.  It's time for the farm cats' breakfast with a brief stop to check on the new additions that got fed late last night, and still have plenty left.  

     Construction areas are certainly a mess, and today it's my mess to clean up (at least a little).  With construction started midday Sunday, there are only a few more boards that need tacked on to call it done for now.  Later we plan to add some more amendments to the structure, and in a few days move it out of our driveway.  Nestled inside are our new additions...

     ... two Bourbon Red turkeys who are about four months old.  They came from my in-laws who didn't have a place to house them over the winter, and therefore asked if perhaps we might want some turkeys?  After some debate between the Mr. and I as turkeys were not in our plans at the moment, and less than a week of construction on the new Turkey Trailer (I'll talk about that in another post), we're quite excited to see how these two settle in around here!  The guess is that these two are actually a pair, and it's our hopes that next spring they will become a breeding pair.  For now, they are pecking at the glass windows in front of them (they've never had windows before as they've lived outside in a mobile run) and taking in their new surroundings, including the farm cats that needed to peek through the windows.  

     Speaking of farm cats, it's on to breakfast for them!  

     Followed by what quite a few of us wish to be doing right now... snoozing in the sun.

Wishing you a beautiful, albeit brisk, autumn day from Pennsylvania Dutch Country! 

Things They Don't Tell You About Raising Chickens

 

     It's been over a year now since we brought home our balls of fluff.  From the start we knew we wanted a multipurpose chicken that we could raise for eggs and meat, and had settled on Plymouth Barred Rocks after a lot of research, and this past spring we added some Delawares as well.  The Mr. designed a chicken coop, which I've nicknamed the "Pastured Poultry Palace," designed to separate the birds into meat and laying flocks, and cut down the workload on us of having to go to two separate buildings.  Yet during the last year we came across quite a few things that no one really ever told us before raising chickens.  So to hopefully eliminate some surprises for you along your journey, I thought I'd better relay some of our not-so-wonderful adventures: 

Decide early on if the chickens are your pets or your food.  Realistically, they cannot be both.

Roosters to roasters.
(You can thank one of my old bosses for that pun.) 

     I cannot recall how many times I was asked what the names of our chickens were, as though all animals have names... but ours don't.  It was something we decided immediately, and by not naming them, it helped us along in the mindset we had to follow to get us through the inevitable fate of farm animals raised for food.  (It certainly helped me for sure!)  At some point our animals would become dinner.  That by no means, means you should mistreat the animals because they are your food instead of your pets.  Every morning, I still went up and said hi to them as I got them their food, and changed out their water.  I'd throw earthworms I found to them or leftover grapes, and enjoyed watching them chase each other around for the "treats."  When times are economically tough, I always make sure to purchase the animal's food first before our own to ensure that they always have enough to eat.  (Don't worry, we won't go hungry either.  We just might not be eating the food we want, but instead the food we have.)  They, while they were with us, enjoyed great lives.  And, when the time came to make dinner out of some of them, the process was quick.  I cannot stress enough that whether your chicken is a pet or food/food source is something that you need to understand from the beginning, and remember that mindset as you raise them, because if you're treating your chicken like a pet, it will be really hard when you need to cook one for the table.

Our Delawares out in their pasture run.  We've found our chickens prefer green over grain.

They want it all, and they want it NOW.  

The Plymouth Barred Rock rooster is
always the most vocal with his
demands.  He also lets his hens know
when someone is on their way with
food to the coop.  The Delawares
have caught on to his announcements
now, and come running too.

     The chickens have always been ones to want to be fed.  It's not that we underfeed our birds.  It's just they believe that whatever we have in the bucket is going to be bigger and better than whatever they have in front of them.  The hens scramble to the feed bucket each morning, half climbing over top of each other on their mad dash for whatever "treats" are in it.  (Apparently, the grass is always greener on the other side.)  I have gotten pecked by the hens until I drop the bucket and released all the food, especially if I am blocking them from getting into the bucket since they only get half of its contents.  I've also gotten pecked by a rooster so badly that it drew blood because I wasn't feeding his grain holder fast enough.  (My mother actually got spurred by a rooster when doing feeding for us while we were on vacation as well.)  The moral of the message is... when you feed them, do it fast and no one gets hurt.  

  

Roosters (and hens) can be ornery.  

Our three Plymouth Barred
Rock roosters in calmer times.

     Everyone mentions a mean rooster or a hen a little too aggressive in establishing the pecking order, but we were certainly not prepared for the blood bath that I stumbled across when closing up the coop on March 28.  It looked like something out of a television crime drama, with actual spray patterns of the blood inside the run.  You could see where one cornered the other.  Where the larger of the two started aggressively ripping feathers out from the underside of the medium rooster's wing.  And then, their blood stained trail to the  coop.

     We shined a light into the inside of the coop, the largest two roosters were coated in blood, feathers still hanging from their mouths, and their faces pecked and obviously still bleeding, as well as were various parts of their bodies.  The third rooster, the smallest one, was snuggled up on the roost against the wall that led to the ladies' side, specks of blood on him from the spray of the fight, but no sign of physical harm, or that he was aggressive towards the others.  He had always been the quiet one, while the two larger ones were always battling for dominance.  There was nothing we could do for the two larger, battle scarred roosters, and for the first times in our lives butchered chickens.  We started at 7 p.m., and only stumbled into bed around midnight.  The next morning our lone rooster, crowed much louder and prouder than I had ever heard him crow before, to welcome the sun and greeted the four ladies on the other side of the fence.  I have a feeling our meat birds will become meat birds a little quicker from here on out...

There's a routine established with chickens.

Walking down their tunnel run.  The
scraps they don't pick at get cleaned out.

     Maybe it's not intentional on the part of the birds, but the chickens established a routine for us, and not the other way around.  The first thing I do in the mornings at the coop is dump their scraps into their "tunnel runs" to the "pasture run," or directly into the "pasture run" if I'm feeling extra adventurous.  Then, I open the tunnels or chutes, and head towards the coop.  This preoccupies the chickens so the rest of the chores I can do only with the "assistance" of the farm cats, and not both birds and cats.  Then I change out the water inside the coop or run, refill any grain holders that need filling, and check for eggs.  (We also check for eggs in the late-afternoon/evening too, as some prefer morning to lay, and others the afternoon.)  By getting the birds essentially "out of the way" chores go a lot quicker at the coop.

     As an important note: They will let you know if you are late.  Every morning, I try to be out there between 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.  By 9:45, I am officially late, and the rooster will be crowing about more than just the sun.  If I'm there at 8:00 a.m., the hens are dust bathing, and looking at with the "um, we're still getting our morning baths" look, and you know you are in trouble for interrupting them.

No matter how you design your coop (or if you purchase a pre-built coop), they'll be something about it you'll wish you could change.  

     We did research for months on how we wanted a chicken coop constructed before the hammer hit the first nail, yet looking back, there are certainly things we'd do differently now...

• Sure edges on poop trays and doors to the coop hold shavings and poop in, but they also hold it in, making it a pain when you go to clean the coop.  
• The chicken "pasture run" was originally constructed without an access hatch, but we quickly learned it needed one to allow us to feed them in the run and for any emergencies.  
• The pvc grain holders made life easier to fit everything inside the coop, but the elbows don't allow feed to fall down very well, so we resorted back to regular feeders as their primary feeders in the coop, and use the pvc pipes as a secondary feeder. 
• Our Plymouth Barred Rock hens prefer curtains on their nesting boxes as long as they are pulled way back.  Regardless, our hens prefer to face the wall when nesting and only turn around if they hear noise in the coop.  
• You will never be able to make their favorite nesting box large enough, and they will try to lay eggs on top of each other in the box.  Two of our hens favor the left box, and the other two favor the right.  If someone is in the box when they want to be you can hear the ruckus caused by the complaining hen in the house (a few hundred feet away, with all windows closed)! 

... just to name a few.  

What have you learned about your chickens that no one prepared you for?

International Heritage Breed Week

     In honor of International Heritage Breeds Week (May 15-21, 2016), I'd like to skip ahead in our chicken keeping adventures and introduce to you our new editions around here.  Cue, cute balls of fluff and feathers: 

     Meet the newest, rather vocal, members of this crazy life we lead, who arrived via a 26-hour trip from Missouri on the twelfth: seventeen Delaware chicks.  

     Having started our chicken keeping adventures last spring with seven Plymouth Barred Rocks, a mid-nineteenth century breed, which are on the recovering list of Heritage Poultry Breeds by the Livestock Conservancy, we figured that another heritage breed would be a good edition. (Plus, as history people, we are biased towards heritage breeds.  Go figure.)  Plymouth Barred Rocks are hearty birds that can withstand differences in weather, overall climate, and work well both free-ranging and confined.  On top of that, Plymouth Barred Rocks are a dual-purpose breed, being wonderful brown egg layers, and also good meat birds.  Before being replaced by other more modern breeds, Plymouth Barred Rocks were popular in the meat bird industry as broilers during the 1920s.  Two of our roosters went by the way of the meat birds, and ended up in our freezer.  Our third rooster (above, left) is happy with his four hens who keep us in a lot of eggs as they pass their first full year of life.  

     So why not stick with Plymouth Barred Rocks, and add some more of them to the flock instead of another breed, since they're such a great dual purpose bird?  I'm blaming this one on the Mr.  (Who knew there's Crazy Chicken Men and not just Crazy Chicken Ladies?)  He noticed the Delawares, and literally on his birthday we ordered fifteen of them.  Thanks to the hatchery for throwing in two extras in the tragic event that not all the chicks we ordered would make it through the mail, we now have seventeen (as they all made it through).  

     Delawares are a much younger breed than our Plymouth Barred Rocks are, but ironically, more difficult to locate.  On the watch list of Heritage Poultry Breeds by the Livestock Conservancy they come in slightly more endangered than the Plymouth Barred Rocks.  Delawares have only been around since 1940, just sliding into the cutoff for heritage breeds (a breed that has been around since at least the mid-twentieth century).  They, like the Plymouth Barred Rocks, are good dual purpose birds and were utilized by the meat industry up through the 1950s as broilers.  

     Thus, we decided that the Delawares would become our meat flock and the Plymouth Barred Rocks would be our laying flock.  (Thank goodness the Mr. designed a coop that would hold so many birds!  I have a feeling he secretly knew what was to come when building it.)  Both flocks would be separated on their own side of the coop and run system, and contain their own rooster along with a few hens.

     Still young and only gaining their first black-tipped white wing feathers, our Delawares are currently in quarantine in a brooder in the wood shed, waiting until they hit at least a month of age and the weather gets warmer, for them to be sent out to the coop with the "big chickens."  For now, they're only testing out their newly discovered "big chicken skills," scratching in the new shavings and testing out their wings, which you can watch in our video below.
  

For more information about heritage breeds, visit The Livestock Conservancy's website.

March Madness: March Update

Spring is in the air and earth.  The fluctuating temperatures of the month of March brought days in the 20s, to days, like yesterday, where it almost seemed summer was in the air as the temperatures climbed upwards of 70.  With the sour cherry tree about to burst forth in white blossoms outside our living room window, it seems our garden should be fully planted, but since March was a month of madness for us, we lost our opportunity to keep up with the conservative families up the way who already have rows of perfectly planted onions and pristine weed-free peas.  Yes, our garden sits a little vacant, as we seem to be too nervous over these fluctuating temperatures (and chance of snow in the coming week) to break ground too early and destroy our crops.  

That doesn't mean, however, that we are sitting on our hands waiting for the weather to warm.  March has brought plenty of life, and some death, around our place.  

In just a month's time the shelves on our indoor seed starter begun to flood with the sight of green goodness.  From cabbages and marigolds, to tomatoes and peppers, and even some herbs along with other types of green, life is certainly coming into the place.  Each year we figure out, a little too late, that the year previous's seed starting unit will end up being too small.  It's a common occurrence we have year after year, and you think by now we'd learn; however, this year we did learn... only the greenhouse isn't done quite yet, and as it is unheated with these fluctuating temperatures, we will still have to wait a little until we can actually use it.  

You may also notice some green sprouts on the floor down there, which is barley and wheat fodder (well more like sprouts) for the chickens.  Using feed grain we purchased from McGeary Organics in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, we had been a little unsuccessful with our unskilled fodder attempts, but after adding some seed starting soil (that the Mr. mixed himself this year), the green sprouts sprung forth, and the chickens love them!

One can hope that our chickens will continue to love all the green.  Even with the fluctuating temperatures, their egg laying has certainly increased.  All four of the ladies are finally laying now, and not just freeloading off of GMO-free and GMO-free/organic feeds.  We ended up with a whopping 91 eggs for the month of March, which is up from the 49 in January, and 54 in February.  The hens seem to finally be coming into their own, and they are still a little over a month shy from being a year old!  

The hens were also introduced a few days ago to the rooster, and the chicken coop and runs opened up so they have access to both sides.  You may notice that I said rooster, and not roosters.  As I had mentioned earlier, March had brought with it some death around here.  From the beginning we recognized that our chickens were not pets, but rather food.  We treated them humanely, spoiled them with grapes and earthworms, and I would even talk to them in the mornings when I was doing the chores; however, two of the roosters had to go to allow the third one to be kept for breeding, and to maintain the delicate balance of life at the coop.  

The roosters decided themselves who the victor would be after two of them took their job of being the lead rooster a little too seriously, and caused injury to each other.  The injuries, mixed with their personalities, made the decision easy, and that night we butchered for the first time.  As I was a kid who grew up in town, rather than the country, this was not an experience I was eagerly anticipating, and the whole tale can be left for another time; however, I would like to leave you with the warning that YouTube videos do not do the sounds of gutting a chicken justice, and I was so glad that it was after dinner.  Weighing in at 5lb 2oz and 5lb 10oz, they were our two largest (and meanest) of the birds who were constantly battling it out with each other and us.  One of the birds had taken a good sized peck out of my arm, drawing blood, when it was first moved into the coop last year, and what we presume to be the same bird, also ended up spurring my mother when she was feeding them one day.  Thinking back on it... why did we wait so long to get rid of them?  

Now all of the five remaining birds - one rooster and four hens - are happily pecking away and exploring in their enlarged coop.  Even as I write this, the rooster is eagerly crowing in the morning.  We added in some extra features, such as hanging produce baskets, and have temporarily enlarged the coop and run to allow them the extra room until we end up with meat birds (whether we get lucky and a hen goes broody, or we have to buy some to replenish the flock).  

On the few "free" days and evenings we had, we managed to get the plow wire brushed down, and the seized discs on the disc harrow free.  Although all of the implements (aside from the plow) still need a little more work to them before they can be used, we are at least one step closer to getting our garden ready for spring planting.  Even our landlord has once-again allowed us use of his rototiller to ensure we can get the garden in the ground when the David Bradley is being a bit temperamental.  With all that has been going on around here, I am eager to see what surprises April will bring. 

Groundhog Day: Will Winter Stay?

"Groundhog Day - Half Your Hay" -  Old Farm Saying  

     It's February 2nd again, otherwise known as time for that groundhog to do his thing, and hopefully proclaim an early spring!  You see, I'm from the bizarre state that once a year uses one of these rascals to predict the onset of spring every Groundhog Day (or February 2nd).  It's an interesting tradition that hearkens back to Punxsutawney Phil (from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania) in 1886, and although he is a "beloved" groundhog around those parts... here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, he's really starting to bother me!    There's lots that I can say about groundhogs.  They do this...

Eating my black raspberries... 

    And this...

Stealing my black walnuts...

      And in the end they also... predict winter.  

     Punxutawney Phil is notorious for this as out of the 119 recorded predictions he's made since 1886, only 17 of those times he actually predicted an early spring.  Therefore this morning, I was not holding my breath that the 130-year-old-or-more Phil (yes, they really do claim he's the same groundhog from 1886 who drinks a special magical punch during the Annual Groundhog Picnic each summer that gives him seven more years of life) wouldn't see his shadow, and give me an early spring.

     The day before, the cats didn't seem to be holding their breaths either, and decided nothing good was going to come of this and they should just go about their daily schedules of following me up to the coop, and scratching on trees while I do the chicken chores, making a single file line back down from the coop, and then playing in the driveway because Momma's slow.  Someone has to become king (or queen) of the board pile, and then everyone eats.

     Oh, and it wouldn't be a morning without Whitey pesting poor Gravy thinking she's the Gray stray (that you see on the right).  What can I say?  He likes to defend his territory (and supper dish).  

     Needless to say, through their mud-covered faces at the breakfast dish, they were awaiting spring to come as much as I was, but it's all up to that pesky groundhog.  With baited breath, I awaited the morning prediction from old Phil...

    Through the glare of media spotlights, camera flashes, and smartphone selfies, he didn't see his shadow.  WHAT!?!?  Glad I'm not a betting person.  I guess that means we're supposed to have an early spring folks.  Perhaps I should get out the shovel from the shed and start trenching the driveway and snow banks for the inch of rain we're supposed to have come with our 50+ degree temperatures tomorrow?  Woo!  No more snow, right, right?

     Here's to the dream!  Does your state or country have any strange ways of predicting the onset of spring?  

Too Many Projects, Too Little Time In 2015

     I can't believe it's almost the end of January and I haven't wrapped up 2015 yet.  We ended our 2015 on more rain than I was interested in seeing, and started 2016 on piles and piles of snow.  The rain certainly was a change from the beginning of the year which was especially hard on our electric bills, even harder than our first one here, and the snow piled even higher.  There's certainly been some changes around the whole place as we're entering our fourth growing season at this home in a few months.  Come take the journey with us over the course of the last year:

Scaredy Cat and Purrball playing snowball ice hockey on
the quite icy driveway in February.

     When we started 2015, we had Momma Buttercup and nine of her twelve offspring running around the place keeping the rodents and bugs at bay for us.  Most of them waited for us on the steps and corncrib each time we returned home from a long mid-week "weekend" at my in-laws, and were full of love and energy.  Unfortunately, since then, we have just six remaining: Gravy and Whitey from the first litter, and Blue Eyes, Little Gray, Purrball and Tiger from the second litter.  The rest, being farm cats, all decided to head out across the fields one day, and we have not seen them since.  Perhaps, like Gravy, they'll come back after an extended absence (her's was only a little over a week), but we are not holding our breath, and instead loving on those we have remaining.

     Due to a break out of eye infections that soon spread across all of our cats, rabies shots, and needing to get a bunch of them spayed or neutered, the cats, to say the least, cost us a bucketful last year that we were not planning on.  Our hope is that we can reduce their medical bills and food bills in 2016, but for now I'm ashamed to admit their cost almost topped that of our springtime project...

     By spring we decided to add some feathery friends to entertain the cats... okay, we wanted eggs and meat, but they do certainly entertain the cats!  Seven fluffy chicks in May turned into four laying hens and three roosters who never shut up!  (Their alarm clocks are clearly broken.)  During this time, we raised them from three days old in a makeshift brooder in the shed, constructed their chicken coop on steroids (i.e. a "pastured poultry palace"), dug over a foot down to bury their main run, and we are now presently constructing their tunnel run and rotating pastures.  As of the end of the year, our stubborn hens have given us 81 eggs in all, and we still haven't come up with the time to thin the rooster flock.

     Their coop, and the whole chicken enterprise, cost us a rather hefty sum as well (more so for the fully enclosed runs and all the hardware cloth than the actual structure).  I'll let you guess how much the going price for "farm fresh" eggs is around here, to calculate just why we need 4,813 eggs to break even.

     The garden was another trial that happened to be occurring right alongside the chicken project.  Our 38' by 78' main garden, paired with the less well-kept upper garden and some random patches about the yard certainly kept us in food this year.  It was the first year we experimented with cover crops and mulching, and the chickens certainly enjoyed buckwheat treats throughout the spring into the early summer.  To say the least, things got a little weedy around the place as the season progressed and we tackled our other projects.

     I'm also happy to say, if you don't calculate the equipment purchase into the garden costs, we actually saved money gardening!  Fortunately, when I make my financial spreadsheet for everything we do, equipment doesn't fall into the garden costs!  However, the equipment set us back a little as well...

     To make things a little easier next year we added yet another project to our list: fixing up the implements for a David Bradley Super Power.  The Mr., with some help, got the Super Power running in early fall.  Now, we should be working on wire brushing, painting and repairing all those implements that we'll need for spring; however, we're working on chicken  runs and pastures and...

     ...started yet another garden project as well.  The Mr. really, really wanted to have the greenhouse up before planting season begun in early winter, so he called some of his family members fairly last minute in December and they  managed to get all four walls, rafters, and eleven of the windows installed in a single day.  Talk about teamwork!  If everything goes as planned, we'll at least have some seedlings growing in the greenhouse, even if the seeds are still started on the seed starter unit the Mr. built for us for this past spring's planting.  (Of course, this was the plan, prior to 30" of snow being dumped on us.)

      As the cats continued to vie for our attention, the crops and weeds were growing, and the chickens needed the permanent home put up, we still needed to do something with all of that produce.  For some reason canning season begun in mid-winter for me this year, and continued through until mid-fall (even though there are still things that need canned down in one of the deep freezes right now).  It was a lot of work to put up all of that food, and I can definitely say that in the next couple of days I'll be inventorying what we still have in stock to start making the final adjustments for our 2016 garden.

     The financial spreadsheet wasn't showing black by the end of the year, and I'm going to write that off on "creating a life we love living" by building up infrastructure, and hope we do better next year.  This is the first year of red, after two years in the black, so one can hope that 2016 we won't be seeing red again.

     Yup, can you believe it?  It's almost February of 2016, and certainly time to start thinking about the garden and projects for next year.  What big changes have you seen around your place this past year?

The Golden Egg: Part 3 of Our Chicken Keeping Adventure

This look-back is meant to thoroughly introduce you to why we have chickens.  Updates of our chickens' progress can be found on our Facebook and in additional blog posts. - The American Haggard Housewife

     Waiting on the lousy first egg was a trial to say the least.  Whoever thought that a single solitary egg could be such a long, annoying, and exasperating wait has never had chickens.  They are an investment in your money, your time, and your sanity, and that first egg, that lone golden egg, is the most expensive one of all.  

     Think about it.  If your chickens only lay one egg, no matter how much money you have invested in them, that egg costs all of the money, time, and sanity that you invested into the poultry enterprise, no matter how large or small it may be.  And, after recently totaling our personal investment into said chickens, I can attest that our first egg is one GOLDEN egg.  

     I still don't know which of the ladies laid it, but after referring to them as "freeloaders" since Week 16 as they were clearly interested in the expensive GMO-free organic grain we've been indulging them with, but certainly not in holding up their end of the bargain, there on Week 22 it was sitting in a pile of "manure" under the roosts.

     Sure, it wasn't in the proper location, and I'll have to get some "fake eggs" (probably golf balls or whatever else I can locate around the house) to move their nesting into the laying boxes, but who cares?!  It's an egg!  (Sure, we'll care later if they continue to not lay in the nesting boxes.)  

     Like my mother informed my cousin who asked last month if we had gotten eggs yet, "Of course not!  You know there will be 1000s of picture of that first egg."  Sure enough, she was right, and I had to take multiples of our XXS egg.  (For those of you who waited so long for your first egg, you probably ended up taking pictures too!)  

     And, when we finally crack it, there will probably be pictures of whatever it's made into a well, because it will always be our first egg.  It will hopefully; however, be the most expensive egg we'll ever have to crack, as the next egg will share the burden of the distributed cost and therefore each egg will be a little more cost effective in the end.  One can dream, right?  

P.S. - If anyone is keeping track, that was a whooping 157 days after we got the 3-day old chicks (so that's 160 days after they were born, we've managed a single egg).  

NOW AVAILABLE! Bawk, Bawk: Part 4 of Our Chicken Keeping Adventure

The "I'd Like To" Game

Yes, that is us (a throwback to 2013) and one of our
many projects: cleaning out the "upper garden" where our
berry patch is.  It's still somewhat overgrown now, but
nothing like it was!  The backbreaking labor we call life.

     I've figured out by now a "normal life," or what the stereotypical "normal life" is, is not, by any means, in the cards for us.  I glance across my social media every morning to see an array of friends, former classmates and colleagues, and family filling us in on the highlights of their lives.  Monday morning is the absolute worst for this as I watch their vacations and weekends flash before my eyes, desperately scrolling to get past them.  After all what is a vacation?  Or, even a weekend?  I don't think we've really seen those for a while.  If you think it's easy to just take off for a few days, let's give you a glimpse at our "I'd like to" game we get to play when we consider one of those two possibilities.  I sure hope someone else out there plays this same game as well... 

     I'd like to sleep in... (A beautiful mini vacation) What that really means is, I'd like to meet this face when I come to the door.  It's one of our farm cats Purrball, and a not very happy one, because I missed his stomach clock.  I know what you're thinking, "It's just a cat," but, you don't understand, he knows how to turn the rooster on me (and that thing will not shut up once he does). 

     I'd like to go away for the weekend... Um... you do realize we have animals right?  (Can you imagine eight disgruntled cats meeting us on the doorstep?)  Our going away for the weekend means loading the animal feed and water up and praying for two days that we have enough, while we have a relative on speed dial if there's an emergency (or if we get stuck in traffic).  That's only in fair weather conditions though.  If it's too hot, their water has to be changed multiple times a day.  If it's too cold and their water freezes, then the ice has to be broken and the water has to be changed, whenever the ice begins to form (multiple times a day).  There's also that garden, that needs harvested (which can usually be put off for just two days if need be), but the watering can't.  We went away for a weekend this past summer, just when the sweet corn was forming.  They were calling for rain, so we weren't too worried.  The showers missed us, and we were now two hours away without the real ability to say "we'll just run back home and throw the sprinkler on."  Yup, we planted 600 stalks of sweet corn.  We got about three dozen "edible to us" ears off of it.  Everything else went to the chickens.  Totally worth the weekend right?  

What a normal day of tomatoes looks like and what could
be spoiling in the garden if no one takes notice.

     I'd like to take a vacation... Ahhh, spending more than two days away, sounds relaxing doesn't it?  Yup, but that prep work is going to be awful.  It involves multiple steps before we can even get out the door, which includes (a) harvesting anything from the garden that is "ripe enough" to harvest and that will be ripe while your away, (b) finding someone willing to watch the farm cats and change their food and water once a day, (c) this same person will also be doing the same to the chickens and checking for eggs, (d) and they'll be watering the garden too, (e) and they'll probably be harvesting the crops that weren't ripe enough when will left, but now are.  Their daily visit to your house, on a good day when everything runs smoothly, will take them 30 minutes, but in reality it will be more like an hour (especially if they don't understand your daily chores as well as you).  Planning on staying away longer than a week?  Make sure that person is willing to clean out the chicken coop and preserve your harvest that is now decaying because even though it's harvested, something still needs done with it.  

     I'd like to relax this evening... (A mini-weekend if you will)  Ha!  Good one.  What that actually means is, I'd like to ignore the garden that either needs weeded or harvested, and if we don't do either, we lose our crops and therefore our food.  Have you ever watched tomatoes rot on the vine because you didn't have enough time or energy left to harvest them?  It's extremely depressing (to say the least), and by taking this mini weekend, you might as well be throwing the tomatoes (and whatever else needs harvesting) to the compost bin.  

     In the end you may be saying I'd like to have a normal life, but what is a "normal life" after all?  To us, this is becoming the new normal.  Two years ago, there were no animals to worry about, but a garden.  Three years ago there were only a few container vegetables to have to try to keep alive on my soon-to-be-husband's balcony, but were we as happy then as we are now?  We've grown closer together with this new life we have, and although we really can't sleep in, or take a vacation (no matter how long it may be), or even truly have a carefree relaxing evening without having to worry about some little chore that isn't getting done, why would we want anything else?  

     Now, if you'll excuse me I have some work, scratch that, life to tend to.