April 28 through June 15 As with the turkeys, I decided to let the chickens hatch eggs this year. My friend Dolly swears that letting the chickens take care of the process is much better, and easier, than doing it… Read more ›
This hen’s id is black and green bands on the left leg. This hen’s id is a green band on the right leg. She is one of the two who hatched out three poults in May 2011. This hen’s id… Read more ›
April 4 through June 11, 2011 As the next step into total poultry immersion, I decided to let the birds breed this year. It makes sense to save the price of buying day-old chicks in our plan to make the… Read more ›
Starting in mid January, Genny helped us out with jacking up parts of the house and repairing joists. Dennis and I also worked on the project. Many of the locust posts the house construction is built around have rotted at… Read more ›
I went out to check on the poultry and found this hawk trapped in the turkey enclosure. It was tired from trying to find its way out. I cornered and captured it, then managed to take a couple pictures of… Read more ›
We went back and forth on how we want to deal with storage in the kitchen. The mice and all the stashes they had in the back of cupboards and things solidified our thinking: simple open shelves where we can… Read more ›
I woke to my usual chores of feeding cats and dogs, igniting the wood stove fire, watering and feeding the chickens, guineas and turkeys, and checking on our invalid chicken in the West bathroom. My heart lightened when I stepped… Read more ›
On December 9, some folks delivered five Guinea fowl to us. They couldn’t keep them anymore and we volunteered to take them in. We put them in the unused house in the turkey yard (the turkeys are too big for… Read more ›
November 24-27 We picked up Madeline up at Dulles Tuesday evening. Here she is starting food prep for the big meal Thursday. We also have the Shiff’s dogs, McLeod and Jake, visiting for the week while Cathie and Dave are… Read more ›
The past week was interesting. Let’s start at the beginning….. Last Sunday morning I went to Rucker Farm to work in the creamery, one of my most favorite places in the universe. I have been working there Saturday mornings, but… Read more ›
The photos of the turkey area are taken from the house roof — a “bird’s eye view” (Thank you, John). The roof structure is 2″ mesh netting suspended from ropes stretched between the surrounding trees. Dennis thought up the suspension… Read more ›
The Narragansett turkeys are four months old. The fourteen heritage birds are exploring the backyard while hanging out with the rest of us—dogs and people. Schroeder is very good with them. Our neighbor dog Cinnamon, a tan lab, isn’t so… Read more ›
We decided that the cockerels (young male chickens) had gotten big enough to be butchered (plus we were growing tired of their constant crowing). So off to Muskrat Haven Farm, where they were processed for $3.50 a piece.
I have 690 e-mails in my inbox. I look down at my legs—a locus for a collection of minor afflictions and injuries. Rash from where I brushed up against poison ivy in the summer chicken yard—that opportunistic vine has claimed… Read more ›
The rocks used for this wall were here when we moved in, but in a jumbled pile below the North garden. I thought they were brought in for some project but after digging out two similar—albeit smaller—rocks from the garden… Read more ›
On May 29th, we butchered our second batch of four chickens, three Australorps and one Red. This time Dennis did the bleeding and took off the heads and feet and I plucked and eviscerated the birds.
The turkeys are five and a half weeks old and they love to come and perch on us when we come in their enclosure. Here, Dennis has eight or nine roosting across his arm span. Notice the one Speckled Sussex… Read more ›
April 8-30 Like the day-old chicks, we ordered day-old Naragansett turkeys from Welp Hatchery. Here they are crowded around the waterer the day they arrived, April 8. The weather warmed and we set up an outdoor pen for the poults… Read more ›
April 16-20 One of our big projects this year was to fence a new area that wraps around the North and East sides of the main garden for a summer chicken yard. Dennis drove most of the ten-foot pipes we… Read more ›
Earlier this year, I spent some time researching chicken breeds — Henderson’s Chicken Breed page was a great help. I decided to order day-old chicks from Welp hatchery in Iowa. I wanted a dual-purpose breed that would be good enough… Read more ›
