rainy farm day

 

Hello! So today’s weather calls for “T-storms” all day, but so far it’s been pretty weak, definitely not enough to keep one inside all day; but here I am anyway. It’s rainy enough to warrant some tea and some writing anyway. On the agenda for today is getting some flats of seeds planted and ready for transplanting, which can be indoor work. Some of our vegetables (kale, broccoli, some other greens) are having a little trouble sprouting in the ground so we’re going to try and plant them first in the flats with some potting soil. We did this already with some

 

 

Back in business

cabbage and broccoli and planted them in the garden a few days ago, and they’ve almost doubled in size, they’re doing really great. With those rows done we have a pretty good amount of the garden back after the disasters of a few weeks ago…

 

 For the rest of the empty rows, we have heaps and heaps of plants coming in this week. Strawberries, mainly, but also some more vegetables. Thousands of them. Some months are slower than others but this month will not be one of those. Luckily for us though, an extremely gracious farmer friend of ours has lended us his bed maker, which will save us a LOT of time – days in fact. With that out of the way, we can focus on ammending the soil and putting the plants into the ground, still a very labor intensive little chore, but made more manageable by knowing we won’t have to make the beds (see previous posts for how wonderful that was).

 

 

In other news, the chickens are finally free! Last weekend Ronny and I got around to moving the chicken pens to the field and opening them up so the little birds can roam around at their leisure. We still have the 7 from before, but on top of that we have a recent addition of 10 Turken birds from a very amazing donation. As much as I appreciate them and all their eggs and antics, Turkens are the ugliest birds ever. Ever. Some of them are nice, yes, but when they’re bad, they’re bad. Here are some of the nicer looking ones. See how happy they are!

 

More roaming chickens

  

 

What a life

 Now – unfortunately – for the bad news; because there are a few things. Firstly, one of our turkeys was eaten by some sort of animal, probably a coyote. This is sad because it was our turkey, of course, but more so because we were literally just about to go out there and do it ourselves and put him in the freezer… they beat us to it. That specific turkey had a childhood (childhood? chickhood?) vitamin deficiency and so couldn’t really judge its balance or where it was flying, which mad for a lot of amusing nights as I watched it try to fly up to roost, but eventually was its downfall since it was roosting on the ground every night. Secondly, and this is gonna be tough, brace yourself… the baby turkey died It was partly my fault, but let me explain.

It had been doing really well, so we had placed it in a cage inside the chicken pen so it could be less lonely and adapt to the outside. This was a good idea I think. We would let it run around every day, the chickens were (sorta) warming up to her, it was pretty good. Saturday we went off to the Eco Fair in Wichita Falls (which, side note, was a really good time. We had a booth and had coffee for people so there were plenty of people to talk with and share about the farm and CSA’s. The people at River Bend did a really great job setting it all up too, it went very smoothly), and as I do in the mornings, went out to feed the chickens before we left. Which was early, i don’t even want to say how early i got up. That previous night i had left the cage open a little so the turkey could get out and roost, and i just left it open that day. Well, you know how it is with baby turkeys out in the wild. I think either the chickens pecked it to death or it got its head stuck in the fence; or maybe a combination of the two. Sad day. My Turkey Raising Success Rate is now at 0%. Dang it.

Other than that, I weeded a bunch of stuff, got some new coffee, reconciled with the goat, am thrilled about the fall weather (although I miss the sun), and am learning to kill squash bugs without hesitation. Here is a nice picture of the sparkling morning dew on the row covers to brighten your day.

  

 

*Edit: Ok, it’s really storming now, I take it back. It started up right as I went outside… of course it did.

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Tags: free-range chickens, planting, rain, WWOOF