You can hear the chicks peeping from outside the barn, pretty loudly, but they stop as soon as you slide the door open. Then they start back up slowly as you peek over the stall door at them. Still so cute that I can hardly stand it. I’m inviting everyone I know with kids to come up and see them in the next couple of weeks.

So far so good, all 50 are still alive. Of course I only think there are 50 as I forgot to count them as I unloaded them yesterday. A couple of quick counts put me at 54 and 56 including the Welsummers, which should mean there are actually 50. Guess we’ll find out when we start cutting heads…

*****

I froze 4.5 pounds of green beans (bush varieties) today in 2 person servings. There’s no science to my serving sizes so it worked out to be 13 vacuum packed packages. I also froze 1.5 pounds of peas that I don’t think we’ll get to since I had the water going anyway. I froze those into 4 packages - 3 of about 1/3 pound each and one that was a 1/2 pound.

I think I’ve finally found a blanching, ice water, packaging process that really works for me. I bought myself a really big strainer and made use of it to blanch each batch of about a pound. I put the beans / peas in it, then submerged the whole thing in the water. Made it A LOT easier to get the veggies out of the water in a timely manner, and made it easy to dump them into the ice water bath. Then I air dried everything for a couple of hours on cooking racks set over dish towels inside of cookie sheets. Made it easy to get rid of the excess water and to move them around.

*****

We’re eating green beans by the fistful (I love them) but there’s no way we can consume them all fresh.

We likely don’t need that many more packages of green beans in the freezer for winter - 20 should be enough - so any extra beans above that will be made into dilly beans. I’m actually looking forward to making and eating them.

Tomorrow I’m going to make onion & cucumber salad with the first of the pickling cukes. I might even make a quart of fridge pickles as well since we’re not yet getting enough cukes to justify setting up for dill pickles.

Along the same lines I think I’m going to take all of the red / sweet onions that bolted and make pickled onions with them. They sound good and could be a nice addition for sandwiches, eggs, etc. Anyone ever made them before?

I thought perhaps there were enough people interested in the meat bird process that a weekly update would be good? Let me know if I’m wrong and I’ll just give you cute pictures and not all of the details…

This morning the call from the Post Office came at 7:45 am. Just after I’d gotten to work and well after Mike was a long time from home. It’s not clear if they really got here late Thursday and they didn’t call, or if they actually got here that early this morning. Anyway, the PO was in a big hurry to have us pick them up, but they had to wait until I could sneak away at lunch. Shortly after noon the loudly peeping box was mine and I dashed off to the barn to get them settled and go back to work.

Hard to believe that this box had 55 chicks in it, but it did. And actually, during a cooler time of year it could have held up to 100. They had only 13 - 15 in each corner due to the heat we’ve been having.

Luckily we were all set up and ready for them so it was just a matter of plugging in the lights, filling the waterers and putting out some feed. All easily accomplished. Then each chick got its beak dipped in the water and set on it’s feet. They were immediately on their way to doing what chicks do best - eating, drinking, pooping and sleeping.

I tried to trick Lucy into taking a couple of the Welsummer chicks, but she just tried to peck them to death. I rescued them and put them back in with the rest of the fluff balls. Oh well, they’ll just have to hang with the meat birds until they get their feathers. Lucy has been banished back to the hen shack where I’m working hard to get her off the nest. She’s lost quite a bit of weight in the futile 6 weeks she’s been sitting and it’s time to end it. Black Langshan’s don’t make very good mothers from what I’ve recently read, so I’m wondering if she actually killed the two chicks that hatched herself…

After a false start with a brand new heat lamp bulb that conked out in less than 6 hours (gonna return that sucker!) everyone seems to be doing fabulously. The setup is basically a third of a 10′x10′ box stall with 2 heat lamps, 4 1-quart waterers and 2 two-foot chick feeders. That’s likely going to last a week or two and then they’ll graduate to “big chick” tube feeders and metal waterers and get access to the entire stall. We’ll be using one pair that I already had and then going to have to pick up another pair either at the feed store or through Craigslist.

Here’s some cute pics for you from tonight, costs to date noted at the bottom.

The whole crew, all 50 red broilers and 5 Welsummers, soaking up some heat.

They eat…

They drink…

They sleep…

Wherever they are.

*****
Costs to Date (broilers only):

$69.50 - 50 chicks at $1.25 each plus $7 shipping
$60.25 - 2 chick waterers, 2 chick feeders, 1 heat lamp, 2 heat lamp bulbs, 2 bales shavings
$67.00 - 2 50# bags of organic chick starter
———-
$196.75 - Total ($3.94 per bird)

Supplies we already had: 2 chick waterers, 4 quart mason jars, 1 heat lamp, extension cords, 1 18″ chick feeder that I’ll add in tomorrow plus a 2 gallon metal waterer and a 14 lb. tube feeder.

We’re still trying to decide if we’ll feed organic all they way through or not. These guys have to go all the way to 12 weeks and the price of organic feed is going through the roof. But they’ll get it at least until 5 or 6 weeks as I’m not a big fan of medicated chick starter and that’s the only other option at the feed stores around here.

Sick of gardening posts yet? Sorry about it, I’m a bit brain dead right now as we catch up with the garden and I immerse myself in my new job (day 4 tomorrow).

That photo above? That’s just shy of 4 pounds of bush beans. And I’d say it’s about 20% of what we’re going to eventually harvest. Maybe more like 25%. But still, there’s a lot more to come.

Right now we’re eating as many as we can with the peas and collecting the rest in the fridge. Saturday they’ll all get blanched and put in the freezer. That cycle will continue until I’ve frozen as many as we need, then I’ll pickle the rest.

Of the three types that I planted, I’d say that the two green ones are about equal for productivity. The purple ones are a gorgeous shade of aubergine, but they’re not nearly as productive as the green. That said we’ll likely plant them again next year just because they’re so pretty.

Good thing the pole beans are still working on blooming. Otherwise we’d really be buried in beans. I’ll get a complete garden update, complete with photos, up this weekend. First I’ve got to get some weeding done so you don’t know how bad it is out there.

And be sure to check in tomorrow night for photos of the 55 peepers that should be arriving in the afternoon…

There comes a point at which you have to cry uncle and just start searching for recipes that use as many veggies as possible. In the end I didn’t freeze the peas as it seemed a waste of such sweet, perfect peas. Instead we’re trying to eat our way through 3.5 pounds before they go bad… Add to that several pounds of green beans, the first 7 pickling cukes, broccoli, carrots and more and wow, that’s a lot of veggies to eat.

After an intensive scouring of Epicurious, my favorite cookbooks and a desperate call to my mom, I’ve put together a fleet of recipes to start relieving the load. On the list is a pea and green bean salad, seven layer salad, fridge pickles, cucumber and onion salad, broccoli and cheese casserole and sauteed veggies of all kinds.

Tonight’s dinner was Bavarian Sausage Hot Pot, minus the nutmeg because I didn’t have any. Everything but the cabbage (local), beef stock (organic), kielbasa (local) and dried herbs (organic) came from our garden. If I made it again I’d halve the caraway or maybe leave it out completely and add a bit of garlic instead, but overall we both agreed it was pretty easy. Not to mention that it used a shocking amount of produce (yay!) and it is definitely a 30 minute one pot meal.

Yum.

I feel like I’m behind in life right now, or at least in the garden. We’re barely caught up on the harvesting and still miles (or maybe pounds?) behind on eating and now we’re behind on the fall planting. Must just be the year for late gardening.

It’s been a struggle to find any space to put anything more than what was already in the ground. But after some maneuvering and some clean-up I think I have it figured out. Now I just have to find time to loosen the dirt and put in the seeds. Oh, and put together a planting plan that takes into account both fertility and family crop rotation.

It seemed so simple sitting in the COG class in March / April. But it’s not. It’s complex and detail oriented and not where my head is at right now. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that seems like it can go together many different ways, but really it can’t. Particularly not when you’re trying to make sure that you’re observing 3 year rotations for disease and seasonal rotations for fertility.

Not sure what I’m talking about? Well, it goes like this:

Family Rotation:
In order to prevent common diseases that affect plant families you shouldn’t plant the same family in the same place more often than every three to seven years. When you plant something in the same place season after season it allows the natural pests and diseases of that family to build up in the soil. Rotating them reduces the possibility of issues occurring and the pest management tactics you hae to implement.

This particularly applies to the disease prone families of brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, etc), night shades (tomato, eggplant, peppers, potatoes) and alliums (onions, leeks, garlic).

Fertility Rotation:
Fertility rotation helps minimize the need to add fertilizer or other nutrient inputs to your soil. The practice basically builds upon the idea that different types of crops require different levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to grow well. Fertility rotation breaks crops into four categories: leaf, root, flowering and fruiting based on the part of the plant that you consume (well, most of the time). If you’re practicing fertility rotation you essentially need to rotate through each of the four groups as you plant.

For example: spring lettuce (leaf), could be followed by fall carrots (root), winter clover (flower) and tomatoes (fruit) the following year.

*****

Trying to manage both is enough to make my brain hurt and I’m only on the first year, second season. So far I’ve worked out these successions for my fall planting.

- Radishes (root) => Lettuce (leaf)
- Snow/Snap Peas (fruit) => Radish and winter broccoli (root, flower)
- Lettuce (leaf) => overwintering Carrots (root)
- Broccoli (flower) => fall Shelling Peas (fruit)
- Peppers (fruit) => Kale, Chard (leaf)
- Potatoes (root) => overwintering Onions, Garlic (leaf)

Now I’m working on what to plant where for the overwintering onions and garlic and the spring plan for 2009 so that I can determine which winter cover crops should go where.

I’ve got a lead on this chicken plucker, used. Anyone got any insight into whether a tabletop one is really reasonable for 50 chickens at a time? And whether this one is any good? The info online is scarce and we always used a big industrial looking one when I was a kid…

It’s the Dux Table Top chicken plucker.

Are you still here? It’s always interesting to see what you’ll return to after a week’s vacation.

This time around the finds included: 2 dead baby chicks, 3.75 pounds of peas, 4 pounds of bush beans, 5 BIG heads of broccoli, a million tiny green tomatoes and other sundry things. If I’d known how far behind the garden would be I would have asked Mike if we could take our summer vacation earlier in June. Oh well.

Lucy’s first egg hatched just as we were leaving last Saturday. I gave my mother-in-law, Sharon, a heads up to check on her when she came by on Sunday. On Sunday she heard peeping, on Tuesday she heard none but Lucy was still sitting. We were home for 24 hours starting Thursday night and when I checked on her I found two dead chicks and 6 unhatched eggs. I’m not sure if she didn’t get off the nest and get them food and water or if another bird attacked and killed them.

Goes to show that you should always look at the calendar to see if you’ll be in town when the eggs hatch before you humor a broody hen. I’m not sure that it would have made any difference if I’d been here except that I would perhaps have been keeping a slightly closer eye on the goings on than Sharon could.

To humor Lu, who’s still sitting on a now empty nest (the unhatched eggs were duds), I had the hatchery add 5 day old Welsummer pullet chicks (not the hatchery I’m using) to the broiler chick shipment coming this week. The last thing we need is more hens, but I’ll figure something out later.

As for the garden, wow!

I picked every shelling pea I could before we left to try to get ahead of it but it wasn’t enough. I picked a gallon of them (unshelled) on Thursday and another gallon plus today. It took me more than an hour to shell them all and it came out to 3.75 pounds of shelled peas - or almost enough to fill a gallon ziplock bag. I’ll be freezing most of them tomorrow night - anyone have any tips for the best way to do that?

The bush beans went crazy while we were gone, which I knew would happen. I picked 2.5 pounds when we got home Thursday and another 1.5 pounds tonight. And that’s just off the beginning of the first section. I think the freezer is going to be full of green beans!

I thought that the broccoli wasn’t coming for another couple of weeks, but I was wrong. There are a number of really big heads out there and some smaller ones still working on it. I think I’ll be giving broccoli away again as I don’t want any more in the freezer. Next year I will do a better job of staggering it’s planting times and I’ll plant less.

There are baby cucumbers forming, although I think I made a mistake putting the cucumbers where they are. They’re being shaded by the monster heirloom tomatoes on one side and the pole beans on the other. We’ll take what we get this year but I think I’ll be buying most of my cucumbers for pickles. Bummer, but that’s what happens with a first garden and a spatially challenged gardener (I didn’t think about height when I laid things out).

The pumpkin vines are taking over the world and I spent some time today beating them back with a hoe. They have quite a bit of room to spread and can have the pathways to a certain extent, but I have to be able to get to the bush beans…

The corn has tassels peaking out, the Brussels sprouts are forming the very earliest sprouts, the peppers have tiny green fruits, my solitary tomatillo has the first papery pods forming, the leeks are putting on weight, the Walla Walla sweets have fallen over, the carrots are going gangbusters, the potatoes are starting to die back and there are a bazillion tiny green tomatoes on every vine. Wow!