Garden start-up, and chickens
Posted by Talena Kraus on Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Everything still looks pretty snowy, so I thought I'd start a sort of "how does your garden grow" series and try to post a photo or two every week or so of the garden or other farm stuff so that you can see how things look before you actually get your produce in late June. I will also put up a photo or two of the seed starting process, because there really is a whole lot that happens before you get your produce; you can't just stuff seeds into the ground in rows and end up with lovely productive plants.
I left some plants in the garden in fall, essentially to decompose and return organic matter to the soil over winter so that the soil isn't depleted. Because we have a ready supply of horse manure that's been "naturally spread over much of the property", or stocked up over the past few decades, the soil is pretty fertile (and if you need fertilizer, let me know!), but it's still a good habit. It's also a good idea to rotate your crops, which I will discuss in a later post as it kind of needs its own whole section.
As I have got our eggs on offer as well now, I thought I'd let you know about the poultry. It's a small start, like the CSA, so last May I got 11 chickens and 3 ducks. One duck didn't make it (stroke, I think?), but all the other adorable fluffy little chicks are now happy egg-laying hens, one female duck and one devoted male duck. The egg production therefore peaks at 11 chicken eggs and one duck egg per day, and as it's currently winter it's not peak production - but they still do quite well! They are free range, which for me means that I open the door between their stall and the outdoors around sunrise and close it around sunset. They go in and out as they please, and after the first week or so, they have been going inside when it's close to dark anyway, so I don't have to herd them anymore. I make sure they have ample feed and water, and they got lots of handling as chicks so they run to me when they see me - usually because they hope I have food, but whether I do or not I can still pick them up, pet them, and take eggs out from under them.
I have a host of entertaining chicken stories too, which I will post here and there eventually. For now, apparently I need to shut down my browser to update my Flash so that I can actually post pictures instead of just writing about it. So hopefully the next post will have images and be up later today!
I left some plants in the garden in fall, essentially to decompose and return organic matter to the soil over winter so that the soil isn't depleted. Because we have a ready supply of horse manure that's been "naturally spread over much of the property", or stocked up over the past few decades, the soil is pretty fertile (and if you need fertilizer, let me know!), but it's still a good habit. It's also a good idea to rotate your crops, which I will discuss in a later post as it kind of needs its own whole section.
As I have got our eggs on offer as well now, I thought I'd let you know about the poultry. It's a small start, like the CSA, so last May I got 11 chickens and 3 ducks. One duck didn't make it (stroke, I think?), but all the other adorable fluffy little chicks are now happy egg-laying hens, one female duck and one devoted male duck. The egg production therefore peaks at 11 chicken eggs and one duck egg per day, and as it's currently winter it's not peak production - but they still do quite well! They are free range, which for me means that I open the door between their stall and the outdoors around sunrise and close it around sunset. They go in and out as they please, and after the first week or so, they have been going inside when it's close to dark anyway, so I don't have to herd them anymore. I make sure they have ample feed and water, and they got lots of handling as chicks so they run to me when they see me - usually because they hope I have food, but whether I do or not I can still pick them up, pet them, and take eggs out from under them.
I have a host of entertaining chicken stories too, which I will post here and there eventually. For now, apparently I need to shut down my browser to update my Flash so that I can actually post pictures instead of just writing about it. So hopefully the next post will have images and be up later today!
