Floods, spiders and frog cakes - oh my

It has been a crazy few weeks - travel for work, flooding rains, "high water" chickens rescues, my daughter's birthday party, a new smoker and some new recipes!

First - the floods. When hurricane Hermine hit the gulf coast, she kept coming inland as a tropical storm and hit San Antonio and Boerne dead on. We had two days of pouring rain and strong winds. For the most part my yard stays fairly dry, but the run off runs down the fence behind the chicken coops. The big girls were fine in their coop - most of the run stayed dry and when the wind started they could go up into the hen house and stay nice and dry. The little girls didn't do as well in their mini-coop. The water pooled up around it and the wind was blowing rain into the opening if the little house - so they were not staying dry. In the picture that is water from the fence to the edge of the driveway - a muddy little mini lake. When I realized the water was getting too deep, I tried dragging the coop forward to higher ground and turning it to avoid the wind - but it wasn't going to work, so I brought the little girls into the garage and put them in their original small dog kennel for a few days. They were crowded but at least they were dry. I was soaked but they were nice and dry :)

The yard clean up was a bit of a chore but once everything dried out I was able to get everything put back in order. In the process of pruning one of the Butterfly bushes in my front yard I ran across this lovely garden spider and I had to take her picture and bring the kids out to see her.

We also had a birthday party for my daughter over the weekend. She asked for a pond theme cake with a frog and lilly pads. I struggled a bit with the frog, but in the end I think it turned out pretty well and my daughter and her friends loved it! A few of the mom's suggested I go into the cake business - but I honestly have no idea how to charge for a cake and I'm not sure my figures are good enough, but it is something I am going to think about. Maybe I can do a few more and then hang up my shingle - kids theme cakes - get 'em here!

Eggplant recipes anyone?

The chicks are growing and doing well. They grow so fast. At two weeks they have nearly fully feathered wings and are showing tail feathers. All except Athena (the little black one - bantam Barred Plymouth Rock) - she has barely any feathers anywhere - she is still all fuzz. Sometimes I guess roosters feather out more slowly than hens, but also different breeds seem to develop at slightly different rates - so I am not sure which scenario is in play here but I sure hope Athena doesn't turn out to be a rooster! We had this same concern with Pouf, but right now I think Pouf is a hen, so hopefully Athena is just a late bloomer!

The big girls are really enjoying being out in the yard - but I think they are sad that I had to fence them out of the veggie garden. In this picture Cadbury is in the front (she is a Silver Cuckoo Marans), the Amelia is next and Pouf in the back (both Easter Eggers). Milkshake (also an Easter Egger) is not in this picture but she is usually right there with the other girls grazing in the grass and eating bugs. I have been out of town this week so they have been in their coop all week and I am sure they will be really excited to get out this weekend.

As you can see in the picture from the garden across to the coop the driveway eats up a lot of what could be "pasture" for the girls, but I think I have taken advantage of the space as well as I can at this point so they will just have to be content with the few little strips of grass. I am hoping to get some white clover to grow in some of the bald spots, but it is becoming clear that to give it a chance to get established I will need to fence it off or keep the girls in the coop long enough to get it going.

In the garden, I was able to pick some plums off the tree before I left - they were still a little too green but I was afraid they would fall off before I got home from this trip. I hope Friday morning I have a whole bunch of plums perfect for picking and not a bunch of plums lying in my yard! I also an starting to have black eyed peas (the long skinny pods in the picture below) and I think I will have one or two Japanese Eggplant to pick when I get home. Does anyone have some good, fairly healthy eggplant recipes you can share with me? I have not cooked with it much before so all I can think of right now is either grilled eggplant or maybe make Babba Ganoush out of it. I would appreciate pointers if anyone has them! I also had a few tomatoes on the verge of being ripe that I didn't want to find on the ground after getting home so I picked those before I left and gave them to a friend to let ripen on his counter. They won't be as good as they would be if they ripened on the vine but I figure they must be better than the ones picked totally green that they gas to turn red and then put in the stores!

Happy gardening everyone!

Sunny sunny days

It has been a gorgeous sunny weekend! I got quite a bit of yard work done and did a little harvesting from the garden. The potatoes had all pretty well given up the ghost so I pulled them up and found about 2 pounds of potatoes down in the soil - added to the pound I already dug up and I have to say I think I did pretty well for just 8 plants. I think if I plant some again at the end of the summer I might be able to get a second harvest so they will go on my "try again in the fall" list. :) I also got another huge number of tomatillos - so tonight for dinner the kids and I had some salsa and oven fries courtesy of the garden to go with our dinner.

Soon it looks like I will start getting cucumbers, tomatoes and plums too! The plums are starting to turn a nice rosy color - I am betting I will have a few ready to pick in the next day or so. I am HOPING that next weekend I have enough that I can make some plum jam! I also have some eggplant starting to form and lots of flowers on the yellow squash. I wonder if I could get the kids to eat stuffed squash blossoms? Hmmmm - maybe I will try it later this week if the flowers keep coming at the rate they are now. I did get my daughter to try some sauteed yellow crookneck squash and she liked it - so that is a good addition to the growing list of veggies she enjoys. My son didn't try them - but I am hoping next time I can get him to give them a try.

I finally got some plants into the small raised bed on the corner of my patio and also potted some citronella plants and put them on my back patio. I am hoping I can keep the mosquitoes away from the patio so the kids and I can enjoy it this summer and not get chewed to bits. Even if they don't work 100% - I think they look nice - so the patio is ready for summer.

The chicks are all doing well - with the exception of the Barred Plymouth Rock that was my son's specially chosen chick. She keeps getting "pasty butt" - which means she gets poop stuck in the feathers around her bottom and can't go to the bathroom. So I have been carefully washing her feathers off about once a day hoping to help her get past it - but it has me a little worried. My son will be really upset if she doesn't make it. Other than the pasty butt issue she seems fine - eating and drinking and pecking around in the shavings - so I am hopeful that she will be fine.

Let the harvest begin

After what seems like weeks in the house and away from home, I spent most of the weekend working in the yard and I am so happy. It looks so much better! The Butterfly Bush is starting to bloom and both bushes have really grown a lot and filled in and I think they are going to be gorgeous this year when they are in full bloom.

I also got some new plants in around the mail box - last year I have annuals that burned up - so I went with some perennials this year - Bee Balm and some purple salvia - the tags say deer won't eat them and at my house only the plants at the street edge are usually in danger of being munched - so I am hopeful they will leave the new plants alone. I also have a Satsuma Mandarin in front that nearly burned up last summer and ultimately froze to death over the winter - so I replaced that with a self-pollinating nectarine which should have pretty pink flowers in the spring and of course the added benefit of fruit for the kids and I. It doesn't get a huge amount of sun where I had to put it - so it may not have much fruit but we will hope for the best.

It was also a good weekend for starting the harvest in my garden! I got enough tomatillos along with a handful of cilantro and a tiny red onion that I was able to make some salsa just adding a few store bought tomatoes. My tomatoes are just starting to turn red and I think in another week or two I am going to be overloaded with them - which means canning season will begin! I was a little bummed today because some of my potatoes had turned yellow and looked dead so I went to pull them out and was happy to find a handful of potatoes! The brownish looking things in the picture with the potatoes are from my "Chocolate Cherry" tomato. They are not pretty but the taste ok - although I have to say as tomatoes go they aren't the best so I will skip those next year.

Everything is growing...

The chickens are still getting bigger - and the gardens are growing too. Unfortunately while on a business trip the temperatures went up and the broccoli bloomed so I had to pull it all up and throw it in the composter. The brussel sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower all followed suit - right into the composter. I have to say its a little disappointing that none of those plants produced anything - but if I look at the bright side at least I now know that I need to plant those crops in the fall - not in the spring. Lesson learned.

The cucumbers are starting to work their way up the trellis, the second planting of pole beans (center in this picture) are starting to grow, the fennel is starting to form small bulbs (in front of the pole beans) and the carrots are about 6 inches tall. I am so anxious to actually be able to harvest something it is killing me! We have picked a few snow peas but I really didn't plant enough so the kids are mostly just eating them as garden snacks. I also learned that next year I should probably plant a whole row of them and that I need a taller support structure for them than I tried this year. This garden expansion has no end to learning opportunities :)

So to reintroduce the girls - in front in this picture is Pouf - I think she is a she after all! The "blond" in the middle is Milkshake - you can really see the ruff around her chin in this pic. Amelia is peeking over Milkshake's back - her face is a dark gray and she has a really pronounced ruff that looks like a beard. Maybe Lincoln would have been a better name :) Cadbury is in the back - her feathers are silver in the center with a dark edge around each one. She seems to be the smartest of the four and is usually the first to explore a new treat. Tonight they got horned worms out of the garden - I plucked the little destroyers off the tomatoes and tossed them in the coop. The girls tore into them - a little gross perhaps - but as a friend at work said - it is good revenge!

I hope to get more progress on fences and other things to finish up the yard - but with summer setting in and vacations coming around things may have to go slowly for awhile.

A few more little projects

I decided that I needed a break from power-washing and re-staining the fence, so I stopped by my favorite stone store and picked up a little more flagstone and a few more pieces of limestone chop block. I put the flagstone across the front of the coop - but I didn't get quite enough so I will have to get a little more to finish it up. The chop block went on the end along with a little of the left over dirt from the other raised beds. A quick stop to Home Depot and I got a Jasmine and a few deep red geraniums to make it look a little more finished. The downside is I like it so much that I think I should add another little flower bed on the far end of the coop too!

The chick(ens) and really at home in the coop now - they enjoy the roosts that are outside - in the late afternoon they get some nice sun and the girls like to perch there and sun bathe a little.

I did manage to get some staining done - but I admit I didn't make much progress. I spent a lot of the weekend doing things with the kids - they deserved it after so many weekends of working on the coop and yard and helping care for my mom (she has been recovering from several surgeries the last few months).

This week I have to hit the road for work again, so the staining will have to wait for the weekend. I am hoping to maybe get one side fence done - but it is fairly slow going. I tried using a power sprayer but to be honest I don't think it was a lot faster than just using a paint brush - so I think I will keep working away at it the old fashioned way :)

A New Gate

The gate to enclose my backyard is in! This means that no deer can get in to eat my garden and hopefully fewer stray cats will use my gardens as a litter box!

The problem now is that between the coop and the new gate - my old fence looks pretty shabby. So the next step will be to power wash the old fence and re-stain it. I am hoping to get a little done tomorrow - but it Saturdays are busy with swimming lessons and things so I will have to play it by ear.

In chick news - they finally figured out to go up into their house at night and to come out on their own in the morning. I have to start thinking about a way to divide the house so that the new chicks can go into the house a few weeks after they arrive. The new chicks arrive in one month - two white Silkies, a bantam Barred Plymouth Rock and three more Easter Eggers. The three Easter Eggers are for my mom - they will stay with me until they are big enough to go outside - then they will move into a horse stall at my parents place.

The garden is doing well - I think by next weekend I will have broccoli to harvest! It has been a cool rainy week, so as long as we get one more week like that I think it will keep growing and not bolt. The Chinese Cabbage bolted so I had to pull it all out, and I harvested the two head lettuces I had. They were both very good. I think it will be too hot soon for more lettuce, so I am going to plant pole beans where the lettuces were and maybe radishes and pumpkins where the cabbages were. I hope I can get that all done this weekend, along with the fence work - we will have to see.

My yard doesn't look very nice for pictures right now because the grass is too long - but my lawnmower starter broke so it is in the shop until next week. So please forgive the shabby looking yard in any new pictures in the next week :) I hope I can get it all spiffed up in the next few weeks - when the new babies arrive I really want to have a coop warming and new chick welcome party out in the yard! Wish me luck!

Teenage chickens and veggies galore!

Pouf (on the left) and Milkshake (on the right below) are both showing really pretty coloring. It is hard to see on the picture of Milkshake, but the kind of golden caramel color around her head outlines the edges of her feathers so she has kind of what they call a "laced" pattern. We are still not sure if Pouf is male or female but I'm still thinking maybe male - but only time will tell!

Cadbury is also a laced pattern - she has black feathers with a silver outline. Amelia for all her bravery is rather dull looking - her body is mostly a kind of ashy gray with a sort of golden layer over the gray and then black feathers on her head.

She looks like she is getting kind of a ruff or beard of feathers around her chin- that may give her a bit more style! What lady doesn't look better with a beard! :)

Not only are the chicks growing but so is the garden! It has rained for a week and the garden has been loving it. The asparagus that I planted has shot up so I was able to fill in the bed with dirt around the little stalks and they are ready to just grow for a year and hopefully put down strong roots and have some I can harvest next year. The spears are so thin right now that they are about half the size of a pencil - next year they should be a little bigger. I am so excited to have my own asparagus!

The tomatoes have set tiny fruit the size of a pencil eraser (below right) and there are quarter sized heads of broccoli also forming on several of the plants. The tomatillos are loaded with flowers and are also setting fruit - that is the little green thing that looks like a paper lantern. I love tomatillo salsa and chicken enchiladas verde so hopefully I will be making some with my own tomatillos this year! I need to find out what to do about the plum tree - the branches are so loaded with fruit that they are bent way over - so I think I need to probably removes some fruit from each branch to keep the branches from breaking as they ripen and to allow the tree to put more energy into the remaining fruit. My daughter is thrilled - she was very disappointed last year when we didn't get any plums.

Lovely spring day in the garden

I finally got back out into the garden today after nearly a week cooped up in the house. Who knew a silly thing like a broken nail could have such a big impact! On the last day of building out the hen house, when picking up one of the pieces of plywood, I slipped and it fell and snapped my finger nail about half way down my finger. I happen to have acrylic over my nails, so it didn't tear my nail off totally, but hurt nonetheless. Anyway - I put a band aid on it and went about my work. Tuesday night the finger with the broken nail was hot, red and throbbing - never a good sign. I went to the doctor and it turned out that I had a staph infection from the skin breaking under the nail. Anyway it was several days before I could get my finger back into a glove so I could get back out in the garden, but today I was finally able to get back into the dirt! YAY!

On Thursday I had sprinklers moved around a little and raised some up to accommodate the new raised beds and now all the beds can be watered on an automated schedule which will be much easier than having to hand water all summer. With the sprinklers moved I was also able to get the asparagus root stock planted in the corner bed. I would post a picture but it looks like shallow dirt at this point - hopefully in a week or two there will be more to see. I didn't realize it but when you plant asparagus they recommend barely covering the roots and leaving just the top of the crown exposed, then as the shoots start to emerge you keep adding dirt until it is about 6 inches deep. So right now the little roots went in near the bottom of the bed and I covered them, and will gradually fill up the bed as they grow - if they grow. Wish me luck!

This week I have to spend away from home to help care for my mom - who has a broken pelvis - so probably no new updates until the end of the week when my new gate goes in and the yard is finally enclosed.

The chicks are still doing well, but they seem to struggle a little with the ladder - so they haven't been utilizing the run much unless we help them down and then back up again at night. I may need to adjust it somehow so that it isn't as steep, but as they get bigger it might be OK. I guess we will just have to keep helping them and see if they can figure it out.

Moving Day!

Moving day has arrived! The coop is all stained, the roosts are in and the ladder is done. The picture on the right shows the "fully furnished" version of the hen house with paper shavings for bedding and the roosts in place.








The chicks were nervous at first but very soon after being put in the hen house they found their way down the ladder and were pecking around in the grass and checking out the dust bath we made for them (under the house in the white block area). I am so thankful to be done enough to have them outside and get my living room back to the way it was meant to be - chicken free! I still need to build nest boxes and add them, but these girls won't start laying for at least another 20 weeks so I have some time for those!




The garden is also growing like crazy and starting to really look like a garden - not just little green shoots coming up. The mesculin that was just a few little leaves poking up into the air is now nearly ready to harvest. I am hoping to harvest some of it for a family dinner on Sunday.


The picture of the lone flower on the plum tree that I posted back in early March? Now the tree is covered with tiny green fruit that with luck will ripen into delicious plums. I say hopefully because last year with the drought we had the tiny little green plums all fell off - but there are so many this year that I have hope.

I have people coming to reposition some sprinklers to accommodate the raised beds later this week and the gate to enclose my yard at my alley entrance is scheduled for next week, but right now I am just going to enjoy being done with the coop!

Ouch!

It was a long hard weekend and I am missing a good portion of skin off of a few knuckles and have some nice scratches, but the good news is that the hardware cloth/wire mesh is all on the coop! I also was able to get the door built and the mesh on the door. My dad came today to help put the upper section of hardware cloth on which was a huge help - it is pretty hard to hold up a big length of the hardware cloth by yourself while nailing in poultry staples - so I cam really glad he was able to help. After he was gone I finished up the lower wire, my son and daughter helped stain the door (which still needs to be hung) and I back filled around the coop piers. I decided behind the coop by the fence I should put in some pavers to keep it from being a weedy mess since the space is too narrow to mow and would be a bear to weed whip. The limestone pavers and crushed granite I used to fill in between the was left over from a garden project last year and I need one more bag of granite, but I think it is going to look very nice. I have some pavers not too far from this around one side of the house - so at some point I may connect the two areas to try to tie it in and make it look a little more finished.

I did some work on the garden as well, things are doing very nicely and growing really well - I am hopeful that I may start to see florets on the broccoli soon. I did a little weeding and spread a layer of compost around all the plants in the fall veggie bed to add a little more nutrients to the soil to see if I can't kick those veggies into production! I have a lot of yard clean up around the beds to catch up on once the coop is done - but for now I am focusing on the coop and keeping the veggies going - the rest is going to have to wait. Although I did manage to at least mow my front yard Saturday so it doesn't look like I have also taken to growing my own hay!

I have to do some traveling this coming week for work, so other than what I can get done tomorrow night after work I have to wait until the weekend to be able to do any more work on the coop. I am determined to get the exterior siding on the hen house next weekend, but I think I am going to have to call in the reinforcements to get that all done in one weekend. There is still a lot to do after the siding goes on, but I am hopeful that the chicks will move out of the house and into their new house by April 10. I love watching them grow and watching their antics, but the dust in my living room is unreal. I dust one day and three days later there is a layer of dust on everything that makes it look like my house got hit by a dust devil.

I am exhausted and will be happy for a long nights sleep tonight - I am hoping to get the door hung tomorrow evening, but I also have to pack from my trip so I will have to play it by ear. Wish me luck everyone!

Happy gardening!

Wired - but not for sound

Well, not totally wired, but at least it is a start. The hardware cloth is on to the bottom half of the front of the coop. I need to cut out around the door, but figure that I can do that once I finish stapling it down the rest of the way around. So for those of you who haven't built a chicken coop before, I will share that you can't use a staple gun, not even with large staples apparently. You have to buy special "poultry net" staples and hammer them in, so of course they bend and mash and don't all go in straight. For someone as Type "A" as myself bent mashed staples are really annoying, but considering how many of them I have to put in, I am learning to give up on the idea of perfection and go with "its good enough." :) I am hoping that I can finish wiring all the way around the bottom half tomorrow, between swimming lessons and other things planned. Hopefully the top half on Sunday when I have recruited my dad to come help again.




The chicks are still growing and eating like mad and I think I have basically two more weeks max before they outgrow their new larger brooder, so I need to pick up the pace a little on the coop. The picture on the right is Pouf - I think she (he?) is funny with her (for now I will go with her being a hen) big cheek tufts and the little light colored feather "spikes" on the top of her head - almost like little horns!



The spring flowers are starting in the yard which is a nice touch of spring too - the first rose bud is on my roses, the irises are blooming, the salvia (center picture) is blooming (which will hopefully mean hummingbirds soon) and the mountain laurel with its grape candy scented blossoms (picture on the right below) is also adding color to the yard.