And then there were four

This weekend Milkshake started laying! So now all four of the original girls are laying. The eggs in the picture from left to right are from Cadbury, Milkshake, Amelia and Pouf. Amelia's are the most sage green of the eggs and Pouf's are bluest. The colors look a little washed out in this picture - the eggs look almost white, but they are on a white towel to help show the color.

I also finished converting the dog kennel into coop number 2 for the little girls. I am not sure what to do when they start laying - but hopefully they will lay in the "house" part of their coop - but I am betting I will need to modify the interior to have a nest box in half and a roost in half. I took some new pictures of them (at the end of this post) - they are 12 weeks old this week, so I have a few more weeks - probably about 8 befor they start laying, so maybe by then the big girls won't pick on them too much if they are all together. I keep hoping I can get them incorporated into the big coop - but for now this works and it will work in the future when we have new chicks to integrate. Hopefully that won't be for awhile, but I guess we are ready when the time comes.

The inside seedlings are progressing - nearly all of them have sprouted at this point so now they just need to grow for a few weeks inside while the worst of the summer heat passes outside. My plan right now is to move them outside the first or second week in September - hopefully by then the temps will be back down into the 80s.

Not much of a post today - I need to get out and get the yard mowed and the grass trimmed - its a disaster from two weekends in a row with busy mornings and afternoons that are too hot to be outside!

Green eggs and ham!

Amelia finally came through and laid her first egg this afternoon! The kids were checking pretty much every hour and came running in the house yelling "Amelia laid a green egg! Amelia laid a green egg!" It is very exciting. So since I just bought a freezer full of pasture raised pork - now I can really have green eggs (or egg) and ham. ;) Now we have two more Easter Eggers to start laying and we could get more fun colors from them. Green or light brown are most likely - but I am still hoping for a blue or maybe pinkish egg. If everyone lays a different color egg then I can tell who has laid and who hasn't each day. I think Pouf (picture below)will be next - she started the egg squat today and has been checking out the nest boxes, so I hope in the next week she will start. I think Milkshake is still a few weeks behind the others, but we will see.

In gardening news I have seeds sprouting in my living room - the bok choy, broccoli and Brussel sprouts are all starting to come up so in a few weeks (hopefully the first week of September) I will have seedlings to transplant into the garden. I am hoping to also start some mache and lettuce soon. I'm wondering if maybe I can just grown those under the light year round - so when it is hot in the summer I can still have freshly grown lettuces. I have to decide if I want to give up that part of my living room permanently I guess :)

So with luck by this time next week I will be getting three eggs a day on average! The waiting is the hardest part!

Still waiting

Amelia has been singing the "egg song" and doing the "egg squat" for over a week now and still no eggs! Every morning we go check hoping for two eggs but so far there is only one egg each day from Cadbury. With luck we will get a blue or green egg soon!

The good news is that the girls were all able to free range today so the little girls were able to come out of their kennel. They still are too nervous to venture far out of the coop and mostly stay inside, but at least everyone can peacefully co-exist (for the most part) when the big girls can get out into the yard. So - at least on weekends everyone is "integrated" - although I admit it is certainly tenuous at times. I am hoping that with a few more days of everyone being in and out of the coop that they will all start to be more used to each other and not fight on the days they have to share the coop.

Other than some yard work to clean some worn out dill and tomatillos out of the garden today I decided that I should probably start a few veggies inside to move out to the garden in a month when it starts to cool off. So today I set the grow lights up and started seeds for broccoli, brussel sprouts and some baby bok choy. I have seeds for cauliflower too - so hopefully I can start some of that when these get going. If not I will just buy transplants for those this year. I also need to get some cabbage, onions, garlic and hopefully shallots. I tried some shallots this spring but I guess it was too late in the spring and they didn't produce anything, so hopefully fall planted shallots will do better. It seems strange to talk about "fall planting" when it is nearly 100 degrees here and the coming week is probably going to be our hottest of the year so far. But I guess starting a few things inside - with a transplant date in September seems reasonable.

One other accomplishment of the day - but it seems a little silly to even mention it - I canned one pint of spicy dilly green beans. Yes - that's right - only 1 pint. My beans are producing but not very well (my mom thinks its too much nitrogen in the soil) - lots of green leaves but very few beans. So since there were not enough to actually make a side dish for dinner, I stuffed 'em in a jar and pickled them. I have not made pickled beans before, but I had amazing ones at Jazz Fest in New Orleans a few years ago so I wanted to try to make some myself. Ok - I grant you that they were in a Bloody Mary and it was at the end of the day - but honestly - they were really, really good. I can only hope mine will be as good!

So another weekend is over - and I head back to work tomorrow. I wish I could just garden, can and bake every day - but considering my garden has not produced much this year I guess I'm going to need to keep the day job a little (ok - a lot) longer! :)

Eggs!!!!!

WOW! I guess I must have counted months wrong because we just got our first eggs! I didn't see any when I put the girls away last night, but this evening when I went out there were TWO little brown eggs! I am thinking that maybe they are from Cadbury - our Silver Cuckoo Marans (in the picture below). Marans are supposed to lay dark chocolate brown eggs. These are not very dark, but I understand that Marans egg color darken as the hen matures. Eggs also typically get larger as the hens mature - so while these two eggs are pretty small we can expect larger ones as the months go on.

If they are both from Cadbury, she must have laid one last night when I put them into the coop for the night - and maybe the other one today sometime. I didn't see either egg when I let them out this morning, so maybe I have two girls who started at the same time? I honestly have no idea how to figure out who laid them! The Easter Eggers will hopefully lay blue or green eggs, but sometimes they also lay brown eggs so these could be from one of the "EE"s. Any chicken people out there who can guess at which breed these came from? One looks like it has a stripe around the middle and is darker on the ends than the center. You can see that in the picture above. I included the quarter so you can judge the size better.

Is it dorky to be SO excited over eggs? :)

Moving time for the new chicks

Sorry it has been so long for a decent update! The good news is - the chicks moved out into the coop. They are still in a little dog kennel to keep them safe from the big girls but they are out of my living room - YAY!!! The picture on the left is the day they moved in - they are in the house part of the coop. Each day when I am home I move them out either into the coop run or out on the grass - still in the kennel - but that way they can peck around in the grass and sand and start to pick up grit and get used to the routine. They really enjoy the time out on the grass. I am a little nervous about letting them all out together because since Athena (the black and white Barred Plymouth Rock) and Lilly (the white Silkie) are bantam breeds they will be much smaller than the big girls so I think they will be safer if they have a little more size before they are all together.

The big girls are really enjoying their free time in the yard. I am lucky to be able to work from home so in the morning before I get started I let them out of the coop to roam around the yard. I check them at lunch and then lock them back into the coop in the evening when I take them the table scraps (mostly just the starch and veggies). They usually come running because they are eager to see whats for dinner each night :)

I have about 6-8 weeks to go before I start getting eggs and I can't wait! Since we will average about 12 eggs every 3 or 4 days I decided I better come up with some ways to use up all those eggs so I started practicing some egg heavy recipes this weekend. I have to say the kids loved it Sunday when we had a Dutch Baby for breakfast (uses 3 whole eggs) and then home made ice cream for dessert after dinner (6 egg yolks). Of course I still have to use up the remaining 6 egg whites, but I have a few ideas - maybe Angel Food cake? Baked Alaska? Meringues? Going to try to use them up tomorrow night. I will keep you posted!

Video clip

My daughter was bored today and decided to take my new toy (iPhone 4) out into the yard to shoot a little video of the chickens. The little girls are still separated so they won't get picked on but so far everyone seems to be getting along fine. I will keep them separated for probably another week and then let them all be together. But even in their little crate they enjoy being out in the grass and being able to peck around. I have some other pictures and will try to get them posted soon - I know I am terribly behind on updates - summer vacations and chores have kept me too busy.

In gardening news I am sad to say I don't have much to report - I seem to have an uncanny ability to kill squash plants which is odd considering most people I know get so many they don't know what to do with them. On mine the stems all seem to split near the ground and they dry out and die. It isn't a beetle - I read they can split from uneven watering and we have had some periods of heavy rain so maybe that is what caused it? I'm not really sure but I planted a few more and am hoping they make it. I am getting lots of black eyed peas - now I just need to make some soup or something to use them up :) I got enough cucumbers to make a few jars of pickles before leaving for vacation and got back to plants that look very unhappy so I am hopeful that those weren't the last cucumbers I will get this year. Our temperatures are in the mid-90s so it is pretty hot - I may have to wait for a fall crop to get many more.

Sorry for the lack of pictures - I will do my best to get some new ones posted this weekend.

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!

Free rangin'

Well, it has been much too long since I have gotten out in the yard and the grass needs mowing and the pecan flowers(?) need to be raked up - but there was no time for that today. But I got out long enough this afternoon to let the girls out to see how they would do "free-ranging" in the yard. It took them some time to build up their courage enough to come out and when they did they didn't go far from the door. They haven't figured out their way around much yet so when one wandered in and the others were outside there was quite a bit of anxiety caused by the separation but eventually they figured it out. I think I will have to keep an eye on them as they get braver and go farther into the yard because it only took them about 5 minutes to mow down the bean plant that was growing by the corner of the coop. It was a Lima bean plant that my daughter planted at school and since I don't like Lima beans at all I have no sadness over the girls munching away on it. Besides - greens are good for them :)



I still need to plant something in the bed at the far end of the coop. I am wondering what I can plan that might stand a chance of survival pitted against the four of them and I am thinking not much! But maybe if I rig up some kind of wire cover to protect seedlings they could graze on the green bits that come through the wire. I definitely need to put up a barrier so when they get brave enough to cross the driveway they don't eat up my whole garden.

It was fun to see them out - I think they enjoyed pucking at bugs and seeds - but they didn't go near the big fuzzy caterpillar that went right by them. Guess the fuzzy ones aren't a flavor they like :)

The new chicks come next week - hopefully Wednesday so I will post new pics then and with luck and weather on my side maybe I can even get my yard cleaned up enough for a few more pics and updates. I have empty spaces in the garden and I am feeling the need to plant more ... but the question is more of what?