Fall on the Farm

The cool weather is finally setting in, and there are changes all around. The trees are bursting into beautiful colors, one last chorus before they all fall to the earth. This morning I went outside and stood in the garden and just listened to the sounds of the chipping sparrows, song sparrows, house sparrows, blue jays, nuthatches and many other birds. I could smell wood burning, I assume that is someone's attempt to ward off the chilly air. Soon there will be a frost so it is time to think about covering the roses and cutting the herbs one last time before putting them to bed for the winter. We have acquired two goats, and they have so graciously mowed down my garden of all weeds so I can think about planting some cool weather crops now. The harvest this year was good despite the lack of rain. Peppers were abundant, as were the McIntosh apples. There were so many apples that the branches had to bend almost to the ground under the weight of them! The tomatoes did well, and we had some lettuce as well. The potatoes did not produce as much as we had hoped because the potato beetle got them again, but we did enjoy eating them. This year we ordered all blue and red gold. The red gold are creamy and so yummy, and the blue are great for making fries, chips and mashed potatoes. The flowers and herbs did well, and I was so pleased.

Each day as I walk out and just take in the sights around me, like the six black fuzzy baby ducks that hatched, or the chickens who come up to me and talk to me, the sun coming over the mountian, or the moon lighting up the night I am just in awe and wonder of all the blessings that farm life has been. I can't imagine any other life now. There are times when I miss home and some of the things that city life has to offer, and I will always miss the ocean but this is where I belong. Here in the midst of roosters crowing, hens laying, birds singing, and food growing. Here I will live and grow and discover and learn and pass it all on to my children. This is the good life.

Warm Days on The Farm

This morning I got up and went straight out into the garden. I went out just after ten and it was about 70 degrees out and starting to feel humid. I started to move pieces of wood around to mark around what will soon be the watermelon garden. Meghan helped me. She is so funny, she loves to help in the garden. I had to move these 6 foot long wood poles and she grabbed one end while I got the other. She also helps me pull weeds in the strawberry garden, which will be next to the watermelons. On the way by something red caught my eye. There were cherries on the cherry tree! Perfect little red cherries! I was so excited. Meghan wanted to eat them, and I was trying to explain to her that they weren't ripe yet, so they wouldn't taste that good. We then went into the garden and I started to pull weeds from the herb bed. She went down to check her potatoes (which she keeps calling tomatoes) and she started yelling because she found two Colorado Potato beetles. Don't worry, the plants have been saved, I squished the bugs with my sandal! Joshua made some horseradish spray by putting leaves of the horse radish into water in a spray bottle and letting it sit in the sun, and that is supposed to help keep the beetles off, so I will have Meghan spray hers potato plants with some the next time we head out there.

I pulled up some radishes, which are shown above, and they are extra spicy even when they are this small. YUM! Radishes are by far one of the easiest things to grow. Even if you don't eat them it is so much fun to grow them with kids who can't wait for things to grow! They are ready to pick within ten days. In the garden there is one tomato that has flowers, there are some florettes showing on the broccoli, there are flowers on the bean plants, some of the shallots that I planted and thought for sure they were dead have come up, the onions are doing great as well. The peppers aren't growing as fast as I would like, but they are doing ok. The corn is coming up, and you can tell which one is the strawberry popcorn because it has dark red stalks. My climbing rose on the side of the house has its first open bud, which is a beautiful pale pink and there are lots of other buds just waiting to open. The climbing rose in the duck area is in full flower and has a wonderful scent to it. The peach trees are doing well, the fruit is about the size of a kiwi fruit. The apple trees are just weighed down with apples, so I am hoping for a great harvest this year. There are grapes on the grapevine, and I still have three grapevines that need planting! And unfortunately the weeds are also doing great so I have hours of weeding ahead of me...but that can wait for tonight when it isn't so warm.

The birds are very active right now. As I sit here writing there is a chipping sparrow carving out large chunks of suet, letting them drop to the ground to eat it, then flying back up to wipe its beak off on the branch. The red winged black birds are also eating the suet, along with the downy woodpeckers, and red bellied woodpeckers. I haven't seen the white or red breasted nuthatches yet but I am hoping they will make an appearance soon. There are Carolina chickadees nesting in a dead tree in the orchard, and the bluebirds are very active, which is great because they eat tons of insects. There are cardinal and robins and grackles and the list could go on and on.

The pond is starting to become covered with duckweed again, and the boys brought home some fish for the pond although I am not sure if any of them survived. The bullfrogs have started singing and the peepers seem to have quieted down now that they have finished announcing "SPRING IS COMING! SPRING IS COMING!" I love watching the changes that happen all over the farm season by season. It reminds me so much of God and how things are new every morning, and how great is His faithfulness! When you live on a farm you get to see those promises unfold in so many ways right in front of your eyes.

Planting Time

Over the weekend I planted out 75 strawberry plants. 5o of them are June bearing, and 25 are everlasting. I planted them carefully and then covered them with a thick blanket of straw because I knew that it would dip into the 30s for the next few nights. I also planted cabbage, peas, beans, radish, rutabega and lettuce in a seperate bed. I covered the beans with straw to protect them from the cold as well. I purchased some Johnny Jump ups and planted them and I also acquired a rosemary and lavendar plant. I still haven't decided how I will design my herb garden yet.

Planting was back breaking work but I felt quite satisfied when I was finished. I am still trying to decide where to till up a new garden, the site that I had wanted to plant is filled with gravel (quite suitable for lavendar) so now I must come up with a new plan. I also need to find a way to fence in the garden to keep the chickens out! They have already been scratching the straw off my strawberry beds and I don't want them to eat all of the seedlings. When the plants are strong and mature I will allow them in the garden on a limited basis to help with bug control.

http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/strawberries/growing.html

http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/1998/3-13-1998/plantsb.html

THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT

Well, there are only two days left until the GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT! Dust off your field guides, and get your binoculars ready to count the birds. See the bottom of the page for links on how to identify birds that you are most likely to see in your backyard.

You can submit your results here:
http://gbbc.birdsource.org/gbbcApps/input

WHAT IS THE GBBC you ask??
The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds.


Participants count birds anywhere for as little or as long as they wish during the four-day period. They tally the highest number of birds of each species seen together at any one time. To report their counts, they fill out an online checklist at the Great Backyard Bird Count web site. As the count progresses, anyone with Internet access can explore what is being reported from their own towns or anywhere in the United States and Canada. They can also see how this year's numbers compare with those from previous years. Participants may also send in photographs of the birds they see. A selection of images is posted in the online photo gallery. In 2007, participants reported a record-breaking 11 million birds of 616 species. They submitted more than 80,000 checklists, an all-time record for the ten years of the count.

Why Count Birds?
Anna's Hummingbird. Photo by JackDoyle, OR, 2007 GBBC participant
Scientists and bird enthusiasts can learn a lot by knowing where the birds are. Bird populations are dynamic; they are constantly in flux. No single scientist or team of scientists could hope to document the complex distribution and movements of so many species in such a short time.We need your help. Make sure the birds from your community are well represented in the count. It doesn't matter whether you report the 5 species coming to your backyard feeder or the 75 species you see during a day's outing to a wildlife refuge.

Your counts can help us answer many questions:
How will this winter's snow and cold temperatures influence bird populations?
Where are winter finches and other “irruptive” species that appear in large numbers during some years but not others?
How will the timing of birds’ migrations compare with past years?
How are bird diseases, such as West Nile virus, affecting birds in different regions?
What kinds of differences in bird diversity are apparent in cities versus suburban, rural, and natural areas?
Are any birds undergoing worrisome declines that point to the need for conservation attention?
Male Wood Duck. Photo by Tim Springer,TX, 2007 GBBC participant
Scientists use the counts, along with observations from other citizen-science projects, such as the Christmas Bird Count, Project FeederWatch, and eBird, to give us an immense picture of our winter birds. Each year that these data are collected makes them more meaningful and allows scientists to investigate far-reaching questions.For highlights of past results, visit the Science Stories section of the GBBC web site.





http://www.whatbird.com/

http://www.birding.com/bird_identification.asp

http://www.wild-bird-watching.com/birds.html

http://davenation.com/birds/

http://www.attractwildbirds.com/identifybirds/most-common.htm


http://www.emporia.edu/ksn/v42n2-february1996/birds.htm

Baby Chicks

We ordered our chicks from Ideal Poultry this year. The customer service over the phone has been excellent so far, and the chicks arrived healthy two days after shipping. We ordered 25 chicks, and we have lost one, and I haven't figured out why she died. I spend a lot of time fussing over them, making sure their water is clean and that they have plenty of food and I also talk to them a lot. Right now we have 8 chickens in the coop, and I love when they follow me around outside looking for treats. They make musical chirps, it is a beautiful sound! I keep them in a refigerator box with pine shavings, a 250 watt light bulb and the box is also next to a baseboard heater which is set on low. There is plenty of room for them to run around, but I would not place more than 25-30 in a box this size. I always make sure to spray our shoes with Lysol when we come in and I always wash my hands when I come in from caring for my chickens outside.
Here is some more information on raising baby chicks!

http://www.kountrylife.com/content/how15.htm

http://www.mypetchicken.com/ebook.aspx?Chapter=4

http://www.upc-online.org/caring_for_chicks.html

http://www.strombergschickens.com/stock/chick_care.php

Cleaning the Chicken Coop

Winter is a good time to clean out the coop. The weather is cold and I think it makes it easy to tolerate this sometimes unpleasant chore. I didn't mind doing it, I actually enjoy chores around the farm. I love my chickens and I love giving them a nice clean place to lay their eggs, sleep and eat. They don't spend too much time in the coop, because we let them out every day to roam around the farm.

We are planning to make some renovations to the coop. The hen that you see in the picture is sitting on the loft, and I want to change the area underneath the loft into a nursery area for baby chicks, or for a hen and chicks in case any of my hens go broody. I am also going to build nest boxes and we will need another roost too. I can't wait to order more chicks! I am reading a great book right now by one of my favorite authors Carol Ekarius called Storeys Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds. There are lots of great photos and information on chickens. We have decided that we are going to order more laying hens, more broilers to eat and maybe even a few chickens that are rare. Here are some web sites about chicken coops!

http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/poultry/factsheets/10.html

http://www.demesne.info/Garden-Help/Keep-Chickens/Planning-Coops.htm

http://www.mybackyardchickenfarm.com/chickencoop.html

http://www.henspa.focuspage.com/Henspa%20Features.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Build-a-Chicken-Coop---6-Crucial-Elements-on-Building-a-Chicken-House&id=477219

http://backyardchickens.com/coopdesigns.html

http://www.mypetchicken.com/