Today, a bit of an egg disaster, around 20 eggs down, by far the biggest single egg loss in my brief egg-collecting career. The girls choose to do most of their laying in one nest box (there are six in a row), so there’re usually around a couple of dozen eggs in there, conveniently waiting for pick-up. This time, there were only 8 or 10, all slimy with egg white and coated with shavings and droppings, with tiny bits of eggshell thoroughly mixed into the rest of the litter. What I think happened was, one of the eggs somehow broke, the girls jammed into the egg-packed nest in a feeding frenzy, their jostling and mad pecking broke some more, increasing the frenzy and the breaking, and so forth. As I was cleaning up the rest, one egg slipped and cracked, and half a dozen chickens went crazy slurping it up. Man, do they love eating eggs… I tossed the rest into a bucket (whereI later took the pic)… I don’t expect this to be a new regular thing, as the girls don’t seem to be interested in actually trying to break eggs…though I’m sure they could learn.
Hitting the books
The first new seed catalog came in three weeks ago, but the first from the two seed companies I mostly use arrived on Friday. Today, I took a quick look, checking to see what’s new, but mainly making sure that reliable stand-bys are still around. Dusky eggplant, that manages to come through in the craziest conditions. Rich, earthy Bloomsdale spinach (open pollinated!). Earlivee sweet corn for its speed and it’s more-corn-less-sugar, not-overly-sweet taste (it’s…gone!). Early Dividend broccoli and First Crop beets, planted in spring for their reliably extreme earliness. The shortlist goes on. Most of ’em are still there! The ones that fall off tend to be open-pollinated varieties, as they make way for “better” hybrids… These catalogs are convenient, but I wonder when I’ll get around to seed-saving for real. Progress!
News, off!
Tiny farming tip: to be happier, healthier, and more productive, in and out of the garden, stop following the NEWS! I quit around three years ago, and never felt better. I got sucked back in last September by a tasty combo of Obama, Sarah Palin, and a side order of global economic meltdown. Who could resist? But now, the election’s long over, and CNN is still on in the background, like a radio… Until today.
Today, for no real reason, I decided to actually watch the news for a while. Started with some Terror in India, a little Baghdad Shootout, and then, the main course, a special investigative report, “America’s Killer Diet”… Wow. Segment after segment of bizarre, surreal and mildly disturbing bits of bad-food trivia. Healthy kid moves from Jamaica to the US, discovers junk food, and gains 30 lbs in his first year (concerned mom intervenes by actually COOKING). Secretary of Agriculture agrees that, if Americans tried to eat the recommended daily five servings of veg, there wouldn’t be enough to go around. Revealed: just about all of the food in America is really made out of CORN (and soy). Twinkies-maker says: “The core ingredients of Twinkies have been the same for decades: flour, sugar and water. Deconstructing the Twinkie is like trying to deconstruct the universe.” Spokeswoman for an urban farming project in Chicago explains that, in her neighborhood, you can easily buy a gun, but you CAN’T FIND AN ORGANIC TOMATO. What’s THAT about? What does that even mean? Off goes the news! Again. Phew! :)
Chickens in snow
These chickens like snow! The eight remaining roosters have been out and about in some fairly wild weather, making their way through 6″ (15cm) blankets of snow, gusting winds and absolutely freezing cold. They always have the option of heading out of the little door in their half of the chickenhouse, or not. I’ve only kept it closed in the morning a couple of times, when the weather was ridiculously nasty. They’ve only stayed inside once by choice, on not such a bad day, which was a bit of a mystery (maybe snow had built up at their doorway that I didn’t notice). They still roam all over—chicken tracks just about everywhere in the barnyard snow—but tend to hang out on exposed ground, like around the small stand of trees in front of the farmhouse. So far, no frostbite and no frozen feet falling off. They’re pretty tough birds…
Hardy berry
These guys are pretty impressive in the low maintenance department, definitely the toughest, hardiest potted plants I’ve known. They arrived out of the blue last January, about 20 of them. After a bit of coddling under the fluorescent lights along with the spring seedlings, I set them outside in front of the Milkhouse, and there they’ve sat, untended, in 4″ (10cm) plastic pots, for the last seven months. In recent weeks, they’ve been basically frozen solid in their pots for much of the time. And here they are, leaves glossy, setting a couple of berries… Cool!
What are they? Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), aka teaberry, a small, creeping evergreen shrub with minty, wintergreen-tasting berries (the leaves and stems can be made into a medicinal tea, and the plant also produce wintergreen oil, used as a flavoring). They’re healthy, but they’ve only set a couple of berries amongst the remaining six plants (I gave away the rest). Hmmm… I’m comfortable with the many varieties I grow of 40 or so veggies and herbs, I’m still getting used to several varieties of a dozen types of cut flower, and I’m working on ID-ing ALL of the various grasses and weeds around here. WINTERGREEN is barely on the map… So many names, so much to know…! UPDATE: Case in point… Thanks to comments below, these guys were properly identified, I’d thought they were winterberry… I’ve corrected the post!
Stacking cages
The backdrop of snow turned the puzzle of sorting tomato cages into a bit of abstract art. I don’t use these exclusively, most of the 500-600 plants each year are tied to stakes or sprawled. But the cages get used, too. After every season so far, I’ve been determined to move beyond these lightweight wire gizmos to a more robust tomato support solution, but come spring and the transplanting rush, I end up with even more of ’em. They work great for the first eight weeks after transplanting, but once the toms really get going, they’re kinda useless, too short and not strong enough to hold up the plants. At the end of the season, they have to be hacked and torn out of the tangle of dead toms. And then, they have to be bent back in shape and stacked, tossing the ones where the rings have broken from the spines. I’d left this last little task till today, and now it’s done: the before (above) and after, around 200 cages, stacked and ready to store. Next season, something new!
Chickens at work
The Shaver Red Sex-Link laying hens are doing fine in the fairly chilly chickenhouse, eating up a storm, looking and sounding healthy and happy, and producing away. They’ve been in artificial light days for the last couple of months, about 16 hours made up of daylight extended by a 60W bulb on a timer that’s on till 11pm. I’m curious whether at least some of the girls would really stop producing for the winter if the light dropped below 15 hours for even a single day. I don’t actually want to see it happen, but what if there’s a power failure? Hmmm… Kerosene lamp? In any case, fall egg production has so far stayed steady at about 20-23 a day for the 25 girls… Chickens are easy, you don’t have to know a lot to raise them casually, but there is a lot you could know. And of course, the more you know, the less you need! My winter chicken reading is Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.