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Saturday, July 14, 2012

Update

Well ... so much has been going on that I have not had much time to post about the gardens or the chickens. here is a very quick update ...

City garden is doing GREAT :) :) we are so thankful. Got lots of beet, spinach and kale seeds. Also lettuce seeds. LOTS. We might try to sale some at the farmers market. We'll see. We ripped up what needed to be ripped up and planted some green beans, more kale, and cabbage.

Country garden is doing TERRIBLE! :) :) One of the boys left a gate open and the cows came in and helped themselves to the corn :) They had a little fun rolling a bale of hay around in the green beans too. What they didn't ruin, the grasshoppers did. :) We dug the potatoes early but got a pretty good harvest anyway. The green beans ... nothing much at all ... so many rows ... no beans. Oh well. That's why we planted some more at the city garden. Maybe we'll have a few yet?! We did get some NoLo grasshopper biological bait. The instructions were for "about 8 grasshoppers per square yard." Uhhuh. We all got a great laugh out of that. David said this is the worst he's seen it in a while. Why? probably because we did not have a hard frost last winter. There are THOUSANDS of hoppers per square yard at the country garden!!! We learned a lot though. The tomatoes out there are hanging in there but the hoppers are now on them. Had to pick the squash early too. Live and learn.

Chickens: our girls laid their first egg over night :) They are all doing well and noone has died even though it's been terribly hot and miserable. They seem happy and they still like us. They are good at jumping/flying over the fences, so the boys are making a chicken tractor for them.

Farmers Market: something new we started last month. We've been selling mostly bread and jams but a few veggies too. Everyone else has a LOT of nice veggies and no bread or jams, so we thought to just stick with things noone else is offering. It seems to be going well so far.

Brianna got a new camera (well, my dad and a brother helped pay for her new camera) to replace the old one that had a mind of its own. She is so thankful! Here are a few shots from that:

jam for the market
cinnamon raisin bread for market
coneflower 
thought this was pretty
hens & chick at Christine's

One last thing to share. I asked a brother to please build me pantry shelves for my jars & buckets whenever he had time ... a few days later I had shelves!! I am SO THANKFUL!!!!! I really felt spoiled. 


6 comments:

  1. Oh the cows ,, ooof.
    Cool, I am still waiting for my girls to lay there first eggs.
    They are 6 months ,are they getting close?


    Blessings Renee

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  2. They should be laying soon!! We have gotten 4 eggs so far but then are all small and "cute". The girls seem real proud of them ... it's fun to watch how they act. They are changing day by day.

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  3. Great ! I was thinking well they are still young,and this heat has been up to 100 lately. also the girls wont eat laying pellets, any suggestions?

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  4. Hmmm ... no I am not sure why they wont eat their food? It's been super hot here too and others have had issues with chickens dying. So far ours are all doing fine. We put a box fan in their coop opposite of their windows so the air sucks through constantly. We also are careful to give them plenty of fresh water ... sometimes 3 or 4 times a day. We have a bowl for them outside and they tip that once in a while on accident, so we are always peeking in making sure it's not tipped. But too, the water sits there and gets warm, so we freshen it up to cool it off and try to keep it in the shade. We also give them treats like raw tomatoes or zucchini. Whatever we can do to keep the stress level down.

    :)

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  5. they will eat the scratch we gave them when they were little but the pellets they dont like...
    they wont eat watermelons lol but will eat corn on cob lol
    Yea we keep 2 waterers out,and keep in shade ,and check water 3 times a day,and when low we refill it. also we sprayed down where they lay,they seem to like the cool wet dirt lol

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  6. Popping in to see how you are doing :)

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