Big Carrot

   While working in the garden today, I noticed one of the carrots starting to crack on the top. I pulled it up so it wouldn't grow anymore, and also I was curious how big the carrots were getting. I won't pull the rest of the carrots until the first frost gets here, but the kids are excited to see if the rest of the carrots are as big as this one.

Waterer and Feeder for the Meat Birds

   We're using our old chicken coop to raise the meat birds this year, and the layers are in the new coop. The birds are going to be little tight on space as they grow but still within the amount of space you're supposed to have for them. I've got plans to make a new coop next year, but that's next year.

   I wanted to do a post about the waterer and feeder so people can see how easy it is to raise them. The feeder is just a box with an opening at the bottom and a angled piece of wood in the back to move the grain forward. I put two 50 lb. bags in it, and that last for a couple of weeks or so. I bought an automatic waterer for them and hooked it up to a trash can. I fill the trash can with water once a week or so and the waterer will automatically fill up the bowl when it gets low. I check on the birds every day to make sure they're ok, but with these systems it makes it very easy to raise meat birds.

Broccoli

   After the slugs wiped out a lot of our broccoli this year, we finally got our first head of broccoli. It's not quite as big as the ones you get at the grocery store but pretty close. We have a few more plants that are pushing up the heads of broccoli but aren't quite ready to be cut. We're going to leave the plant that we got the head off of and let it grow some side sprouts of broccoli. We'll see how much one plant can produce.

Lefty's Harem

The ducklings are the dark ones in the center

The ducklings are now big enough to join the others in the main coop. We were nervous when adding them together, but when we put them in they were welcomed very quick to the duck flock. Lefty seemed happy with the new addition, as he should be. We think of the three ducklings that made it, all of them are females. We are able to tell due to the chest feathers looking the same as the older females and their quacking is a lot louder and obnoxious, which is a sign of female khaki campbells. I'm not making this stuff up, it's just the way it is.

First Corn

   Today we picked some of our own corn that we had growing in our garden. We had never tried growing corn and were a little apprehensive about it. When having a garden with woods around it cuts down on the amount of light the corn receives. The plants didn't grow as tall as if they were growing in the fields but, we still got some cobs to grow on them. Even some of them had two cobs growing on them. The cobs came out a little bit smaller than the ones at the farm stand but were still delicious. The kids reply to me asking what they thought of the corn was "it's so good we can't even stand it ". I guess we'll have to grow corn next year too.

Cute Chicks

   Our order of baby chicks just came in from McMurray Hatchery. We ordered 50 meat birds, 6 Buff Orpingtons, and they put one extra mystery bird in the box that we won't find out what kind it is until it grows up.
    We raise the meat birds, which are called Jumbo Cornish X Rock hens, in a separate coop and feed them an all natural diet. After eight weeks they're ready to be butchered. All though they look cute and fuzzy now, in eight weeks they won't look like anything you want to wrap your arms around and hug.
   We ordered some Buff Orpingtons to offset the age of the rest of the flock and add a little different color to it. The first chickens we ever ordered had a couple of buffs in it, and one of them who was named Buttercup turned out to be my wife's favorite. We're excited to see if these girls have the same temperament as Buttercup, and one of them looks different from the others meaning we might have a rooster. We never had a rooster before, so we'll see what everyone thinks of the crowing sound if she turns out to be a he. It would also mean that we would be able to incubate our own chicks.

   The mystery chick could turn out to be any breed or any sex. It's something fun that the hatchery does to each of their orders. The chick stands out from the rest of the flock, it's the only one with a strip down its head.

Ducklings' New House

   The ducklings recently were moved into a new temporary house, until they are old enough to live with the rest of the flock. When they were first born, they lived in a old guinea pig cage that we had. The problem with that was when ducks drink they put their bills in the water and take a sip then shake their heads back and forth  making everything wet. When you combine that with all the crumbs that fall out of their bills when they eat and the wood shavings it turned into a soupy mess in less then 24 hours. Then next house I tried was a quick wooded box with an old house screen on the bottom. I put the box and them in the garage so we didn't have to smell them. It work for a little bit but, because the box was on the cement all the water and waste stayed right under them. Again making a big soupy mess. Their new house is made to go outside and be moved around so the bottom can air out. What I did was take a old pallet I had and put some metal screen that someone gave me on the bottom. I also used the same screen for one of the sides, it's 3/8 of an inch spacing screen. Next I used some exterior plywood I had and put up some walls and a roof. Cut out a door and used some old hinges for it. I still need to put some wood siding and shingles on for a better look but so far it hasn't cost me anything to make.
   On a sad note, we're down to three ducklings. When they were living in the garage, something got in there and took some of them. We're not sure what it was but, made sure that the new house was built tight so nothing can get in.

Green Beans

   One of the first vegetables we get around here is the green beans, and this year has been very good. We planted them at different times to make sure we didn't get them all at once, and we also used them as fillers around the garden when other plants didn't take. So far we have picked about half the plants, and even after giving some away and eating them fresh we still had a lot left. We ended up blanching them and then put them in the  freezer.



   How we blanched them is first  put them in the sink to wash them and then snap off the ends. Then we brought a pot of water to a boil and put in a strainer full of green beans in the water for about three minutes. After the three minutes, we put them in the sink that had cold water and ice cubes in it to cool off for about three minutes also. Once done we put them on some dish towels to dry off before putting them in some zip lock bags. So far our freezer has five gallon size zip lock bags full of green beans in it, and more to come.