May 2014

Hello everyone! It's been a couple of months since my last update.  Many things have happened.  This was a very hard winter and I had lots of problems with my chicken flock.  I had a couple I lost to sickness, and a fox got 6 of them.  My buildings are starting to really shift in the ground since they are close to 80 years old.  We are getting a new small barn this spring and I got 2 dozen hatching eggs to hatch!  Here are a couple of photos of the hatching eggs and one of them in the incubator! Our approximate hatch date is May 27th!  Exciting!  Blue egg customers will be happy, 8 of the hatching eggs are blue! If those hatch there is a chance those chickens will lay blue eggs!  This incubator is the same one we used when I was a kid!

So far we have some tomato, pepper and cucumber seeds started in the greenhouse!  Here are some photos.  We also planted kale, swiss chard, beets, carrots, radishes, lettuce and dill.  We still have many rows to fill.

Ok, here are some various photos of just things happening around me.  Some of these are just blooms from trees, some hyacinths, a succulent ground cover my mom has, and some mushrooms I found.  Also, I had this decorative haunted house birdhouse my sister gave me.....during the winter, a mouse was in it inside the house!  I put the house outside and now a couple of wrens have started making a nest in it! I took some photos of that!  Yesterday I found a robin's nest!  The robin isn't too happy as we pass by and often times swoops down at our heads.  Enjoy the photos!

I will update again soon with some more photos of what we have planted in the garden and how the plots look so far.  I got rained out today! I was going to take some video!  Enjoy the photos!

April 2013 Spring Update!

Finally, today it was almost 70 degrees in Central Ohio!  Today was filled with outside chores. I took some photos of everything that is currently going on here.

First, my dad, has been starting tomato seeds.  Started so far are Beefmaster, a Greenhouse hybrid, and Roma tomatoes.

Here are tilled up sections of the garden.  We have planted onions, turnips, and peas in these locations.

Here is the chicken update!

Today I cleaned out the chicken coop completely and put in new bedding.  Below is a photo of the new bedding, which is dry leaves, wood chips, straw, and pine needles.

I got two full wheelbarrows full of compost!  I layered the bedding over the entire winter and it has composted into usable fertilizer for the garden!

Then I added a large trash can full of dry leaves to their outdoor run.

Here is an update on the drawer nesting box.  It was being used just fine, however, we had trouble with the chickens scratching out the straw.  We took a second drawer that was the same and took out the bottom and stacked it on top of the other one.  This way they won't be laying the eggs on the bare wood.

The chickens were interested in what I was doing most of the time.  They also enjoyed the dry leaves outside and took dust baths.  They take dust baths to keep cool and to keep any bugs away.  I've never even seen a bug on any of my chickens.

Thanks for reading! I'm looking forward to blogging more updates as we plant, get more baby chicks and update the chicken coop!