What's happening around the farm.
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese on Mar 1st, 2010
I was just referred to an excellent blog post by a poultry grower in Washington state explaining his costs. He is pricing out live birds, not broilers. Bottom line: his cost to raise an egg layer from chick to laying hen is $15. He explains it very well.
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese on Feb 28th, 2010
We found our first duck egg of the year this morning. This means we need to keep the ducks in later in the morning. When a duck gets serious about hatching some eggs, she will build a nest and lay her eggs in it. But when she’s not serious about making babies, she just drops [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese on Feb 24th, 2010
The hens pretty much stayed inside today – they don’t like fresh snow. Even the ducks weren’t happy about the snow, but they decided lots of space out in the snow was better than cooped up inside. When it is above freezing we hook hoses up and give them swimming water. The really enjoy it. [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, Vegetables on Feb 2nd, 2010
Last December before the price went up I bought 3 sling bags of Vermont Compost. They came today (no it was not poor service – I told them I didn’t need them until February). These are big, heavy bags as you can see by comparison with me standing by them. The shipping paper says 5000 [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, Vegetables on Jan 29th, 2010
I went out to the hoophouse at 9:45 this morning and pulled the row cover off to let light, air, and heat into the plants. Outside temp was 5F, inside was 32F. Soil around the edges frozen. Didn’t get back out to harvest until noon – outside was up to 14F, and inside was a [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, CSA, Vegetables on Jan 9th, 2010
Sunny – the spinach is actually growing well. If I had had more patience I would even have harvested some. I started out digging and transplanting some to space them out better, but will not be surprised it the disturbance causes them to go to seed. I realized I have LOTS of spinach plants, so [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, CSA on Jun 12th, 2009
I am encouraged that some of you are getting antsy for opening day and wanting to know just how this comes off. The distribution is from 3 to 6:30 on Friday. There are a few folks wanting to pick up their shares on Tuesdays, which will work in the future, but as I mentioned some [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, CSA, Vegetables on May 23rd, 2009
First momma Muscovy hatched 16 babies last Sunday and Monday. They are incredible bug eaters. Those tiny little legs that were built for fast propulsion in the water also propel them incredibly quickly across the ground. And they can jump up astonishingly high to catch a bug. Weren’t keen on having Tony approach to take [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, CSA, Vegetables on May 16th, 2009
The two inches of rain over the weekend kept me out of the field until Wednesday. That is OK since it gave me chance to weed the hoophouse, plant Cherokee Purple tomatoes in the hoophouse, keep suckering and training the hoophouse tomatoes, seed squash, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, basil, and flowers, and move larger plants around [...]
Posted in Chickens, ducks, geese, CSA, Vegetables on May 8th, 2009
Dry, dry, dry. But, that keeps the weeds down. Where we have irrigated they are really starting to pop though. Oh, finally some rain. The weeds LOVED it! Fortunately I was up to date with the weeding right before the drizzles came. But the onions are in a really weedy spot, and with irrigation keeping [...]
