Beautiful (the chicken) wandered out to explore while I was doing chores this morning, and when she tried to come back to the coop Barclay was in her way, blocking the narrow path. He stood there nose to nose, wagging, to see if she would run, but instead she just got this slightly put-out look and was leaning this way and that to see how she could get around him. So then he turned his side to her, which he does to invite dogs to play, and wagged his tail, and she just kept trying to get past, and was about to try going under him, when I asked him to get out of her way. So he let her by, and then sniffed her butt on the way past. He just wishes they would play with him. It’s funny to see him trying to communicate with a chicken using dog language 🙂
Meanwhile, in the brooder, the four baby chicks are doing fine. Hanging out, eating and sleeping, like good babies.
The barnyard mix babies, who are 8 weeks old this week, are sure different looking. Two of them have black heads now.
The one without a black head seems to be a roo, judging by the comb he’s sporting on top of his head. Much bigger than the other chicks. The two black ones appear to be girls, and the other one (didn’t get a picture of him today) who is buff and black appears to be a roo – so 2 roo and 4 hens, not a bad turnout.
The weather is still gloomy, cold and wet. Within the first two weeks of the month we’d set a rainfall record for June, and have been setting daily records for cold. You know that if you are setting records for rainfall in the NW, it must be really wet!
Out in the garden things are growing along. As you can see from the first bed on the right, the lettuce is loving the weather!
As is the second planting of lettuce and spinach.
The arugula keeps trying to bolt. The onions seem to be doing well also. I have three broccoli plants that survived the slug onslaught. The slugs have been real pests this year, partly because the rain keeps washing away the slug bait. They ate my cucumbers as soon as they appeared, leaving little stumps 😦 I’m about ready to try the ‘piepan of beer’ trap on the slugs, but then I would have to go buy some beer to waste on the slugs.
The squash has blossoms
The beans are poking up. Pole beans on the left, yellow bush beans on the right. I’m looking forward to doing some canning and pickling with these guys! Right now they don’t look particularly happy, a little yellow and stressed. I think this bed didn’t get the chicken compost like the rest, but I know it got plenty of llama compost.
The potato plants are peeking out of their mounds of straw. I hope the slugs and potato bugs are not gobbling up all my potatoes under there. In a wet spring like we’re having, I’m wondering if growing potatoes in straw was a good idea. The straw is absolutely infested with those little black grass spiders. When I walk by I see them scurrying in every direction. They don’t bother me too much. I hope they eat potato bugs!
My waist-high heritage variety tomatoes almost make me look like I know what I’m doing. Unfortunately the tomatoes I started from seed aren’t doing nearly as well, maybe half as tall and wimpy stems. Was it the vigor of the variety, or something I did wrong in starting them? Oh well, learn a bit more every year. I’ll be saving seeds from these heritage varieties this year for next year, so we’ll see what happens then.
That’s the garden so far. I’m surprised at how quickly it has filled in, and there’s still more I want to plant! I need to find room for the cuke starts I picked up, and the peppers. I would like to find a spot to stick some winter squash, like acorn squash. I’d like to do some winter veg, and I want to raise lettuce in a cold frame so I’m reserving the raised bed for that – if I ever find a window to use as a cover for it. And of course everytime I set foot in there there is weeding and pruning and other chores to do. I must say, the garden is keeping me plenty occupied this year!
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Today I went to the store to buy some T posts for building a trellis for my tomatoes and beans, and instead bought some pepper starts, cucumbers, and pickle cucumbers! Problem is the cukes need to be trellised too, and I still didn’t get any trellis supplies! I was going to buy 8 ft T posts to pound into the ground and attach a length of fence to for the beans to climb, and discovered the 8 footers were $10 each!!! Ouch, can’t do that. I’m going to have to find some T posts around here to reuse, or think of something else to do. Today was a mild day, only sprinkled a little. As soon as mother nature turns the heat back on, I know I’m going to need to start tying up my plants somehow.
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Today I weeded, planted another plot of lettuce (we’ve been having dinner salads from the first planting and the second planting is about 4 inches high), planted more onions, removed the straw mulch from around the tomatoes because it was attracting slugs and bugs, and put it on top of the potato mounds. Lots done, lots to do, but it’s still under control. The beans are all about an inch tall, so I have a little time, but putting up a piece of fence for them to climb on is my next concern. Oh, and I saw a flower on one of the squash plants – go squash!
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I’ve been taking Barclay to the dog park to play with the other eskimos. There’s our friends Sherry & Scott with eskies Saki & Sitka, who are in our dog club, and Amber (who took the picture) with her eskie Mowgli, and then we ran into Megan and her puppy Navi (she’s right in the middle of this picture, Barclay is just above her). Unfortunately today we found out Megan is moving and needs to find Navi a new home. Navi is only 5 months old, and adorable! What a horrible temptation!
This weekend I picked up 4 Splash Orpington chicks – they will be white speckled with black.
I had hoped the broody hen’s chicks would hatch and I could slip these in with the rest, but the way it worked out I just cleaned out the brooder and set it back up for these little guys. They spent the first couple days in my friends brooder (she got six of them), so now they have to get used to being in a much smaller group. We’ll see how they do.
..before they hatch! Today I finally moved the broody hen to see what was going on under her. She has been sitting on 12 eggs for 24 days, which is a few days overdue from the 21 days it should take to hatching – and there was still no sign of chicks. I moved her off the nest and had a look at the eggs – two were rotten and broken, just the membrane holding the goo inside, and two were uncracked. There were signs of other broken eggs in the nest, and she had kicked out a couple shells last week. I removed the whole thing and dumped it in the compost pile. I don’t know what went wrong with those eggs, but it was time to let her get off the nest and walk around again. She’s out scratching around with the other chickens now.
We took advantage of the break in the weather today to plant some of our apple trees. The new orchard will be out in the front pasture, near the end of the driveway. I spent quite a bit of time hauling tools and waterhose out there (had to find the hose, untangle it, run it out there), and then Dave came out to help with the hard part.
What a nice day! I let the chickens out to explore the yard. They seemed to really enjoy getting out into a new area. I’m sure it’s boring always being in the orchard.
I even opened the tractor and let mam hen and her chicks out. I had hoped this would help start to integrate the chicks into the flock, but instead mama hen ran off to terrorize the other hens, and the rooster had to break up a fight between her and one of the other hens who hadn’t been doing anything! Then she wandered away and completely ignored her babies while the teenage roosters went over and picked on them (probably because they are at the bottom of the flock, and were relieved to see someone who would be under them!). So I tossed the teenagers into the extra tractor. By evening all the chickens had gone to roost, including mama, leaving her chicks in the tractor to huddle up for the night alone. I think they’ll be fine, she’s just not as good a mama hen as some of the others I’ve had. She decided she was done with them, and has been trying to escape the tractor for the last few days.
The three blue/buff chicks are very pretty.
This poor guy looks like he’s put together with spare parts! It will be interesting to see what he/she looks like all feathered out.
Steff Does Stuff! 