2011 Chicken Order

Yesterday I ordered my chickens for June delivery.  We've always had them sent earlier, but then it would be too cold to put them under the lights out in the chicken coop.  They would have to be put down in the basement until the weather eased up a bit and let me tell you, chickens are dirty.  They generate a ton of dust and it gets into every single nook and cranny!

When I get my chicks, I put them in two plastic round kiddy pools with some nice straw in the bottom (thick enough to discourage spraddled legs) and wire fencing around it so they can't fly out.  There's no corners for them to get piled up and crush one another.

When you order chickens, you can get pullets, which are females (egg layers), males, or straight run (which is a mix of male and female chicks).  I have two good-natured male roosters (trust me a good-natured rooster is hard to find!) and I'm not raising chicks, so other than my cornish rocks (who are for meat), I get all pullets.

Here was my order from Ideal Poultry (the pictures are borrowed from their website).  I just hope the pictures stay and I don't end up with the question mark thing:

5 - Americauna pullets (Easter eggers - green or blue tinted eggs)



5 - Speckled Sussex pullets (so darn pretty, and lay a speckled egg)



5- Rhode Island Red pullets (good layers, brown eggs)



25 - Cornish Rock straight run (meat birds)



10 - Buff Orpington pullets (a really nice temperament, good laying chicken, brown eggs)



5 - Golden Lakenvelder pullets (white eggs, hardy, rare, and they're Pittsburgh Steeler colors!)



5 - Welsummer pullets (fairly rare, hardy, lay a dark, terra-cotta brown egg)



The Welsummers are back ordered and, if they're not available in June, I'll get 10 of the Golden Lakenvelders instead.

This seems like a large order, but you generally lose a few of the chicks due to the stress of shipping, and because my chickens free-range, I have some loss to predators.  I have a number of old chickens in the coop this year who are not laying and a couple of meat chickens from last year that are about the size of small ostriches who will all be culled.  It's time to move in some fresh layers!

Complicated Oatmeal (It Sounds Like A Name For A Band!)

I make my kids a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast every once in awhile (especially since my friend, Rosie, taught me how delicious it is made with milk - don't ever make it with water!).

Here's how I cook it:  mix together oats and milk, maybe throw in some cinnamon and a dollop of real maple syrup; cook, stirring, on medium heat until it gets to the proper consistency.  Drop a bit of brown sugar on top, serve.


Ingredients:  oats, milk, cinnamon, real maple syrup, brown sugar (molasses, white sugar)

Now, here is the ingredient list for the "healthy" Breakfast Oatmeal from one of those fast food places (you know which one):

Oatmeal Whole grain rolled oats, brown sugar, food starch-modified, salt, natural flavor (plant source), barley malt extract, caramel color.

Diced Apples Apples, calcium ascorbate (a blend of calcium and vitamin C to maintain freshness and color).

Cranberry Raisin Blend Dried sweetened cranberries (sugar, cranberries), California raisins, golden raisins, sunflower oil, sulfur dioxide (preservative).

Light Cream Milk, cream, sodium phosphate, datem, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sodium citrate, carrageenan. CONTAINS: MILK.

Final Analysis:   ~It takes about five minutes to make your own oatmeal at home (using quick-cooking oatmeal) and two minutes to wash out the pot. ~It probably takes the same amount of time to go through the drive thru.                                          ---------------- ~You can sit at a table at home to eat - or you can eat in your car or at your desk and take the chance of glopping oatmeal on your clothes or workplace.                                          ----------------- ~You're eating five ingredients when you make it at home (counting brown sugar as one ingredient).                                      ~You're eating a whopping 21 ingredients if you eat it from that fast food place.                                  --------------------- ~The fast food Breakfast Oatmeal contains fruit. ~At home, you can easily throw some some raisins and dried sweetened cranberries into your cooking oatmeal (I will attest that this is awesome! Oh, and this raises your ingredient count to seven).  Diced apple takes a bit more work but is not impossible.  You can add extra raisins and dried sweetened cranberries to get your daily serving of fruit.   How did something so simple become so complicated?

Winter Gifts: Eggs and Carrots

Last winter, I tried layering carrots with sand between them in a big plastic container and put the container in my basement.  I kept wondering how I still had a few fruit flies in the late fall?  Then, long before the spring came around, I poured a nasty smelling carrot/sand mush into my compost bin.  It did not work.  

Last fall I read an article in Mother Earth News about a mini homemade root cellar made out of a 5- gallon bucket.  Here's the link to the article:  Mini Root Cellar.  It looked feasible.  

I didn't have a spare 5-gallon bucket floating around so I found a deep, plastic, Rubbermaid-style, container.  I drilled holes in the bottom and prepared to bury it out in my garden.  Fitz pointed out that it would stink to have to dig snow to pull out my carrots, so I decided to bury it at one end of the high tunnel.  I didn't have a spare straw bale lying around either, but I had plenty of leaves, so, after filling the container with unwashed carrots from my garden, I piled a mountain of leaves on top of it.

This is what I brought up from the garden and chicken coop the other day - in mid-February!

Aren't they gorgeous?  They smell wonderful!  I don't think I've ever noticed in all the years I've been buying them from the store, that carrots have a wonderful "carroty" scent.  I've rinsed these off and they're still a bit dirty.  I found that the leaves that I had piled on top of the bin are a bit of a pain to pull off and then they fall down into the plastic container so you end up with leaf bits all over the carrots.  Next year I will definitely put a straw bale over them.   

If you are growing carrots (and I imagine this would work well with other root vegetables).  Follow the link above and give this a try.  I think you'll be pleased with the results.  

Love and Maple Syrup

                                                                                              

Love and maple syrup shine like

Embers warm, like thoughts divine

They tell us it is spring

Love and maple syrup stir

The thoughts of people into words

Of songs that they can sing

Excerpt from, "Love and Maple Syrup," by Gordon Lightfoot

Sap!

THE SAP IS RUNNING!

After I got off work yesterday, I thought I would take a ride and look at my sap lines.  What a pleasant surprise!

In the top photo you can clearly see the sap running out of the lines.  Those icicles hanging off the tank are all maple sap.

  The bottom photo shows an area we tap that is very shady.  A lot of junk gets built up in the lines and all that green gunk you see has washed out.  That's why we run the lines a bit before we stick them into the tanks.  If you look at the bottom photo near the top center you can see the stream of maple sap.  

After I took these photos I stuck the lines into the tanks - we're collecting!  Now we just have to cross our fingers and hope Mother Nature does her part!

The worst that can happen (I can't believe I'm saying this) is that it gets too warm too fast.  We want below freezing nights and above freezing days.  

Maple Sap Weather for Wednesday -  6:30 a.m. temperature:  -3 degrees

4 p.m. temperature: 33-degrees.

Got Sap?

Living In A Winter Wonderland

I looked out the window from John's bedroom this morning and thought the world looked like a winter picture postcard.

I couldn't believe the amount of snow that slid off the high tunnels - look at it piled up along the sides.  

You can see my trail to the chicken coop.  Fitz saved me yesterday when he hauled 150 pounds of chicken feed down on a sled and left a nice wide trail of nicely packed snow!

Maple Sap Weather for Tuesday -  6:30 a.m. temperature:  0-degrees

2 p.m. temperature: 22-degrees.

(I don't think we'll see any sap flowing.) 

The Sweetest Drip: The Making of Maple Syrup

I told you about a song called, "Tap Tap Thunk" in my last post.  I would love to play it for you because it's so darn cute, but it's part of a movie that my neighbor, Bryan Ianson, who lives about a mile down the road... the one who got us into the maple syrup business... made, and I don't want to take away from this great film he put together.  Here's the teaser for "The Sweetest Drip:  The Making of Maple Syrup:

This movie is not only informative, but it's darn entertaining too!  If you are interested in tapping maple trees - with bucket, bags, or tubing, you'll find out how to do it from this video.

The DVD contains chapters on: Tree Identification, Surveying the Woods, Tapping Trees, Collecting Your Sap, Boiling, Grading, Filtering, and Bottling,  The added Bonus Features teach you to make Maple Candy, Maple Lollipops, Maple Sugar, Maple Cream, and Maple Nuts.

It's 1 hr. 35 min. long in DVD format.

If you're interested in buying it, there is a "The Sweetest Drip" website.  Click here:   The Sweetest Drip

Or, I'll be happy to talk to my neighbor!