Tucking the girls in

One of our youngest girls has decided to go broody.  Every night for almost a week, I have found her in a nest box on the eggs from that day.  I keep taking them from her because we need eggs to eat, but she won't budge.  The last few days there haven't been very many eggs and I'm wondering if she's scared the girls off.

I think this was only confirmed tonight when I found an egg on the ground in the coop.

Apples are done

It took me a couple weeks, but we finally got all of the apples that we were planning to preserve taken care of.

We bought 5 bushels of York, Granny Smith, and Ida Red apples from a school fundraiser.  The apples came from a local farm.  Five bushels was a lot more than I originally pictured.  

One bushel

 We couldn't even fit them all on the breakfast table.  We had three on the table and then the bags were on the benches with the other bags we had left over from our previous canning experience the week before.

Peeling by hand wasn't so bad once I set up a system like the week before.  I would peel a large pile into a big platter and then go take care of those apples.

I started with apple pie filling.  I had to order more of the cornstarch-like product that is needed for canning and I was sure to order a lot so that I'd always have some on hand and then I got to work.

Clyde's Last Kids

I took these pictures a few days ago but when I looked at them today I realized just how big the babies have gotten.  They're only two months old, and they're just about the same size as Silkie Sue!  The oldest is still hoping that one of these will be a rooster just like Clyde, and I have to say that I'm hoping for the same thing.

Purple Potatoes?

When I purchased potato starters last spring, I had seen a box for purple potatoes.  I'd never even heard of such a thing but decided to plant them.  We harvested them a week or two ago and today I finally cooked some of them.

They tasted a little different from the other potatoes, but not enough for me to be able to describe it.  We'll definitely plant more next spring if I see them again.

Here are pictures from when we harvested them:  Harvesting the fall garden

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Sweet Potato Pie

We've had frost the last two morning and the tops of all of the sweet potato plants had turned black.  I knew I had to harvest the sweet potatoes soon so I went out and dug them up today.  I've never grown sweet potatoes before and have never seen them harvested, so this was a learning experience.

We managed to get a 5 gallon bucket full of them.  Many were small, but there were some large ones too.  Next year I'm going to plant more of them and I'm going to find a way to contain them from spreading so much as I'm sure there are many still in the garden that I didn't find since they'd spread so far.

I think this only makes me want a root cellar even more so that I can properly store these long term.

Poor Faith and Her Poor Ear

We'd seen that Faith's hematoma ear was swelling more and my heart was sinking as I admitted that she would need to have it drained by the vet and it wasn't going to heal on it's own.

This was a few days ago

When I left for work on Friday morning, it was a little more swollen, but I never would have expected to see what we saw when I came home from work just a few hours later.  When I walked in the door I saw her ear and she immediately started shaking her head.  I sat and held her ear while I called the vet and after a few minutes I realized that holding her ear in place was actually letting her relax and stop shaking hear head.  So I ran to dig out a scarf while the oldest held her ear and we tied her ear up flat.

She looks miserable, but I could tell she preferred this as compared to feeling that huge dangly ear

 Once we got to the vet, I decided to take a few pictures to document how bad it had gotten.

Pictures of the eggs never get old for me

It looks like the girls are finally using more than two nesting boxes.  We found eggs in three of the boxes this week and have caught three girls nesting during the day in different boxes.

And here is a picture of the 9 eggs I collected one day this week.  It is always so cool to see the different colors.

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My Silly Girls

The weather has quickly turned and it's freezing outside.  I decided to snap some pictures of the animals and Kelly decided to make it easy for me.

Meanwhile, Carrie was pushing her head into my rear end.  She wasn't being aggressive, she just wanted to nuzzle up.

Pumpkin Seeds and Chickens

I tossed all of the pumpkin seeds in the dehydrator last week and when they were done I decided to take them out to the chickens.

My patience has finally paid off because all of the birds will eat out of my hand now.

Buffy's in Solitary Confinement

Buffy has been molting and looking pretty ragged.  She's even lost quite a bit of weight and has me a little worried.

I've read that giving a molting chicken more protein is important and I know that they can get picked on more by the other chickens because the new feathers is something interesting to pick at.  So I decided to put her in a crate inside the coop for a few days.  Each morning I made her some scrambled eggs and we mixed in some dried meal worms. 

I'm sure she wasn't happy to be alone in there, but I think it was good for her to have some solitude.  

Several days later she still looks ragged, but I can see the new feathers growing in so I let her out to free range for a bit.  Her ragged look was only more obvious to me then, next to the healthy looking birds.