Light before Dawn

People that drive by our house between the hours of 6:00 - 8:30 AM and aren't familiar with chickens probably think we forgot to turn off our chicken house light when we did chores. But actually there is a purpose behind this light, to the point that there is a timer connected to it, that will turn it on every morning all winter; waking up our birds even when the sun doesn't.

Why? Chickens' internal clocks are very light and day length sensitive. Short, dark, cold days = no eggs. Which if you're a chicken makes sense. Why lay eggs, which equals babies, if the weather is not hospitable or even safe for such fragile little ones? Well, if you're a hen left to your own devices, you won't waste the energy. Instead, you'll molt your feathers, and use the energy you would have used to lay eggs to grow new feathers and keep warm. And then wait until next spring to start laying again. 

Which is all and good if you're a chicken, but not so great if you're a chicken farmer. Each year the thoughts argue in our minds, starting in late October, to light or not to light. As days grow shorter, darker, and colder, we suddenly usually within a weeks time go from 5 eggs a day to 1 or 0 eggs a day. And will continue like that all winter if we don't supplement some light in the coop.


We don't want to force our chickens completely out of sync with their natural cycles, but we don't like to leave family and friends high and dry as far as farm fresh eggs for 4 months of the year. So we compromise, and let the chickens have 6 - 8 weeks of dark, short days as October moves into November and November into December, to quit their egg laying for a while and molt. Some drop their feathers all at once, and look like this gal:

And others have been losing their feathers gradually, and suddenly one day you look at them and go, wow you look nice and sleek and fluffy, and realize they've been molting all along (like the other black one, sister of the partially naked one above).

Then the first week of December ( this week!) we start giving them their warm bright wake up call. Which they seem to especially like on those super cold days, when they huddle under the incandescent bulb to warm up a bit before heading out to forage for a few minutes.  

Outside the "Picture" Window

We're going to try something new around here in an effort to make this a true blog with postings on a daily basis or as close to that as possible. The inspiration coming from our favorite window in the house:

Located over our kitchen sink, it provides a pleasant view while we work on the many household tasks that revolve around that particular area of the kitchen. It is not a large window, but perfectly proportioned for the space, and so much more useful than the drafty, aluminum framed, designed for warm places like Florida, window that used to inhabit that space.

To the West (left) out that window you can see the road for quite aways, and also part of the neighbor's field:

If you look straight out to the North, you see a big part of our yard, the North end of the pasture, the road, and the neighbor's other field:

And if you look to the East (right), you can see our chicken house, calf shed, and South end of the pasture. Which is probably one of the most used views, as we try to keep an eye on our livestock or just enjoy the crazy antics of our critters as they go about their days:

And so the plan is to post every day at least a photo looking out this window; some days it will be focused on a particular thing with more text and photos to illustrate. So here goes . . . the start of our "Picture Window" series. Wish us luck!

A Chill in the Breeze

I know that officially I cannot declare that fall is here for a couple of more days, but unofficially . . . the season known as fall has arrived at the O'Hara Corner Farm. Today it is overcast and blustery, the yellow leaves of the walnut trees are being scattered around the yard, and I feel inclined to wear my jacket to go out and pick tomatoes this afternoon. This amuses me a wee bit, as usually I don't associate wearing a jacket with tomato picking, but hey it is only 65 degrees F.

Sometime in August, picking and preserving became a priority over weeding, and so now we end up with a garden area looking like this:

Which is definitely not pretty, and a little depressing when compared with the clean neat rows of early June. But soon, all the stakes, posts, and trellises will be pulled out, the tall weeds will succumb to the weed whackers, and all will be mowed flat by the mower. Then we dig up the heap that is the compost pile, spread it on top of the whole thing, and call it done until next spring's tilling. I find as the years go by, we seem to take more and more pleasure in the process of each season, and delight in the blessings that each of them bring.

Which brings me to the joys that still abound for us this month:

Late blooming clematis . . . can't you just smell it!

Our new dairy beef steers T-Bone (in the lean-to), and Hamburger:

Growing, thriving meat turkeys:

Our new outdoor kitty Henry, who adopted us a couple of weeks ago. He is incredibly friendly, but not terribly photogenic :)

And having got to spend a very lovely week in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a few weeks ago:

As you can see from below, its been a dry late summer. Most of our grass is dry and brown, except for the spot in the yard where the garden hose leaks :)

Full Bloom

Just glancing at our blog, I realized that it's been almost a month since I posted last. Total craziness! Things here at the farm have went from hurry up and grow to hurry up and keep up with me in a few short weeks time. And while I always think that spring is the time for flowers around here, I'm beginning to think that summer is just as blooming. Warning if flowers aren't your thing . . . you may want to skip this post because its loaded with them.

We started picking and canning green beans this week, 12 quarts canned, and a pressure cooker full eaten. And don't they look so lovely on the plant:

Scarlett O'Hara morning glories (no, I'm not kidding that is their real name). While the seed package promised a bright magenta color, they turned out to be a lovely indigo with purple veining. Though we should have planted them in a patch by themselves, they daily threaten to take over the snapdragons and 4 o'clocks.

Other things blooming in profusion:

And there are others too, but I'm lacking the patience to upload them all.

And lastly, a chance to get up close and personal with our meat chickens . . .

As you can see, they are growing quite well, and are no longer cute and fluffy. Especially since I've been bitten, not just pecked, by them twice in the past couple of days when I've been putting them away for the night. They are to the point where my interest in them has moved from pet-type animals to caring for livestock to ensure quality and quantity of meat come butchering day.

Hurry Up and Grow!

Ryan has requested that I post photos of the garden for all to see, since the last time you saw any photos was when everything was just starting to sprout. So here goes:

Cole crops . . .

Green beans and lima beans:

Tomatoes and peppers:

Sweet corn:

Sunflowers:

Right now were at the stage where we're not harvesting a lot right now; just weeding a lot and encouraging everything to hurry up and grow!

And to fit the crazy 2 weeks ahead schedule of this summer, we picked the first ripe black raspberries a couple of days ago.

Friday on the Farm

As promised, here is a picture of the little poults living in our garage:

As you can see, they are not very photogenic, and will pretty much try to do anything in their power to get away from humans. We don't know why this group of babies is the most flighty we've ever had. They came from the same breeder we got ours from last year, and last years poults were extremely human curious, they loved to check us out and were often intent on pecking at wedding rings, buttons, or other shiny things we might be wearing. These guys are the complete opposite of that; we will have a fun time catching them to move them to their outside pen.

Due to an odd, overly warm spring, a lot of our plants are ahead of schedule. At the end of the 1st week of June, we are already nearing the end of strawberry season, and many of our roses are in full bloom. We have a new one we bought for $3 this spring, that was just twigs when we set it in the ground, but now after just a month or so of babying, we are rewarded with this:

I didn't think that much about it, but Ryan brought it to my attention that this yellow rose with pink edges is very similar to the ones we wore and carried as boutenieres and bouquets at our wedding. I knew I picked this variety for some reason!

As strawberry season draws to a close, we've been searching for new to us ways to preserve this bounty of produce. We made jam, and froze some, but you can only use so many frozen strawberries. Yesterday, I sliced up a bunch and put them in the food dehydrator we borrowed from Mom and Dad. They have completely dried out in 24 hours, and have went from bright red little slices, to dark red, dry little bits of strawberry sweetness. They will be a welcome treat on cereal or as a snack later this year.

Summer Time on the Farm

It seems like the weather has moved directly from late April to July, and now we're back to late May again. And while this proves to be a bit much for our human bodies to adjust to, the plants and animals here on the farm seem to actually thrive in it. It was just about 2 weeks ago that our strawberry plants looked like this.

Since that picture we have collected several gallons of strawberries from our little 50 plant patch, and I have tried my hand at strawberry pie, strawberry ice cream, starwberry jam, and next on my list dried strawberries and strawberry fruit leather. Besides lots of eating fresh strawberries straight off the plant, before they even make it to the house. Yum!!!

And while we seem to have strawberries on the brain, and if you look at us we might seem a little red from all the fabulous anthocyanins we've eaten lately; strawberries aren't the only thing we're growing around here.

Requiring just as much daily attention as our strawberry patch are the noisy little birds found in various buildings around the property. On May 7 we upped our farmyard bird population from 6 chickens and 2 turkeys to now having 36 chickens and 6 turkeys! Granted most of that population isn't a month old yet. Though in 3 weeks they have went from being covered with down fluff to growing feathers, and being able to be outside part of the day now. The 30 baby chicks are living in the old turkey shed. The day we put them out there, they looked like this:

Now they look like this:

For more on the animals and other happenings . . . check back tomorrow.