StormBaby (age 6) in her play dress out taking care of the chickens and so excited about the first Olive Egg!
Can we manage sustainable living someday?
In our effort to live more green and someday be more sustainable and possibly even give energy back to the grid we have been trying a lot of things. The thing that we seem to have a real passion for these days is our chickens. Some how 6 chickens turned into a lot more. People joke about chicken math but I am here to warn you that it is a real thing!
Our second set of chickens, 4 pullets that were hatched in April have started laying, at least a few of them anyway. We know for sure who layed this first Olive Green egg. It is our olive egger we call “Blue” because of the color grey she is. She is one of our favorites. She is a kind of Easter Egger, a mixed breed done specially for how she looks, temperament, laying timeline, egg size and color! This very cool green! The kids are so excited and have waited months for this egg. Of course they want to put it right in the incubator to hatch but alas, it isn’t good to try and hatch the first few eggs, and we have enough chicks!
We stopped incubating last month because the cold is coming and we don’t want to put chicks outside in the cold to acclimate like that. We also though as I said have enough! They are never hard to find homes for out here though and right now we are growing them out mostly till we can tell boys from girls. We are trying a genetic testing experiment project and need certain ones. More about that project when we know if we have the chickens we need for it for sure!
We are bringing some chicks down to my sister this month and really excited about the trip. Sadly a feral cat with new kittens got to some of her chickens a few days ago and she lost 5 of them. Yes, cats can do that! (thankfully mine does not!) Mother cats will do just about anything to feed her kittens and that includes killing chicks! Not sure how traveling with 8 week old chicks will go, they are pretty big already and the trip is 9 hours! Wish us luck!
About our square foot raised garden beds
As for the Gardens, they are really coming along beautifully. The lettuce is thriving now. Remember how I killed so many lettuce sprouts over the summer trying to get them to grow in the summer heat? This is exactly why are practicing now as I had no idea I couldn’t grow lettuce here in the summer. Now I know! Radishes are coming in nicely and I can harvest in a week! Tomato plants are huge and have many green tomatoes but they don’t seem to be turning red…. we need to figure that out as they gave us a lot of bright colorful tomatoes not so long ago!
The Kids Are So Happy
So that is our update. I love how much the kids are learning from all this and how much responsibility they choose to take on for the care of the chickens and gardens. They are loving being outside, being in touch with nature, all the playing, and even building things. Oh the plans they have!
Will update again soon!
