From Pips to Chicks

Saturday night I heard the first peeping coming from the incubator.  I was excited because I had been waiting for 3 weeks to get to this point.  I finally had some signs of life, but I still had to wait some more.  Sunday morning when I woke up I checked on the incubator again.  No chicks yet, but two of the eggs had pipped meaning that the chicks had made their first crack in the egg.  The hatch had begun.

Hatching can be a very slow process.  The chicks are tiny and weak and it can take a very long time for them to break out of their shells.  The pip is just the first stage and they rest often and for long periods between small bursts of activity.  The eggs wobble around a little in the incubator so I know that progress is being made.

By Sunday night five of the eggs had hatched.  I let them dry overnight in the incubator and moved them into the brooder on Monday morning.  I still had four eggs in the incubator and at least one of them was still peeping so I left the incubator running.  Hopefully whoever is still kicking finds their way out of their shell today while I am at work.  Meanwhile the hatched chicks are adjusting to life in the brooder.  They sleep often and run around clumsily as they learn how to use their body.  In no time they will be running all over the place and growing quickly into chickens.

Digging Fresh Winter Carrots

I am still in the process of turning over my garden beds this winter.  I usually wait until we have a little warm spell so the soil is easy to turn.  There has been a couple of rainy snow storms recently so the soil was nice and moist which is much easier to work with than when it's super dry or frozen.
The bed that I turned over last was planted in turnips over the summer with a row of carrots down the middle.  I had harvested the turnips so long ago that I forgot that there was still a crop of carrots in the bed.  Imagine my surprise when I turned over a shovelful of carrots instead of dirt!  After that discovery I was more careful turning over the rest of the bed and was rewarded with a nice flat of purple and orange carrots.

I did have a few carrots that had turned to mush, but there were still plenty of good carrots left.  I am going to dehydrate some of these to add to a dry soup mix and the nicest ones will get eaten in the next few days.  I may also use a couple for a batch of stock if I can find the time.

Carrots are a crop that I have been using to break up the soil in my yard.  I had very hard packed clay when I started these beds, but now after just a couple of years the soil is much looser and easier to work with.  The carrot roots reach deep into the soil and bring up buried nutrients that will become available to feed the future crops in this bed.  When I finished digging out all the carrots I added more fire pit ashes and another bag of fall leaves to the soil, and mixed it all together. Over the next couple of months these amendments will break down into compost to feed the next season's crops.

Preparing for Chicks

The eggs should be hatching any day now and I wanted to get things ready for them ahead of time.  My brooder is a large aquarium that I borrowed from a friend a few years back and it's been working so well that I hope she keeps letting me use it.

I cover the bottom with a layer of newspaper first.  This will make cleaning it out much easier later on because I can simply roll everything up and throw it in a bucket to take it out to my compost pile.  Next I placed the food and water stabilizers in the corners of the aquarium.  I use a couple bricks for the water because I know they will keep the dishes level.  I also like them because they are porous and absorbent.  Chicks are pretty messy about their food and water, so I do what I can to keep them clean and dry.  The feeders are placed on top of a couple re-purposed plastic bowls which raises them up off the bottom a bit and makes them less likely to get filled with bedding when the chicks get to scratching and making a mess.  Finally I fill the whole bottom with a nice thick layer of wood shavings.  Some people say to start chicks off on just paper towels, but I like the nice thick layer for them to move around on.  It gives them something to scratch in and is very absorbent and helps keep the new chicks clean, warm and dry.  It also gives them a soft place to sleep when they crash (as they often do in the beginning of life).  When the chicks start hatching I will set up the heat lamp so that the space will be warm enough for them when they are ready to move into the brooder.

Soon there will the peeping of little babies in my back room.  The first few weeks of raising chicks are often the cutest and most entertaining weeks in the spring.  I look forward to this time every year.

Taking Stock of my Stores: February Edition

It has been months since I added to my food storage.  The canning frenzy began last summer with the arrival of the first fruit of the season.  There was apricot jam and canned peaches to start.  Cherries became wine and later a few boxes of plums transformed into more wine and plum jam.  When the garden started coming into it's own there were pickles and salsa and eventually tomato sauce as well.  In the fall I rounded out my stores with a few jars of applesauce, apple pie filling and a few jars of canned pears and pepper jelly.  Into the freezer I piled in lots of frozen broccoli and green beans and many bags of frozen peppers. I also added fresh garlic, shallots, onions and potatoes to my dry storage before it was all said and done.

Slowly but surely I have been working my way through my stockpile while at the same time enjoying an astonishingly low grocery bill.  Many of my meals are nearly all home grown.  I have potatoes with many of my meals - mostly fried up with onions and garlic for breakfast, but also baked or boiled with my dinner.  The frozen broccoli and green beans make a nice accompaniment for my dinners.  The canned fruits are good when I am craving a sweet snack and the jams and jellies regularly find their way into sandwiches that I take with me for lunch.  The pickles are an anytime crunchy snack and I have found a small market for them with my coworkers.  The handful of jars that I have sold at work make all that time canning them a little more worth my while.  As for meat this year I am still working my way through my half a hog that was butchered last winter, a couple more chickens from my first foray into meat birds and a few random packages of venison that need to be ground up or made into jerky.

Right now my current tally of canned goods looks like this:  Apricot Jam - 7 half pints, Plum Jam - 9 half pints, Pepper Jelly - 7 quarter pints, Canned Peaches - 7 pints, Canned Pears - 6 pints, Applesauce - 5 pints, Apple Pie Filling - 5 pints, Salsa - 24 pints, Pickles - 19 quarts, Tomato Sauce - 14 pints, Chicken Stock - 16 quarts.

In the freezer I have: 3 whole chickens and 8 bags of various chicken parts, 4 bags of pork chops, 3 lbs of Italian sausage, a good sized shoulder roast, a package of ribs, a tenderloin and some pork skirt steak, 1 package of venison steaks, 3 packages of venison stew meat, and 5 packages of venison that need to be ground up.  There are also 21 bags of broccoli, 16 bags of green beans, 4 gallons of peppers, and a quart of frozen pea pods.

In dry storage I have 1.5 lbs of shallots, 24.5 lbs of yellow onions, 4.5 lbs of garlic and 21.5 lbs of potatoes.  There are still 12 bottles of plum wine left plus what is waiting to be bottled in the carboy.

If you want to see what I started with in the fall check out this post: Taking Stock of my Stores

Overall I am pleased with the amount of food that I was able to provide for myself with just my garden and chicken coop.  I still have to buy fruit if I want to can it for my for my stores, but if I can find a piece of land to call my own, that will change.  I still have enough food to last me several more months from the looks of things so I am getting better at estimating how much I need to preserve to last me the year.  I still need to work out having a larger variety of things, but I think what I canned this year was a good start.  My only problem now seems to be working out the storage space for all the jars of home canned goods.

An added benefit of preserving my own food is that I can use the jars over and over again saving me even more money in the long run.  I am finding that canning my own food is a highly cost effective and nutritious endeavor.  I like knowing exactly what goes into my food and where it comes from.  I also like the low waste side of the coin.  I don't have a lot of trash to throw away because all the containers just get washed and reused in the next batch of whatever I need them for.  It also makes storage a little simpler because everything is the same size.  All in all it's a win win - for my own health and for the health of my environment.

My Favorite Home Grown Breakfast

In my house breakfast gets fancy when I have the time to cook in the morning.  My favorite thing to make for myself is over easy eggs with a side of "Potatoes ala Wendall" and bacon.  This is a breakfast that I have on a regular basis since I have an abundant supply of eggs, potatoes, onions and garlic from my back yard. 

The first things into the frying pan are a couple slices of bacon.  While those cook up I chop the potatoes, onions and garlic into small chunks so they cook up fast.  

I have a variety of different potatoes on hand so I like to mix it up a little from day to day.  I also substitute shallots for onions here and there to add a little more variety to my meals.  I am using up the crops that I harvested last fall little by little and each meal makes me proud because I know that this food came out of my own front yard.

Once the bacon is finished cooking I throw the potatoes into the pan and let them brown a bit before adding the onions and finally the garlic.

Last but not least are the fresh eggs cracked into the hot pan and cooked until golden brown on both sides.

This is by far one of my favorite ways to start my day and I love the flavor of my fresh, colorful homegrown meals.  I also love the fact that the only thing on my plate that I had to buy was the bacon.  This delicious meal cost me less than $1.00 and took about 20 minutes to prepare.  What a great way to greet the day!

Bonus Harvest

Slowly but surely I am working my way through cleaning up the garden for spring.  We have had a stretch of mild weather here and it has been warm enough to turn over more beds.  The most recent turned bed was my mixed bag bed in which I allowed volunteer potatoes to grow among the turnips, carrots and chard that I planted.  Apparently I missed some things when I harvested the first time around.

I managed to find a few more pounds of potatoes and a handful of carrots.  Many of the small potatoes were soft from the hard freezes, but some of the deeper, larger potatoes were in great condition so I added them to my potato storage inside.  The carrots will be fresh snacks for a couple of days.  I love finding late season treats like this in my garden.  This is a very barren time of year for the garden so the fact that I am harvesting anything at all makes me very happy.

More Crochet Projects Completed

The holiday season has drawn to a close, but a few weeks ago, I had been very busy squeezing in those last minute Christmas gifts for this year.  My mother requested an headband in black and white so I quickly worked one up from some left over black yarn from a previous project and a bit of my white hand spun wool that I had just waiting to become something special.  It turned out beautifully and I hope it keeps her ears warm in the coming colder months of the year.

Another project that I finished up was a hat for my friend.  She wanted a hat for her husband that was the same color and pattern as the hat I made for her earlier, only without the ear warmers so I quickly crocheted a brand new beanie for her.

This pattern doubles up on the thickness of the yarn so it is very warm yet still very soft.  I think it is a perfect addition to anyone's winter hat collection and will hopefully be used often in the coming months.

Setting Up The Incubator

Things are pretty small scale here on the homestead and raising chickens is no exception.  The flock that I currently have is a mixed age flock of various dual purpose breeds.  Right now I have nine hens and two roosters (soon to be one).  The hens provide more than enough eggs for me plus a few extra dozen a month that I can sell to put towards their feed bill.  While I don't sell enough to make a profit from their eggs, I am happy if I can break even with their feed bill.  In addition to selling eggs, I also use the extra birds (roosters) for my own meals.  A couple of years ago I raised a large batch of chickens for meat (28 chickens was a lot for me).  I still have some of those birds in my freezer, but they are almost gone.  From that experience I learned that I would rather raise smaller, more frequent batches of chicks than to raise one large batch all at once.  Processing the birds is far less daunting when you only have to do two or three at a time as opposed to a marathon session of twenty five.  That large batch of chickens did give me a good selection of roosters and I narrowed it down to a few with what I considered desirable traits to use in breeding more chickens for my future flock.  Those lucky fellows got to shack up with the ladies for the winter and the following year I hatched two more rounds of chicks to add to my flock at no additional cost to me (other than feeding).

This year I am going to hatch a few more chickens with the eventual plan of replacing some of the older hens in the flock.  I won't get rid of all of the older ladies, but I want to keep the flock at a manageable size for me, so all the "bonus" chickens will go into the freezer.  I am going to keep my current good rooster for the foreseeable future and any young roosters that hatch will be destined for the freezer.  I was hoping that I would be able to allow the hens to hatch out some of their own chicks (saving me much time and trouble), but none of my hens have become broody so far.  My back up plan is to use my own incubator to hatch out my own chicks at home.  

I have had this incubator for years now and though the hatch rate isn't super high, I still manage to hatch out small batches of chicks every time I have used it.  It is a very basic incubator that has a small heating element and a fan for air circulation.  There is a shallow water tray that lies under the screen that the eggs rest on to help increase humidity during incubation.  This incubator is so low tech that I have to manually turn the eggs several times a day to give them the best chance for hatching.  

I am hoping that this year's hatch will be a higher percentage than I have gotten in years past.  Most of my hens are 1-2 years old so they are in their laying prime and they have been living with the current rooster for several months, so I am certain that most of the eggs are fertile.  The girls have really started to lay well in the past few weeks, so I have saved the freshest eggs from the last couple of days at room temperature just for the purpose of hatching.  The eggs I have selected are clean, smooth and of uniform shape and texture.  I don't want to continue to breed any chickens that lay misshapen eggs, so using the nice ones for hatching should take care of that problem.

I am setting the eggs according to the recommendations of the the farmer's almanac.  They recommend setting eggs so that they will hatch during a fruitful period.  The best days for setting eggs this month are the forth and the fifth, so I needed to get everything ready for incubation by the third.  Setting up the incubator is easy, just plug it in and adjust the thermostat so that the temperature inside stays steady at 99-100 degrees.  I usually let the incubator run for a full day before I set eggs just to make sure that it can maintain the correct temperature.  I will add water to the tray when I set the eggs in to begin incubation.  I am going to try to hatch twelve eggs this time.  I choose twelve because if they do all hatch successfully I won't be overwhelmed with chicks.  Twelve is slightly more than I would actually want, but I don't expect every single egg to hatch either.  If I end up with between six and ten chicks I will be happy.  

Winter Hikes

One of the greatest things about where I live is the variety of climates that I can visit in just a short drive.  To the south are tall mountain peaks and if I am in the mood for snow shoeing or other cold weather adventures I can drive a couple hours and find snow.  In this valley it is much drier and a little warmer, so winter hikes can be found up the numerous canyons to the north and west of where I live.  There is a canyon only 20 minutes from my house that has miles of trails to explore and if I have a few hours to spare I often go there for short afternoon adventures.  Farther north are even more canyons and more miles of trails to explore in the winter.  I like hiking these areas in the winter because it is usually a comfortable temperature for hiking and quieter.  I don't have to contend with crowds of people or suffer through the scorching high desert heat of summer.

This was a beautiful frozen waterfall hidden in Dominguez Canyon.

 I find it pretty amazing that there is still a source of running water in this area at this time of year.  Places like this are high desert gems.

The view back the way we came.

 One of my friends spotted these guys hanging out on the side of the canyon.  I always feel a little blessed to witness such rare creatures when I am out hiking in these kinds of places.

 Closer to home there are some interesting rock formations hidden up an inconspicuous looking valley.

The view from inside the hole.

 Here is where wind, water and time create art among the rocks.

These are the places that I visit when I need time to recharge.  The solitude and silence soothes my spirit and quiets my restlessness.