The Pullet's First Eggs

I hatched a round of chicks at the end of February.  When they first hatched there were a total of eight chicks, but while they were growing in the yard half of them were stolen by a fox in the night.  The four remaining chicks got a reinforced run and managed to make their way to adult hood over the next few months unscathed.  They were finally big enough to hold their own with the older chickens so they were mixed together about a month ago.  Things got off to a rough start, but they now seem to be tolerating each other well.

The older chickens are a stage in their lives where they are going through a molt so they look pretty awful and they haven't been laying consistently for a few weeks.  With my egg production being down I was really starting to wonder if any of my new additions to the flock were hens.  I had heard roosters crowing for the last few weeks so I knew that I had at least two of those, but I still wondered how much longer it would be until I got my first egg from the hens.

This week I got my answer.  Both of my new pullets laid their first egg on the same day!  Even better, they both laid in the nest boxes so they already seem to get what those are for.  It will be nice to have a little boost in egg production with a couple of new layers in the flock.

The smallest eggs on the top belong to the new pullets.  I am happy to see that they have smooth, uniform, well shaped eggs.  Some of my other hens lay some pretty wonky looking eggs sometimes and it isn't necessarily a trait that I want in my flock.  Weird shaped eggs with thick or thin shells don't hatch very well so I prefer to raise chicks that can lay healthy strong eggs.  From the looks of things so far these new pullets are keepers.

Harvesting Onions Round One

I can't believe it was only a few months ago that I was tucking onion sets into the soil.  I believe I planted them in late March and it took very little time to get growing.

 In only a matter of weeks they sent up strong healthy growth and proceeded to fill in the bed.

They were so happy here that they grew like this for another couple of months before they finally fell over.  This was my signal that they were about ready to harvest.

I pulled the irrigation lines out of the bed in an attempt to let them dry out a bit before harvest.  Monsoon season had other plans however and proceeded to dump buckets of rain on my garden for several weeks.  It never did quite dry out, but I did chance upon a nice clear sunny morning so I took the opportunity to get some harvesting done.

As I pulled them from the bed I laid them out in the sunshine to dry out a bit and begin the curing process.  I also did my best to clean them up as much as possible since I was pulling them from fairly sticky mud and didn't want them to rot.  I had to toss many into the compost that were mushy from sitting in the wet soil for too long already.

Once I finished digging them out I let them sit in the sun for a few hours, but had to rush to bring them indoors in the afternoon because another monsoon storm was heading my way. They will finishing curing on wire shelves in my kitchen.  Once the leaves dry up I will cut them off and store the cured bulbs in the pantry.

Dehydrated Zucchini Chips

I am in the midst of a glut of summer squash and have been totally unable to keep up with them despite eating them every day in various dishes.  I have been giving them away by the bag at work and feeding the giant ones to the chickens to supplement their diet.  I decided that since I had so many it wouldn't hurt to use a few in an flavor experiment with my dehydrator, so I sliced them up and laid them out on the trays, making each tray a slightly different flavor.  One tray I left plain for comparison.  One tray I sprinkled with Old Bay Seasoning.  One tray I just sprinkled with salt and one tray I sprinkled with white vinegar and sea salt.  If it turns out to be a tasty snack then I will make several batches of chips over the next few weeks and hopefully have a healthy treat for myself this winter when fresh summer squash is well out of season.

And the Pickling Begins

I was only able to keep up with eating my fresh cucumbers for a week or two once they starting coming on.  Each day the number of cucumbers that I pull off the vine increases and soon I will be filling baskets with them every morning.  It only took a few days to fill a gallon bag with my fresh harvests so I decided that it was time to get started on the first batch of dill pickles for the year.  This year I planned a bit better and should have no shortage of dill for my pickling needs.  I only planted one row with dill, but the plants are huge and heavy with flower heads.  I also used the garlic that I harvested last month to flavor my home grown pickles.

The morning that I filled the gallon bag with pickling cucumbers I made quick work of washing all of them and trimming the flower ends off the fruit.  I try to pick them when they are about three to four inches long, but some get away for too long and they get sliced into spears so they fit into the jars better.  The washed and trimmed cucumbers go into a brine solution to soak for about twelve hours before they move on to the next stage of canning.

The next stage involves draining the brine from the cucumbers and packing them into hot jars along with a head of dill, a clove of garlic and a couple teaspoons of mustard seed.  I then top the jars off with my pickling solution mixture leaving head space for canning and into the boiling water bath they go.  I process my quart jars for twenty five minutes at this elevation and let them cool down for ten minutes before I remove them from the water bath.  I allow the jars to cool overnight and then remove the rings for storage.

Here are the first four jars of dill pickles for the season with many more in the works outside on the vine.

Garden Harvests: Summer Squash is in the Lead!

The summer crops are coming on fast right now and the summer squash are leading the charge.  They went from tiny seedlings to full blown bushes in just a few weeks and shortly after I saw the first flower I began to harvest my first zucchini and yellow squash of the year.  The yellow squash has been by far the most productive, but I have already discovered a couple of baseball bat sized zucchini hiding under huge leaves.  Those of course immediately went to the chickens since I have no desire to save them for my own use.  I have also been giving away my extra squash to friends and coworkers in an effort to keep up with the harvest.  I may dehydrate a few this summer, but I still have so much left from last year that it doesn't make sense to dehydrate more.

The cucumbers have begun to trickle in and so far I have been able to keep up with them, eating them every day with my lunch or dinner.  I have a feeling it will only be another few days before pickling season goes into full swing around here and I will be inundated with cucumbers as well.  The plants look plenty healthy right now, so I am expecting another bumper crop year in the cucumber department.

I have also harvested a handful of sweet banana peppers and sweet green chili peppers, as well as my first ripe tomatoes of the season.  These plants are also doing quite well, and when everything starts to ripen all at once I will become very busy in the kitchen canning salsa and sauces with the garden bounty.

Canning Peach Slices

When I stopped in at the local farmer's market this week I found that the local farms were carrying some delicious fresh ripe peaches.  I wasn't planning on getting any more than I could eat for the next week, but I came across a flat of peaches that were so large and beautiful that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to save some of this warm summer flavor for the cold evenings of winter so I took it home.

I decided to save enough to eat fresh all week, so I picked out some that could stand to ripen a few more days, then got to work on preparing the rest for canning.  These peaches were the first freestone peaches of the season and that made them ideal for canning.  Free stone just means that the flesh of the peach doesn't stick to the pit very well so they tend to be easier to cut apart for canning.  One by one I blanched and peeled the peaches and then sliced them up into a lemon juice solution to prevent browning.  I decided to hot process this batch of peaches so once I got the syrup solution up to a boil I added peach slices to the syrup to let them warm up for a few minutes before I added them to the jars.  Each jar was topped off with the syrup and then sealed and put back into the water bath canner.

After boiling in the water bath for 35 minutes I let the canner cool down, then removed the jars one by one to cool on the table.  I ended up with seven pints of peach slices to add to my winter stores.  I will probably do another flat of peaches before the summer is over, but right now I am just trying to enjoy them as much as I can while they are still fresh.

The New Arrivals

Just over three weeks ago I lost the friendliest rooster I have ever had.  He was a rarity among roosters in that he would never run from me and always let me pick him up with no fussing, struggling or aggression.  He also liked to follow me around when he was able and I became fond of him in the short time that he lived here.  I was hoping that he would be my main flock rooster for awhile, but there was a tragic accident and he is gone, but I still had hope for his sweet demeanor to live on.  For a couple days after he passed I collected the eggs from the hens he shared a pen with and set them in my incubator.  I started with a total of 9 eggs, only four of which proved to be viable.  Of the four only three ended up hatching.  These guys are currently resting after their long day of coming into the world and will spend the next few weeks learning the ins and outs of being a chicken in the brooder in my back room.

The plan is to handle them a lot and get them used to human contact and so far they seem to be doing well.  As hard as I try to not get attached to these guys, I think I will always love watching baby chicks doing their thing as they grow up.  I am hoping that at least one of them is as sweet as the rooster that sired them so that his good name may live on.