Just to tide us over

Maybe while we're waiting for real chicks, I should make some of these...

Pattern here.
Photo and pattern from Myrtle & Eunice.  Thanks, Myrtle and Eunice!

As things continue to go pear shaped...

We currently have no chickens.  This feels odd, since we've had chickens for years and years and years.
Something scared away and/or killed all our chickens.  The Prime Suspect is a large dog that appears in our yard occasionally.  We have no idea what irresponsible jackass owns it and doesn't see fit to keep it safely at home.  We've alerted our local Animal Control Officer (a wonderful woman whom we both dearly love and respect) and she's watching for it. 
But that doesn't get us our chickens back.  Our old Rhode Island Reds.  Our not-Buff Orpingtons.  Our Black Australorps.  Our brand-new Barred Rocks.  All gone.
We won't be able to get new chicks until spring.
And they won't start laying until they mature next fall.
We're going to have to buy eggs for the first time in umpteen years.
I'm so depressed...

Creeeeeeeeeaaak

Well, the hinges on the door seem a bit rusty, and there's definitely a lot of dust on the windowsills, but I'll get the blog shipshape in no time...
It's been a busy summer.  After endless soul sucking rain in June and a good bit of July, the sun finally came out.  And then it got too hot and humid to breathe.

So, a summary of summer:
Madman heard a report that we'd had 21 days of rain in June.  I honestly don't recall there being 9 days without rain - I'd put it closer to 3.  Maybe 4, tops.
So the garden is an abject failure this year.  What didn't wash away, rotted in the ground.  The soil was usually too wet to work (and was always too wet to work on my days off), so the only thing growing out there is grass and ragweed.  And 6 corn plants.  And I found a beet the other day.
Not a banner year for gardening.
The goldfinch finally gave up around the end of July.  My guess is he finally suffered a terminal concussion.
Something has been eating our laying hens and got one of our adult turkeys.  We're not sure if it's a skunk, a raccoon, or a fox - all have been seen lurking around here at one time or another.  We've revamped fencing.  Again.
There have been numerous sheep escapes - some more harrowing than others.  (I'll share a few in a later post.)
We lost a mama rabbit, but gained 12 baby rabbits. 
All 12 of our Barred Rocks have survived, and are almost ready to join the remnants of our laying flock, once we're certain that we've thwarted whatever carnivore is out there.  There are several roosters in the crowd, who don't know that they're auditioning for the role of Only Rooster in the Coop.  (The ones who get voted off the island will end up in the freezer.)
All 15 turkeys are also still with us.  They've still got some growing to do.  There's been some gobbling starting to go on out there, so we're hoping there's a male or two for our future breeding flock.
I had a lovely vacation, with family visits, yarn, bubble blowing, and a RenFair.

And I had a major milestone birthday.  One of those that end in zero.  There weren't any party hats or balloons, but my daughters kidnapped me and took me on an adventure.  And, as with all really good adventures, I got to wear a superhero costume.

Anyone care to hazard a guess?

All Quiet on the Critter Front

No sign of any lambs.
No sign of any weasels.

One of those statements makes me happier than the other, of course.

The chicks are growing, getting prettier by the day. Their wings are developing black and white stripes as they feather out, which you can almost see in the picture.

I had a terrible time even getting a picture of the little peeps, because they move so fast.  One moment I had a group focused in the middle of the frame, the next moment all I had was a plain of woodshavings.  The lighting was complicated in this pic by a sunbeam that was peeking in through the upper window of the coop.

The closest thing to animal excitement (and non-quiet) we've had was the other day when one of the hens was out.  (We keep explaining to the chickens that this is not a free-range establishment.  They keep ignoring us.)  I was happily kneeling in one of my flower beds, pulling weeds, when I had a feeling of not-being-alone.  A quick glance to my side showed a hen standing at my elbow, watching raptly as I tugged at grass, with a "Whatcha doin'?" look on her face.  Or maybe it was an "Are you gonna eat that?" look - it's hard to tell with chickens.  This was the same hen that I'd unsuccessfully chased earlier in the day.  There had been one of those mad loud I-laid-an-egg cackles, but it wasn't coming from the henhouse like it should have been.  (Chickens are very full of themselves when they lay an egg.  They're good for several rounds of "Buk-buk-buk-bu-GACK!!!  Buk-buk-bu-GACK!! Bu-GACK!!!  Buk-buk-buk-bu-GACK!!!"  which roughly translates as "I just laid an egg!!!  Me!!!  I laid an egg!!  It's the best egg EVER!!!")  I finally tracked the noise down to the bunnies' shed, where the hen was telling poor Stiffler all about her brand new egg, from a distance of about a foot away.  Poor Stiffler - large ears, sensitive hearing.  He was just staring at her with a rabbity WTF face.  I made a grab for her and missed, but at least it shut her up as she ran out. 
I swear I heard Stiffler give a sigh of relief as I picked up the Best Egg Ever and took it to the house.

Peeps and Sheeps

Another sign of spring is when we do this:

It was really hard to get a picture, since they all move so fast. 

This year's choice for our Chicken of the Year is the Barred Rock. 
It occurred to me last fall that if we got a different color of chicken each year, we would be better able to keep track of how old each chicken is.  After years of getting Rhode Island Reds, we had no idea which hen was from which year.  And we've still got a bunch of them in our flock - they could be anywhere from 4 to 7 years old.  Now when a chicken inexplicably drops dead (and they do) at least we'll be able to figure out whether it's from old age or from some chicken health-threat. 
And Barred Rocks are really pretty...

Anyway, the little dark chicks are the Rocks, and there are 12 of them all together.  Straight run, so they'll be a mix of boys and girls.  We plan to keep one of the roosters, since our previous rooster inexplicably dropped dead.  (Oh, hell, there's one of those plans again.)

The lighter chicks are actually baby turkeys.  We got 15 Bourbon Reds, which is the same heritage breed that our present two turkey hens are.  (We didn't really want that many, but that was the minimum order.  Given the fragility of turkey poults, it may be just as well that we start with extras, though.)
The plan here (there's that word again) (and I can hear that giggling, ya know) is to keep the best tom turkey out of the group for breeding purposes.  We'd really like to be able to hatch our own turkeys. 
BTW, I might need you to remind me later that I thought that was a good idea.

In sheepy news, all the girls are 'making bag' - which means that lambing could start any time.  Onyx looks like she's getting ready to feed the multitudes - if her udder gets any bigger, she'll be stepping on it...
I hope she doesn't have triplets again.

Hey! What happened to August?!?

And how did it get to be September already...

So, what have I got to show for the summer?

Here's the sum total of the knitting I got done:

Wingspan.  (This is the best of a bunch of really bad pictures.  I can't get the colors right and the focus defeats me.)  I love this project.  Though if you count over to the fourth and fifth wedges, starting from the right, you'll see that the color sequence went south.  Minutes after I posted about how the colors were transitioning perfectly for the pattern, I hit a knot in the yarn.  *sigh*

The garden pretty well went south this summer too.  What with the sheep getting out and eating most of it, there's not much left but swiss chard and green beans.  And the tomatoes are being eaten nearly to the ground by a sudden infestation of hornworms, which we've never had before in all our years of gardening up here.  Growing up in Kansas and upstate NY, I was familiar with them, but Madman was all "WTF?!?" because he'd never seen one before.  Picture a caterpillar the size of your middle finger, chomping on your tomato plants and pooping the equivalent of elephant droppings.  The only good thing about them is that they explode rather spectacularly when you stomp on them.  (Just be careful not to point them at anyone, as they go off like a cannon.)

One of the few bright spots is that my lovely Black Austrolorps have started laying eggs.  (*sniff*  They grow up so fast...)  They've now been moved in with the main laying flock, though they spend most of their time next to the fence between poultry pens, gazing at their beloved turkeys.  The turkeys are also now spending all their time pressed up against the other side of the fence, gazing right back at their little chicken friends.  And this morning, Madman found the hen turkey in with the layer flock - she must have climbed the fence since she's now too fat to fly.  We foresee trouble, but the turkeys' days are numbered (because Thanksgiving.  And possibly Christmas.  You know.  Don't tell them.) so it will all work out in the end.   Because it would be just great if something on this little farmlet would just stay where it's supposed to.

But I'm not holding my breath...

Of Poults and Pullets

I've been so caught up with the shenanigans of the sheep this summer, that I've been remiss in reporting on the turkeys and the Black Austrolorps.
Let's just fix that, shall we?
Here's a photo of the Lorps in the pen they share with the turkeys.  They're definitely a Gang of Six - they travel as a group, and rarely stray more than a few feet away from each other.

(I just wish I could get closer to them to get better pictures - they're not particularly friendly...)
I'm especially intrigued with their legs, which are black, instead of the almost-yellow of all our other chickens.

As for the turkeys, we thought we had one tom and two hens.  But late last week, one of the 'hens' suddenly started looking more and more male.  We don't know if this is normal or if he's just a late bloomer.  So, we've got one tom, one hen, and one puzzle.

Here's the tom:

He's in full-tilt Proud to Be a Turkey mode.  Tail feathers fanned, wing feathers also fanned and wings held down and slightly out to the side, all his feathers fluffed up until he looks twice his actual size, chin tucked and face colors blazing.

The funny thing is that he's been doing this since he was a week old - even before he had feathers to fluff.  He would assume the position and strut the strut.  "Oh, yeah, dude.  I'm a turkey.  Watch me now."
As for the other guy - here he is with the hen.  Up until last week, he looked just like her.  Then suddenly his neck started getting redder, that funny droopy nose-thing started growing, and he started doing the tom-turkey-fluff thing.  It was a surprise to us...

And I can cheerfully report that turkeys are just as dumb as we'd heard.  Maybe even dumber.
(You're starting to sense that I'm getting ready to tell one of my animal stories, aren't you?  Yep, you're right.  Grab a beer or a cup of tea and settle in, cuz here we go.)
This whole turkey-raising thing is new to us, if you'll remember.  It's this year's experiment, and it's been interesting.  On the whole, we like turkeys - they're not as flighty as chickens.  More placid, yet more curious.  They like to check things out, though they don't seem to come to any conclusions.
So, the other day, I was on morning chores.  Now evening chores can be done in a relaxed manner, since there are no time constraints.  For this reason, disaster rarely strikes for evening chores.
Mornings, however, are another story.  Since we have to get to work in a timely fashion, we tend to be in a bit more of a hurry, even when we've allowed an extra margin of time in case of delays.  (We have a theory that morning chores take 20 minutes if everything goes smoothly.  However, this is just a theory, since everything has never gone smoothly...)
So, like I said, it was my morning for chores.  There had already been a few delays, and the extra time had been pretty well chewed up, when I looked toward the gate to the turkey and lorp pen and saw a turkey standing just outside the (closed) gate.
It was the hen.  I don't know how she got out.  My theory is that she'd flown up to the top of the gate and then fell off.  Not great flyers, turkeys. 
I started grumbling to myself.  "Aw, crap.  I don't have time for this.  Damn turkey.  grumble grumble" 
I approached her cautiously, trying not to spook her.  It was the first time a turkey had been out of the pen, and I had no way of knowing how she'd react.  The very last thing I wanted to be doing was racing around chasing a terrified turkey.
She continued to stand there quietly as I edged closer.  I realized I could almost hear her singing to herself:  "I'm so dumb.  Dumb-de-dumb-de-dumb."
I got closer.
 "I'm so dumb.  Dumb-de-dumb-de-dumb."
And closer.
 "I'm so dumb.  Dumb-de-dumb-de-dumb."
I finally got close enough to lay hands on her.  She still didn't move.
 "I'm so dumb.  Dumb-de-dumb-de-dumb."
I reached behind her, unlatched and opened the gate, then, with both hands gently turned her around.  She obliged by alternately lifting each foot as I spun her, rocking in time to her song.
 "I'm so dumb.  Dumb-de-dumb-de-dumb."
I gave her a little push, and she walked back into the pen, still singing.  "I'm so dumb.  Dumb-de-dumb-de-dumb."

Turkeys.  Raising them again next year?  Oh, yeah.

Another fail...

I had big plans for today.  I was going to take pictures of lambs and write a lovely post describing their latest shenanigans.  (At least they're finally confined to their pen, and our garden is starting to grow.  We actually got enough lettuce for a salad the other night, without having to share it with sheep.  (They're actually not very good about sharing...))
 
Unfortunately, today was chicken butchering day, and doesn't the time just fly when you're having fun?

By the time we'd finished with the chickens, and with the people who came to pick up their chickens, and done the thousand other things that need doing on the rare occasion we actually get a day off together, I was too pooped to pic.

So, for lack of anything else to show and tell - here's a picture I took at NH S&W that I forgot to share.

 Yes, she's converted her exercise bike to power her spinning wheel.  (I can only think of the times I've gotten all excited about seeing a spinning class advertised in the paper, only to discover that it's actually just a class for riding exercise bikes.  Like that needs to be a class...)

As if we didn't have enough to do...

Our chicks and baby turkeys arrived yesterday.  What were we thinking...

 We've got 50 Cornish-X, though 20 of them will be going right away to someone else.  The black ones are Black Australorps that I ordered at the last minute.  (Madman had sent me down to the feedstore with our turkey order.  I was unsupervised.  Black Australorp chicks were on their order list and were the same price as Rhode Island Reds.  I couldn't help it.  I'd wanted Australorps since the first picture I saw of them, and there they were, right on the order form.  How many times do you get a chance to impulse buy chickens...)
Madman picked up the chicks when they came in, and brought them home.  "You're going to love your Australorps," he told me.  "They look like little penguins."

 And we got half a dozen turkey poults.  We've never grown turkeys before, so this should be an interesting experiment.  The three in the foreground are turkeys - they look like chicks with lumps on their heads.

I told Madman I wanted to take a black marker out to the chick's coop and draw little bow-ties on the Australorps.  "Wouldn't that be cute?"  I asked.  He just laughed and shook his head.  And went to hide the markers.

For those of you keeping score at home

The pullets are nosing ahead again...

Yes, that's four (count them, four!) pullets standing outside the coop door, trying to figure out how to get in.

One of the less stupid  braver ones actually edged past me while I had the door open, filling feeders, and got inside.  A second one I cornered, grabbed, and boosted over the fence.

The other two are still out there milling around somewhere, too fast for me to capture.  (Madman tried to find them when he got home, but since it now gets dark in what feels like mid-afternoon,  it wasn't possible to find two chickens by the light of a headlamp.)

We honestly can't figure out how they're getting out.  And apparently, neither can they, since they can't manage to get back in.

More Mayhem

Too tired to post. We butchered the last of the second batch of meatbirds today - twenty-some of the little blimpoids. (We were victims of our own success on the first batch - we ended up selling so many that we didn't get any for ourselves. Had to raise a second batch, and even then we could have sold most of them.) (You know you're on the right track when you have to beat customers off with a stick.) ("My chicken, damn you! Let go! Mine mine mine!")
Anyway, I just finished stuffing the last of them into the freezer. And I had to lean on the door slightly to do it... (There had to be a general purge of the freezer about mid-afternoon. A lot of things went to the compost pile. Bananas-that-would-have-been-for-banana-bread-if-I'd remembered-I-had-them-at-any-point-in-the-last-several-months, chicken carcasses that I'd intended to boil down for stock, etc. And several unlabeled items that I decided that if I couldn't identify it in less than 20 seconds then it should probably be thrown away...)
(Note to self: Label things that go in the freezer. No, you are not going to remember what they are later, no matter how firmly you believe you will. No, seriously, label things.)

Chicken for supper tonight. Gotta go start some pilaf...

That's Frahn-ken-steen!

One morning, shortly after we got the last batch of meatbirds, Madman came in from morning chores and asked, "Have you noticed one of the chicks has a weird crooked neck?"
"Oh, yeah," I answered. "I've been calling him Igor..."

Meet Igor, all grown up. Still looking at the world sideways (and slightly-from-the-right.)

At least he seldom trips over things...

We win! We win!

It's been a week since any of the pullets have gotten out of their pen!
(Stupid chickens...)

Vermont Sheep and Wool

I'll be going on Sunday - anyone else?

(And for the record - still finding two or three pullets out every. single. morning. It's impossible to tell if it's the same culprits every time, as all the pullets are pretty identical looking. Short of paint-balling each of them a different color, there's no way of telling them apart. (And don't think we haven't been tempted...))

Just who is thwarting whom, anyway?

Bullwinkle had it right in her comment on my last post. I'm starting to wonder just who is the thwarter and who is the thwartee. (Or is that thwarted?) Well, someone around here is full of thwarts.
Seven pullets out this morning - five back in their old pen and two out and about in our yard. I managed to catch five and stuff them back into the yard they're supposed to be in, but after innumerable scratches (Chickens have claws. Big sharp claws.) and splatterings with mud and other detritus you'd find in a place with chickens (On my face! Ewwww! On my face!) I finally gave up and went back inside.
I think Houdini came back as a flock of chickens...

Finally Thwarted. (We think)

Madman opened the coop's outside door this morning, figuring the pullets had had long enough to acclimate to their new digs.
When I left for work at noon, there were 2 out - one in the old pen, and one wandering around the edge of the garden. (The pullets were under the mistaken impression that they were free-range hens. When they first started getting out of their pen, we'd go to the trouble of chasing them down and putting them back, but we eventually gave that up. They'd be out again before our backs were turned. We got to the point that we'd see a bunch of chickens out and just heave a sigh as we got on with whatever project had brought us outside.)
Madman went out a little later, found six back in the old pen, gathered them up, and put them back where they were supposed to be. He then sealed up the hole in the netting that he thought they were using for an escape route, and called it good.
A couple hours later, there were six out again. He repeated his previous efforts, and this time making the chicken yard so escape-proof that Houdini would have despaired.
When he went out at suppertime, no chickens were out.
Though there were several standing in the chicken yard in a group, glowering at him and the fence...

If at first you don't succeed, fly fly again

Madman just came in from capturing the last of the pullets and moving her to the main chicken coop with everyone else. He'd nabbed most of them last night, but this one had evaded him somehow.
This was the second time he'd tried to merge the flocks - adding this year's pullets to our main group of layers. (Read about how it's done here.) He tried a couple of days ago, capturing all the pullets while they slept, smuggling them into the main coop, and setting each one on the roost.
But when we woke up the next morning, all the little chickeny brats were right back in their old pen. They'd found some way to escape and had headed back home...
Since we want their pen for our new group of meat birds, we really really need them out. This time, we're taking no chances. The main coop's door to the outside is closed, and will remain so for a couple of days, until the pullets forget about the old homestead and settle into the new.
There's a reason that the expression is not "A chicken never forgets"...

Chicken Butchering 101

Yesterday was the big day for doing in the first batch of meat birds, and since I've had requests for documenting the process (mostly from folks who want to convince their partners "See how easy it is?"), I ran around with the camera like a chicken with it's... well, like a busy little photographer.
For the squeamish and the vegetarians in the crowd - you might want to skip today's post. For the curious (and the morbidly curious), here we go...



We're going to be taking something that looks like this:

and turn it into something a little more barbecue-ready.
To start with, the chosen ones were closed in their coop the night before, with lots of water, but no food. This was to ensure that the poop-pipeline (so to speak) was empty, making for a much cleaner process the next day.

Necks broken, heads removed, the chickens are hung up to bleed out.

Next, they're dunked in a water bath (in the 140-150 degree range) to loosen the feathers. We keep a big pot of water heating on the barbecue grill, with another pot preheating on the kitchen stove.

While I was waiting for Madman to dip the chicken, I got distracted by a garter snake on the rock wall surrounding one of my herb beds. Isn't he cute?

The big innovation this year was that Madman and his Dad went in halvies on a chicken plucker! Yay! (You may remember from last year that the plucking was the big bottleneck in the operation. Not that there's anything wrong with plucking chickens for Thirteen.Frickin'.Hours.) This machine is practically magic.

You have to keep a tight grip on the chicken, however, otherwise it tends to launch...

Just in case you were getting tired of looking at chicken butchery pictures and needed a break. This is one of my bush roses.

With feathers removed, it's time for those big stompin feet to go.

And now we're ready for the gooshy bits.

Here's a lupin.

Cut around the anus, then cut up the abdomen towards the breastbone.

Remove all the goosh.

You definitely deserve a flower after that bit. This is my rugosa rose. At the rate it's spreading, you'll be able to see it from your own front window in another year or two.

We use a bone saw to cut the chicken in half. Here's where Madman and I differ - I start on the back, he starts on the front. Either way works.

And all the way through.

Here's where I took over the process. I did the final washing and packaging, and cutting some of the chickens into quarters. See where my thumb is? Right at the tip, there's a depression where there's a weak spot in the spine that even a crappy knife can cut through. This is where to cut to divide the front half from the back half.

A good aggressive rinse, and they're ready to go in the freezer.

Our chickens were so big that whole ones had to be packaged in 2-gallon sized freezer bags. We could fit one half-chicken or two quarter-chickens in a 1-gallon size. I did some spot checking on weights as we went down through, and they weighed from a little over 7 lbs to a little over 9. (That's dressed weight, so about twice the size of the average supermarket chicken.) One chicken makes many meals for 2 people.
And here's one more of my roses - another rugosa in a frilly white. It's nowhere near as aggressive as the deep pink one, so you'll just have to settle for the picture.

Chicken Liberation Day!

Yeehaw!
To tumultuous cheers and a hail of confetti (which was actually just a bunch of wood shavings that I'm still trying to vacuum up), the meat birds moved outside today.
Madman had prepared their new home, complete with copious amounts of food and water


and a luxurious canopy that can be folded down at night for privacy and warmth.

In the picture above, you can see both chicken yards - the laying flock's yard is behind the meatbird domain.
And as if all that luxury wasn't enough, we found a surprise perk growing in the chicken yard.
Volunteer lettuce:


Cuz what's a really great chicken resort without a salad bar?

Spring Sprang Sprung

Hey, it's finally spring up here! For certain definitions of spring. That doesn't mean we won't get another snow or two before summer arrives (or even after summer arrives), but for up here, this is as good as it gets.

The tulips are up! No buds yet, but soon...

The first daffodil up is almost ready to bloom. There are a few more daffs lagging behind, but I'm surprised any of them came back after a guest weedwhacked them last year, thinking they were some kind of heavy-duty grass. So I'll take what I can get and be happy.

I hadn't checked the rhubarb yet this spring - it's going all kinds of crazy. Rhubarb pie, rhubarb dumplings, ginger rhubarb jam... Lovely stuff, rhubarb.

Today's big project was putting up the greenhouse that we acquired from friends who are moving away. One of Madman's buddies showed up to help, which was a wonderful thing.

The sheep's pen is next to the garden, and Goldie spent the whole afternoon trying to cajole the guys into giving them more food. Because why on earth would humans be outside if they weren't actively feeding sheep?


They got the walls up and a couple of the roof trusses attached before they had to call it quits for the day.


Once the structure is complete and the plastic is on, we'll be able to set out our tomato and pepper starts and gain about a month on the growing season.

The chickens have been taking advantage of the warmer weather by spending lots of time outdoors. But there's a serious hitch in their enjoyment.

Over the last couple of years, several new springs have bubbled up in our yard. Each year, more and more water is gushing up out of the ground and heading down the hill. This year, half the chicken yard is now a bubbling stream. Once the greenhouse project is done, Madman will go to work trying to channel the water into the trench he's been carving to handle all the water runoff. We really didn't need a babbling brook running from the upper end of our garden, through the chicken yards, and down our driveway...

Here's one of our spring-molting chickens. I think she looks like a Skeksis...

One of the day's smaller projects was removing the Rhode Island Red chicks from the Big Box o' Chix and putting them into their own little habitat. The CornishX chicks have entered the stage where they spend all their time eating, and they were starting to elbow out the smaller Red chicks.
Here you can see the size difference. The Red chick is actually a day or two older than his mutant brethren, but is half the size.

Madman had actually started the transfer before I realized what he was doing (I was still absorbing coffee, so not too quick on the uptake.) I ran for the camera since I wanted to get that size comparison picture.
The Red chicks were a little spooked, as they were getting scooped up one or two at a time and whisked away to the other box.
Here's one trying to hide in the crowd.

("Shhhh... He'll never see me in here...")

Here they are, happy in their new home.


No more having to fight through a crowd of big hungry buffoons just to get a bite of lunch.