Never underestimate a determined chicken

It seems that our chickens, like Lily, are thoroughly undaunted by obstacles.  Yesterday I was happy to see that we had eggs in the nest boxes, but I didn't see an increase in the number of eggs.  I mentioned this to Mike when he got home, and then he went out to feed the barn cats and check on the girls.  He came back in, and told me that I had to get out to the coop.  In the first 24 hours since Mike had put up the netting to block off the tree, the girls had successfully pulled down the top 18 inches or so, and there were three eggs in the tree trunk.  I've always thought of chickens as somewhat stupid animals, but this flock is proving me wrong.

Mike's netting, effectively pulled down by the girls

This morning I did my first egg check around 11, and there were no eggs in the tree but two eggs in the nest box.  I praised the girls, but since I didn't have any food with me, they were unimpressed.  By 2 there was another egg in the nest box, and one on the floor.  By 4, there was an egg in the tree.  So today's total was five eggs, which is the most that we've gotten since the first day, and the majority of the girls who laid did so in the box.  I do admire the chicken who is still laying in the tree, since it can't be easy for her to get in and out, what with the netting still covering most of the opening.

This morning's nest eggs

This afternoon's tree egg

When I went into the yard to check the tree, I was immediately swarmed by the girls.  They are convinced that my danskos are edible, so they pecked away while I looked in the tree.  My mom has proposed that we name my new chicken best friend Agnes after my dad's mother, since Alice is somewhat named after my maternal grandmother.  I called the chicken Agnes today and she didn't seem to mind, so Agnes it is.  My grandmother Agnes is not doing well right now, so send a little thought her way.

Agnes (center) and the girls

Since we've sorted out the location of the eggs, I've now accumulated a full dozen for Taperman, which I'm sure he'll be very happy to receive this weekend.  The variation in size and color of the eggs is very cool.  Below you can see a lovely brown speckled egg, which is from one of the tree laying girls.  Also, there's a shot of the smallest and largest eggs of the bunch side by side.  The difference is huge!

Taperman's first dozen

Speckled egg

Smallest and largest of the dozen

This weekend, I think Mike is going to fill the tree trunk with spray insulation to definitively block off the tree nest.  Until then, we'll just keep checking the trunk.  I'm impressed by my determined chickens.

We've solved the mystery of the missing eggs

I previously complained about the small number of eggs that we've been getting, and we had been puzzling over how it was possible to find eight eggs on the first day, and then no more than three on each following day.  Well, we've solved the mystery of the missing eggs.

Back when we first constructed the chicken yard, Mike and I both had a hunch that the girls would take advantage of the mostly dead, hollow crab apple tree in the yard to lay in.  Despite this concern, we didn't do anything to block off the inside of the tree, and hadn't thought to look inside of the tree since the girls began laying, despite the paltry number of eggs we've been getting.  On Sunday, we were out saying hello to the girls when we noticed that a rhode island red and an aracauna were perched on the side of the tree.  It was cute.  When we went into the yard, the rhode island red hopped out of the tree, but the aracauna held her ground (this would be a theme of the afternoon).

Aww, chickens in a tree

I'm not getting out

We quickly realized that the girls were probably in the tree for a reason, and so Mike peered into the hole.  Looking back up at him was yet another rhode island red, and when he saw her little chicken eyes, we knew that we had a nest situation.  Mike plucked her out of the tree, and sure enough, the girls had quite a stash of eggs in the hollow, including three blue eggs.

Tree nest of eggs - 24 in all

Tree eggs laid out

The rhode island red had just laid an egg, so I put that in my pocket.  We didn't know how old the rest of the eggs were, though, so we decided to give them to Bullet and Lily to be on the safe side.  In retrospect, it was a bad idea to give each dog a dozen eggs for lunch, and the puppy gas that lasted throughout the evening taught us never to be so generous again.  It was truly heinous for us, although the dogs seemed undisturbed.

To prevent any future use of the tree as a nest, Mike wrapped all of the openings to the trunk with several layers of the netting that we had used last weekend to shore up the fence.  The girls, in particular, the aracuana and the rhode island red who were occupying the tree when we arrived, did not like this development. 

Hey, what's going on up there?

Okay, maybe we can just squeeze in through the bottom

Um, hello, I can't get in here fella

Seriously confused chicken

These two would not accept that the tree was now off limits, and couldn't figure out the netting.  It was a very confusing day to be a chicken.  Already since we blocked off the tree, though, we've had two eggs in the nest box, so I'm hopeful that this will straighten out some of the laying issues. 

Since we had traumatized the girls by taking away what was clearly their favorite place to lay, I tried to make amends with some leftover peanut noodles.  I know that these are my chickens, because their favorite human foods are tofu, rice, noodles, avocados, and vegetables.  So I thought that peanut noodles with veggies and tofu would be a good treat, and I was right.  The girls immediately flocked around me, and Alice was bold enough to try to grab noodles from my hand as I dropped them down to her.

The girls love noodles

Alice, mid noodle grab

Alice in all her glory

I'm glad that we've determined that the girls are laying more than 2-3 eggs a day, and that we truly do have chickens that lay blue eggs.  Taperman is also glad that the likelihood of his receiving a dozen eggs has substantially increased!

Finally starting to figure it out

This morning, all of the eggs were in the nest box!  A paltry total of two, but still, they were both in the nest boxes.  So at least my few chickens who are laying have begun to figure out that the nest boxes are for laying.  Now I just need the rest of the flock to get on board, so that we can start getting some real egg collections.  I know that Taperman is very anxious for his first dozen, and at this rate, it takes us over a week to accumulate 12 (of course, we eat them before that can happen, so poor Taperman remains eggless).

I have a new chicken best friend.  The aracauna in the picture below has become very attached to me during the last week.  When I go into the coop to collect eggs, she is usually the sole chicken to run in and say hello to me.  She trots right up to me, and is happy to let me pick her up.  She's also fascinated by my boots, and loves to stare at them.  She'd really like me to let her peck my wedding rings, like Taperman used to let them, but I'm a little wary of stray beaks so my rings are off limits.  Although she looks like Alice, Alice's comb is bigger than hers, so this is definitely a newly bold chicken.  Perhaps she needs a name, too?  I'm open to suggestions.

My new buddy

Girls greeting me this morning - they definitely associate me with yummy food treats (today it was squash seeds and strings)

Pam has been establishing herself as the sole functioning barncat in residence during this past week.  Every day, I see her out either on the rock wall near the garden (a fantastic chipmunk spot), or nestled in the tall grass next to the barn.  Yesterday she stared Bullet down when he tried to check her out, but this morning she made the mistake of running, so the dogs chased her all the way to the barn.  I threw them inside, which was confusing to them, and Pam made it safely into the barn.  The below picture of her (taken before the chase, of course), is kind of like a where's waldo.  Pam blends in very well, but if you look carefully, you can see her.  She's really a very pretty cat.

We still haven't taken care of the rotting giant pumpkin, and it's getting very ugly out there.  Lily has decided to take matters into her own hands and she sneaks off to munch on it whenever I'm not looking.  (It's probably a good idea to permanently avoid kisses from Lily.)  So gross.  I'd say today is definitely the day, but it's pouring and Mike will be home late, so tomorrow is probably the earliest that we'll Mike will take care of it.

And now, look at how sweet and angelic she looks when she's sleeping.  Remember, this is the same dog who eats rotten pumpkins, compost, and chases barncats.  She also tore out most of the stuffing from her fox toy before this adorable spooning took place.

The meteoric rise, and collapse, of the giant pumpkin

So last weekend, with the help of Mike's dental school friends, we installed the big giant pumpkin on the front stoop, completing our fall decorations.  Sadly, this lovely fall scene only lasted a week.  When we went out on Saturday morning, the pumpkin looked like this:

 Which quickly devolved to this by the afternoon:

 And now looks like this:

It's a sad, smelly sight.  So far, neither of us has been brave enough to tackle the removal, although we realize that the situation is only going to get worse.  We did have a lovely stoop for a week, at least, and the smaller giant pumpkin is still in good shape so all is not lost. 

Even though we were very sad about the collapse of the giant pumpkin, we still managed to get through some good garden work on Sunday.  As I've mentioned before, our chard has been incredibly productive for the last three months.  I never thinned the seedlings, though, and so the bed is very unruly.  When Mike harvested a bunch of chard for visiting friends on Saturday, he told me that he thought that most of our good chard was gone.  I figured that this probably wasn't true, but could admit that the overgrown and bug eaten leaves were overshadowing the good chard, so on Sunday morning I thinned out the chard bed.

 

Overgrown chard bed

Newly invigorated thinned chard bed

Clearly, we still have quite a bit of good chard left, and the bed looks much better now that I've removed the leaves that had gone by.  While I worked on chard maintenance, Mike fixed up the gate to the garden.  Lily the wonder squirmer has perfected the art of slithering under the gate to feast on the compost, and I begged Mike to do something to prevent her from getting in so often.  On Friday and Saturday, she pulled out and ate a broccoli stem, coffee filter with grounds, half a gourd, a carrot, and what looked like a pepper.  Can you tell she's a lab?  So Mike decided to lower the gate and put wire behind it so that she couldn't squeeze between the bars.  It took him at least an hour, and he was very confident in his work.

Lily, honey badger that she is, was undaunted.  About 15 minutes after we went inside for a break, I looked out to see Lily happily noshing away at the compost.  Apparently she took one look at the new gate and decided that it would be even easier to just push her nose through the side, which opens the gate just enough for her to squeeze through.  While we're happy that at least one of our dogs appears to be intelligent, we were not pleased that the redesign had not worked.  So now the gate is both latched shut with a caribeener and then tied tightly with rope.  So far, she hasn't figured out a way to get in, but it seems like it's only a matter of time.

After Mike and I were done with our respective garden jobs, we teamed up to plant a bed of garlic, to be harvested next summer.  Since I did such a sub-par job with the onions, I let Mike do the actual planting work, while I separated the cloves.  It feels good to have now three beds of the garden already set for next year (garlic, asparagus, and rhubarb), and soon I'm going to start planning out the rest of the garden for next summer.

Before our last frost, Mike had harvested a lot of peppers, and while he was brewing a batch of winter ale yesterday afternoon he multitasked by also blackening the peppers on the grill.  We had a mix of bell peppers and poblanos, and he blackened them all.  We're going to chop them up and freeze them for chilis this winter.

We've both been doing quite a bit of chicken socialization lately, so we stopped by the coop to say hello to the girls and have another conversation about where it is, and is not, appropriate to lay eggs.  I had a real connection with a few girls, and I like to think my words made a difference because this morning we had our first nest box egg!  So at least one of our chickens is smart enough to figure out that those straw filled comfy boxes are for laying.  We had two more eggs on the floor, but progress is progress.

How to move a giant pumpkin

Step One:  Invite a group of dentists over to your house.  I know, you're thinking, dentists?  Really?  But they're stronger than they look.  This still isn't saying much, but when your choices are runners or dentists, it's kind of a draw. 

Step Two:  Ply them with food and home brew.  If your dog eats seven of the nine hamburgers that you've prepared (ahem, Bullet), be sure that you have backup food options.  Hot dogs, chicken, and homemade squash, potato and lima bean soup work well.

Step Three:  Casually bring up the existence of the pumpkin, and compliment them on their big, strong muscles.

Step Four:  Make sure there's an engineer in the group!  Did I forget that?  Because she ended up being the key player, and ensured that the very, very strong dentists didn't have to actually lift the pumpkin very much.

Step Five:  Load the pumpkin into a wheelbarrow/wagon/anything with wheels and move it to where you think you might want it.  Notice that the back of your pumpkin has a giant crack, and accept that if the pumpkin lasts through Halloween, you'll be lucky.  Chalk it all up to a learning year for pumpkin growing, and try harder to find that book about growing giant pumpkins that you bought, looked through once, and then lost.

Step Six:  Pretend you were just kidding when you say that you aren't exactly sure where the pumpkin should go, and you'd like to see it a few ways.  Even dentists have their limits.

Step Seven:  Ask for an estimate of the pumpkin's weight, and when you are disappointed with the paltry number (say, 160 pounds), double it.  I grew a 300 POUND PUMPKIN!*

Step Eight:  Try to take a group picture with the pumpkin.  This will turn out to be the most difficult part of the entire process, especially if your husband keeps blocking the pumpkin when he jumps into the shot.  If you have a toddler on hand to sit on the pumpkin, that will really help show how enormous the pumpkin is, and will also be adorable.

Step 10:  Enjoy your fabulous fall decorations.

*A gross exaggeration.  But I don't have a scale that I can weigh the pumpkin on, so I'm sticking with it.

Serious farm cleanup just in time for the first fall frost

Our first real frost was forecasted for last night, so we decided that it was time to pull out our tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, gourds, and winter squash.  From my drive-bys of the neighborhood, it looks like most people around us took care of this task a few weeks ago, but we've still been enjoying a pretty big harvest from these plants, and also, I'm a kind of lazy farmer.  The tomatoes were quickly devolving into a very sad state, though, becoming so smelly that I was avoiding the garden, and I realized that it would only get worse if we subjected the already overripe fruits and dying plants to a few frosts.  I also wanted to make sure that we didn't waste the ripe eggplants and peppers that were still on the plants, and I really wanted to cut down the catnip that took over the herb bed.  We worked all afternoon, and managed to cross off everything on our farm to-do list.

While I waited for Mike to get home from work, I tackled the herb bed.  The catnip has been totally out of control for most of the summer, and none of my three (or four, but I don't think Ricky Bobby really counts - he's more of a neighborhood cat.  You're welcome, neighborhood?) cats will touch it.  Not Itch, who usually can't get enough nip, and not Pam and Staci, who certainly look like they could use a little loosening up.  Even though I've been pushing it on everyone I know with cats, it grows back even more quickly than the chard, and it quickly became a menace to my other herbs.  The catnip completely smothered the parsley, very nearly wiped out the chamomile, and turned my chives into flattened, pale green weaklings.  To give you an even better understanding of how dominant the catnip was, I found two surprises while I was tearing it out.  The first was a very startled mouse, which Lily unsuccessfully tried to hunt after sneaking into the garden.  The second was a pumpkin.  Yes, my catnip was so enormous that it camoflauged a pretty good sized pumpkin!  So my mystery compost squash plants included both gourds and a pumpkin plant - and I had absolutely no idea until I took out the catnip.

So next year, definitely no catnip. 

Pile of catnip

Poor chives!

Surprise pumpkin

Lily hunting the mouse (she did not catch it)

By the time Mike got home, I had torn out most of the annual herbs and had given the mints a serious trim, and had escorted Lily out of the garden four times.  She can slip under anything, and really loves eating rotten tomatoes.  She's kind of a gross dog.  I had also cut off the growing tips of the brussels sprouts plants so that they focus on growing their sprouts, which according to my garden book I probably should have done a month ago.  Oh well, I'm not even sure that I like brussels sprouts, so I'm not too concerned.

Mike quickly got to work ripping out the tomato plants.  He figured that was the grossest job of the day, so he wanted to get it over with.  Originally, we had planned to try to salvage the ripe fruits and toss everything else, but then we quickly moved over to tossing everything.  Most of the tomatoes were overripe, and once you've spent a good amount of time handling rotten tomatoes, you don't really want to eat tomatoes anyway.  We estimate our wasted tomato to eaten tomato ratio to be at least 4:1, so not great.  But once again, I'm very happy that we have chickens, because they're enjoying the tomatoes that we couldn't get to.  By the time Mike was finished with tomato cleanup we had about three wheelbarrows full of rotten tomatoes for the girls, and they are enjoying the feast quite a bit.

Do you think it was time to rip these guys out?

Mike at work

Wasted tomatoes

Girls enjoying a rotten tomato feast

Next, we picked all of the ripe sweet and poblano peppers and eggplants, and ripped out those plants.  We got an entire giant mixing bowl's worth of peppers, and I think we're going to roast and then freeze them to use this winter in chili.  We also got a lot of eggplants, but I haven't yet decided my plans for them.  Lastly, we picked the onions, mostly because they clearly died a while ago and they aren't going to get any bigger.  My onion crop is extremely pathetic, and none of them are larger than a shallot.  At least they taste good, but I need to do more onion studying before next year.  They were supposed to be easy!  I'm not even including a picture of them - they are very pathetic.

We had a few lingering pumpkins that I was hoping to get more mature out in the squash field, but with a frost coming I didn't want to risk that they would get damaged.  We found a bonus rouge vif d'etampes pumpkin and two surprise white pumpkins that we hadn't noticed before, so it was a better haul than I had expected.  We haven't harvested the giant pumpkins yet, because we don't have a plan for how to move them or where to store them.   So we covered them with fleece blankets last night and are trying to think of a plan this week.

Gourd harvest

Lumina white pumpkin

Hidden rouge vif d'etampes pumpkin

Uncle David's Dakota Plant - it never gave up!  And it also never got bigger.

Wrapped giant pumpkin 1

Wrapped giant pumpkin 2 - note the seasonally appropriate blanket

The dogs were exhausted from all of the farm work; Lily from sneaking into the garden to eat tomatoes and compost, and Bullet from "hunting" all afternoon (in four hours of hunting, he caught a grasshopper, which did not appear to be something that he found very tasty).  They passed out when we got inside, and since Lily frequently sleeps upside down with her mouth open, Mike noticed that she had some very lovely compost residue all over her teeth.  Lucky Lily got a scaling from Mike (although he isn't in the picture, Bullet nervously tried to assist).  She slept through the whole thing.  Then, since Bullet felt left out but had very nice looking teeth, Mike gave him a thorough belly cuddle.  All was very good at the farm last night.

A model patient

Silly Bullet

I was glad that we were able to take care of the cleanup and harvesting, because the temperature dropped to 29.4 last night, and I went outside this morning to see a frosted lawn.  The weather is supposed to heat up again for the weekend, but I'm savoring the fall feel of the morning.

Frosted pumpkin leaf

Garden post-frost