Ten Dollar Bathroom Sink

Ten Dollars can go a long way. My daughter Lesley and I were "barn saling" and we stumbled on a great sale where someone had literally cleaned out an old barn and wanted to get rid of a lot of stuff. I bought this black drop-leaf table for $10.00. Later, I got the sink from a nice family in East Lansing through the local Freecycle Yahoo Group. If you don't know about Freecycle, then you need to go and learn. The sink (circa 1920) came with a really cool pedestal, but our plumbing was so ridiculous that I decided I was in no mood to re-plumb everything. Ruth had the idea of cutting out the inside of the table and inserting the sink into it. Voila! We think it is really cool and will look perfect in our 100+ year old farmhouse. (are we delirious?)

The above photo was taken in the barn and NOT the bathroom!

The photo below is of one of the original faucets on the sink. It is probably original and we plan on re-building the insides and using it. Since the sink pre-dates modern bathroom plumbing fixtures, we will use the mix and match faucets that came on the sink, but try to find the ceramic handles like the one pictured below.




Duckies Update!

Don't they look cuddly?! They are really bonded and are never more than three inches apart. When one of them eats, they all eat. When one of them drinks, they all drink. When one of them... you get the idea. They are growing so fast.

You can see one of the chicks I hatched in my classroom about 6 weeks ago keeping watch over the flock of duckies by night. The eight little chickens I hatched think they are so tough and try to boss the duckies around. They usually succeed. I have a feeling a week or two will see some "changing of the guard" as the duckies gain a little confidence.

Hot Chicks

I bought 35 chicks the other day to replenish my layers and to fill some meat bird orders, and saw these bantam chicks and I just could not resist! I don't know what breeds they are, but I do know that they are pretty danged cute!! I am going to do some research and see if I can figure out what I have. Ruth took some photos for me.

Enjoy the pics!

I want geese!

Maple Syrup

Saturday was a beautiful day to be outside and boil sap. The temperature was in the mid-forties (F) and the sky was as blue as it could be. I put together a little outdoor sugar shack and boiled the ten gallons of sap I had collected last week.

First, I collected a good supply of firewood. Next, I took my bonfire ring and put it on the gravel driveway and set up some concrete blocks to make an outdoor stove. I have several sturdy grill tops that I set across the fire pit and put my trays of sap on them so the fire could get to work boiling away the sap.

And the sap cook looked upon what he had wrought and said, "it is good enough."

Now all I had to do was tend the fire, keep adding sap, and wait.

And wait...
And wait...


And wait...

(March is "Reading Month" and I got in several hours of reading Sherlock Holmes)

Ahhhh, but this is definitely worth the wait. I ended up with about 7 cups of pure maple syrup. I expected it to be a little darker, but I do like the nice light amber color. Depending on the sap flow, I will be out there for the next two Saturday mornings boiling and reading.

Come on over, and let's have a little book club while we watch the sap boil.

The Seven Month Itch

I'm not sure if the number seven is the right one, but it sounded close. I am ready to get the garden going right now! I have plans to add additional beds and improve the existing ones. I have a ton of nicely composted chicken coop litter that I mixed with some grass clippings and maple leaves. I plan to mix that into the beds as soon as the ground will let me. I put some "raw" chicken litter on the beds last fall and hopefully that will mix in nicely and not be too "hot."

Are you feeling the same as I am? I know many of you have kids still living at home and they can really keep your mind occupied with all of their busy-ness. However, for me, I have a 28-ish year old daughter living in New York City, and a 27-ish year old son performing on a Princess cruise ship bouncing around the Hawaiian Islands. That leaves my wife Ruth and me probably a little more time to goof off than those with children responsibilities.

Ruth bought me a Gardening magazine the other day and there are some nice articles on pairing plants together, bed rotation plans, ideas on what to grow and how to keep the garden relatively pest free without dousing it with Dow Chemical products.


I spent a few productive hours perusing the Johnny's seed catalogue and made a list which will require another farm! I will probably add and subtract from this list as the next few weeks go by. I want to grow a lot of vegetables this summer, especially green beans, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. There are about twenty other vegetables, herbs, etc. on my list, but I don't want to bore you.



The Kitchen Garden in Winter

There are eight nice beds in this garden, which is between our house and the barn. I plan on extending all of them by four feet or more, and maybe adding two other 4' x 8' beds in-between some of the beds. This garden is surrounded by a circular driveway and a "still-not-completed" fence. I plan on covering the fence with climbing vegetables like beans, cukes and peas. It may end up looking a bit untidy, but hopefully it will yield lots of meals!



Like me, the garden needs a little bit of a slumber to get re-energized for another year of productivity. I am going to test the pH this year and see what exactly is going on out there.

Three Sisters Garden

Since I live in Michigan, and the "Three Fires" Native Americans lived in this vicinity, I am thrilled to use their way of gardening on land they once roamed. We have a little woodland, spring-fed pond and I want to believe that it was used by the Potawatomi and the Ojibwa. Ruth, Peter and I picked a lot sweet corn last summer and I am going to plant way more of it this year! The squash and beans did not do very well in here, but I plan on making a few changes this year to try to help them a little more. (2009 was a poor year in Michigan for all squashes!). I left most of the corn stalks in the ground. I couldn't bear to lose them last fall and they looked rather decorative for all of the Fall holidays.

When will you begin your garden planning? Maybe most of you are way ahead of me!!

Well, I'm off to find all the stuff I'll need to start seedlings in March and April. Hmmm, lighted Plant Cart, seeds, good starter mix, watering can. It was 2 degrees F (-17 C) last night and we have 7 inches of snow on the ground.

I may be just a tad early? Maybe you need to just come in for some hot coffee, or perhaps a spot o' tea?

I can't catch you up!

Well, I decided to just post some words today.

I have been busy this summer getting my daughter married off on the farm. Then I jumped back into my routine of spending a lot of time in August getting ready for the new school year. Add to that a new computer and a more complex waay of getting Ruth's photos, and I have fallen off the blog cliff.

I miss all of my blog pals!

Green Barn Update

• I have 44 hens busily laying eggs and eating grass. You can see from my sidebar the different breed I have. I have opinions about breeds and which ones I would recommend, but you don't want to hear that now.
• I don't have any roosters now. I am not sure if I will ever have one again, but never say never.
• I have seven turkeys. I had to butcher one that got injured. After spending two hours doing that job, I am definitely happy to pay the local butcher $7.00 to do that. I have an appointment on November 25 to have the remaining seven "processed."
• My garden has done a great job! We have been eating lots of sweetcorn, tomatoes, green beans, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, fried green tomatoes and various herbs.
• I just received my order of garlic bulbs to plant soon. If you live in a cold climate, order your garlic NOW and get it planted around the time of your first frost.
• My pumpkin production is way down! I have about a dozen pumpkins in various stages and none of them look all that great. Did anyone have good luck with pumpkins this year?
• I have several piles of chicken coop bedding composting away right now. I am planning on giving them a few more turns and then I will cover all my beds with about six inches of it and till it in for the winter. I would be happy to give you a bushel or two of coop bedding! C'mon out and get it. BYOBB (bring your own bushel baskets)
• If anyone is planning on a Hawaii cruise between now and next summer, my son is playing his guitar on the Princess cruise! Let me know and I can hook you (or your cute daughter) up with him! ;)
• I have vanilla still brewing in the cupboard. I ordered cute little amber bottles to put it in. Nice gifts!!
• Another Green Barn gift (hopefully) will be popcorn. I have about 100 popcorn stalks out there and it looks like a bumper crop! I hope to fill pint jars with it. Stay tuned.
• Maybe I need to have a November drawing and give some vanilla and popcorn away.
• I love beets! I grew one row and they went absolutely nuts. I cooked them and canned them and wish I had five rows. No, I won't give this away.

I need to go blog visiting. I hope to see you soon on your blog!

Where Have I Been?

I have been very neglectful of the blog world! I have been a little overwhelmed with the ending of school and all that I have to do for that, as well as the stuff around the farm that has been keeping me hopping.

I am planning on getting back into gear. I need to get caught up with all of my great blogger pals.

I just took 28 chickens to my (my?) Amish butcher up near Gladwin, MI. His wife and children do all of the work with the butchering. I wish I had taken some pics, but I think they wouldn't have liked it so much. The Amish farm has some modern additions, like a big diesel engine that runs a de-feathering device, but for the most part, the Weavers live pretty true to their convictions. They charged me $1.50 per bird to do the complete butchering process. They also cut them up, as many of the birds were too large for the gallon freezer bags.

I have another thirty broilers going to the butcher on June 26. Looks like we'll be making lots of chicken and noodles and chicken salad sandwiches!

I hope they are tender! The six month old roosters I butchered last fall were very tough!

Broody is back at it. Tomorrow is hatch day. I can hear peeping coming from the eggs, so I think we (she) will have some success. I made the mistake of leaving her nest in the coop, and she has gone from the original 8 eggs, to an astounding 38 eggs. I am sure they won't all hatch, but to help Broody with the hatching, another partridge cochin has been sitting alongside her for the past week to make sure the eggs all get good coverage. I don't know what will happen when the eggs hatch. Who will get to be the mom?

I am rambling away here.

My veg garden is starting to look like a garden. Practically everything is up and growing! Some of the seeds I planted didn't germinate, so I will have to make do without some things, mostly squash and chives.

The blackberries are going absolute bonkers. I can't believe how many canes I have and they are all loaded with flowers.

OK, I have to go out and do some chores, but I am going to post this boring thing anyway.

Thanks for reading this far!

Five Weeks Old

New Meat Locker

That sounds really crass! I predator-proofed the middle section of my barn this past week and moved 45 chickens and 7 turkeys in, (all of them about five weeks old). They were a little overwhelmed with all of the space at first, but are now happily nosing around in all of the new corners.

The white birds in the photo below are the cornish X breed. These guys are twice as large as the red broilers I am experimenting with. I have heard that the red broilers are tastier, even though they don't grow as quickly as the cornish chicks. I bought the red broilers from Ideal Poultry, and they are growing well. I am going to try to give them a little outside time and see how they like that. Last fall, I butchered out some extra, (annoying) six month old roosters, and they were as tough as shoe leather. I think the free-ranging gave them a little too much body-building time.

In the photo below, you can see three white turkeys and a bronze at the far right. They are very curious and like to follow me around. I am glad I found a butcher, because I am not enjoying the "processing" part of raising chickens.

The two very dark chickens in the photo are barnevelder hens. They will lay very dark brown eggs, beginning sometime in late August.

This turkey hung around Ruth while she snapped photos.

Don't look closely at the chicken wire! I discovered that I am really bad at getting it straight. After I made that discovery, I started to not care too! So, the coop is secure, but certainly not a mona lisa. (This is a short-term coop anyway!) There, that makes me feel better.

To make the coop look even better, I only had four foot chicken wire, and overlapped it. Then I ran out of chicken wire altogether and didn't feel like buying more, so I cut a section of hardware cloth to fill in the last little opening. I connected them with nylon zip ties. Wow! I'm thinking "coop of the year!"

Poopy eggs

The nice man who gave me the blue slate turkey eggs pictured below reminded me that washing them would be bad for the developing embryos, so I didn't. Aren't they just lovely? That is a nice mixture of mud and poo. I hope THAT isn't bad for the developing embryos too!!

Hatch day is Wednesday, May 20!

To List or Not to List

Where does all the time gone?

I am not one who usually makes to-do lists. When I do make them, I often misplace them, or forget that I made them, and then find them a year later and wonder why I took the time to make that list. (Ruth is great at making lists and then actually getting everything accomplished. If you ask her, she'll make you a complete itinerary for two weeks in Paris, complete with walking tours!) However, with that being said, I must get on with making a to-do list for this spring and summer.

First, I need to explain why I feel the need to create a to-do list. Our daughter is getting married on our little farm on August 1st! That is a pretty good reason to get after things in an orderly manner. Secondly, I have some vegetable gardening goals. Third, I have over 100 chickens and turkeys who all need to be cared and planned for.

Hmmm, I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed!

This is where the wedding ceremony will take place. I am planting several hundred sunflowers as an additional backdrop. The Yucca is moving. Any takers?

Wedding to-do list: (not in order of priority, Ruth will do that in a minute)

1) painting: studio roof, corn crib roof, deck rails, trim three outbuildings, stairway in the house

2) plant 2000 sunflowers

3) plant black pepper plants, coleus and other various flowers for decorations and bouquets

4) plant 20 pounds of wildflower seeds

5) lay new linoleum floor in downstairs bathroom

6) talk to neighbors on both sides about parking

7) finalize plans for the specially brewed beer for the reception

8) finish patio between the shed and the studio

9) tidy all the buildings

10) power wash the house

11) refinish the deck

12) scrape and paint the front porch floor and rails

Vegetable Garden List:

1) remove existing grass from proposed veg patch

2) till the ground thoroughly

3) build 6 raised beds

4) fill beds with nice garden soil and compost

5) start seedlings indoors

6) plan and install watering system

7) build fence and three gates

8) remove perennial bed from the "Three Sisters" circle

9) plant seeds

10)construct cold frames

11) plant seedlings at appropriate times

12) etc.

Poultry List:

1) build another brooder

2) prepare the middle barn room as another coop (build 3 doors, three walls, install chicken wire, move two lights, etc.)
3) other things I can't think of right now

What am I doing with over 100 birds?

Original Flock: 25 Hens

1 Rooster (Khan)

Broody's Babies: 7 (hatched on January 13, gendering still incomplete at this time)

Science Project 22 (hatched on February 13, gendering still incomplete)

Red Broilers 30 (freezer date: early June)

White Broilers 15 (ten for nephew, 5 for donation to food bank)

New Pullets 7 (2 aracaunas, 5 welsummers)

Turkeys 7 (3 bronze giants, 4 white giants, Thanksgiving for various families)

Science Fair hatchlings. The white ones are Light Brahmas, Rhode Island Reds and a Black Sex Link, from Eagle Nest Poultry.

Three or four of the as-of-yet non-gendered roosters are destined for new homes, (people have asked me for a rooster or two). All other rooster will head to the Amish butcher sometime in June. So, by mid-June, I will be down to 7 turkeys, 1 rooster, and between 40 and fifty layers.

If you are still reading this, thank you, but I am sorry for the tediousness.

This list will be much more difficult to lose!

My niece holding and adoring Jinx, a red broiler. (no. I didn't tell her!)

Too Cold for a Picnic

As I wrote in an earlier post, I am building two children-sized picnic tables for my school's fundraiser, which occurs in February. Out in the Green Barn, I have a nice workroom, complete with all of my tools. However, right now I have a brooder taking up 50% of the floor space, and it is really cold out there! So, I got out my little portable propane heater and lugged everything I needed into the garage. It wasn't much warmer in there!

I cut all of the pieces with my chop saw and then took the first pieces to assemble into the family room so I could figure out how to assemble the table in a warm place. Who writes instructions? It seems as if the person writing the directions for most of the things I have had to assemble has never put one of the things together, or doesn't speak English as a first language. No offense intended to anyone out there.

Here are a few shots of the project:

My favorite construction pencil. I stepped on it.

(you could tell that already, couldn't you)

Great inventions. I love my blaze orange square. It's hard to misplace.
I have seven tape measures. I guess you could call that a collection.

The table taking shape. I don't know what I needed the flashlight for.
Maybe I was looking for a pencil.

Hey, that looks like a picnic table! I don't know how it will look when finished.

The moms of the third grade are planning on decorating it somehow. Maybe they'll paint it, or just stain it. The battery in my portable drill died before I could tighten all the screws, so if you look closely on the table top, you can see a few of the screws needing attention.

I am getting a yen for some warmer weather. Anyone want to join me for a little picnic?

News

With the help of our school district's foundation, I was able to purchase this incubator. It is the Hovabator Genesis 1588. I also purchased the automatic egg turner. Now I have both natural and mechanical egg hatchers!

This is what the automatic egg turner looks like:

(Both photos courtesy of Home and Barn Basics Web Site)

I'm so excited about having this incubator as now I can hatch out my own chicks at a considerable savings. Two fifth graders in my school approached me about hatching chicks for their science fair project. Normally, Michigan State University is a great source for fertilized eggs, but they are in the process of changing their available breeds and they would only have white leghorns available. However, Angelo, who is the manager of the poultry farms at MSU referred me to his boss' parents, who happen to own and operate the Eagle Nest Hatchery in Ohio. I immediately called them and spoke directly with owner Kay Karcher, who walked me through all of her available breeds. With Kay's help, I decided to order fertilized eggs of 12 Rhode Island Reds, 12 Black Sex Links, and 12 Light Brahmas. All three of these breeds will lay nice, big brown eggs and the roosters (which I am expecting at least 18) will grow into 4-6 pound fryers in a short time. The fifth graders are especially goofy about the name Black Sex Link. The reason they are named that is they can be gendered at the time of hatching because the hens are all black and the roosters have some white or gray on their heads. These chickens are also known as Black Stars, but the fifth graders are leaving the original name. (The things that make us giggle!!)

The fifth graders will oversee the entire process and they will be in charge of the incubator, which with their teacher's permission, will be located in a quiet place in their classroom (is there a quiet place in a fifth grade classroom?). They are planning on setting up a twenty gallon aquarium with a heat lamp to display 5-10 of the newly hatched chicks throughout the duration of the science fair.

My insanely jealous third graders are only appeased by my promise that they will be able to name a chick, hold them and cuddle with them before they head to their home in the green barn.

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More School News

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Each year, my school holds a Family Fun Night. This is a fun-filled evening of free games and food and also an auction, which is our PTO's main fund-raiser. Every year, the teachers each donate a special item, like lunch with your teacher, or in my case, Gym Night for 20 kids. We eat pizza, brownies, Skittles and then play fun games in the gym and/or outdoors, if the weather cooperates.

This year, I am also offering a "Farm Basket" of goodies from our farm. I'm not sure at this point what I will put in there, but it will include eggs, blackberry jam and syrup, Crab apple jelly, grape jelly, tomato sauce, apple butter, apple sauce, and anything else I can coax out of the ground. I want to make soap like Kim over at Achorn Farm, and would love to paint like Laura over at Laura's Watercolors, or make fabulous jewelry, like Gwen over at Desideratum, but I think I'll stick to more basic things.

I did, however, find the plans for a fun looking children's picnic table and am planning on building two of them to auction off. I was thinking about painting them white and then decorating half of the table with MSU (Michigan State University) colors and the other half with UM (University of Michigan) colors.

Drawings courtesy of move.com.

I may have to build some more of these to have around the farm!

If Broody is successful with her first hatch attempt, I will have chicks this Wednesday or Thursday. I will let you know next week how that goes.

Broody

Meet Broody. She spent the entire month of December trying to hatch everybody's eggs. At first I thought she was injured or sick, but then I realized that she might be getting broody. Broody hens are not all that common as that instinct has been bred out of most of the breeds of poultry. Many breeds of chickens will think about brooding, but then give up after half an hour, or two days, and go back to scratching around and trying to eat whatever the other hens seem to be eating. Every day I had to move her off of the favorite laying nest and make sure she got some food and water. She would then walk around squawking and making a lot of noise, which would inevitably start the choir. If you have never heard twenty five hens yelling at the same time, you ought to add that lovely experience to your "Life To-Do List"!



Broody is a partridge cochin. This breed is one of the broodiest. If you want to have a couple of broody hens around your place to hatch out and raise chicks, then you should add a few cochins to your collection. Besides, they have a lovely temperament and are beautiful as well! I have a buff cochin who waits each night at her perch, just before I turn off the light, for a hand-delivered night supper of grain.

Here she is hogging the favorite nesting box. The other hens would just climb in here with her and lay their eggs and she would gladly cover them with her poofiness.



So, I moved her upstairs into the brooder, favorite nest and all. Before I did that, I collected eight of the largest eggs to see if she could actually pull this off. I know that hatching chicks in January is nearly insane, but she wouldn't give up and I am willing to give it a go. I put a heat lamp over her to warm things up and also to keep her water from freezing. She seems very content. I have never seen her off the eggs, but her water keeps going down and her food needs replenishing. Her due date is either January 14 or 15. I'll let you know!

Broody doing her thing!

Uh Oh! Minky (Ameracauna) has been acting broody as well! This is her "Touch these eggs and I'm gonna kick your butt!" posture. She also has a nice little roar to go with that. When she roars, that prompts the choir to kick in again and they sound so lovely.

Having hens wandering around the farm with little chicks in tow sounds so perfect to me. I have a feeling that round one of the brooder instinct will go to Father Winter,

but you just never know!

And the Winner is...

This week I offered my Lucky Horseshoe I have hanging over the door to my chicken coop. I found it on a shelf in the barn basement and hung it up to keep all the luck for my chickens and my barn. In the spirit of the season, I wanted to pass this along.

I had a "random selector" narrow the 31 entrants down to 3 and the winner is...

Carl Humphreys Sr.!

Congratulations on your amazing, world-class prize!

I want to thank all of you who come and visit me. It always makes my day to interact with you.

Thank you...

Happy New Year to each of you!

The Season For Giving

Let It Snow!

School teachers and children both love snow days. Friday (Dec. 19) was our first snow day of the school year. When there is a chance for a snow day, the students at my school wear their pj's inside out and backwards and eat their dessert first at dinner the night before the wished for event. Success all-around!

10 inches of snow

A View of the Corn Crib

Deer Tracks Across The Path

Peter's Car Stuck in the Driveway.

Welcome to the Farm.

Peter has been working in the Caribbean

since August, and is heading back in January.

GREEN BARN GIVEAWAY!

If you have read this far, you deserve a chance to win this wonderful prize. Can you see the Horseshoe hanging over the door to the chicken coop? Well, everyone who leaves a comment this week will get put into the drawing to win this real horseshoe, which I found in the Green Barn.

Whoo-Hooo!

Doesn't this sound like a great prize? I can tell you are excited.

The Prize.

Good Luck!

Keeping Busy in the Cold Barn

(I gave Ruth the week off from photos, and stole her camera. She edited them.)

As you can see from the thermometer in my coop, it is about 30° F. In spite of the cold weather, my hens have been laying more eggs than ever! On Wednesday, they laid 17 and the next day laid 19! I already have 14 today and it's only around noon. Up until this barrage, the girls have been averaging 10-12 eggs per day for the past couple of months. I think it must be a combination of the light I am leaving on from 6:30AM until 8:00PM and the maturing of the Polish Crested hens. I am getting a lot of white eggs now since white layers are the majority of the flock.

How did the thermometer get dirty? The same way as the light bulb, I guess.




Free Ranging in the barn basement


Since they can't/won't go outside due to the 8 inches of snow on the ground, I have been letting the chickens out of the coop and into the rest of the barn. The basement is my next project. It has a lot of dirt piled up in it. Why it's in there, I don't know, but it has got to go. For the time being, however, the chickens have been loving their dustbaths.


Look at the two white crested polish hens standing tail to tail. They both just finished wallowing in the dirt.

What do you think of her really bad haircut?

What are you looking at?

Go away, I'm taking a bath.

Nesting Boxes

There are over 20 nice nesting boxes on the walls of the coop, full of clean, dry, cozy straw. However, half of the hens prefer unconventional housing for their eggs. "Monkey see, monkey do" seems to be their mantra. If one of them lays an egg somewhere interesting, others follow suit.

Corner lot, nice views available.

While I was taking the photo, the black crested polish hen, (who follows me around all the time), came over to investigate and began setting on the eggs.


Well, nosey Floozey saw that and came over to see what all the excitement was about and proceeded to kick the black one out.

Now that she was alone with the eggs, she began to adjust them so she could do her mothering thing. She stayed there for about two minutes and then was off to see what I was going to do next. Floozey is the nosiest hen in the coop.

Next, I went to the the overturned feed bucket and there was Floozey, checking out the eggs. She actually stayed there for the rest of the time I was in the coop.

Floozey is a Buttercup hen. Doesn't she have the most interesting comb? It will get twice this size as she matures. She was hatched on April 4, 2008. (my birthday!)






Now here is a fancy place to lay some eggs. Notice that round one? it's a Dunlop.


Newly Named

I leave you this week with the Little Dudes. Gomer and Goober, squaring off.