New Baby Chicks
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hatching day
day old balls of fluff
already a week old
Beautiful morning
0I love this time of year when the mornings and evenings are wonderfully cool but you still have a warm summer’s day in between. The morning dew does magic things to delicate works of nature’s art such as spider webs. It’s especially beautiful to see a giant orb weaver web glistening with dew. We have several of these yellow and black garden spiders (Agriope aurantia) around the farm at this time of year and also a few barn spiders (Araneus cavaticus). The barn spiders are especially fascinating. They weave a huge web every night and sometimes in locations where they can be 3-4 feet across. To conserve silk, the spider consumes the web each morning and then rebuilds an entirely new web each night. I know spiders have a bad reputation and many people are terrified of them but I really appreciate them. It is amazing to watch an orb weaver create that spectacular web. I say let those harmless spiders hang around and eat all the flies, mosquitoes, and stink bugs they want!
Agriope dew covered web
Call ducks
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Call ducks and their new home
This weekend we attended the Maryland Poultry Swap & Farmers Market in Sharpsburg. There were lots of chickens, guineas, pheasants, quail, and other animals, but we just couldn’t resist the cute little call ducks. So the farm’s newest residents are Deuce and Dee Dee, a beautiful pair of bibbed call ducks. We set up a fence and a small pool and resurrected the old dog house that was here when we moved in but never used. We thought it would only take an hour or so, but took about half of the day.
Ducks in their pool
The ducks seemed immediately comfortable in their new area and even swam around in their new kiddie/duck pool for a while. They are very attached to each other, quacking frantically even when we picked them up to put them in their reconditioned home for the night. Together, they are really cute. I am looking forward to seeing what kind of eggs they produce and maybe even raising a family in the spring.
Okra in September
0I did my best to keep up with the okra this year, but in the end, the okra was just too much for me. For the past two months I have been trying to cut okra every two or three days. When it was the third day, I would have to cut and discard about a quarter of the harvest and the rest was a little bigger than ideal. Cutting every two days was better, but in a perfect world, I would be harvesting every day.
Okra before cutting and composting
Well I have found that the world is in fact not perfect and about a week ago I just got busy and didn’t get out to the garden at all. I finally got around to looking out at the garden and there was the okra just mocking me; these giant spears atop six-foot tall stalks. It’s a shame to let so much go to waste, but I have already blanched, sliced and frozen lots of bags of it, I have shared some with other okra-minded folks, and I have several large bags and bowls of it laying around the house.
A few were saved, but most were headed for the compost
Okra is a hard sell to many people. When I tell them I have okra to sell or trade (even give away), I am usually met with a sour face and a comment about gooey slime. I try to tell them how delicious it is cut fresh and roasted or put in soup, but they usually pass. Their loss has been my gain – until now. Now it is the compost pile’s gain.
If I run out over the winter, I’ll be amazed and disappointed, but that seems unlikely.
Gertie & Violet share babies
0Hens that are broody or incubating eggs usually do not want any other hens near them. They especially do not want any other chickens around after new babies hatch. They are VERY protective and puff up and chase away anyone who dares to come near the little ones. Gertie and Violet have an understanding and are raising 3 little chicks cooperatively. Gertie is one of our original hens and has gone broody each year but we have never allowed her to hatch babies. This year she was not taking “no” for an answer and moved in on Violet as she was setting on a nest of 8 eggs. Violet did not object and the two of them shared nesting duties for most of the 3 weeks it takes for chicks to develop. We were very curious to see how things would go once babies actually arrived and thought there might be some trouble.
Three of the eggs hatched on Saturday 7/14/12. The momma hens continued to cooperate and care for the babies together! One would continue to incubate the remaining eggs while the other would attend to the babies. The other eggs were either infertile or just did not develop properly for some reason and were abandoned after a few days. All that work sitting on those eggs constantly for 3 weeks and 5 did not hatch – what a shame. Gertie and Violet seem very happy with their new chicks, though and it is so cute watching both of them teach the babies all the secrets of being a good chicken.
Garden Harvest
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I picked some green beans, okra and tomatoes from the garden last night. The grape tomatoes are really coming on right now and this is the first of the larger ones. The Romas look like they will take a while longer but we did plant a lot of those this year and we are going to be very busy making salsa, pasta sauce and canning in a few weeks!
The green beans are just about finished in this crop but there is another half row that should be ready to pick soon and I plan to plant some more of a pole variety this weekend as soon as I get the spent pea plants pulled and that section of the garden cleaned up.
The Annie Oakley okra is so yummy and I will work on getting more of that in the freezer. It is really good to add into soups through the winter. The other variety of okra has produced taller plants that are now blooming so there will be even more to eat/freeze very soon.
Lost a hive
0Hive E is a goner. There are no eggs or brood and no queen. I don’t know for sure if all the bees in the hive are left over or just robbing what is left. I rechecked near dusk when the bees had mostly settled down and there were still lots of bee in the hive, so I think they are just old bees without their queen. I don’t know what happened to her. She might have died or might have ‘re-swarmed’ (I think I just made that word up). This was a swarm from the Georgia hive and although it was very productive, I think not very stable. The consensus among local bee folk was that this year’s Georgian queens should be replaced. I agree, although in my case, swarming made re-queening unnecessary.
It has been in the 90s this week, but as soon as I get a day in the 80s, I will decommission hive E and use some of the frames in the other hives and honey supers, if possible.
The good news is that hive A has a honey super that is almost full! It seems as thought they ignored it for months and then it went from empty to full in a week. I guess that is possible. I may even need to add a second super on that hive. So it looks like some honey is actually in the cards for me this year after all.
The bees still seem very active. Foragers are coming and going at a brisk clip, so there must be some nectar out there. I just hope it can keep up for a little while longer. Most people harvest honey in July or August, the idea being that we can take honey then, but after that we need to leave it for them to store and to get through the winter. A nectar flow in the fall is great for the bees, but doesn’t help me harvest honey.
Patty died but chicks on the way
0Our Partridge Rock hen, Patty, died on Friday. It was over 100 degrees that day, I believe, and it may have been the heat. If not the heat, then I have no idea. These things just happen sometimes 
I don’t remember her acting strangely, but I might have missed something. The hot weather continues and the rest of the chickens mostly just stay in the shade. Egg production is down, too, in this heat.
Violet has been setting on eggs for a week now and has two weeks to go. I hope she makes it. I haven’t seen her come out to eat or drink, but she would typically only do that once a day and I might be missing it. She was setting for about two or three weeks before we gave her eggs to hatch, so there is a possibility that she will give up just before these eggs are ready to hatch. If that happens, I will try to incubate them and hope Violet will still be interested in raising them. Today Gertie decided to lend some moral and physical support.
The ‘new’ birds, meaning the ones we bought or raised this spring are now as big as some of the mature hens, although the new hens are still a couple of months away from laying. They are very handsome birds. There are certainly a few boys among them, but none have offered up a cock-a-doodle-do yet, so we can’t be sure.
Late June bee flowers
0Wildflowers come and go sometimes so quickly that I don’t get a chance to document what is going on. I am trying to record what the bees are visiting and when. This may be an unusual (early) year because of the warm and short winter, and that affected the spring plants greatly, but I suspect that the summer plants are mostly on schedule. Things in bloom now that the bees like include clover, wild mint, broccoli, squash, and hibiscus.
Garden update
0The garden looks pretty good. For the past week we have had some very hot weather and just one day of rain. The soaker hose seems to do the job when it won’t rain, but the plants can tell the difference. There is no substitute for a real drenching rain.
The tomato plants look good. We picked the first couple of grape tomatoes, but it may be a couple more weeks before we can harvest the bigger varieties. We have let some of the broccoli flower and it turns out that it is pretty and the honeybees like it. Who knew. I picked one small orange Hungarian Wax pepper and the rest are coming along. It was nice and ‘spicy’, by-the-way. We planted more bell peppers this year because they seem the most versatile and we will use them. One Jalapeno plant will do for this year.
The peas are just about done. We froze some and will freeze more as soon as I get around to it. I don’t want them to sit in the refrigerator much longer. When I pull those plants next week, I will plant another bunch of cucumbers and pole beans. The okra looks as good as last year, but it has another couple of weeks to go. There are some flowers forming. I will probably pick the first few small cucumbers in the next day or two. They are perfect pickling size now.
There were some germination problems with the beans and edamame, but the plants that made it look good.
The problems are with the vines: the cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, and squash. Germination was terrible, the rabbits ate the early shoots, and now the plants are dying. It seems like a root or stem problem. I think the soil is not as good as it should be in that part of the garden. I will plant some in another section when I pull out the remaining broccoli plants.