Notes from the Farm

Over the years, I've spent way too much time, energy and money on the "farm" So I've taken a step back, or at least tried to.

In spite of this the garden continues to flourish and provide.





Look at all those tomatoes and figs, peppers and eggs, even a pumpkin.....





or two. For some reason this pumpkin started getting greener and greener. Any ideas?





I suspended this pumpkin with a Walmart bag which I thought was pretty fitting. The pumpkin was beautifully shaped, not lop-sided or flattened by lying on the ground.




We picked these just a few days ago. Our plants continue to fruit and its almost November. That's crazy!!

Although with my ingenious tomato "cages" access takes a little more agility than perhaps normal.





It's hard to tell from this how high up I am. Falling certainly wouldn't kill me, but it would sure hurt.



Got one, actually got a whole bunch of beautiful yellow sweet things.

Life's Cycles

A couple of years back Skye got a couple of rats. One from Petco and then after reading that we really should have purchased our rat from a breeder and that you should really have two rats because they are social animals, we did just that and got a second hand-raised rat from a reputable breeder. That rat passed away a while back. The "cheap" feeder rat from Petco however lived much longer. Unfortunately, Spirit died the other day. She died quietly in the night. Skye was sad but handled it well. She made a lovely memorial for her.

Beautiful.




After a couple of weeks nature took over again. BTW these flowers and leaves are edible and we through them in our salads. Also I harvest every couple of days for the chickens. They love it.




Beautiful amaranth.

You can eat the leaves and use the seed as well. I planted these mostly for the chickens. I've planted a lot of stuff for our feathered friends and they have paid us back with eggs, lots and lots of eggs. We got 8 eggs the other day. That means each and every one of the girls are now laying.



Come and get it girls. They are always on the lookout for treats.





You silly birds. That's not a nesting box.

One of the downsides to having backyard chickens is the fly that come with them. Keeping the are clean is important. We use the deep litter method, which certainly cuts down on the flies but it doesn't eliminate them. So we put out a good number of non-toxic traps. I also grow plants that flies don't like as well as promoting beneficial insects. There are some predatory wasps and flies that also help keep down the population.



This is not one of the products I would recommend. In fact this thing barely caught any flies at all. Although it did sure stink.

Downsizing

Originally we decided the absolute maximum number of chickens we could keep was 5 and that 3 was probably a better idea.

Because of one thing or another, mostly the eco-class we ended up with many more birds than that and settle down to 9 birds. One revealed itself to be a rooster and then we were down to 8, which was still more than our space really can handle.

We took the first step towards downsizing by finding a good home for a couple of our girls.

Our biggest bird, Milky Way. She was the one that was laying a whole bunch of double yolks. She still lays just about every day and they are good size eggs as well.






We got Cole at the same time as Milky Way, both from Malibu feed. They've always been inseparable, so it was part of the deal you take one you got to take the other. Even though Cole was much smaller than Milky way she was older when we bought them and she has always been the dominant one. They're both really beautiful birds.




Bye Cole, I'm sure you guys will like your new home.






These are just a couple quick pics of the girls in their new home. We gave them to another family who home schools and already has some chickens.

They live close by and Hannah is in Skye's girl scout troop so I'm sure we'll be seeing them regularly enough.

We still have 6 lovely hens and are getting on average 4 eggs a day.

Life on the Urban Farm