And Then There Were Just Two...

It started out all so promising. I had managed to get six Beltsville Small White Turkey eggs. I had wanted at least a dozen but the woman I got them from had turkey hens not quite co-operating with her and she only managed to collect five over ten days. Then she called the next day and said she found another egg after we left. So we went back and got the last egg and popped them all into the incubator. We were surprised to see that these eggs were not much bigger than our chicken eggs. They were a lot pointier, though and were a creamy off-white colour with speckles.

After two weeks in the incubator, I decided to candle them. Candling is simply shining a bright light in a dark room at the egg to see what is happening inside. The light can't be too big, usually just an inch or two. A high powered flashlight works well. I used a spotlight with a box over it. I cut a small hole in the box for the light. Out of the six eggs, five certainly looked like there was something in there. I could see veins floating and a really big black spot which I hoped was the turkey itself.

Turkeys take a lot longer to hatch than chickens in two ways. Chickens generally hatch in 21 days, turkeys take 28. A chicken will pip a hole in the egg. After that, cracks start appearing and when the cracks get wide, I know a chicken will be breaking out shortly. Turkeys, not so much. They pip a hole and crack the egg and then wait all day before doing anything more. Drove me crazy. I worried they had died or were too weak to get out. But since I didn't have any experience with turkey hatches, I decided to wait and see. Five of the eggs hatched, they took their sweet time, but they hatched. Seems like I'm getting the hang of this candling thing. One had an issue with his bottom, it was bloody. I left him in the incubator for a longer period of time, hoping the issue would resolve itself. When it looked like there was no new blood, I took him out and carefully washed his bottom with warm water. He was as right as rain. The last turkey hatched was over a day late and it was clear he wasn't very well. He couldn't walk even after a few hours. Turkey poults lurch and wobble a lot at first. They take one step then stumble for two or three steps and fall on their little chins. After a couple of hours, they gain their feet and manage to walk a lot better. This guy just couldn't get his feet under him, saying he had a drunken gait is being very kind. So I separated him until he got a little strength. I hand fed and watered him. Unfortunately, he died two days later.

So I had four strong, happy little poults (turkey talk for babies). I kept them by themselves for a few days and then put them with the baby chicks and all was well...for a while. As recommended by the woman, I fed everybody turkey starter. Four days later I found one of the turkey poults dead. He hadn't seemed sick. Two days later, I noticed another poult not doing well. He didn't seem ill, he just wasn't holding his own very well. So I gave him his own little brooder. He was quiet the first day and mostly slept. P, teenage son, started calling him Yoda. The next day he was perkier. He ate, drank and sang. I was very encouraged! And then that night he died.

I asked and googled and referred to my books and I couldn't find out what on earth I was doing wrong. One thing that repeatedly showed up in my search was the comment that while turkey eggs are fairly easy to hatch, raising young turkeys is difficult and high losses are not unusual.

Since then, I have had no more deaths. The two surviving ones are doing famously. They are growing, they are bright and alert. I like turkeys. These two guys are so friendly. When chicks are young, they tend to run away from me screaming in terror. You know those old cartoons where when some character is frightened out of their mind, all you see is a mouth with the tonsils vibrating as they scream? That's what I'm reminded of with chicks. Their little stubby wings flap uselessly, they trip over their own feet in an effort to get away and then they all huddle in a corner, quaking. Not turkey poults. They see me coming and look at me curiously. I talk and whistle and they answer in bright little chirps. When I put my hand in the brooder, they mosey over to say hi while the chicks huddle in the corners. Poults love being picked up and will even settle down for a nap in my open palm. Really nice little birds from the start, not like chicks who take a few weeks to figure out I'm not Freddie Kruger. Poults are also different looking. They have day-glo orange, over-sized feet and their eyes are buggy at first. As they grow, they tend to be leggy and they have a little bump right above their beaks. But they are sweet.

These two hatched on June 11 and are two weeks old now. I have no idea if they are hens or toms (turkey talk for male). Best case scenario is that I have a pair. But I'm not going to worry about that right now, I'm just going to enjoy these two charming creatures and hope they continue to do well.

The Swamp

We have a little area at the edge of the property by the road. The land there is sinking. Probably because it is really close to the creek and the water table is high there. And as it sinks, it gets wetter and wetter. After the first year we were here, Don stopped mowing the area because the lawn mower just kept getting bogged down. Pretty soon we started referring to it as "The Swamp". Actually I called it "The Marsh" but it didn't stick, 'swamp' did. Left to its own devices the area grew madly every summer. Lupins, hay, oats, bulrushes all florished in there.

One of the things we'd like to do is get some fill and raise that area up. Then we could do something with it. But that's probably not going to be happening any time soon. So the swamp stays and adds a little wildness to DaM Farm. So do the two teenage kids, but that's a different topic.

When I started raising chickens, I had an abundance of their manure mixed with wood shavings, straw, hay and the occasional feather. I decided to dump it in the swamp. It might take twenty years but the manure would add a little lift to the area. So for the last three years, that's what I've been doing. Hasn't raised the ground one iota as far as I can see. But this year I made a "duh" discovery. I have the most beautiful, aged, crawling with worms compost out there in the swamp. Whoot. Areas of The Swamp are nothing more than a great big worm bin.

All Spring I hauled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of this heavy, water-sodden compost from one end of our place to the other. I also recruited Don and the kids and they did a fair amount of the transporting. The compost was so wet, it smelled. But after drying out in the gardens, it looked rich and dark and didn't smell any more. I put most of it in the area of the veggie garden I let go fallow last year and planted my carrots and beans there. Having another ready source of compost is always a good thing.

Vegetable Garden 2010

Well, I sure was late but I did get the main garden in. I finished planting it on June 15. I could say there were lots of valid reasons for being this late. It was very rainy and we had a couple of late frosts but to tell the truth, everyone else seemed to be able to get their garden in about a week earlier. I fear procrastination got the better of me.

I planted the usual veggies, corn, carrots, lettuce onions, beans, tomatoes and various herbs in the usual companion groups. I did rotate the crops as I always do. I dotted the garden with nasturtiums but did not plant sunflowers in the veggie garden this year. I have the chard in between the tomato/basil and the pumpkins just to give those icky little potato bugs that love both a bit of a barrier so they'd have actually work a little harder to get from the tomatoes to the pumpkins or vice-versa. I'm hoping that will make my plants a little less accessible and I won't have the danged bugs descending in hoards. So far, onions, beans and lettuce have made an appearance, giving the mounded, dark brown rows a little splash of colour and some charm.

I had great success with grow herbs, basil, cilantro and parsley from seed. The cold frames really helped with that. Unfortunately, the tomatoes I started didn't fair as well. They outgrew their containers so I planted them and covered them with plastic. They managed the first frost fine but the second did most of them in. The ones remaining however, already have flowers on them. I think I will plant them in bigger containers next year. So I had to buy some tomato plants, and since I was at the garden center anyway, might as well get some cukes and peppers. I got some Mexican sweet red horn peppers. I have never grown those before and I'm looking forward to seeing how they do. All my pumpkins plants were started from seed that germinated in the compost pile! That made life easy.

I still have to plant the peas and snow peas but I usually wait till the corn is about 4 - 6 inches high before planting the peas. But I don't know if I'm even getting corn this year. It was the first in the ground and I should see shoots by now. I'm seeing corn shoots I planted near the chicken coop already and that was planted just last week. While I'm not seeing shoots, I did notice about 4 days after planting the corn curious markings in the rows. It looked like something had been digging and rooting around in my corn rows. I first thought crows but I didn't see any bird footy prints. May-be it was a small creature. I don't know but I'm pretty sure my corn seeds are all gone. I'll give it a couple more days then I'll replant. I have some corn seed left over but none of the baby corn seed. I also have some beans and onions I could plant in the rows as well. It will be an awful late planting but you never know what might happen. The garden surprises me every year.

Harvesting the Worm Castings

Unlike today which is miserable, yesterday was bright and sunny, nice and warm. There was also a good, stalwart breeze keeping the skeeters and blackflies at bay. So I naturally wanted to go out and weed the veggie garden. Since I was going to be outside anyway, I figured I might as well harvest castings from the second worm bin, I did the first, larger bin a while back just when I started planting. I like to be outside when the bin is out because I don't particularly want the crows to think I have just set up a buffet for them.

Harvesting the castings is getting easier. Probably because I don't sift it anymore. If it is half decayed and/or not moving, I take it. I don't care if there's a leaf or a little leftover straw stalk in the castings. So it's not the major time consuming chore it once was. The set up is easy. I put down a plastic sheet, gently dump the bin out. Rinse the bin out well and get the new bedding of dead leaves soaking in water, that would be the white pail in the top picture. Worms hate the daylight and will burrow down away from the sun. So I go weed for a bit, return and take the casings until I hit the worms, go back to weeding, and repeat.

As I go down into the pile, I will come across a clump of leaf bedding not eaten. I generally don't feed my worms for a few days before harvesting so they will eating the bedding but there's always a few clumps still hanging around. The clumps go back into the bin for one very important reason. Those little yellow, orange and white balls you see on the bedding are worm cocoons. Each will hold anywhere from 2 to 20 baby worms. I don't know why they're different colours and sizes unless they're from different types of worms or, and this thought seems to make more sense, because they are in different stages of development

So after an hour or so, the castings are pretty much all collected. Now comes the grody part. I am left with a pile of eewy worms and I am not going to pick them up, gloves or no gloves. Ugh. That's were the plastic sheet comes in so handy. Not only does it keep the worms from burrowing into the ground and escaping, it makes the perfect transport vehicle for the worms. I just pick up the corners and gently slide the worms and all their gooeyness into the new cleaned bin. Easy peasy, thank you very much. I rinse off the plastic and it's ready to use when it is time again to harvest.





Here's the nice, clean bin all ready for the most productive inhabitants of the DaM Farm. After soaking the leaves for awhile, I'll wring them out as much as I can and put a good 6 inches in the bin, that's the bedding for the worms. Then I will put in some soaked and drained rabbit manure. It gets finished off with another layer of leaves. One of the things about harvesting in the sun is I'm sure the leaves won't be too wet. The sun evaporates any extra moisture without drying out the leaves too much. Well, as long as I keep an eye on things, that's how it works.

And so is all this worth it? The hauling, the prep work, the back and forth, the great big squirm of worms? I think so, most definitely. Because this is what I end up with... a great big bag of worm castings (I have my foot in there for scale, the bag is bigger than it looks). It might just look like a bag of earth to you but it since I've been using it, my garden has just exploded with produce! The more we can grow ourselves, the happier the whole family is.