Not Exactly Like I Planned...

Spring is here and everything is bursting with new life except for a little acre or so in scenic PEI nestled in a little sheltered corner of the island. I've been have a heck of a time getting my new generation of livestock going here on the farm. Talk about a run of disappointments.

The rabbits were the beginning of the run. I have a young doe I've been trying to breed for forever. She just won't have anything to do with it. Just my luck to get a purist rabbit. The real disappointing thing is I kept her back from the last litter my dear Earl Grey sired before he passed away. She grew well and had a good body shape and nice personality but so did the other doelings from that litter. The reason why I chose her was because she looked very similar to Earl. Earl was a great rabbit and I wanted to keep his looks around. But she is not co-operating at all. I've tried everything I know of to get her 'in the mood' but nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Of the other four does I bred at the same time, only one had a viable litter. My oldest doe had one large dead kit, the other two did nothing. It was after a fairly long break for them and I know sometimes rabbits take a while to get back into breeding mode but I never had that problem before. So the rabbitry should be 'hoping' with new life but it is not. It's got some but no where close to where it should be.

The chickens are fairing worse than the rabbits! First there was that whole false broody thing where I lost the whole nest of eggs. Then I had an incubator fiasco where it shot up to 110F for some unknown reason but I strongly suspect the water I put in the tray with was may-be too warm. Whatever the reason, I didn't get one chick, not one out of 42 eggs. During the three week incubation period, I hoped against hope that something survived. Two more times the temperature shot up but when I tried another thermometer, the temp. was a perfect 99.5F So I'm thinking it wasn't the incubator but a faulty thermometer. In which case the eggs didn't hatch cause I cooled them down for too long. Losing a whole hatch of my own eggs is bad enough but I bought two dozen eggs, Delaware and Americauna, to complement my own. Losing those just added to the whole disappointment. So I should be having peeps all over the place and I have none, nada, zip, zilch.

That's how it goes sometimes. It's really nothing disastrous, more like a series of setbacks one after the other. The DaM Farm holds so many surprises and unexpected joys that I think I'm just not used to having a bunch of disappointments anymore. I can't decided if that's a good thing or not. Anyhow, onwards and upwards, pip-pip, whoot-whoot and all that rot. Disappointments never killed anybody, probably builds character...or dementia.

So Where's Winnie the Pooh?

I know living a rural life has its surprises but this getting ridiculous. This morning as I was walking through the dining room, I casually looked out the glass doors and stopped dead in my tracks. There's a dog, a boxer, in my yard. Unfortunately, loose dogs in my yard are a common enough occurance here and that is not what has me gazing outside with my mouth open. Following closely behind the dog is a pig. A little pink pig. Well, there goes the neighbourhood. As soon as I go outside, the dog takes off, the pig decides to hang around for a while.

This little pig is checking out the chicken coop. He tried for a while to get into the chicken area and has decided may-be he can get into the coop. My teenage daughter, absolutely charmed by this little piglet, promptly christened him Herbert and declared she wanted him. Fat chance, kid. You have two dogs, one cat, rabbits and chickens, all of which you ignore ninety-five per cent of the time. Forget the pig.

OK, well he's finished investigating the chicken coop so he's decided to mosey over and investigate me. I back up a wee bit. He's a charming little guy but I have a thing about personal space when it comes to pigs, even little piglet ones who should be romping around the 100 acre woods with a stuffed bear.

So now Piglet is heading home. Good-bye little pig, don't come back because you are awfully cute and sweet and may-be the idea of keeping you would be too hard to resist.

First Cold Frame Built

Over the week-end, Don built my first official cold frame. You can't really call the one I knocked together last year a cold frame, more like an experiment to nurture an inkling of an idea. I think this new cold frame looks great but what I'm really impressed with is that, except for the nails, all of it was built from Don's resourcefulness and scrounging abilities. The wood came from an old building we took down when we first moved here. I think at one point the previous owners used it as a duck house. A very sad duck house with no windows, a leaky green roof and very little room. The base was all that was left of it after we took it down and Don used that for the frame. The window part is an old window from when we replaced them in the house. Some time or another, I'd really like to paint it to match the house, probably around the same time Hades freezes over, I would imagine.

In the next little while, I think I'll start hardening my tomato plants in it. After it is finished doing that and all the plants are in the garden (what a delightful thought!), I think I'll use it to grow my potatoes, leaving the window open, of course. I'm hoping that way, those rotten little potato bugs can't find them.

Empty Nest Syndrome

I wrote a little while ago about finding a bunch of eggs and thinking I had a broody hen or two. You can read about that here. Well, Mocha sat on the eggs for two days and I thought everything was hunky-dory. On the third day, she got off the nest and started pacing by the fence to get out. She kept it up all day so that night I let her go back to the main coop. I figured if the eggs were cooled for 24 hours, they were toast anyhow. Out of the eight eggs, I was able to use 3 or 4 in baking, they passed the water test. The others were iffy so I didn't used them. Out of the eight, seven had no sign starting life. One had a little cobwebby blood threads may-be a quarter inch long. A disappointment for sure, but valuable lessons learned and I know much more about broodiness, half -broodiness and stubbornness passing as broodiness.

Seedlings, the Good, the Bad and the Utter Failures

I have planted everything I wanted to start early indoors. It's been an experience, to say the least. Surprises abound and hopes dash against the reality of trying to push Nature. The best success so far as been the tomatoes I saved from seed. I didn't think I'd have much luck with them but after a straggly start, they are strong, upright and bushy. The ones I transplanted into juice containers are doing well, so are the ones I didn't transplant so I know now I don't have to transplant to make them less straggly. The celery is slow, as expected. But I am seeing the first real leaves on them now, lacy scalloped leaves just delicately edging the dark earth with green. The herbs, basil, cilantro, summer savory and parsley are all going at their own time table and looking good. Basil, of course, was out of the starting gate first. Bursting through and stretching as fast and long it could. I've always found basil to be such a joyful plant. There's just something about basil that light and happy. I planted a mix of basil seeds so along with the little green sprouts, I also have purple. Nice little surprise. The cucumber seeds I bought are doing well, if not a little leggy right now. A sturdy seedling, stout and squat, I'm hoping with a little more light, they'll outgrow their stretch.

The green/red pepper seeds I saved did nothing, nor did the cucumber seeds I kept. Turns out they needed to be saved differently that I did, which was basically sitting them on a plate till they dried. Cucumber seeds have to be saved pretty much the same way as I did the tomatoes. Pepper seeds shouldn't be collected until the pepper is as close to the rotting stage as possible. For fun, I bought an early hybrid small watermelon seed to try. Only three sprouted and then two died. I'm guessing I did something wrong there, too.

We're hoping to get the cold frames built this weekend then I can start hardening off the plants. I've already started raking and putting on compost on the garden, waking it up so I put my dreams into action.

Nifty Idea Extended

Sometimes I am inspired by an idea so much that new and wonderful applications occur to me. Usually starts with a thought along the lines of, "Well, this is really working well, what if I make it bigger and better..." Taking an idea and running with it is something I do quite often. Sometimes it works out really great, other times...well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I started my herbs from seeds this week and quickly ran out of window sill. So I thought of the frame of that little portable greenhouse I have. I got that out of the garage, re-homed a bunch of spiders to the compost (they'll be happier there) and stuck its wheels on. And then inspiration hit me. Line it with aluminum foil just like I did with the boxes. It holds a lot of flats (plus a spider plant that got displaced when I commandeered the window) and is fairly stable. Rolls nicely, too. Just turn it around, open the curtains and push it in place.

There is an unforeseen result I didn't even think of (that usually happens with my grand schemes). With all that aluminum foil glittering in the windows, it looks like either I'm trying to protect myself from alien transmissions or I got me a grow-up going there. EEK!

Who Knew Chickens Played April Fools?

Well, those little feathery tricksters sure pulled one over on me. I went out to look for eggs this morning. A little Buff Orpington just couldn't wait to get out of the coop proper and head over to the "brooding area" which is empty. She seemed a little frantic, which was weird but I didn't think much of it. On occasion, I will find a chicken over there, just checking things out. I collect the eggs in the coop and on my way out, I check the Buff in the brooding area but I can't see her...ANYWHERE. I could hear her, but couldn't see her. So I went in for a closer look. That's the brooding area in the picture above. With the exception of the butt-end of a chicken in the lower right hand corner (some hens will do anything to be a star), do you see any chickens in there? Neither do I.

So I started snooping and there, squished in between the top and bottom straw bales, I found her. I also found a mixed hen, too. The Buff was enthusiastically pecking her on the head trying to make her move. O.K., now this is getting odd. So I reach under the mix, who I believe to be Mocha to see if there was an egg. There was ten. Ten I knew nothing about because it never occurred to me that a hen, much less two, would wedge themselves between two straw bales to lay eggs. There's Mocha after I chased away the head poking Buff Orpington.

Now I have a nest of eggs in the most unlikely and unsuitable places and possibly two broody hens. GACK!!! Funny how this situation was never mentioned in any books or any conversations I ever had about chickens. "Oh, and by the way, Marn; (or Marnie, or Marian, or Dumb-Dumb)make sure you don't make any cool hidy-holes that would be totally impractical for brooding hens 'cause that's exactly where they'll pick for raising their chicks. Until, of course, the chicks hatch, fall off the bale and break their itty-bitty necks." Double GACK!!!

That's the cache of eggs I knew nothing about. There's twelve, not ten. On top of everything else, I can't count when surprised. Well, I have to do something but I have no idea what. So I'll start with the easiest and work my way up (or down, whatever). I definitely have to close off that broody area so no chicken can get in or out. That I solved by using an S hook to close the top part of the fence where the chickens were getting in. The thing is, I don't know about leaving the eggs on that bale, it seems precarious to say the least if those eggs hatch. I looks like I may have two broody hens. Of the two, Mocha is totally in broody mode. She's cranky, she's pecky and when I pick her up, she turns into a boneless pile of rags. The Buff is running around, eating and generally being a normal chicken. So I figure she was just hoping to add another egg to the clutch and let another hen have the fun of hatching them. So I put her back in the flock. There's no way that Mocha can set twelve eggs, it's a bit much. I have learned that eight eggs seem to be a good number for a hen Mocha's size. So I take seven of the eggs and put them in my pocket. The other five I put in a new nest area that I have packed with straw all around to make it cozy and secure and on the floor. I remove the top bale, opening up the area where Mocha is setting making it not so attractive to her. I transfer Mocha to the new nest area. She protests a bit but then she sees the eggs and goes in and settles. I take the seven eggs in and test them to see how fresh they are. If you put an egg in a bowl of water, a fresh one will sink, a 'rotten' one will float to the top and a so-so one will stand on end. So I decide to give her the so-so ones since chances are there's a chick developing in them. I had a whole escapade with weird broody hens last season and did the whole egg water thing, the eggs that stood on end or floated did hatch. The four fresh ones I kept to put in the incubator that will be started this Saturday (more on that in another post; one long, convoluted story at a time). I went back to the brooding area to give Mocha the eggs. Now I intended to take the other five and do the water test so she'd have eggs roughly the same age but I decided against it. She'd been through a lot of turmoil, being pecked on the head, being moved, have eggs taken then replaced, and I thought I had pushed it about as far as I could.

So Mocha now has eight eggs under her and hopefully she'll stay on the nest and in three weeks I'll see if anything hatches or if this was nothing more than an elaborate April Fool's Joke these two hens 'hatched' up. "Hey, I know," Says Mocha to Buffy, "Let's hide a bunch of eggs on her and then on April Fool's, we'll let her find them. That'll be a fine joke. And messing with her head is just a bonus."