One of the best things about getting up early in the morning is getting to see the sunrise.

You can see that we have a view over the city below. Very neat.

On my last post, a lot of you commented on our tomato plant supports, so I thought I’d post more pictures of them.

Mr. C thought up the tripod support idea. He thought it would be cheaper and be neater to look at than regular tomato cages. I fought him at first, but now I think he was right- they are pretty neat looking and go with the natural look of a garden. (It’s also something that’s easily moved to a new spot next year)

As you can see, they are just 3 small trees cut down and set in a tripod fashion. He then tied them together with a thick piece of string. Another (longer) tree trunk is then laid between tripods to support the tomato plants.

The piece of this that’s harder to see is our tomato clips. Before Mr. C and I started dating, I had never seen them before. A big-time farmer he used to work for used them, and so Mr. C found some on ebay and bought them in bulk.The string is snapped into place using little ‘teeth’ on the clip and the clips are placed on the tomato stems to support them.

The only downside to this method is that the tomato plants will need more clips as they get larger. But b/c you control what part of the tomato plant gets support, I think it makes it easier to find tomatoes.

What method do you guys use to support your tomato plants? Have you seen these clips before?

So it’s been approximately 723 days since my last post. Well, close to it anyways. I wish I could say it was b/c I was out in the garden weeding like a mad fool, but alas… it was only b/c I couldn’t get pictures to upload and without pictures, what is there? Just words. Boring words.

Mr. C got me a new camera for my birthday. (A Nikon L100, that I LOVE. It’s got a 15x zoom!) so I’ve been taking random pictures around our little farm.

First up is the tomato plants. This year Mr. C decided to go a more natural (and cheap!) route to string up our tomato plants using small tree trunks. I think it looks pretty neat. (Ignore the weeds)

I SAID don’t look at the WEEDS!

And thanks to my zoom (b/c if I try to get his picture when I’m close to him, he runs to me and flops on his back), I finally got a cute picture of BrownDog with his ‘broken’ ear. I don’t know if he was born like that or what, but I think it’s cute nonetheless. Soon he’ll be headed to the groomer for a much-needed shaving.

Isn’t it cute? And it looks like he’s smiling!

And last but not least is a picture I snapped of a hummingbird. The light wasn’t good, but this was with my zoom and I was amazed at how much detail it picked up. (Did I mention I love my camera?)

What kind of cameras do you guys use?

So, Mr. C and I finished laying the underground dog fence wire yesterday. We decided to do it ourselves to save money and no, it wasn’t easy, but we did it! And it works!

These are the little white flags marking where we laid the wire.

We decided to get an underground fence b/c our outside dog, Brown Dog, has been following hikers (there’s a hiking trail right by our house), sometimes for 15 miles. He disappears pretty much every weekend and all we can do is wait until someone notices his collar and calls us. Hopefully the fence will keep him contained and safe. We laid the fence around 2.5 acres so he’ll still have plenty of room to roam (although not the hundreds of acres he was used to before!!)

Our garden has been growing like a weed the past couple of days thanks to a let-up of the rain. Here’s a couple of pictures:

I’ve never grown broccoli before so I was tickled when Mr. C pointed out that our broccoli was indeed growing!

Our green beans are starting to pop up. You can still see the seed attached to this one!

Since some of you mentioned that you liked seeing how my broody was doing, here’s a quick update.

Yes, she’s still broody. And yes, I candled the eggs. Out of the 12 eggs I gave her, 2 showed no signs of growth (and after cracking them open, I was correct and they would have eventually became the dreaded ROTTEN EGG!), 3 have small growth but I need to recheck them, 1 has veining but is slightly cracked so I’m waiting to see if it continues to develop or if the crack is too significant, and 6 showed veining! So we’re off to a great start!

Want to read more about our broody hen adventures?

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

Read Part 3 here.

Read Part 4 here.

So how are you gardens doing?

For those who have been following the happenings of Speckles, the broody hen, (and if not: here’s Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) things took a turn for the stinkier last night. We got home from the lakehouse and this horrible, horrible smell was coming from her cage. I lifted her up and one of the eggs had busted. It was an infamous ‘exploding egg’. Apparently, if a hen sets on a non-fertilized egg for long enough, it will rot and eventually explode underneath of her. And the smell? The smell is HORRIBLE. It was all over the other eggs, all over her… I’ve never smelled a rotten egg smell, and it was enough to make me want to hurl. No kidding.

 So, I candled again and none of the eggs were showing signs of further growth. Even the ones I could see moving around before weren’t moving anymore.

Today when I went in to the chicken coop, Speckles was wanting out of her cage, so I let her out and decided to throw her eggs away. I cracked each of them open (I know, it sounds horrible… but how am I supposed to learn otherwise?) and she had one more rotten egg underneath of her (that splattered all over my arm when I cracked it- HURL! HURL!). The other eggs were all in various stages of growth, but none of them seemed to still be alive. (Or alive before I cracked the shell…)

So, I decided to see what she’d do and she went back in, got on another nest and went back to her broody ways. So I cleaned out her cage (I had to scrub it with Comet to get the smell out. HORRIBLE) and will take eggs that are laid today and put her back in the cage tonight.

I know some of you are probably tired of hearing about my Broody Escapades, so here is my plan (all of this hinges on her staying broody, of course)

1. Collect 12 eggs from todays eggs. Number them 1-12.
2. Put her in her cage again with food and water and new, non-stinky hay. This keeps her away from the other chickens and makes sure that she doesn’t swap her eggs out.
3. Check eggs on Day 9. If no veining, eggs will get thrown out. No ifs-ands-or buts. (Trust me, once you smell a rotten egg, you don’t want another one near you) Also, after looking through images on this website, I think I can pick out a rotten egg now.
4. Check eggs a week later for further growth.
5. Hopefully hatch out some cute babies the week of May 25!

Did I mention that the rotten egg smell is the worst thing I’ve ever smelled? And I grew up on a hog farm!!

This past weekend, Mr. C and I were finally able to get our garden out. (yay!) And this year, I’m taking the advice I read on Kathleen’s blog (Eggs in my Pocket) and keeping a sort of ‘Garden Journal’ b/c we always forget what kind of plants we planted or what kind we liked and didn’t like.

This year’s garden is 34 feet by 46 feet.

Here are our garden’s debut pictures:

From Left: 3 rows of onions (red, yellow, and white) and in the back, a little leaf lettuce patch.

Red Cabbage, Head Cabbage, Broccoli, and Cauliflower.

Head Lettuce and 2 rows of potatoes (which are cuttings from our last years potatoes).

One row: Half carrots, half okra

Yellow Squash (3 plants) and Zucchini (2 plants). 1 row of Ambrosia- bi-color corn.

1 row of corn (Silver Queen- a white corn), and 1 row: Half SugarSnap Peas and Half Future Green Beans.

We planted two patches of tomato test seeds (one shown here). I say ‘test’ seeds b/c we usually buy started tomato plants but we wanted to try something new.

Speaking of Tomatoes, does anybody grow Mr. Stripey Tomatoes? I love them.

Broody Update Part 2

Read our experiences with a Broody Part 1 HERE. and Part 2 HERE. 

I think this picture sums it up:

After reading a post written by Homesteading Hickory Hills, he mentioned putting the broody in her enclosure at NIGHT. Since she threw a fit last time I tried seperating her, I was hesitant to try again. But, just yesterday another one of the hens got into her nest and broke an egg (I couldn’t tell what number it was, but I’m going to try and figure it out later) and since she should be getting close to hatching out a couple, I wanted to get her seperated soon. And, it worked! So now she’s in her own little cage, still in the chicken coop, but where the other chickens won’t bother her. She also has her own food and water.  

Who knew you could learn so much from other bloggers?

Also, I updated our website www.JandJAcres.com . So check out the new changes if you’re bored!

It’s serious work bein’ broody.

If you haven’t read it, go read about my broody hen to get caught up on what’s going on.

Since I couldn’t find a coffee can, I decided to try candling with a smaller, brighter flashlight… and it worked!

It worked so well, I was able to number the eggs 2-12 and write down what I could see in the shells. The following is what I observed:

Egg #     Activity

    2            Small Mass

    3            Small Mass

    4            Small Mass

    5            Small- questionable

    6           Movement in egg

    7           Small Mass

    8           Veins

    9          Veins, big!

   10         Small Mass

   11         Movement

   12        Mass- questionable. Check at later date.

I think that egg #s 6 and 11 were probably some of the original ones she had. Egg #s 8 and 9 are close behind and the others were part of the latest batch she stole. I’m hoping that the eggs with ’small mass’ listed will be showing veins here very soon.

She had 7 other eggs underneath of her, but these didn’t show any signs of development and were probably laid just yesterday. After I removed the 7 ‘extra’ eggs, she is now able to cover all of her eggs and hasn’t pushed any out all day.

11 eggs. I wonder how many will hatch out!

Speckles, in all her broody glory. She likes grass clippings.

Speckles is my first Broody Hen. (Although I did have a faker broody back in July of 2008) She’s a Speckled Sussex (from Ideal Hatchery) and went broody on April 5, 2009. A couple days after that, a couple of the other hens got into her nest and broke an egg. Concerned that the yolk-covered eggs wouldn’t hatch, I threw a couple of them out. After that, I noticed that she continued to collect eggs. For like a week. So she was setting on about a dozen eggs.

Going on advice that I read on The Backyard Chicken forum, I decided to try and seperate her into her own little nest. So I got out an old critter cage, put food, water, and plenty of straw in there, then transferred her eggs in. Last but not least, I put Speckles into her new home.

And she flipped out.

So, I moved her back to her old nest and gave her her eggs back and that night I marked them with a small blue ‘1′. I tried to candle* them (where you shine a light into the egg, looking for signs of development) but I couldn’t see anything so they all got marked with a blue ’1′.  I had also noticed that Speckles would sometimes push eggs out from underneath of her, usually the same two. Legend has it that hens know when an egg is ‘bad’ or not developing and will push it out of the nest. People on The Backyard Chicken forum admitted that this wasn’t always true, but since she seemed to be pushing the same two out of the nest, I decided if she did it again I would take them away from her.

Last night, I candled the eggs again and a couple of them were showing sure signs of development. (I could see veins in one and a ‘mass’ in another) I should have marked them, but didn’t think to at the time. She had also added more (!!) eggs to her nest. I could tell b/c these were ones without the blue ‘1′ marked on them.

This morning, she had again pushed the same two eggs out from underneath of her, so I decided to crack one and see if it was, indeed, a bad egg. Unfortuneatly, it was NOT a bad egg and was instead a small developing chick. I felt horrible!

So my new plan is to candle the eggs tonight and MARK the ones that are developing. Some of them are too dark to tell (oddly enough the green eggs are the hardest one to see) and if some of them are showing no signs of development, I will remove them from her. Right now she has too many and she can’t cover them all.

 The only other concern I have is that some of the eggs are so far apart development wise, I’d hate for her to hatch a couple and get off her nest and leave some eggs that would have hatched.

I know that some people would say to just leave her alone, but b/c she’s in the nest boxes with the others, she’ll never hatch any out if she keeps pushing out the good eggs and collecting new ones!  

Sigh.

I’ll try and get a picture of one of the candled eggs tonight. Keep your fingers crossed that there’s development in them all!

Feel free to offer any suggestions on dealing with a broody hen!

 *How I’m Candling: I’ve actually been using a flashlight to candle them, although my dad told me that they used a coffee can with a small hole cut into the bottom of it and a lightbulb when he was younger. I may try his method tonight since the flashlight is a little bigger than what I need.

Jen’s Farmily: The blog where we always appreciate green grass and a blue sky (even if it’s partly cloudy) and even more so on Earth Day.

See anything peculiar under the lid of our propane tank?

 Maybe this will help:

Jen’s Farmily: The Blog where this is the second year that we’ve had baby birds under the propane tank lid, and I recently found another nest. This time on top of the old mail jeep’s engine.

It’s always nice coming home from this:

to 40 degree temperatures and snow.

NOT!

Luckily it has warmed up around here again. My tulips are blooming, which is a miracle in itself. I wonder why the chickens don’t find them interesting enough to eat?

The wind has them looking a little ragged, but they’re exactly what I needed… a little COLOR!

 Also? It appears we have a broody chicken!! One of our Speckled Sussex has been sitting on eggs since April 5. So today is Day 5!