On February 15, 2010, our garden looked like this:

The snow was deep. So deep that MrC and I couldn’t get to work the next day. We actually got stuck in front of our house in his 4-wheel-drive truck. Ridiculous!

Fast forward a month and four days later: (aka March 19, 2010)

and MrC and I were outside burning off the rest of the garden. There was 3 back-to-back days of no rain which allowed the ground to dry up just enough for us to till.

We managed to get three passes done with the tiller before we ran out of gas. That was plenty for the chickens though. They thought it was Christmas morning!

We got a small area fenced off and got 2.5 rows of onions planted. This is the earliest we’ve gotten onions planted. Normally we procrastinate or hum and haw about what day we should till and then suddenly it’s May and we’re finally getting our onions planted.

And a little over a week later, we started to see onions sprouting up:

I’m really excited for our garden this year. Of course I probably say that ever year, but this year it’s ME pushing MrC to get things planted instead of him saying “We should probably plant these soon.”

In other not-so-good news:

This cute little thing is the kitten that someone dropped off months ago. We actually caught it once and put it in a cage and it was FURIOUS. And I knew that if we took it to the humane society they would put it down for being unadoptable. So we freed it,  started feeding it and I attempted to get it just a little more friendly. It doesn’t run away when we get close to it, but it won’t let us touch it. It did, however, prove to be a great hunter. Even with an unlimited amount of food available, MrC and I are constantly finding moles and mice laying around the yard.

Let me stop here and say that I KNOW how important it is to spay/neuter your pets. Four of our 5 animals are adopted! I’ve volunteered at humane societies and animal shelters. I see what happens to unwanted pets and it breaks my heart.

So my goal was to get to the point where it was used to us touching it and get it taken to the vet and get neutered. Because from the close encounters I had with it, I could tell it was a male.

Then one day, two other cats showed up. “Odd,” I thought. But just chalked it up to them wanting to get something to eat. Then two days later, I looked out my window and one of the wandering cats was mating with our cat.

I’ll admit I cussed at this point.

B/c I’m pretty sure that the female is always on bottom. Which is exactly where our cat was.

So the cute little cat you see in the above picture? Is now pregnant. She’s actually a couple weeks pregnant and her belly is starting to get big.

Sigh.

I feel HORRIBLE. I should’ve known! I should’ve thrown her in the cage and trucked her to the vet AS SOON AS WE FOUND HER. But she is still so young! I had no idea how limited my time was.

Keeping the kittens is not something we can do. We’re renting our house and with 3 cats, 3 dogs, and 15 chickens, we’re already pushing our limits. But I’m hoping that she has them in the garage and maybe I can handle them enough to where they are friendly and find good homes for them. Don’t get me wrong, if I can’t find homes, they’ll stay with us (over the protests of MrC, of course) but that’s not the ideal situation!

Argh!

SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PETS! And if you want a kitten and you’re in the Southern Indiana area, let me know!

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?

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!

Note: I am replying back to your comments ON your comments. If you’d rather get an e-mail response, let me know!  

Apparently, I have a broody hen that’s a slacker.

(For all you non-chicken types… when a chicken goes ‘broody’ it means she’s trying to hatch eggs)

I saw her on a nest Thursday night, Friday morning, and Friday night. So I started getting excited. Baby chicks! At J&J Acres!

Then on Saturday, she was up off the nest. And I was sad. Then she was back on it on Saturday night. Then on Sunday, she got off and four chickens laid eggs in that same nest… and when I went in there later, she had given up setting on 14 eggs and was now setting on 3 new eggs.

Argh. I tried to put her in a cage with the eggs, and she freaked out.

So I took away all the eggs and she clucked around for a while, peeking into each nest.

I just don’t think she’s ready to be a mom.

From what I’ve read, chickens set on the nest for days at a time, and get up for a few minutes to get a drink and eat. This chicken was up for hours at a time the first couple of days… so maybe she just needs to grow up a little bit. Who knows.

Garden Stuff

I love pulling carrots out of the garden. Maybe because up until this year we had never grown carrots. And I still get excited because they look exactly like they do in cartoons. (Hello Bugs Bunny!)

Mr. C laughed at me for picking such a puny carrot to put on the farm blog. But I think it’s perfect! And it’s really not that puny… it just has a long stem!

It’s hard to believe, but Mr. C and I have almost picked (and given away or eaten) ALL of our corn this year. We’re already making plans to have a bigger garden next year!!

Lake House Stuff

We didn’t go to the lake house this past weekend b/c gas is killing us, but here’s a picture from two weekends ago when Mr. C borrowed my dad’s pressure washer and I witnessed a miracle:

The deck is going to look great with some fresh stain (and paint for the railing).

Thanks to all who made suggestions about the walls. It looks like Kilz Primer is a good starting point… once we get the texture worked out of the walls!

As I mentioned, Mr. C and I bought a house on the lake.

It’s not a super-fancy place, but it’s OURS and I want it to have that ‘vacation/cottagey’ feel to it.

That being said, the colors that are all throughout the house are BLAH.

And trying to find help on how to replace the Manufactured House stuff is NOWHERE to be found.

The gypsum board (or whatever it is) is covered in this:

(It’s got a ‘distressed’ look, it’s not dirty.)  

Red. And Green. And it’ll only go with the Christmas decorations about a month out of the year. Not good.

Then, in the spirit of red and green, I give you the wall panelling type stuff. (Does anyone know what this is called? It’s a border thats about waist-high, but it’s completely removable by removing nails- or is it staples?)

The countertops aren’t bad, but there’s more GREEN:

The cabinets are the brown color you see above.

So far the only thing I’ve done is get a couple of cute Sunflower kitchen linens from Kmart.

What I’d like to do is take out the wall-panelling type material and replace it with a light-blue material (I think blue because it’s a cottage type color- and water- and we’re on a lake!). The kitchen and living room are adjoining, so it would go all the way around both.

The kitchen? I’d love to paint it a bright, cheerful color… like yellow. (Or is yellow a bad kitchen color?) Then maybe throw a splash of color using striped kitchen blinds.

But then the question comes up as to if the yellow paint would cover the gypsum board (or WHATEVER it is) correctly, or if it’s too much work and I should just work with the red and green.

Also? The guest bathroom is done in the red-and-green striped gypsum. (You get it by now right? I have no idea if it’s really gypsum board, or what they make the walls out of) Which thwarts the cute bathroom-decorating I had planned.

Does anyone out there have any advice? Or know what in the heck the panel around the rooms is called? Or what the walls are done in?

Farmily Updates

In other news, we ate some of our FIRST ears of corn yesterday! They were fabulous (even if I did pick them a little early, I was impatient)

Yumm. And there weren’t even any bugs on them. I should probably thank the chickens for that.

Also, Mr. C and I picked up our new Maytag Washer and Dryer! Our old clothes washer quit working right about the time we bought the lake house. (Isn’t that how it always goes) So we had to get new ones. Yay!

Speaking of clothes washers… the HE-front load washers are a good $1000 more than the one you see above. To me, they’re not worth getting. It’ll take 10 years before you can recoup that extra $1000.

Or maybe we’re just tightwads and are perfectly happy with our less-than-$400 washer. Hmm… yep, that’s probably it.

Yesterday, Mr. C and I worked in the garden. Or rather, he worked in the garden while I took a nap… then woke up just in time to get updated pictures of our garden’s progress. heh.

I like the way the sun is hitting the corn’s tassles on this one.

Left- baby carrots. Right- Sugarsnap peas

Left- Cabbage. Right- Baby yellow squash

Hot peppers!

So the garden is coming along quite nicely, although we need to pull the weeds that grew while we were on vacation last week. Really it’s needed minimal upkeep this year since the rain has been fairly decent. *Knock on wood*

Cute Chicken Picture of the Day

When chickens get hot, they’ll do this:

They’ll hold their wings out from their bodies. I happen to catch her in the middle of a yawn, which made for an even better ‘woe is me chicken’ picture.

How are your gardens doing?

Those who have chickens know that there is always a favorite nest to lay eggs in. We have ten nests. Five of which are usually empty. Example of yesterdays action:

Nest 1:

3 eggs.

Nest 2:

1 Egg.

Nest 4:

2 eggs.

Nest 6:

1 egg.

Nest 9:

9 (!!!) Eggs.

The popular nest changes locations daily so I’m not sure what makes it a hotspot.

Garden Update

I haven’t said too much about our garden lately. 1/2 of it is doing really well:

From L-R: Peas, Carrots, Lettuce, Cabbage

We plan on putting woven wire up for the peas to grow on. They’re already reaching for something to grab onto.

Ugh. Weeds.

The other half isn’t doing so well. The tomato plants are really suffering. This poor little pepper plant lost all it’s leaves during a really windy day a couple of days ago.

He’s a little pathetic, eh? Ignore the weeds. The dirt has been too wet to hoe!!  

So we may be re-planting some things this year. My corn isn’t popping up like I hoped it would either. But I don’t mind replanting since it’ll stagger the time when the vegetables are ready to be picked.

Homemade Gifts

I worked with a woman named Maria at the Restaurant before I graduated college. She had chickens and really she was the one that reminded me about how much fun chickens were. She had to give up her chickens because the house she was renting is now the home of a crop-advisor (or something like that) for the farmer who’s land she lived on. Now she lives in a sub-division. And hates it.

So I like to send eggs to her every once in a while since she of all people appreciates farm fresh eggs. She sent me homemade yeast rolls a couple of weeks ago. This time she sent me homemade scones which are fabulous. She also sends any egg cartons she has. It makes me smile to get packages from her.

The scones are in the tin.

It’s funny because if you were to have worked with me (young, know-it-all, with a bitchy attitude) you’d never think that Maria (sweet, easy going, and never talks bad about anyone) and I would be friends, especially after I left the restaurant. 

That’s all for now. I hope your gardens are faring better than ours!

I ordered 3 chicken saddles today.

Picture from mbldesigns.com.

No, really. A couple of our pullets seem to be favorites of the two roosters… which means that they are bare-back from being… um… played with so much. One of the RIR’s back is just bare skin now. So you get these saddles and that way the rooster isn’t hurting the chicken anymore and her feathers can grow back.

I ordered them from MBL Designs. I ordered 3, since there’s about 3 hens that are looking worse-for-the-wear.

I’m not going to tell Jimmy that I ordered them. When I get them (next week) I want to see how long until he notices the chickens wearing them. hee hee.

Creativity Update

I had two great responses to my Request For Creative thinking in my last post. I like the hand-rail idea and the tree/shrub idea. So I may somehow incorporate both. I had a suggestion over at TheEasyGarden forum, but it was a lot of flowers I don’t know so I’ll be doing some research this weekend.

I’ve been practicing much self-control with not buying flowers so far…. which is apparently a good thing since we’re getting a ‘light freeze’ next Tuesday night. I will be in Michigan so I’m sure it will be a ‘heavy freeze’ up there. Fabulous.

Money Tree Update

Some of you had asked how my money tree is doing… and I’m proud to say that it’s looking fabulous and even sprouting new money leaves! I’m guessing we’re going to win the lottery any day now!

Garden Update

Jimmy and I have been busy little bees in the garden. So far we have planted the following: okra, carrots, peas, onions, corn, cabbage, and lettuce. This weekend we are heading over to his mom’s house to work on Garden B, where we will plant potatoes and the like. If two gardens doesn’t get my hoein-muscles in shape, I don’t know what will!!