Coming Right Along On Schedule…For Summer Or Fall…

The weather is most strange this summer. Not only have we received our fair share of rain…but we haven’t had the heat that was coupled with the lack of rain in past years to create the drought conditions of summers past either. It has been rather refreshing weather for working on the buildings around the farm.
Yesterday we finished off the trim work on the front of the barn and added the candles to the windows. We think it is as quaint and cozy as any New England barn existing today. The trim work always makes a major difference in a project and if not completed, the job is never finished! It’s that simple!
We received an email this morning that the remainder of the run-in-shed lumber is finished at the saw mill and ready for pick-up. We’ll get that tomorrow or next week sometime, because we are working on the rear of the barn today. We’ll soon be finished with the barn work and cleaning up around the farm in general. We feel really good about where we stand with the farm as a whole right now and know we will be ready for winter this year…unlike years past!

 Trimmed out barn in the daylight...

Barn after dark with lighting...quite quaint

The new chicks are doing great…the young turkeys are fine and we hope the loss of the one was a fluke not helped. Since the remaining two are fine, I have to think something happened that we could not have stopped, or seen coming. It was fine in the evening and dead in the morning, without a mark on it to show trauma of any kind. The adult hens are again laying on eight eggs which I hope they are successful in hatching out. Any that do hatch will go into the building where the little ones are now and under a light for safety, because the adults are not too good at watching after their young. They step on them, lay on them or may even peck them to death for some reason…but none the less, they manage to kill them somehow. Recently we had ten eggs in the nest, but when Tina, our old broad breasted bronze died of old age, the male quit going outside and got into the nesting box with the females and stomped on all the eggs and broke them. (Males are even clumsier than females)

I spent an entire day inventing and making a cage assembly that would allow the hens to enter the nesting box, but would not allow the male to enter. Since then, the females have been trying to hatch a brood of eggs, which we hope occurs soon. The more turkey chicks the better!!!
We will never again use an incubator to increase our flock of either chickens, ducks or turkeys, because it is a waste of time, a lot of work and the chances of getting cockerels is high. Everything we have now will be sterile because of the breed or we will cull males out. The Golden Reds we have as layers are hybrid birds that cannot reproduce and the silver cockerels cannot reproduce either. We don’t want any more male ducks because the torment and torture the females during breeding season (or most any time of the year really) so if we want ducks, we will buy female Indian Runners.
The turkeys will take care of their own reproduction.

Vick has been working with the fiber…processing it and using her odd lots to weave a beautiful scarf on her tabletop loom. I’ve included a picture of it. It is lovely and long enough to go from waist, around your neck one time and down to your waist on the other side. It will be a great scarf to keep the bitter winter winds from going down the back of your neck and will stay tucked securely inside your coat.

I want it!!! (if she’ll give it to me…)   

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070283 Cluckin' "A" Critter Farm, LLC