Monthly Archives: March 2013

Spring is Sproutin’

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Close up of sprouting veggies and herbs
Mini greenhouse photo

The mini greenhouse. Who can resist buying one when it’s on sale AND encourages you to have fun playing with dirt?

Winter was weird.  Again.  The pond has gotten a little water back into it, but winter didn’t bring us nearly enough rain to fill the pond back up or help with the drought situation.  The frequent high winter winds did drop the wind chills and make it miserable to be outside, even if it wasn’t wet enough for a more normal Texas winter though.

Now that March is here, it is nice to start seeing a bit more sun and experience some mild Spring days.  Even if it isn’t officially spring yet.  (I won’t hold my breath that the mild pleasant temps will stay.  I am fully expecting it to be 90+ degrees starting in a few weeks.  As usual. :/ )  Even though the weather here isn’t always pleasing, it IS pleasing to see signs of spring sproutin’ in our new mini greenhouse!

For $20 on sale, I just couldn’t pass up the chance to buy this little mini greenhouse to see what it can do.  Hopefully it will be good not only for sprouting seeds, but to grow some things next winter.  Fresh winter tomatoes grown in a big pot sounds good.

There is something exciting about seeing the little sprouts popping their heads up to say hello.  We still have a few more things to plant (ok, more than a few cuz I tend to be a planting nut once I get started), but this is a pretty good start, considering we haven’t grown anything for several years. (Those evil grasshoppers just kept plotting against us and thwarted previous gardening efforts at this house.)  But, now that we have chickens that LOVE to eat grasshoppers, we figured it was time to  get back on the garden wagon.

Look but don’t taste the plants grasshoppers!  (Although I hope our chickens will taste a LOT of you hoppers!)  Cheers for Spring Sprouts!

 

 

Close up of sprouting veggies and herbs

Sprouting veggies and herbs!

Photo of more veggie/herb sprouts

More sprouting veggies and herbs!

Posted in Farm Life, Gardening

New Java Momma

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One of our lovely standard-bred heritage Mottled Javas is a new mother!  Having a broody (a chicken showing mothering behaviors) hatch eggs was a new adventure for the chicken and for us.

The eggs were incubated in the house while I watched the broody pullet to make sure that she would stay on a nest of eggs.  Some chickens give up partway through the three-week incubation period and stop keeping the eggs warm.  Once I was sure she would stay the course, she was moved to a condo cage in the garage and the eggs from the incubator were put under her shortly before hatch date.

Only one of the three eggs hatched out, but she is proud as can be anyway.  And she’ll let people know if they are getting too close to her little fluffball.  It’s funny to see the chick dive into Momma Chicken’s feathers and watch its little chick feet disappear.  They even get a ventriloquist act going with the chick peeping and cheeping while hiding in Momma’s chest feathers.

Many chickens, especially hatchery stock, have had broodiness (the desire to sit on eggs and hatch them) bred out of them.  For a dual-purpose homestead bird like the Java, broodiness is a trait to be celebrated and encouraged when possible.    So far this experiment with a broody has been successful and we plan to utilize it in the future.  As well as continue to breed for broodiness, to help keep our Javas close to what a good, old-fashioned homestead bird should be.

Mottled Java Momma and baby in the broody condo.

Mottled Java Momma and baby in the broody condo.

New baby checking out Momma while she has a bite to eat.

New baby checking out Momma while she has a bite to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Chickens, Javas, Poultry, Uncategorized