Mabel

Two weeks ago we got our final chicken (for now). I ended up getting her where we got 2 of our other girls, and I wish that we had just gotten her at the same time, because adding just one chicken isn't pretty. I was going to get one from someone else, but it fell through. She had a rough start, it's always best to add chickens in pairs so they have at least one ally. She is settling in well though and running around with all of the others.


I didn't think I wanted this breed, but she is very pretty. She's still not too sure about us, but I think she will tame down quite a bit in a few weeks if we keep working with her.

Preserving

We are wrapping up summer over here by preserving the last of the harvest. We picked peaches and canned them up.





And pears...Aaron's favorite



Except I messed most of them up by leaving too much head space unfortunately. I didn't release all the air bubbles trapped in the pears as I added the syrup. They will still keep, but will get brown on the tops.


At 1:30 am we made an executive decision to dry and freeze the rest.


Earlier in the week I made cinnamon apple pear freezer jam with some fruit given to us by a friend. I think it will be good in oatmeal and on pancakes.





Canning is a lot of work, but it's so nice to have good food throughout the winter and to share with friends and neighbors. I can't wait until we have a nice, cool basement and a chest freezer to store all of this stuff!

Farm City

I read the book Farm City about a year ago, and LOVED it. A great story about a woman living in Oakland, CA. Her apartment has an abandoned lot next to it, which she adopts and transforms into a true urban farm. Novella Carpenter is her name, and her writing is hilarious and smart, and also easy to read. Aaron just finished reading it and also really enjoyed it.
I was reading her blog last night and saw that she will be in Portland speaking AND there will be demos and talks on all sorts of cool stuff - like bread making, raising meat chickens, making cheese and composting. We are so there! We picked up our tickets today from Grand Central Bakery, all of the baked goods we got there were delicious too!

Here is a link to all the goings on:
Grand Central Bakery Fair

Pickles!

We found a farm in Albany with several U-Pick options. They had pickling cucumbers for $1.20 a pound, but the woman offered to let us pick our own for half price. Sold! We picked all of the small ones they had and got about 10 pounds.


Firming up in an ice bath


The set up


Dill


Cukes stuffed in with garlic and dill. We were in kind of a hurry so I didn't get any pictures of Aaron ladling on the caustic brine.


Boiling water bath for 13 minutes


Pickles! Aaron used the garlic I grew this year. He also made one spicy jar with a hot pepper in it. I chopped the pepper for him and didn't wash my hands. Stupid! I rubbed my nose and it felt like it was on fire for a while. My finger tips are actually still feeling warm over 24 hours later! I learned my lesson on that.


We only got 7 quarts, but that should be enough. I have a feeling they aren't very good after a few months anyway.

Poop Post

I'm going to guess that 99% of my readers will not want to hear about or see pictures of chicken poop. But I have just gone through an ordeal, and I wish I had known this stuff, so I am posting about it anyway. If you don't want to see gross poop pictures, skip this post.

Our buff orpington was sick about a week and a half ago. I immediately treated her with Corid, a drug for coccidiosis. She responded well and within 3 days was back to normal. No one else showed signs of illness, except every morning I would find bloody poop on the roost. I talked to the man at the feed store, Del, who told me if that continued to switch drugs at the end of the first course. So I did switch drugs. But the bloody feces continued. After 10 days of this I was starting to panic, thinking I had a drug resistant strain and I was going to lose all the chickens. After getting no where by trying to call people and do internet research, I joined the website www.backyardchickens.com This website has so much information, and has a forum for chicken emergencies. I posted my situation along with this picture:

You can see why I was concerned! Several people responded that day and referred me to this poop page. They told me that chickens sometimes shed the lining of their intestines, and that this is normal. My picture matches the last one under "normal" poos. I am SO relieved. What I can't find online is why this is happening so frequently. Do they not have enough grit? Did the sulfa drug I just gave them wipe out their gut bacteria (they are getting yogurt daily for this)? Most chicken owners don't know that this happens - I guess they aren't out inspecting their poop everyday! I still don't know the answer to this, but for now knowing that everyone is going to be okay is good enough for me.

Oh you can see a picture of what coccidiosis poop looks like on the poop page, nothing like what their's looked like. It's quite alarming.

Birth!

We opened our hives this weekend to see how much honey was stored up. We are feeding our weaker hive and wanted to see how much longer we need to feed them. This picture is blurry, but check out those full pollen baskets!


I'm not sure what plant is producing this gorgeous pollen right now, but it reminds me of the color that Thai monks wear.


I love it when they do this:


Do you see what's going on here?


That is a bee emerging!!!


There were actually two coming out at the same time. We watched them for a few minutes and I was gearing up to capture the whole thing. Then suddenly Aaron put the frame back. I think he was done holding it and got impatient. I'm bummed because this is not something you see everyday! It was kind of taking a while, but I would have liked to see the wet bee come out and see how the others react.


Until the next time we see a bee emerging...these pictures will have to do!

It's Big...

I took a day off work last week and we headed to the state fair. We saw baby pigs.


This silly banty rooster: "CockADoodleDugh" It started out strong and gurgled out at the end.


Has anyone else done this? I LOVED this when I was a kid. You pick out your oyster.

They say "1, 2, 3 Aloha!" and crack into that bad boy.


Out pops your pearl! Black, yellow, white. Sometimes there are twins. I have 6 or 7 pearls from doing this when I was younger. I don't even really care for pearls, but they get you on the unknown excitement factor.


We caught just two of the timber events. Pole climbing and a race over floating logs. I wish we had seen more of these, they were fun.


Aaron made a new friend.


We saw some good art:


Went through the petting zoo.


And saw all the miniature horses. Now I'm not sure what the deal with these horses is, I have no previous experience, but they all seemed to have issues. Self esteem issues. Most of them stood in the corner and looked ashamed. That they were so small? I was definitely not charmed by them, and not without wanting to be - they are miniature horses after all. This beauty was for sale, only $500. Okay that was mean, but look at it!


We were pretty "eh" about the fair this year. I think we had a better time at the Linn County Fair. There were hardly any chickens, and it just seemed to be mainly people selling a bunch of crap. We were spoiled by the Ohio and Minnesota State Fairs I think. The Dairy Wives Barn did not disappoint however, their soft serve is to die for! It was actually the only fair food we ate, which was nice. I didn't feel gross the rest of the day like I would have if we had gotten a funnel cake as well...