Saturday Farm Journal

The ducks and chickens are enjoying roaming around the grounds and we are enjoying watching them. Both the boy and the dog are learning not to chase the birds, the dog listens better than the boy, but we are learning.

We let the chickens into the blueberry bushes to clean them up, fertilize, and eat bugs. It's funny to watch the chickens jump up to snatch a berry. The chickens continue to be friendly, sometimes a little too friendly (they jumped up on the picnic table in search of bugs). Yesterday the poor things got caught in the rain and tried to hide under the bushes, I don't think it worked out too well. Fluffernutter is growing steadily and getting more and more handsome. Fairly certain that he is a Buff Cochin, what do you think?

Blueberry season is over. We gathered seven or so gallons of berries from our three bushes. There is about four gallons in the freezer for the winter. The pears will be ready very, very soon. In fact a few of the daycare kids have been eating the small hard ones that have fallen on the ground.

I am hoping that the tomatoes ripen soon as the hot peppers and green peppers are ready to make salsa. When the tomatoes do ripen we are going to be in canning mode. We will make tomato sauce, tomato soup, and salsa. 

Saturday Farm Journal :: Green Tomato Relish

The batteries in the camera died right before I could show you the two gallons of relish I made Friday night. All the green tomatoes are from our garden. The peppers in the photo are from our garden, but the onion is from the store. I ended up purchasing onions and peppers from the store, but maybe the last batch of relish will have some from our garden. The story is the same with the garden, many weeds, few things to report. We are fairly certain we are not going to get the 5lbs of seed potatoes back in produce. We are hoping to break even. The good news is that the ducks are now taking care of the potato bugs for us, check out  this post for the all the waddling fun!

The tomatoes are doing awesome, regardless of their floppy, bushy state. Jason did manage to stake a few. He tossed some branches into the horses paddock, which is beside the garden, believing that the horse didn't like tomatoes. Wrong! The next day the horse helped himself to some plants and ruined some tomatoes! Gah! Luckily, there are tons of tomatoes so the horse can have a few.

Mom did manage to weed one row of potatoes in the last week. We have picked green beans twice, but haven't been able to put any up for winter because we're eating them. We have stored up four gallons of blueberries in the freezer. My sister in law picked about a gallon of blueberries yesterday and we have probably have eaten a gallon. That's six gallons of blueberries from three bushes! God is good! 

Last weeks list:

• weed: cabbage and tomatoes
• stake tomatoes
• pick tomatoes
• make relish
• pick blueberries

This weeks list:

• pick blueberries
• pick green beans
• weed something
• stake tomatoes

Saturday Farm Journal

On Thursday, with the help of the son of a farmer from church, the broilers were slaughtered, processed, and placed in the freezer. The whole chickens varied in estimated weight from 5-7lbs. We decided to go ahead and stop growing them at 8weeks because the largest broiler died one evening and another good sized one became lame. We ended up with eleven chickens in the freezer for a total of (averaged and estimated) 55lbs of chicken. Not too bad for our first time. Next year we will be doing more, and possibly getting a few turkeys too.

The ducks have been moved to their permanent home. All eleven of them. At first we kept the two batches apart with fences until they were accustomed to each other. Now they get along just fine with only a little bit of dominating pinches now and again. 

We have been eating a lot of blueberries. Every two days we spend two hours picking everything that is tinged red. Once inside they are all blue within a few days and then we freeze them in gallon sized bags. I have already made Upside-down Blueberry Cake and will be making it again tonight to take to a family gathering. I will be sure to take a few photographs and put the recipe up on our other blog after this week-end.

The garden is doing great. Mom has been spending a lot of time each evening weeding, when she isn't picking blueberries. This past week she weeded some tomatoes and potatoes and Dad hilled them. I weeded some tomatoes and peppers, and staked a few tomato plants. We ate green beans out of the garden on Wednesday, they were so yummy. Next week I will be making Green Tomato Relish, since we ate up the last jar a month ago.

Last weeks lists:

• weed: cabbage and tomatoes
• water if it doesn't rain
• continue to watch for bugs
• replant cucumbers
• move layers outside and Peking ducks to house

Next weeks list:

• weed: cabbage and tomatoes
• stake tomatoes
• pick tomatoes
• make relish
• pick blueberries

Saturday Journal

I cannot believe how the garden has changed in a week. Last week I had nothing to photograph, this week not true. The beans, some of the zucchini and summer squash, and the sunflowers are all up. The peas are growing fast and the other plants are looking great.


The chickens are changing almost daily. The broilers definitely weigh more than the layers. I think I have narrowed down the mystery chick to a bantam (Fluffernutter), it is still quite tiny and if I am right she* will only be about 2lbs fully grown. The deformed chick, Twig is doing great, it will be interesting to see if she will be able to get up to nesting boxes and roost, time will tell. Piglet is our smallest, not sure why she is so little, but it doesn't appear that she's being pushed out of the way to eat so I think she is just bitty. The men are hoping to get the ducks moved into the basement of the barn, boy are they messy!


We are mulching with the pine shavings used in the chicken brood box and in the ducks. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. Anybody know for sure? From what I understand the shavings are high in acid which means that we will need to add more lime next spring. Everything is trial and error, like with the ducks who are on house number 3 or is it 4?


Last weeks list

• Weed the peas
• Mulch the strawberries
• Plant pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers, potatoes, watermelon, turnip

This weeks list

• Weed tomatoes
• Hoe between the rows
• Mulch Brussels Sprouts
• Thin the beans

*I am of course, assuming that most of our chicks are female. We were told they are 90% female so hopefully we'll only have a couple of roosters

Saturday Farm Journal

yes, its fuzzy

Not much happened in the garden for the last two weeks. It's been raining and then there was a threat of frost, so we put off planting until yesterday. We planted four dozen different tomato plants: roma, beefsteak, and super sweet; two dozen green peppers; six green cabbage; six red cabbage; and six Brussels sprouts. We weren't planning on planting cabbage, but the new part of the garden is wetter than expected and cabbage supposedly likes it wet, we'll see what happens. This week the plan is to plant the seeds: pumpkin, zucchini, summer squash, other squashes, cucumbers, beans, sunflowers, carrots, and beets.

 The blueberries are looking great and so are the pear trees. The blossoms have all fallen off the pear trees and now it's just a waiting game. I tell the daycare kiddos each year that the pears will be ready by the time they go to school in the fall, but I wonder where everything has been a bit early if they will be too.

In other farm news, the chickens and ducks have arrived. I will dedicate a full post to them next week.