Burns Best Farm

What's Been Going On

I did not mean to take a month long break from blogging.  Really.  I didn't fast from the Internet, and all of our technology equipment has been working well.  No, I didn't intend to stay away this long.  But I'll try to explain what's been going on the last 31 days (in 500 words or less!)

Some of you know (but most don't) that my family moved in late February.  We lived in a suburb of Atlanta and we sold our home and moved to our farm property 90 miles away.  Last year, during the growing season, we lived at the farm most of the week and commuted back into the city to sell our produce on the weekends at a farmers market.

So this year, we started our seedlings in our farm house basement and ordered our first ever baby chicks and grew them up in the basement as well.  We suffered through the deep Easter freeze, got sidetracked and waylaid a bit with getting seeds into the ground after such wacky weather, and got three mobile chicken pens built to house our flock.

We moved the chickens outside and almost immediately started to suffer mortality.  Some from predators reaching their mean little raccoon paws through the wire pen and other losses due to my lack of understanding of how much (or how little) to feed pastured hens.  I can't tell you how frustrating the chicken experience has been for me; it is tough to be on such a sharply trending learning and experience curve, especially with animals/money at risk. 

But I am hopeful our numbers have stablized and we are getting crafty and sneaky  creative in order to outwit the predators.  Meanwhile, most of the chickens have hit the ten week mark and we are ten weeks closer to farm fresh eggs.  I'm trying to keep focused on the positives here.

And the garden is beginning to come along.  Beets, broccoli, chard, lettuce, a few carrots and the beloved haricot vert beans are all sprouted and growing nicely.  Mike started a large number of squash, yellow crookneck and patty pan, indoors and transferred them a couple of weeks ago.  I thought he was nuts for trying them inside first; I grew up in the "direct seeding" family when it came to squash.  But he has been rewarded nicely for his efforts and with about 50 blooms on the plants and two of the most adorable little squashes already showing, I definitely think he beat the system this year and we are two-three weeks ahead of our past performance with squash.

Meanwhile, my potatoes have (mostly) recovered from the extreme cold.  I think I lost a total of four plants, all of one variety, but I have three plants of that kind that did come back, so all is not lost.  The onions survived and the blackberry root stock is showing signs of growth, too.

So, in addition to making up for lost school instruction time during the move, we have been busy trying to get this place looking more like a real farm.  Real life impacting my blogging career.  Now there's a new one.

Hi

11:29, 2007-May-13 .. Posted by Chas

Nice to see you back and you have been a busy lady! :) We have been quite busy around here as well. Your potatoes must have been much hardier than mine, I think we lost all of them, we planted 150!!! My dh's grandpa said this is the first year he has ever lost all his potatoes too. So at least it wasn't something we did... I am glad to see you back and I hope you have a great day!
blessings,
Chas

Untitled Comment

11:53, 2007-May-13 .. Posted by ZookeeperCat

What are you feeding your chickens? I've never had early deaths from feeding issues, just from bacterial disease (hybrids are susceptible) and predators.

If you're going organic, when they're small the feed should be chopped, I believe. We always started them off on store feed, then switched them to grain when they were big enough to go out on the grass.

Glad your potatoes came back! I wondered if they might.

Cat, Lazy Creek Zookeeper