Spring chicken harvest 2014

We've talked before on the differences between frankenchickens (Cornish Cross) and heritage breed birds.  Above is an example.  To the right is a 9 week old frankenchicken.  To the left is a 6 month old heritage bird.  See the color difference, that's called flavor.  We don't get flavor any more from the supermarket.

Processing!

Parts in their final rinse.

The harvest, packed and ready for the deep freeze.

Another angle of the harvest.

Packing Green Beans

After cleaning the beans last night it's time to pack them up and freeze them.  We start with a quick blanch and an ice bath.

Then they are added to bags.

After a quick vacuum and seal they are ready for the freezer.

May 29th garden update

We have beans!  

Let's get to snappin!

First few zucchinni and yellow squash!

Turkey poults

The turkeys are laying in overdrive so it's time to incubate.  We put 19 eggs in the incubator.  Last year we had a 50% hatch rate.  I was expecting maybe 10 poults.

They started hatching Saturday.

They kept hatching on Sunday....... and Monday

In fact, all but three hatched.

One died right away and we now have fifteen poults.  It's time for a Craigslist add.

My weedy garden update 5/15/14

View from the back porch

The four beds of green beans are blossoming.  The closest bed has 3 rows while the next 3 each have 2.  The 3 seemed to grow better but we'll see how difficult it is to pick.

We planted four beds of peas this spring..... multiple times thanks to the chickens.  They're a bit thin because the chickens got in again after the multiple planting by tearing through the netting.  They REALLY like peas.  Now there's chicken wire around the base of the fence and it's kept them out.... so far.

The tomatoes are coming up, it's time to tie them up.

Potatoes

The first yellow crookneck squash are here.  They're only a few inches long but we'll be eating them by next weekend most likely.

The zucchinni has blossomed but there's no zucchinni yet.

The carrots are doing much better this year.  We may actually get some carrots this time.  They appear to really like the new mulch.

Dino dig site

When Logan told me he was digging for dinosaurs in the back yard I had forgotten I bought him a shovel....  We had to have a little talk about digging under concrete.  I think I'm going to try and find a cow femur and bury it in his hole and see what he does when he finds it.

First 7 chickens harvested

The first batch of chickens hit 10 weeks and we started processing them.  I got the first 7 on the line and Danielle and I realized that they were a bit small.  The last 5 got a reprieve for a few weeks to fatten up some more.  This is the first 7 heading to the freezer.

Ruthless and Toothless

When we had Logan my Lieutenant from Iwakuni, Erik Wilson, sent us a skull cap for Logan.  We found it the other day and it's a perfect fit on James right now.  Still cute.

First hive inspection with the kids.

Logan and Paige in their new bee suits

Danielle says they look like little space men.

It's a little hard to see because our photographer doesn't have a bee suit.....yet.

The kids and I did an inspection and our weak hive is now our strong hive.  The strong hive swarmed before the rains we had and it appears that they are queenless.  Looks like we'll be buying a new queen.  There's no brood at all in the hive.

All in all it was a good experience.  AKA, no-one got stumg and the kids had a good time.  Now we just have to fix the queen issue.