Chicken Update

We have chickens!!!  The ability to house animals has been a something I've looked forward to and even thought about as a balancer to some of the sacrifices of rural life (e.g. no longer living across the street from a giant grocery store).

I had originally assumed we would order from one of the larger hatcheries, but as we did our research we learned that at many hatcheries the demand for hens so outweighs the demand for male chicks that males are often disposed of shortly after hatching.  This did not match sync with our vision of being stewards of the land and animals, so we started looking into local options thinking that smaller scale operations were likely better equipped to handle this challenge.

The chicks traveled home in a small post office box.

We learned that a neighbor just down the road from us hatches chicks, and had Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpington's hatching this month.  The chicks are be "straight run", meaning we'll get a mix of male and female chicks.  We're not set up to house roosters, but our neighbor has offered to buy the roosters back from us after a few months when the sex becomes apparent.

The brooder the chicks came from.  The hatchers said that they usually leave them in the
brooder for about 12 hours after they hatch, until their feathers become soft and poofy

The chicks spent their first night in a large storage tupperware under a heat lamp.  I had purchased cedar chips to use as their bedding but then read in the backyardchickens.com forums that cedar shavings have an oil in the wood that is poison to chickens.  Last night we had enough of the shavings we were sent home with to get by.  So, today I'll be marching back to the store to return my giant bag of cedar shavings for pine shavings which appear to be the bedding of choice.

Buying chicks looks like serious business in this photo.  Definitely the photographer was not referring to the chickens as "chicki-doos" at this moment. 

We have friends, cousins, nieces and nephews who are up to the task of helping us name the chicks.   Names to date include, "Chickie Nikki", "Beauregard", "Clucky" and "Nugget".  Which just goes to show that chickens are the original creativity muse....right?!?  We have 16 more chickies to name, and are open to suggestions.

We Have a Farm!!!

“A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm -- it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism.”
~ Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front


We are ecstatic to be leasing land from Ayrshire Farms, the FIRST ever certified organic farm in North Carolina!  They have been farming organically in North Carolina for over 30 years and they have a few plots that they make available for lease.

About our Plot: - We have seven very long rows surrounded by deer fencing.  We'll be growing squash, sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes, okra(!), peas, shelling beans, beets, radishes, microgreens, melons and more!  The soil-building benefits of organic farming are so apparent at Ayrshire.  When I first saw the red, red, RED, soil of eastern North Carolina I remember telling Ches I felt like I could scoop up a handful of soil and spin a nice pot.   As you can see from the photos, the Ayrshire soil is a brown, loamy tilth.  Eventually we will be buying our own land, so we plan to learn all we can from Ayrshire's owner, Daryl Walker, to learn how she and the Ayrshire founder Bill Dow built this vibrant place (Follow the Bill Dow link for his contribution to an oral history project about the Ayrshire farm's origins).

Spring is just around the corner (the first day of spring is March 20th!).  This weekend are hoping the ground will be dry enough to till our plots and direct seed sugar snap peas.  We couldn't be happier than to be partnering with Ayrshire Farms!  Stay tuned for more updates as the season unfolds.

An added benefit of the high deer fencing...if we get tired
of weeding we can lock ourselves in until we're finished.

Choosing Seeds

Ches and I have chosen most of our seeds from the lovely Seed Savers Exchange.  It was hard to narrow down our choices, and with Seed Savers there are always the neat, unusual items that can be hard to resist.  We have a selection of heirloom seed tomatoes  summer and fall squashes, lettuces, radishes, okra (yum!), peppers and more.  February is the month I find myself most missing fresh-from-the-garden produce.  I keep switching which seed I am most excited about, but I think for today it is Ground Cherries.  They are actually a type of tomato that grows in a husk and has a sweet flavor.  I have never grown them myself but always buy them at the Farmer's Market and I am told they are prolific plants that will thrive and takeover wherever you put them!

We knew we wanted to buy most of our seeds from Seed Savers because they already had most of what we wanted, but shortly after placing the order I was extra glad went with them after reading the article "The Four Steps Required to Keep Monsanto OUT of Your Garden".  I had not realized some of the names Monsanto seed was being sold under, or that they were buying up heirloom seed names!  Highly recommended reading for those who swap spring fashion magazines for spring seed catalogs!

The Seed Assortment!