Farm Journal

We got the first frost this morning ... beautifull but bbbrrrrr it is cold ...

On the farm we have an alley of Bradford Pears (not producing fruits)... In the spring they are covered with white flowers and at this time of the year they put a show of spectacular colors ...

The Girls are doing great, the first flock is already 12 weeks old ... and no pressure here but every day I remind them that eggs production is around the corner !!!!

The colors of the pictures are really off but they were either in the shade or running away !!! .... They totally not collaborated for this shooting session !!!!

Relaxing under the mandarines !!!

The little sisters .... they are 5 weeks old, they have been pastured for over 2 weeks already. I waited much longer with the first flock before letting them run around (books usually say 4 weeks) but talking with experts I started to let them out earlier and I think they are doing much better ...

Having chickens is the best pest control system ... They are scratching all the time ... Usually pastured chickens get 15 % of their diet from bugs/green but I am sure it must be more ....

No pictures of the Leghorn Light Brown, they are so shy that it is impossible to get pictures. They are also very aggressive with each other and I am not sure I will keep on getting them. I will see how the eggs production goes.

Growing up, in Switzerland, mandarines were not a common fruit and I will always remember that we, kids, usually got the first ones of the season in our gooddies bag for "La Saint Nicolas" which is on December 6.

In the bag besides the mandarines we would have peanuts and walnuts and of course "Biscome" another typically swiss gooddies.

Who would have thought that some 40ize years later I would grow mines living in the middle of peanuts country !!!!

The first 2 pictures were taken on October 15, the trees were loaded ...  

and now is picking time ....

Mandarines are easy to pick and as you pick them you are surrounded by the most wonderfull orangy smell ...

They are 5 weeks old, very small birds compare to the Dominiques or the Rhode Islands, very shy too. Almost impossible to take a decent pix of them ... they keep on running away from me. Very pretty birds ...

It has been a while since the last picutes it has been very busy around here  ... well as you can see on the pix the Dominiques and the Rhode Island Red are doing very well, they are now 10 weeks old ....

Breakfast time ...

Dominique ....

Daily work ....

I took those pictures a few days ago when they were just 10 days old.

It took the previous flock a good two weeks to do the same thing .... !!!!

                                          Another queen of the water cooler .....

They are already jumping out of the pool ... but they don't know how to get back in !!! ....  When one is in trouble he will call for help with this very loud cry and all the others are totally quiet ....

                                                        Visiting .....

Let me tell you something : pastured chickens are happy chickens !!!!

You should see them when I first open the door of their coop in the morning ... they run the whole length of their pasture at least 2 or 3 times stretching legs and wings ... they are hillarious to watch ... then they calm down and start getting seriously busy ...

Scratching and searching all day long ....

.... roosting ....

 snacking ... .

6 weeks old Rhode Island Red ...

6 weeks old Dominique ...

This morning at 6:45am the post office called me, my baby chicks had arrived !!

I got a lot of emails about getting them through mail order. Here is a pix of the box ....

They are all bundled against each other to keep warm.

They hatched on Monday and they can survive for a couple of days without feed or water. But let me tell you they are starving .... those have been out of the box for less than 5 minutes ....

The first 2 days I put the feed and the water in little plates that I find easier for them to access than the feeders, that also mean serious poopingscouping .. lol ..

They are Leghorn Light Brown :

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/leghorn/index.htm

They are smaller than the ones I got but have a reputation of good layers (no pressure) and they produce white eggs.

After many months of hard work, I am very pleased to announce that our e-commerce is open for business.

We offer a line of 100% natural preserves that will change with the seasons.  Our preserves are made with whole fruit and organic sugar.