First egg of the year!

Yesterday, when I went out to feed and water the chickens, I found a nice surprise.

Not only was that the first egg we got this year, that was the first egg since just before Thanksgiving.  I recently opened a new bag of feed, and I don’t know if the old feed had … gone stale.  Or, we had some leftover sauerkraut that had been in the refrigerator for over a week that I fed to them the other day.  I don’t know if that gave them a bit of what they’ve been missing or what.  Or, it’s just the dozen or so factors that help old hens lay eggs in winter all coincidently aligned that one day.  We’ll have to see when the next egg appears.

Garden roundup for 2024

During 2024, our chickens laid a total of 818 eggs, of which 616 made it to the house, which works out to an average of about a dozen eggs a week.  Of course, between the age of the hens and the cold weather, we haven’t gotten any eggs since about Thanksgiving.  I don’t know if they’ll start laying again in a few months once it warms up again or not.  Either way, we’re making plans on getting some peeps in a few months to have a new set of egg layers. 

Something I had planned to do, was to have a post listing everything we canned or froze this year.  Unfortunately, my mom keeps a list of everything on a legal pad, and I can’t find it.  I think it got moved somewhere in the cleaning before Thanksgiving.  As is likely, I’ll probably stumble across it in a day or two.  But when I do find it, I’ll make the post to show how much food we were able to grow and store this year.

Probably the only other garden news are my four raised beds.  I’ve been thinking of getting some for the last few years, and I finally got around to it.  My plan had been to have them all built and filled by now so that they would be ready to go come spring.  But between doing 800 other things and wet weather and whatnot, I only have two that are mostly filled and a third that is built.  Some week when it isn’t too cold I’ll have to get around to building the fourth one, and hopefully I can get them filled before planting season.  So I should have posts on them in 2025.

I hope you all had a good 2024, and hopefully we all will be able to grow more in 2025.  Since not much happens garden-wise here in winter, my next update will be in March.

Garden roundup for October

During October, our chickens only laid 35 eggs, of which 23 made it to the house.  It seemed like we only had two hens laying, one laying good eggs and the one laying thin shelled ones that always break.  It has been warmer this last week or so, and it does seem like they’re laying more – three eggs were laid on the 31st, two good and one thin – but we’ll definitely have to get some chicks in the spring.

I think the only things harvested this month were I picked a couple squash and we’ve dug a bunch of potatoes.  There are still more potatoes, it’s just a matter of weather, time, and if my back can take it. 

Since things have slowed down so much, I’m not planning on doing a roundup for November.  But I will have a year end roundup, where I’ll list out everything we’ve canned or frozen, as well as plans for next year.

Garden roundup for September

During August, our chickens laid 57 eggs, of which 38 made it to the house.  That’s the fewest number of eggs laid since I started keeping track last summer.  It’s definitely that they’re older hens.  I guess I’ll have to plan to get some chicks next spring.

Things have been so hectic, I haven’t kept up taking photos and posting blogs about harvests.  I think the only new items we harvested this month were the beets and pumpkins.  Other things we harvested were more tomatoes and even some raspberries.

Hopefully, as things wind down, I’ll be able to organize my thoughts and get some posts out on, various topics.  We’ll see.

Garden roundup for August

During August, our chickens laid 71 eggs, of which 54 made it to the house.  That’s the fewest eggs laid since January.  I don’t know if it was the heat, they’re really slowing down laying eggs, or what.  I guess we’ll see in the next few months.

I said that June and July were hectic, but then August came around.  There were several first harvest, such as kidney beans, corn, watermelon, pears, etc.  I got pictures of some of these, but never seemed to have the time to post them.  I also picked all of our onions and currently have them drying. 

The big thing, and part of why this post is late, has been tomatoes.  In the last two weeks we’ve canned enough pizza sauce for twenty-two pizzas, as well as enough spaghetti sauce for about twenty nights of spaghetti.  We still have about a dozen jars from previous years, so we’ll have to go from having spaghetti once or twice a month to two or three times a month.  And just yesterday, we canned about a dozen jars of just tomatoes.  And there’s still more in the garden.  I even started looking for recipes for ketchup, just to use them up.  Although, my mom said somebody had made homemade ketchup some years ago, but they didn’t care for it.  But if we have more tomatoes than we know what to do with, we might just try an experiment.  I’ll let you know if we do. 

Hopefully, things will slow down now.  All that’s left is the last planting of corn, which might not do so well, the beets, pumpkins, potatoes, some apples, and more tomatoes.  I’m already starting to plan next year’s garden, and two things I know we’ll have will be fewer zucchini and fewer tomatoes.

Garden roundup for July

During July, our chickens laid 91 eggs, of which 70 made it to the house.  I wish I could figure out why so many are breaking. 

Anyway, for the June update I said that June was hectic, but July has been … hecticier?  There were several first harvests I meant to post a blog for, but never got around to.  For example, in July we picked the first: peas, green beans, potatoes, green pepper, and onions. 

The slugs really did a number on our pea plants, so there aren’t that many plants, but some of them are producing pretty well.  So far, I think the only thing we’ve done with the peas is use them to fill out some jars of green beans we’ve canned.

This was about half of our first harvest of green beans.  And while the slugs did some damage and the weeds have taken over a bit, the green beans are doing really good this year.  We’ve already canned enough for our normal yearly use, and they’re still coming.  Now we’re basically just letting them go for shell beans.

We have some tractor tires we grow onions or carrots in, but we also have a few car tires filled up with dirt.  These I use for sunflowers, or I’ll put a potato in.  I can start them early, weeks before the normal potato patch is ready to plant so we can get some early potatoes.  And a couple of these were dying, so it was time to dig them up.  The yield wasn’t that great, but considering I’d planted little, marble sized potatoes, the return was pretty good.

I’m not sure what happened to our peppers this year.  They grew a bit, but then seemed to stop.  They’re only a foot or so tall, but there are a few peppers on them.  The biggest thing we use peppers for is making spaghetti sauce, and we still have a few left over from last year, so we should be fine for peppers.

Last year, I planted a bunch of onion sets.  We got some nice sized onions out of them, but we also had a few that didn’t get much bigger.  Over winter, we used – or had to throw away – the nice sized onions, but were left with a dozen or so smaller bulbs.  I planted them, and in this case, it turned into three onions.  I went to pick one, but two came.  I didn’t get a picture of the other one because it was cut up for dinner.

I think that pretty much covers July.  The currants, raspberries, and blueberries are done for the year, and the blackberries are starting to finish.  Which is good, because coming soon will be kidney beans, corn, watermelon, and a glut of tomatoes.

Quick harvest updates

On July 9th, I picked our first bucket of Yellow Transparent Apples.

They could be bigger, which would be nice, but they still made good applesauce.

I also picked our first blackberries that day.

The next day, I picked our first cucumbers.

The next first harvest will probably be sometime next week when our peas are ready.