Garden roundup for March

I usually start these roundups by saying how many eggs our hens produced.  Well, they quit laying towards the end of last year.  Between their age and the cold, it wasn’t too surprising.  Well, about the middle of January we got an egg.  And then about every two or three days we’d get another one.  Given that egg prices were going insane, it was nice to have enough eggs for the occasional cake or whatever.  Then one morning I went out and found that five of our six chickens were dead.  Something had gotten in and killed them.  And it came back a few days later and got our last chicken.  About a week later we did manage to trap the likely culprit: 

So we don’t have any chickens right now.  We need to get some supplies, and then we can hopefully get a crew together to board up the holes and do some other, low priority but needed things in the coop.  Once that’s done, we’ll get some chicks and hopefully in a few months get back in the egg business. 

Other than the five or six eggs we managed to get, the only other harvest these last few months were the parsnips.  For some reason, we didn’t have that many germinate last year, but we got enough for four meals.  One with fresh parsnips, and the other three in the freezer.

The only thing planted so far this year have been some potatoes.  I’m doing a little experiment where I planted seven smallish potatoes and we’ll see how many I get in return with minimum work.  I’ve planted potatoes at the end of fall to have them come up as soon as it warms in the spring, but I didn’t get around to it last year.  It’s still freezing a few nights a week, but it should be a few weeks before they start growing, so hopefully it will be warm enough by then.

The only other garden stuff I’ve been working on are my raised beds.  I have three put together – there’s still one more I need to put together – and two of them are “filled.” I would love to have them fully full, but I’m trying to fill them on the cheap.  I put logs and sticks in the bottoms, but I’m filling them with regular dirt.  I’m screening the dirt to get the big rocks out, but it is a slow process.  I started last fall, but I stopped once the snow came.  And, of course, it seems every other day it rains, which gums up the works.  My plan/hope is that while I’m using just plan dirt, I’m also adding in a bunch of organic stuff, from leaves and what I cleaned out of the coop to banana peels and tea bags that normally would have gone into the compost.  Hopefully, as this breaks down it will turn my dirt into okay soil.  And over the years as I add in compost and other stuff, the soil quality will only improve.  That’s the plan.  We’ll have to see how it works out.

First harvest of the year!

 

Parsnips.

For some reason, we didn’t get that many parsnips growing last year.  I don’t know if it was bad seeds, too dry, slugs, whatever, but we only got about a dozen parsnips.  A couple of them are fair sized.  Once cleaned up they should be enough for two, maybe three meals.

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.