A quick 2025 roundup

I had planned on writing up a post about all the problems I had in 2025, from old seeds not germinating to slugs killing the ones that did.  But as with most things, I kept putting it off.  Getting into December, I figured I should really get that written up so I could just add in how many eggs we got this year and be ready for a year end roundup.  And then I had a series of minor, yet annoying health issues.  I spent a lot of December either not being able to do more than watch YouTube, to just not feeling like doing more than watching YouTube.  So none of that stuff got written up.  My new plan, is to go over some of that stuff in a month or two when I put out a post on my plans for 2026.

The one thing I will roundup, will be our eggs.  Our old hens had just started laying again when they were killed by a mink at the end of January.  We only managed to get 8 eggs from them.  We fixed up the coop and got new chicks, which started laying on September 1.  Since then, they’ve laid 434 eggs, of which 428 made it to the house.  We’ve used a lot of them in baking, and giving a bunch to my siblings.  I’ve also sold 11 dozen to my coworkers.  The cold weather hasn’t seemed to slow them down that much, so here’s looking forward to 100+ eggs a month for 2026.

Garden roundup for August and September

At the beginning of September, I knew I needed to do a roundup for August, but it seemed like one thing after another kept coming up, and I delayed it so long I figured I’ll just do a roundup for August and September.  And here it is, late on the third of October, and I’m just going to do the most basic of roundups.  This gardening season hasn’t been the best, and I really just want to get started on next year.  I still have carrots and potatoes and some other things left to pick, but I’ll probably save all of that for a year end roundup.

Anyway, the good stuff.  As I mentioned in a previous post, our chickens have started laying.  During the month of September, they laid 81 eggs, of which 80 made it to the house.  They’re still a bit smaller than typical eggs, but it’s nice to have fresh eggs again.

Towards the beginning of August I finally started getting zucchini, and by the end of September I’ve picked 46.  So we’ve had fried zucchini and zucchini bread and given several away to my siblings.

I’ve picked all of our green beans, and shell beans, peppers, and onions, which did pretty well.  Just yesterday I picked our third and final pick of broccoli.  Our tomato harvest was … okay.  Not great, but not terrible.

Terrible harvests were kidney beans (few), pears (3), and the one tree for applesauce, which only made enough for three, small servings of applesauce.  But those were better than our corn, which did nothing. 

Part of me wishes I could just jump to next spring to try again, but there’s a lot of work I need to do before then.  For example, my raised beds settled way more than I expected, so I need to get them filled back up.  Hopefully, I can get that done before it snows.  We’ll see.

The first egg from our new hens!

They're still learning.

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 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 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.

Garden roundup for June

During the month of June, our chickens laid 100 eggs, 77 of which made it to the house.  As to the broken eggs, I think they’re just messing with me.  For example, I used to just record the number of good eggs and the number of broken ones.  But then I realized I should keep track of which nests the broken eggs are in, to change them more often.  For the first round, there were eggs broken in all three nests, so I changed all of them.  But for the second round, eggs were only being broken in the left and right nests.  Since everything in the middle nest was still good, I figured I’d only change the left and right ones.  So when I gathered eggs one day, I cleaned the grass clippings and shredded paper out of the left and right nests.  There wasn’t any egg leakage in the shredded paper, but I left the nests empty for a few hours to dry out just in case.  Well, when I went back to fill them in, there was a broken egg in the center nest.  And since I changed everything, broken eggs seem to alternate between the center and right nests. 

June has been a hectic month.  We discovered that it wasn’t a rabbit eating our peas and beans, but slugs.  We’ve tried several ways to deal with them, and I don’t know if they helped, or if the plants have just gotten big enough that they’re growing faster than the slugs can eat them. 

The red currants are just about done.  We have a couple containers in the freezer, but if I had the time I could easily fill a few more.  Our red raspberries are going strong, and our black raspberries and blueberries are starting to hit their stride.  I mentioned when I first picked some black raspberries, that we had one patch where they grow pretty big.  I said I should get a picture, so ….

The small one is one I picked at random from one of the other patches.  The first one I picked at random from the big patch wasn’t that much bigger, but then I saw the one in the photo.  The big ones are nice because they fill the container fast.

Something else we picked, on the last day in June, was our first tomato.

We buy a bunch of tomatoes from the nursery that are all at the ready to transplant stage.  But we also buy one or two older tomatoes that probably should have been transplanted a couple weeks earlier.  Not only was this one blooming, there were little tomatoes already on it when we finally transplanted it.  This way, we get some tomatoes earlier.

Other things, we finally got the potato patch worked up and our potatoes planted.  As well as a spot for carrots. 

As I said, June was hectic, and July will probably be even worse. 

Garden roundup for May

During May, our chickens laid 108ish eggs, of which 68 made it to the house.  I say 108ish because, last month I said I suspected there was a nest in the barn.  Well, I finally found it and it had a dozen or so eggs in it, but they were all broke.  The nest was between two bales of hay, which I moved apart.  I don’t know if they’ll find a new spot now, or what.

At the beginning of the month, one of our hens wasn’t do so good.  And after a couple of days, she died.  In previous months, I’d said that one of our hens was at the bottom of the pecking order and I think wasn’t getting enough stuff for strong eggs.  She was the one that died.  Like I said, they’re getting kind of old, so it wasn’t that surprising.  I had hoped that that would be the end of me finding broken eggs, but it turns out we do have one hen that eats them.  Well, I think she just eats her own.  I don’t know if she was the one laying in the barn, but when I disrupted her she came back to laying in the coop.  Whatever the case, I’m still pretty annoyed with it.

The last note about eggs, is it was the last week of May 2023 that I started keeping track of eggs.  Well, I kept track of how many eggs made it to the house.  And even though we’ve lost a couple of hens since then, the numbers aren’t that much lower. 

Other updates, the onions that had started to grow over winter and that I planted in pots to try to transplant out, all died.  Most died before I had a chance to transplant them, and the two I did transplant didn’t survive.  I guess I’ll just have to make sure I dry any onions I get this year so they last through the winter.

Last month, I hinted at two upcoming stories, one about lettuce and one about something else.  The lettuce one I’ll have to write up a post in a week or so.  The other one … will take a lot more work.  It’s something I’ve tried several times over the years, but without any luck.  And circumstances demand I try again, hopefully with better luck.  If I do have any luck, I’ll write about it.

Something I forgot to mention last month, was that I had started some seeds indoors.  I started a zucchini, a cucumber, and a pumpkin.  I also tried to start a watermelon, cantaloupe, and a squash that germinated but almost immediately died.  Well, this month I transplanted the zucchini, cucumber and pumpkin.  I also direct planted another zucchini and squash, but they haven’t germinated yet.  I didn’t direct sow any watermelon or cantaloupe because my sister finally gave up trying to garden in her … bog, so we needed garden space for her plants.  But she had a watermelon and cantaloupe, so hopefully they do well enough that we can get a couple.

May was a very busy time in the garden.  I also direct sowed some parsnips, peas, green beans, kidney beans, corn, and beets, as well as some onion sets.  All of them are up, unfortunately, something – probably a rabbit – went to town on the peas.  I plant a double row of peas, and then put stakes on the outside and run line for them to climb up.  I hadn’t done that when I found the damage, so I put in the stakes and ran the line pretty close together at the bottom, so hopefully the rabbit will look elsewhere for a meal.  I’ll probably sow in some new seeds to fill in the gaps.

I’ve also planted some marigolds, sunflowers, and some other flowers.  Some of the sunflowers were up, but then something – rabbit? – ate them.  I was thinking of replanting some sunflowers, but putting some type of cover over them so they would get some size before something could chew on them, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.

Other plants we got at a greenhouse.  We got tomatoes, green peppers, broccoli, and cabbage.  All have been transplanted in, with the last thing – the tomatoes – going in on the 31st.  So far, the only problem I’ve had is that something dug up around one of the cabbages to get at the compost I buried next to it.  To stop whatever digging up the other plants, I didn’t put any compost with them when I transplanted.  Instead, I’ll spread it out in the path above them and work it in.  But that will have to wait until I have time to do it.

Other notes, we picked some rhubarb this month, but I can’t remember how much we stored.  I’ll have to get those numbers later.  Our currants are starting to ripen, so that will be one thing I’m doing in June.  Also, the only things left to plant are our potatoes and carrots.  Both we just started working up their spots, now if the rain will hold off for a couple of days, we’ll get them in.

Garden roundup for April

During April, our chickens laid 87 eggs, of which 67 made it to the house.  This is less than the 107 they laid last month.  There are two possibilities for this.  The first is our hens are getting pretty old.  It does seem that whenever we need a bunch of eggs for baking or whatever, we need to crack a few extra because we find some with blood spots in them.  So I’d say their egg laying days are numbered.  The other possibility is, now that the weather is more or less good, they’re running off and laying in some hidden nest.  I did find one nest with three eggs in it that I just threw in the compost because I wasn’t sure how old they were.  My dad is the one who lets the chickens out in the morning, and he says there’s one that immediately runs off to the barn, but I’ve looked in there multiple times and haven’t found any nests.  Of course, something that’s happened in years past, is I’ll stop looking in the barn for nests, and then a month later I’ll go to grab something and find a nest with two dozen eggs in it. 

I finished digging up all of our parsnips.  We have 17 quart bags in the freezer.  One of my goals in the next couple of days is to add some compost to the parsnip bed, work it up, and plant the new parsnips.

Other things I’ve planted so far are some lettuce, which I’m trying something new with, so there should be a post on it in a few weeks if it, hopefully, works.  I also had some potatoes that sat on the porch all winter and were starting to grow.  I planted a couple, but then it froze one night and I didn’t think to cover them.  In years past I’ve planted some potatoes in the fall and let them come up the next spring.  Sometimes these have been hit by a frost or two, but they seem to keep coming back. 

In past months, I’ve said that I planted some onions that had started to grow.  Well, I finally had a spot worked up for them so I transplanted … some.  I think I had planted seven bulbs in three batches over the last few months.  All of them grew, but then they stunted.  I don’t know if they didn’t get enough light, or it was too cold, or what.  But when I transplanted them I found that five of the bulbs had rotted away to nothing.  The other two … might still be alive.  I’ll have to see if they do anything.  I still had five or six little bulbs from last year, one of which had started to grow, so I planted them.  I’ll have to see if they can grow bigger this year.  And lastly, last year for the first time I tried planting onion seeds.  It didn’t go well.  I think all the ones I planted indoors and transplanted out died, and I think few of the ones I direct sowed even germinated, and most of them later died.  I still had some seeds left, so I planted all of them, and again, I’ll have to see if they do anything this year.

There might be something big happening tomorrow.  If it does, I’ll do a post about it, probably in a few days.  If it doesn’t work, I’ll just mention it next month.

Garden roundup for March

During the month of March, our chickens laid 107 eggs, which is a good chunk of the 250 they’ve laid so far this year.  I guess they’re happier not having to deal with the snow.  But 17 of these were broke.  If there is a hen eating them, I think it is a rare occasion.  I think they’re breaking just because possibly one hen isn’t eating the oyster shells.  There is one hen, at the bottom of the pecking order, who seems to always be off by herself, so maybe the others don’t let her at the feed.  Of course, when I do sprinkle in some oyster shells in their feed, they look at me as if saying, “That’s not food.” I had hoped that warmer weather would let them eat better, and while we’ve had plenty of nice days, we’ve also had rainy, cold spells.  Maybe once spring fully gets going, whoever is laying weak eggs will get the right nutrients.

I’ve started digging our parsnips.  Most are smallish, but I have gotten a couple monsters.  In previous years I’ve dug all the parsnips in a day or two, but this year my mom is having issues with her hand, so she can only peel a few at a time.  So I’ve been digging a basket, then washing them up so she can peel and slice them.  Some we’ve eaten, but at the end of the month we had 7 quart bags of parsnips in the freezer.  And I’ve probably dug up not quite half of what we planted.  Of course, one end of our parsnip patch is shaded a bit, which might be why that end gives smaller ones, while big ones come from the other end.  I’ve been digging at various spots, but I’ve dug most of the ones from the smaller end.  So there might be a few more monsters waiting.  Now I just have to wait for the rain to stop and the ground to dry up some.

The only other gardening news I have is to report our onions aren’t doing so well.  These were ones that started to grow, so I planted them in a pot, hoping I’ll be able to transplant them outside.  They might still be alive, but not so great.  It’s probably just that I have them sitting next to a window and they’re not getting enough light.  We’ll have to see how they do.

Garden roundup for February

During the month of February, our chickens laid 75 eggs, which – even with two fewer days – is more than the 67 laid in January.  Unfortunately, 17 of these eggs were damaged.  At first, I thought it was just that a few hens weren’t eating their oyster shells, and while that might have started the problem, I think at least one hen is eating eggs.  I don’t know if, with the cold and snow, there aren’t any bugs or worms for them and their feed isn’t protein enough.  It did seem that when it was really cold every day there was one or even two eggs ate, but it has been somewhat warm this last week or so, and some eggs have been eaten but not as many.  We’ll have to see if warmer weather will break them of this habit.

The only other garden thing was I potted a few more onions that had started to sprout.  Last year was a pretty good year for onions, and I had two dozen or so nice big ones.  I hung them up to dry, and I thought they had dried enough, but earlier this month I went to grab one to use and most of them were starting to rot.  The smaller onions – that I figured I’d plant this year – are holding up pretty good and getting used.  I guess I’ll just have to be extra certain to dry any big onions I get in the future.

Garden roundup for January

In January, our chickens gave us 60 eggs.  Well, they laid 67 eggs, but seven were damaged in some way so they didn’t make it to the house.

The only other gardening news I have for this month, is I found three onions that had sprouted.  So I put some potting soil in a pot and planted them.  This is something I’ve done a few times in the past, but I haven’t had too much luck with.  Last year, I was able to transplant a potted onion into the garden, but that was when the onion held on until late-March, or April before it started to grow.  I found another onion growing back in November, or December, which I planted, but I think it’s mostly dead now.  We’ll have to see if any of these make it to warm weather to be planted out.

First egg of the year!

 

Unfortunately, the second egg broke so this one was covered in yolk.  There’s one hen that gets picked on, and I don’t know if the other hens aren’t letting her eat the oyster shells or what, but it seems like every other day or so there will be a broken egg in a nest.  I don’t think any are eating the eggs, so I think it’s all just the shells being thin.

When I got this one, there was another hen on another nest, and when I went out later there were two unharmed eggs there.  So, “four” eggs from seven aging hens in the middle of winter, isn’t too bad.

First harvests of the year

So the point of this blog is to show what we harvest from our garden/farm.  But as evidence that I still have a lot of bugs to work out of the system, I completely forgot that we’ve already had some harvests.

Aside from eggs – which right now we’re getting about four a day – the first garden harvest this year was back in February, when I pulled the parsnips from last year.  The way we’ve always done parsnips is to let them grow all summer, and leave them in the ground over winter and only dig them once they start to grow again next spring.  There is a reason to do this, but I don’t feel like looking it up right now.  But this year we had a warm February and they started growing again early.  So I dug them up, and we had some for dinner, gave some away to my siblings, and froze five or six bags. 

The second thing we harvested was some rhubarb three or so weeks ago.  We have two rhubarb plants we planted last year and one, for some reason, is only about half the size of the other.  My dad picked it the rhubarb, so I think he only picked from the bigger plant to let the smaller one grow some.  What was harvested then was turned into a pie, and my dad pick some more this week which was froze to be made into pie in the future.

The last thing we’ve harvested is some leaf lettuce.  I picked enough for a sandwich about a week ago, three or four sandwiches worth earlier this week, and it looks like I’ll need to pick some today. 

That’s our harvests up to the first week in June.  This month I’ll probably also start picking red raspberries and currants.  I may also get some wild strawberries, although where I usually picked them is now a corn field.  But we’ll see.