Fall's Bounty

As the nights grow longer and the weather turns colder, there's still work to do on the homestead. This is how our kitchen cabinets look these days. We've been canning a lot: turning crabapples into mustards, making jams and butters, and finding various ways to preserve our green tomatoes.

We're still waiting on our fall crops of broccoli, beets, and kohlrabi to grow bigger. Meanwhile, our daikon radishes have gotten huge! It's surprising to look around the garden and discover what's still growing: leeks, onions, peas, beans, and chard. Some vegetables seem to thrive better in cold weather, like our lettuces which are finally coming in, and it's interesting to note the differences in taste through the various seasons.

All the unseasonably pleasant weather lately has been a blessing for our chickens. After the raccoon attack last summer, the egg supply in our fridge looked dismal. However, now our younger hens have matured before the cold weather sets in, and we're collecting more eggs daily!

Success!

Though our past attempts (here and here) didn't work out so well, our third attempt at hatching eggs has worked out great! Justin created a different DIY egg incubator, this time by using the top freezer portion of an old refrigerator. We ordered a half dozen blue Orpington hatching eggs, and we're lucky enough to have 4 little chicks hatch and survive. With such a successful hatch, we're hopeful that this means we won't have to rely on unethical, cruel, and abusive chick hatcheries anymore - and that instead, we can continue to keep hatching our own!

Animal news: Chicks

We took a trip out to Fulton, Missouri over the weekend and picked up some chicks from a local hatchery. We got a few araucanas, some silver laced wyandottes, and a handful of bantam seabrights. They should start laying eggs around the end of July.

Incubator update

Well, our first attempt at incubating eggs didn't work out so well. Much to our disappointment, none of our cinnamon queen eggs hatched.

We're trying again, though, with a couple dozen quail eggs. We've managed to keep the temperature more stable than last time, and hopefully we'll have better results. These little eggs should start hatching around February 25th.

Incubator, MacGyver style

Justin finished making our first incubator earlier this week. With sustainability in mind, he fashioned the incubator out of an old kitchen cabinet, a used water heater thermostat, two used lighting fixtures, and our old weather thermometer. We found an automatic egg-turner off eBay, and stuck some Styrofoam in there for added insulation. Unfortunately, the water heater thermostat doesn't seem to be as sensitive as we need, and the temperature inside keeps dipping too low or climbing too high. We've since ordered a more sensitive thermostat which should arrive in the mail shortly. In the meantime we're keeping our fingers crossed and testing out the incubator's efficacy on five Cinnamon Queen eggs we got from our homesteading friends who sold us the breeding rabbits.