a hen crows

You may remember the sweet little chicks I introduced you to back in April. We purchased them from a poultry swap outside of the Tractor Supply store in Farmville and were assured they were going to all grow up to be beautiful egg producing hens. Hrmfff, I have a funny story about those hens. A few weeks ago, early in the morning as I lay in bed I heard an owl. We have oodles of owls here. In the early spring you can hear them sing to each other all night, but I've never seen one. So as you can imagine this owl hooting got me pretty excited. He was so close by, near the chickens, I was sure of it. He was probably scoping out the baby chicks. I had to find him. I ran downstairs, out the front door, to the chickens, looking up the whole way. There wasn't an owl in sight and I wasn't hearing him anymore either. Oh well, maybe next time. A few days later I hear this hooting again, this time I'm near the car. Craning my neck so that I can see through the trees, there he is! No, not an owl, but one of the hens cracking it's voice, like that of a teenage boy. And that's exactly what that he is, a teenage rooster.
Darn it!
Out of eight chicks two have turned out to be roosters. Anybody want a rooster?



Our fruit trees are looking pretty spectacular right now.





The peaches have just about plumped up. We only have one peach tree , so it's really hard to share! They ripen all at the same time so most will be frozen for future use. The apple trees, well that's another story. We have five apple trees and three of them are loaded. Our CSA members can expect to see them in their shares once they ripen.







Sunday was spent picking up the apples and peaches that have fallen off the trees onto the ground in hopes of keeping the wasps and yellow jackets away. This makes picking them so much easier when the time comes. Nothing is more distracting than trying to dodge the giant European Wasp while picking apples! By the time most of the fruit hits the ground it's pretty rotten or on it's way, those are a delicacy to the chickens. The rest, the ones I deem salvageable, will be baked. The apples aren't ripe enough to eat, but they're tart enough to put in a pie or tart. Richmond Food Collective has a great recipe on their site.

As I said, the chickens get the rest







Sunday was also spent making tomato sauce.



My intentions had been to can the sauce, but I'm a little afraid of botulism. Unless it's going to freeze the wrinkles on my forehead (it's natural, right?). Instead I put the cooled sauce into freezer bags, laid them on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Not to mention how much easier it is to freeze sauce than sitting it in a canning bath for 35 minutes.



R.I.P - we lost two of the chicks henny penny hatched out.