Tick, Tick, Tick...

There is something about being in farm country in the South that is repeatedly teaching us that patience is a virtue. It seems that no matter how much of a hurry we are in to accomplish and see results, God, the Postal Service and some of the locals don’t care. There is no such thing as a New York minute here and we must constantly remind ourselves to slow down and quit trying to swim up stream. That being said, our chickens still are not chickens. They are pre-chickens. We have been faithfully rotating eggs every eight hours (Ed does the midnight flip) so that the chicks aren’t born lop-sided, but they are still just eggs. We have been wondering if we were fooled into believing that the eggs need to be rotated three times a day for their twenty-one day incubation (much like sending your unknowing wife to the hardware store for a left handed monkey wrench and a ten pound bag of air to lighten up the concrete that is being mixed) but continue our rotation practice anyway. The eggs are due to hatch sometime around October 5th unless our algebraic formula is incorrect and then they will be born on the 13th.

The cat and dogs on the other hand have adjusted well to the pace and have no problem lying around. Woody and Charlotte have actually shown our cat Milo the prime shade spots around the yard. The only time any of them hurry is dinnertime.

Gayle has the house decorated for fall with some local produce. She continues to re-arrange furniture and storage in an endless pursuit of the right look and efficient work flow patterns. We have removed most of the boxes and furniture that we are going to use in the house from the semi trailer and need to move it farther back in the driveway so we can start calling it “the barn”. Hopefully we will be able to start building the barn in the spring so that we can sell the trailer. If it is here to long we may have to paint it red and put a mural of cows in a pasture on it for some rural camouflage.

The chicken coop is getting sporadic attention and is nearing completion. The windows are in, the roof is on and siding will be finished this weekend. The project is a typical one that Ed does. It started off with used lumber and cheap windows and finished with a full tin roof and cedar siding. The budget for the project has been adjusted on a daily basis (always up). Ed must think that he is still managing the budget at the fire department. The house will be long gone before the chicken coop. It could end up becoming a historical landmark building in 100 short years. But the eggs are still just eggs.

Chris continues to study planting and composting and animal husbandry. He has begun to prepare the soil and staked out the new greenhouse. The greenhouse should allow us to grow a lot of vegetables year round. His cold weather crops are progressing well and he just planted more lettuce and spinach. He is hoping to spend another day under the tutelage of Art Duckworth on the Apple Tree Farm. Art has offered Chris some guinea hens in trade for hours. Guinea hens are prolific bug and pest eaters and are fairly self sufficient, although incredibly dumb birds. We believe they may be a cross between a Dodo and a Lemming. They are somewhat like watch dogs because they alarm when someone approaches the property but will walk into traffic for no apparent reason and follow each other around in a group. If nothing else they are very entertaining, not that we aren’t constantly amused by what we are seeing and doing now.

They Made It!

Our chicken eggs finally arrived today and we were a bit under whelmed. Jennifer at the post office was diligently watching for our little friends to arrive and excitedly called us at 8:30 this morning to tell us the good news. The Mount Ulla post office is about the size of a standard two-car garage. I am not sure if Jennifer is a postal clerk or the postmaster, or maybe all of the above, but she was more than pleased to afford us some special attention and offer some chicken rearing advice as well. I couldn’t help but notice that the eggs look just like the ones we buy at the grocery store to eat, same carton, same shells. I don’t know what I expected. I guess we would have all been surprised if they had smiling faces peering through windows in the shells or they were bouncing around like Mexican jumping beans. Being the cynic that I am I ordered another two dozen hatching eggs from our egg supplier last night. I think it's improbable that you can mail eggs and have them hatch. Gayle is anxious because she is sure we are going to have forty-eight chickens soon. I think she is writing a list of forty-eight chicken names so she will be ready. Maybe I will challenge her to have them all start with the same letter.

We spent the day wiring the incubator (freezer) with controls so that it would require less time and effort during the hatching process. We installed a furnace thermostat to turn the heating element (light bulbs) on and off and attached a thermometer and hygrometer so we could monitor conditions inside. The thermostat was a great success but we will have to upgrade our humidifier so the eggs do not dry out. At bed time the temperature was steady at 100 degrees and the humidity was at sixty percent. After all of the number crunching I realized that I have spent three times what a ready made incubator would have cost and many hours attempting to avoid spending too much time on the project. I know that your own more expensive, always in need of repair and occasionally reliable homemade equipment is much better in the long run. Just ask my engineering guru and MacGyver look alike friend Rick Simmerer.

Last week Chris worked for a day on Art Duckworth’s farm, Apple Orchard Farm, about an hour from here. Art is our Organic Farming Czar. Chris spent the day repairing soaker hose, cleaning out the garden and dragging the pasture to spread out the fertilizer piles left by the cows. Art imparted on Chris the wisdom of the simpler life along with two large bags of produce and some flowers. We decided to pickle and “put up” the green tomatoes along with some heirloom hot peppers (really hot). Some time six months from now when the pickling process is done we will find out if we like pickled green tomatoes.

Chris has been letting us know lately that he does not approve of the sudden weight gain of the outside cats, Precious and Baby. We have all been noticing that since we moved in they are fattening up and spend all day lying on the deck. In the process of doing chores this week we had two separate and unappreciated mouse incidents. We decided that we were dissatisfied with the girl’s breach of contract and were considering a possible permanent and binding resolution, when, with perfect timing, out of the dark comes Precious with a varmint snack to show us, seeking our approval. After a short tail high parade and a few feigned get away attempts by the mouse she walked off to enjoy some rodent tar-tar. If that cat can't understand what we were saying then how could she have known we were talking about taking her for a ride out to farm country? Oh, wait.....

Tomorrow we will attempt to wrap up the incubator issues and put the roof on the chicken coop for our zero to forty-eight chickens.

Gone Postal

We have been anxiously anticipating the arrival of our chicken eggs this week only to be disappointed after many trips to the mailbox out at the road. I am sure that farmers in the distant past could have never anticipated the use of Ebay and the good old U.S. Postal Service to have their livestock needs fulfilled, or the anxiety and frustration that go along with purchasing something based on a tiny picture and the trust placed in a distant "seller" to complete a digital transaction. We were sure something was amiss when our new friends did not arrive as expected. We were sure that we were duped by a chicken misrepresentation of the most heinous variety. Well...after investigation we were somewhat relieved to find out that our chicken supplier had done exactly what they were expected, and sent our chicken eggs to Avon Lake, Ohio. Apparently the folks at Paypal (Ebay) do not automatically keep track of everyone that makes a cross-country move to avoid said confusion and you are actually required to TELL THEM when you make such a move. The icing on the cake is that they started in Raleigh, North Carolina about two hours from here

So after contacting the folks that are living in our old house and explaining that, yes, you can mail live chicken eggs, our friends are enroute again in the U.S. Mail and are anticipated here in about eight more hours. They will still be arriving soon enough to put in the incubator but we may find them walking in circles after they hatch due to their dizziness and possible jet lag. The upside is that we will have the quick trip from Cleveland to Charlotte and back over a weekend in common, and that should help with some of the awkwardness of our first meeting.

We do have the incubator finished and ready. It is a real work of art and necessitated engineering. A retired (or expired) upright freezer was obtained from the local Habitat for Humanity Restore and dissected to reduce weight and salvage usable parts. If you ever have a project that requires a number of windows that are all different sizes, shapes and colors, the Restore is the place for you. We added brooder heat lamps to the bottom with a thermostat, a thermometer and humidistat and a humidifier made from an old bread pan and the cooling fan from the back of the freezer and we are ready to incubate chickens, turkeys, waterfowl, snakes, iguanas, ostriches, etc…. Some time early in October we should be the proud foster parents of a freezer full of fuzzy little chicken peepers.

We received the results of our soil tests from the county extension office and are relieved that the soil here is not as bad as we had expected. We will be cultivating large amounts of compost to amend the soil in a way that does not violate the organic gardeners and farmer’s code (still need to learn the secret handshake). The cats are still not pregnant. The fall garden is growing slowly. The greenhouse will need to be assembled soon and this place still keeps the theme song to Green Acres fresh on my mind. I had better go see if Zsa Zsa is making hotcakes.

Chickens Away

The boys were back at it again this weekend with the tools and a pile of recycled lumber. We are continuing work on the chicken coop in anticipation of the adoption of twenty fertilized Buff Orpington chicken eggs that will be delivered some time at the end of the week. In an effort to be self-reliant and as environmentally conscious as a conservative Republican landowner can be, we have been using Freecycle.com to lessen our impact on the land as much as possible by looking for used materials. Besides it has the ever-popular "FREE" price tag. We acquired a load of used lumber from a local horse owner that was removing an out-building to make more room for two horses that she will be adding to her Harras (look it up).

So, back to our chickens. We purchased twenty eggs on Ebay for $1.04 plus shipping. They are due to arrive in a few days. We will incubate them for twenty-one days and then watch for them to hatch. We are actively looking for a small freezer to convert into the ultimate incubator, but a cardboard box with a light bulb will do in a pinch. We decided to start with chickens because they are relatively easy to work with and lower cost than a cow. (How can I get twenty cows for $1.04?, Hmmm..) We have been reading all we can about chicken rearing and such and decided that we would be better to relay the process in pictures. See Below:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

So we have our work cut out for us for the next few days at least. The weather here has been perfect. Cool at night and high seventies during the day. Our fall vegetables are coming along. The tractor is running when necessary and soon we will have live entertainment in the chicken run. God is good.

Labor Day (Week)!

We have finally gotten to a point where we have cleaned up the boxes and have some space in the house to function. It's been quite a challenge finding time to unpack and organize while working on farm projects and planning for fall duties and winter preparation.

We enjoyed company on Monday for Labor Day. Nate and Kaitlin invited friends to have a southern barbeque. In Cleveland the word barbeque most often implies ribs, but in North Carolina we're talking “Pork Butt”. Now there was some discrepancy as to whether it is really a pig’s backside or the shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the propriety of preparation of “barbeque”. The first barbeque rule is that cooking the pork must take longer than driving from one side of Texas to the other. The second rule is that for as many people as there are in the South, there are an equal number of secret recipes for barbeque sauce and purchasing a bottle of a commercially recognized sauce is equivalent to slapping the Queen of England in the face on her birthday. The grill was started at ten thirty in the morning and we ate at seven o’clock in the evening. There was significant discussion regarding what the secret barbeque sauce was “missing” and everyone went home slightly heavier than they came.

Bradley Builders was back in business for a few days working to get the chicken coop built. After much reading, study and thought we decided to "wing it" (think chicken) and began building. The major design decisions were made by Gayle (who as always is wholly concerned with aesthetics and mostly unconcerned about the functionality of the new "Hotel Del Pollo") and approved by our resident space planning and design consultant, Kaitlin.

In an effort to be as eco-friendly and organic as possible the chickens will have no contact with pressure treated lumber, so we used regular old plywood for the floor. The reason the floor is green is because that was the color of the least expensive exterior latex mis-tinted, and therefore, discounted paint at Lowes. A whopping three dollars for the whole can. We actually are trying to build the coop out of recycled materials as much as possible. We ran an add on freecycle.com in the area asking for recycled, used and leftover lumber. We actually had one response and are hoping for more before long. Windows were purchased at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Davidson, NC about 20 minutes from here, also at a great discount. Gayle is sure we will be visiting there a lot! At this point the floor is complete and the first wall frame is up. We are hoping to get the walls finished and a roof on this weekend. The chickens stay in the coop for the first couple of weeks to get them acclimated and make sure they remember where home and their nest is and then we can let them out in the "free range".

Soon we will be expecting the birds from Cleveland to be arriving for the winter. We are hoping to recognize them by the Mid-Western accents in their chirping. We have prepared accomodations for them and promise that we will not try to convince them to stay here when it's time to return home in the spring. It's a little bit odd adjusting to the different climate here after living in Cleveland for our entire lives. We expect weather to cool down when the school buses start rolling but are still experiencing summer weather. I don't know how long it will take to get the new pattern of the seasons deep in our bones, if ever.

Another Day in the Sun!

It is Sunday and we decided to take a walk around the property and appreciate some of what God has blessed us with. The farm is basically divided into three sections. The fields (or garden) in the front, the woods in the middle and the pasture in the back. The house is in the center of the property where the woods meet the fields shaded by trees on three sides. The pasture was recently cut with the tractor (my butt has recovered since last Saturday) and we took the dogs for a long walk all the way to the back. By the time we got back there they decided that a rest under the Black Walnut trees was a good idea. 

Gayle found a Model Small Farm about an hour Southwest of us in Stanley NC, so Gayle, Ed, Kaitlin and Chris all loaded into the car and went for a visit. The farmers name is Art Duckworth and he calls his place Apple Tree Farm. His claim to fame is that he is working toward being totally self-reliant with solar and wind powered well pumps and organic composting. He grows all of his own vegetables and fruits as well as chickens, pigs and beef cows. Art also has an MBA and a Doctorate as well as a degree in Chemistry. Needless to say Art can save us a lot of time on Wikepedia. We spent two hours talking about compost, water supply, farm finance and seed germination and propogation. The major decision that we came to was that we need to get chickens. Chris also volunteered to come back and work on Art's farm to try to absorb more of the information that is available. Chris has really been working hard to get us up to speed. I think we should name our first rooster after him.

These are some of Chris's beans that just came up. We will cover them with a cold frame at the end of October to extend the season until we harvest. We also are beginning to think about a pond. Water is a critical to any farm and the area suffered through drought conditions for a few seasons recently. We are lucky enough to have good terrain to build a pond and have it fill with ground water as it rains. Kenny, the previous owner put some effort into clearing an area in the woods for a pond but didn't have enough time to finish the project. Hopefully through the winter and into spring we will be able to get the end of the pond closed off and water tight. We will be able to see the pond from the deck behind the house and it will hold water for irrigation and for the animals in the pasture. The patch of weeds in the sun is where the pond will be.

I'm not sure if it will be big enough to water ski, but I don't think Gayle would paddle that fast anyway. Maybe I can use it as an excuse to sit out with a fishing pole, even if there aren't any fish in it. We'll see.