The Clover Path Garden

I am sure you are curious about orgainc and why grow organically. At first, back in the 80's, it was because I was chemically toxic because I had been a historical painter for all of my life and I was toxed out to the max. Lead levels over 25, mecury levels were over 20. So I decided I didn't need any more chems in my body and started to investigate organic growing.

I started to grow flowers because I am a photographer (graduated college with a Batchelors in Fine Art, photo major) and I never could find the flowers when I needed the pix. Then, I branched into veggies for the table and added in some herbs. The whole thing exploded into a full-time occupation in the mid- 90's and I started to sell at Farmers Markets with great success.

In the mid-80's I bought some day-old geese. I had always wanted white geese and got some Chinese whites. I was doing landscape gardening at old homes and took the goslings with me to my landscaping jobs. They were transported in a 5 gallon bucket with a hardware cloth cover. I took food and a small fortex bowl for water. My clients were charmed with the goslings, who had imprinted on me as MOMMA! When the goslings were tired, they would come and sit on my lap as I weeded and take a nap. I became the Goose Lady.

In 1996, I moved to the south coast of Massachusestts, back to my childhood town. My mother was aging and needed some "adult supervision". She insisted on climbing to the top of the ladders and cleaning her gutters, fixing the roof, among other chores. The "children" felt she shouldn't be doing those things without some "supervision", or at least someone to foot the ladder for her! Since I am the only one without my own children, I was elected.

I bought into a small farm about 1/8 mile down the road from my mother's and began to grow veggies and flowers. I sold directly to stores & restaurants and a local farmers market on Saturday's.

In 2002, I took a job on Cape Cod, working on a restoration project...an old cape built in the early 1800's. I worked alone in the house and stayed there during the week. On weekends, I would come back to Acushnet and work on the garden and help my mother. After five months on the job, I suffered an awful pain in my groin, back and thigh area. Diagnosis was osteoarthritis in my hips. I had to retire from the job on the cape. I couldn't garden anymore, since any lifting, pulling, digging, etc...all related to gardening, fired up the pain.

It took me almost a year to recover my strength, but I will never be as strong as I once was. In December, 2003, someone gave me seven hens and two roosters with a coop. That was my step back into the poultry business.

I discovered I could easily take care of chickens, wash and sell eggs, do the related work and not suffer the disabling pain I had while I was trying to garden.

In the summer of 2004, I hired a friend and we built my new hen house. It is 10 x 12 feet, has a shed roof and includes a grain room. The actual living space for the hens is 9 x 10 feet. I modified the blueprints for the hen house to include a front overhang of 3 feet to shade the front of the coop in summer. I incorporated a large, double hung window in the front that faces south. During the summer months, the overhang shades the entire front of the coop. In winter, the sun shines in most of the day and the insulation keeps the solar gain inside and water seldom freezes overnight unless the temps drop below zero with high windchill factors. There is a wondow in the east-facing grain room and one in the west side of the coop to allow late-day sun into the hen house.

 

In late Sept, 2004, 68 day-old chix arrived and the chicken business started. I was totally organic from the onset of the new chix. Getting organic grain at a reasonable cost has been my challenge from the start. Some grain stores charge upto $24.00 a bag for chix starter or broiler grower. Layer pellets can go for up to $19 for 50# weight. I started to hunt for a better option, since I would have to charge $10.00 a doz for eggs and I know I would never sell them at that price! I located a grain store about 100 miles north of me. They sell large quantites of Nature's Best grains (made by Kreemer feeds in PA). I started dealing with them and have been very satisfied with the grain. I get a good price on the grain with discounts for quantity, making the cost of layer pellets about $15.75 for 50#.  At one time, I fed a certain brand of conventional feeds. That was when I lived in Vermont and raised geese. During one winter, I almost lost my best goose to food poisoning. When I spoke to my other "bird brained" friends, I found out many of them who fed the same brand of feed had lost many, and in some cases, hundreds of birds fed that brand. Seems a large batch of grain sold to the public was somehow contaminated with something (we never found out what, the manufacturer kept this real hush-hush) and thousands of birds died from the feed. It was so bad, all you had to do was go to that grain dealer and tell them you lost 50 birds and they paid you from the register without asking any questions. One of my friend lost over 250 ducks, many golden phesants as well as other birds. She raised birds for shipping day-olds to feed stores. It really cost her a lot of money to loose those birds.

I like the Black Star Sex Links for brown egg layers. Some lay right through their molt! I had some Red Sex Links, they were good layers of large brown eggs, but really exhausted themselves quickly and then didn't lay eggs (after about 10 months of production). They never recovered and were laying shell-less eggs. Made a real mess in the egg-laying boxes.

The Araucanas are the strongest layers I have. They lay blue or green eggs and will lay through the coldest months on a regualr basis. I do give my hens 14 hours a day of light during the winter months.

In 2004, I was given a duck. She had no mate, but adapted to the hen yards quickly.  In the winter months, she lived with a Broad-Brested Bronze turkey that came along with my original flock. Turkey-Lurkey and Ducky Lucky got along just splendidly and shared a nice coop during the nights. During the summer of 2005, I located some duck eggs and set them under Ducky Lucky, who was setting sterile eggs...we had no drake then.  She hatched out one egg, a male named Donald Duck...of course!  Ducky Lucky is the first of many Muscovy ducks that now live here on the ranch.  There is a breeding flock consisting of seven ducks and one Drake, Sir Walter Drake.  He is a handsome, considerate drake of a mild manner.  Over the past three years, he has fathered many ducklings.  In the spring of 2006, I moved another coop to the farm.  This coop housed some Heratige breed turkey polts one of my hens hatched out.  Henreitta & Thomas Turkey lived very nicely in the coop.  In 2007, Henreitta laid about 28 eggs while Thomas guarded the coop door and danced in the yard while Henreitta set eggs.  Unfortunately, the eggs didn't hatch and the turkeys were relocated to another farm. Currently, there are about 50 chickens and 40 ducks on the ranch.  The ducklings will be for Holiday table starting in November and ending in  December.  Many folks will be horrified that these ducklings are for eating.  But if you don't eat them, you can't afford to raise them.  Same for the boy chickens that are hatched out under momma hens.  Can't have too many roosters around, they fight and cause too much distraction for the hens who only want to eat bugs and lay eggs.