Vintage Quest Acres

Yesterday was a beautiful day on the farm.  We had had a couple of days of rain previous and I had noticed we had very few flowers on our plants. I was starting to panic, wondering if we had done something wrong, and the plants weren't happy. But yesterday the sun came out and the flowers opened. The squash and cucumber plants were full of lovely yellow flowers - hundreds of them.  It was gorgeous.

Yet even more beautiful were the bees and other pollinators.  I saw sweat bees, bumblebees, honeybees and butterflies.  When you really start thinking about what they are doing, it is amazing.  I watched as a big bumblebee did a dance around the center of the male flower.  It wiggled its way out of the flower and buzzed its way to another flower, this time a female flower.  So innocently it impregnated the female flower.  Simple yet so complicated.  All the energy that goes into making that squash by so many living things, yet my contribution is miniscule.  I planted the seed. We have watered on occasion, but this plant would have survived without it. 

I did not grow that squash or any other plant on our farm.  I watched it grow.  I am not a participant in this process, I am only an observer.  To know when to let go and let God is a lesson that I need to remember as a farmer. 

I am learning to trust that the flowers will open and the bees will find the flowers when the time is right. 

We are going to try out the blog format for communication.  It seems it would be a good way to get recipes out and allow for searches, etc.  Our internet provider tends to cut us off if we try to upload too much on our website and we are reduced to worse than dial-up for 24 hours as a punishment.  (We have 20MB/hour as a limit - really low when updating a website with pictures.)

 We are also on Facebook under Vintage Quest Acres.  We welcome you as a fan.  We are fairly new to all this, as our life outside tends to keep us busy.  However we prefer internet as our primary means of communication so it makes sense to embrace these "new" technologies in our farm.  

Last summer when we moved onto the farm, we ordered many chickens. 100+ of them. My daughter had always wanted to raise chickens and we got them on her birthday. She was so happy, and she lovingly took care of them from their early beginnings and through the winter. She figured out when they would lay eggs and in joyful anticipation expected a bumper crop around Christmas. When the eggs didn't come, we tried changing their feed, adding lights, checking for mites, etc. But still no eggs. And then the days got warmer and the sunlight got stronger and longer. Lo and behold, nature's plan could not be forced by all the tricks. Our chickens insisted on waiting until spring to start laying! Now we have a bunch of eggs, up to 5 dozen a day. Earlier this week, we started moving the "laying" hens over to the summer pen. Funny thing is that after we moved those that we thought were laying (we plan to "cull" those who are not), the leftover ones laid more eggs than the "laying" hens. In the next couple of days, we will move more hens over after we spend some time watching them lay eggs. (We have to see it to believe it.) During this process, my son got pecked by a rooster. He mistakenly thought that he could tell off a rooster for being aggressive. He got too close and so the rooster pecked him VERY close to his eye. That rooster will soon be on the dinner table. He is the brother of the mean rooster I spoke of in "And So Goes the Mean Rooster."

The weather out here has been gorgeous.  Two days ago we hit 90F. Our farm is typically a good 10 degrees warmer than the predicted high when the sun is out.  We have a south facing hill, which just heats up as soon as the sun hits it. 

We have begun planting those things that can take some cool weather.  As much as we would like for winter to be done, we know that we have not seen the last of the cold weather.  We expect more frosts, we even know that snow is possible still. 

The chickens have noticed the nice weather and are laying eggs - finally!  We have too many roosters - they are testing their voices and some sound just awful.  One rooster's crow sounds like a child's cry.  That is annoying! My kids are getting quite the nature lesson as all the roosters are working on making fertlie eggs.  Poor hens! 

Yesterday we found a rooster in the middle of the pen, in a very odd position.  My daughter gave it some food, and then a hen attacked it.  The poor rooster had no feathers on the back of his neck.  He had become the laughing stock of the flock.  He couldn't move anymore either, so he must have gotten into a fight and lost.  We separated him from the rest of the flock and we are giving him some time to heal.  He is a Cuckoo Maran, which is a rare breed that lays dark chocolate brown eggs.  He is one of 5 roosters of his type that we have.  We definitely have to get rid of some of the roosters, but our freezer is full of  beef, deer and turkey meat right now. 

Months ago, we had bought some chickens from a fellow homesteader. She said she had too many so we acquired her surplus. Among this surplus were two Americana Roosters. Teenage roosters. We already had a rooster, a gentleman white rooster. He had a teenager period too, that ended abruptly when the chick from his favorite hen was taken by a hawk. Ever since that day he has been an attentive rooster, doing his job of protecting his flock.

One of the roosters we were told had a mean streak. He frequently attacked the little girl at his first home. But our kids are older/wiser and we figured they could handle him. What we did not figure on was the complete out of control teenager energy we would have to deal with. The two new roosters ganged up and would terrorize our white rooster and all the hens. The hens were upset, the white rooster no longer had the control of the flock and these two teenagers were having too much fun at the expense of others.

Our solution was to separate them. It was soon apparent that the one rooster was the dominant one and mean. We thought that eventually he would calm down but he did not. We banned him to the outside of the pen, while the white rooster and the other teenager settled their differences and ruled over the hens with fairness.

Mean Rooster (as he was so named) became aggressive to anyone walking on the outside of the pen. He attacked people from behind, and I started carrying a stick whenever I had to pass by. I often told him that he would be the reason I would start eating meat again - I would gladly give up my 20+ years of vegetarianism to eat him. I wondered why we kept him. My husband said that he was there to protect the other chickens - he would be the one a predator would eat first.

Instead, he created a mystery. He did end up dead, no doubt killed by a bored dog. We found piles of feathers where he must have given fight and flight. Eventually the path led to Mean Roosters body. A week before we had adopted a new dog, an Australian Shepard, who is supposed to protect the chickens. He did sound a warning bark that night and we didn't respond properly. Or did our new dog kill Mean Rooster? Why didn't our dogs chase off whichever dog came on their property?

Yesterday though there was relief on my part as I walked by the chicken pen. I didn't have to watch my back or pick up a stick, or wonder if I was going to have to kill Mean Rooster that day.

A beautiful day is upon us in E. Tennessee.  The sun is out, the temps should reach 60 degrees, and with that comes the wind.  Wind is not something we were able to predict as being a major factor on our farm.  We do plan to harvest the wind at some point, by putting up a windmill. Not high on the priority list this year.  

The wind is making me anxious today.  Months ago, we watched our greenhouse get shredded by the wind.  The soft plastic layer that we were getting ready to cover in a hard plastic just couldn't handle the 40+ mph winds.  I can't help but wonder if we have other things that are not ready for the wind.

 Today my hubby and son are bonding with an ax.  My son bought the ax with his own gift certificate for Home Depot.  I am not so sure of the wisdom of giving a 7 yr old his own ax, but we have given him strict rules on use.  Today he is using it to cut off branches of fallen trees - perfect use of his abundant energy.  He will learn a useful and helpful skill to the farm today.  I can't help to think that if more boys were given the opportunity to do physical learning as young kids, if they would be better behaved in the long run.

 I think it is time for me to soak up some sunshine.