Portage River Farm

The day is approaching when I am going to have to cull the extra roosters in our flock. In doing so, I will slaughter five roosters and leave the best two to be the breeding stock for next year's flock expansion. The trick is determining which of the roosters exhibit the qualities that we want to keep.

The poultry raising guides that I have read for our breed of chicken make recommendations on this selecion process. The best roosters to keep will have a certain color, body shape, comb configuration and temperment. Sean and I have been eyeing the flock and believe there are two obvious choices. There are two roosters who stand out above the rest. The first we plan to use as a replacement for Marco Pollo. He will take his place as patriarch of the northern flock as "Marco Pollo II" once Marco I meets his fate. (Marco I is the agressive bird that I mentioned previously who also happens to be inferior genetically according to the standards.)

The second rooster that we are thinking of keeping is another fine specimen. He will take his place as the rooster of the southern coop and will be dubbed "Gallus Rex I" or Rex for short. There is just one thing about Rex that gives us a slight concern about his eligibility to ascend to the throne. Rex is a dancing chicken.

Rex's stylish displays do not happen every day but there's nothing like it when he decides to kick up his heels. He dances by spinning in a tight circle in one direcion, and then reversing his movement to retrace his steps backward. If you watch the video below, you will first be tempted to believe that I reversed the video for the latter half. In fact, the video has not been touched in any way.

We are hoping that Rex's fanciful ways are not evidence of some pathology. You would be tempted to think that he had a serious brain defect of some sort except that he behaves perfectly ordinarily when he isn't dancing. He will go for many days acting like every other rooster in the yard, then break into a fit of dancing for a few minutes, and then go back to his ordinary pecking and strutting as if nothing happened.

I have searched the internet and my literature for some chicken disease that would cause spinning but have thus far come up with nothing that would indicate that the dancing is a problem. I would hate to cull an otherwise handsome bird if this behavior is normal. I would also hate to cull all of the rest of the roosters only to find that there is something wrong with him. Will we end up frustratedly watching him pursue his dancing obsession instead of fathering new chics? While I ponder this question Rex continues to kick up his heels and spin his way through his first pleasant summer.

As I've mention in earlier posts, the harvest season has been going very well this year. We have been especially happy with the cauliflower and broccoli which have yielded large and very sweet heads.


Our earlier troubles with cabbage moths had been handily fixed with a single application of an organic gardening biologic control (see earlier post for details). They still nibbled on some of the leaves now and again, but the amount of damage done never again rose to the level that I felt a need to do something about it.

Our daughter Freya (in center of photo) happened to have a couple of her school friends over for a visit and we put them to work. I snapped this picture as they were delivering some produce to the kitchen for processing. A small amount of these were steamed for dinner. The rest we blanched, vacuum packed and stored away in the freezer for use this winter.

The weather has certainly been odd this year. The spring was the rainiest that anyone could remember. Then along came July and it was incredibly dry. Knowing that I was supposed to make sure the garden received at least 1" of water per week, I spent a fair amount of that month setting up and moving our one sprinkler around. It didn't take long until I was telling myself, "There must be a better way".

I headed off to the hardware store and bought more sprinklers, some more garden hose, some valving and a watering timer. Now what was once a chore is as easy as can be.

I placed fence posts at various points in the garden and topped each with a sprinkler. I ran hoses between them and hooked it all up to the water supply. Unfortunately the output of our well pump isn't quite enough volume for all of them to run at the same time so I added some valves to break them into two groups. Now I just set the timer and stand back while the sprinklers do all of the work.

It would be fair to say that my garden plans will require some adjustment for next year. Some items such as peas have been too few. Other things such as zucchini, collards and yellow summer squash are yielding in such huge quantities that it is laughable.

We have been harvesting the garden literally by the wheel barrow full for the past month. We have tried to find time to can some of it for winter use, have been having fresh vegetables at nearly every meal and chopping up some to feed to the chickens. Inevitably, some of it has been heaped in piles between the rows and left to rot in the sun.

In my defense, I only ordered one small packet of seeds per variety. The problem was that I doggedly planted every single seed in every packet no matter how impractical that might be. Now that we have this first year under our belt, I will be able to make some adjustments to the plans to better match our ability to consume what is grown. All of this may be reversed someday if we ever manage to start producing for sale at the local farmer's markets but right now we are just too busy getting the kids back into the school routine.

In the quiet time between the last harvest and maple tapping season, I have a long list of website improvements and similar projects to tackle. Among them will be the final assessment of our garden's successes and failures. I also look forward to adjusting some of the varieties that we grew that didn't turn out so well.

But for the moment the sun is still warm and things are still growing. I think I may take the kids aside this evening and work out a special strategy to help with the problem. I'm starting to think that Janet and I could intentionally distract any visitor who comes to our house just long enough for the children to pack every cubic inch of their vehicle with squash!

Of all of our children, Sean seems to have taken to the chickens the most. During idle moments he can often be found visiting the henhouse. He likes to scoop up a hen or rooster, cradle it under his arm and sit or walk around the chicken yard petting it. I have to admit that I understand the appeal and do the same myself now and again. They are soft, friendly and very entertaining birds.

During a recent weekend afternoon, I was working in the garden when Sean passed by on his way to the coop for a visit. Shortly thereafter he came running out into the yard yelling excitedly that he had just found our first egg! He brought it to me and the family gathered around as we admired the little treasure. It was a small egg and brown in color. The boys are shown holding it in the picture below.

Since that day we have had a steady increase in the size and frequency of eggs arriving as more and more hens have gotten into the act. We now can count on three eggs every day. We have used them in baking and eaten them for breakfast. They range in size from medium to large and have a better flavor than store-bought eggs. Thus far our consumption has kept up with the supply and we are happy to know that we may never have to buy eggs at the grocery again.


My plan is to build our breeding flock up to include 16 hens and 2 roosters. Based on the fact that each Orpington hen is supposed to lay about 265 eggs each year, that should mean we will eventually be hauling a dozen eggs out of the coop each day! We plan to hatch some of them to provide meat birds for the table and replacements for aging birds in the breeding flock. The rest we will either sell or eat.

I have to say that I am very impressed by the productive little hens. Walking back to the house with the day's hand full of eggs, I find myself thinking that it seems miraculous that their bodies can create such an amazing thing let alone withstand doing it day after day.

Even before we have slaughtered our first bird I feel humbled by the relationship that humanity has forged with these once wild creatures. In return for feed, water and protective shelter, it seems that they will cheerfully provide us an endless supply of protein to sustain us as well as entertaining company. I can only imagine the work that the little hens go through each day. Even considering all of the work that has been going into building a safe and pleasant coop for them, it still seems to me that we've got the better part of the deal!

Last weekend found Sean and I hard at work once again on the chicken coop. It is admittedly a huge project but it seems we would have had it completed by now had other priorities not jumped up constantly to cause us to put our efforts elsewhere. The impetus for this burst of activity was complaints from the neighbors about our roosters loudly crowing in the early hours of the morning.

Up until this point, the roof of the coop was merely tarps stretched over the roof trusses to keep the rain out. Unfortunately, this arrangement does little to dampen the racket raised by our alpha rooster, Marco, when he is in full cry. In the interest of being good neighbors, we set aside a day to see what we could do to enclose the coop more completely.

Working together, we sheeted in the roof with plywood and then tacked down roofing felt to protect it from the rain. At first I only used staples to hold it in place. After a few windy days of seeing it partially blow off and attempting to secure it with staples again, I finally resorted to screwing thin boards along the lower edges to prevent further movement. I have placed an order for sheet metal to cover the roof and hopefully the current arrangement will hold until that is installed.

We also completed the task of sheeting in the exterior walls on the back and southern wing of the coop (the right-hand side in the photo). Having that complete, we tacked housewrap around the entire building to keep it dry until we are ready to install siding. We also tacked sheets of plywood over the window openings on the inside to further contain the noise.

The coop now remains completely dry and is very dimly lit within even at the height of the day. The combination of the substantial muffling that the newly enclosed coop provides and the fact that it remains dark in the interior until quite late in the morning has led to rave reviews from our neighbors.

One of the next steps will be the installation of the windows and remaining doors. This will once again permit light into the coop. Hopefully the interior windows plus the storm windows will be sufficient to keep the crowing volume low even when Marco can once again see the sunrise and feels compelled to do what comes naturally.

I also have to add that it is wonderful to work on projects like this with the children. They are interesting and pleasant company as we carry on a continuous banter about whatever comes to mind. I am also happy to be teaching them skills that may come in handy some day on projects of their own and instilling in them a sense of pride at the completion of a job well done.

Janet has always loved decorating our home with flowers. Upon purchasing our farm last fall, we began to discuss the best spot for the flower garden. Before long we settled on the patch of grass in the center of the circle drive directly in front of the house.

The plan didn't move beyond that stage until Mother's Day. We used that occasion as the impetus to get things moving forward. The children and I took Janet out to the nursery where we purchased a wide assortment of wildflower mixes and individual seed packets.

I also borrowed my father-in-law's rototiller to tear up the sod and prepare the ground for seeding. Unfortunately the project hit a major snag when I managed to break the tiller by snapping an old welded repair that had become rusty and brittle. I removed the part and Dave had it rewelded at a local shop. Borrowing equipment is always risky but he has been very forgiving and helpful.

When the tiller was finally back in working order, I broke up the very hard packed soil and removed a fair number of rocks. Aidan and I mixed all of the seeds in a bucket with some potting soil and then broadcast them as evenly as we could. After a few weeks of watering, the first seedlings were well on their way.

We were concerned that a flower garden created in this way would just end up looking like a big patch of weeds. Fortunately the blooms have been increasingly plentiful and it is finally beginning to fill in and look nice. We are trying not to overdo the harvesting of flowers so that enough will go to seed to provide for next year's crop. Regardless of how many manage to emerge after the long winter, I'm sure we will have to supplement it with a fresh batch of store-bought seeds next spring as well.

Now that the flower garden is blooming, the interior of our house is full of colorful bouquets. Every few days, Janet has been picking a combination of wildflowers and our garden flowers and placing them everywhere. I even found a water glass with some sitting on my desk in the basement.

A few nights ago, I reluctantly tore myself away from a project in the house to complete my nightly chore of shutting the chickens in their coop. I headed to the mud room to don my boots as Freya announced that she wanted to come along as well.

We have been anticipating the day that our hens would start laying for a long time. Unfortunately we are still waiting. Tomorrow they will be 21 weeks old and it's seems high time for some eggs to appear. The young roosters have been making their clumsy attempts to move things along much to the annoyance of the hens. They invariably get chased, squashed, clawed and have a few feathers yanked out in the process. So much for avian romance.

As with everything else, I have been overdue in providing the hens somewhere to lay their eggs. Every few days, I have scouted among the weeds for eggs but their brown color decreases my chance of finding them. Perhaps they have been standing around with their legs crossed and holding their breath waiting for me to get the maternity ward in order.

Last weekend, I finally managed to put a few hours into this task. The pictures show the result. I copied the design from a sketch that I found in the book "Barnyard In Your Backyard". I'm not sure why the ceiling of each nest box needed to be so high but I think they'll suffice. The book claims that this three nest unit will accommodate up to twelve hens. Since we have thirteen, I'm hoping I can stretch that number by one for now. We hung it on the wall just inside the coop doorway at the recommended height.

I lined the bottom of each nest with a square of cardboard and then added straw to make a comfortable nest. Per the advice that I have seen in a few books, I placed a golf ball in each nest to act as a clue for the hens of what the boxes are for. Each time I have been in the coop, I have picked up a few hens and placed them on the roost at the front of the box.

After getting over being rudely handled by the brutish human, they stand on the roost and peer at the golf ball in the nest with interest. Each hen eventually has stepped into the nest and poked about in the straw for a minute or two before making their way back down to the floor. I have no evidence to date that these little training sessions are of any use, but if they start laying golf balls we'll be rich!

In all of the hustle and bustle of daily life, it is a challenge to find time to slow down and smell the roses. I have written here of my restless pursuit of projects around the farm and my frustrations of always feeling behind in my work. Part of that comes from the fact that my part-time hobby doesn't take into account that weeds grow and things fall apart around here at a full-time pace. The rest of it is just my naturally ardent nature.



There is one sight that breaks my stride at least once per day and causes me to stand and reflect with a smile on my face. It may have been late in planting and a bit too weedy in patches, but my garden gives me great pleasure and a sense of accomplishment just the same. There is something so satisfying about seeing those plants spring from the soil and grow big and beautiful before your eyes. When measured against the reward of vegetables for the table and the aesthetic pleasure that it brings, the labor to plant and maintain the garden seems well spent.

I have had an interest in wild plants for most of my life. Throughout my late teen and college years, I spent countless hours (that I probably should have been studying!) wandering the fields and woods with identification guides in hand. I still have hundreds of pages of notes logging my finds from those days. Since then I have headed out any chance that I could to collect wild plants for food and medicine. Gradually, I'm passing that knowledge and the love of wild plants to my children.


One of the herbs that the family has taken to whole-heartedly is jewelweed. I have been able to find it just about anywhere I have ever lived and it grows in great abundance in the woods behind our house. Anyone who has ever taken a walk with me in the woods has been subjected to a demonstration of how the plant got its name. The leaves are covered with a nearly invisible layer of dense hairs. By holding one of the leaves underwater, the plant shimmers beautifully as if transformed into silver due to the layer of air trapped in the hairs.

Our favorite use for this plant is as a remedy for itchy skin. It has a succulent stem that reminds me of very watery celery. If you crush the stem between your fingers it yields a clear sap that when spread on the skin will relieve mosquito bites, rashes or poison ivy at least as well as anything in the drugstore shelves. During the summer, our household puts this remedy to work a number of times each week. Late evenings will often find me walking out into the woods with a flashlight to retrieve a stem or two to ease someones itchy skin so they can sleep.

The other name commonly used for jewelweed is spotted touch-me-not. It gets this name from the little black spots on the orange flowers and the way the seed pods react when touched. In the fall the plants produce little pairs of seed pods where each flower had bloomed. These pods are attached to the stem by a ingenious little spring mechanism that propels the pod several feel away when disturbed. It is fun to walk through patches of jewelweed at that time of year and hear the little pods springing off in every direction as you pass.

Even the simplest of requests can take forever to complete when they are added to my pile of projects. Quite early in the spring, Janet requested a clothesline be set up somewhere in the yard. It seemed a little thing but I just could never manage to bring it high enough on the priority list to get it done. There was always something that demanded more immediate attention, something so far behind schedule that I couldn't spare a few hours to get the clothesline done.

As spring passed into summer, I had still not manged to make much progress. To my credit, I did purchase the posts, rope and hardware, but had left them sitting in a neglected heap as I walked around them on my way to more pressing things. Janet continued to use the dryer but longed for the fresh smell of line-dried clothes. Being resourceful, from time to time she accomplished the effect by draping the linens over the deck railing.

As if in sympathy for Janet's suffering, the dryer even did it's part to move the project up the priority list by breaking down. It refused to generate enough airflow to get anything dry. Unswayed by these strongarm tactics, I strung a temporary clothesline across the driveway from the front porch to the gazebo.

Further to Janet's credit, she withstood the embarrassment of having our laundry hanging on the front of the house and overlooked the apprehensions of visitors who were afraid to drive beneath the ropes. They worried that the clothespins might scratch their car roofs or that they would lose their radio antennas when they become snagged on the line.

One summer day, I awoke determined to finally get this item off of my plate once and for all. I used the tractor to bore the post-holes, poured in cement, added the cross members and hardware to the top. Once the cement had set up I added the ropes and we were finally in business! Janet could not be happier with her new clothesline and I am relieved at having something completely crossed off of my list.

Sunset is my favorite time of day. The long shadows and yellowing light signal that the work of the day is drawing to an end, whether you are ready or not. The countryside takes on a dream-like quality as the sky puts on a dazzling and fleeting display.

I glance to the horizon as I scurry about to put away tools or push myself to get just a little further on a project before it becomes too dim to see. At times the sights overwhelm even my desire to get one more thing accomplished and I rush into the house to retrieve whomever is at hand to join me in the front yard to watch the last of the light show.

During the summer evenings, the colorful skies serve as a backdrop for a display of beauty and skill by our resident barn swallows. Their flight paths take them in swinging arcs over our heads as they turn to make yet another pass low to the ground above our hayfield. Their graceful acrobatics are so pleasant to watch as they dart back and forth across the meadows scooping insects from the air in their beaks. How they can see the insects at that speed and in that dim light is beyond me.



To my pleasant surprise, I have discovered that I have the ability to schedule a command performance by large numbers of these aerial artists whenever I wish. The simple act of firing up my tractor and beginning to mow the hayfield brings them from far and wide at any time of day. As I make my way back and forth across the field, I can watch several dozen swallows zip through the air at daredevil speeds. As they swoop and glide, it is as if I were watching warplanes reenacting a dogfight from the best seat in the house.

I have yet to drive into any trees as a result of my swallow-watching but a careful observer may note that my mowing cuts tend to meander a bit more than they should. To me, the flight of these little acrobats is no less captivating and graceful than a pod of dolphins playing in the surf.

Photo by IanF, http://www.birdforum.net/

Over the holiday we drove down to southern Ohio and visited my parents. It was relaxing and nice to catch up with family and friends. I attended a class reunion, we watched the fireworks, ate lots of great food and played lots of badminton.

My parents' garden and landscaping are beautiful and far ahead of anything we have going on. During a conversation with my father about my ambitious gardening plans, he offered to let me borrow a gadget that they had in their shed for dealing with weeds.

We walked to the shed to have a look. That particular shed is a point of pride for me. A few years back my father and I made a project of designing and building it. Work obligations meant that I had to head back home before the project was done, leaving much of the completion work to him. Just the same, whenever I see that shed I feel proud of it and recall nice memories of us building it together.

Once we arrived in the shed, he showed me a Toro Garden Cultivator. It is kind of like a mini rototiller with a little two-cycle engine. After being assured that they were not going to need it for a while, I gratefully loaded it into the back of the van for the trip back home. I had seen these things advertised before and wondered if it would be worth the investment. Now I had a way to find out.

A few days later I was out at my shed and eager to give it a try. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the thing to start. Dad had mentioned that the priming system wasn't working but he managed to get it started anyway. Since my skills at getting small engines to do my bidding aren't as great as my father's, I decided to do what I could to eliminate its handicaps.

After a few hours on the Internet, I found all of parts that I needed. I impatiently awaited the UPS truck each day until my little pile of parts arrived. I replaced the priming bulb, the fuel lines, the spark plug, a bolt for the muffler and a clamp for the handle that had fallen off. Having all of that complete, I filled it with fuel and gave the cord a few yanks. To my delight, it roared to life and was ready to start tilling.

Dad had mentioned that it seems a little light for the job and right away I was in agreement. The tines were eager to dig into the soil but unless the soil was already soft, there isn't quite enough weight to let it really dig in. After a few trials, I found that it performs amazingly well if the soil is a little damp as it would be for a few days after a rain.

I have been happily using the cultivator and my garden has never looked better. It makes quick work of the weeds and is small enough to get up close and between plants. It also does a better job of keeping the weeds away than a hoe because it gets the plant out all of the way to the roots. On the down side I would have to say that it is noisy enough that I wear earplugs and it leaves me stinking of exhaust. Just the same, one of these is definitely on my wish list for gadgets to buy next year.

The second handy device that we recently procured is a power washer. Despite my native cheapness, I decided to forgo the usual hunt on Craig's list and Ebay and actually purchased a new one from Lowes. I felt that the pump on a power washer was vulnerable enough to abuse and expensive enough to repair that I really didn't want to buy somebody else's worn out junk.


After lingering a long while in the store comparing the features and prices of the units, I finally settled on a gas-powered Troy-bilt model. I decided that the gas-powered one was better because I could imagine applications all over the farm, such as the barn and chicken coop, where a need for electricity could be cumbersome.

We put it to work as soon as we got home and had it assembled. As you may have seen from some of the pictures on our website, the cracks in the driveway are rife with weeds. This unit has enough power to blast the plants out of there, roots and all. Next we'll have to do something about filling those cracks so the weeds won't come back.

Last weekend saw Janet working away at the weeds in the driveway while I cultivated them out of the garden. The farm has become a bit noisier with these additions, but also is really starting to shape up.

(The mention of the brand names in this blog article is not intended as an endorsement of any particular product or company.  I have had no contact with either company.)

At about 2:30am on Saturday evening I was awoken from a sound sleep by Finn, our Labrador retriever, barking in the front room. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will already know that this is not an entirely uncommon occurrence but generally leads to something interesting enough that I can't resist getting out of bed to investigate. Upon joining him in the living room, I could tell by his actions that he was reacting to something that he could hear rather than something he had seen. He wasn't looking directly out of the windows but was instead raising his head toward the ceiling and barking more in the way that dogs react to distant fire engines.

I reached for the sliding door handle, hooked his chain on his collar and we walked out into the night air. From the moment that I slid the door open, I could hear that there was a very loud noise outside. My first impression was that of a siren similar to a tornado warning but more low-pitched.

The noise seemed to be coming from the front of the house so I walked in that direction. Finn came along with me as I strained to pick out the sound over the din of his chain being drug along the boards of the deck. We finally reached the front of the house and the limit of his travel. As I walked further away from him and along the driveway, the origin of the amazingly loud sound became clear.

The noise was not coming from a siren at all but instead was the incredibly loud bawling of a cow. It was clearly coming from the farm across the road from ours. I stood in the darkness, listening to the noise and wondering what was wrong with the animal. This was not the occasional moo of a cow calling to the herd but instead was a nearly continuous calling out by the animal punctuated by fleeting gaps as it drew in another lung-full of air. I was greatly impressed by the sheer force and urgency of the call. I honestly wasn't aware that cows could produce that many decibels. It was easily the loudest animal noise I have ever heard.

I tried to imagine what the cow must be suffering to cause it to call out in this way. Was it being killed by something? Was it somehow painfully caught in a fence and dying? As I stood there trying to decide if I should walk down the road to see what was happening, the noise suddenly stopped. As the last echoes died away, I returned to the house and sat on the front step with Finn. We listened for a while longer but no additional sounds came to us. Eventually we headed back into the house to resume our slumbers.

The mystery was solved on Sunday afternoon during a conversation with our neighbors. They mentioned that the cattle across the road had been calving over the last few days. Finn and I had been witnesses to the late night labours of a cow delivering the latest addition to the herd.

We hope to get cattle of our own over the next few years. If nothing else our late night experience has prepared me for just how distressed a cow can get in her last stages of delivery. When that time comes for us, I'm going to try to remember to slip some earplugs in my pocket!

The major project of this weekend has been the replacement of the shed door. One of the doors had been badly damaged before we bought the farm and most of it was missing. The previous owner explained that the wind had caught it during a violent storm and broke it in two by slamming it back against the side of the shed. The remainind portion can be seen lying on the ground in front of the shed in the picture.