Harvest Monday 8.13.12

Ah - still not harvesting much. The rains have me down. The heat and the rain make a whole lot of.... ROT.

But, I have high hopes. My harvest will be going up now in one department...

Eggs!

The hen house is no longer in the neighbors yard. She gave up and doesn't want to share any more. :-) That works for me.

Well. It means more work for me... but I'm all right with that. It also means more compost for me, and more eggs for me! Our family will certainly take full advantage of the eggs, and I don't think that they do, really. I think that it was more of a novelty for them. The hens are happy to be here and have settled in nicely. Bug patrol has begun and they seem to like the fact that I bring them our table scraps.

Funny that. I never fed table scraps to any of our other animals and here I spoil chickens... hmmm. *scratches head* This MUST have something to do with the fact that they are the only pets that gives us food back. Yes, that must be it. :-D

Only two eggs this week. The day of the move they decided they were having none of that. You can see here that one of the hens is still giving us very small eggs as compared to this 'large' Egglands Best egg. But they are getting larger now.

The nest is certainly inadequate as is the run, but it will have to wait for another week or two before I can fix that problem. They are given free roam in the evenings so I don't feel too bad except that they don't roost out of the weather. Of course I also want them to learn to lay in the nest box but as I said it isn't right... The coop is good enough, but I want better for these girls and I certainly want them to lay in a nest and roost indoors. I'll have to work on that. They actually roosted ON THE GROUND last night. *shakes head*. That just won't do.

Also harvested this week:

More lady peas, some pink eye purple hulls joined in (not pictured - I was busy with setting up the coop) and I yanked some leeks that were rotting and tossed them to the chickens.

Part of the deal of getting the coop over to our side of the fence was putting in this secondary fence:

This is inside the gate a landing pad area that I put in this weekend. It's a place for the garbage can to go. This way when we open the gate to get the garbage can no one can see into the side yard, we can get the garbage can out without fear of letting a hen out and it also helps stifle any sounds emanating from them. This 5' section beyond the fence you see here?  This runs the entire length of our house and will be where the hens will live... (5' x 20' run + coop) hopefully for the rest of their useful lives. Of course, that is as long as our HOA stays out of it. I've talked to all of our neighbors. Obviously they don't have any problem with it. The hens have been around for 6 months already. They only just started laying so the noise just started and that is the only concern. So we will move them here between the houses where unfortunately we won't see them until we let them out in the evenings - but that is when we would see them anyway.

Guess I should have made that two posts. SORRY!

Linking in to Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.



'Till next time!

Barbie~