Well, our little farm is chuggin' along and doing very well. The chickens are growing right in front of my eyes each and every day. The seven of them are eating about ten pounds of the food we give them every week, and that is on top of all of the goodies they get when they are foraging around the property all day long.
The chickens favorite thing to do these days is to stand on top of the compost pile and scratch and hunt for earthworms. I have a whole colony of earthworms that live in my compost due to the end of my vermiculture experiment. When I tried to keep earthworms as a way to compost my kitchen scraps and harvest their castings for my garden, I realized that I was taking away the "green" matter that my composting system needed. Plus, I think that people who use worm bins are using earthworms to compost, maybe, because they don't have the space and "brown" matter, like yard waste and grass clippings, it takes to sustain the two to three cubic yards of compost we are managing. So, I let the four pounds of worms free in my garden and compost piles. There are thousands of worms living there now, helping to break down the kitchen scraps and leaving their castings behind, enriching my compost that much more. They are good for my compost, and apparently, my chickens as well. But I read that the healthiest chickens are those that have a varied diet, so there you go.
Taylor and I set up the honeybee hive boxes today. I will picking the first colony up next Saturday and then installing the package bees into one of the boxes. I will pick up the second colony on the following weekend. I have all my gear and I am going to the library tomorrow to check out The Backyard Beekeeper as yet another point of reference.
Pictures to come! You won't believe how big the chickens have gotten!
No comments:
Post a Comment