Spring has sprung!

I've been seeing signs of an early spring this year, although I am somewhat behind with farm chores. Spring is a time of mixed emotions for me, as it's when my mom died suddenly four years ago, but it's also my favorite time of year. Spring brings thoughts of newness: new livestock babies gamboling in the fields, new chicks hatching in the incubator, new grass and flowers sending up shoots. But since Mom died, spring has also been a time of ending, which is hard to correlate with how I normally have thought about the season.

Be that as it may, spring has sprung, and life goes along tickety-boo here at the farm. The hens have finally started laying more, (I don't put lights on my large fowl birds to stimulate their production) and I've set some hatches, better later than never I suppose.

The grass has started growing in the yard and pastures, and soon James and I will have our annual disagreement about when we should start to mow. I like to start early, to avoid having it get too high and not being able to mulch. James likes to wait, as he feels once you start to mow, the grass grows much faster, and you have to mow all the time. I am not convinced that mowing makes the grass grow faster, just dunno about that.

And this year, for the first time since before the girls were born, we're going to plant a vegetable garden! We had one when we lived in Saskatoon before the girls were born. We grew all sorts of things that year, including tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, all sorts of lettuce, potatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins, melons, the works.

At any rate, this year I purchased some wonderful organic seeds for heirloom tomatoes through Local Harvest, from their listee Happy Cat Organics, and was lucky enough to win the seeds for free during LC's birthday celebration! I'm working on finding some nice, organic seed potatoes, as those are the two things we want to focus on this year, other than the obligatory sweet corn, of course.

Not sure how we'll keep the local deer/raccoon population out of the garden. I've considered planting it right next to the goat pen, where Toby the Anatolian Shepherd Dog lives, but that area doesn't get as much sunlight as I'd like. I do have some extra electric poultry netting I might try, normally I use it in the chicken pens, but it might work around a garden. We'll see.

DD#2 and I recently discussed getting back into goats, which has been very tempting, especially since seeing the kids born to friends, especially the cute buckling born to my soaping friend, who runs Simply Eden, where you can see pics of her goaties. But James put the kibosh on that, which is probably a good thing, as I don't really have time to do dairy these days, especially if I'm adding a garden. Maybe some other year...

Not much new going on here other than the usual spring stuff, which is pretty well typified by one of my favorite New Yorker magazine cartoons, which can be seen HERE. Well, enough blathering here in this blog, off to get some work done!

As the year ends...

2010 was a busy year for the Haggarty family. I didn't get a Christmas newsletter done to put in the cards I sent out this year, so thought I'd do a blog post to catch up with everything that has gone on during the year.

Allie is a junior in high school this 2010-11 year, and as always is thriving. She made the cut to compete in the Governor's Scholar Program of KY, but unfortunately did not win one of the three coveted spots. But her 28 on her ACT (the first time taking it since 7th grade) consoled her, and we're confident she'll find her niche at the college of her choice. She's been asked to be the Grant County 4-H Poultry Project Leader for this year, a job usually done by an adult, and she's quite looking forward to that. She's my staunch helper around the farm with chores, couldn't do it without her!

Colleen graduated from Williamstown High School this year, number 4 in her class, with a GPA of something over 4.0 (I am not sure how that works, don't ask.) We were pleased to have her paternal grandparents come down from Canada for her graduation, it's always wonderful to see Fred and Shirl. She enrolled in the University of Cincinnati in the fall, in the prestigious DAAP program (Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning), but to her and our dismay, became very ill in November with a combination of Mono and Strep. This caused her to miss so much school that she decided to withdraw from DAAP (it's one of those highly competitive programs where if you miss four weeks you might as well take the year over.) Happily, she was accepted at the University of Kentucky for the winter/spring semester, and is now enrolled there as an undeclared major freshman.

James is still happily employed at the Cincinnati Enquirer as Operations Manager. He loves his job, always something new to learn, a project to tackle, a new piece of equipment to research, it's just been a wonderful place to work and we're so glad he's there! He's reached 970 hours of horseback riding time in the American Quarter Horse Recreational Ride program, and we fully expect he'll hit 1,000 hours next year. He's working on doing a seminar this spring with the local Horse Council on orienteering on horseback, and is still the Grant County KEEP (Kentucky Equine Education Project) team leader.

Laura made a big leap this year, expanding her vintage postcard business. She purchased from her father the ephemera her mother spent over 40 years collecting, and has been working hard to do more than just sell the cards themselves, but to monetize the over 10,000 images. She started out with a Christmas card collection - cards made from reproductions of the vintage images from all over the world. That went well, and she's now working on catalogues for Valentine's Day cards, and will follow those with all the other major holidays. She's also working on a line of quilt fabric blocks (amazingly, you can print on fabric from an inkjet printer); bookmarks, and magnets, all with vintage images.

All the farm and house animals are doing well, although we were sad to lose our last house cat this summer, Miss Cleo now romps at the Rainbow Bridge with her friends Babe and Kitzel. But all the horses are still with us, even Buddy, who will be 31 on January 1st. Toby and his goat charges; Zoltan and Stanley still roam the east pasture; we still have about 100 chickens in large fowl and bantam (although we're just breeding Buckeyes now); the barn cats Frodo, Samwise, and their mother Starz keep the barn and fields rodent-free, and Ziva and McGee are our Canine Early Warning System, guarding the house at all times.

We wish all our friends and family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May the coming year bring you all peace, happiness, and joy.

Guinea Fowl

Pearl Guinea Fowl

When we moved to our farm Kentucky in '03, one of the things I was sure I wanted to get was guineas. As a child growing up I would often visit my mother's family in East Liverpool, Ohio where the family has a gentlemans farm. My grandfather was particularly fond of horses and poultry (as was his father), but by the time I was older had sold most of his birds except the guineas and several mean geese.

I adored the guineas, for their ugly charm and their amazing noise. (The mean geese are worth their own story one day.) My grandmother used to say the sounds they made reminded her of a rusty gate hinge (those are the quiet noises, they make very loud ones too!) But I wanted some, if only to remind my of my grandparents, and the summer of '04 found me looking for guineas of my own.

We found a breeder in Indiana who had some for sale, and drove over there to pick up some young birds (called keets.) We brought them home, and set them up in a chicken tractor to get used to being here. Guineas have to be penned in a new place for at least four to six weeks before you allow them to roam, or they just take off.

Once we set them loose, they adjusted to free ranging and became a constant source of amusement. Guineas are not the smartest creature on the planet, and we joke that they share one brain amongst the entire group, which is why you often see them chasing each other about, for hours at a time!

Our farm has considerable road frontage, and behind our own 45 acres is another 102 which is mostly pasture and woods like ours. Across the road is our neighbor John, who has a dog named Darla. So where did the guineas decide to roam? Not behind the house, where there was freedom and safety aplenty. No. They decided to cross the road, and go play in Darlas' yard. Darla, being a dog after all, decided she found them very tasty indeed, and I could hardly be mad at her for eating them, as they were in her yard!

In the process of their daily jaunt across the road, one day several of the guineas were hit by a car and killed. The girls and I saw their bodies as we were returning from school, and I pulled into the top of the drive and got out to pick up and dispose of the bodies.

Behind us had been a pickup truck with a local hunter driving (we could tell he hunted because he had dog boxes in the back.) He pulled into the drive behind me and got out, and asked "Are those yours?"

"Yes" I replied quizzically.

"What are you going to do with them?" He asked.

"Um, I'm going to throw them away." I responded.

There was a long silence, me standing holding the dead guineas, him looking and them and then back at me. Finally it hit me.

"Do you want them?" I asked.

"Well, they sure do make good eating" he replied, "can I see them please?"

I handed the dead bodies over. Now, this was essentially road kill, right? I know people eat guineas, and their meat is actually a delicacy. But I've never eaten road kill, and wasn't going to start with birds I considered pets.

The hunter said "Yes, I'd like them if you're not going to eat them, they're in ok shape."

I told him he was welcome to them, and he drove off with the dead guineas in his truck. I shook my head, and continued down to the house, smiling to myself, and explaining to the girls what had happened.

Young guineas stuck on the roof.

To this day, we still haven't eaten one of our guineas, I just can't bring myself to do so. We have eaten a number of our chickens, but the guineas just have too much sentimental value to me to try. Whenever I look at them, I feel my grandfather smiling down at me from heaven, laughing at their antics. So from us at least, they're safe. From Darla, well, when it comes to her, they're on their own.

Ch-ch-ch changes...

My oldest goes off to college this fall, and it will mean changes on many levels for us all. She'll be attending the DAAP (Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning) school at the University of Cincinnati to study graphic design (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree it seems.)

Aside from the usual emptying-of-the-nest issues all families and parents face when kids go off to school, those of us who live on farms also have to deal with losing our chore helpers when our fledglings spread their wings and fly out into the world.

This has made me reassess just how many chickens I need here on the farm, and how many breeds I will want to work with. When breeding purebred chickens you need at least one pen, if not many, for each breed. Ideally you have several breeding pens and maintain several separate lines for each breed. And each pen needs to be chored individually, of course.

Losing half my chore force to the wider world means cutting back. In the past we've worked with many breeds of chickens: Leghorns (Brown and White), Ameraucanas, Marans, Orpingtons, Dominiques, Silkies, Dutch Bantams, Cochins, Olive Eggers (a strain of which I created myself, known as the Charlottes, from the Six Feet Under characters Charlotte Light and Charlotte Dark), and of course, Buckeyes.

As of this fall, we'll be down to just one breed, Buckeyes in large fowl and bantam. It's an odd thing to contemplate, but must be done. I work from home doing several part-time jobs as well as the farm gig, and with just my younger daughter to help with chicken chores (DH does the horse chores), there's just no getting around the need to reduce our numbers.

At our highest numbers we likely had about 200 birds (not including chicks that were hatched and shipped to others.) That's a lot of birds to chore, especially when they are in many separate pens. My goal is to get things thinned down to about three pens, and a couple of smaller cages.

I had my eyes opened to this requirement last summer. DD#1 was away at an art seminar for two weeks. During that time, DH and DD#2 went back to Ohio where my family has a farm. They took the truck and two of the horses with them, and I stayed home with all the critters. Doing chores all by myself for the first time made me appreciate my husband even more than I do (he stays home and does chores when the girls and I go out of town.) It also made me realize that 3 hours of chores every day just wasn't going to fit into my work schedule (that's how long it took to feed and water everything twice a day.)

So sadly, I'm selling the last of my Dutch bantams. I love them dearly, but their temperaments do not allow me to keep them in a large flock the way I can with the Buckeyes (the males fight too much.) I've found homes for many of them, and know I can place the rest well with people who will appreciate them. But it's hard to give them up.

This fall will be bittersweet on several levels and while much will change, the rhythms of farm life reassure me that much will remain the same. As Bowie said in that song from all those years ago:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same.

As I turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes...

Summer means extra males

Summer usually finds us with a plethora of young chickens, many of whom will not stay here forever. With poultry, a good ratio is about one male to every ten females. However, Mother Nature doesn't let us hatch them that way, more's the pity. Often the ratio hatched is about 50/50, sometimes more one way, sometimes more the other.

The problem begins when all the teen-aged roosters (which we term cockerels in the poultry world) start to have their hormones kick in. They get randy. They get obnoxious. They get over-eager and make pests of themselves to the females. And too many of them can actually gang up on a poor female and in their stupid exuberance, kill one. So they have to be thinned out.

I had a long call yesterday from a woman who had purchased chicks from me earlier this spring. She was in the midst of deciding which males to cull, and needed help. (Culling can mean any number of things, but bottom line, it means remove from the breeding pens.) She wanted to know how she was supposed to determine which young males to keep, and which to cull.

We went over a number of areas to look at, aided in part by the American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection, which lists the various characteristics of the various breeds. There are specific traits that should be adhered to, and following the Standard is always the first place to start.

But reading about characteristics and applying that info can be two different things. And the best way to learn how to do so is to have an old-timer teach you first hand. But not all of us are lucky enough to have such mentors available, so we turn to others and the Internet for info.

The breed club for which I am Secretary/Treasurer, the American Buckeye Poultry Club, has a copy of the breed standard for Buckeyes (the breed we are focusing on here at the farm now.) If you're a member of the club, you can read it here. If you're not a member, you can always check your Standard (and if you don't own a Standard, get one!)

Another organization, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, has published a step by step process by which you can assess young birds for good meat qualities and rates of growth, see it here.

Between the two, one can usually figure out which males to keep, and which need to go. We sometimes butcher our own extra males, as Buckeyes make great meat birds. Sometimes we sell some of the extras to a friend who has a market for them in a larger city nearby (yellow-skinned birds appeal to certain ethnic markets it seems.) But one way or another we winnow the numbers down. Right now we have three adult males who preside over a pen of about twenty five adult females, along with about nine young males and twenty or so young females. More than ideal, but they all get along well, and don't overbreed the hens, so they're ok for now.

Later in the summer I may rotate out the oldest male, or put him in a pen with some of his great-granddaughters, to linebreed for some reinforcement of his excellent qualities. For now, the remaining "extra" cockerels have the run of the pen, and are living life pretty large. They have more than half an acre to roam, bugs to chase and eat, and cool shade under the big oak and ash trees. Live doesn't get much better for a chicken these days. Come fall, things may change, but for now, Life is Good.

Snow, snow, snow, enought with the bloody snow already!

Ok, I am just SO OVER snow. I know, I'm from the north. I know I've blogged about the snow before. But now we're about to get another 3-10 inches (no one knows for sure how many), and I'm pretty much ready to stick needles in my eyes.

My older daughter is due to graduate from HS this year, and at the rate we're going it will be July before she's out! ((sigh))

How about this little clipper just slip right on by us this time, what do you say, Oh Weather Gods? Please?

Heritage Chickens: Buckeyes

Over the last four years or so, we've grown to just adore Buckeye chickens, for a variety of reasons. There is the emotional connection: I am from Ohio, and on my grandparent's farm in front of their house is a large Buckeye tree. My grandfather used to carry Buckeye seeds with him always, when my mom and aunt were sorting through his clothes after his death, they found a Buckeye in almost every pocket of every jacket and coat. So the idea of a chicken called a Buckeye was immediately appealing to me.

We got our first Buckeyes from my friend Matt John of Shady Lane Poultry, back in '06. Getting them was actually a mistake, they had slipped in with a batch of chicks Matt had hatched for our 4-H group, and when he saw them and mentioned it, I snatched them up for us and took them home. We started out with only four birds, one cockerel and three pullets. We liked them from the start, they grew fast and were very vigorous.

The following year we got some more chicks from Matt, as I wasn't set up to hatch eggs from that pen at that time. I had a couple of different breeds in it, all of which day-ranged together, so had no way to ensure the eggs would be purebred. But as time went on, we grew to like the breed more and more. And last year we decided they would be the only large fowl breed we'd work with, as they had everything we liked: gentle temperament, healthy, pea comb (which prevents frostbite), good dual-purpose qualities, good layers of eggs, and the extra cockerels dress out well for meat.

So last year we hatched a bunch of chicks, and the response has been astounding. This year I have a ton of orders for chicks, and have been shipping a boatload of hatching eggs. I am even about to order a new digital incubator and setter, to ensure I can get really good hatches from everything I set.

Of course, there's also the breed club we started for the Buckeyes. In the fall of '07, we took Buckeyes to the Ohio National poultry show (our very favorite show.) Colleen and Allie won BB with their cock bird, (James says they did even better, I need to go back and check the coop tags to be sure.) Colleen asked me if she'd get points for the win (breed clubs award points to their members for show results, and at the end of the year the person with the most points is awarded a prize of some sort.)

However, at that time there was no breed club for Buckeyes. When I told Colleen that, she insisted we start one, so the following March I started a Yahoo Group for Buckeyes, to gauge the level of interest in the breed, and was surprised at how quickly it took off! I knew I wanted to make it a real club; with elected officers and bylaws and the like. At as of the summer of '09, we're all set. The American Buckeye Poultry Club was officially registered as a 501(c)3 non-profit, and has grown quickly.

We've been lucky to have the support of Jeannette Beranger of the ALBC, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy:
and some of the top/longtime breeders of Buckeyes: Duane Urch, John Brown, and Bob Rhodes are all members and support the club. The increase in interest in the breed has been helped along by a wonderful article written by Christine Heinrichs in BackYard Poultry Magazine, which can be seen here.

But even without the rise in popularity of this bird, we'd still love them. They're friendly, personable birds. They get along with each other and humans well, and we think are just the best all-around farmstead bird there is. The ability to show them and market them is just the icing on the cake. And at the end of the day, I know my grandfather would be pleased as punch at the whole idea of his granddaughter raising birds named after his favorite tree.