Prepping for Winter

The farm has moved into its next season. We are now preparing for winter.

The chickens and I have rototilled the garden. We will be planting winter rye, both as food for the chickens, but also to help enrich the soil and reduce next years weeds. The garlic will also go in this week, and hopefully a lovely layer of compost. I am thinking this year it will be a combination of pond goo (as I am still working on clearing that out) and chicken poo. 

I was so excited to find a blue egg in the nesting box this week. Our new little white sapphire chickens are laying a full month earlier than I had expected!

And finally, if you recall, we had 10 babies this year between the white sapphire and our born here. Of these 10, 4 were girls, and the born here rooster I am keeping. That left 5 roosters that would not have a place on our farm...but they would fit nicely into our freezer. Our wonderful friends Jennifer and Mark, raised meat king chickens this year and had created a chicken processing unit. Yesterday I took these roosters to their house and over a period of 2.5 hours we prepared my 5 roosters and their 22 chickens. It took me the same length of time to process my one bird last time lol!! We had a great assembly line set up, a fantastic chicken plucker that saved hours of hand plucking time and great company to enjoy while we worked! Guess what’s for supper tonight!