Happy Hens & Eggs

The Happy Healthy Fluffy Butt Club!

So far this summer my girls are doing great!

We've had one small limp, that healed within 24 hours.

Finally I've been able to get a good photo of my olive egg next to one of my light blue eggs!

I know the light one looks white but its a lovely light blue.

So far everyone is doing great and having a fantastic summer!

Re-Seeding the Wheat

Roughly two months ago we cut the rabbits grass for the first time.
To see that blog click HERE

From that day on, we've cut it almost everyday!

Two months of cheap, fresh, healthy feed for the rabbits!

As you can see from the first photo its starting to "stalk" where it grows a thicker dry husk at the bottom.

Checking under it and seeing the amazing root system we cut it as short as we could 

(to get it to grow back green again).

We also added a few more wheat grass seeds on the top and then covered it with the cut thick stalks to keep the birds from the seeds.

Over the coarse of this week we will finish reseeding, cutting and restarting the grass.

Even if we need to do this process every two months into the fall it will still save us a ton of money, keep the rabbits cooler and healthier!

 

Cucumbers & Kale

So our cucumbers (three plantings worth) have come up, but slowly and barely. 

To increase our yield we moved the large frames to the middle of the garden - full sun!
In the front we planted kale & in the middle of the frames we planted kale.

While I've never cooked kale in my life, my husband seems to really want to try it.

As always I will learn how and add it into my repertoire.

Now don't get me wrong the few cucumbers that did come up in the corner where we originally planted we will try to vine up pallets.

I'm not giving up on them, but two years ago I pickled cucumbers for the first time.

Ever since my family has been looking for a massive haul so I could fill our pantry with home made pickles for an entire year.

 I love that my family enjoys my cooking and is 100% certain its the best ever, 

I just pray my garden will accommodate their wishes!

Funny enough I'm allergic to raw cucumber - cooked or pickled and the enzyme I'm allergic to breaks down but fresh is a HUGE trip to the ER for me.
I guess its a good thing my family loves my pickles so much!

Preserving Dill in Olive Oil

I have SO MUCH Dill this year! I've cut and cut and cut it!
I've cooked, baked and given it to the chickens & rabbits.
I've given some to friends & family, I've dried bunch after bunch for the winter.

Funny thing about Dill - they more you cut the faster it seems to grow!

My forest of dill in the garlic - soon I'll be able to harvest the garlic. I'm no longer worried about the dill surviving when we take the garlic out. Even if we lose a few plants I doubt I'll notice!

First what I did was cut a very large bunch of dill.

Then I separated the large long stems that are better for hanging and drying from the smaller sections to cut up for freezing in oil.
Then I went through and removed the stalk, when cutting you only want the finer dill.

Finely chopping the dill, adding it bit by bit into my ice cube trays.

Once all the dill was portioned off, chopped or hung,

I added Classic Olive Oil to the dill - barely covering it completely.

For me each cube was roughly half deep in the tray, add as much as your cooking tastes prefer.

I added the classic olive oil instead of the more popular virgin or extra virgin for a more delicate soft taste in the oil.

I plan on using the oil/dill cubes for grilling fish & other type dishes.

Cooking or grilling EVOO or VOO can change the taste to something more bitter.

Now you can freeze dill in water,
HOWEVER
if you do that, you'll be adding water into whatever dish you add the dill to.
Next time I may add a half of lemon slice to each ice cube tray, marking the bag especially for fish dishes, but I personally will stick to oil.
I froze the cubes overnight but the standard time should be 4 hours or more to freeze a full tray.

During my checking of the dill sections I found one stalk not like the rest.
It had two small sections of bright tiny yellow eggs.

Those are lady bug eggs!

Lady bugs are GREAT bugs, so I took that stalk back outside and placed it underneath all the rest of the dill to protect the eggs.

Egg Shell Dispenser

This lovely Egg Shell Dispenser happened today. 

A few weeks ago I showed my hubby two fantastic dispensers I found off pinterest.
Fresh Eggs Daily's

Farmhouse 38's

My girls needed a full time dispenser and they looked easy enough for me to do without help.

So what happens when I ask my husband for a correct sized board?

He disappears for a while and when I check on him I find this!
My darling spoils me!

We nestled the feeder underneath one of the nesting boxes to keep rain off of it!

To attach it to the chicken wire of the night coop my husband bent two large nails downwards.

Making it easy to refill and clean!

(I'm not a wine person so mine was a washed out coconut rum bottle but any glass will do)

As long as its easy to fill and pour.

No matter how it looks, its important to offer your chickens either crushed egg shells or oyster shells! They need extra calcium, one of my girls egg shells has been getting really thin.

Hence the need for a full time dispenser!

Giving it to them every now and then isn't enough!

My ladies needed encouragement to investigate the new toy,
I sprinkled some crushed eggshells on the ground to get their attention to the new dispenser.
So far (day one)
I've had two ladies eat directly from the dish and two happily eat all the bits I dropped on the ground.
Will need to slowly work on the rest tomorrow!

Doctoring Tomato Plants vol.1

Ordering things online is always a risk,

this time I watched our postman 

(thankfully only the fill in) 

throw our package boldly marked FRAGILE on the ground.

If you look closely you can see the tiny slit.

Almost half of my new tomato plants were bent.

Using toothpicks and medical gauze I bandaged them up as well as I could.

Thankfully the seller promises to send more.

In the meantime my goal is to keep this bunch alive!

  

I'll post updates on their progress

Update: 6/11/16
We've lost two of the broken
but it seems four of the broken are doing well.

Cooling off!

Summer heat is very hard on rabbits!
Rabbits can easily die from several different types of heat related deaths, so for small rabbitry's like ours its very important to help them beat the heat.

We make sure they have shade, water and a few things to help cool them off.

I took several washed out glass bottles, added water (little over half way) 

kept the lid off (so it doesn't explode when the ice expands)

and then placed the bottles in the freezer.

Once frozen I waited a few days for it to heat up and then took these out and added them into the cages during the hottest part of the day.

Summer is just starting here and we are still in the low 90's.
As it get hotter and stay's hotter longer, I'll be taking bottles out twice a day.

Once in mid-morning, once in the afternoon.

Blackthorn, really seems to love her little cooler.