Labor Day greetings! We have been working so hard lately that we wish we had the day off but there is no such thing this time of year at the farm! Not much time to write but that’s because there has been so much activity here lately.
The new rear property fence is now installed save for the 16 foot wide double gate which was supposed to be here 2 weeks ago but hasn’t yet appeared. We have a temp gate in place but have continued to have deer frustration during the installation since we were widely vulnerable each night during this process. The recent deer census in our area is crazy…43 deer per acre (translating to more than 215 here at the farm alone!!!) which is nearly double the number in the last 9 years and unacceptable for them as well. No zoo would be allowed to house that ratio of deer. Keeping them out is now our main goal!
Despite the depressing deer news, Dave has tilled up 2/3 of the summer fields and is in the process of planting the fall season. Today he worked on putting together a new Mantis brand rototiller for smaller areas. The new barn was a nice place to do this!
With most of the summer crop volume in the rear view mirror, my processing demands are diminishing. The cukes (341 plus pounds YTD) are done and so is my pickle making! After putting up a mixture of sweets, dills and sours in 265 pints and 52 quarts, I’m all pickled out! Wouldn’t you know, the jalapeno peppers that we love to add to the sweet pickle jars are still coming in strong. I froze these today to use throughout the winter. 
We also harvested the summer Brussels sprouts and are ready to plant the fall crop which is much tastier since these plants prefer the cold weather, including light frosts. Boy these are yummy when roasted!
Here are the eggplants I’ve breaded for roasting today to freeze for future use…about to hit the oven in this photo.
The chicks are 10 weeks old today and growing like weeds…so much so that everyone keeps asking if we have eggs yet since they appear to be nearly full grown. 
The answer is ‘no’! Most breeds of chickens don’t start laying until they range from 20-28 weeks but we have one variety, Cinnamon Queen, that starts laying at 18 weeks. The Easter Eggers will start around 21 weeks so we have some time yet for the girls to be teenagers first. Can you see the yellow chicken swing I recently installed for their entertainment in the photo above? They continue to love the greens I add each day and have fun playing on the rungs of this old wooden ladder. 
We had our first medical emergency in the flock but I think I was prepared. Petunia, one of our dear Easter Eggers, had a bleeding tail feather shaft last week. I’m not sure how this happened, but once there is blood in the coop, the other chicks peck at it and the only thing to do is to isolate the bird and medicate until healed. Don’t look if your stomach is weak but here it is after a bit of clean up. 
I knew to put Vetericyn on it and had pre-ordered this from a vet med supply house. 
It helped almost immediately but I also put a back apron on her so that she and others could not peck at the area. 
This apron fit over her wings and was relatively easy to install but took me a couple of minutes to get it adjusted just right. I bought the pink one for breast cancer awareness…the irony of this is coming later! 
Petunia wore it with pride!
And was still able to loft up to the night time roost with the others with no problems. 
That brings me to a touchy subject that I’ve avoided addressing on the blog but have personally come to terms with in recent weeks and finally thought it was time to share. Plain and simple, I discovered we had some R.O.O.S.T.E.R.S in the mix of chix at the farm! Yes, despite the fact that I had made an order for all female chicks, the vent sexing (professional rear end inspection that separates the sexes) that is done within hours of hatching is known to be only 90-95% accurate. Arg! I think this is why the hatchery throws in a couple of extra babies as they did for me.
I started to be suspicious one morning when I heard what sounded like a tweener chick trying to voice an early morning announcement of some sort. Funny, but was it partly a croak or perhaps a clearing of throat? It sounded like “ooh-ra-doo-ra-doo”…in other words, cockerel baby talk. (FYI, young female chicks are called pullets and a young males are cockerels.) The physical appearances of developing combs and waddles (both sexes have a set of each but they do appear different depending on the breed and stage of development) were also starting to become more and more apparent. My daily obsessive review of the chicks sent me to on-line forums with masses of photos for identification purposes. There is even a site for posting pics that offer identification assessments. The youthful crowing was also coming from the most colorful of the gang which is another indication of cockerels. Suspicions were verified…I did not have an entire flock of girls as I had wanted!
So, here is the rub. Roosters are typically the most aggressive individuals in the flock which was not part of the personality profile we were going for since we had purposely selected the most docile of chickens breeds for our purposes. Although I knew that our area does not prohibit us from housing rooster/s, the fact of the matter is that the acceptable ratio of rooster to hen in a single flock is 1-10. If I had had one cockerel out of the total 21 that would not have killed the deal. But wouldn’t you know, we had more than one in our mix. In fact we had four which is greater than the percent of error from the hatchery statistics than I had expected and a greater acceptable flock ratio as well. Arg!
So what is one to do? It hardly mattered that I didn’t want any aggressors in the mix nor that I wasn’t interested in hatching future batches of chicks from fertilized eggs. No matter what my end goals were, I just had too many males unless I was wanting to cull the young roosters for Sunday dinners as I had watched both my grandmothers do. So most if not all had to go…and go somewhere soon. Lucky me. Kate helped spread the word and lo and behold, one of her colleagues in the science department at JBS was interested in adopting some cockerels. He had kept chickens in the past and showed up two weekends ago with his young sons and took some cockerels to his coop.
So, now the coop is relatively peaceful and less complicated since the pecking order is more straightforward with just hens. And, the irony revealed – Petunia, aka the cockerel Phineas, is now happily running around the all male flock somewhere in O’Fallon, Missouri.
The intrigue of the sexes continues to dominate the farm (I can’t get a break!) as I recently introduced a new queen in the ‘girl’ beehive. A couple of weeks ago it became apparent that the original queen that was so productive in that colony either swarmed off or befell some other fate, leaving a thriving group of bees in need of a queen. I located one locally that is called an “ankle biter” since this strain is known to bite the mites that infect their colonies. Yay! Whatever it takes! Bite away! I put her into the hive late Wednesday and then pulled the cork on the cage separation 3 days later. Crossing fingers that this is a good take for the bees!
We had the pleasure of hosting little Coulter for most of the Labor Day weekend while his parents were in DC for a wedding. Aren’t they a cute young couple!
We, on the other hand, had so much fun here with their little one as our guest…
In the pool on the terrace….
And at the Magic House grocery carefully selecting fruits for his basket…
And a simple tub bath at the end of the day! 
Night, night!
As the chicks are growing, I have also been scooping unbelievable amounts of poop from the sandy areas both indoors and out that these darling hens inhabit. I knew this would be the case but I am always amazed at the amount of poop these gals produce! Most effective for this is a kitty litter scooper which I employ as much as thrice daily (’cause I’m a nut) to sift chunks of poo out of the sand.
Here is the marvelous line of chicken poop they deposited on the designated drop board and left for me to clean up this morning. 
Why am I so pleased? Because it is so easy to clean up after them this way! I merely grab my handy 12″ drywall blade and scoop it all up from the metal drop board surface in one quick motion, ridding the coop of this overnight waste with ease. 
Question from the crowd: Do chickens pee? Answer: No, they do not really but the white part of their excrement is the portion that is considered their pee. The ‘poo’ bit is a brownish to greenish color part. The ‘pee’ is the surrounding white bit which is the uric acid part. It is made by the liver and is not soluble in water. It requires less water to excrete than the water-soluble version, urea, that mammals make so chickens are actually more efficient in this way. Whew! I hope that puts everyone’s mind at ease about chicken poop as well as pee!
Speaking of the hot tub, Coulter is enjoying the last days of summer pool time. Never without his Cardinal Baseball cap (thanks to uncle Peter) as well as some type of vehicle in his hand, he navigates the water at the local pool.
What a welcome site here in the middle of August. Here is the shortest of the group, approximately 12-24″ tall, named Teddy Bear. 
Then comes Valentine at 5 feet tall. 
Then Taiyo, about to open here at 5-6 feet tall. 
Then Velvet Queen at 5-7 feet tall with Mahogany petals and a nearly black center.
Autumn Beauty, ranging from 5-8 feet tall, has more than one shade, ranging from yellow to gold to dark burgundy.
Do you see anything interesting about this photo? Dave noticed that the flower heads are facing west as the day wears on but they start out their day eastward facing. It turns out that they follow the sun with much drama and movement and 
They don’t seem to care whose hand is feeding them when the goodies are leftover skins and seeds. 
But there was no attitude from little Coulter who had his first haircut this week. Kate managed a Rockwell-esque photo montage.
Then the slide…
And finally a cool off with a bit of breeze from the swing!!!
What a difference a year makes when you are 15 months old!
Not too long after this, the deer discovered the back way into the orchard and began helping themselves to the lovely fruits which had grown well beyond golf ball stage. Arg! Not only were we greatly discouraged by this predatory activity, we knew that the deer were also nibbling the branches and doing additional harm to the trees. So we did a second culling and took all the fruits away so that the deer would no longer be attracted to the trees. We brought in a modest harvest of 25.5 lbs of small sized apples and just could not throw them away. These are a few of the green ones from the first culling. The second ones were much farther along and were turning beautiful shades of red. 
So, after researching recipes and with a bit of time yesterday, I decided to make apple butter with these apples. No, I did not have enough volume to involve the lovely copper apple butter kettle that I purchased from a farm sale several years ago but I hope to use this item some time in the future! 
So I started by weighing up a small batch of 6lbs of apples and quartered and cored them and popped them into a large pot on the stove to cook down and soften. 
As instructed, I added some liquid in the form of apple cider instead of water but either would have done the trick. 
These had to cook longer than the recipe indicated, mostly because they were less ripe, but when they were finally soft, I put them thru my food mill. 
Here is where I made a miserable mistake. I grabbed the food mill from the dishwasher after previously milling tomato sauce and never gave much thought about the size of the sieve plate in the bottom that I was using. Ugh! How dumb! Here are the three plates I had to choose from – since I was only separating the apple skins I should have used the largest one (on the left) instead of the smaller one on the right (which keeps tomato seeds from going thru!) – I would have saved my poor arms another work out! Live and learn!
So, after the fruit was cooked and separated from the skins using the mill, I returned it to the stove top to begin the next stage of apple butter making which is to add sugar and spices and continue to cook. But wait a minute! I started to wonder why I was making apple butter instead of just apple sauce with this lovely fruit since that is what I saw before me!
I quickly reversed course and found out that I could just heat this fruit and put it in jars to can it (or freeze it) as is without all the extra sugar and cooking time. I decided on the canning method and after bringing the mass back to a boil, I put it directly into six jars with just a little left over for refrigerator samples. Here are my six pints ready for capping. 
I processed it as prescribed and viola, the first apple sauce from Seven Oaks apple trees!
Here are the leftover scraps that I offered to the chicks that evening…they browned out a bit while awaiting delivery but the chicks didn’t seem to mind…
As they gobbled them up… 
I also offered the reserve from the food mill the next day and they much preferred those leftovers…I guess this is because the product is soft and cooked? Either way, it is a good use of scraps that would otherwise go into the compost.
In other news, the new deer fence project is going forward with a little help from a neighbor’s handyman, Tony, since we are in crunch time with other farm commitments. He has helped to pull off much of the overgrowth from the existing fence in the last couple of days so we will be better prepared for the installation of the new fence. We have nearly 300 feet of fence line to clear. Here you can see a long line of Green Giant Arborvitae trees on either side of the current fence which we planted a couple of years ago to promote a ‘green’ fence between us and the neighbors. We are looking forward to a seven foot tall deer fence soon! 
In other news, the bees are currently getting a treatment for Varroa mite control called Apiguard. Now that the honey has been harvested, I added this treatment to each hive on Saturday and they will get another dose in two weeks. It seems this is the recommended treatment for the mites that are causing such a problem with colony collapse lately. Crossing fingers for good results to keep our colonies alive!
Coulter continues to enjoy visiting the chicks but is a bit distracted lately by the fun rocks he finds just outside of their run! He picks them up one by one and shares his collection with Nana before putting them back down, which is a game that can go on and on!
Our little Cardinal fan! Stay tuned!
The excitement is over so now I’m back to focusing on the abundance of produce being harvested here as well as processing it all. So far we have brought in over 940 lbs of produce and I feel we are barely in the middle of the season with lots more to go. This bodes well so far but my dear Aunt Helen (who would have celebrated her birthday today and is ever front in my mind) related this story to me not long ago. She had witnessed her mother picking up the fruit from the ground beneath the trees on their farm and saw that she was seriously taking all of it in to preserve in addition to the best fruit that had already been picked from the tree earlier. Helen said she wondered why Grandma Sophie was bothering with the “drops” after such a fruitful and plentiful year. The lesson was that you never know what the future will bring so you need to preserve all that you have so as to be prepared for what might come next season!
Aside from being with Coulter, my favorite time of day is any time I get to spend with the chicks. I’m thinking they enjoy my visits as well since they follow me around and now enjoy perching on my “limbs”! Perhaps I sneaked my way into their lives through feeding them treats which they can only have in small amounts but which rapidly get their attention! 
So now when I visit the coop, they expect me to bring some treats and they fawn over me in ways that only young chicks can. Of course this puts a huge smile on my face! The Buff Orpingtons and Rhode Island Reds are particularly interactive as are the Barred Rocks. This all started several days ago when I was sitting down observing them and felt one hop up onto my shoulder from behind. Having previously raised parrots, I was not terribly startled. Since then, they have been more comfortable doing this and I couldn’t resist recording some of this activity today even though I’m not ‘coiffed’ for a photo session! Here you see one on my elbow, one on my shoulder and one on my opposite arm and looking at the camera!
This Buff Orpington just wanted to nestle on the crook of my arm as long as I would let her! I love the look she is giving into the camera! A little attitude, as if “what are you looking at?”
Not to be outdone, this Rhode Island Red had to investigate too!
And was joined soon after by a friend…
They say that talking to the birds is helpful so I manage to blabber on in a nonsense way to them the entire time I’m out in their coop. 
And he ends up soaking wet…
so we strip him down and soon after he is ready for his kiddie pool…
Tomorrow we start the first day of our newest project…an official, 7 foot tall deer fence that will be installed in the rear property line. Yes, the deer have finally figured out that the faux fencing we did on the north and south border sides isn’t the only obstacle to the farm and they have been voracious this year which is much what we hear from others as well. Since the deer have traditionally traveled north to south, we didn’t worry so much about the east side until recently and the only way to conquer them on that front is with an official fence. Stay tuned for updates on that project! LOTS-O-WORK!
The idea is that they peck at the little nipples and they get a drip or two of water. This keeps their water supply clean and helps to eliminate any standing water which could grow bacteria. It also serves as a distraction since it is almost like a new toy to them.
Looking much better now with a bit of color on the board and batten exterior!
They found another Farley gate for roosting purposes and have taken their first dust baths! 
Coulter now goes out with us each day to visit the chicks but as much as he likes all their activities, he may best enjoy the chicken on the screen porch as it stands still for his inspections!
On to the bees: We picked up and installed the new queen on Wednesday. Here she is in her little cage with some attendants waiting to ‘go’. She is “marked” with a dot of ink on her back so she is easily spotted in the crowd. I took a nail and punctured the sugar plug that separated her from the rest of the world and knew that her new subjects would eagerly eat thru the sugar to welcome her to the hive. 
I re-inspected the hive yesterday and sure enough, she was out, roaming the frames and hopefully filling lots of empty cells with eggs! This hive is currently being fed with sugar syrup to help them adjust. The next step for the bees is to test for mites which is best to do around August 1st. More on that later. I’m pleased that the assortment of sunflowers I planted near the back terrace are now really starting to bloom and the bees will enjoy this summer time pollen and nectar!
We spent the morning off loading it (OMG, sand is heavy!) into small containers that we carried down to fill the pool surround in the coop. After many trips, we felt pretty good that the new brooder was ready, so I transferred all the chicks to their new home. As a well intentioned new chick mom – AKA “playground attendant” – I hung around and watched the ensuing activity. I’m glad I stuck around since the pool walls (ony 15″ tall) did not prove high enough to keep the chicks from lofting up from their food dish and then to the top of the wall…and out from there! Oh, drat and arg and all those other words I know so well!
Here they are in the crock with brine and ready for a weight on top to sit for a couple of weeks. The smell of dill is wonderful but also thrilling is the use of so many cukes!
Watch for more chick updates as well as name ideas which are becoming more obvious as they mature! So far, the four Easter Egger chicks are well named: 2 by the Moores – Petunia & Myrtle, and 2 by my nephew, Jack – Buttercup and Violet…all flower names since these are the colorful egg layers! More names in the next post!
The bees love to help out with pollination! 
So, much like other years, I have started with our favorite sweet pickle recipe and weighed up 9 pounds on each of the last couple of days to wash and slice up. 
I then pack them tightly – steaming hot – into pint jars before adding a sweetly spiced, cooked syrup that has thickened on the stove top in the background. Ouch to fingers!
This reliable recipe makes 10 pints of crisp, sweet pickles which I’ve done twice already in the last two days. I’ve already made 31 half pints of blueberry jam in addition to freezing countless gallon bags of them. If it weren’t raining, I’d be picking berries now to add to the 90 plus pounds I have harvested this year to date. Here are some of the pickles and blueberry jam jars cooling while waiting for labels.
The garlic bulbs have finished drying after two weeks on their screen bed and were ready today to trim and put in the “root cellar”, aka the basement. I cut their long necks and put them into the mesh bags I had purchased for this purpose and off they went to hang in a dark, cool corner of the basement where I will send my messenger, Dave, to grab a head every now and then for cooking during the coming year.
Dave started digging the potatoes recently and got less than three of the ten rows dug so far – weighing in over 53 pounds – before the rain started in so they are also in the cool, dark basement as well! We expect quite a nice continued harvest of Pontiac Reds to compliment more of the Yukon Golds as seen below. 
With all the processing I’ve been doing these days, I decided to wise up and get some bulk items to help keep the cost down. For instance, I found a great pectin supplier in a small, family owned company in northern California called Pacific Pectin. So instead of opening an individual package of Sure-Gel every time I make a batch of jam, I’m measuring out the equivalent amount from a 10 pound box. What a savings for a jam maker like me!
I’ve also taken to buying my sugar in 25lb bags. 
This requires some strong arms and pre-planning which I’ve been working on as well as the supplies for pickles shown here. Gallon containers of vinegar were on sale recently so I’m grabbing as many jugs and noting the amounts subtracted from each so as to keep my constant measuring sensible. 
When I have time, I pre-measure bags of sugar for specific recipes so that I have a system called ‘mis en place’ – French for ‘things in place’ – so as to keep the stress of the fast paced, heated cooking the simplest. This helped out when making 85 jars of strawberry jam!
Other crops are doing well and we are serving a large variety at mealtimes: turnips, broccoli, swiss chard, lettuces, scallions, peas and peppers and more. The tomatoes are just beginning to ripen and it looks as though we will have a good harvest. I’m investigating another method of preserving our harvest this year as I purchased a vacuum sealer recently. Everyone raves about these machines but I’ve been hesitant since I’ve been pretty successful so far with my other tools. 
So far, so good. I worked up some Swiss chard today into nice bundles for the freezer. I consider this another tool in my war chest…I’ll keep you posted as to my opinion of usefulness. 
So, besides all I’m trying to accomplish on the farm lately, I’ve been asked to give a presentation at the 
The chicks provided some of the entertainment and at one week old, are doing quite well despite eating us out of house and home as they are consuming at least 3 quarts of feed each day! Tail feathers are now apparent on some of the varieties. 
And we joined in for a group photo that included other JBS faculty members and their families! Happy Fourth of July! 
They are starting to develop their wing feathers which you can see here on this central gal who is a Cinnamon Queen variety.
Aren’t they so cute!!! The thermometer you see on the floor of the brooder is indicating the temp but they ignore it and so do I at this point since they are very comfy. 
When they graduate from the brood boxes, they will go to their indoor coop for a while which is a nice interior area of the barn. Here are the finished nesting boxes in the coop that have an opening in back (on my workshop side) to allow for egg retrieval for anyone not willing to deal with laying hens! There is also a special security screening on the coop window area which lets light in but not critters!!! 
Below is their 3 tiered, adjustable, coop roosting area with a “drop board” below that will allow me to clean off their nightly ‘deposits’ very efficiently. I lined the lower area of the interior coop with ‘Hardie Board’ siding so I can spray it down and wash all of the excrement into the sewer floor drain. There is also a hose bib below the drop board area that will be the watering station providing an in line, fresh water system for their drinking pleasure!
My work shop, which is next door to the coop, has a sink and other amenities as well…ok, there is a toilet too that is not pictured! 
I couldn’t resist hanging some of chick artwork in my workshop today! 
Here is their covered, fresh air run that is ultra secured with a concrete foundation surrounded by galvanized, heavy duty hardware screening. The top (ceiling) is ventilated to let the heat out but also screened off to prevent the chickens from trying to roost up top. These girls will be spoiled!
It is a good thing we are taking such precautions since I found these racoon tracks just outside of the coop area this morning! Arg! 
But no day is complete around here without a bit of precious time with Coulter who makes our days on the farm extra special. He finds the joy in every corner and inspires us to do the same!
Seven Oaks Farm & Orchard 