If you want to jump around to the different subjects, you can click on any of the links below to take you further down the page:
Building Bigger Bridges
The Garden - Wrapping up Spring/Summer
Chicken and Guinea update
No More Facebook
A Home for Wayward Birds
A little over 5 weeks ago we acquired a baby quail chick. Not unsurprising since we live next door to a quail farm. It found its way into the chicken/guinea run. It was the tiniest chick we'd ever seen. We did some reading and found out that quail mature around 5 weeks old. This one was only a few days at most. We quickly put together a brooder container (heat, food, water and some bedding material) that we kept in the coop and did what we could to raise it around the other birds for as long as we could.
Each day we'd "walk" it outside so it could get some fresh air, sunshine and socialize with the other birds so it wouldn't get lonely.
Sometime during the third week apparently a guinea or chicken must have knocked the top off the brooder and the chick escaped (they can fly at 2 weeks old). We discovered it walking around the yard with the guineas, like it was one of them. It escaped a couple more times during that week.
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| A slightly blurry picture of the quail around 3 weeks old. |
By week 4 we were letting it out for a few hours, unsupervised and it stayed around the coop/run or followed the guineas. It seemed to be imprinted on the farm. The moment of truth happened last Sunday (Oct 27) when the chick walked up to me, looked up at me and promptly flew up and landed on my shoulder. WOW! I was so surprised. Sadly, it was our last day with the quail.
The next day, I walked out to discover the top off the brooder and the quail gone again. Normally no worries, but the guineas were gone too. They'd found their way down to the quail farm. When they saw me looking for them they ran to me and followed me home, but the quail wasn't in sight. No idea where it went. We'd like to think it heard the other quail and found a way to sneak into one of the quail houses and was adopted by a quail family. It was a fun adventure while it lasted.
Building Bigger Bridges
Last year around this time I rebuilt one of the bridges from the island to the "mainland". Another bridge, one that goes into the woods from the island was also in need of repair.
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| It was tilted and the right support (underneath) was rotted and breaking. |
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| Lifting the far end of the old bridge to shore up the underneath foundations on each end. |
The span was between 22 and 24 feet and my replacement pole was too heavy to lift and drag across. On top of that there was no way to get the tractor to the other side. I decided to leave the top boards in place as a "guide" while I pushed the new pole across the span with the tractor. It actually worked! Once I had it all the way across the span and the foundations shored up, I could disassemble the old bridge and remove the old (right side) support.
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| New support on the right side. The left support was still in good shape. The middle pole was rotten about 2/3 of the way across. |
Once I had my left and right supports lined up, it was time to add the new treads.
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| Making progress... |
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| Complete...and solid! Third and final bridge in the background. |
The Garden - Wrapping up Spring/Summer
I'll make this brief:
Spring peas - Good crop. Delicious right off the vine
Tomatoes - Too much early rain, they didn't do well
Squash - Started well, tapered off quick
(Japanese) Sakata melons - Did well
Watermelons - Also did fairly well. Finally had success with our heirloom Bradfords
Cantaloupe - Good crop
Cucumbers - Good crop early, then tapered
Jalapenos - Tons early, rains killed them later
Eggplant - 5 or more varieties, still growing and producing like gangbusters
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| One of our Bradford watermelons |
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| A couple of our Sakata melons. They were sweet and you could eat them right up to and including the rind. |
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| A bucket of cukes. |
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| We grew at least 5 varieties. All successful. |
We grew a variety of squash called the "Seminole Pumpkin" which is similar to a butternut squash. We not only had a good crop, we had a varied crop as some of them grew like butternut squash with long necks and others grew like small pumpkins.
We have an "orange" crop this year. We grow three varieties of Satsumas, which are similar to Mandarins or Halos. Three of our trees produced fruit this year.
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| This is the St. Ann variety. It produced the larger of our Satsumas. |
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| This is our Owari variety. It produced a very juicy and sweet Satsuma. |
We're also growing some "exotic" or experimental produce...
We're harvesting Roselle (aka Florida cranberry). It's used to make Hibiscus Tea and also "Florida Cranberry Sauce". It tastes remarkably similar to cranberry and it's a very pretty plant to grow as it's in the Hibiscus family.
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| These are the calyx (bud) of the plant that open to reveal the flower and seed pods. This is about 10% of the buds that covered the flower stalks. |
Fingers-crossed on this one, Passionfruit (yellow and purple). So far we've found 4 fruit on our massive vines. They're about the size of a tennis ball at the moment. The vine is blooming like crazy. We're going to try to protect it enough to harvest the fruit if we can, then cut it back, dig it up and put it in a pot in the greenhouse for the winter.
Chicken and Guinea update
The last time you saw our chickens they were much younger and we were still figuring who was who (and what). Well...we traded 5 of them back to the breeder as 6 of the 8 birds she gave us were roosters. We kept one rooster (a Lavender Orpington). We got 2 new Lavenders (hens) and 3 new Easter Eggers. Now our chicken yard looks like it should. One rooster and the rest hens.
Our guineas have grown quite a bit and their colors are very apparent now. They roam all over the farm and frequently come to the house squawking for sunflower seed treats. The chickens don't roam as far, but they all free range around the farm.
We lost a guinea a few weeks back. They wouldn't go into the coop one evening because a cat had inadvertently wandered in, then back out. The guineas scattered that night with several sleeping in the trees and the majority of them sleeping on the roof of the barn. The next morning we were missing one. Such is life with guineas.
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| All 8 of the chickens |
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| Our rooster, proudly crowing |
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| The guineas out on a rainy day |
No More Facebook
If you're looking for blog updates, you won't find us on Facebook anymore. Neta and I decided to drop Facebook for a number of reasons. We're sorry for any inconvenience. We hope you'll stick with us.
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