Summer is Upon Us

It hit 80 degrees here about 2 pm today.  The honey bees are happy, corn is growing as are the weeds.

Our Broiler chickens at five weeks in their summer home

I transferred the broiler chickens to their home and pasture.  We'll butcher them this August and they'll dress out about about 4.5 lbs each.  We started with 50 and four have died.  Why, I believe they committed suicide.  Who knows.  The pasture and inside the coop had grass waist high; they ate the grass in their coop down in two days, hungry guys and gals.  Now they are working on the pasture and they are growing well.

Day 2 in their new pen - half of the jungle is gone!

Of our two bee hives, the one in the new boxes are doing very well.  The other hive I kept in an old hive box I bought used.  The queen died and now we have few bees there.  I think I will burn it and start over next spring with new boxes.

The goats are doing well.  We have four boys, all healthy.  I milk their mothers in the morning and let them feed all day on their mothers.  We are getting about a gallon of fresh milk per day.  Making kefir and some other soft cheeses.

We had such a cold and wet spring everything growing is behind except the garlic and the raspberries.  Our honey bees wouldn't come out most spring days and our normal large crop of bumblebees came out late, so we had no pollination on the cherry and plum trees.  Only one of our Asian pear trees (out of four) has fruit.  The apple trees set ok, between two and three apples per cluster of five, which is alright with me as I usually thin to that so we get larger apples.

Mother duck with some of her ducklings in her brooder house

 We have a good crop of ducks this year.  Two mothers have hatched their eggs and we have two setting on nests due any day now.  The first one had 15 and we sold 10; the second one had 10 and we have five of them sold as soon as they feather out.

Oyster Mushrooms growing on a down Alder log

With the cool spring our Oyster mushroom log in the woods was late, but our crop is better than ever.  We gathered about 10 lbs last week, sauteed them and put them in the freezer.  Oyster mushrooms sell for about $10 per pound.  I'll go out there this afternoon and pick some for our stir fry dinner this evening.

Between real estate being extremely busy for me this year, and my building projects (new buck house, new chicken coop ...) I been behind on weed eating and preparing the garden beds.  I have weeds growing into the electrical goat fence and still have three garden beds to weed and turn.  Lots of work to do.  Pam ends her school year next Monday, June 27th, so I'll have more help.  I have not even had time to write, which I love.