Tag Archives: Homestead Produce

The Great Potato Experiment of 2019 – Day 118

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(Also the Great Onion Experiment of 2019)

We harvested the rest of our potatoes today. As you can see from the picture above, the purple potatoes were much more prolific, but the red ones grew bigger.

Overall I am very happy with the results of our “experiment”. I learned a lot about growing these varieties of potatoes. I should have planted them earlier so they could grow larger (especially the purples), and I coulda planted the rows quite a bit closer to get more yield out of the planting bed (a 3’x6′ bed in our terraces). And we’ll need to plant a ton more to feed our family for more than a few meals. And how to get those purples bigger? Also need to experiment with the long storing varieties like russets once we have a good place to store potatoes. But it’s good to know that it’s possible to grow potatoes here in the dry, high desert.

Also, can we talk about those onions?

Again, they are nothing to brag about, except that I have tried numerous times over the years to grow onions and have never been successful. So the fact that I got ANY harvest this year is pretty amazing to me! They won’t last long since they’ll be eaten quickly, but I’m rather proud of those cute baby onions.

2019 Chick Hatching Update

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All 4 of Welly’s eggs hatched! One had some issues and we spent a couple days nursing it back to health.

Poor thing was so weak. It couldn’t even hold it’s head up.

Doing better after warming and feeding it an electrolyte solution.

12 hours after hatching it was apparent it was going to survive but it was not as vigorous as it’s siblings, so we kept it inside for another couple of days.

We named that one Nugget. After a day or so, we brought one of its siblings in to teach it to eat and drink from the waterer. Since we had been hand feeding it the electrolyte solution, it wasn’t catching on by itself. After another day or two, you couldn’t tell Nugget from the other except that we put a leg band on it, so we but them all back in with Welly.

So now we had 9 chicks. Three of them we knew were males. Time would tell for the others.

At just 4 weeks old, the Sex-link’s combs were substantially bigger than the Speckled Sussex’s. Hoped that meant the Sussex were female – it did!

And at 6 weeks old, it was VERY obvious that two of Welly’s chicks were male, and two were female. These are the two males.

Oh, and you know little Nugget that we put so much time and effort into reviving? Yep, one of the males!

So, we ended up with 5 males and 4 females. Figures!

And one of the white females got out of her pen when a neighboring dog happened to be visiting and got herself killed. 😢

So, now we have 5 males that are bound for the stew pot this fall, and 3 females that will be added to the flock.

Right now we are working on integrating the two chick flocks to each other. The mammas are back in with their original flock. We are not going to bother integrating all those boys to one of the main flocks when they will be gone in a couple months anyway. But in the meantime, we need them all to be in the same coop/run. And soon it will be time to introduce the three pullets into their new flock.

Ah, the joys of raising chickens!

2019 Broody Hen watch: Days 16 & 5

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No, the title is not a typo. We are on day 16 AND day 5.

How, you ask?

This is how.

Yep, that’s another Broody Hen.Welly the Welsummer went broody once or twice last summer, but we weren’t successful in getting her to hatch the eggs. Or either of her Welsummer sisters for that matter (Summer and Suntime). But we learned a lot from our mistakes last summer and are very hopeful that she’ll come through this time.We have her set up in a large dog crate and think we have taken care of the mouse problem we had last time we had a hen be broody in this box (by getting cats and by not leaving food in the crate over night).

We put a dozen eggs under her 5 days ago after we moved her to the box and made sure she was dedicated to being broody. The eggs we put under her were laid by our White Leghorns who are in with a Speckled Sussex roo. While the genetics are not right for the chicks to be sex-link hybrids, they should lay great eggs when they grow up. IF they hatch, of course. We will candle the eggs in about a week. We’re hoping there’s at least a few that are fertile considering the roo has 17 hens to share his attention with.

Now, on to Day 16 with Bluebell. We candled on Day 12 and we have 10 developing eggs.One egg had not developed, and one was missing (probably got broken). One of the remaining eggs will most likely not develop much further as the air sack is not in the correct position. Unlike in the picture above, the air sack is on the side, not at the end like it’s supposed to be. So, at most, we’ll get 9 chicks from that clutch, IF they all hatch. Considering last summer’s abysmal failures, I’m not counting my chicks until they hatch.

We’re starting to get close, just 5 more days!

The Great Potato Experiment of 2019: Day 29

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Edit: I wrote his post at the end of May. I found it in my drafts in August! I am backdating the publishing date so hopefully it will show up on the blog in order, but for all my subscribers who will get an email notification about it, that’s the reason why it’s old news. 😊

Last week, on Day 29, the potato plants had grown enough that I “hilled” them up. Essentially, I just pulled in that dirt I moved to the side when I planted them. I forgot to take any pictures except for the ones in the pots.

So I was all excited that this seems to be working so beautifully, when I came across a fact that had me pondering if my potatoes are going to do as well as I had hoped.

Basically, did you know that there are two types of potatoes: determinate and indeterminate? And that you plant them differently and treat them differently according to which kind they are?

I had no idea! I thought a potato was a potato when it came to planting and I hadn’t ever even heard of any method of planting and caring for them other than variations of the hilling method.

But I was wrong. The hilling method, where you keep adding soil or mulch as the plant grows and more and more potatoes will grow in the new areas you buried, only works for the indeterminate varieties. I’m not sure what kinds are those varieties, but I can tell you which ones they are not! Red Norland, and Purple Majesty!

Yep, the two varieties I planted are determinate, which means that they will only ever set potatoes in the first layer of soil where they are planted.

Awe well, learn something new every day. I still have hopes that they will grow and give us at least a few potatoes.

2019 Broody Hen Hatch Watch: Day 1

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May 19, 2019

You may remember last summer when we tried to have some of our broody hens hatch some eggs for us. (You can read those posts here.)

We tried six times and only ended up with 2 chicks (both roosters, of course!). Sadly, after some research, I think a couple of those failures were from us handling and moving the eggs after day 17, which is when the eggs should be left alone until hatching. So we might had inadvertently cause some of the in-egg deaths. I’m crushed. 😟

But, we are trying again, and we know better this time.

One of our Austra-Whites, Bluebell, went broody last week. She was the mama that raised store bought chicks for us in 2017. Her sister, another Austra-White named Speckles, was the hen who successfully hatched the two chicks last summer.

Our 2018 chicks – a Black Sex-link male, and a Speckled Sussex male who is now one of our breeding roosters.

We never had any success in hatching with the three Welsummers or the Golden-laced Wyandotte who went broody, so when Bluebell decided to be broody again this year, I was happy. I know she is a reliable brooder and a good mama.

So, here we go.

We moved her to the brooder coop nest box, blocked off from the 8 week old chicks who are using the rest of the coop.

Our brooder box setup. Just shut the right door to keep the hen in, and the left one is opened or closed as needed for security or ventilation and to access food and water.

She was sitting on golf balls for a few days in order to adjust to the move before we gave her eggs.

Classic broody hen stink-eye

But after one night she had settled right in. So I figured it was safe to put eggs under her.

The next day (that was yesterday) we swapped out 9 golf balls for a dozen eggs we had been collecting from our breeding group from several days.

I’m pretty sure all the ones on the right are from our Speckled Sussex hen, Lizzie. She lays very light tan eggs, and usually it’s pretty easy to tell hers from the eggs that Feathers lays. But sometimes it wasn’t quite as obvious. Most of the ones on the left are from Feathers who is a Plymoth Barred Rock. They are both in with a Speckled Sussex rooster, Nigel. So Lizzie’s chicks will be pure breed Speckled Sussex. Feathers’ will be Black Sex-links, which means we will be able to tell immediately at hatching if they are male or female. And then there are a couple that I think are from our other Speckled Sussex in our other flock, which means they would also be pure breed. However, they could be from our Black Australorp, or our Golden Laced Wyandotte in that flock as well. In which case, the chicks would just be normal ol’ farmyard hybrids. Nothing special other than the fact that they would probably still lay some great eggs.

Hey, we should come up with a name for our sex-link hybrids. Every hatchery calls theirs something different dependant on the breeds of the parents. Black sex-links are almost always a Rhode Island Red or New Hampshire Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen and the offspring is almost always called a Black Star or Black Rock. Red/Gold sex-links have a much larger variety of breeds as parents, thus have many different “brand” names: Red Star, ISA Brown, Cinnamon Queen, Golden Comet, etc. Hmmmm…, Something to think about.

At any rate, we’ll hopefully have some Speckled Sussex and some sex-link and a couple mystery chicks hatching out in about 3 weeks. I will candle the eggs in about 12 days (I’m not confident in my abilities to candle on day 7) and their projected Hatch Date is June 8th.

I am sooo hoping this works this time. We really want an easy and natural way to replenish our flocks in order to be as sustainable as possible. If we can reliably hatch chicks, we wouldn’t have to purchase new ones, and we could sell some to offset costs.

I’ll keep you updated as we progress.

And this time, no moving of the eggs in the last 4-5 days!

The Great Potato Experiment of 2019: Days 10 and 15

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They are growing!

May 12: Day 10

The first little sprout started looking it’s head through the soil.

I was starting to get a little worried. No signs of life. Would they actually grow from those sprouts I planted or were they too far gone? Had they expended too much energy already just trying to get out of the box and then been shocked by being smothered in the ground?

Well, at least one is growing, so I’m happy.

May 17: Day 15

More growth!

The main bed showing the red potato spouts showing through the soil.

A purple potato sprout. I love that even the leaves start out purple, my favorite color.

I had a couple of the red seed potatoes that didn’t fit into the main bed, so I planted them in some old pots I had. They are growing, too!

I am loving this “experiment”. Not only am I trying something that is essentially new to me, but as I walk through my terraced beds every day to work on the house, I am filled with joy that I have a garden this year.

Yes, it’s tiny and not even fully planted yet, but it’s there. And seeing all the new growth fills a spot in my soul that reminds me how much I love gardening and producing our own food.

Soon I’ll have to share my tomato experiment of this year. 😯

The Great Potato Experiment of 2019: Day 1

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I definitely waited way too long to get my seed potatoes in the ground. But I bought them when I had bigger plans for the garden, which I scaled back drastically when we decided it was more prudent for me to be working on the house rather than building and maintaining brand new gardens.

But I already had these seed potatoes. And I am continuing to develop the terraced garden beds as I have time and just have to get in some outside work.

So I finally figured out WHERE I wanted to plant them. And that’s when I discovered they had a headstart on my gardening for the year. (See above picture! 😄) So, I dug some trenches, and threw three potatoes in each, sprouts and all.
We’ll see how it goes. I’ve only grown potatoes once before, years ago, and that was before I learned to cover them up as they grow.

Method: dig 3 foot long trenches 8 inches deep. Lay 3 potatoes with sprouts end-to-end in the trenches. Cover with several inches of soil. As (if?) they grow, when they get to be about 6 inches tall, I’ll cover the bottom 3 inches with soil. I’ll continue doing that until…ummmm, I’m actually not sure when they are ready to harvest. More research is needed, obviously. But for now, at least they are in the ground!

Broody Hen Saga: final update

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I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that we did not have any cute fluffy chickies hatch. Otherwise their pictures would have been all over Instagram and Facebook.

So we’re done with our hatching trials for this year. I’m sure we’ll try again next spring. And in the meanwhile, I’ll be doing a bunch of research to see what might have been our issue. We really want hatching our own chicks to be sustainable.

So stay tuned. We’ll keep at it and bring you along for the ride. 😁

Broody Hen Saga: Day 19

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*sigh*

I’m at a loss. I don’t think any of the eggs are gonna hatch.

We moved Summer into the main part of the coop in preparation for hatching (which could happen any time in the next 2 days).

I took the opportunity to candle the eggs again since we got her off them to clean her box (tried getting her to sit on them in the bucket, but she wasn’t having any of that.)

All of them have air sacks that are much too large for this stage of development. In one (top left in the collage below), you can see feathers that have developed, but again, there’s too much space in there. The chicks should be large enough to pretty much take up the entire egg by now.

We’re all sad that it looks like we won’t be getting any chicks.

I just don’t know why this happened. Summer was a great brooder. She was always on those eggs. Did they get too hot? Did she jostle them too much? Is there something wrong in the genetics?

The last time we got a hen to sit for the duration, only 2 out of 7 eggs hatched. And out of the 5 that were left over, 4 of then were fully formed chicks that died just before hatching. (One had never fully developed.)

So I just don’t know. Is it something we are doing wrong, or is it just nature and out of our control?

One day we’d like to be able to reliably hatch our own eggs, and maybe even sell hatching eggs. But if we can’t get them to hatch, then that’s an issue.

For now, I’ll leave them under her. A couple of them I’m sure are not viable, but there’s that one with the feathers that I’m not ready to give up on. There’s a part of me that keeps saying that chicks grow a lot in the last day or two before hatching. I have a feeling it’s not gonna hatch, but I won’t give up all hope till all hope is gone.

Broody Hen Saga: Day 14

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I candled our hen-incubating eggs on day 7 like everyone says to do. But I just couldn’t tell. They all looked too similar. However, I had a feeling that only half of them were developing. So I figured I’d give it another week or so and try again.

And this time the differences were striking! The 5 eggs (I was right!) that have developing chicks in them, very obviously have something in them.

Day 15, rather obvious

The 5 eggs that never developed (or stopped early) still look like a regular, non-developing eggs when candled. I did notice that several of them had cracks in the shell like the picture below. No telling when that happened, but I’m sure it didn’t help.

Non-viable with cracks in shell

So, out of the 10 eggs that were originally under Summer, only 5 are viable. I sure hope those five actually hatch. One more week to go…