April 2017 - Archie's Acres

April 28, 2017April 28, 2017

Countdown to the last frost is upon us!

Good Afternoon! And Happy Friday!

It’s been a very busy but exciting week here at Archie’s Acres! The last frost is upon us! And the 100+ tomato and pepper plants couldn’t be more excited. No wait, scratch that, Hanna and I couldn’t be more excited to get them out of our sun porch! They’re about 6 inches tall and clearly looking for more space to grow. And of course we’re all for that. We’re hoping for only one more week of a frost threat out here. Oh please…

In preparation for the big move, we’ve begun building a 150′ by 35′ deer/rabbit fence around our entire garden. It’s a lot of work, and really kills your hands, but it’s worth it. The deer, rabbits and raccoons are ferocious eaters out here!

Wrapping the entire area in 30lb test fishing line and 2 feet tall chicken wire.

Spring is the season for Baby Animals.

…and we have a couple around here.

Our baby chickens are growing and flourishing. They’re learning the rules of being a chicken. And believe it or not, there is a protocol and of course a pecking order. The 20+ babies that we got from the hatchery in Iowa (Hoover’s Hatchery: https://www.hoovershatchery.com/) are now about 2 months old and are living outside in a rabbit hutch that we converted to a chicken coop. They’re still unable to join the adults because they’re not even close in size so they won’t stand a chance with the adults, who tend to be bullies.

The 7 blue egg laying chicks that we hatched in the incubator earlier this month are happily in their brooder in the garage, growing and socializing and learning chicken things. They have about 2 more weeks until they have all of their feathers and can handle the outside temp changes. But we’ll most likely keep them in the brooder for another month since there is only 7 of them, and they won’t outgrow their current space as quickly.

Baby Quail!

We have also hatched 7 baby quail in the last week. They are Coturnix quail, which is a breed of Japanese quail; they are the easiest quail breed to start with, they are cold hardy, mild-mannered and prefer to hang out on the ground which makes egg collection easier. We will sell their eggs at farmers markets this summer.

At first we had only hatched 1 quail, who was alone for over a day, he/she was very lonely, so a new hatchling made him/her very happy. He/she was very concerned with the well-being of the new baby. It was very sweet to watch. Since then we’ve hatched 5 more. They are the tiniest creatures. And their growth rate is impressive. In just 2 weeks they have developed at a rate that would take a chicken over a month to reach. These quail will reach full maturity at around 2 months old, while a chicken will take 5-6 months.

One of our baby quail needed braces for his splayed legs.

Baby Lamb!

Annnnnd we now have a baby lamb! Her name is Tilly. She lives in our house currently, as newborns are prone to hypothermia. She is 1 week old today and follows us around like a puppy. We got her from our friend Mike, who is a hog/sheep farmer nearby (he was also our realtor). Tilly was a triplet and her mom was unable to make enough milk for all 3 babies, so she needed to be bottle-fed, and we volunteered. At first it was a tough process, she didn’t take to bottle feeding very well. But 2 days later, she was a maniac at feeding time. She hits the bottle like a tiny bass and inhales her food. She’s growing and getting stronger every day. She will be in charge of landscaping our 2+ acre fenced in pasture. It’ll be nice to not have to make the time to mow that.

Busy busy busy…

All of these baby plants and animals have kept us very busy. Please follow us on Instagram. @ArchiesAcres

I try to post at least once a day. And as Spring really kicks in, we’ll have more of a focus on our organic vegetables and herbs. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

April 20, 2017April 21, 2017

Farmlife is a busy life!

Yes yes, I realize that it’s been forever since we’ve posted an update. So I’ll do a top 10 list of things that we’ve done since I last checked in.

TOP 10 THINGS WE’VE DONE ON THE FARM…

1. Those blue egg layer Cream Crested Legbar and Whiting True Blue eggs finally hatched! We have 7 beautiful new chicken babies! I’ve been actively humanizing them by relentlessly picking them up, so they’re a friendly little crew.

2. Our windbreak has been massively added to on the West and North sides of the farm by planting 25 arborvitae trees, 10 plum bushes, 10 serviceberry bushes and 10 nannyberry bushes. They’re all only about 2 feet tall, but seem to be doing well. Now we just have to wait 5 years…

3. We tilled our entire 150′ by 35′ garden. Since we don’t own a tiller yet, so we borrowed our neighbors. Geez, tilling is hard work!

4. We planted over 150 potatoes. Many many radishes, onions, peas, carrots and Brussels sprouts seeds went in the ground too….

5. We re-potted over 150 tomato, pepper, cauliflower, flower and broccoli seedlings. Some of the rarer tomato and peppers seedlings will be sold at the Rockford Green City Farmer’s Market this summer for the first few markets anyway. We’ll be there every 2nd and 4th Friday until the end of September.

Here’s the link to find out more about the market:

http://www.rockfordcitymarket.com/

6. We built a deer and rabbit fence around the entire garden. The rabbit and deer population is impressive out here. When we come home in the evening, there are always at least 8 baby rabbits running across the driveway. And we learned last year that they are ferocious eaters!

7. We weeded, re-roped and trimmed back our Centennial and Chinook hops plants to get them ready for Spring. This is the 2nd year for these hops so we should get an even better crop this summer! Last year we only got enough to do 2 batches of beer. So this year we’re hoping for at least 4 brewing sessions with our own hops.

8. We just started hatching quail eggs! Last night, in fact. We have 20+ cortunix quail eggs in our incubator. So far 3 have hatched. They are so cute! And surprisingly loud. We plan to sell quail eggs this summer. Quail develop surprisingly fast, they’ll be fully grown and laying in only 2 months!

9. We have moved all of our Iowa hatchery chicks out to a pen across from the chicken coop to get them acclimated to life outside. They’re all over 7 weeks now so they have all of their feathers and can survive the elements. Happy to report that all are doing well!

10. We have finalized our farmer’s market paperwork with the Rockford Farmer’s Market. We’ve bought all of the licenses that Illinois requires for every single thing they can think of. And it’s a lot. We have an egg license, I have my ServSafe food handling certification, a food handling permit and our individual licenses to sell in each county where we plan to sell. Plus our LLC insurance, FEIN and sales tax ID requirements are all squared away. We have all the required packaging and labeling materials to sell in Illinois, it was tedious and over-the-top, but that’s finally done. Phew.

Life is good here at Archie’s Acres. Spring has the trees and flowers blooming, the grass is green and the woods are coming back to life! It’s so fun to watch nature do its thing every spring.

For daily picture updates about Archie’s Acres, follow us on Instagram! @archiesacres

https://www.instagram.com/archiesacres/

A beautiful Spring day at Archie’s Acres.

April 3, 2017April 3, 2017

A busy weekend of baby chickens!

Hatching eggs is a beautiful experience.

I previously wrote about our little breeding program to expand our chicken egg color palette, well on Friday another important step was taken, we successfully hatched 3 bright blue egg layers. The hatching rate wasn’t great. Only 3 out of 9 eggs hatched. Usually 60% can be expected. Ugh. It appears that a few of the eggs we received from the breeder in FL weren’t fertilized, which is really annoying considering the cost, but at least we got 3. And they’re sooo cute!

Blue Egg Layers

2 of these chicks are Cream Crested Legbars and the other is a Whiting True Blue. The Cream Crested Legbars are a purebred, rare breed of blue egg layer. While the Whiting True Blue was bred by Dr. Tom Whiting, a poultry geneticist, they’re a relatively new breed, but they consistently lay a blue egg and that’s all that matters. Don’t ask me which chick is which though. It’ll be a few weeks until I can answer with confidence. But I can tell you that the Cream Crested Legbars have awesome hair!

Clearly, it’s easy to identify a Cream Crested Legbar.

But back to the hatching…about 7 hours after the first chick hatched we realized that one of the babies was struggling to escape to freedom. We learned from previous hatchings that not helping can lead to curled toes, vitamin deficiencies and death. (Remember the story about our rooster, Jerry) However, we’ve read that helping can cause development issues and even death, this is all based on the idea that people might force a chick out of the egg to early.

Our cat was obsessed with the hatching chicks.

This was not the case, so we decided to go ahead and open the egg. Carefully, with tweezers, patience and a warm, wet cloth to try to moisten shell and internal membrane. (The internal membrane that lines the inside of the egg, which you may have noticed when peeling a hard-boiled egg, dries out from the exposure to the air after the chick breaks the shell), so this little guy didn’t stand much of a chance without our help.

Check out the chick rescue video on Instagram @ArchiesAcres

It was a wonderful moment when we realized that we saved this sweet little baby. S/he was very weak from the rough start but has since made a full recovery. Here’s a pic from right after the “delivery.” The video of the rescue is on our Instagram feed as well.

Newborn baby chicken. We had to help this little one along.

We’re happy to report that all 3 chicks are doing well!

In the next day or so we have another incubator filled with 6 eggs that will (hopefully) be hatching. Stay Tuned for that!

Month: April 2017