Baby Chicks hatched on St. Patrick's day. We made a homemade incubator and they hatched exactly 21 days from when we placed them in there. We had a exciting time watching them hatch, we have 15 babies. Don has been plowing the field for the garden and using the tractor rototiller. Today we planted our onion's that we grew in our green house, from seeds from onion plants last year. We saved back all our seeds from last year. This year we are trying some new Heirloom seeds especially tomato, black krim, Cherokee purple, mortgage lifter, and brandy wine. We are going to sell some of our plants this year. We have some Cherry Tomato, early girl, beefsteaks.
The green house we made has come in handy, never a dull winter, we are busy planting seeds getting ready for spring, or planting winter garden.
Last year we bought some baby chicks and they produce about a dozen eggs a day, along with our older hens. We sell eggs and now have to reserve for our customers, if we have any extra. Right now this week they are already sold. I have to say I have not tasted anything so good as a fresh egg.
This year we bought some Cornish Cross for meat birds, that will be put in the freezer.
and are planning to hatch more eggs.
Last year we got very busy with the garden and did not write much. We also visited peach farm and brought fresh peaches to can and sold some, a store peach does not compare at all. This winter we visited a organic mandarin orange farm, and brought some back to sell. So we not only have our fresh vegetables, we seek out other farmers and bring fresh fruit for our customers. Our pumpkin crop turned out pretty good, we had pre-schools come and buy all our little one.
We are going to try companion planting where you plant herbs and flowers near your vegetable plants, to keep off bugs, and the 2 different plants, help each other. We are also going to make a chicken tractor, and put between the rows of the garden, so the chickens can eat the bugs. We hope to go organic, and we are studying and learning more all the time.
In September, my mother passed away (Grandma) it was hard to keep up with the farm.

Garden

We started early in February planting seeds in pots and making a greenhouse, and adding some grow lights. We hired a neighbor to rip the ground with his tractor. Don then used the rototiller to work the ground. We had already started a winter garden up the hill near the house where we had put some onions, shallots, and lettuce. We purchased some red potato sets, red and white onion, which we planted in February, in April we started planting some of our plants we had started. This picture was taken today we are still adding plants.
Our landowner Bill ripped and tilled with his garden tractor the pumpkin patch, we are growing the little decorator pumpkins, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, and the giant pumpkins, also some seeds Bill and his wife gave us they had gotten in Italy, with unusual pumpkins.
We are now starting to get little tomatoes on our plants, we planted some Heirloom tomatoes to try this year Brandywine. The cabbage are getting pretty good size, our squash is growing fast the crooked neck squash already have little squash's, the potatoes already have potatoes.
My aunt who lives in the midwest sent me a photo of it snowing the other day I wondered if anyone there had started planting and had lost plants. We watch the weather forcast daily as we do not want to lose all our hard work.