Tomato Tomahto

Today Nathan (with his Australian accent) asked our landlord's daughter how her 4th birthday party was. She looked very confused and asked him, "what's a birthday potty???". I almost fell over laughing.

Back to Tomahtos - one of the best parts about being new to all of this is how exciting everything is.

For example, OUR FIRST TOMATO!

It's a Sweet Million tomato - they're the seeds that I started at the beginning of March. Apparently the plants can grow over 8' tall. Good thing they're tied to the roof of the greenhouse (they're about 2' right now).

A mesclun mix started from seeds in one of the grow beds is doing well (the 2nd row).

Thai Dragon hot peppers like the greenhouse heat.

 Watermelon growing vertically.

The strawberry tower.

I guess we do have pollinators in the greenhouse (I still want bees).  

I'm pretty confident in my chicken sexing. 

Cockerel:

Pullet:

WTF:

WTF x2. What ARE they??

The First Crow

 Grow bed #1, April to May - big difference! 

The two bathtubs weren't providing enough filtration for the water (the ammonia levels are too high) so Nathan added two more grow beds.

This one has eggplant and tomatoes. The other will have peppers.

Tomatoes this morning:

We dug up the first arugula (the plants that had been started back at the beginning of March) because they were getting way too peppery and replanted some new seeds. The arugula in the greenhouse tastes pretty peppery, too - I think it's just too hot in there for it, even for eating the greens when they're tiny. We'll stick to planting it outside until it gets too hot.

We've been trying to figure out which of the chicks are pullets and which are cockerels. They're almost 7 weeks now and apparently you should be able to tell males vs females by the size and colour of their combs and wattles (bigger and darker at this stage in males) and by their feathers (the males have less developed feathers on their backs). Of the meat birds, there seem to be two pullets and four cockerels. Zebra Head is definitely a boy....and today he tried to crow. It sounded more like burp/chirp sounds, but I'm pretty sure he was trying to crow. Magpie and Magpie's twin are unknowns - their mohawks make it hard to tell. The two brown chicks (the ones that are supposed to be sex-linked) seem to be pullets and of the three Light Sussex, one (Squishy) looks to be a pullet, one looks more like a cockerel, and one is iffy. Fingers crossed for a girl - although our four hens are giving us more than enough eggs. We're up to two dozen in the fridge even with constant baking, quiches and poached eggs!

Hot Days, Frosty Nights

We have another frosty night ahead, apparently. We spent a good half hour covering the fish tank, the grow bed and the greenhouse plants with various tarps and cloths. We closed the greenhouse up early so hopefully it will retain enough heat to stay above 0. 

Nathan has gone to check the fish water temperature in the middle of the night the last two nights (*note that I never volunteer for this task) and it has stayed consistently between 18-20 degrees. There's a small aquarium heater in the tank, it gets covered at night, plus we attached insulation around the outside of the tank. Those things all seem to be working to keep the temperature up. 

First net full of Tilapia going into their new home. We transported them in that black tupperware in the back of my car - going around corners was a little sloshy but all fish were fine upon arrival.

They like to hide in dark corners and in some plant pots that Nathan put in the tank (or "pot plants" as Nathan says they call them in Australia. I'm not so sure about that...) 

Salad greens looking good in the grow bed. 

Tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini.

I took Magpie away from the other chicks to have her photo taken and she wasn't too happy about it. She is *loud*!

It was so hot in the greenhouse today...and yet Abby and Ryan insist on lying in there, panting away.

Spa Day

Don't worry, not dead.

Just resting after an intense first dust bath. 

The chicks all seemed to discover dust bathing yesterday. Apparently they do it to clean themselves and to get rid of parasites. Our hens seem to spend a large portion of their time at the little spa that they dug out next to a tree. It's pretty funny to watch.

Magpie's name should be Elvis. What is with her head feathers?? 

Abby looking a little too interested in the chicks.

 This is the chicken feeder that I made. I drilled a bunch of 1.5" holes in some 3" pvc. It should theoretically hold a bunch of food and self-fill as it empties, but the food seems to get a bit stuck in the elbow joint. It's still too big for the chicks but the hens use theirs. 

We are 2 days away from fish! Nathan got a test kit yesterday for the water. pH looks perfect at 6.8.

The water gets pumped out of the big green fish tank and into the grow bed.

 As it fills the grow bed, the water feeds the plants (after the nitrogen cycle has taken place on the fish waste water due to bacteria in the grow bed media). The water fills the grow bed slowly and then gets gets siphoned out quickly back into the fish tank due to this very cool (*nerd alert*) bell siphon that Nathan built, causing an ebb and flow effect through the bed.

The water in the tank was a balmy 26 degrees yesterday afternoon. We have to get some shade mesh for the tank - heat might be more of a problem than cold.

Oh, and one more bit of news...we go pick this up this afternoon:

I'm very jealous...but I've been assured that I will get to drive it (and not just from the backseat) as much as I want.

Mohawk Chick

 Just sitting down to do some blogging...

Look at Magpie's new head feathers! Very strange.

We got 4 eggs again this morning! Even later though...this time they only laid them around 11. 

The little brown chicks hang out together. They all like running around in the sun in their coop (they come inside after 'play time'). 

Today Nathan worked some more on the aquaponics set up - he siliconed a piece of aluminium mesh over the bottom of the big tank and started building the drain pipe.

I prepared the rest of our greenhouse beds and transplanted the cucumbers, melons and gold nugget tomatoes. Then we got the rest of the drip irrigation set up - it's set up for 40 minutes every morning at 7:00 am.

Morning scritches for Barney.