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!

Empty Nesters

The chicks moved out today...to their new coop. They seemed pretty happy to have more room to run around. We hung the heat lamp on a chain attached to the ceiling and zap strapped the wire up the chain, along the ceiling and out of the playhouse coop. We closed the coop door tonight to keep it warmer but we'll open it during they day so they can have the outdoor part to play around in, too.

We had 4 fresh eggs again for breakfast and then a giant harvest of our veggies for dinner!

Yup, that's the giant harvest. 8 arugula leaves. That's ok, they topped our delicious homemade pizza.

 Hot genoa salami, green olives, onion and garlic (and the patented sesame seed crust). 

Ham, sundried tomatoes, blue cheese, onion and arugula.