Category: Homesteading

The Kittens Returned

All of the stray kitties disappeared last Thursday — no Patches, no Cali-Kitty (although there may only be one grown up calico cat … still don’t know!), no Cali-Kitten, no Fritter, no Black Currant, and no Pebble.

We saw a calico girl yesterday — she ran by while we were getting the chickens and turkeys into the coop and ate — and saw Patches earlier today (she was really hungry!).

But, tonight, Anya was playing a video game and saw some movement outside. She thought there might be a raccoon or opossum … but looked again and saw the kittens.

Autumn Hive Inspection

We inspected our hive this afternoon — they need food! There are maybe three frames full of bees, so we consolidated down to one hive body and removed all of the empty frames. There are bees bringing in nectar and pollen, very little brood (research tells me this is normal for this time of year since rearing brood takes a lot of resources). Most importantly, though, we need to order winter bee food and get that into the hive quickly.

Kittens

We’ve been feeding a calico kitty or two — still not quite sure on that one! She wasn’t around for a few days, and voila … now there are kittens. An orange and white one, two gray ones, and a mini-calico kitty. We need to find someone who does low-cost spay/neuter so we don’t get overrun with cute fluffballs!

Fairy Eggs

The chickens we hatched earlier this year have started laying their first eggs — our first chicken to lay an egg (Queenington) laid a large egg, and the rest of our egg layers followed with fairly normal chicken-egg sized eggs. I didn’t know that it was common for chickens to start off laying small eggs (called fairy eggs) until we got the Bresse hens. They’re not great for hatching (really tiny chick incubates and often cannot even get out of the egg), but the eggs are perfectly edible. I think we’ll be making pickled eggs with this year’s tiny eggs.

Heritage Turkeys

In addition to growing open pollinated, heirloom vegetables — we’ve got a flock of heritage turkeys. These guys are Black Spanish turkeys. Unlike the broad-breasted turkeys raised commercially today, they walk around and do turkey things all day. They are all waiting by the gate as we walk over to the poultry pasture, and there are always a few turkeys following us around if we’re working in their area.

The two males we have from last year were amazing with the little poults this Spring. They’d take a share of poults and snuggle them at night to keep them warm. They’d march around them as the little ones pecked around during the day. Even now that the younger turkeys are almost fully grown, the older turkeys stand guard and make sure everyone gets access to food and water. Watching the adult turkeys with the younger ones has been right educational, and I am eager to hatch some of our own poults next year!