Ready for winter

 It is not clear to me how I ever had time for a job. It is the end of October. By now, the semester would be in Week 11 of 16, and I have just finished the list of things I needed to do outside to get ready for winter. I have washed the pots and trays, cleaned the greenhouse, and pulled the spent vegetables from the garden. The landscape cloth is rolled up and stored, as are all the drip irrigation lines. I put the strawberries to bed by covering them with straw and row cover to keep the straw from blowing away. The garlic is planted and similarly covered with straw and row cover. How did I do all that when I only had weekends? (I miss my mom. She helped a lot.)

Two raised beds of strawberries (foreground), Brussels sprouts and garlic in the main garden.

I am done with apples. I have dried apples, made and canned three batches of apple butter, and cooked gallons of applesauce. I started the applesauce process with modest intentions. I made enough for my needs and told myself that I’d done the last batch. But there were so many apples! I had the thought that I would share and made one more batch, definitely the last. The apples were just too good to let rot, so I made a third last batch. I mean it this time.

The third last batch: Six pints + one cup applesauce with
applesauce pot and food mill to take out the lumps

I can’t say for certain, but I think Lucky laid her first egg on Saturday. It is larger than the usual first pullet egg, but smaller than the average hen’s egg. Another indication was that we had two green/blue eggs in one day, which we haven’t seen since Goldie and Silvia started laying again.

Putative pullet egg from Lucky, upper left, with hen eggs for comparison

Speaking of, Silvia is looking good, having grown back her beard feathers since her molt.

The newly-feathered Silvia

In other signs of fall, the corn has been harvested across the road. I’m not sure what they were doing yesterday other than making a lot of noise and filling the air with dust. They took the corn the day before. Terry thought they were picking up stover (the parts of the corn plant that are not the ear).

Cleaning up the cornfield across the road

The milkweed pods have dehisced, a fancy word for “split open.” Milkweed fluff is everywhere. And milkweed seedlings will be everywhere come spring.

Dehiscent milkweed pods

Terry has decorated the front entrance with his pumpkins, Michigan holly, and Osage orange fruit. It looks very festive.

Home-grown seasonal decorations

Happy Halloween!

Eggs at last

 While the rain drought deepens (no rain for a month now), the egg drought seems to be over! Our two Ameraucanas, Silvia and Goldie, have resumed laying blue eggs, and we are getting two to four eggs a day again. Lucky still seems to show no interest in transitioning from pullet to hen.

Three eggs, including a blue one

We’ve had frosts the last two nights. The cold temperatures are supposed to make Brussels sprouts sweeter. They have been slow to develop this year, perhaps because they are not fond of heat. Some of them are finally taking off, and I plan to harvest some this afternoon.

Long-awaited Brussels sprouts

Others persist in being slackers. I have no hope for them, as the lateral buds are showing no signs of developing. I planted two varieties, but performance did not sort out neatly as one variety being consistently better than the other. I am perplexed. I might be planning them too close together.

Underachiever

I started cleaning out the north garden. The tomatoes and tomato cages are out. I’ve pulled up most of the drip lines and some of the landscape cloth. It’s dusty work with the ground so dry, but it’s better than doing it in mud. I meant to have it all cleaned out by now, but I was distracted by applesauce and apple butter. So many apples.

Partially cleaned garden

I won’t have to trim the strawberry leaves before I cover the beds with straw this winter. The deer have done an excellent job of that.

Deer-trimmed strawberry bed

Two of my tomato plants in the high tunnel are living in their heads. They refuse to acknowledge the coming of autumn. I got sick of picking/processing tomatoes weeks ago, but Terry refused to give up. He says he is still picking red tomatoes, which he is finding homes for. He must be doing a good job, as I haven’t seen any that are taking on any color at all. Conventional wisdom suggests that tomatoes need a longer day to ripen.

Tomatoes in the high tunnel that won't quit

Last year we had a giant evening primrose that got as tall as the tractor shed. I expected lots of primrose in that area this summer, given the millions of tiny seeds that primrose dropped everywhere. My flower book says they bloom from June through September, but they obviously did not read the book. They did finally appear at the end of September. Like the tomatoes, they are living in their heads. It does not seem that the seed pods will ripen before the killing frost. Hard to say, though, because it’s supposed to warm up again in a couple of days.

Late blooming evening primrose

We don’t have much fall color here. The trees along the creek are mostly box elder, which merely turn brown and shrivel up. The red maples are still green. We do have one sassafras tree, which I think is from a seed collected from the big sassafras that grew in the yard of my childhood home. It’s a good story, anyway. This tree is brilliantly red (mostly).

Sassafras tree

Sassafras has three kinds of leaves. I learned them as “mittens.” The mittens can have one thumb, two thumbs or no thumbs. Our tree has mostly no thumbs or two thumbs. It was hard to tell, though, because there has been a lot of nibbling.

Zero- and two-thumbed mitten leaves

I really am going to finish cleaning up the garden this weekend. Really! It will be no fun at all if the ground freezes. Also, I’ve got to get the garlic planted. Time goes so fast.

Fall Molt

 Moving the hens to their winter coop late has had consequences. The main reason we do it is to give them artificial light because they will stop laying with less than 14-hour days. I neglected to think of the other day length cue—molting. Many birds molt seasonally. Some do it to change to and from breeding colors. Others, including chickens, do it to replace worn and damaged feathers prior to winter's cold. Molting and lack of egg laying are two sides of the same coin. Hens have resources to grow new feathers or lay eggs, but not both. For most of September, day after day I’d find piles of feathers under the roost in the morning. Five of the eight hens looked more bedraggled by the day.

Silvia and Luella. Note Silvia's unkempt appearance and
downy feathers peeking through on Luella's chest.

Trudy is losing her characteristic bronze feathers with black edge. 
She is a golden Wyandott like Luella, above, and should look the same.

Goldie having a bad feather day

Close up of wing feathers growing in

Someone who (I suspect) spends too much time on the internet told me that molting is painful for chickens, and you shouldn’t pick them up while they are growing feathers. I was skeptical. I did some googling and found words like “sensitive,” which could be interpreted as painful, but how maladaptive would that be? Feathers are analogous to hair in mammals. Hair doesn’t hurt when it grows. I have observed my chickens preening constantly (poking at their skin and pulling their feathers through their beak). To me, it looks like molting itches, which would be annoying enough, certainly. Bad news—molting takes 8 to 12 weeks. We may not have extra eggs until Thanksgiving.

Frankie preening or scratching itches. Hard to tell

Lucky doesn’t molt. She’s too young. She’s grown into a pretty young lady. She is not showing any signs of getting ready to lay, more’s the pity.

Lucky

Her feathers are iridescent green when the sun hits at a certain angle. It doesn’t show up well in the picture, but it’s impressive in person.

Lucky's iridescent feathers

The silver Wyandotts also don’t seem to be molting, but I can’t explain why. They don’t look like they’re missing feathers.

The two silver Wyandotts, Dottie (left) and Bonnie

Right now, we get 0, 1 or 2 eggs a day. It takes more than a week to accumulate a dozen. I know for a fact that Goldie and Silvia are not laying as we have not gotten a blue egg in over a month. I think that only Bonnie and Dottie are laying. We seem to be getting only two kinds of eggs. One is normal and the other is an odd elongated shape. I don’t know which one lays which. For now, we’re just grateful for what we get.

Same breed, two egg colors and shapes. A mystery.