A year and a half ago we found out that our neighbor at the Fruity Chicken was putting his house up for short sale, and for various reasons my sweety Karen and I decided to try and purchase it. For anyone who has never experienced a “short sale” the term does NOT refer to time frame! After a long, arduous, and highly frustrating process we finally took possession of the Clayton Annex to the Fruity Chicken 3 weeks ago.
The Fruity Chicken is a 1/2 acre corner lot with a 1200 sqft. house and a barn on it, the Clayton Annex is the 1/2 acre corner lot with a 1600 sqft. house and a pool directly behind The Fruity Chicken and sharing a common back fence. So effectively we now have a full acre peninsula with 2 houses, a pool, and a barn on it.
In the midst of all of this destruction I remembered that I had duck eggs in the incubator. When I checked on them I realized that my auto-turner had broke sometime, I started turning by hand but didn’t really hold out much hope for my chances of hatching out any ducklings. A month before 6 eggs had been put in my incubator, 4 green and 2 white ones. What breed are they? I have no clue, one of the females looks kinda like a mallard and the other is black with a white belly and a funky little poof ball on her head. After the first day of Kitchen destruction we came home to find 2 of the green eggs had hatched out.
Due to all of the work going on at the Annex I haven’t had a lot of time to get things straightened up and ready for the 10 new bareroot fruit trees coming this winter. The plan is to create some mini raised beds to mitigate the wet-feet issue that plagued the orchard last year. Things at The Fruity Chicken haven’t been totally on hold though, the fodder plan is progressing, fermented feed is still a hit, and the damn evil egg eating aliens are still plaguing me! But I got a plan……my next blog post should contain pictures of the perpetrator in the act, I borrowed my buddy Hoss’ trail cam last night and set it up in the coop today.
While feeding Friday one of Alexa’s Silkie Roosters snuck out and the next thing I know we had a battle royal join on.
Our winter catch up season just keeps getting fuller and fuller.