Chillin with my Peeps

I sit here in the warm living room, my dog Stella at my side restraining herself with all her might from sauntering over to the 3 brooders full of various poultry that have been born or arrived last night. Chris' parents Marlene and Roger are reading and we are amusing ourselves by attempting to keep the ducklings waterer full. We have 3 Welsh Harlequin Pekin crosses at 3-4 weeks guzzling it down in an old Smart Cart dumping wheelbarrow. We have 3 of our first born Cuckoo Maran cross chicks at 95 degrees in another box and we have 8, 2 week old Ancona, Blue Swedish and Buff Orpington ducklings on the porch under the heatlamp. The background music tonight is a whole lot of peeping and some lapping up of water. Sadly, so far, we have had 2 dead chicks due to being born prematurely before their yolks were absorbed into their navels. They pipped 2 days early and when I helped open the hole they were still very bloody as they had not absorbed the blood into their little bodies yet. Not knowing the rules of live and let live, I thought that it was only right for me to help them. I urge anyone reading this to leave their chicks be until a day or more goes by. I am crushed to know that I may have hurt them mortally by helping. We hatched 3 more by late last night that seem healthy, though one has a bit of a splayed leg. That's 5 out of the 48 we set out three weeks ago! We may have a few more hatchlings tonight, so we keep checking the incubator. I guess we will know by tomorrow night if we will have any more success. I also have 10 Red Sex Link chicks coming from a local school's hatching project tomorrow morning to join the littlest of the chicks. Thank goodness for our friends Brian and Erica who let us borrow some more brooding equipment. There is something glorious about knowing that we will have more creatures to add to our flock. Though it took me a while to warm up to the ducks, they are now highly prized and respected in my book. Lets all hope for females.

Schedule F

Again I attempt to do my own taxes, and again I go crawling to my accountant with my tail between my legs. I know it is not that complicated, but it is getting more and more complicated as I buy more equipment, and work on buying this farm. I bow down to the man in his button down and tie who sits at his desk and reads tax code for a living. Let me be good at planting and seeding and hoeing and let me admit that I just cannot be confident in my attempt to Free File.

We have been given a letter of commitment for a mortgage at Adirondack Trust. Now the paperwork floods in. We've chosen a lawyer and started signing. I had to overnight the papers to Chris in Texas. Now he is overnighting them back to town. Maria from Saratoga PLAN walked the boundaries of the 3 lots on the farm that will have easements. Sounds like I will soon be receiving another packet with the actual easement contract to peruse. The lawyer is ready. I have prepared him for restrictions, easements, rights of first refusal and variances. This is not your ordinary purchase of an ordinary home. Nope. This one might end with a ribbon cutting. I feel like I am being squeezed through the ringer being here alone to tend to the chores, start the farming season, and secure the loan and get the lawyers working. But this all feels lucky, like a blessing, rather than a pain. I know I don't deserve this. It is plainly too nice a place for me. So I will just have to educate myself and harness the power of my own muscles to earn its respect. I already know the people who have died here don't mind me. The neighbors are starting to hear the news and they seem glad we will stay. The sooner the farm is ours and we have a bit of privacy and solace here the better. Being caretakers has left us in a spotlight. I will be glad when the lights turn off and I can live my little hermit existence, tending this place in quiet with no one caring or watching. I don't want a boss or an employee. I am really yearning to find a way to make my living on the least amount of land, with the most effective crops. I don't want to expand or fill this place up. I don't want migrants and crews running about. I want this year to be peaceful.

On that note, I'd better quickly figure out my business plan for the year, having just yesterday found out I was approved for the Saratoga Farmer's Market to sell on Wednesdays from 3-6. Last year, it seemed a struggle to find a market for what I produced above and beyond what the CSA could absorb. I would run around frantically trying to offload this highly perishable product. This year, I will have an outlet that I hope can handle the excess without phone calls, door to door and worry. Plus, at market, there are no promises of what I will show up with week to week. I bring what I have. The CSA, while wonderful, is a complicated ballet requiring perfect timing and grace. Perhaps the transition to a viable market will make me feel better about myself as a business woman. I LOVED the little Greenfield Market on Middle Grove. There were no politics, grudges, cliques or taboos. But I just couldn't make a living. If I am going to help buy this farm, I need to start making smart choices about my time and the crops I choose to grow and sell. Maybe I can't always grow the funkiest looking vegetables anymore. Maybe I need to stick with the staples..... ok, as long as some are rainbow colored. When Michael Pollan tells you to eat the rainbow, you eat it, damn it.

The chicks have been candled. I am new to this, so at day 16, I am only positive about 10 chicks. The rest are probably yolkers or quitters as they call them, but I just don't have the heart to crack them open to see. I was only brave enough last night to crack 2. Both were yolkers. That leaves 46 eggs in the incubator getting close to hatching this weekend when Chris and his family arrive home. The process has been eye opening. I knew not of lethal genes and curly toe and humidity before this experiment. I look forward to being done with my egg turning though! Hopefully we'll have at least 6 healthy chicks this weekend in a brooder. Hopefully, they won't be mushy, have the yolk stuck to their navel, or have bulge eye.

In trying to print out my tax forms, I realized I need ink in the printer. Ain't that always the way.... off I go for errands galore.

Before and After

Sun Shower

After one week of living solo here at the farm, I am missing my man. The bed is colder, so it is easier to rise but my morning coffee is never just right like the way he makes it. I feed the cat, turn the eggs, feed the dog, feed the fish, stoke the fire, feed and water the chickens, check my onion sprouts, stack some firewood for the day, watch Pierre and his ladies scratching outside. The morning still seems precious to me, like why would I give it to a boss or a foreman. Here at the farm, it is mine. But it is better shared.

The chicks are better off out of the broken turner and in my care, but turning 48 eggs quickly 3 times a day about 8 hours apart for 21 days is quite the effort. I put an X on one side and and O on the other and flip them quickly. The temp (99.5) and humidity (50%) have been right. It is 7 days now and I am getting ready to candle. Just like turning, I will read about candling tonight. The turning apparently prevents strange deformities. So much to worry about. Again, The Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow really scares the crap out of me every time I read it. Curly toes, bulge eye, flip wing, red navel, lethal genes, inability to pip, sudden death due to infection. It all sounds like a freak show. I am about to be a mother of what could potentially be unsightly. Yet, so many of the problems I have read about in that book just never seem to affect my flocks. I spend nights paranoid about mineral deficiencies and cannibalism and mites and worms and prolapse and binding. I don't think it's ever happened.

This week was about patching and priming the small kitchen I am about to get certified to legally sell handmade foods from the farm. My dad was there with his collection of trowels and his smooth hand. Feathering spackle is an art and he happens to be quite good at it. The small west wing kitchen was a mess. Lots of holes, gashes, cracks and crappy taping. It was, like all other rooms here, linen white. Deciding to paint the kitchen "Sun Shower" yellow was a difficult task this morning. My girlfriends and I had breakfast  at Beverly's in town and I stopped at Allerdice to make the decision. I think I was there in the bright lights of the color swatch display for over an hour. I had Hosta Green, Light Moss, Stem Green, Canary Yellow, Sea Grass... all lined up next to a creamy linen white (the trim). Chris likes white. All white, everywhere, white white white. It can't be retro pickle green then. Our neighbor in the original Wing House on Grange Road has a lovely 2-toned kitchen made of 2 bold greens. She told me the story of painting it with her husband Frank. I love it, but this kitchen is made of light and sunshine, with ripple glass window panes and a sort of restorative view to the south. Sun Shower yellow it is. I may be crazy, but this house needs one colorful room. I almost went with American Clay. But I expect to make quite a mess in this kitchen, so washable it is.

 I think we were approved for a mortgage hands down, though not officially yet, at Adirondack Trust. Bank of America, HSBC, and Wells Fargo clammed up when they found out it was a working farm. They pretty much sounded like they were phobic of supporting a farmer. Not that they asked me what kind of farmer I was or what my business plan was or how much I made. They just flat out said they can't work with farms. The back up plan is to talk to First Pioneer in Cobleskill. I have hope though that we will hear good news tomorrow. Then the rush will be on for a lawyer with contracts to draw up and sign. The easement will finally be placed on the farm through Saratoga PLAN. There will be a lot of deed restrictions to put in place. One of the great deed restrictions is : No NYS designated invasive species can be introduced to the landscape.

I am off to begin painting now, with loud music playing Del McCoury in my beater jeans. Hopefully when the sun comes up tomorrow I will have a good idea what kind of yellow this yellow really is.

Incubating

For 21 days Christopher will be in training at his new job. For 21 days I will be incubating our chicks. They are due to hatch when Marlene and Roger come for a visit. During that time, our friends Kate and Dave will be moving in for a week to prepare for their hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. We have 48 eggs in various states in the incubator. Who knows how many are viable? Should I candle? We've had some trouble with the temp and we've had some trouble with the turner. I am tempted to just take the turner out and manually turn them a few times a day. It may be too late. Who knows? I am once again scanning the big wide internet, or "The Google" as President Bush used to call it, to see what the deal is with the "give-up and start again"threshold for this little homesteading lesson. Apparently the turning is very important.

My flock of 40 were all outside in the sun scratching in the dirt and the soggy lawn. The paths I have tramped down melted away first leaving little trails for the chickens to find their way to the grubs in the brambles. I wonder if a hen is constantly 99.5 degrees turning the eggs gently while she is in her trance. She won't eat or leave or give up for 3 weeks, as long as it takes.

Healthy Wealthy and Wise

Busy busy busy. Early to bed and early to rise. Chris has had his first 2 days at Global Foundries and is settling into his cubicle, getting up on the software he will be writing for and filling out forms. He booked travel for 3 weeks to Austin. Luckily, it coincides with the music festival South by Southwest, which will make the evenings fun. I have been bustling around the farm trying to tie up loose ends. The ends are fraying again, like always and I am behind. The story of farming. We managed to cut our 50 oak logs for this year's shiitakes. I have been finishing up orders with Jung, found my soil warming cables for my hotbed on Ebay, filled out a DBA for Wing Road Farm, printed out many ST-125 Tax Exempt forms, picked up my North Country Organics Pro-Gro from Saratoga Organics, grabbed some All Purpose Sand from Allerdice, renewed the great periodical Growing For Market, read about certifying my second kitchen under 20-C status regulations with NYS Department of Ag and Markets, ordered an expensive but worth it pallet of Vermont Compost, started putting together my Planet Whizbang wheelhoe, talked to a bunch of mortgage people at banks far and wide to compare rates. I have been a busy little farmer.

In the meantime, I had time to take a snowshoe with Stella today to the VanDyck's. We romped and roamed through the network of trails I have memorized to the tracks we are not supposed to be on to get to our friends' house without touching pavement. I carried a sack of spinach and managed to bump into Alan right over the overpass where I boldly walk over the traffic returning home from work. It reminds me of all the overpasses I tramped over on the AT with my backpack and face gloating with freedom while everyone else commuted home from the jails they are kept in all day. I love being outside when the winter turns to spring. He led me to a nice spring and also a place where a porcupine has made a den for over 100 years (not the same porcy.) They have a baby on the way any minute now, their daughter Tada knows my name, and they have 4 new Tamworth crosses in the fold with their goats and roosters. I called Chris to come pick me up and we borrowed their incubator to hatch our first Wing Road chickens.

Hatchlings! Fuzzy little chirpers will fill our basement again. They will be strange mixes- Maran meets Langshan, Orpinton, Aracauna, Australorp. The crosses will be amazing to behold I bet. Chris is giddy with delight and is reading me the rules of the game. No washing the eggs. Eggs must be stored fat end up and tilted twice a day. Keep them in a cool room until placing in the incubator. We will collect 48 eggs over the next 4 days or so and hope they will hatch when Chris' parents arrive at the end of the month. Having never hatched babies before, I feel like this will be a real treat for me. Now that we know how to raise and keep great layers, the next step is to replenish our flock here at home.

Off to read....