Top view of some of the tomatoes, we have them at various stages in prep forripening in the hoop house. Some of our favorite varieties are Determinate and some
are Indeterminate. Determinate means that the plant has a primary and a secondary
axis, producing a limited supply of fruit/ ripen at relatively same time frame.
Indeterminate has a central axis, growing, indefinitely in length, producing a
succession of lateral branches, bearing flower buds. Indeterminate will ripen
throughout the season.
We'll work on re-potting in a week or so, depending on the weather and will
move them to our small outdoor greenhouse during the day and back in, in
the evenings, or we may hook up our milk house heater and leave them out.
Many of our herbs have long germination times, but they are beginning to
fill in and grow well. We are however again struggling with our sweet and hot
peppers. The seed is viable, we check by sprouting some on a moist paper
towel. So I'm either over watering them or under watering*sigh* I've replanted
them for the second time and pray they sprout.
As we've educated ourselves about GMO's and commercial animal feeds,
we've been on a path of making and mixing our own feeds. Today I'm grinding
our chick feed, this will supply a weeks worth of feed for the small chicks. As they
grow you'll need to increase your amounts Here is what we grind;
2c. organic barley
2c. organic oat groats
1-1/2 c. Painted Mountain Indian corn
2c. red winter wheat
1/2 c. organic flax seed
1/2 c organic sunflower seed
and to this I add;
3-4 Tbsp. granular garlic
2tsp. sea salt
4-5 Tbsp. Thorvin Kelp
1 tsp. of each herb listed; yarrow, oregano, rosemary and basil.
Here is the Painter Mountain Indian corn, we grow each year for ourselves as
as well as for animal feed.
Everything added and waiting to be mixed. It smells wonderful! Okay now
don't laugh, but..... it makes their poo smell better too, LOL! Mike even says it
smells like Italian something *wink*
You can see the different textures in the grains, some I grind finer than
others for better absorption. They love it and we place a small plastic lid
full of sand and small grit in along with their food and water. We also
begin introducing grated up carrots, lettuce, squash, bread crumbs, etc...
This is when they learn to become beggars*wink*
3 comments:
Wonderful on the chick food.
Phelan,
Thank you, it's been a trial and error learning curve with the turkeys, but thankfully the chick are far more hardy and actually thrive on this mix.
Mrs. T,
I just learned what the difference was last season. I knew some produced their crops pretty much all at once and others were more everbearing but didn't know this is what they called them*wink*
Yes, we tell all of our animals we sure hope they appreciate all we go through to give them a great life. This is why we don't feel bad when it comes time for butchering, what life they lived they truly wanted for nothing!, LOL!
Michaela,
For the adults we feed a course grind, mix of 50# ea. corn, oats, barley( if we have it on hand), wheat and 3 small coffee cans full of whole sunflower seeds. Then to this we add Throvin kelp( small coffee can full) When we have extra milk of clabbered milk we give it to the chickens as well and they get leftover scraps from meal preps and left over items we*blush* miss in the frig and can't remember how old it is, but yet it isn't spoiled or moldy. Those items, spoiled( on rare occasion, not meat) got to the compost pile.
In winter we make a hot mash with this mix and add molasses, garlic and herbs if needed. We also feed alfalfa hay in winter and the chickens free range in the afternoons in the warmer seasons. We're hoping to fence our property so they can free range more than a few hours, but right now if we let them out any longer than that they get us in trouble with some crabby neighbors a few houses down*sigh* You'd think that if they had 6 acres they'd be content, NOPE, grass is greener across the road and down the way.
I've never heard of someone making their own chicken feed. Leave it up to you. lol. I'm going to have to try it now. lol.
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