Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Asberry Acres Permaculture Forest Farm - Planting Slowing Down

The reasons are two-fold: most of the plants have been planted, woohoo! and, at the moment, I'm still trying to resolve the drain right-of-way issue with the County Drainage Board. Although the right-of-way issue won't affect much of the property, it does interfere with some of my plan. In particular, it interferes with the placement of a Korean Pine windbreak. Still, I've marked out where the trees outside the 75' zone will go.

The five chicks are still doing fairly well. The two Brahmans have a few feathers missing as does one of the Rhode Island Reds. While goofing around with the girls, I made a crow sound ("caw") and one of the Brahmans tried to respond -- and not a single sound came out! We all had a chuckle as it would do this every time we made the noise. Which got me to thinking, Ostrich (his name) is probably a rooster. He started out being one of the smallest chicks and is already bigger than all the rest. The chicks are definitely starting to mature - they have most of their adult feathers now although Ostrich still has tufts of fluff. And, every so often we'll hear one cluck instead of the cute little chirp.

I'm figuring the pecking and missing feathers is due to space stress so I'm planning on making two chicken tractors instead of just one. We haven't taken the birds (in dog kennels) outside just yet since the dog is still a threat. In fact, the escape artist was found out of her harness and was begging for treats this morning.

The long weekend ended on a good note:
Is it even possible? Can it be? Yes! Clear skies!