Good day farmers! It has been a pretty interesting month, so I figured I would share a few thoughts about it.

 

First, we have lost several chickens this month.  At first, I thought they were just heading into the woods and roosting in a tree, but it soon became apparent what had been going on.  Michelle was cooking fondant in the kitchen a couple weeks ago.  She looked out and saw a bird in the yard.  She thinks “that is not a chicken, but it sure is pretty”, then heads outside.  As she snaps a picture of this magnificent and beautiful bird…it flies off with one of the 3 month old hens in its claws. Upon inspecting her photo, I determined that the culprit was a hawk.  We have both California and Bald eagles around here, but this was definitely not an eagle. I had the chance to watch the hawk a few days later. It perched on a high tree overlooking the yard as the hens were perusing the foliage.  A couple of times, the hawk spread it’s wings out and I would guess (bear in mind I was at least 100 feet away) that the wingspan was three to four feet.  It was a massive bird.  At any rate, it must have seen me milling about because it finally decided to move on.  Almost as soon as it left the perch and started gliding toward someone else’s land, Gaston (the rooster) starts clucking like crazy and all of the chickens started squawking and flapping their wings while running toward the forest.  I guess he isn’t such a bad guy to have around, though he still can’t quite figure out how to properly stay on a hen’s back when trying to make baby chicks.  He jumps on and immediately falls over her head and lands on his face.  It’s pretty funny to watch.  Anyway, as we have now lost 6 chickens (5 chicks and our smallest laying hen – Road Runner) I started looking into having the ODFW come out and remove it.  They have no such service.  I’m not really sure what to do with free range chickens when they have a daytime predator stalking them.  The dogs aren’t really outside much during the winter and there is obviously less human activity around the property, so it makes things rather difficult.  What are your thoughts on how to address this problem?  Have you had to deal with a predatory bird before?  What was the result?  Let me know in the comments.  The chickens have moved into their winter egg production, so it has died down by about 30% from the peak.  We have ten chicks now that should be starting to lay around summer time, so we will have a good amount of laying hens here pretty soon.  We had one hen, Ben Richards — who was nesting in the shop, decide yesterday that she was done nesting after a month and a half.  I suspect that either she was off the eggs too much or they weren’t fertilized due to our inept rooster, Gaston.  I will crack a couple of the eggs open tonight, since we can’t eat them now, and see which is the case.  We also have another hen in the hen house, nesting.  She has no name yet, but she took over for Road Runner when she got eaten by the hawk (I found her body in the woods).  Once I realized that Road Runner wasn’t coming back, I tossed all of her eggs under a red chicken that was attempting to nest on a fake egg.  I had previously been throwing her off that egg to stop her from nesting, but it ended up being good that I had one to keep the eggs going (assuming any of them are fertilized).  At any rate, we should have enough daily eggs to start selling them come summer.  If you are interested in being notified when we start selling eggs, please send an email to priddyacres@gmail.com and we will get back to you in early summer.

In other news, the bees have successfully moved into winter mode. We put those quilt boxes on top and they seem to be doing what they were designed to do.  I think I will get a more loose weave burlap next year, though.  The stuff we put on there, the gardening cloth, works, but it seems to restrict the airflow just enough that all the moisture is absorbed on the bottom of the layer of absorbent material (paper in our case) when it is supposed to go to the top then get dried out by the air coming through the holes.  I also think that we could have put less of the paper in there so air could more easily migrate through it, but they are still working.  I looked inside, while trying to be as non-invasive as possible since it is cold right now, and verified that the cluster is at the top of the hive right now in two of the hives.  I won’t open up the hives completely until we are over 45-50 degrees.  I don’t want them freezing.  If we have a 50% survival rate for our bees, it will be pretty much the average for beekeepers in the Willamette Valley.  Of course, that doesn’t make you feel any better about losing a hive.  We’ll see what the result of overwintering is in February or March when it is time to do another mite treatment.  Hopefully, I will find five hives full of fat bees ready for spring. Lastly, we have been slowly working on the woodshed remodel.

 

I finally got all the materials I need for the new roof, so that should be going up in the next week or so.  It was extremely difficult to locate reasonably priced plywood for the roofing.  Back in May and June, plywood was about $10 a sheet. Now, the cheapest I could find was $17 a sheet and that’s IF I could find any.  The first place I went only had seven sheets and it was $22 a sheet for five-ply 5/8 inch CDX.  I bought all they had. I ended up going to one other place and it was $17 a sheet for the same, but they had quite a bit more.  Evidently, due to all the hurricanes and whatnot that have hit this country, plywood is selling like it is going out of style.  Basic economics: if demand goes up and supply stays the same, price goes up. Anyway, I finished buying all the 32 sheets I needed for the roof.  A lot of people asked me why I didn’t go with OSB (oriented strand board) for the roof sheeting.  My dad, who has decades of experience building houses, says that using OSB increases the chance that your roof will start to sag.  The sagging is due to getting moisture on the OSB, I’m guessing because OSB is pretty much wood chips held together with glue. I’ll be giving the roofer a call tomorrow night to see if I can arrange a time for him to come put my roof on since I really don’t want to do it and he is way faster than I would be.  Once that is done, I can finally start working on the stuff I know how to do: wiring, insulating, sheetrock, etc.  I’m hoping to have it finished by springtime so I can use it as a service area when my younger son gets married in June.  Yes, that means that I will be having another wedding on the property. As if the first two weren’t enough work.  I do think this one will be significantly easier to handle, though.  It is early enough in the summer that we won’t have to worry about the extremely high temperatures that plagued our state late summer last year, the woodshed remodel will be mostly completed (if not done), and there will be significantly less work to be done.  We can spend most of our time beautifying the property and getting ready for the event.  I am really looking forward to seeing how utilizing the northern part of the property for a wedding venue will work now that everything is mostly done.  Last summer wasn’t the greatest gauge since we didn’t have everything done so we couldn’t charge a normal rate.  With each event that we hold here, we are finding new ways to improve the experience of those who use our venue.

 

Well, I guess that’s it for now.  Hopefully, everyone has a great Thanksgiving feast lined up and is looking forward to my favorite time of year.