Summer, at last.

 It is SO hard to keep up with all things farm and homestead related during the school (work) year.  At last it's summer and I can try to settle in to the rhythm of growing things, baking things and hopefully at some point deep cleaning the house. These last couple days I've been able to use food from our gardens to make dinner and a desert. With prices as they are, the more we can grow, the more we can save. 

First up Haskap/ Honeyberry cake! We have a great crop of these berries this year. Getting our first plant years ago (on clearance) was a great choice and now I pick up one or two more should I happen to find them on end of season clearance. These berries grow so well in our area, they can deal with the cold winter temperatures. The berries are not as sweet as blueberries but they are very good especially when fully ripe. 

honeyberries on bush

The berry cake it was nearly all gone by the time I took the picture!

We also have some veggies ready in the gardens. I started plants indoors very early and the result is nice large Kale and other greens plants. As for the garlic that I started last fall, some are now at the point of growing scapes which can be used to give a garlicky taste to recipes. I used the garlic scapes cut up small, along with chives, in some rolls and bread. I also used the scapes in a stir fry along with various garden greens and some green onions and small onion bulbs (which have grown a bit out of control again this year) The onions that we planted years ago have perrenialized and go on and on and....So we will harvest some of them small and use that way to free up space where these have taken over. 

Garlic Scapes

KitKat helping

So many little and not so little onion plants!

Curly Kale

"Dinosaur" Kale

Chives

Garlic Scape and Chive rolls well the last few anyway! They were very garlicky but I think everyone liked them.

Chicks growing up and integrating with the flock

 This years' chicks have had a little extra challenge. They aren't all the same age, not even close enough the brood completely together. I don't mind a good challenge and have made it work. First off we ordered some chicks from an area feed store and the different breeds came in over a 3 week period of time. One breed was a full week earlier than the first expected week which led to an even bigger gap between the purchased chicks and a small group of bantams that we were hatching from within our own flock. So we did 2 brooders, one brooder for the chicks all within that 3 week early range and the other brooder for the bantams who are about a month younger than the oldest chicks in the first group. I kept the two brooders next to each other so both groups of chicks could see each other. Once I started bringing chicks outside I had both groups mingle at times. Later when it was time to move to the coop-within larger brooder cages, I kept both groups near each other. It's all worked fairly well. The older group is not fully integrated with the adult flock and the younger group are getting close to full, safe integration. I would fully integrate the bantams this week but as I have 2 weeks of work left at the school I will probably have to wait until that time is up, we will see as time goes. I feel more comfortable with integrating bantams when I am around all day. This weekend so far they have been out with the flock for several hours and it has gone well so far. It looks like all the purchased chicks are female, as for the bantams it looks like 2 males, 2 females and the silkie will be the tiebreaker. I'm slightly leaning female for her. Silkies can take many months to reveal gender.

Not the best picture but two brooder cages next to each other.

Bantams

older chicks

That time we had a scheduled 4 hour power outage, small EcoFlow power supply kept everyone comfy and warm.

One bantam mama hen- frizzled  bantam cochin

Other bantam mama silkie (we have a few possibles not sure which silkie eggs they were.

outside time for large and small chicks.

The growing bantams

Silkie- hen was one of our silkies, rooster was Mr. Pain our silkie rooster.

Polish/silkie mix "Polkie" they are called. Silkie hen x white crested black Polish roo

Black frizzle chick Frizzle bantam cochin hen x spitzhauben roo

Brown/black frizzle chick- frizzled cochin hen x spithauben or polish roo

Speckled frizzled chick- cohcin hen x sptzhauben or silkie roo (still rying to work this one out).

Better look at the brown/black chick's colors

Some of the old timers hanging out.

some of the older chicks