By now, many of you are saying good-bye to your summer gardens by canning and freezing all the produce you’ve worked so hard for all summer long, and saying hello to frost and freeze warnings in your area, I know I am.  They’ve come a tad bit early this year in our neck of the woods, but the good news is, I saw it coming!  In preparation of it, I went out and harvested what I could of all the green cherry tomatoes which I am going to attempt to ripen indoors.  Here’s how:

Most varieties of tomatoes need temperatures to be above 60 degrees to finish ripening. Where we live, by October, those days can be few and far between.  To speed up ripening of the existing green tomatoes on the vine, pinch off any new flowers.  If you’re in an area like us, there is a few things you can do to try and get every last tomato off your vines before winter sets in.

1.  You can use the tried and true method of simply bringing your green tomatoes inside and placing them in a sunny window sill turning them daily until they turn the desired red color.  This method works best on fruits that are already beginning to change color.

2.  You can pull out the entire plant and hang it in a dry, sheltered location, like the garage or basement. The fruits will continue to ripen and will still have some of the benefits of ripening on the vine. Try and take some roots with the plant and shake off any loose soil. You don’t want to hang the plants in direct sunlight or total darkness.

3.  You can wrap each individual green tomato in newspaper and layer in a box, no more than 2 layers deep. Place the box in a dark, dry spot and check weekly for progress. It usually takes 3-4 weeks for the tomatoes to ripen, but check frequently and remove any fruits that show signs of rotting.  *I personally do not have time to wrap each individual tomato, so I improvise by placing a single layer of tomatoes in a cardboard box.  Then I lay a sheet of newspaper over the layer and start a new layer.

Ripening Green Tomatoes in a box

4.  You can also place the green tomatoes in a paper bag with a ripe apple. The apple gives off ethylene gas, which speeds up ripening. Check the bag daily.

Keep in mind, not all of your green tomatoes will ripen and, by ripening them indoors, they will lose some of their flavor, but at least it won’t be as heartbreaking as seeing your huge bounty of green tomatoes get killed by a frost or freeze.

Here is our new alpaca baby, a sweet chocolate brown girl weighing in at 15 pounds, born just after 4:30 this afternoon!

female cria and Momma Buffy

cria kisses

female cria and Momma Buffy

Autumn is just about upon us once again.  Here in Southeastern MI we’ve had some pretty chilly nights and even some crisp days.  The daylight hours are getting shorter, the tops of the trees are showing some color and the summer gardens are just about done for the season.

With Mother Nature at her finest (at least for me) many are preparing for a long cold winter.

Usually around this time of year, many people start questioning how to keep their animals warm and comfortable thru the winter.  I have found the 1 animal most people seem to be concerned about is the wonderful Chicken.

I remember my first winter as a chicken keeper.  It was scary to say the least.  I remember that first really cold night.  The temperature dropped down to a very cold 12 degrees!  I only had 2 large breed hens then and I loved them so.  I couldn’t bear the thought of them freezing to death out there.  I thought about bringing them in the house for the night.  I even got up once in the middle of the night and went out to check on them.  I found them huddled together as tightly as possible and they looked cold.  Several more hours passed till morning came and I jumped out of bed and ran out to the coop, afraid I was going to find to frozen stiff chickens.  I opened the coop door (only a brisk 17 degrees now) and out they came, happy as can be!  They didn’t seem to care one bit that is was very cold outside.  After that first night, I thought and thought about different ways I could keep them warm without heating their coop.  Truth of the matter is, large breed chickens are more tolerant of the cold than the heat.  I had a small coop with a removable roof so I insulated it with straw by simply tying sections of straw to the roof panels on the inside.  I also stuffed the coop with layers of straw and pine shavings up to about an inch below the roost.  Picture a space about 3×3 feet packed with straw with only enough room for the girls to get to their roost and to the net box and leaving the vents clear.  Most nights I would find a thin layer of ice in their waterer, but it was thin enough for them to easily break thru if they got thirsty.  That was a sign that even though the outside temps were well below freezing, the straw stuffed coop was staying relatively warm with just the 2 hens body heat.  I didn’t worry after that.

I also have a chain link run for the girls during the day that I sided with left over vinyl siding I had on hand from siding the house.  I sided the North, West, and East sides of it and half the roof was also covered.  This helped shield them from the brutal winds and weather.  Al winter long they pecked their day away, comfortably.

***Note:  This has nothing to do with keeping chickens warm in the winter but if you still want to have fresh eggs every day, you will need to add supplemental light (not a heat light).  This can be done by simply hanging a 100 watt light in your coop or run and turning it on either a few hours before sunrise or to extend the day after sunset.  There is some varied opinions out there as to whether it is best to add extra light in the wee morning hours or at night.  I personally do not have a timer….yet, so I extend the daylight hours for them at night.  Just before it starts getting dark I turn their light on until I’m ready to go to bed, at which point, the girls go into their coop where I have an orange colored sensor light that goes out rather quickly.  This helps to ease them into the dark hours.  I have not experienced any problems or issues adding light later in the day, nor do my chickens show any signs of being stressed by it.  The important thing in any circumstance is to carefully observe your flock.  What might be good for one person’s flock may not be right for another’s.  Watch, observe and modify as you see fit to meet the needs of your beloved feathered friends.

2 weeks from today our lovely alpaca “Buffy” is due with her 6th cria and we are so excited!  What is a cria you ask?  A cria (pronounced CREE-AH) is a baby alpaca.  Let me tell you a little bit about crias.  Gestation in alpacas is a long 11 months!  Can you imagine! When crias are born, they remind me of horses, they are all legs.  Newborn crias can weigh on average between 14 and 18 pounds at birth.  They are usually up and walking, more like wobbling, around in about an hour after birth, nursing soon after.  It is very rare for an alpaca to give birth to twins.  Crias stay close to mom for the first 6 months, but can wean earlier.  I just love crias, they are so playful and so curious, just a joy to watch out in the pasture.

About 3 weeks after giving birth, Momma alpaca is already ready to conceive again!!  I am so happy I am not an alpaca!!  This is their natural way of life.

alpaca cria, Buffy in back ground

newborn cria

Buffy and Baby

Just up! First time up on her feet!

Look at our visitor last night!  Scary stuff when it’s sitting less than 5 feet away from my 17 chickens!

Did you know:

There are more than 60 different species of opossum, and it’s the only marsupial (pouched mammal) found in the United States and Canada.

A female opossum gives birth to as many as 20 babies in 1 litter.  Her young are as tiny as honeybees. However, less than half of them survive.  Some never even make it to the pouch.  Once born, babies immediately crawl into the mother’s pouch, where they continue to develop. As they get larger, they will go in and out of the pouch and sometimes ride on the mother’s back as she hunts for food.

Opossums are scavengers, and they are often found near garbage cans, and dumpsters. They can often be spotted near roadkill. They are a common city dweller.  Opossums also eat grass, nuts, and fruit. They will hunt mice, birds, insects, worms, snakes, and even CHICKENS!

This opossum was definitely looking for a chicken dinner!  I can not stress enough how important it is to predator proof your chicken coop and run!  Mine has been put to the test several times, this summer alone!  Thankfully my feathered friends stay safe up on their roosts because this guy doesn’t stand a chance on getting in!

Opossum

Well, once again I have been a little MIA.  The end of summer is a very busy time around here and we’ve been enjoying it!  Here’s some of what we’ve been up to:

The incubators have been very hard at work for several months now, but the time has come to store them away:(  It makes me sad, yet a break from hatching, setting up brooders, moving chicks to the outside playpen, introducing them to the rest of the flock and selling chicks, is a nice change.  The last to hatch were these 2 surprise Silkies from mail order eggs a friend gave me.  These are 2 firsts for us, a lovely “Showgirl Silkie and a Partridge Silkie.” I believe that is her color anyway.

They are now 1 week old.

Showgirl and Partridge Silkies

Showgirl and Partridge Silkies

If there’s 1 thing I’ve learned from raising Coturnix quail it’s the fact that they are very ruthless and cannibalistic!  This happens mostly when new members are introduced to the flock.  I use the “playpen” method and several distractions such as treats a new hiding place etc. when introducing new members but this doesn’t always work, they are not very accepting no matter what efforts are made to make the transition go smoothly.

Earlier this week, I introduced some newbies to the flock and a few days went by with no drama, and then…….last night while doing my nightly routine with the animals, I found this girl (see photo).  She’s 1 of the newbies and she has been singled out by the others.  They have “scalped” her!

scalped quail

It’s ugly I know but believe it or not she’s doing ok.  A little time away from the flock and some antibacterial ointment (without pain reliever) and back into the flock she goes.

One thing I don’t recommend in a case such as this, is isolating from the flock unless you use the “playpen” method again for the simple fact that, you CAN NOT introduce just 1 bird to a whole flock, the others will kill the single bird!  I took her out for about an hour, treated her, made sure she got some food and water and then once all the others were down for the night, I placed her back into the coop.

This morning I found her hanging out in a corner with a large male laying beside her, hopefully he is protecting her.  The others don’t seem interested in her so far today.  I will have to keep a close eye on them and repeat the process if it happens again.  I will keep ointment on her head which will hopefully help to keep the others from pecking at her.

It’s always something with these quail.  I believe I have more dramatic adventures with them, then any other animal on the ranch.

Been busy around here but what else is new.  The new peeps are doing well and starting to feather out already.  Unfortunately we’ve lost 2 quail babies and 1 has bad eyes that keep getting stuck shut for some reason, so I’m having to clean them and open them up several times a day so the poor thing can find the food and water.

Moved the big cage a.k.a grow out brooder, outside so the youngsters got their first taste of spending the night outside for the first time last night and it got down to a chilly 51 degrees, but they’re all doing well this morning.

I still have 6 Seramas that need new homes ASAP!  With the cooler weather moving in and the cold being here before we know, the flock will soon need to be cooped up at night and there isn’t enough room for them.  So if anyone local is interested, send me an email [email protected]  I have them priced to sell quick at an unbelievable price for Seramas!

Still have 10 eggs in the bator.  This will be my last hatch till spring (boo-hoo).  It saddens me to pack my bator away but chicks are too hard to find homes for in the winter months.

Our pregnant alpaca “Buffy” is due in a little over a month so the excitement is building!  Hoping for another grey girl.  Buffy has been amazing with giving us gorgeous girls, so fingers are crossed for another.

The gardens are starting to wind down.  Tomatoes, peppers and corn are just about the only things still producing so I’m really hoping for a day soon that I can get out there and pull all the spent plants and replace with some others that will give us a fall harvest, but it’s getting late so we’ll see.

That about wraps it up around here.  How are things at your place?

Once again I’ve been busy hatching out chicks, yes I am a true hatch-o-holic and there’s no cure!  Monday we had 18 Coturnix quail hatch and 2 Serama Bantams.  Aren’t they adorable!!  In case you can’t tell who’s who, the larger white sleeping chick in front and the black chick are the 2 Seramas.  I also want to let all my local friends know that they are for sale along with some older peeps from the last 2 previous hatches.  I will not ship them so you must be local or willing to drive.  As nature would have it, fall is almost here so this is my last hatch for Seramas and quail until spring.  I still have silkies and polish in the bators, but once they’re hatched I will be packing up the bators until spring, and it just breaks my heart.

Peeps

CONGRATULATIONS Jennifer West Burress, you are our lucky winner in the “what’s your favorite farm animal GIVEAWAY!” Please email your mailing info to [email protected]  so we can get your prize in the mail to you!

Thank you to everyone who participated and as always, thank you for making our page so much fun!