Tuesday 11 June 2013

Staple Seeds and Bigger Birds

Whew! It has been a busy, busy few weeks!  Our apologies for the trickle of blog updates.  Rest assured, it means more farming is being done. 

So what have we been up to at The Birds and the Beans?  Lots of planting! As this is our first year farming, we were a bit late getting our spades into the ground-- trying to figure out where exactly we can put our spades.  As a result, we missed the early planting season, so we decided to make up for lost time by planting the majority of our staple crops in the last three weeks. We’ve seeded wheat, barley, peas, oats, lentils, quinoa, buckwheat, beans, popcorn, and potatoes.  We also transplanted some seedlings: mainly winter squash, onions, and leeks so far, with many more to come. 

With regards to the chickens, they are now three weeks old.  We have now moved them from the brooding barn to the great outdoors.  We’ve had to assemble a sort of ‘intermediate accommodation’ to ensure they don’t freeze in the chilly June nights, since some of them still don’t have feathers on their rumps.  (A big thanks to our neighbour for lending us an old coop to use.)  We’re excited to have our quickly growing chicks out foraging on pasture.  Many pasture poultry producers won’t introduce the chickens to pasture until they are older, but we want to maximise the portion of their lives they spend on pasture.  

Check out our Products page for details about ordering meat birds.  They’ll be ready July 3.


Stay tuned for more updates –if all goes well we’ll be seeing you at the market in July!

One of our more handsome birds.