Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Turkey's Have Arrived

On Wednesday, April 18th, David & Debbie went to the Post Office and picked up ten 2-day old turkey chicks and brought them to the farm. Unfortunately, one died after arriving home but the other nine seem to be thriving.

One-Week Old Turkey Chicks

It will be approximately three weeks total (two weeks from tomorrow) before they can be let loose in their run. Prior to being let loose, David plans to acclimate them to the outdoors and to the shelter.

Unfortunately the weather is still not cooperating as it is still raining off and on, and tilling still cannot be accomplished.

All "farms" have a variety of "junk" sitting around, farmers tend not to throw anything away and the Baker's seem to be excelling in this practice. As a result, Debbie has been able to start a (sometimes unique) container garden so that we can at least have some tomatoes and other vegetables.


The Old Gas Grill - Our herb garden, which includes chives, cilantro, parsley, dill, and sweet basil. On the sides are bell peppers.


The Old Bar-B-Que - The kitchen garden, which includes radishes and green onions. In the pots on the left are bell peppers, and on the right is spearmint.


Standard Pots on the Bench - Red containers are heirloom Cherokee Purple Tomatoes, the cucumbers in the long container did not make it (something will be planted in their place), on the far left of the back row is a Mr. Stripey tomato, in the large container next to the cucumbers that did not make it are heirloom Johnson tomatoes, and at the far left in the front row is zucchini (every garden needs some). In the container on the deck to the left of the bench are regular tomatoes.

In addition, there are geraniums to plant (a fund raiser for Elizabeth's school) and wild flower seeds have been sowed in the bulb containers.

Work has started on the hen house. Hopefully Donald and David will have that complete in the next two - three weeks. Once the Turkey chicks have been transferred to the Turkey run, the chickens will be ordered.

We continue to hope that we can get the test garden tilled and planted by mid-May, if so, we can still have a good initial crop. Once the pasture dries out we will start preparing the 1/2 acre plots for development. We hope to have the crop plots in cover crops by the end of summer and all necessary fencing up. The front four plots will not need cross fencing; however, we will be cross-fencing the back plots and hope to have that started by fall. We will need to cut/trim trees along the eastern edge of the pasture to allow for a road.

Until next week,

The Baker Family


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