Some of our Marans & our darkest eggs

Here is a picture of our darkest eggs to date. Also I have posted two pictures I took yesterday as I was getting the eggs.

Greenhouse Heater

As part of the packaged greenhouse from Farmtek, I also got a propane heater. It is one of those wall mount ventless types from Desa. They are also know as Glo-Warm heaters. I decided to mount the heater on a piece of concrete hardboard that I got from Home Depot. I mounted the hardboard to the aluminum wall supports. I used the cement hardboard because I didn't know how much heat the heater would generate and I didn't want the polycarbonate wall melting. It all worked out pretty good. I put a 100 pound propane tank in back of the greenhouse and piped in the propane underground. Now I just have to see how long it taks to burn through 100 lbs. of proapne during the winter. We haven't put any plants in yet, but are planning on starting germinating in February.

Marans Eggs Comparison

I gathered about 18 eggs today. The marans are now laying regularly. So I decided to take the 12 darkest and compare them to the color chart. Well here it is. Let me know what you think about the color. I think the dark ones are 6 & 7s. They are all from the Cratty line. I got them this spring from Kelly.

30 Dozen Christmas Cookies

Today we made over 30 dozen Finnish Fingers Christmas cookies. Some people call them "matchsticks", but we like Finnish Fingers instead.

Christmas Tree

Two pictures of the Christmas tree that Mon & Dad gave us last year. This was the one that they used to use, but now they have a smaller one.

More Marans Comparison

Jim wanted to see what the comparison was between the Marans eggs and the Golden Red (aka Golden Comets) . Left to right in this pciture are the Marans, Golden Red and Buff Orpington eggs. Today we got a total of 18 from our hens. They are finally startingto produce on a regular basis, I hope!

Maran's Finally Laying

The Maran's hens that we got back in June from the Cratty line of Marans have finally started laying. The ten around the outside are from the marans, the two in the middle are from our Buff Orpington hens for color comparison. We hope to get many more, but we had to put a light in the coop to give them their 15 hours of "daylight".

Greenhouse is Done!

Last night in the 60 degree weather, Elly and I put the remaining 12 panels on the greenhouse. Yeah!

Pictures of the completed greenhouse will be up shortly.

Our Greenhouse Almost Done

This is the greenhouse we bought from www.farmtek.com in the Spring of 2005. It stayed in boxed in our garage all summer while we built the second coop.

We also had all the tall trees chopped down to allow the sunlight to come in. We finally got around to starting it in October and are now just about done Hurrah!

There are windows on the top that can be opened to let the hot air out.

For the base and to level it we use a material call "graded base" from www.powellstone.com It is basically "stone dust" with 3/4" aggregate. The stuff packs great. Good thing I have a tractor to move the stuff and spread it around!