Friday, December 30, 2005

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.



Wednesday, December 28, 2005

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.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

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.


Friday, December 16, 2005

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.


Tuesday, December 06, 2005

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!

Sunday, December 04, 2005

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".