Big Island Chickens

Our "Teens" started laying The eggs are a bit on the small side for one of them. We got 15 eggs today, including the Peewee egg. We are ramping up our bid for food independence by raising our own chickens for meat and eggs, and for that, we need hens. We are building our laying flock up to 30 adult hens and will maintain that level until we feel a need to change. We obviously can't eat 25-30 eggs a day so the surplus eggs are to being sold to offset the feed cost. We are already selling to a local organic restaurant in a town down the road a piece.   We keep our hens in a coop and run so while they are "Free-Range" according to the US Government, they are confined for many reasons. One of which is that we do not want our chickens to become our neighbors dog's dinner. Their Coop is 64 square feet, with a second internal story, and the run is 20x20, so plenty of room for our initial flock. The small 'Mini-Cooper' on the left is the brooder we ...

Are there really such things?  Yes, Virginia. Chocolate grows on trees. Willy Wonka's ultimate dream! Rows of trees with bars hanging low for easy picking. 10-12 bars on each branch, 200 or more on each tree- Ready to make into Truffles, bars, creams, sauces and powders. What a dream but alas, all dreams fade in the mornings first light. Oh, Chocolate does grow on trees, but not like this, though it would make pruning less of chore wouldn't it? They grow like this. Medium height tree, with the seeds that chocolate is made from set in thick football shaped pods that grow directly out of the trunks and limbs rather than out on the outer portions of the terminal branches on fruit spurs like most other fruit.  And unlike other fruit, chocolate pods have to go through an intensive set of processing steps to become what we know as Chocolate. Fermenting, drying, classifying, milling, pressing, heating, mixing, tempering and a few I can't remember off...

The Pineapple Bed is in Start from a store bought pineapple I went for mulch yesterday and decided instead of putting it in the new chicken pen area (yes, I know that mulching the expansion should be this post, but...), that I would start a new pineapple bed.  I have been collecting pineapple tops from the ones we and our friends are eating and putting them into our saved and recycled pots. Its been a few months and many have really established roots on them. One or two needed to be planted as their roots are feeling their way out of the drainage holes.  I am a newbie to pineapple growing so most of my info is coming from interweb searches. This is a two to three year investment of time and space since I get the starts free.  This is what our little ones looked like in the front horseshoe last year. They turned a bright yellow and wow, did they small good! I have both the yellow and white varieties of fruit, white being preferred here by the locals. I s...