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...

Bad News Personal choices can have a far reaching effect on people that we just cannot comprehend. While the following information would be best discussed in a different forum, this very personal news is shared here only to point out that my past few weeks started on a less than stellar note.  Two weeks ago, I got a call from a family member that my sister was in the hospital and would most likely not go home. Turns out that though she has been getting treatment for multiple myeloma, a specific form of leukemia, for 3 years she has known about the disease for 6.  I and my siblings found out this info only last Tuesday. Of course I got on a plane the next day on the first flight out of Hilo and stayed the next week. She stabilized and seemed to be doing well enough that she went home. Most of my other siblings including me (we are 5 strong), started to head home one by one. That was bad news #1 JoAnn met me at the airport and on the way home she mentioned that the tu...

Our Second Brood We recently purchased a commercial version of a home incubator. A fancy way of saying a nice styrofoam box to hatch out chickens. We picked this up our local Del's Tractor Supply (no they don't sell tractors.) This one was the top of the line they had in stock. The Farm Innovator's Digital Circulated Air Incubator with Egg Turner.  It has a thermostatically controlled heater, a circulating fan to reduce hot and cool spots, a tray with room for 41 eggs, a motorized egg turner so we wouldn't have to, a lower set of water channels for maintaining the proper humidity, and small weave hardware cloth to keep the chicks out of the channels and the water once they'd hatched. It also has a large viewing window for watching the process, and a control module that keeps track on monitoring/ displaying the temperature, humidity % and the number of days left for incubation. Temp of the heater is preset, but you can change it to whatever you want in 1/2 deg...

Something other than Chickens What do you mean,"other than chickens?"  Yeah, there is life other than chickens at our little one acre farm. Today, JoAnn and I got the log moving system perfected. Let me go flashback a bit to explain and get you up to speed on this. One of our good friends, Julia  introduced us to couple that had just gotten their Rainbow Eucalyptus cut down, but the tree guys left it laying in their driveway. Our friends knew I had a chainsaw and thought, how nice it would be if we could go over and cut up the tree and haul it off for them. If you've never seen one, the Rainbow variety of the eucalyptus is stunning while alive, sporting an exterior set of reds, greens, some yellows and a few shade of the above. The inner wood is a rich set of browns, and pale off whites when dry. This photo is not me, nor my friends but it was the best non-"enhanced" picture of the tree I am speaking of. It can grow quite large, 'ours being 30" and...

Our Tour  Smell Free is possible! Farm Classes every Thursday Morning JoAnn and I signed up and attended a two part class at Hawaiian Sanctuary " Starting a Poultry Flock"   by Chris Hardenbrook, Owner of 13-Mile Farm. During the class he mentioned that his farm was smell and fly free and neither of us really believed that statement. We have been fighting flies since we got the chickens and we don't want to be bad neighbors so we were eager to talk to him more about this.  We waited after class to talk about arranging a farm tour and a few anxious days later  we were very excited to meet up with Chris. After getting lost once on the way, (it turns out that 13 mile road isn't really on any of the Hawaii maps), but we got there after a few clear directions by phone.   A little history: I grew up in an area that raised chickens for the some of the big commercial brands, Zacky and Foster Farms were the biggest, and the ranchers that raised the bird...