Henrietta from Australia has a Strava account, and the number of steps she takes every day may make you feel like you need to get out more. Did I mention that Henrietta is a chicken? Henrietta the ‘chook’ lives on a farm owned by Australian company Honest Eggs Co., and she’s one of the first chickens to test out FitChix, a chicken activity tracker.
FitChix Chicken-Friendly Activity Tracker
Tracking the health of livestock is an important part of farming. Animals don’t always respond to pain, illness or stress the same way humans do. Because they can’t tell us when they are feeling sick, hungry, cold or tired, it can be a struggle to determine what illness a flock has or whether they’re getting enough food and exercise.
Monitoring the well-being of chickens is just one of the reasons why Honest Eggs Co. invented the first fitness tracker for chickens.
Honest Eggs Co. wanted to capture and share the activity levels of their birds with the people who buy their eggs. They did this to eliminate any questions about how free-range their eggs are. By tracking their chickens and stamping the activity level of their hens right on the egg, anyone buying the eggs would know they really were from true free-range hens.
How FitChix Works
If you wear an activity tracker yourself, you know how it tracks your daily steps, distance and other metrics like calories burned, GPS or heart rate. Just like our own fitness trackers, FitChix likely uses an accelerometer to monitor steps.
Accelerometers are sensors that detect movement. As the chicken goes about its day, the device tracks activity and logs it in software. As shown in Henrietta’s Strava account, the device also appears to track distance and durations.
Honest Egg Co. takes their chicken’s step count and prints it right on the egg. If you buy eggs from them, you can open your egg carton in the morning and be greeted with a number that shows you how many steps the chickens took before laying the egg.
The only catch? The company doesn’t track individual hen data and print it separately on each egg. Instead, Honest Eggs Co. prints an average of their collective hens’ steps on each dozen.
FitChix isn’t an intrusive device, so there is no harm for the chickens. It’s a small fitness tracker that sits on the hen’s back. Honest Egg Co. has said they don’t require their chickens to wear the tracker all the time but instead use it occasionally to monitor activity.
More Chicken Trackers Could Be on the Way
FitChix isn’t a device available for purchase for your own flock, but there is another chicken fitness tracker in development that we may see in the future. Researchers at the University of California in Riverside have been working on a ‘Fitbit for chickens’ since 2018.
The device is a small backpack the chicken wears, and the researchers use an algorithm that analyzes different chicken behavior. When a chicken wears the backpack, researchers can see whether she is pecking or dust-bathing, or if she is feeling under the weather. Incredibly, the algorithm can also let them know if the chicken is suffering from illnesses like parasites.
Coming Soon to a Farm Near You?
There are GPS dog trackers, rumination collars to monitor cows, and even trackers to see where your barn cat wanders during the day. Are chicken trackers the next big trend for poultry owners?
Time will tell. But if they do appear on the market, we’ll all be able to gain valuable insight into the lives of our chickens.
The following is an excerpt from Eric and Joy McEwen‘s new book Raising Resilient Bees(Chelsea Green Publishing July 2023) and is printed with permission from the publisher.
courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing
In our early beekeeping days, we joined the Southern Oregon Beekeepers Association. Among the otherwise older membership was one younger, enthusiastic, and forward-thinking individual: John Jacob of Old Sol Apiaries, located in nearby Rogue River, Oregon. John is a pioneer in rearing queens from survivor stock—from honey bees that forgo treatment for control of varroa populations and live to tell about it. Like our early efforts, John’s projects experienced much criticism, and his queens were initially dubiously received. At the time, breeding queens of any sort was not a feat being undertaken in Oregon to any significant extent due to the much colder and wetter springs than the neighboring states to the south. Furthermore, queens raised from lines that were not the product of extensive line breeding with bees of known parentage were viewed as inferior. But John was a meticulous perfectionist. He taught us and others about the magic behind a well-reared queen and the methods required to reliably produce one, and Old Sol became the main source of new genetics into our isolated operation for many years.
One of the wisest things we ever learned from John was the foundation of the entire natural queen-rearing endeavor: understanding why bees raise queens in the first place. What is the impulse that bees are responding to when they raise a queen? What triggers their efforts? Can these conditions be replicated? And if so, can they be replicated in a manner that consistently stimulates the rearing of healthy, vigorous queens? The queens we had purchased over the years made it clear that the conditions of queen raising could be carried out poorly; John proved to us that there was a better way.
One reason a colony will initiate queen rearing is abundance. When a nectar flow is on and the hive is filling with nectar at a very fast rate, a colony may be overflowing with both young bees and the stores needed to support them. These positive conditions incite the bees to raise new queens in anticipation of swarming. One measurable factor that contributes to the swarm impulse is hive congestion. As the foragers require an ever-increasing amount of time to find house bees to whom they can transfer their loads of nectar, it becomes a cue to the colony that it is appropriate to initiate swarming. As you might expect, an abundance of both forage and young hatching bees are the conditions required to produce a superior queen.
The other reason a hive will raise a new queen is the absence of queen pheromone. When a queen’s pheromone levels are failing and the bees detect that her productivity is coming to an end, they will initiate the production of new queens. Likewise, bees will note an increase in the incidence of a queen laying unfertilized eggs in worker cells, a sign of depleted sperm stores in her spermatheca. Oftentimes a supersedure cell produced in a large colony that is aware of a failing queen can be of high quality as well, but the quality of the queen produced under these circumstances is very dependent upon the hive’s morale, health and the surrounding environmental conditions, such as nectar flow and availability of pollen. Learning to mimic both triggering conditions simultaneously in your queen-rearing process is the key to producing superior quality queens.
The process by which bees rear a new queen begins when the bees initiate queen cell production: the building or modifying of a cell to accommodate a queen larva of significantly greater size. The colony will typically rear multiple queen cells at once, to increase the chance of success. In the case of an aging or absent queen, this process is regulated by the reduction or absence of queen pheromones in the hive. In the case of emergency queen rearing, within a day of a complete absence of queen pheromones the bees will have begun to select suitable candidate eggs and larvae, tearing down worker-sized cell walls in preparation for constructing queen cells.
When bees rear multiple queens, workers have some influence on the sequence and timing of the queens’ emergence. Workers may select larvae up to 3 days old, as well as the most recently lain eggs, allowing for as much as a 5-day difference in age between queens. Worker bees can also manipulate the emergence rates of virgin queens by adding or removing wax from the operculum cap of the queen cell at the end of pupation. When this occurs, in concert with variation in when the eggs were laid by the queen, it can result in the emergence period extending over almost a week. This process typically results in the presence of multiple virgins in the colony at once, at which point the hive becomes an arena of activity. Virgin queens exhibit behaviors such as quacking, tooting and moving throughout the hive, all of which elicit a response from the workers. The queen who receives the most attention from the workers usually prevails as the sole reproductive female.
We sometimes see additional new queens emerge into colonies whose first virgin queens have already undertaken mating flights. This natural variation in timing adds resilience to the queen-rearing process by ensuring the presence of “back-up queens” in the event that an earlier virgin is lost while mating (a not-uncommon occurrence).
When a queen is reared artificially via the grafting process, a capped queen cell is placed into a queenless mini-colony arranged in a new box for this purpose (typically referred to as a “mating nucleus colony”). The presence of a mature queen cell and the pheromones emanating from it inhibits the colony’s instinct to rear additional queens. This leaves the colony with only a single chance to successfully nurture to maturity a new reproductive queen, making the colony vulnerable to environmental events and dependent on the quality of that human-reared virgin queen. It is true that if the colony rejects the cell immediately while there are still eggs and young larvae present, the nucleus colony can undertake the process of rearing a new queen. But unless the nucleus colony was intentionally prepared with this in mind and contains ample eggs and young larvae from which to select, a sub-optimal outcome is likely.
My daughter loves sugar snap peas so we always plant them in the spring. She prefers to tug them right off plant and eat them fresh, but sometimes we have so many ready to harvest at the same time that I have enough to pickle.
I have a water bath canned and fermented pickle recipe for sugar snap peas in my cookbook Can It & Ferment It. But it’s going to be humid and in the 90s here in Minnesota all week, so I’m skipping the canner and quick pickling this batch.
This recipe is a quick-pickle adaptation of my canned recipe. It’s a very simple recipe, as most of mine are. It makes a very crisp and refreshing pickle that can be made with spicy peppers or without.
Wash pea pods, trim the ends and remove the strings. Cut the peas into halves or thirds to make bite-sized pieces. Mix with the prepped carrots, jalapeños and garlic.
In a small nonreactive saucepan, bring the brine ingredients to a boil and simmer until the salt has dissolved.
Pack a clean pint-sized canning jar with the vegetables. Gently push the vegetables into the jar so you can fit more in and don’t end up with a jar of brine and few vegetables. Once packed well, carefully pour the hot brine into the jar, leaving half an inch of headspace.
Wipe the rim of the jar with a dampened, lint-free towel to remove any spillage. Place the canning jar lid on and twist the ring on tightly. Allow the jar to cool on the countertop until it reaches room temperature.
Once cooled, date and label, and transfer it to the refrigerator. Because this recipe doesn’t require water bath canning, it is not shelf-stable (regardless if the lid seals from the heat or not).
Once refrigerated, allow the flavors to meld for at least one week, or two if you can wait that long. The longer you wait, the more flavor the pickles will have and the spicier they’ll become.
Your pickled sugar snap peas are best enjoyed within six months.
Notes
Regular-mouth canning jars are recommended for this recipe, as the shoulders on the jar help keep the produce submerged under the pickling brine.
Add a sprig of fresh dill or two to your pickled sugar snap peas to give them a dill-pickle flavor.
If you don’t want to add carrots or hot peppers, omit them, and add in additional snap peas.
I just recently walked across my the city of Winnipeg, 40 km from the south of the city to the north (almost 25 miles), right under the perimeter highway to start and over top of it to finish.
I did this again a few weeks later, this time moving west to east.
Finding Potential Foodscapes
Why would I walk across Winnipeg again? This walk, which is part of a cumulative action I’m taking, is meant to provide a look at food security in the city—in all cities, in fact, by reason of the similarities in our development of landscapes in urban and suburban areas.
I am looking at the potential for adding more foodscapes into our cities. I want to add more community gardens, more edible landscapes, more production of edible biodiversity and … well, just more food!
Part of this is assessing the current diversity of the city, its street trees and yard landscapes. It is also about assessing the current food projects that already exist: home gardens, edible yards (or “yardens”), community gardens and other small and large food landscape creations.
Walking While Watching
Furthermore, I am looking at differences and similarities between communities. I want to learn how to build on their current infrastructure, underutilized green- and grayspaces, and angles of attack for transitioning the landscape to edible biodiversity.
Of primary importance is how we can connect neighborhoods together through edible corridors. By strengthening and creating new human-scale transit ways (walk, bike, e-bike, rollerblade, etc.) we make avenues for people to slow down and move naturally through the city.
We are also making ideal and fertile ground for edible hedges along these green transit routes. We can connect these narrower edible landscapes to the fragmented, but no less ideal, underutilized rectangles and squares and triangles of greenspace, which can be turned into larger community gardens, food forests and berry meadows.
A Nutritional Need
The need to do this in the city is great, and the power of rural allies in the work is immense. It would be straightforward to transition many of these spaces using not just landscape techniques but also the skill sets of market gardeners, permaculture designers and edible landscapers.
Equipment like two-wheel tractors and hand tools (such as bed row markers) would be ideal. Techniques like zipper beds and overall edible ecosystem design will be the best fit for these spaces.
Stay tuned as I continue to survey and create designs for transitioning urban areas to food security!
Keyhole gardening is both a composting method and a gardening method. I am going to describe the more traditional design of this method so you understand the whole concept, and then I’ll describe some variations that are easier to use.
The whole thing starts by building a special keyhole garden which is a circular raised bed that contains a center composting area. One side of the circle has a pie-slice cut out of it so that you can reach the center. I guess the term “keyhole” comes from this shape, but I don’t really see a keyhole?
If you Google keyhole gardens, you will find many different designs for such a garden. The raised bed can be any height, and the wall can be made out of any material, including rocks, bricks or even wood. It does not even have to be a circle. It could be a square with one side indented to allow access. The garden can also be domed with the center higher than the walls.
The center composting area is some type of cylinder or cage that can hold material. I have seen people use wire mesh, steel drums, and plastic buckets. The requirement here is that the bottom is left open so the compost sits on soil, and the sides should have lots of holes to allow soil organisms access to the organic matter.
This design is essentially a garden built around a composting cage. New organic matter is added into the top of the cage as you collect it. It slowly moves down as older material decomposes. Nutrients leach out the side into the garden, and macroorganisms can move from the soil into the compost for a snack. The cage itself is either never emptied or only emptied every few years.
This composting process is quite simple, but making the garden is more work. There are ways to simplify the system and still retain most of its benefits. The raised bed can be only a few inches high and made with a single row of bricks. The center compost pit would need to be lowered so composting happens below grade.
Keyhole gardening will also happen even if the garden bed is not raised, or raised a few inches with no wall around it. The main point is to have a garden all the way around the composting pit so that the whole garden benefits from leached nutrients.
This is an interesting idea, but I think it has some fundamental flaws. The claim is that nutrients flow from inside the cage into the surrounding soil. Although this will happen to some extent, most nutrients move down in soil, not sideways. Plant roots live mostly in the top 6 inches of soil. That means plants won’t get most of the nutrients.
Reports that I have seen show plants doing equally well over the whole garden, but you would expect the ones near the center to do much better if they were getting nutrients from the compost, so I suspect the plants are getting their nutrients mostly from the original soil and not from the compost.
Raised beds dry out faster and therefore require more watering.
If you would like to build one of these gardens, consider building it very close to grade and don’t raise it up more than 6 inches. The compost cage in the center should be placed at grade so most of the material is above the garden, and it should have a solid bottom. These changes will reduce watering requirements and increase the nutrients that make it to plants.
In some modern supermarkets, fresh foods tend to be a bit predictable. Produce may be limited to a small number of common hybrid varieties, with many beloved heirloom fruits and veggies absent. The same is often true of eggs and the available egg colors. While you can probably find brown eggs, it’s usually the standard white eggs that prevail on the shelves.
In both instances, the reason is the same: Grocery shelves are usually stocked with a particular variety that is favored by the masses and easy to mass produce. For chicken eggs, this often means that the White Leghorns supply the majority.
But on your hobby farm, options don’t need to be so limited.
When you’re simply looking to keep your family and friends stocked with farm-fresh eggs, the commercial-level egg production qualities of the leghorn may not be as important as other breed factors. This frees you up to focus on other qualities such as climate hardiness, meat production in dual-purpose breeds and, if you want, egg colors.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with white eggs. And while you might not want to choose a chicken breed solely for a specific egg color, there’s also nothing wrong with adding a bit of joy and atheistic charm to your farmhouse kitchen with a rainbow of shell colors.
But to get certain egg colors, you need the certain chicken breeds. So here are 11 that will deliver eggs in colors other than white.
If you like brown eggs, and you like a lot of eggs, you can’t skip over the Rhode Island Red. With some hens producing well into the range of 200 to 300 eggs per year, you can count this attractive and very friendly chicken to keep you well supplied.
Keep in mind that there are two subvarieties of this breed. First, there’s the more commercially viable industry variety. There’s also the hobby farm-friendly heritage variety, which functions nicely as a dual-purpose bird for meat.
Plymouth Rock
Brown
Paulette Johnson
Another prolific egg producer with brown eggs is the Plymouth Rock. It’s such a good layer that it was one of America’s biggest egg producers prior to the general industrial move toward the leghorn.
It’s an easy bird to have around the farm and lays about 200 eggs per year. Also, what’s not to like about those amazing black-and-white feathers?
Ameraucana
Daniel Johnson
Blue
Technically, the eggs of Ameraucana chickens are considered blue, but it’s a delightful sea blue with a dose of pastel green mixed in. This breed was developed in the United States from the South American Araucana chicken (which also lays blue eggs).
Araucanas possess interesting ear tufts. However, the genetics for this trait sometimes results in a lethal allele (an alternative form of a gene that arises by mutation) that can greatly reduce hatch rates, so the Ameraucana was developed to keep the blue eggs but eliminate the lethal allele. Ameraucanas even have blue legs! They’re docile birds but not very common, so you might have to do some searching to find a breeder.
Marans
Daniel Johnson
Dark Brown
The Marans, named after the town of Marans, France, is notable for laying dark brown eggs. There are plenty of subvarieties in the Marans chicken breed, but the Black Copper Marans produces really dark brown eggs. The coloring is very striking.
This can be a lot of fun, especially if you have other chicken breeds in your coop and can create an assortment of color shades in your egg basket. Marans are cold hardy and an excellent choice for regions with chilly winters.
Welsummer
Brown with Speckles
Turkey eggs have brown speckles, but you can also get a similar effect from Welsummer chickens. It’s a fun way to enjoy an additional pattern on your eggshells.
Plus, there’s plenty to love about Welsummer chickens in general: hardiness, docility and excellent meat qualities in addition to the cool eggs.
Easter Egger
Daniel Johnson
Blue, Green, Yellow & More
You wanted unique shell colors, and this is your chance! Depending on the specific hen, an Easter Egger chicken can provide you with light blues, fun greens, browns, yellows and occasionally even pink eggs, although the colors are very pastel.
Just be aware ahead of time that Easter Eggers are a “designer” chicken, or more simply, a mixed-breed, in the same vein as a Goldendoodle or Yorkipoo in the dog world. This means that you might see a wider variety of breed traits from chicken to chicken.
You also wouldn’t be able to show them at fairs or poultry breed events.
Olive Egger
Green
If you’re looking for green eggs specifically, you can usually do it with your own breeding experiments. You just have to cross a blue-layer like an Ameraucana with a brown-layer such as a Marans.
As with the Easter Eggers, the downside here is that you’re moving into unknown territory when it comes to the rest of the offspring’s traits. You don’t know exactly what you’re going to get, and any resulting chicks won’t breed true.
But it’s nevertheless a method for obtaining green eggs. (Now you just need some ham, right?).
Orpington
Daniel Johnson
Brown
Developed in England during the late 1800s as a solid dual-purpose breed, the Orpington is a fast-maturing chicken that’s a great layer or can be used as a meat bird. The attractive Buff coloring results in a striking bird with a wonderful golden color.
Egg colors can range from light to dark brown.
Penedesenca
Red/Brown
This is a Spanish-bred chicken with a high heat tolerance, so it might be a good choice for homesteaders in southern regions. They also lay eggs with a unique reddish tint mixed with a very dark brown base.
Brahma
Brown
If you’d like to try a large chicken, check out the brown-egg-laying Brahma, which tops out at a healthy 10 to 12 pounds! They’re good layers even in the winter, so you can invest in them to help extend your laying season even when other hens have stopped.
Cream Legbar
Blue
Developed just over 100 years ago and derived at least in part by the blue-egg-laying Araucana, Cream Legbars also produce eggs with that lovely blue color that is so unique.
Cream Legbars are also pretty useful for poultry producers as male and female chicks are easily distinguished after hatching. They’re excellent foragers and good in a free-range situation.
And there you have it: 11 beautiful chicken breeds that can add a dash of color to your morning egg collecting routine. Have fun!
More Information
Taster’s Choice
It somehow seems logical that if different colored eggs look different from each other, they might also taste different. But it just so happens that this idea doesn’t pan out. While a hen’s age, environment and diet can conceivably affect the nutritional value or even subtly affect the taste of an egg, the color of the shell itself really doesn’t have an impact on the taste.
More Birds, More Choices
If you’re a true fan of colored eggs, explore other poultry species as well. You’ll find more colors, fun patterns, textures and sizes. Look for boutique eggs at a local farmers market, or consider raising these birds yourself. At any rate, there’s plenty to like about:
Quail Eggs
Small, charming and absolutely speckled with brown spots from small to large, quail eggs are a fun choice. They’re sometimes considered a delicacy.
Duck Eggs
For cooking purposes, a single duck egg equals about two chicken eggs, and they’re simply loaded with nutrients and deep creamy flavor. Plus they come in several colors including white, brown, black and some pleasant pale shades of blues and greens.
Turkey Eggs
Always a light color, with wonderful brown speckling, turkey eggs are just as edible as these others and are pretty large, too!
Emu Eggs
Surprisingly large, with a unique texture and a rich, deep bluish-green color, emu eggs are sure to amaze! Emus are also hilariously entertaining to watch.
Shell Game
Wondering just what causes a white egg, a brown egg or other colors? The quickest answer is: simple genetics. For purebred birds, this is entirely predictable and consistent. For the Easter Eggers, things are a bit of surprise, but the egg color is still based on the genes the individual bird inherited.
In addition to breed genetics, you can sometimes get a clue to what color eggs a hen will produce by examining her earlobes—red earlobes for brown eggs, white earlobes for white.
Finally, a couple of pigments are produced by the hen to actually “paint” the eggs while they’re in the formation process. The oocyanin pigment creates blue and green eggs and permeates the eggshell, making eggs blue/green inside and out.
Protoporphyrin is a brown pigment applied late in the egg-formation process and simply coats the shell without affecting the yolk or egg white.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2023 issue of Chickens magazine.
St. Louis flower farmer Mimo Davis talks about growing flowers year-round, Black flower farmers, her work as vice president of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and more!
Listen to this episode of the Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast to hear about Mimo Davis’ journey from being a social worker for homeless adolescent males in New York City to becoming a flower farmer in rural Missouri in just eight weeks.
Mimo talks about what it’s like as an African American to farm flowers in rural Missouri and the dearth of Black flower farmers in the state. Hear about the transition Mimo made into the current iteration of her farming dream, Urban Buds City Grown Flowers, which she operates with Miranda Duschack, and learn everything about the farm, including the 1-acre property’s history as a flower farm since the 1800s—plus learn how Mimo manages to grow flowers year-round.
Also get to know the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and how you can tap into the education and resources they offer to farmers.
Today’s poultry farmers have many modern advances at their fingertips, more so even than just a decade ago. From digital brooder thermometers and computerized incubators to automatic chicken feeders and programmable coop lighting, technology—from apps to hardware—has changed the face of how we manage our chickens.
Backyard poultry owners may not have the same gadget and gear needs as those farmers with small flocks and hobby farms. But one thing all chicken keepers need is a method to manage their birds.
While a notebook or ledger remains a time-tested manner to do so, a smartphone app allows poultry keepers to easily add and modify flock information, keep track of egg production, and keep tabs on much more information about their chickens. Plus they can provide the convenience of having all this information at your fingertips.
Here are four poultry-management apps to consider to help you manage your backyard chickens.
Flockstar
Flockstar focuses on data tracking for the single backyard flock. Create a profile for each of your chickens, including their name, age, gender, breed, hatch date and photo, then track their egg laying by day, week, month or year.
Flockstar allows you to keep notes on egg weights, damaged eggs and unusable eggs like wind eggs and soft-shelled eggs. There’s even a leaderboard that identifies your flock’s top layers.
Flockstar also continually connects to the cloud, so there’s no worry about losing your data because of a missed manual back up. Flockstar offers a paid upgrade which adds the ability to:
track multiple flocks
manage expenses, sales, vendors and customers
keep a journal with notes, photos and tags
Developed by Late Shift Digital, LLC.
123Poultry
Designed for the cottage-industry flock keeper, 123Poultry helps you keep tabs on your farm’s financial performance. Track your income, expenses and sales via easy-to-read tables, graphs and logs.
Determine each bird’s feed intake and body-weight development to learn which of your breeds are the most feed efficient. Record important flock details, including each bird’s laying percentage, percentage of damaged eggs and total eggs laid.
You can even record which of your birds are active, which have been sold and which have died. The app’s Knowledge Center, which offers tips on farming and management practices, is a huge bonus.
Developed by Champrix.
ChookBook
The app for microflock owners who want a simple, uncomplicated way of keeping track of their chickens, ChookBook features a colorful, easy-to-use interface that focuses on your flock’s individual birds. Each hen has her own page, featuring her photo and details such as her color, gender, breed and hatch date.
If she is actively laying, toggle the Active switch. Then, for each day, record which bird lays an egg.
ChookBook imports this data into a bar graph that indicates your flock’s egg production for the week. If you’d like to keep track of whether you’ve watered or wormed your flock or cleaned their coop, ChookBook provides sections where these can be recorded.
Developed by Gustavo Costa de Oliveira.
Count Your Eggs
If all you want to do is keep track of your flock’s egg productivity, Count Your Eggs is the app for you. There are no profile pages for your hens. There is no place to record feed or water intake, hatching rates, individual layer percentages or other flock details.
Unlike some of the more intensive apps, all Count Your Eggs does is track how many eggs your chickens lay each day.
This data is tabulated into a graph showing your flock’s productivity over a week, month, quarter year, half year, year and two years. You can search My Egg History for a specific date to see how many eggs were laid that day. You can also edit your totals in case you miss a day or one of your hens lays late in the afternoon.
Cut flower gardens are such a popular niche right now. We walked through Lindsay Huckabee’s Huck-a-bee Flower Farm to learn how she profits from her suburban backyard garden.
Huckabee began her cut flower garden during the pandemic. Inspired by the wildly popular docuseries GrowingFloret from Floret Flower Farm, she felt the motivation and push to begin her dream business of growing flowers for arrangements.
The first year the project was just a hobby. She bought a starter kit from the local big-box garden center and started three beds that all performed really well. That first year she just gave away all the flowers she grew while she learned and practiced.
The following winter she took an online course, which gave her the knowledge needed to turn her passion to profession.
Currently Huck-a-bee Flower Farm is three years into the business, selling bouquet subscriptions to offices, individuals and boutiques nearby. Social media and word of mouth provide her most successful marketing avenues.
Huckabee can get three seasons out of her cut flowers, from April though September. Her cool season flowers get planted in the late fall/early winter and emerge early spring. Some of the summer flowers will re-seed, saving Huckabee a lot of money. She also starts flowers indoors a the others finish their season outdoors.
Each year, she adds rows for more future growth.
In the video above, Huckabee teaches us arranging principles in a canning jar bouquet. The grid system that goes under the jar keeps the stems neat and tidy. She recommends stripping all side leaves before adding them to the jar and just being creative without feeling constricted by a set of rules.
If you are interested in creating your own cut flower garden, you’ll find plenty of classes, books and other resources out there. Then, follow Huckabee’s example of starting small and growing more and more each year!
Whenever I purchase new trees for my orchard, it feels as though there’s an imperative need to plant them as soon as possible. That’s true on the occasions when I purchase bare-root trees, but container-grown trees are another matter.
Even though it seems like a potted tree would benefit from being planted straight away, that isn’t always the case. It depends in large part on when you purchased the tree. If it’s early spring, great—get that tree planted before the heat of summer comes along! The same goes if it’s early fall and there’s still enough growing time left for the tree to get established before winter.
But if it’s late spring or early summer, and the weather is dry with temperatures creeping up into the 80s and 90s, you might want to hold off on planting container-grown trees. And that’s a perfectly acceptable approach.
An Example
Let me give you an example. I recently purchased half a dozen fruit trees from a local nursery. I had intended to purchase fewer, but once I started looking around … well, the numbers multiplied.
They’re all lovely specimens, and I’ll be picking them up in July—right during the peak heat of summer.
The potted trees have received diligent care and daily watering at the nursery, so subjecting them to the shock of summer planting isn’t my first choice. Summer is a very busy time of year on my farm, and I know if I were to plant them right away in my orchard (which isn’t close to a convenient water source), there would be days when I’m unable to water the trees.
But this isn’t the first time I’ve lined up trees to arrive in July, and when this happens, I wait to plant them until the end of summer. By then, temperatures have cooled down and the busyness of summer is winding down, so I have more time to drive a 35-gallon leg tank around my orchard watering each tree. For the duration of summer, I keep my trees in their pots (inside a tall fence, so they’ll be safe from hungry deer) and near a water source so daily watering by hose is quick and convenient.
Basically, I just pretend my trees are still at the nursery. They thrive with the daily attention they receive. Come planting time they settle right in and get to stretch their roots until winter sets in. The following spring, they wake up happy and no longer need as much water as they did immediately after planting.
Of course, every situation is different. If you live in an area with cool and/or rainy summer weather, planting potted trees in summer might be just fine. It can even be beneficial, giving them more time to settle in before winter.
But if summers are busy and you’re worried about giving freshly planted trees the attention they need to thrive in heat and dry weather, do them a favor and keep them container-bound until late summer or fall. The trees are unlikely to be bothered, and you can more easily control their environment and care until planting conditions are more suitable. That’s a win-win for you and your trees.
