March 2-6 Happy Hen Farms Newsletter: 2019 Production Recap & Farm Update

Good Evening, 

I hope everyone's weekend has been going good so far with the relatively nice weather! 

Everyday except Friday this week is available for deliveries (to the school) due to no school on Friday. My grandparent's store in Nampa will be open Tuesday and Thursday (10-3) and Friday (10-5). 

Eggs: 

Production has been right around 6 dozen per day. To start the week off, there will be about 25 Md dzn and about 10 Lg dzn available. The chickens have been extremely happy with the unusually warm weather, and have been showing it with their constant running and flying around the yard. 

Newsletter: 

For this week's newsletter, I decided to do a joint newsletter about last year's production of the top products, as well as what has been going on the last few weeks during the nice weather.  

Last year, the top products were: 

Eggs, Tomatoes, Beans, Corn, Jalapeno's, and Zucchini's. It is interesting that Beans, Corn, and Zucchini are the predominant crops simply because those three crops were given the nickname "The Three Sisters" because of the symbiotic affects that each of the plants had on each other. You can read and watch more about the basics of what the affects are here  

From January thru December of 2019, the total amount of eggs collected was 14,500 eggs. That amounts to about 1,209 dzn. The total amount of feed that it took to get the 14,500 eggs was right at about 6,200 lbs (3.1 tons). 

Roughly 110 pounds of Tomatoes were harvested over the summer from about 30 tomato plants. No artificial fertilizers were used to achieve that, and the 110 lbs were only the recorded amounts, but there was quite a bit that was fed to the chickens, as well as the occasional snack. I don't know how many tomatoes there actually were, although I could speculate a number somewhere around 200 pounds.

For the Beans, there was about 35 pounds harvested from a 10 square foot area, and about 30 pounds of Jalapeno's were harvested from a similar area. There was about 60 ears of Corn that was harvested, along with 60 Zucchini's (off of 4 plants!). And last but not least, there was a total of 67 meat chickens raised last year. 

All of these numbers ultimately represent your support throughout the season(s) last year. I am constantly thankful for your love of good tasting food and am always trying to make it better and more efficient with the resources that I have. 

In joint with last year's top produce report, I decided to share a bit about what has gone on the past few weeks and weekends with the sudden uptick in nice weather.

all the bedding that needed to be hauled out...

 

Essentially, last weekend led me to start hauling all the bedding out of the chicken run (about 2 feet deep). Last weekend alone, I moved 25 wheelbarrow loads out and spread it on the garden, and then proceeded to seed in the wheat for a cover crop. Afterwards, I proceeded to finish emptying out the chicken run with about another 25 wheelbarrow loads or so of the old bedding and started to make a 25 foot row (also about 2.5 feet high) so it can finish composting. The chickens have been having a fun time scratching through the pile, as well as making me frustrated as to how many times I have to reshape the pile! But, ultimately, almost anything that keeps the chickens happy makes me happy (unless they get into the garden areas, or the neighbor's yard) because happy chickens lay better and lay more eggs than depressed chickens. That's why the farm is named "Happy Hen Farms" ! 

As always, any questions or comments are always welcome! 

Thank you!