Wings

You can tell by how feathered out their wings are how that some of them are a couple days older then the others.  They are growing so fast. 

- Fin

Musings about Chicks

I've had my chicks for only 24 hours now and already find them so interesting.  Nature is amazing to me, providing new and interesting every day.

Some of my chicks hatched Tuesday, some Wednesday and some Thursday.  They are mostly all acting the same, even though some are a bit older then others.  It's amazing to me that with no mother to teach them how things work they already know.  They scratch the ground and peck at it for food.  They well regulate how hot or cold they are by moving toward or away from the heat lamp.  They drink, automatically like birds. 

I'm not sure why I find all this quite as amazing as I do.  The instinct on these little creatures is amazing to behold.  They hold such great interest and intelligence in their eyes that it just astonishes me. 

I've been around other peoples chickens before, seen how they act and interact, heard watching them called chicken tv.  I never exactly got it, but I truly do now.  Watching chickens be chickens is a lot of fun.   They run away if you make sudden movements, but come right back to inspect what you are doing.  They let me pick them up and magically bed down and fall asleep if you cover them in your hand.  They like to be scratched. 

I fully intend on making pets out of these guys, they are my future egg layers.  Even the roosters will find a productive place in life, some in the freezer and some breeding a future line of chicks.  I want them to have the best life possible, no matter what their future destiny. 

I already have plans for future plantings into the yard and garden beds and boxes for them.   I am hoping to improve the "grass" in my yard with great diversity so that these guys have plenty to eat while they free range.  I am hoping to grow several different kinds of crops to both supplement their foraging and store for winter. 

I have big plans for these tiny chicks.

-Fin

Chicks are here!!!

-Fin

Chicks are coming!

I was supposed to get them today, however, as of this morning only seven out of the ten I ordered had hatched. Hopefully I will be able to pick them up tomorrow.

I'm getting Buckeye Chickens. They ate a dual purpose egg/meat bird. From what I've read they are very cold hardy so I shouldn't have to worry to much about them this winter.

I've got my brooder all set up:

-Fin

Winter in the Garden

It hasn't been super cold here this year. We've only had a couple days and many nights below freezing. It's been enough to kill most of the veggies but some are still going, some limping along.

Kale and maybe some Kolrabi:

Garlic:

The cover crop is coming in nicely in places, not as well in others:

Fate took down the Christmas tree yesterday and I cut it up to make a support for some climbing things this summer:

I'm not sure what will be climbing it yet but it should provide a nice support for something.

I've started chopping up the rotted wood for my hugelkulture beds in the front yard. It's slow going. Its hard work and I am convinced I lost a lot of muscle from being vegetarian for so long. Slowly but surely I will build it back up tho. I've got plenty of time.

I've been enjoying going through my seed catalogs this winter. I've am getting ready to put an order in very soon. It's getting time to start seeds for the garden this year. I'm excited to see spring come and things start growing again.

- Fin

27 days

I changed my diet 27 days ago now to a low carb and sugar free diet. I just went cold turkey, from a vegetarian diet prior, which was interesting to say the least.  I am basically following the paleo diet these days, tho that's just a label to make it easy to reference the way I am eating.  I've heard it called paleo, primal, caveman, and various other things, all being about the same. 

My main goal with changing the way I eat was trying to find a way of eating that 1. Made me feel healthy and 2. Made it more likely that we would eat out of the garden. 

Some things that I've noticed after changing my diet for 27 days:

1.  No more heartburn

Seriously.  I used to have heartburn every day no matter what I ate. It seemed like a constant thing that I was just living with.  It's gone now, literally overnight.  I hope for good!

2.  I feel a lot less tired all the time

I don't feel nearly as run down all the time like I used to.  Considering that its winter, which is usually a tough time for my energy levels being anything but non-existent, I think that's pretty impressive. 

3.  I feel leaner

This isn't about loosing pounds, which I have, but about how my body feels.  I used to be pretty substantially muscled, which I feel like I've lost over the last couple years.  I've been feeling a lot weaker, as well as just kind of generally "puffy." Not bloated, just kind of fluffy.  I've lost about 10lbs according to the scale, but I swear I've lost many inches of fluffyness all over my body.  I'm hoping to be able to gain back all the muscle I feel I've lost this year.   I'm not concerned with what the scale tells me I weigh, but with how "in shape" I feel in general.  I've been feeling more and more out of shape the last couple years, which has seemed strange to me considering I feel I am far more physically active these days then I used to be.  I blame it on my former vegetarian diet.

4.  I don't have a stuffy nose every morning

Not entirely sure what's up here with this.  It used to be that I would wake up every morning and desperately need to blow my nose.  Sometimes many times throughout the day.  I've felt almost constantly stuffy for awhile now, but for some reason that seems to have gone away.  I'm not sure what I cut out that caused this, however, I'm happy about it! 

5.  I'm loosing that constant craving for sugar

Don't get me wrong, I still want to nom down some chocolate hardcore.  I've been slowing myself a couple pieces of chocolate at night, as I feel depriving myself completely of the things I love is foolish.  It just makes me more likely to binge on an entire chocolate bar (or three!) when I don't allow myself a small controlled amount.  It's the taste of the chocolate I want tho, not the sugar.  There was a time where I'd crave sugar constantly, and it didn't matter at all what kind it was.  Candy, cookies, cake, tons of sugar in my coffee in the morning, I'd even eat brown sugar straight out of the jar!  That craving is going away, slowly, but it is going away.  These days I still want the sugar, but its a lot easier to ignore. 

6.  I am shopping for food almost exclusively at the farmers market

I've bought almost everything in the last few weeks that we've been eating at the farmers market here in town.  All localy grown meats and vegetables.  This gives me great hope that this year we should be able to eat out of our garden as far as produce goes.  I am hoping to be able to have the money to join the meat csa that Parker Farms puts out. This is the farm I've been buying my meat from, and it is awesome. 

I know there are more things I've noticed in these 27 days, but those are the ones that stick out in my head.  I had said originally that I'd be trying this diet for 30 day and then re-evaluate how I felt....but I can tell you 3 days early (and, really even after the first week!) that I don't intend to change the way I eat. 

I just feel so much healthier these days.

- Fin

The Otto Project

The tank:

The supplies:

The subjects:

The Project:

These guys are Otocinclus vestitus, or at least that's the most commonly imported one and the one I am assuming that I have. They are one of my favorite fish and I've been wanting to try to breed them for awhile now. I've kind of played at it for the last year but I'm getting serious now. They are one of the least bred fish in the hobby, and one of the harder ones to get and keep alive.

Easy to acquire, hard to keep alive due to the fact that they are not fed right in store tanks. I've read that they have a bacteria in their stomach that helps them with their digestion. If they are not fed pretty much constantly that bacteria in their stomach dies off and they soon follow. It's very common to loose these fish between two weeks and a month after you get them home for this very reason. If they stay alive that for the initial month then they seem to be extremely hardy.

Todays test results:

Tds: 389
Temp: 75.3
Kh: 35.8 @ 2 drops solution
Gh: 179 @ 10 drops solution
Ph: 6.6
Ammonia: .5ppm weird
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm

I'm going to be recording my test results on this tank here on this blog. The ammonia reading from today is either a fluke or from the fertilizer tabs I put in yesterday. I will test again tomorrow to make sure. This is a long established tank so I'm not worried about it, there is plenty of established nitrifying bacteria present.

The total disolved solids (tds) are extremely high, as is the general hardness (gh)...we basically have liquid rock for water around here. I'm using a water softener pillow in an attempt to get those values down. According to the directions it should take 48 hours to do its work. I will test values tomorrow to see where we are on that. I bought it on clearence so hopefully it does work!

In the future for water changes on this tank I will be preparing the water ahead of time in an effort to keep the values the same. I may turn up the heater a bit, I haven't decided yet.

This is a good time to be preparing for this as catfish usually breed in the spring. I have some pygmy cories on the same tank I would like to see breed as well. I accidently bred them once back when I first got them (no clue how that happened) but not since, and none of the babies survived as far as I can tell.

The other thing I would like to see in this tank that I've tried and failed at twice now is crystal red shrimp. I think they are awesome looking but with the liquid rock around here they just can't handle it. They need much softer acidic water to even stay alive.

I've been following a thread on one of the forums that I frequent from someone that has bred these guys repeatedly, and am hoping to have as good of results here!

- Fin