Updates from the homestead

I've been slacking a bit on updating, so I'm going to cram everything into this post.

We have harvested 3 - 6 blueberries daily for the last couple weeks.  Nothing to write home about, but they are so sweet and delicious we eat them as we pick them!  We have also harvested about 6 little strawberries.  They are also sweet and delicious!  Tons of peppers coming out of the garden.  A few zucchinis too.  Tomatoes are starting to ripen so we've picked several cherry tomatoes and are seeing the first signs of red tomatoes on our heirloom plants.  Can't wait to start picking those...probably later this week.

We finally got chickens!  My awesome aunt ordered pullets and gave us 3 of them!  I've been wanting chickens for a long time now, but was hesitant because I am not really an animal lover so I didn't want them in the house...and was afraid I'd kill them (not on purpose of course!).  Once the chicks came home with us (April 18, 2012) we had the big task of constructing a coop ahead of us.  I'm VERY frugal and priced some supplies at home depot and realized this was going to cost us a small fortune.  I could have bought an already built coop for a few hundred dollars, but I was not about to spend that kind of money on these chickens.  I started searching Craigslist, knowing I had about 5 or 6 weeks before we had to have the coop built.  After a couple days I came across a family a few blocks away selling a pretty raggedy coop for $40!  I immediately told them I wanted it, sight unseen, and made pick up arrangements.  There was a lot of rotting/unusable wood that came with the coop, but it also came with 6 foot high chicken wire...about 20 feet of it, (4) 12 foot tin roof panels, lots of hardware (screws, bolts, wire, door hardware, etc) and quite a bit of usable wood!  We ended up needing to buy 2 more 2x4's (on sale for $3.50 each), 30 self tapping roofing screws, 2 more hinges (for a total cost of $16) and one roll of 3'x10' chicken wire for $11.  Total investment for our coop was $74!  And it will last for YEARS!  (As an added bonus, if we ever stop keeping chickens it will make a great extra storage area for tools, grills, etc.)  I've included a picture of our finished coop below.  (We have a huge dog crate on top of the table shown in the picture to put the girls up in the evenings.)

Our first cuke.  Didn't taste right though.  Matter of fact, ALL the cukes tasted bad.  I pulled all the plants.

2+ lb Kohlrabi!  There was a lot of tough fiber in it. Next time I'll cut it much sooner.

Almost 1 lb of swiss chard! 

Another big zucchini.  This one had a little worm in it that we cut away.

Green tomatoes that fell off when the pot blew over, pinto beans, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and a jalapeno

More zucchini, blueberries and 2 pea pods (the only 2 that grew before the plants died.

Our $74 chicken coop!

The girls.  (Left to right: Blue, Rooster, Ming Ming)

Seed Saving...so easy a 2 year old can do it!

Cherry tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, jalapeno and ghost peppers.