NowHere Farms

    Some days you trudge out to do chores and just put your head down, ignore the cold/wind/rain/heat and just focus on the necessary steps to get 'er done. Other days you go out and take a moment to stand and appreciate/enjoy the beauty around you. Still other days you go out and listen to the quail creating a ruckus and the roosters having a crow-off, reminding the quail who is  really  the boss of the homestead. And then there are days when you go out and find....a long hoped for surprise. On September 12th ~ 150 days ago according to Ms. Googly Pants ~ we drove to the west side of Mobile and bought 10 Buff Orpington pullets, 1 Buff Orpington cockerel, 10 Rhode Island Red pullets, and 1 Easter Egger cockerel (because they were out of Rhode Island Reds cockerels when we got there).  In time we realized we actually had 9 Rhode Island Red pullets and 1 Rhode Island Red cockerel so we shared the Easter Egger with a neighbor. But I digress. We have fed these free-...

  Let me start with admitting that the words, "Cold" and "Ridiculously Cold" are relative terms.  I freely acknowledge that.  If we lived in Nome, Alaska we would likely be quite happy with the "balmy" winter we are experiencing.  But we do NOT live in Nome, Alaska.  We live on the Southern Gulf Coast 10 miles inland from beautiful,  warm  beaches.   Thus the below-freezing temperatures we have been experiencing over the past 7-10 days is....an adjustment and has required some creativity in how we manage things. In December we decided to go ahead and start a hatch.  When the quail hatch we move them from the incubators into warm brooders with heat plates in the quail shed.       While the shed is not air-tight and fully insulated, we can keep temperatures around 10 degrees higher than the outdoor temperature.  As long as the ambient temperature is over 50 degrees, the heat plates we use can do the job to keep the...