Today’s Happenings on Sunnyside Lane Hobby Farm

Red Plums

Plums Plums and more Plums will be picked today on Sunnyside Lane Hobby Farm.

I only have 2 extremely large trees that make the bright red variety of plums and they are loaded. Today I am making a plum sauce (gelled like cranberry sauce) and plum jelly too. I have a few jars of plum juice canning for us to have to drink. It is really nice to serve hot with a cinnamon stick to stir it on a cold winter day.

Patty Squash

Sunnyside Lane Hobby Farm Squash (yellow crookneck and straight neck, zucchini and patty) were all loaded yesterday, so I am sending some to work with Stan today for his boss, who was hinting he’d like to have some fresh squash. Later this afternoon, I will be picking snap beans and English peas. They are slowing down now so I hope to get enough for supper tonight.

Stan’s new cage for the quail.

We did our morning feeding of all our birds. Stan had moved the new Jumbo Coturnix quail from the brooder to a quail pen he recently made yesterday. We found only one dead this morning. It was the smallest one and I think it was a shock of the moving that may have done it in. These quail are 3 weeks old and we have 14 Cuckoo Maran biddies in with them for now. The biddies and the quail are the same size. We noticed that our regular Coturnix quail that are about 3 months old are a lot smaller than the baby Jumbos. But the regular Coturnix is laying eggs like crazy. We give them bread from the bakery stores 2 times a week and lots of hot peppers. Someone said that would make them lay more eggs and it seems to be working.

A more mature pair of Cockatiels

Our parakeet mama is sitting on 3 of her own eggs and 3 cockatiel eggs. I am hopeful that she will hatch these and was amazed that she is sitting on them. The cockatiels refused to use their box and were just laying them in the bottom of the cage. We were sure if they were fertile until we caught them in the act. Stan rearranged a different cage for them and I collected the eggs for three days while he set everything up for them. I gave the eggs to the parakeet mama who was laying eggs at the same time.
I keep a check on them daily now as it is close to time for them to hatch. I will keep everyone updated on how this works out. I am prepared to hand feed the tiel babies.
The Tiels that were laying these eggs are now in their new cage which is huge and they have laid 3 more eggs in the box this time. We noticed our older pair is also laying more eggs. We will leave the nesting boxes up for 2 clutches a year but no more after that.
Big Dawg, our tom turkey still doesn’t have a mate, but appears to be ok with that at the moment. Stan is convinced the turkey thinks he is a parakeet and should be held and played with as such. I don’t know who spoiled him. (Teresa looking all innocent)
There is so much to do on Sunnyside Lane Hobby Farm and so little time to do it all, but we love every minute of it.