Monday, December 05, 2011

Keets and Our Last Pepper Harvest .............

The guinea hen that was sitting on the nest , hatched 17 keets in Oct.. I thought she was sitting on 16 eggs , but she laid another egg the day I took a pic of the 16 eggs and started sitting that night. On Oct. 4 the eggs hatched and there were 17 keets. I caught 6 of the keets before she realized what I was doing , then she got really protective and wouldn't let me near them. I put boards around the bottom of the fence and decided to leave them with her. That worked well for two weeks , but one evening I was late going out to check on them and when I got there she was outside the fence and had the keets under her settled down for the night. They apparently found a hole or went over the boards and she flew out with them. Since it was getting dark there wasn't much I could do except hope for the best for her and the keets. But the next morning she was gone and all the keets except for 2 , guess that fox made another raid. I caught the other 2 keets and put them in the brooder box with the other 6. We've lost another guinea since then , so we're down to 4 adult guineas and the 8 keets which are now in a holding pen outside until we release them next Spring.



We did have a nice pepper harvest in Oct , after it rained a couple of times the vines were loaded. I was really thankful for the peppers , we had stuffed peppers a couple of times . I diced and froze several bell peppers for seasoning , froze some strips for stir-frying this winter .......




and pickled the banana peppers.


Hope everyone had a great weekend !!


~ Blessings ~

JoyceAnn







4 comments:

Hidden Haven Homestead said...

We had a abundance of peppers this fall too. I am peppered out. LOL Good look with the keets.

AkasaWolfSong said...

JoyceAnn...

Sorry about the keets...that damnable old story about keeping the fox away from the henhouse eh?

Hopefully the rest will be alright with you putting them in a holding pen.

How nice you got all those peppers...an added blessing! :)
Stuffed peppers sounds really good! What do you stuff yours with?

Here's to a Great Week!
xoxo

Anonymous said...

Sorry you've lost the guineas. Seems like there have been so many predators this year. I had a great pepper harvest this year too. I had so many I finally took a big box to work and gave them away. I hate to waste things.

Vickie LeBlanc said...

Sorry about your keets and the mom. Nature works in mysterious ways sometimes. We had green peppers this year from our cold frame that Dave built in the Spring. Hope you have a good week.