sutton023

Ameraucana and Brahma eggs If you're not already aware, we're now keeping/growing both chickens and guinea fowl at Badgersett Farm, as an integrated part of growing the nut crops. The birds provide multiple services, and produce multiple products. They eat grass (way more than expected, particularly the guineas) and reduce our mowing costs; they eat bugs constantly, we hope including nut weevils, they provide substantial rapid fertility to the plants, and they adjust the soil pH upward, again, more than expected. Besides which, we get eggs and meat. We are keeping records of costs/expenses and our expectation at this point is that the birds contribute far more positives than they cost. Right now- we are able to offer both chicken and guinea "hatching eggs" for sale; specifically these are eggs from selected parents, and from birds that have proven to be survivors in a complex true free range environment. Virtually all the chickens available commercially have bee...

Every once in a while, we do try to grab just a bit of the beauty that is zooming past us. Yesterday I ran out for a few minutes to take just a few pictures of the hybrid hickory buds. I wanted to send them to Denise , who did such a spectacular job with her illustrations of the hazels. (Incidentally; she was awarded the Silver Gilt Medal at the Royal Horticultural Society art show; which means she now has the very great honor that she may show any of her art at that show for the next 5 years, without submitting it for preliminary approval; a very big deal!) In spite of these being very hurried pics, a couple of them turned out not awful anyway. So I thought I would let you see another benefit to growing these hybrids; a brief gorgeous bit of nature that few know exists; the slow blossoming-opening of the apical buds of hickories. Click on any of these for a bigger view; and then magnify to see full size images. Above is what the swollen buds look like just before they break open- ...

We expect to start shipping standard hazel tubelings on Wednesday, pretty much right on time! - 5/15 is our earliest possible ship date, and we usually ship standard tubelings Wed-Thurs of each week so that they arrive for the weekend ready to plant. PRETTY PLEASE keep in mind that there are 155 orders on the shipping queue- and the first one placed in 2011 is number 76 in line. Not all the plants are ready, and we don't currently have the capacity to ship that many orders in a day anyway. Also- much to our dismay, the personnel disruptions we had in February-March mean that our first CHESTNUTS WON'T SHIP UNTIL MID-JUNE. We apologize for this; if you had both hazels and chestnuts in your order you can either opt to wait until both are ready, or have us ship them separately when ready, at no further cost to you. Most of the rest of our bare-root dormant tubeling orders will ship this week. If you ordered XL or Select bare-root hazels and specified no substitutions, we don...