The habaneros are in, the jam is made, and I’m ready to start selling!

I have two new flavors this time around – Napalm Jam – which is nothin’ but habaneros, sugar, pectin, and vinegar. The other is Caramel Apple Assault Habanero Jam (that’s a mouthful, huh?), which is little chunks of apple and habaneros in a caramel sauce.

I did intend to have Cranberry Habanero jam available at this time, but cannot find cranberries in the stores at all. If I still have enough habaneros in stock when the cranberries show up, I’ll add it to the list of available jams.

Go forth and order!

I’ve used up all the habaneros we saved in the freezer from this summer.

What’s listed on the page is what’s available – when that’s gone, no more habanero jams or hot sauces will be available until next Fall.

There are a few new jam flavors – at this point the cranberry will be available until around Christmas (depending on supplies!), the apricot confetti will be available until the rest of the batch is gone (it was kind of a pain to make!), and I don’t know about the apricot and pineapple. We’ll see how popular they are. :)

Apricot Confetti.

Apricot-Habanero.

Cranberry-Habanero. (I apparently have a real problem holding the camera straight, don’t I?)

Pineapple-Habanero.

See what’s available and how to order here.

We have three chicken coops right now at Crooked Acres.

This is the main coop, where the majority of our chickens live (and where they all eventually end up). Built by Fred last year, it currently holds 90 – 100 chickens of varying ages. It could conceivably house about 250 – 300 chickens if it had to, but we will hopefully never get that out of control!

The chickens who live in this coop (and are guarded by George and Gracie) have about two acres, fenced, in which to roam. They tend to stick pretty close to home, though every once in a while we’ll look out to see them spread across the field.

The Maternity Coop. This was our main chicken coop for about a year, until we decided we needed a larger coop and the chickens needed more space to roam. Now when a hen goes broody, we move her to the Maternity Coop and stick a few eggs under her. (At first, Fred was putting six eggs under each hen. But after we realized it was the intention of ALL the hens to go broody, we lowered that number to three eggs under each hen.) Once the eggs are hatched, the babies stay with the hens until the hens start roosting again (and laying eggs), and then we move the hens back out to the main coop. The babies go out to the main coop when they’ve gotten a little bigger.

We had so many broody hens that we ran out of nest boxes and had to improvise.

Charlie lives in the Maternity coop. She has twisted-up toes and tends to get more lovin’ from the roosters than she can handle. After she hurt her wing a few months ago, we put her in the Maternity coop with the broody hens, and she’s pretty happy there. The mother hens seem to regard her as no threat at all, and she’s even been known to sleep in the nest boxes with the mother hens and their babies. Good ol’ Charlie.

Momma hen, checking to be sure you aren’t trying to touch her babies.

This is the very first coop Fred built, two years ago when we had 12 chickens. For a while we used it for the little chickens we hatched ourselves in the incubator before they were big enough to add to the Maternity coop. It’s currently empty and unused. We’ve talked about moving it to the back yard and putting our two Silkies and our Crested Polish chickens in it and having a backyard flock, but haven’t decided yet what to do.

(Comments closed due to spammers.)

The newest chicks are two weeks old now, and are feathering out and are starting to get cute little tails. They’re adorable still, haven’t hit their ugly and gawky (yet somehow still cute) stage just yet.

One of the two babies born of a Crested Polish mother. S/he has a tiny little mohawk starting.

Wee mohawk in the making.

Wing – s/he sure has the colors of the Rock Star, though we don’t know for sure that she’s the Polish who laid the egg (we have two others).

In fact, both the Polish babies have tiny mohawks started. I can’t wait to see what they look like in a few months!

1 ripe avocado
1 Tablespoon Crooked Acres Habanero Hot Sauce
A dash of Mrs. Dash seasoning
Freshly cracked black pepper

Mash avocado and mix everything together. Enjoy!

* * *
The avocado tames the heat somewhat, I’m guessing the fat content has something to do with it, but it’s still very good with tortilla chips, etc.

The eggs we put in the incubator almost three weeks ago have started to hatch! Number one came early this morning. Then for a long time, nothing. Finally we got numbers two and three pretty close together, and recently got number four.

Number one is the reddish one in the back. Number two’s over there on the left – the chick born of an egg that Sassy (the chicken who leaves the chicken yard and travels to her childhood coop to lay her eggs) laid. Number three came out of a Polish-laid egg. I don’t know if it was a Featherhead who laid the egg, or the Rock Star, but it was one of the three. No idea who the father is.

Number two (Sassy’s baby) and four (from a flea market egg).

Number two, Sassy’s baby. I think s/he is going to be gorgeous.

Sassy’s baby (before s/he was born, obviously), getting ready to get out of there.

Baby number four is a cutie. (Well, they all are.)

Edited to add:

Number five! This one’s from a Polish mother (either a Featherhead or the Rock Star) and an unknown father.

Number one snuggles up to the newborn.

Edited to add:

Babies number 7 (the fluffyish yellow chick on the right), 8 (the black one in the back) and 9 (the reddish one in the front). We have four more eggs, but none of them are showing any signs of life. We’re going to let them go until tomorrow, but I don’t expect we’ll get anything from them.

Fred candled the eggs that are in the incubator. To our disappointment, of the thirty-five eggs we got from the guy at the flea market, only six held viable embryos. Of the seven of OUR eggs that we put in the incubator, all seven have viable embryos.

So right now, we’ve got 13 eggs left in the incubator. I’m going to predict we end up with ten baby chicks – not because I have anything to base this on, just a guess.

In another week, we’ll see!

(I’m naming this bunch the “James” bunch, named after the guy we bought the eggs from.)

This afternoon, Fred put 42 eggs in the incubator.

7 of those eggs came from our chickens (two small white ones from the Polish chickens, one from Sassy (the chicken who flies out of the chicken yard to lay her egg in the old chicken coop every day), and four other assorted eggs).

35 of those eggs came from fertile eggs we bought at Dog Days in Ardmore, TN (a flea market that runs every Sunday and Monday). They were laid by Golden Comet hens bred with Rhode Island Red roosters.

More information to come after Fred candles the eggs in a week or so…