Old is new again

A booklet came in the mail to my parents farm and in it there were articles about people trying to rescue heritage breeds of farm animals. The stories that interested me the most were of course the poultry stories. For those not in the know, heritage breeds are breeds of farm animals that our grandparents or great grandparents used on their farms back in the day. These breeds no longer function in today's markets for different reasons, however they often excel on farms that want to return to a more organic way of living or farms that want to have animals work with each other, example chickens on pastures where cows had been or ducks that eat flies in barns or off other livestock.

It may sound funny to say some farm animal breeds are becoming extinct but it is the truth and sadly those genetics will be lost as well. My girls are mostly hybrids and that is because they were the only breeds I could find when I started to get back into chickens at the time. I was very interested in a story where it was suggested, chicken producers try to sell the old breeds to the back yard poultry keepers. Many would probably be better suited to this type of home flock situation and it would help preserve a breed. It was a little scary to read that some breeds of chickens or animals only have a few breeding females left in my country. If you can and are interested, see if you can find a rare breeds club in your country, find out the chicken breeds that are in danger and may be suited to what you want. I am going to try and get Silver Laced/ Golden laced Wyandottes if I can. They were one of the breeds suggested and I like the look of them. There were also many other breeds suggested that I like, I do not have the list with me but I will put it up later. I think it would be a good idea, this way we can have fun with our small flocks and help out hurting breeds as well.

I have a green thumb besides liking chickens, my garden was way behind this year because it never stopped raining since June, this garden is actually at my parents but since I am staying with my Mom, I planted and took care of it. The clip was actually taken about three weeks ago so things have grown much more now. I am getting lots of vegetables now but sadly our growing season is over and I expect a killing frost any day. I have snow peas (my favourite), red and yellow tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, purple beans, onions, cucumbers, butternut squash, honey dew melons and carrots. For the first time ever, I don't have lettuce. Giant slugs came out and ate all my lettuce.

Oh yes and the morning glories, I just like the look of them, they have now climbed higher than my head and will get an updated picture.