2016 Meat Birds Arrive! (Day 1)

Yesterday we posted about preparing for the the delivery of our meat birds.  It's a good thing we did. This morning at work I received a text from Tricia that they had called her from the Post Office and our chicks had arrived.  All 60 of them were in a box - 35 Cornish Cross on one side of the box and 25 Red Rangers on the other.

After she got them home and opened the box, she took them out one by one, counting them, and then put their little heads into water, making sure they drank. Usually they send you a few extra, but not this time.  There were exactly 60 chicks.

The last one...

The last bird in the box was dead, unfortunately.  That's all part of it, though.  We'll compost the dead bird and hope that more don't die.

A Dead Chick

They seemed very lively and healthy, making 'cheep, cheep, cheep' sounds and eating the chick grower that Tricia sprinkled for them.  Only a day or two old and they already have the scratching reflex.  The heat lamps kept the chicks warmed perfectly - too cold and they would be all piled up on one another.  Too hot and they would be scattered away from under the light.  As you can see, they are distributed nicely, comfortably.  If they could talk, they'd tell you they are happy in their new home.  I'm really liking the way the new brooder is working out.

Under the heat lamps

They are fluffy and cute.  At this stage, the chicks are just perfect.  In a few weeks, though...  Ugh!

Chicks!

Now you can see the difference in the chicks.  The Cornish Cross chicks are yellow in color and the Red Rangers are a brownish-red in color.  They run around playfully on the sawdust.  The brooder is set up in a circular shape.  That is important.  If it is a square shaped brooder, the chicks are prone to piling up in a corner where they crush each other, and the chicks on the bottom die.

Happy birds

Now, in a weekly installment that we'll do until these birds are butchered, we'll weigh these guys and chart their growth.  First up, we'll weigh a Cornish Cross.  I put a paper towel on top of our scale and placed the healthy little fellow on top.

The Weigh-in

It is a little hard to see, but the Cornish Cross, at two days old, weighs 3 ounces.

Cornish Cross = 3 ounces

Next I placed the Red Ranger on the scale and he promptly pooped on the paper towel.

Red Ranger Chick on the scale

Red Rangers take a couple weeks longer to mature than the Cornish Cross chicks. This fellow weighs 2 ounces at 2 days old.

Red Ranger = 2 ounces

Here they are both up on top of the scale.

Cheep, Cheep, Cheep!

We'll report on their growth each week and we'll keep track of all our expenses.  At the end of the project we'll give statistics on total expenses, total number of pounds of meat, cost per pound, average dressed weight per bird, etc.  We'll compare our statistics with prior years to see how we did in comparison.  I realize after looking at the cute picture right above, it seems a little cruel to talk about butchering them, but that's just the way it is.  We don't get attached to these birds at all.  They aren't pets.  They are meat for the freezer.  Join us over the next 8-10 weeks as we watch them transform from fluffballs on feet to ziploc bags of meat for us to eat.

Chicks Are 'A Comin'!

Each year around this time we order our meat birds that we'll eat throughout this year.  We usually order so that we have at least one chicken to eat each week.  This year I got online and from Ideal Poultry in Cameron, Texas I ordered:

• 35 Cornish Cross Chickens (Straight Run)
• 25 Red Broilers (Straight Run)

They cost $2.16 each.  There is a small order charge of $7.00.  Straight run means they aren't sexed. They cost more if you order all males since males grow bigger and faster.  The total cost of the order was $136.60.  While checking my emails this morning at 10 am, I got the following email:

The hatchery tells you to report any problems within four days because they operate on the 'honor system.'  If any of them arrive dead, they'll credit your order.  We seldom have any problems though. When the chicks hatch out, the Good Lord gives them the ability to survive for a couple of days without food or water as just prior to hatching, they use all the nutrients from within the egg.

So with the reminder from the hatchery, it lit a fire under me to begin preparing for their arrival.  So here is my brooder:

This Year's Brooder

While it might look like a pile of trash, it is not!  That's just what this year's brooder looks like prior to assembly.  Normally I pull out a homemade brooder, but it is heavy and bulky.  A friend gave me some supplies and the good idea to put together a different style brooder this year.  A brooder is simply a structure for raising young chicks.  It is normally heated.  Let's assemble the new brooder so we're all ready for 60 chicks when they call from the Post Office.

Benjamin was conscripted into Brooder Assembly Service and helped by unrolling the roll of siding. He measured across it with a tape measure so that the diameter was six feet.  That is the perfect size for 60 one day old chicks.  He duct taped it so that it would stay together.

Taping the sides

We then lined the bottom with newspaper.  We figured that might make the clean-up easier in a couple of weeks.  We set a 1x4 across the top and clamped two heat lamps on it and then began dumping sawdust and wood shavings on the bottom. Benjamin commented that the wood shavings smell good.  I think so, too.

Pouring the sawdust/shavings for bedding

Benjamin got inside the brooder and spread the shavings so that they covered every square inch. Things are really coming together now.

Spreading the Bedding

I walked out to the barn and retrieved two small watering containers.  When the little chicks arrive in the mail, they are very, very thirsty.  I put the waterers on top of a board for stability.  As the chicks get a little older, I'll substitute some larger waterers, but these will do for now.

Now all we have to do is wait for a call from the Post Office!

I like the new brooder!  Don't you love it when a plan comes together?  Setting up this brooder was quick, easy - almost effortless! All that's left is to wait for a call from the Post Office first thing in the morning telling us that we have a package THAT'S ALIVE and to come and get it!

Roses Are Red, Violets are...

EDIBLE!

Yesterday by the big live oak I spotted something real colorful and called Tricia over to see it.  Wild violets were blooming in several places between the base of the tree and a concrete bench. They are hard to miss with the beautiful blue color and the heart shaped, dark green leaves.  It is kind of neat that something this pretty just comes up on its own in the wild.  I can remember these from when I was a boy. They grew up wild in our yard in Green Oak.

Wild Violets

It pops up year after year in the same place and there are numerous violets now around the base of the tree.

Beautiful Wild Louisiana Violet

Here is a picture of one of the violets from a distance.  You can see the heart shaped leaves and at least three flowers on this plant.  But that's not all...

Violets are edible!  I learned AT THIS SITE some interesting things about violets:

Flowers: Viola pedata, V. palmata, V. langlosii, V. primulifolia

Members of the Viola family (Violets) are some of the first flowers to appear in early spring. Violets are an excellent ground cover plant for shady or part sunny areas and can be used in place of expensive, high maintenance exotic turf grass.

The flowers can be blue, purple or white. The leaves and flowers are edible and are rich in vitamins A and C. Violas are the host plant for the Variegated Fritillary Butterfly. There are many varieties of Violets that are native to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast states.

I have seen them in blue, purple and white colors, but I never knew they were edible and very healthy for you.  We had picked some fresh lettuce from the garden, so I figured that I would surprise Tricia and pick some violet flowers and leaves and add them to our salad as well.  Here's what it looked like:

A beautiful, healthy and tasty Violet Salad

Not only was the salad delicious and pleasing to the eye, but it was pleasing to the taste buds as well. I ate the violet leaves by themselves and found them to be tasty. I ate the flowers with a big forkful of lettuce and carrots, so I couldn't tell you specifically how the flower tasted.  It is very interesting to know that we are surrounded by edible things that we overlook almost every day.  Nice to learn about edible flowers growing wild in our yard!

The Old Striped-Head

Early Saturday afternoon I was busy in the garden, working up a 30 foot row and planting Contender Green Beans.  We love green beans.  In a couple of weeks I'll work up another row and plant some more so that we have a staggered harvest.  I was wiping the sweat off my brow when Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian dog began barking.  Let me back up.  I use the adjective 'guardian' very, very loosely.  Theoretically he's a guardian dog.  In actuality, he's a predator dog who enjoys eating our laying hens.  As a result, he's banished from the barnyard.

He is still a guardian dog for us, I guess, because he barks his head off at visitors that he doesn't know, cats, possums, raccoons, and other dogs.  As I was hoeing in the garden, that dude began barking and would not stop.  I was busy and tried to tune him out but it was annoying.  Finally I put the hoe down and began walking over his way.  At the same time Tricia came out of the house and said, "What is he barking at?"

He was barking at a turtle that had ambled up in the yard.  I guess we can rest easily tonight knowing that if a bloodthirsty turtle shows up at the house meaning to do our family harm, Big Boy will alert us.  This is the vicious turtle he was barking at:

A Striped-Head Turtle

A striped head turtle.  That's what we always call them anyway.  Their official name is a Red-Eared Slider.  They are found by the hundreds in every roadside ditch.  On summer days they line the top of logs in gullies and bayous.  Some people keep them as pets.  Some people around here eat them, but I've never tried to eat one. Seems like a lot of work for a little bit of meat.  When you pick them up, they are pretty timid as you can see:  Definitely not something that Big Boy should be all concerned about.

Shy Guy

While I was holding him by the garden fence, I thought about the old joke about the post turtle.  I've heard it about several different politicians of different persuasion and political stripe.  Have you heard it?  Let me put the Striped-Head Turtle up on the post so I can tell it:

An old rancher is talking about politics with a young man from the city. He compares a politician to a "post turtle". The young man doesn't understand and asks him what a post turtle is.
The old man says, "When you're driving down a country road and you see a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle. You know he didn't get up there by himself. He doesn't belong there; he can't get anything done while he's up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down."

The Post Turtle

Corny, I know.  So I got the poor thing down.  While I was setting him down, he began to talk to me. Fortunately, I speak "turtlese."  I'll translate what he told me.

Speak your mind, turtle

He told me that he thinks he now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Whoa, even cornier! I set him down and he meandered off across the pasture. Adios, post turtle.

An Update to a Post from 3 Months Ago

A little over 3 months ago, I posted about trip to San Antonio, Texas that Tricia and I took to celebrate our 25th Anniversary.

Alamo Oak

You can read about more about the history of the Alamo Oak by clicking here: Alamo Oak.  There are times that I become cognizant of the fact that I'll ruminate about certain things and then I don't go back and update on progress. Today I'll try to remedy that with this update post.

For a quick summary: About 25 and 1/2 years ago Tricia and I were engaged on the River Walk in San Antonio.  On that evening, I picked up a handful of acorns from the big live oak tree right outside the Alamo and brought them home, planted them and one of them germinated.  I figured that it would be a really neat thing to plant that tree and one day be able to point to the big live oak tree while we sat underneath the sprawling branches and tell our grandchildren and/or great-grandchildren that we picked up the acorn from which that tree grew on the day that Tricia and I were engaged.

That little oak seedling grew into a healthy live oak tree and was about 3 feet tall. Sometimes things don't work out as planned.  At that time we lived in an apartment complex in Houston.  We came home from work one day to find that someone had up-rooted our Anniversary Alamo Oak and it had dried out in the sun all day.  I quickly re-potted it and watered it, but try as I might, I could not resurrect the oak.

Fast forward 25 years.  For our anniversary, we re-traced our steps in San Antonio. At the end of the evening, we happened to walk past the big live oak outside the Alamo.  Again, I picked up a handful of acorns and placed them in my pocket.  I figured, "Let's try this again."  I took them home and was able to get one to germinate.  You can see the healthy, vigorous little live oak popping up out of the soil in the photo at the top of this post.

We talked about how big the tree might be today if the first one had survived.  Well, it doesn't matter. We're going to try this again and hopefully this time, we'll meet with more success.  Landmarks and old things that have a story or interesting history are very interesting to me.  Because of the personal nature of this, it is even more special.  I researched a little bit on the Alamo Oak from which our acorn dropped from and found this article: Article on the Alamo Oak - or Heritage Tree .  The Heritage Tree - how fitting!  Perhaps I'll write an update when one of our great-grandchildren are climbing in the branches of our Anniversary Oak.

A Little Fiber for Your Diet

Image Credit

A (crazy) cousin of mine told me that he was trying to save money on his feed bill. It was costing him a lot of money to feed his horse.  He was brainstorming different cost saving ideas and determined that he would feed his horse one cup less of feed and substitute a cup of sawdust in its place.  He did this every day for a week, the horse was eating it and he saw no ill effects.  So then he removed two cups of feed from his horse's daily ration and substituted two cups of sawdust in its place. That went on for a week and then he continued with the experiment.  He told me that he was saving a lot of money after a month and that he had his horse eating almost 100% sawdust when his horse went and died on him.  Now, he was only joking (I hope), but who in the world would eat sawdust?

Well, if you eat Parmesan Cheese, you probably do!  THIS ARTICLE I read recently said that:

Parmesan cheese or wood pulp? Chances are when you sprinkle parmesan on your spaghetti you may be getting a little of both.
Some companies that promise 100% parmesan cheese, have been adding cellulose, a common food additive made from wood pulp, to their cheese products, according to an independent study, launched by Bloomberg News.
An independent laboratory test found that products like Walmart store's Great Value 100% grated parmesan cheese registered 7.8% cellulose, Jewel-Osco’s Essential Everyday 100% parmesan cheese was 8.8% cellulose and Kraft had 3.8% cellulose, Bloomberg reported.

Image Credit

Well, that's crazy, isn't it?  Sawdust mixed with cheese doesn't sound very appetizing.  I assume if you ate enough of it, you might end up like my cousin's horse.  Sometimes at our house, I invoke the "five second rule."  Do you do that? The rule says that if you happen to drop some food on the ground, as long as you pick it up in less than five seconds, it is safe to eat.  Sometimes (yes, I'm frugal) I'll add a bit of water to an (almost) empty Tabasco Sauce bottle to get the last bit out of the bottle.  Ditto with ketchup or mustard.

I think the difference with those things is that I KNOWINGLY do those things.  I wouldn't want my food picked up off of the kitchen floor if I go out to a restaurant.  I wouldn't want someone to serve me diluted Tabasco Sauce, ketchup or mustard either.  And I sure wouldn't want wood chips in my Parmesan Cheese, wood you?! Adding wood pulp to your Parmesan Cheese won't hurt you, but it is deceitful. Companies are able to stretch their product and add profits to their bottom line - at our expense.

That's why it's always best to read labels on things you eat and choose those products that contain few ingredients with ingredients that you can pronounce and understand what it is, with no artificial colors, flavorings or fillers like sawdust.  Oh, block Parmesan Cheese that you grate yourself does NOT contain sawdust.  If you are not a beaver and don't enjoy eating sawdust, you want to make sure that you buy block Parmesan and grate it yourself!

Almost Time for Annie to Kid

Back in September, we posted HERE about taking our Nubian goat, Annie, down the road to get bred.  Our neighbor has a Nubian buck.  We left her with the buck for a while and then our neighbor informed us that she was bred successfully and we picked her up.  To the best of our calculations, Annie should be kidding before the end of the month.  Her belly is pretty big and oddly shaped.  She spends a lot of time just laying around.

Oddly Shaped Annie

Annie miscarried in her first pregnancy, so we're hoping for better results this time. I began to read a little on kidding and learned that, like a cow, the last few days before delivery, the udder will fill with milk.  We're already seeing her start to "bag up," so it can't be too much longer.  The article stated that delivery will take five hours - Four hours for dilation and one hour for delivery of the kid.  Twins are quite common with goats, so we'll be on the lookout for two!

Wide Load

A normal delivery is when the kid presents right side up, with front feet out, with the head between the legs.  We're praying for a normal position and delivery.  We are keeping our eyes on her.  When Annie was born, her momma, Nellie, delivered her in secret.  We never saw here in labor and only found Annie after she had been born for an hour or two.

Momma to be

Like in calving, baby goats should be standing within a few hours after birth and looking to begin nursing.  It's always an exciting time when babies come, whether they be calves, chicks, or kids. We'll keep you posted and be sure to show plenty of baby pics.  Baby goats are cute little critters.  We will be happy to have new babies and goat milk once again.  

Picking the Very Last of the Navel Oranges

This year was an excellent year for citrus.  We've picked every last tangerine off our our trees and just the other day I went out and picked the final bucketful of navel oranges off of the top of the tree. I pick the low hanging fruit first, because it is convenient, but after you've eaten everything else, then I start picking the hard to reach fruit at the top of the tree.

We've eaten plenty of them by just cutting them up and snacking on them.  We've juiced many of them and have enjoyed drinking fresh squeezed orange juice - it is so much better than store-bought OJ.  Tricia has flavored our kombucha with some of the juice and IN THIS POST we show a delicious option for using our oranges. I'm telling you, it is the best cake.

The last oranges at the top of the tree

After I had picked them all, I made another pass around the tree just to make sure that I wasn't leaving any behind.  Lo and behold there was another one hiding behind some leaves in the middle of the tree - can't leave any behind.

Hide & Seek Orange

Navel Oranges get their name from the 'belly-button' looking object on the opposite end than the stem.  THIS LINK explains how the navel orange came about.  It is an interesting story and I'll post a little bit:

"That appearance of a navel on the orange is the result of a mutation," Moses says. The mutation created a conjoined twin — an aborted second orange at the opposite end from the stem. "Looks like a human navel," Moses says, but "it's in fact a small, second orange."

And the mutation that started it all? A single branch on a sour orange tree in the garden of a monastery in Brazil.

A Presbyterian missionary came upon it in the mid-1800s. It intrigued him that not only did the orange have a bellybutton and baby orange inside — it was sweet, and had no seeds.

He made a cutting, propagated some little trees, and sent them to William Saunders at the USDA in Washington.

"Because the navel orange through that mutation is seedless," Moses says, "all of the navel oranges that we see today and we eat today are genetically identical with the original orange."

That's right. The produce aisle is filled with clones of that one mutation from Bahia, Brazil.

The Last bucket of oranges 

So once I picked the last of the fruit, my son Russ, a horticulture major at LSU, taught me what he knows about pruning the tree.  We cut some branches off of the tree according to his pruning technique.  It will keep fruit from dragging on the ground when the orange-laden limbs are bent over. We fed the leaves to the cows and goat and they ate every green leaf off of it.

It won't be much longer before all the trees begin to bloom and the evening air is filled with one of the most fragrant aromas on God's green earth - orange blossoms!

Our New Flock of Guinea Fowl

 We’ve had one lonely male guinea fowl on Our Maker’s Acres Family Farm for quite a while. Our guinea cock was given to us by a friend.  He was in mourning after his mate was killed by a dog.  You see, guinea fowl mate for life.  They are monogamous and mate with no other guineas. He's just been hanging out with our chickens.  We figured that since he lost his “wife,” it was high time that we’d at least give him some friends of his own species, so when we ordered our most recent bunch of pullets, we ordered four guinea fowl day old chicks.

Baby guinea fowl are not called chicks – they are called keets.  I ordered the keets as “straight-run.” That means they aren’t sexed.  It is sort of like a grab bag.  You don’t know whether they are going to be males or females.  I was counting on them being a 50-50 mix, with half being male and half female.  More on that in a minute.  So as they aged, I noticed that they were different.  In fact we now have 3 different breeds of guinea fowl.  One of them turned out to be a Pearl Grey:

Pearl Grey Guinea

One of them is a Lavender:

Lavender Guinea

And two of them are White Africans:

White African Guinea

As you can see in the photo, the breeds are pretty easy to tell apart.  As far as telling the difference between the sexes?  Very hard.  In fact, when I Googled ‘how to tell the difference between male and female guinea fowl,’ I learned that it is virtually impossible to tell by looking at them.  As a side note, it is interesting to see that ten years ago, the word ‘googled’ was not a verb! 

What you have to do is LISTEN to them to tell the difference between the males and females.  Seriously.  So there I was bent over INSIDE the chicken tractor, watching and listening to the noise they make.  Males only speak in one syllable.  They make a “chi-chi-chi-chi” sound.  Females, on the other hand, speak in two syllable sounds.  The female makes a “buck-wheat, buck-wheat” sound.  Now, I know what you are thinking, but I’m not sure if you can make any determination on the relative intelligence level between the sexes or not based on that! (smile).  But amazingly, the female can imitate the male’s chi-chi-chi-chi sound as well.  Crafty and deceptive, she is.

So I had my work cut out for me.  Bent over watching the frightened birds, I watched and listened and watched and listened – and no one would speak.  For the longest time I sat there.  Finally, I heard the buck-wheat, buck-wheat sound coming from the Pearl Grey letting me know that we had at least one female.

I got tired of waiting for the others to talk.  Determining the sex of the remaining three will be a project for another day.  At least we have one female and as a result, we’ll have guinea eggs.  That reminds me of something from my childhood.  On Easter Sunday, we’d “pock” eggs.  A Cajun Tradition, we’d dye hard boiled eggs and tap them together.  The person with the broken egg would be out, while the person with the unbroken egg would progress around the room until a ‘Champion’ holding the hardest egg would be crowned.  My great-grandmother would always bring guinea eggs.  Guinea eggs are smaller than a chicken egg, but they also have harder shells than a chicken egg – making them highly valued come pocking time.

Back to the lonely widower male guinea, he’s been hanging around the chicken tractor interested in his brethren.  I wonder if when it says they “mate for life,” if that means that once their wife dies, they ‘re-marry?”  I guess we’ll find out shortly!

Planting Potatoes 2016

In our last post we talked about preparing our seed potatoes for planting by cutting them so that each chunk had an eye.  We allowed the cut potatoes to sit for a couple of days and 'scab' over so as not to rot once placed in the ground.  After only two days the potatoes' cut ends had healed over.  Right on schedule!

Saturday morning arrived and once the morning chores were done, it was time to get some potatoes in the ground.  I usually shoot for Valentine's Day as the planting day for potatoes.  This year I was a day early.  I decided to plant the potatoes in the area of the garden that was planted with squash and beans.  In 2012 I planted this plot with potatoes and we had our best yield ever.  Let's see if we can repeat.

The Potato Patch

I used a tape measure to mark off 24 inch rows and tied baling twine to stakes pulled tight to mark my rows.  Amy, the Jersey cow, was supervising my measurements and also requesting that I toss weeds over the fence.  I obliged.

Pulling up rows

With some good old-fashioned work with a shovel and a hoe, I pulled up five additional rows between the Onion row on the north and the brussels sprouts row on the south side.  I knew from the other day that I have 168 pieces of seed potatoes to plant, so we'll see if this is enough room or if I'll have to work up more soil.

Five rows ready to plant

Now potatoes should be planted 12 inches apart, so I made a marking stick using an old piece of bamboo cane that I've had in the corner of the garage.  I marked off 12 inch increments on the bamboo with a permanent marker.  Back when Russ was younger, I was the den leader of his group of Webelos Scouts.  In one of our activities we made walking sticks with bamboo. The bamboo came from a stand of bamboo cane at the farm in Oberlin that my grandfather had planted as a windbreak for the cattle.  As kids we'd run through the "bamboo jungle" pretending it was Viet Nam.  

In it's previous life as a walking stick, the bamboo had a leather string on the top with feathers on it. But that's not all.  As I was on my way to the scout meeting, I happened across a freshly hit raccoon on the road.  I pulled over and cut the tail off the poor old coon and tied it to the walking stick.  As you know, everyone needs a walking stick with a coon's tail on it, right?  From walking stick to measuring stick, that old piece of bamboo has more lives than a cat.

Marking, digging, planting

In addition to being planted 12 inches apart, potatoes should be planted 4 inches deep, according to LSU AgCenter.  I'm going to do something a little different.  I dug a 4 inch deep hole and then dropped a tablespoon of organic fertilizer and then covered it with a couple of inches of dirt.  Then I placed the potatoes in the hole.

Yukon Gold potatoes in the ground

Potato planting is back breaking work.  I got all the Yukon Gold planted and started on the LaSoda potatoes, finally covering with soil.  The eyes were all sprouted nicely and with a rain coming Monday and temperatures expected to be in the 70's all week, I think these spuds are going to really take off.

LaSoda Red Potato with a healthy eye

Finally I was finished!

2016 Potato Crop (or most of it anyway)

Or was I?  To my chagrin, I realized that I had 43 seed potatoes left.  So I pulled up another row and a half on the other side of the beets to finish up the job.  At long last, I was done.  As they grow I'll pull up soil around the plants and then mulch heavily with hay to crowd out any weed pressure.  In 90-120 days we'll be digging potatoes - another back breaking job, but a rewarding one.  Nothing like new potatoes cooked along with some fresh picked green beans.  This weekend I'll try to work up some ground to get some beans and corn planted.  Happy Growing, Ya'll!

Getting Ready to Plant Potatoes

I asked Tricia to pick up some seed potatoes at the Feed Store the next time that she went to pick up dairy ration, laying pellets, and alfalfa.  This time every year our local feed store stocks up on seed potatoes that everyone in the area will be planting. Tricia picked up two boxes that consisted of ten (10) pounds of Lasoda Red Potatoes and five (5) pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes.

Some of the potatoes were large and some were small.  I just left them out on my workbench in the garage for a couple of weeks.  My goal is to always have them planted sometime around Valentine's Day.  It's easy to remember.  In our growing zone the planting range is from January 20th - February 28th.

Seed Potatoes

After sitting in the garage in 70 degree temperatures, the potatoes' eyes started to grow.  You can see the eyes sprouting on the Yukon Gold potatoes:

Yukon Gold eyes

And the Lasoda Red potatoes:

Ready to start growing

Now for smaller potatoes, you can certainly plant them whole.  If the potatoes are bigger than the size of a golf ball, I like to cut them so that each section has an eye. Sometimes, I can get up to four pieces off of a potato, but most of the time I'll get three.  Each one of these will produce its own plant.

This potato will yield three separate plants and hopefully many potatoes

Once I was finished cutting them, I laid them on trays.  The ten pounds of Lasoda Red Potatoes yielded 128 separate pieces and the five pounds of Yukon Gold yielded 40 separate pieces.  If my math is right, that will give us 168 potato plants if they all grow!  I will let these sit in the trays for 3 days until the cut edges have scabbed over.  Then they'll be ready to put in the ground - hopefully this weekend.

Trays of cut potatoes

Oh, one more thing.  We also saved some seed potatoes from our own crop.  You can see them all sprouted below.  They aren't very pretty, but they'll produce good potatoes.

Our own seed potatoes

I can't wait to get these all in the ground!