Farm Update

Let's see...

The 16 chicken chicks are growing well. They are feathering out nicely and are even starting to fly up onto the roost in the brooding pen. I still can't tell the sex of the chicks so I am keeping my fingers crossed that more then 50% will be hens.

The rabbit kits are also growing well. I pulled them out of the nest boxes a few days ago to put clean bedding material in so I got a head count on them finally. Purslane's litter has 7 kits while Camomile's litter has a whopping 10 kits!

The goose is finally sitting on her eggs in the ground level nest box that Neil built for me last year. I have counted 7 eggs in the nest. I hope she successfully hatches out more than one gosling this year.

The alpacas are looking skinny after their shearing earlier this week. I moved our 10 month old male, Seamus, out of the females pasture and put him in with the young boys out in the back pasture. He is mildly stressed by the move, I always hate weaning time, but he seems to be getting along fine with the other boys so I am happy with that. I also moved our llama into the cow pasture. There is more grass there right now and she can't be in either of the back alpaca pastures since I have intact males in both of them. She seems to enjoy having new pasture to explore.

I got the lawn mowed again today... I need to start mowing sections of the pasture soon to keep the thistle and wild dill from taking hold again.

Neil and his Dad started framing in the rear wall of the garage this weekend. It will be nice when the building of the garage is done and Neil can spend his weekends using the garage instead. I have lots of projects for him. :)

Evan picked these buttercups for me today... they sure brighten up the kitchen!

Yeah... new turkeys!

As I was getting ready this morning to go out to do chores the kids had already headed out to play outside. A few minutes later McKayla comes running in the house to tell me that the turkey eggs had hatched into turkey babies!

Wow! I had only discovered that the turkeys were setting on eggs in the blackberry bushes less then two weeks ago now. When I went out three of the turkey hens were over by the kids playground. The kids had taken some bricks and made a circle nest and filled it with hay. One of the hens was squatted over the nest and I could see several little poults sticking out for under her. As cute as that was, I was not willing to loose these poults like I had the few that were hatched out this past spring. I needed to move them and the hen into one of the brooder pens in the chicken coop.

I had my Wulsummer hens and rooster in one of the pens and I first needed to move them out to the hoop house instead. Once everyone was shifted around I collected the poults... there were five... and put them in the brooder. Then I got the hen and they all quickly settled into there new home.

Neil was home today as we had an appointment in Durham this afternoon. While I finished up morning chores, he took the weed whacker and cleared out from under the electric fence (it was turned off) all around the pastures. He then went back with the tractor and mowed around outside of the pastures to keep the weeds down. The tall weeds can short out the fence and make it so it doesn't work as efficiently on the animals. It looked really nice when he finished up.

We had just enough time to clean ourselves up and take the over an hour drive to the city for our appointment.

I'm back, hopefully...

One of my regular egg customers (and now friend) told me today when she stopped by for her eggs that she stumbled across this blog and really enjoyed reading it. She noticed that I hadn't had an entry since the beginning of May and wondered why.

Why? That is a good question. Let's just say that is has been a very busy summer and more then a bit stressful. The first month I found that I just didn't have the time in my day to do any blogging. Then it just fell out of my normal routine so I stopped thinking about what I would blog about. After about 6-8 weeks of no blogging I started feeling a bit guilty about stopping. When things worthy of noting happened around here I would think "I really need to post that on the blog tonight." but still I would never get around to actually doing it. So, I am now determined to get back to my former habit of blogging at least 3-4 times a week.

Meanwhile, just to recap a few major highlights over the past few months:

We have had lots of ducklings and chicks born. We have sold many of them but still have many that will need to be butchered in the coming weeks.

We had a cria born to our alpaca Gritona on May 22nd. He is a light fawn that we named Seamus (sounds like Shamus). He is a very bold young male so we have had little contact with him as he wants to "play" and this would lead to disrespecting of humans and possible agression in the future. We have left his correcting to his mother and herd mates.

Neil and I got a good bit of cross fencing up and created two new alpaca pastures. In one we put the males Peter, Sidney and Finley. Into the other went the male Novio along with the females GeeGee, Abby, Celtie and Joy. Moving the pacas to new pastures has greatly improved the condition of the grass. I still am mowing the pastures to prevent the thistle from growing up but the pastures are so much better then last year. I can only hope that they will improve every year. Our Nigerian dwarf goats gave birth for the first time. Pepper had a single doeling that we will be keeping. We named her Mary Jane.


Gabby had twin bucklings that we sold to a neighboring alpaca farmer so I know that will be well cared for.

I have been milking Gabby (I let Pepper raise Mary Jane herself) and have made some fresh goat cheese, a batch of Feta that is still in the brining stage and some whey ricotta.

The wild blackberries around that property ripened and we made a batch of Blackberry jelly with them.

And finally, and sadly, our cat Sweet Pea that I brought home from the feed store last Fall went missing the first week of July. I have owned a lot of cats in my life and I have to say she was one of my favorites. I wish I knew what became of her; car, fox, coyote, stray dog? I miss her every morning as I go down to the barn to do chores and she is not following behind me or riding on my shoulder. The farm is not the same anymore.

More fencing

I am pleased that Neil and I got the major run of cross fencing finished this weekend. The job included installing the last of the angled cross braces on the end posts, installing two 12' gates and run about another 100 feet of woven wire fencing. But we now have an additional pasture in which to purposefully separate our livestock! Yeah!

We also got a great start on installing the woven wire on the section of fence line that will split this new pasture we just formed into two pastures. There is only about another 150-200 of fencing on that run and a single four foot gate to install and I will have two pastures in which to put the animals.

The last bit of work we did for today was to get a watering system set up in the new pastures. In the large trash/junk pile out in the woods that we inherited with the farm has been an upside down cast iron tub. I wasn't sure what condition it was in but I had in mind to move it up to the pastures as a water trough. We got the tractor down to the pile and using chains moved it up to the shed to evaluate it. This was not the "loins foot" type but a newer style that would fit like a modern tub today. That meant that three sides were exposed and only one side had a face to it. But, besides being baby blue in color it was in perfect condition still. Not a chip on it. Neil installed a new drain for me so it would hold water again and I could easily drain in out to keep it clean. Once that was done we took it out to the pasture and set it up on some bricks to level it and keep the drain off the ground. For now I will have to fill it a few times a week from a 50 gallon drum that fits in the bucket of the tractor. In future we hope to get a gravity feed system worked out.

With the fence done and water available the new pasture is now ready for some livestock. That will happen tomorrow.

Fence progression.

Finally, we had a weekend with no rain so we could continue work on our new pasture cross-fencing. Yesterday, we finished drilling the holes and setting the posts. Today, we got about 300 feet of woven wire stretched and installed. I know it doesn't sound like much but it involved a lot of splicing. Neil was able to get the "end rolls" free from the fencing company working at his job site right now. The rolls are only between 50-75 feet long. It defiantly made for longer labor time to install but without this fencing we wouldn't have been able to cross-fence at all this year so we don't really mind.

We would have finished one whole run but we were driven out of the pasture in the late afternoon by a sudden thunderstorm. So, now we will have to wait until next weekend to finish up and move some of our alpacas around.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

After almost a week straight of rain today it cleared off and was warm again. By the afternoon the grass had dried out enough that I was able to mow the lawn for the first time of the season. It is amazing to me how different (and neat and tidy) the farm looks when the grass is mowed down. I like to mow with the tractor as for the most part I have a great view of the pastures and all the animals we have.

Today was particularly fun as the animals were also very thrilled that the rain was gone and the sun was out. The four cows and our mini donkey were just straight out running around the pasture, skipping and twisting all the way. The alpacas were out grazing as a herd what little grass has started to grow in their pasture too.

Just a pleasent day after such a cold wet gloomy week.

Ruler of the Roost

What is it about boys... when it comes to girls?

I went in to feed the poultry (chickens, ducks and turkeys) this morning and discovered the tom turkey and the drake duck were fighting. The drake's head was all bloody and blood dripped out of his nostrils. The tom had blood all over the front of him, although I am pretty sure it is the drake's blood not his.

These two boys have peacfully coexisted for almost a year now. What has changed? The girls. They are now laying eggs and a few of them are setting. I am sure the boys are all puffed up with pride and feel they need to be top male in the poultry yard.

So, with a lack of any other space to seperate them I put all five turkeys (the tom and four hens) in the hoop house. I had to move a nest of eggs and I hope the hen continues to set on them in their new location.

I guess by default the drake duck will be the ruler of the roost for now.

I also noticed as I went about chores this morning that we lost the top of the old dead tree out in the pasture in the wind we had last night. Neil and I have been watching it for awhile, worried that it might fall before we got a chance to cut it down. We it fell first and luckily none of the animals got hurt in the process. It sure does change the look of the skyline in that little grove of trees in the pasture. It also made quite a mess on the ground for us to clean up. More firewood!

I sold four dozen eggs today!

Work on the barn gets done!

I noticed this morning while doing chores that end of our 6' woven wire fence had gotten mangled a bit. After feeding I walked out into the pasture to get a closer look. This part of the fence is kind of loose since it was the end of the roll but didn't quite reach where the next wooden post will be. In the future when we get more fencing we will be splicing them together, but for right now, the end of the roll is being staked with a T-post and then the electric fence begins. It was obvious that a deer had gotten tangled in the woven wire and struggled to get free. The spacing on the wire had been distorted and the fence was leaning out quite a bit. It will still hold our livestock for now so it is not at the top of our list for fixing today. It will be nice when we have 6' fencing all around the pasture so the deer can't get in at all.

Neil actually got a chance to work on the end wall of the barn today! He got about 2/3 of the wall framed in and sided. All that is left is framing around the 8' wide door and putting on the rest of the siding. Hopefully next weekend will see the completion of the barn siding project. We still need to build some doors and my office in the barn but I am happy to have the wind break this wall will provide the animals.

I brought more hay up from the semi-trailer today. While I was in there I counted the bales I had remaining. I have 31 bales left after taking today's load. That means I have only about 45 days left of hay at best. Come January I am going to have to find some more hay... probably about 50-75 bales at the very least.

This afternoon I also took the tractor out into the pasture and collected the down wood out in the tree stand. It made for a good load of wood on the tractor. I figure it will be a couple of days of cutting anyway. Oh, and Neil took a few minutes and sharpened the chainsaw chain for me. I did a test cut after the fact and it was like cutting through butter! That will make cutting wood so much faster.

Neil and I also got the 10x10 pop-up canopy set up over the catch pen for Eloise once she arrives. The transporter called this afternoon and said it would be later this evening that he would be delivering her.

10pm Update: Well, Eloise is here at last! Finally, all of our alpacas are here on the farm with us. She has a cute face but being a black alapca in the dark of night it was hard to get a good look at her. I threw some hay down for her along with some water and after a bit left her to settle down for the night. I can't wait to see her in daylight.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! This is my very favorite holiday; family, friends and good food is what it is all about!

Here on the farm we are not celebrating until Saturday when Neil's parents will come up for a few days from SC. So, today, Neil and I were out in the pasture setting new fence posts for the new male alpaca pasture we need to put Finley into. It didn't take too long to get the posts set as we spaced them about 50 feet apart. This will be an interior 3 strand electric fence so we are not too concerned about security. We got all the posts set today and one line of the electric string installed... we ran out of electric string and the store is not open today as it is Thanksgiving!

We will finish it up in the morning hopefully.

It's the little things that count.

Today was a day full of small projects.

After completing the painting on the farm sign this week, Neil was able to get it installed for me up by the road. Once installed I did have a small amount of touch up painting to do with the white background as the turkeys left foot prints on the first side I painted before we flipped it to paint the second side. Painting the sign was a project that took far longer then originally planned and I am very happy to have it done at last. Yeah!

Then I butchered our three Road Island Red roosters. These three were the hardest of all the birds I have done to pluck! I was very frustrated. What should have been a 5 minutes job for each of them turned into 20 minutes a piece. The feathers just didn't want to come out, especially on the wings. I knew I scalded them for the same time and in my frustration I tore the skin on two of them. Boy, wasn't I happy when that project was over!

Meanwhile, Neil was down working on a hay feeder for the cows and donkeys. Prior to now I had to place to feed them hay except on the ground and there is just so much waste that way. Our hay here is too expensive with our drought to waste any of it so I have been waiting for a hay feeder to start giving the cows any hay. It will be nice to start supplimenting our poor drought damaged pasture with some hay at last. The previous owners had a 2x4 frame they left behind that held three trash cans side by side. Neil simply took that framework and covered the floor and the four sides with plywood, put on two wheels in the front and two wooden handles in the back and it was done. The wheels will make it easy for me to move it around myself. The whole thing is pretty slick and it was all made with stuff we had lying around... which are the best projects when you are a homesteader!

Finally, Neil installed some new locks on the bedroom french doors as the current locks were getting a bit old.

I made a yummy dinner of grilled London Broil, mashed potatoes, green beans and fresh dinner rolls. Everything was so good!

Three eggs today.

Pokeweed

We have quite a bit of this plant in different areas of the property. It is a fast growing plant with red stalks, broad green leaves and, this Fall, large dark blue berries all over them. I was unsure what is was but was hoping that the beautiful looking berries would be edible. A quick internet search proved otherwise.

It turns out this is called Pokeweed. The Iowa Extention office says this on Pokeweed:

"The entire pokeweed plant contains a poisonous substance similar to saponin. The alkaloid phytolaccine also occurs in small amounts. Most authorities regard the plant as poisonous. Birds are apparently immune to this poison. Animals usually do not eat the plant because of its bitter taste. Humans have been poisoned by eating parts of the root, which is the most poisonous part of the plant. Children are often attracted by the bright crimson juice of the berries and can be poisoned by eating the berries. Indians used the juice for staining feathers, arrowshafts, and garments. Indians and early settlers used the root in poultices and certain drugs for skin diseases and rheumatism. If taken internally, pokeweed is a slow acting but a
violent emetic. Vomiting usually starts about 2 hours after the plant or parts of it have been eaten. Severe cases of poisoning result in purging, spasms, and sometimes convulsions. If death occurs, it is usually due to paralysis of the respiratory organs. Cases of animal or human poisoning should be handled by a veterinarian or a physician. Because of the danger of human poisoning, pokeweed should be eradicated when discovered. This is especially true if the plants are in hedges, gardens, and other areas adjacent to a home where children may be attracted by clusters of berries."

So, I guess I need to make the time to go out into the pasture and remove the weeds from there. We also have some closer to the house which I will remove. But there is quite a bit in the woods away from the animals and kids that I will leave for now for the birds over the winter.

Chicken Butchering

First thing we did this morning (after chores and breakfast that is) was to hook up the trailer and head down to the feed store to pick up the 25 bales of hay that I pre-paid for on Tuesday. I would have liked to get more but at $8.75 a bale 25 was all that we could mange right now. That will bring our hay numbers up to 52 bales for the winter. To be on the safe side I would love to have twice that number put up. All this means is that I need to be conservative with the hay and not use any until we really need to. As long there is green grass in the pastures the livestock is just going to have to make do. Being a small farmer on a tight budget can be a struggle at times.

After getting the hay we did a bit of shopping in town since we were there. Got some food to stock the pantry and some new shoes, two pair of jeans and couple of shirts for Evan. He is growing so fast and with cooler weather coming on I can't get away with just putting him in shorts and sandals all the time.

Then this afternoon it was time for me to butcher the three roosters I had separated out from the flock last night. This was the first time I had butchered chickens all by myself (I had learned to do it in college). First I had to decide between the chopping block or using a "killing cone". I opted for the killing cone as the part I hate the most about the butchering process is having them flap around after they are dead (or dieing). The cone holds their wings against their body and prevents any of the flapping around. My "cone" was just a plastic gallon jug with the bottom cut off and the spout cut off to allow the head and neck to pass through. The jug was installed bottom up on the backside of the tool shed with a 5-gallon bucket on the ground to catch the blood.

One at a time the chickens were placed upside down into the cone. Chickens become very calm when held upside down which makes is very easy to put the chicken into the cone. So, with my first chicken in the cone I firmly held his head, took a deep breath, and using a sharp knife slit the jugular vein on one side of his neck. I continued to hold his head to keep him from shaking it, and blood, all over. I repeated that with the other two birds. Once that was done (which is by far the hardest part) I scalded the birds in a big pot of water I had sitting on the side burner of our outdoor grill. Time of scalding varies with the temp of the water and the age of the bird. My water was at 125 degrees and I swished them around (one at a time) for about 45 seconds to a minute. Once scalded the feathers come off by hand pretty easy. I then took the three birds into the kitchen to finish the remainder of the cleaning process. I would say it took 7-10 minutes per bird to remove the heads and feet and eviscerate them. This time should get closer to 5 minutes as I get more practice. Once they were all cleaned they went into a cold water brine (just water and salt) and placed into the fridge to age for 2-3 days. Once they age they can be cooked or frozen for later.

All in all the butchering process was not as bad as one might think it would be. Now I only have 15 more birds to go!

Back at the farm....

Well, we arrived at the farm around 4:15am this morning. It was a long drive last night. Neil and I took turns driving and we still needed to pull over and sleep for a while. We were glad to crawl in bed once we got here!

We needed to drive all night because our new steel building was getting delivered this morning and we needed to be here to unload it. It is hard to believe that such a small pile of metal can turn into such a large building! Our neighbor Dan is going to be pouring the concrete pad for this building soon (I hope). I will post more photos as this job is completed.

Once the delivery was done we packed up the kids and went out to brunch as we didn't have much in the house to eat. Stopped in at Lowe's and Food Lion to get what we needed for the weekend and then headed home. The rest of the day we spent doing yard work. Neil raked all the leaves from around the house. He said he didn't think this had every been done before since their was glass and bits of shingle under the leaves. The house has had a metal roof for 5 years! The problem we have with stuff like dried leaves here is that unless we want to shift everything out we can't put it into our compost bins since it has so much trashy stuff in it. So, we have to pile it out by the junkpile in the woods until the time comes when that whole mess needs to be delt with.

Neil and I took turns with the JD push mover around the house and in the tight places and then I got to mow the large side yard with the Kabota tractor. Neil had them install a deck mower on the tractor when he bought it. It works great! After I finished the side yard and some of the larger bits around the house I headed out to the pasture. It was in bad shape after not being grazed most of last summer and fall. We did have a neighbor come and bushhog it down for us last fall but it has just been laid over since that time. I was pleased with how the pasture looked after the mowing. The deck mower did a pretty good job chewing up the large straw that was choking out the new grass from growing up. Made it much easier to walk through and for us to see the debri we needed to remove from the field. Bits of lumber, down fence posts, rocks, two big gopher holes that will need to be filled in. I am not too worried about gophers staying in the field once our LGDs are on patrol.

Neil took over mowing the pasture once the kids got tired and wanted me to go inside with them. I figure the cleared pasture is 7-8 acres and we managed to get about 1/5 of it mowed today.

All that glitters is NOT gold!

We had a quiet morning here. Neil slept in late. I was awake so got out of bed and chopped up the leftovers of our Corned Beef Dinner from last night and put it in a skillet for corned beef hash for brunch. We topped it off with fried eggs... sure was good!

Once we were all up and about, Neil had to run to town for a few things. The kids and I wanted to break in the new bread machine that came a few days ago as I just unpacked it last night. We had plenty of bread in the house so I wanted to make something different. We settled on soft pretzels. We had a blast watching the machine "do it's thing" and then shaping the dough into snakes and rings. As the pretzels were cooling the kids and I headed outside to work.

One of the main things I have done every day that we have been here is to pick up the broken glass and other bits of trash all over the ground. It's everywhere! But, it is especially bad behind the barn in the wooded pasture where the pigs used to be. Part of this area is where I intend to keep the cows and goats. I have been working hard at getting 99% of it cleaned up so I will feel ok about having the animals on that ground. This area is so littered that it would take months to pick it all up by hand. I have been raking the area and then using the tractor to scoop up the piles. It is a lot of heavy raking since there are rocks in the mess of stuff I am removing as well. But, it seems to be going quicker then I thought it would. I at least want to get the area directly behind the barn clear where the turn out pens will be. I will work out from that area later.



Once Neil got home he worked on moving the semi-truck trailer that the previous owners had against the back of the barn. It makes for good storage but for us it is in a terrible location. The past owners actually built the barn roof over the trailer so for us to move it we need to move it sideways a few feet before we can go forward or backward with it. Neil managed to get the back end of it away from the barn today! Our wonderful neighbor has volunteered to bring over his backhoe in a few days to try to move it into the trees away from the barn for us. Gosh, I hope it works.