I got pictures!

My older daughter brought a camera from the school's photo club home for the weekend so I borrowed it to get some pics of the animals for everyone to see first up is the goats.

Now The white goat is as far as we can tell younger than our black one, who is also the head goat in our tiny herd.  She's always chasing the white one (Milkshake) off the feed while she (Momma) is eating.  The little one is our buckling Oreo, he's still too small to do his job, but I doubt the girls care right now.

I don't know how many people saw back when we got our first flock here how we called the chicks "food tv" for our cats.  But.. we got new programming on the "food tv".

It's the Cornish Cross show, I was in the farm store with Silver picking up a couple things when they brought them into the store.  Silver thought it was funny, my head when up as soon as I heard the peeping from them and I started scanning the store to see where they were.  These guys are going to be an experiment to see if it is worth the cost to raise a bunch next year for the freezer.  That's why there is only 6 now, we had considered getting 12.

Speaking of chickens...

This  Is a picture of about 1/3 of our current laying flock.  I unfortunately have about 5-6 roosters in there and they are getting reduced to 2 roosters next week.  That white bucket in the foreground is a feeder Silver made for them out of a 5 gallon pail and a feed bowl.  He bolted the two together and cut some holes in the bottom of the sides of the bucket and it is now a 5 gallon chicken feeder.  The two leghorns in the picture are roosters as is the bird in the doorway, we're keeping the one in the doorway he's a mix) because he is just so huge.

Here is the other one we are keeping:

It's a turken, we got two of these roosters and two hens of this breed and after watching all of the boys I noticed the turkens are built massively.  Also this turken and that mixed rooster (I call him pretty boy and once I can get a pic you'll know why) are the most vigorous breeders in the batch of roosters.  So it was size of the bird and behavior that determined which roosters are going to be put in the freezer verses left with the ladies.

I have the chicken coop in the same location it was though the yard got an upgrade,

The tarp is  up over the coop and part of the yard partly to keep the tarp from getting torn and to help the roof which needs repair.  We bent rebar for the "hoops", we also used pieces of wood at the bottom to hold the chicken wire down with rebar stakes hammered into the ground which will also prevent anybody from digging into the yard.  We also now have a full sized door on the yard instead of having to bend in half to go into the yard.  All of the chicken wire is the same fencing we had on the old yard reused on this one.

That next building is the new rabbitry with those 2 barrels there to store food for birds and rabbits.

Except for the 2 cages on the upper right everything was gotten from one person.  The cage 'condo' on the left side is a  multi lab cage that can be broken down into 6 cages  when you put dividers in.    We temporarily have just tarps on this structure, we're going to put some wood up on the sides to keep the wind down, we're trying to figure out if we'll need a heater int here or not for the winter as they are all New Zeland and New Zeland crosses.

This is Harriet,

I love her coloring, I am hoping when I breed her, that her color will be in her babies as I personally love that silver grey fur.  I am hoping at least down the line to keep the furs off of the ones we butcher for projects.  She's under a year old so I have a few years of breeding her to try for more with her color.

We do have one top notch animal in this bunch.

This is Ziggy, he came with a pedigree and an ear tattoo that is on his opposite ear.  I am going to be putting does in front of him this week as we have cooler weather this week so we should have fully functioning boys this week.  Seems the bucks' equipment doesn't work well when it hits over 90 degrees.  The only colored rabbit I have is Harriet everyone else is a white New Zeland, and we're trying to figure out what she might be.

I am working on trying to switch the rabbits to forage feeding over pellet food, as I'd rather cut them some food myself than have to buy it.  We had gotten some geese from the person we got the rabbits from too but they wandered off.  Which I did expect, and was figuring I'd have to get some goose eggs to hatch next spring so we have friendly ones to guard our yard.

Well I need to get moving, as it's taken me an hour to set this post up due to pictures and I am still cutting firewood for this winter as our chain saw was out of commission this spring so we're half our wood behind.  Though pretty soon we'll have it all and will be chopping/cutting wood for next year.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Silly Things in Life.

There are some really silly words/phrases in the English language and sometimes other ideas are strange as well. Example... “They shot him dead.” So can someone shoot someone alive? Really, come on folks think about it. The phrase is just downright silly.

We even have silly things in gardening, Everytime I look up how to grow something different, everything says “sandy loam” is the perfect soil to grow “X” item. So what doesn't like sandy loam if you are going to grow it? Think on it how many things tell you that what you want to grow wants hard pan, or heavy clay soil?

On the concept of silly things in existence, P.E. class at my kids' school. Now, this school always has the money at the end of the school year to buy all the seniors a gift because they are graduating. However, they don't wish to keep up the gym floor constantly so all of the children are required to have brand new gym shoes that have never been worn outside for the kids to wear for gym class. Otherwise they are required to do P.E. in just socks, which personally I have an issue with.

Now anyone who regularly reads my blog knows that I am a Pagan, and I let the kids go to a local baptist church as it's what they want. I discovered something that is done there that I have an issue with. They bribe the kids with candy to learn their bible verses, and to get them to keep coming back. That isn't right because it shows kids that you only want what someone is willing to pay you to do something. Also I find it wrong that kids are gaining belief in something because someone is paying them to believe in it. What happened to following with your heart?

As for a homestead update, tomorrow barring rain we pick up rabbits and we just got the rabbittry built yesterday. It has temporary sides on it at the moment (tarps) but it is weather proof, as Harriet and Snowball have shown us as they did not get wet with all the rain we had last night and this morning. We have constructed a new sawdust toilet for the building my and Silver are in for this winter, it still needs a seat on it, but shrugs we'll get there. Granted it would have been great to have had it done this morning with the downpour and all the lightning we had. The garden is still producing tomatoes, cucumbers,peppers, and squashes. Seems we did have one pumpkin on the vine, however once it started turning orange it started rotting away. The chickens loved it.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

My plans, Future and close future

The other evening I watched some video's on Turtle Island Preserve. I think that place is amazing, personally I would love to live like that with 99% of “modern amenities” gone from my life. I sit and think on it a bit and you know what aside from needing a well here most of my power usage is the kids watching tv or our fridge/freezer running. We also have electric stoves and water heater. Now when we first got here we heated our water on a simple wood cook stove and only had power in a little box of 4 outlets. (granted this was 4 months after we got here)

I would not mind going back to not using power for the most part and being outside in the shade when working on things that do not require me out in the sunlight. Part of this will be getting my outdoor kitchen built... -soon-. This will be a big plus for us as I could get most of our meals cooked there instead of in the house and heating the house up. Not to mention outside I wouldn't really need to much in the way of artificial light. What little we might need we have discovered solar garden lights work nice. This would mean more wood chopping, but to me that isn't a real big deal really. I can easily cut enough wood in a day for just cooking. It's doing the wood chopping for our winter heat that is a bit tedious.

Our new building that me and Silver are living out of is getting a sawdust toilet, so I will be back to having to take it out and finding a good place to compost it. I cannot use it like the humanure book suggests in my veggie beds as Silver is on a good deal of medications (blood sugar and thyroid), however I could use it to mulch my non-edible flower beds.

When we get around to building other home structures on the property they will be tucked into the woods (in the hopes of something like an eco village small scaled), however I am thinking of making them all sawdust toilets, so I need to plan a good composting spot for all of that.

Starting tomorrow I am going to be starting the work on expanding my vegetable garden. Hopefully I will get some actual help on the project verses someone who just sits there and stares blankly at me while I am just trying to get the work done all the while asking ever minute what they should be doing. I swear some younger people don't know how to take ques on how to do things by just watching others.

Silver made a chicken feeder the other day. He took a plastic pan about the size of one of those large rubber feed bowls and attached it to a 5 gallon bucket he drilled holes in for the feed to flow out of. It works well and I have been able to gauge better how much they are eating now. This batch of chickens just got their first straw bale to tear apart. Now they got it 3 days ago and they are still tearing it up.

We have a minor hangup on building the rabbittry, Silver's toe has opened back up again and the podiatrist has him on a major antibiotic and has his foot in a “boot” to prevent pressure on his toe. Good for the toe but bad for projects that need to be done by this time next week. Especially since the meds sometimes knock him out if he's really not feeling well. Hopefully in the next few days we can get to work on it. This weekend we won't be able to do any building as we're due some rain then (YEAH RAIN!), think it falls under the heading of -FINALLY- we get some rain here that might last more than an hour (yesterday). The dogwood trees here are dieing due to heat and lack of rain. I hope they produce next year.

Unfortunately due to that bad rain deficit, my elderberry trees gave up. I hope they make it to next year. We'll see though, they were going to be major covered with berries too!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Good Bye Crookie

Well for those of you who have followed the Blogger Blog since the beginning you may have heard of Crookie (aka Crookshanks) out kitty with a neurological issue.

Well a few days ago we buried him, the big guy had gotten an infection in his cheek about 3 months ago and it never healed right and he was slowly going.  So we've been making him comfy for all that time.

He was our big bad ass Tom cat who fathered many a kitten and would let any kitten do anything to him.  He was even teaching his look alike from the last year's kittens on what he was doing.  We don't know if he finished this amazing education, but I do know young Devil is very much like Crookie if Crookie never had his stroke.

Now for those of you who don't know anything about Crookie, back when he was 3 months old he had a stroke.

He could not lift his head for some time (a week or more) after the effects of the stroke went away.  It gave him a permanent crook in his neck and he had to relearn to do many things.

An fyi, what we did after his stroke and he was able to see and speak.  I make that statement because right after his stroke we went fully stiff for about 2 days and we had to work his muscles to get them to release.  We started him on slightly watered down condensed milk, just watered enough to make it easy for  him to swallow.  then when he could move aside from not being able to hold his head up (points to pic of Silver holding Crookie up) we gave him bits of cooked pork fat to get him to try to eat.  We fed him like this for a week before he could stand unaided for a few minutes.  We had to show him cat food was food to eat after that, then Bandit the super mom took over and taught him everything else.

Then he grew up into our big beautiful orange cat.  We had a few hiccups with him as he lived.  He learned that "mommie" didn't like him spraying in the house (quick kick to his backside taught him that).  He then learned that "mommie" didn't like him asserting himself to the other males in the house, seems when he does "mommie" steps in and picks you up by the tail and has a few words with you.  That aside he was a very good cat and as I said would let the babies crawl all over him chewing their way along.  One even tried to find a working nipple on him.

Well my pretty boy I hope you enjoy your spot in my flower garden overlooking the pond.  We will miss you sleeping with us this winter and I will miss how you followed me all over the property as I did my work for the day.  The kids will miss how you'd turn your head a meow when I'd say your name.

There is a few lines from  Watership Down that I think have a moment here:

                                           My heart is filled with sadness,
                                            For my friend stopped running today.

Goodbye Crookie we miss you!

Be well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Rambling Thoughts

Well we have 2 weeks about before we get our extra rabbits, we have some work to do to prepare for them. Mainly as where we have the 2 we do have won't work for this large amount. We figured putting them next to our chicken coop will mean that we can keep the chicken feed stored in there with the rabbits and their food.

My biggest hope in this endeavor is to have the extra meat for us. To me having our grocery bill going down is going to be a major help to us. I am planning on making an attempt to can a bunch of the rabbit meat in different formats. One of which being breakfast sausage, I hope it does well.

I am hoping that due to the amount of rabbits we are getting that I'll be able to just cover the garden beds all winter with rabbit manure and in the spring maybe mix it into the soil there or I might just continue with the no till/layer method.

While looking about on Craig's list I have noticed some trends. A lot of people are getting rid of animals due to just their coloring. To me I find this silly because personally I am not showing animals, and though I do prefer certain breeds. I know that right now I will take what I am offered animal wise. Someone is selling their Holstein cows because they now only want to do reds. I saw one person selling off sheep because quote “their sheep project is done”. Personally if they we no longer wanted and they are an animal traditionally used as meat I'd butcher it. That's part of the reason our food type animals are all getting food names, so it's a reminder that we are eating it at some point. I guess not everyone can do that.

I have seen people out here with huge goat herds that have more than they can handle because while they are not using them for any kind of food they just can't get rid of them and they are not willing to butcher them either. Got too many buck goats? I hear Chevron is a wonderful meat similar to sheep. I guess it's a good thing blogs are opinions because some people would say I am being cruel, but hey. To me having a “meat type” animal means that I have more meat in the house.

Well I have to get out to my garden and capture some tomatoes before they take over.

Be Well, Be safe, and Blessed Be...

What is it with Young People? (A Rant)

I again am curious as to where the work ethic of the younger generations went. The young man who is one of our intern's over the last few days either would say there was no work he was suppose to do, or that he only wanted to do something relaxing. So to be perfectly frank I ripped him up and down verbally while chopping the wood he was suppose to be chopping that he said was not there. So at Silver's suggestion I am having the young man follow me around all day today to see the work I do all day. So I got him up at 5 am to start on the animal feedings.

Well I did all the work myself with him just standing there arms crossed over his chest the whole time I am going around feeding and watering everyone. I mean geez at least offer to hold the 5 gallons of water for me if nothing else yeah? All that I can say in this case is that thankfully he's not a WOOFER as if he were I'd never use the program again. Maybe when we have more housing I can look into that program and have better luck with help around here.

Next on the list of morning chores after I wake the kids for school will be to go and check the garden and due to timing, I can probably even weed the paths. I have to get some forage for our penned up goats (my dears learned how to unpicket themselves), some forage for the rabbits as well. Oh I also have to go out and use the weedeater to clear some areas for Silver to work on his project for out storm shelter/new well house/cold storage room. I might get to moving some dirt by the bucket right now as our wheel barrow needs a brand new tire the old one is destroyed.

This doesn't even count all the cooking I have to do throughout the day and the dish washing, and house cleaning. Then the constant check on the animals all day. Funny thing is all the intern needed to do daily was take care of my chickens (which includes random checks for eggs) chop fire wood and move dirt to the various spots around the property as well as get us some downed wood that we can use as kindling for the winter. Oh and also bring up the log segments that need chopping to the wood chopping area.

My complaint about the younger generation includes the discussion on what is a proper wake up time. I wake up at 5am every morning the kids go to school so I have an hour of work before they get up to do all the animal feedings then I can do everything that -needs- full light after they get up. This young man has issues waking up in the morning and for the whole time he has been here it has been a trial to get him out of bed in the early morning to work before the heat is too bad. Now there are two.. count them two stupid comments that go with this. First is “I'm tired”, duh you went to bed around midnight of course you are tired. The second is “I lived in Texas I know heat and humidity”. Uh huh, so why do you have an issue then with working in the day time after 10 am? The young man has a answer to that too it is “well I burn easy so I don't like to be out during the day”.

That just falls under the heading of really? We live on a homestead a small farm where there is never ending work. Generally the only breaks we get is in the night and sometimes when it rains (and only for any major project as long as the rain isn't days long). I swear do the younger generation just not think that people work hard all day ever? (btw what I mean by younger generation are teens through to 30 years as from my current experience they do the least work. I am sure there are exceptions to that rule.) I grew up in a middle class family where my dad was a welder and my mom was the daughter of a carpenter. My parents believed if we wanted something we had to work for it. I try to instill that in my kids but they also expect to just do fun things and work isn't important. Granted since going to boot camp as soon as I ask my son something he has jumped up to do it.

We have had 2 young men of the same age here within the last year to assist us and they both pretty much think that the highlight of the day is when they get to go play their games. Now both of these people wanted to come here and explore the woods surrounding our home. Neither have done so (hell the 30yr old hasn't either but shrugs), do the younger generation also have an issue with following through on something they say they will do too?

Well I better end my rant here as I have in a few minutes to go back to working, which maybe the issue is the younger ones think that word is a swear word?

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

New Birds!

So last evening me Silver one of our interns and two of the kids went over to my rabbit person to catch as many of her chickens as we could get our hands on. We did this around sunset in the hopes of catching them roosting. From the looks it seems most are crosses of some kind. We now have a good number of roosters (I am going to be culling there and I am trying to decide which roosters to keep), there is a few young birds; who keep close together thankfully. One of the youngsters is a guinea fowl, she (I think) has a lame leg; seems to be twisted backwards. I am hoping as she grows she'll be able to walk ok so I can let her loose come next spring to eat bugs for us. We did get some turken's otherwise known as the “naked-necked chicken”. The two adults are roosters and seems we have two young ones of indeterminate sex. I am hoping for at least one hen in there as I want the size of those birds added to my flock. So if we don't have a hen I might be keeping one of those roosters as they seem very vigorous in mating with hens from watching them for a few minutes this morning.

I was also offered to take the one homing pigeon she has. Seems at one point she had more and the rest flew off and left this one female by herself. We are thinking of taking her, we just need to make her a house. I was thinking of buying a couple more to raise as squab maybe, though the birds seem very pricey to buy. Lowest I saw was $50 a bird and that did not count shipping. I'll have to see what I can about getting a few more somewhere down the line.

The guinea isn't the only one with a foot issue it seems either. There is a hen who is missing at least her claws, and a white rooster who walks decidedly oddly like one of his feet don't work right. The woman said the guinea is due to her incubator, that is possible I imagine; I will have to see when we use it. Granted Silver is thinking of rebuilding it so it might not be an issue at all for us. I plan on checking on everybody a few times today to see how they interact to help me decide which roosters to keep around for my ladies. I also have a few that I am still trying to see if they are hens or roosters, as I learned when I had just the Rhode Island Reds and Jersey Giants that the hens sometimes get big combs. So that's it for now, I wish I had a -working- camera so I could snap some pics but that is one expense I can't afford right now.

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...