Farm Happenings, and Stuff

Whew!
Do you know that Wii Sports boxing can burn about 100 calories per 15 minutes?

I kid you not.

The last few nights Ben and I have been looking for something other than movies to do after the kids go to bed. We figured out that our Wii can be used for more than just netflix. ;) We loaded up Sports and actually had quite a good time, bowling and boxing. And it's burning pretty good calories.

My weight has been steadily climbing since my last pregnancy and it's got to stop. I'm sure part of it is the ultra-fatty pasta alfredo, pizza, and fried pork chops we've been eating. So the last two weeks or so I have started cutting down on calories and getting more exercise. Luckily exercise is coming fairly easy now that the weather is (well, WAS) warming up. Mucking out a barn burns a lot of calories!

We found out that the goats are too small still for breeding. :( So now I am on the lookout for a doe that is ready to deliver in a month or so that we can purchase. I found a beautiful Alpine doe on craigslist, but alas, I can't justify spending $300 for a goat.

We have a flock of 8 chickens now - 6 hens and 2 roosters. Ole Red and Popcorn made it through the winter. Roosie Jr. Jr. did not. :( We had three generations of that roo on our farm and now he's gone. It makes me sad.

We have decided to increase our flock - again. We will be going to Tractor Supply during their Chick Days and letting the girls pick out a few. We'll also try to hatch at least one incubator (20-30 eggs). Ben is on the fence about trying meat chickens again this year - we need some equipment, but if we can make/purchase that in time, we'll do a small meat chicken order.

Over last weekend we dug up 12 wild raspberry plants and replanted them in our nice mulched/fertalized berry patch. I also dug up 3 of my grapes that may or may not make it - I can't remember which ones were growing last year. This weekend we hope to dig up all the wild blackberries that we have around - hundreds, easily, and add some of them to the berry patch.

I have fruit trees on order - quite a few, actually, as well as a few more grape plants. I have apples, peaches, pears, and cherries coming. It's very exciting. We have found these large 'cages' that are used with large glue tanks in commercial glue companies. They are about 5 foot square and they keep the goats from being able to eat newly planted trees.

Our bees are alive! We're not sure just HOW alive, but there was definite activity during the few warm days we had. I do hope that the cold snap again hasn't hurt them. Hopefully they got some pollen while they were out and have a tiny bit extra food. We saw a lot of small, tiny bees (hopefully babies = good breeding/hatching going on). Ben has another hive up and ready and we are getting another 4 pound package of bees in April, so we'll have two hives going. And hopefully our first hive will swarm and we will catch it - 3 hives!

We also took out our mason bee house and looked inside, which I will post later because I got some cool pictures of it. We only found larve. :( But we're going to try again. Mason bees and "orchard" bees are great for fruit trees because they buzz around right as most trees are budding and flowering - unlike honey bees, which come out either too early or too late, depending on what kind of tree.

So that's the farm happenings! I love spring.

Spring? SPRING?

I love winter. Really, I love winter.

But you know what? Enough's enough. I would go into all the reasons why I'm sick of it, but, well, I'm sure you know.

Yesterday was a balmy, sunny 45 degrees. The farm jumped into action. I swear, it was like a switch had turned on. The bees came back to life (we were pretty sure they were dead) and were buzzing frantically around, cleaning out their house and starting up life again. The chickens were wandering around for the first time in a while. The goats were nibbling some grass that had come uncovered as the snow melted. Even the birds were chirping.

I saw our hated enemy friend the hawk, sweeping over the fields. I have to admit, he's a beauty. I just wish he would stop eating our chickens. I get sick of watching him dive after them.

Spring is such a frenzied time, even for a small farm like ours. Here's some of the things that need to be done this year:

• Clean out the barn completely. Everything is going. All the bedding, stocked hay, everything. The goats are now corraled in the smaller pen and sleeping in the (empty) chicken house. The barn needs to be completely mucked, pressure washed, and set to rights.
• Fence in the whole pasture with field wire fence, layered with electric lines. We've found that the electric-only works only so-so, and goats are natural escape artists anyway, so we're going to panel it all in field wire before we let the goats out into the main pasture. We'll use the electric lines to keep them from head-butting or rubbing up against the field fence.
• Start up our berry patch in the back. We mucked out about 1/3 of the barn Sunday and all of that wonderful, crappy mulch and straw went back to the berry area. I layered it down nicely.
• Get some grape trellises up and running.
• At least experiment with cold weather crops - lettuces, broccoli, etc. I've never even attempted them, so I'm going to semi-blindly dive in.
• Get some fruit trees going.
• Construction: What I would like to do is construct a new chicken house, complete with roosts and a secure chick area. The chicken house we have now is tiny and not really suited in the way I want it to be (call me picky). The new house will be made of pallet wood and recycled wood as much as possible. I really want to build it myself...
• That being said, I would also like to construct a goat shed with a kidding stall and shelter from the wind. This isn't going to be a complex thing by any means. It just needs to be built.
• Lonnie-the-goat goes to butcher this fall.
• I am on the fence about breeding the girls... I need to do it quick if we're going to do it.
• We will be picking out some chicks from Tractor Supply and also hatching some of our own out here again. We will be butchering 5 or so in fall.

Sooo... yeah, that's it so far! LOL.

Chickies Overload!!!!

Spring and summer is the time of babies.
Apparently, for us, it's also the time to buy 30 more adults.

But the babies are the best part.

Months ago I ordered some Blue Laced Red Wyandottes - a rare, and beautiful, breed of chickens that took my breath away the first time I saw them.

June 1st I received 14 of these chickies.


Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of them when they were day-old and fluffy.





You can already see the beautiful patterns and colors in the wings. We have some really dark ones and some really light ones.



A couple of weeks later, here they are, in all their glory. Now they're housed in the barn and their feathers are almost all filled out.


I can't wait for them to grow up.

Then, a few weeks ago, we hatched some of our own home-layed eggs in the incubator. We had about 28 eggs in there, and only got about 10 chicks, but I was happy with that! They came out nice and wet and weak.


Then a few days later puffed up nicely!


So, that's the chickies so far this year. We have another set of eggs in the incubator set to hatch soon.

Morrigan's Chicken

Morrigan has adopted one of our adolescent chickens as her own. Luckily the chicken in question is extremely tame, one of our hand-raised ones.
But she carts it around all day. It's sooo cute.

We were a little worried about her hurting him. He seemed a little lethargic, but once she put him down he bounced around fine. She named her "Gray".

Then Morri got creative. She decided to find Gray a house.




So that's Morrigan's new pet. Much better than a puppy, in my opinion.

Random Post #1

Whew, we have busy busy weeks ahead of us!

This weekend is, thankfully, free. Next weekend we have a birthday party. The weekend after that we have a baby shower! The weekend after that I go to the dentist. The weekend after that the girls go to a new pedi!

Whew!

Luckily the weeks seem pretty empty.

June 29th summer quarter at school starts. I have three at-home classes. It will feel good to keep learning, even if it's at home! I hope to go back for real classes by winter.

Life on the farm chugs along! One of our hens hatched her chicks a week or so ago. Out of 15 eggs, only three hatched. :( I was very sad.

She seems to be taking care of them, at least. She protects them from the roosters and feeds them.



I love watching natural-hatched chicks. They act so different from hatchery chicks.

Our asparagus is also popping up, finally! We planted 25 roots a few weeks ago, luckily before the rains set in. Now I'm sure they've had plenty of water, and we mulched on top of them to keep the weeds out and give them nutrients.


Also in the asparagus bed was some odd looking fungi that I pulled up after I took the picture. First off, I'm allergic to mushrooms, and second off, I didn't want the kids getting into it and chance that it was poisonous.


Not sure how good you can see it.

My strawberries are also taking off! I hope to have a good harvest this year, out of the six plants. I'm sure the rain are helping them too!


I need to mulch the bed really bad... the weeds are getting ridiculous.

So anyway, thats the update from the Doran farm!
Kudos,
Ket

Our Unwelcome (but beautiful) Visitor

After a nice errand-and-lunch trip, we were extremely surprised to come home to a very unexpected visitor.
Warning: The next few images, hidden behind the cut, may be graphic. Not like blood-and-guts graphic but perhaps slightly disturbing.

Read more »

Chickens, Chickens, Ba-Bawk!

Our chickens have to be the most amusing part of the homestead. If I happen to be in a bad mood, watching them always cheers me up. Especially during breakfast, because they're extremely violent (to each other) when it comes to food... and watching a bunch of chickens pecking each other and running each other around the pen is just... hilarious. Maybe I'll post a video of it.

So anyway, here is our "flock", as it were. We probably have about 20 left... We had run-ins with coyotes and a cat who was living in our barn. Good fencing got rid of the coyotes (or at least lessened the chances) and our dog Scout got rid of the cat.



This is probably our prettiest roo. You can't really see it in the pic, but he has black feathers mixed in with the white on his neck. He also has a matching hen.



We don't know what breeds these two are, but I'm betting they're from the Americana hen we had for a few weeks (before a coyote dragged her off). They look slightly Americana. The black and white one is a silver laced Wyandotte.



And two days ago we got the first eggs of spring, 2010.


This is our coop. Hubby built it 100% from material from a barn that had caved in. The frame and floor are the barn wood, the siding is the old aluminum or steel (can't remember) barn roof, and the nest boxes inside were 2nd hand from his dad. Personally, I think he did a fantastic job.


Most of the chickens we have now were actually hatched here. We had 3 hens go broody, and 27 chicks ended up hatching. We still have 2 of the broody hens (the wyandotte and the white/black one), so we're hoping to expand our flock naturally. Except I'm buying some of these from a local hatchery. Isn't she just Beautiful?

(Picture copyright and owned by http://www.bluelacedred.com/gallery1.html, an EXCELLENT wyandotte reference site.)