Follow the adventures of Ket, a city girl who is slowly turning into a homesteader. Along for the ride is loving hubby Ben, big girl Tamsyn, and bigger girl Morrigan. Oh, and the animals - 2 goats, a cow, bees, chickens, dogs, and guinea pigs!
Spring is always crazy on the farm (and I do consider us a farm now).
Last year I went back to work full time, so we put most things on hold. We sold our goats, paused the gardening, and paused the house renovations.
This year we're back in full swing. I'm no longer working (at least not for pay), so I'm back "in the saddle" so to speak. Here's a quick farm tour update!
One of the most recent (and most important) projects was the goat shed. We had to build that before we could get any animals, since they were tearing up our garage-barn.
Yes, those are pallets. The roof was made with some aluminum roofing materials that Ben's dad gave us. Overall the shed cost about $10, because we had to buy long screws to hold the pallets together. The next step is to nail on some plywood (that we got for free at work) for siding, paint it, and scatter a ton of straw on the ground.
In that picture you can see the new goat additions as well: Snowcap (brown) and Maggie (black).
We also were lucky enough to acquire a pretty little fuzzball:
Meet Checkers! She's a 4 week old holestein heifer. She's an absolute sweetie and follows you around. She licks you. Her ears are amazingly soft. She's had a hard life so far (more on that later) but has bounced back.
Later on i'll take you through a tour of our gardens, but for now, here is a glimpse!
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.
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.
Before I go into bees, I have to start with an introduction by my beloved, favorite comic of all time, Eddie Izzard. If you don't know who Eddie is, first off, shame on you. Second off, watch this:
Now, hopefully you've had a laugh.
We got our bees yesterday. Ben brought them home from work.
That is, approximately, 10,000 bees. I kid you not. There is a queen stuffed in there, in the middle, where they all seem to be hanging on.
I can't tell if you can see this or not, but the top 'row' of bees here are perfectly lined up against the top.
So, we (meaning Ben) set up the hive in the back of the property, then took the bees back. He decided on a veil but no gloves since he wanted to be able to feel things. I bought him a yard of wedding veil (snicker...) from Joanns.
The first step was to 'paint' all the bees with a sugar water solution.
This makes them eat it, and they gorge themselves and get full and happy. Theory says if their stomachs are gorged, they can't bend enough to sting you. Theory also says the sugar concentration puts them into a sort of stupor. Not sure how much I believe those, but we did it anyway.
Then we took out the sugar water can.
This is what the bees eat when they are in transit, and while they're adjusting to their new hive. There's tiny holes poked in the can so they can get at it drop by drop.
The queen cage came next. Queens are always 'caged' because they normally don't 'belong' to the bees in the box. Chances are if they were left loose with the other bees, the workers would kill her because they wouldn't recognize her scent. By putting her in the cage, over time, the workers adjust to her and she can take over the real hive when it comes time to install.
The queen's 'cage' is plugged by a piece of sugar candy (think: marshmallow) that she slowly eats her way through. It's a gradual process to make sure the workers accept her.
Here's the cage, covered in bees:
And a close-up:
I didn't get a shot of the queen herself, because Ben wanted to hurry things along.
He attached her cage to the inside of the hive, then got ready to empty the rest of the bees in after her.
The top came off!
And.. SHAKE!
They fell onto the top of the hive. Look at all the little buggers!
After that, it was just putting the hive back together. Sooner or later the bees will realize they have a home, and start building comb. The queen will get out and start laying eggs.
Some of the bees stayed in the box, but they'll make their way in sooner or later. The queen will 'call' them.
We're really excited to see what next year brings. We will leave them alone this year so they can establish good comb and a good honey store to eat over the winter. Next year we'll crack it open and see what we have!
