Spring

Blooms on the Apple tree

Spring is here. The grass is nice and green, leaves are out on the trees, flowers are blooming and I am sneezing. We have peas, green onions, turnips, lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, garlic and swiss chard coming up in the garden. The perennial plants made it through the winter well and are flourishing. I already have blooms on the strawberries!!! The rhubarb is ready to pick...yum! Chives, thyme, catmint, spearmint and butterfly bush are getting huge!

My Little herb garden has oregano, butterfly bush, chives and catmint.

Rhubarb

Dill that reseeded itself.

The strawberries have blooms & little berries.

The strawberries are taking over the thyme.

Lilacs.

Dragonsblood sedum

Spring Has Sprung

After a long, miserable winter spring seems like it has finally arrived. Most of the snow has melted, except where there were huge drifts. The grass has started to turn green...the days are longer...rhubarb is poking its way through the soil. Stragely enough the strawberries and thyme looks like it never even died back over the winter. The strawberry leaves are huge and the thyme is probably at least 5" high...strange & I will try and get some pictures posted. Maybe the thick snow insulation that it had protected it from our bitterly cold.
We have a new baby goat, a buck, that was born on February 18th. It was an awfully cold morning and Im afraid that his poor little ears got some frost bite, so he may lose the bottom half of them, but he is spunky none the less. The other doe that we had bred miscarried her babies over the winter, which was sad. So this year we only have one baby. :(
The rabbitry has grown by leaps and bounds. We are up to 54 rabbits, including babies that will be weaned this week. Starting March 23rd we have 18 does due over the next 2 weeks. With an average litter size of 4-6 kits that could give us 72-108 new babies....that is if everyone ends up bred. In the past we havent ended up with everyone bred so even if we say that half of the does are bred that could give us 36-54 new babies. On March 6th we went to a 4H rabbit workshop for some hands-on learning for Carter. He did some learning while dad & I did some rabbit selling. It was amazing how fast the babies went. We had weaned them the previous week so they were over 7 weeks old and we wished that we had more to bring. We kept one for ourselves as he is a really nice black otter! Our first show was March 7th...Carter did really well getting BOV with Kellys Candy Cane and BOSV with Chases 8Ball in the first show and BOSV with Chases 8 Ball & BOSV with Chases Remington in the 2nd show. We have another show this weekend...will try and get some pics added!!!

Winter Has Arrived

Somewhere....out there, buried in a drift of snow is my Swiss Chard. Oh, how I miss it!!! I hope that the blanket of straw that I put on it will allow it to come back in the Spring. If it does it will be the first thing to come up in the garden. Mmmmm, I do have some dehydrated, but its not quite the same as when its fresh. Sauted in some onion and olive oil, devine!

Somewhere, out there....are you still there? Do you still stop by to see whats happening on the farm? It has been more than 3 months since I last wrote, but we have been so busy that there has been little time to get on and blog. Lousy excuse I know, but I will try and get this blog updated more often and tell you what has been going on! Lots of fun and some excitement too :D

Gardening Woes

2009 has been a dreadful year to garden here in Iowa. The weather has been unseasonably cool and quite damp. I didnt pull the peas until July. They didnt get pulled because they were done producing, but because I was tired of looking at them and needed to get the cukes in their spot. Now I wish that I would have left the peas where they were as the cukes like warmer weather and they are suffering in the cool weather that we have. The popcorn appears to be ok, which is fun. I got battered and blown over a couple of times in severe storms that we had but has pretty much straigtened right up. The swiss chard has flourished, yum. The pole beans were slow to start put have overtaken their trellis so I have hopes for them. I want lots to freeze and some to pickle. The okra, still on the fence about. I have picked one pod, maybe it is too cold for it this year. Bummer too, I love okra and so badly wanted to pickle some of that too. Will wait and see how it does. The seeds that were labeled Bush Delicata are sprawling so I dont think that they are a bush variety but thats ok since I have them in a seperate area and they are producing some lovely squash. It will be great if we have some tasty winter squash for the cold months. The tomatoes are lagging behind too. Some of the plants I think might have a virus so I am thinking about pulling them. The plants seem to be dying, so maybe they will just be made into green tomato relish. Next year planting spots are going to be rotated. The peppers and eggplant appear to be doing ok. Carters peppers in his 4H garden are doing super! His Giant Marconi and Golden Peppers are huge and very prolific! We really really like the Giant Marconi. They are a sweet pepper and are thick walled. I have used them in taco meat and enchilda casserole. They are supposed to be good grilled too, will have to give that a try, grilled then sliced and put on a grilled brat or pulled pork sandwich, delish! I am looking forward to next year, hopefully a warmer typical Iowa summer.

Tomato and Pepper plants, July 22, 2009.

Strawberry popcorn in front, eggplant (hidden by corn) peppers, tomatoes and then swiss chard, lettuce and herbs hidden by the tomatoes.

Carters flourishing 4H garden, must be from all of the rabbit manure that we put in there. He has marigolds, parsley, golden peppers, basil, giant marconi and tomatoes.

All of these pictures were taken July 22, 2009

What a Mess!!!!

Sunday we got up early to head to the farmers swap. We had a few rabbits and a couple of saddles that we wanted to sell. The weather was fairly nice, not as hot as we expected it to be and there was a very nice breeze. However we could see very dark clouds looming on the horizon to the west of us and headed our way. At about 11:30am we decided to head home as everyone else was leaving. Once we were home we got things unloaded, checked the animals and came inside. Matt & I were going to go pick up some groceries, Carter wanted to stay home. For some reason I decided to turn on the TV and just check the weather. Good thing I did as we had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. Boy, was it severe! The winds were straight line, not sure of the gusts, but the rain was coming down so hard we couldn't even see out the windows. We could hear things hitting the house so headed downstairs and that is when the power went out. The storm blew through and this is what we saw when we looked outside! What a mess!!!

We lost our apple tree :(


Huge mess in the pasture

Tree on a garage in Rowley

The Prespeterian Church in Rowley

Our driveway was blocked by the cedar tree that fell.

The goats enjoyed their snacks.

The kid enjoyed playing on the huge tree that fell.

Damage from Rolwey. The electric company is repairing lines down the street.

More damage from Rowley.

Woah!!!!

The sun was just barely up this morning. I was enjoying the early morning news, checking email and looking out the window. Now why is that goat out eating in the pasture by herself? Usually the goats are out eating and roaming in their herd. Squinting my eyes I yelled out the window to her, "Britches". She didnt lift her head? Maybe she found a good weed or some really tasty grass, so I yelled again "Britches". Still no look from her. Ok, so now I lifted the screen to get a better view. Well, maybe that isn't Britches. The binoculars are hanging on the door so I grab them to get an even better look. Woah, that isnt a goat but a coyote. What is that wiley coyote doing in our pasture???? They can and will take down a goat. I hustle down the stairs, slip on some shoes and get out to the pasture. Thankfully all of the goats are accounted for! I holler at the coyote to get out of here. It hurries to the corn and disappears. We are hoping that it will not be back but will be checking with the DNR on hunting/trapping rules of coyote. It would be awful to have a coyote coming onto our property for free pickings. The camera is pretty much on the fritz as I cant zoom in too much so I didnt bother with any pictures. Sorry. I did take some garden pictures, but will try and blog and post pictures tomorrow.

The Fair

Monday, July 13th was the opening day of the Buchanan County Fair. We really enjoy going to our county fair to see the animals, watch the 4H kids show & eat some great food from Iowa Beef, Pork & Dairy producers! YUM! Since this was Carter's first year in 4H he was involved in the fair this year. On July 7th the 4H garden judge came out to evaluate his home garden project. Carter was super excited to learn via mail that he had earned a blue ribbon for his project. Of course we had to walk through the fair buildings to find his name posted :)

Thursday, July 16th was the pie baking contest and at 6pm that evening the pies were auctioned off. All of the proceeds from the pie sale went to support 4H activities. After I got off of work we hurried out there to see the end of the auction and couldnt believe it when the pies were going for $400+, yes that is not a typo. Some of the kids also made "flower buckets"....5 gallon buckets that were decorated and filled with flowers & plants. Those great looking buckets were bringing in $150+ dollars, all for a great cause! It was getting kind of late so we decided to leave as I had to work friday morning. As we were heading out they were just starting the Lumberjack Show so we decided to stay and watch. Carter sure did get a kick out of it, especially the log run.

As you can see this 9 time world champion log runner landed on his, as Carter so tactfully put it, balls.

Friday was the cattle shows. They even had a youth fun show which Carter participated in. We dont have our own calf yet, but a very nice girl let Carter borrow her milking shorthorn calf named Mask. The calf was nicely trained, Carter had a lot of fun and got a blue ribbon for that class also. He is looking forward to next year so he can do his bottle/bucket calf.

For the price of parking $2, no gate charge and the delicious food you sure cant beat that for a day of family fun!

enjoy the short video of the Fun Show

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July everyone! Hope that yours was safe and fun!

Our 4th was very very cool compared to what it could have been with a high of only 72 F.
This was just fine with us as Carter and I had volunteered to be in the 4th of July parade for my work. Due to rules we had to walk to be able to throw candy...no candy was to be thrown from parade floats/vehicles. We did get a sprinkle that came down but I would much rather be a little damp from some light rain then be soaked from sweat. Here are a few pictures that I took before the parade.




Lets get this thing going already

Yum, Tootsie Rolls.

The rest of the Holiday weekend was spent working in the yard & gardens. I will get some pictures taken and update the progress of our garden. Carter has his 4H garden judging tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed for him :)

Free ranging chickens & ducks

Our 5 Blue Slate turkeys enjoying the morning in their house.

Our duck sitting on her nest of 8 duck eggs and one chicken egg.

Our broody banty hen hatched out 6 chicks

White Muscovy ducklings that we got on June 21st

Parkersburg

Parkersburg, Iowa...population 1,889. In 2008 tragedy stuck when an F5 tornado devastated the town on May 25th. The tornado flattened the southern 2/3rds of the town,destroyed the high school including the football field and killed 8 residents. Current and former football players came together and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace their much loved field. Their come-back season ended with a record of
Today, June 24th 2009, an unbelievable tragedy has struck Parkersburg Iowa again. At 8:45am a former student entered the school, went to the weight room and in front of several students shot and killed the beloved coach of the football team Ed Thomas. He was an instrumental leader in the community, not only on the football field but he was also a social studies teacher.
Our family did not know coach/teacher Ed Thomas, but having a horrible thing like this happen in a small town like Parkersburg makes you feel for their community. If you would like to read more about what has happened, as details are changing and being updated please go to www.kcrg.com or www.kwwl.com

Feelin' Broody

One of our little banty hens has made herself a nest and has been sitting on a clutch of eggs for close to 3 weeks now. If you remember it only takes 21 days for chicks to hatch out of their shells. So, since we didnt write down on the calendar when she started sitting on them I grabbed up a couple today and held them to my ear. Much to my surprise I could her little peeps coming from the egg....that means soon she will be hatching out some babies. I did sneak a couple of duck eggs under her, those take 28 days so hopefully she will continue to sit on the eggs and hatch those out as well!
Our big brown female duck, who has the very original name of "Ducky" couldnt be found on Monday. She is usually the first one out of the barn in the morning when I go out to milk. I thought that something had happened to her, but also found her sitting on her own clutch of 8 eggs and one chicken egg. Maybe she got inspired by the little banty and decided she wanted her own babies? Ducky becomes quite angry if you come close to her nest! I tried to get under her to inspect and see how many eggs she had, she flug her long neck around and gave me a quick tap with her beak. Oh no you dont lady, she was probably thinking. I did manage to see that she did have the 8 white duck eggs and her brown chicken egg. Where that came from I'm not sure as the chickens have been in the coop for a while. I may have to see if I can get that one out from under her and candle the egg and see if its even viable. We certainly dont want a rotten egg explosion, especially since we are supposed to be in the 90's for a few days this week. Ick! I butchered 8 chickens today too so its off to clean up for me. Stay cool!!! Summer is here.

Gobble Gobble

After our quick vacation to Missouri, we are back here in Iowa. It was great to see family, but also nice to be back home.
Sunday we decided to go to the farmers swap & sale. There were quite a few people there with lots of things for sale....rabbits, goats, a lamb, chickens, ducks, turkeys, even a couple of llamas and a donkey, also some craft items. After walking around and checking everything out, debating on getting more rabbits, discussing getting a lamb (she was adorable) we decided to get some turkeys. Well, 5 of them. The turkeys are Blue Slate, a heritage breed. They are four weeks old and are pretty cute. They peep quite a bit and are a really pretty blue/grey color with beige heads. It will be fun to see how many boys and girls we have. We wont be able to tell for a while. The lady that we got them from said that she has 2 pairs and gets quite a few eggs and that she has a hen sitting on a nest right now. These might be a great 4H project for Carter, and maybe a little money maker too if we have some extra eggs to hatch come next spring.
Gobble Gobble

Yesterday afternoon we got our supplies all gathered to butcher the rabbit and roosters. I am happy to say this morning that all 7 roosters are in the freezer and the rabbit is in the refrigerator. Thankfully it wasnt as bad as I thought it could have been. My husband did the rabbit first....I wont go into any full details here as there are plenty of instructions online and even videos of how to butcher a rabbit. It was fairly quick and easy though since the fur pulled off like a sweater. Next were the roosters, which my husband went to work on. He got annoyed with the feathers about half way through so i took over. We had done the roosters like we were did the rabbit, kind of peeling the skin and feathers back and off like a sweater. Since these were roosters (not meat birds) and they were 4 month old there was not a whole lot of meat on them. After I got the first bird butchered....I took the wing, leg, thigh and breast meat off we decided to just take the breast meat, leg and thigh off the remaining birds. There was not much meat on the wing and it was a huge hassle trying to get those wing feathers and skin off! I need to get into the chicken coop again and go through the chickens. There are quite a few roosters left and we dont need them all so a few more will have a date with the freezer here in a couple of weeks. Its nice knowing that I can butcher them myself if need be....I figured that I could probably do it but you never know :). My dad and I fished for years together...we used to wager who caught the least fish had to do the cleaning. So I had experience cleaning fish and also doing the plucking of chickens but we had never butchered them this way before. I have to say that I prefer the skinning method! No hot water and yucky smell. Above is a picture of the butchered rabbit in a bag ready for the refrigerator. We are going to the auction this evening so I am planning on cooking it tomorrow. Now I just have to figure out what to make.......hmmmmmm

Roosters & Rabbit

Soy bean harvest October 6, 2008


Today is the day! The day that we are going to get the roosters and rabbits butchered. Hopefully it will not take too long. The chickens are going to be skinned (along with the rabbit). It just takes too much time to scald them and do the plucking, plus its just downright smelly! But I think that I have written about that before. Food was withheld last night so their systems should be pretty well cleaned out. Just like if you have surgery or some other kind of Doctors appointment and they ask you not to eat after midnight. That way your system will be cleaned out, basically so the food can pass through your body. We will probably have to do the deed in the barn since its supposed to rain today, we cannot put it off any longer. Well at least I dont want to....but I cannot butcher them myself. Well, I probably could but its much better to work as a team and get it done. I will let you know how it goes, wish us luck, on tomorrows posting. So, last night I was putting away leftovers from dinner. Gad, I feel something in my hair...I brush it out thinking that it is a lady bug. I look down into the bowl of refried beans and GAG it is a big brown disgusting hairy spider. I start yelling, ah that was in my hair. Something that I despise is spiders. I know, I know they do have a place where they fit into our world, but being in my hair or my house for that matter is not one of them.

Tomatoes after 20 hours in the dehydrator


Ok, so we didn't get the roosters or the rabbit butchered this weekend. We are hoping to get them done on Tuesday since my husband doesn't have to work. It might be better that way too since our soon will be at school. He isn't too attached to the roosters but the rabbit was supposed to be one of his. We had thought that it was a girl and he named "her" Phoebe....well now it is Pheobo. A big no no is naming an animal that you plan to butcher. We have 2 wethers that are named lunch meat and meat stick. They are out eating and being happy with the other goats but we try not to interact with them too much. One of our goats, Paprika (like the spice or the baby from Blues Clues) has gotten enormous! She has been running with our buckling boer goat and the buckling dairy goat that we have, but is possible that she was bred before we got her. Paprika was quite thin when she came to live with us at the beginning of July. I went back and looked at the pictures and cannot believe how skinny she was. We thought that maybe she had something called bloat....a goat has something called a rumen. It is a big fermentation vat for their food, but it also produces carbon dioxide and methane gas which they need to release either by belching or tooting. Yes, not very polite on the goats part, but they do need to release that gas or the goat can die. Now the dairy goat that we purchased in May must have miscarried in July as we had thought she might have. She was with the lady's buck from April 1-May 9th so with the 150 day gestation that would put her last possible due date as today. No signs that she is going to give birth so hopefully the bucklings that we have her with have done their job! We really want some goats milk. I love to cook, bake and experiment with foods in the kitchen. It would be great to be able to make cheese, yogurt and maybe even some goats milk soap. With the price of cheese too it would be nice to be able to save money where ever we can. The picture above is the tomatoes that I started in the dehydrator yesterday. It takes quite a while for them to dry out since tomatoes are full of moisture but in about 20 hours they are done. I had a few that needed to be dried a bit more. They get nice and dry and leathery when they are done. Last week I made some bread and added some chopped dehydrated tomato and some basil in the bread and it was delicious!

Roma tomatoes ready for the dehydrator


Last night we were all sitting in our bedroom watching the Wisconsin/Ohio State game on ABC. My husband and son were playing mancala while I was watching the game. Carter looks up while the referee is announcing a penalty and says "Oh my gosh, look at his giant mole". Well it in fact was not a giant mole but his microphone headset and the foam end of it was some attempt at flesh colored. Now why did they do that? Why not just go with black? The color of the foam was close to the referees skin color and in fact did look like a giant mole. I hope that you get a good laugh from this, I certainly did! It is raining a little here this morning so I wont be doing any garden work like I had planned. I did get all of the cucumer and zucchini plants taken out of the garden. This was a chilly week too, with lows getting down in the high 30's some days and only up to the 50's-60's during the day. The garden has slowed down a lot, but that is to be expected for early October here in Iowa. The swiss chard I do have to say is showing llittle signs of slowing down. You can cut it off, leaving about an inch of the stalks and it keeps sending up new leaves. I think that I have cut the leaves off 3-4 times...I planted the seeds late too, I think maybe in June. I do need to get out and get some cuttings from the herb garden so I can have some indoor herb plants. Basil is very easy to propagate....you can take a snipping off a plant and stick it in some moist soil and it will send out new roots. Chives you can dig up the plant and seperate the plant. There are many others that you can either root by layering, division or taking cuttings. There are lots of sources online if you are interested just google "Herb Propagation". Of course you can start new plants with seeds, but if you already have the started plant why not use that to create another? Yesterday afternoon the man that farms the land around our house started to take out the soybeans. Soybeans and corn are the primary crops grown here in Iowa...Iowa is first in production of corn and soybeans. Some other crops that are grown here are hay. In 2006 Iowa farmers produced 5.6 million pounds of hay which ranked us 10th in the country. Iowa also produces oats, Christmas trees, honey, strawberries and even grapes. So, yesterday the beans started to come out. We thought that he would be harvesting soon since the plants looked very dry..a golden brown color. I was dreading the harvest since it seems to kick up lots of bugs, but yesterday was cool and there were not the swarms of ladybugs that we usually get. Just a bit of the field is done and with the rain this morning he probably will not finish today. I will get out and take a picture that shows what the bare field looks like once everything is harvested. Next year corn should take its place as they tend to rotate crops.

Whats Cookin'?

Jalapenos ready for the dehydrator


Yesterday after I got done doing the morning chores I picked a huge bowl full of tomatoes, also some green peppers, jalapenos and 3 eggplants. I already had a bag in the refrigerator that has about 2 pounds of jalapenos in it already, along with about a pound of tomatoes that I harvested the other day. Now, in previous years I had canned most of the garden produce that we grew. This year I decided to buy a dehydrator. One of the reasons was our son loves dried fruit.....banana chips, apple chips, and of course raisins. The dehydrator was a little less than $60, certainly not a top of the line dehydrator but so far has done the job nicely. I have been able to dehydrate lots of tomatoes already, its amazing how many of them you can fit into a jar. Our thinking with the dried tomatoes is to rehydrate them and use them in chili, soups, dips,salsa, pasta dishes and maybe even keep them dried and put on salads. I have also dehydrated swiss chard, jalapenos, eggplant, cucumbers, bananas, apples, green peppers, zucchini, patty pan squash, and yellow peppers. I am sure that Im forgetting some things but it will be fun during the winter months to be able to use some of the vegetables that we grew ourselves in our dishes. So yesterday I dehydrated swiss chard...it dries out very quickly so I got that all done and started some tomatoes and jalapenos. The dehydrator is still drying out the tomatoes, I should check it here in a bit and get the veges that are dried in a jar. This week has been down right cold in the mornings. Some counties just to the north of us had their first frost warning last night! Yikes....the tomatoes and eggplants and probably the peppers cannot survive a frost so if we are to get cold here soon I need to get an old blanket or tarp to get the garden covered. All depends on when the frost will hit and how the garden is doing. Plants in pots can be brought inside. Since it has been chilly this week I thought it would be a great night for soup. We love soup, especially in the cold weather months. Sometimes I use a recipe and sometimes I dont. Its somewhat fun to be able to put your own touches into something that you make. Ok, so back to soups. Last weekend I boiled about 10 pounds of potatoes. They were just beginning to sprout and my husband wanted some potato salad. So some were used for the salad the others I put in a storage bag and into the fridge. So I thought those can be used for potato soup. I chopped up some celery, onion and carrots put those in the pot with some olive oil and 2 cloves of garlic. Let them cook until they were just starting to get soft. While they were cooking I peeled and cubed the potatoes and added those to the vegetables. Water just to cover, salt & pepper and I also added four bouillon cubes. I still had quite a bit of Swiss Chard left in the garden so decided to find a recipe to use some of that in a soup. Here is what I found, I did make some changes...I used some basil instead of fennel, no beans, pasta was cooked seperately and then added to individual bowls...I find that it tends to fall apart in soup especially if its reheated. I used whole grain pasta. I chopped the ingredients by hand. Swiss chard is delicious and so easy to grow! Something that I will definitely do next year...you can cut it all off and it will come back to harvest again and again. Its somewhat like spinach but not as strong, delicious in soup.

Swiss Chard and Penne Soup

2 cloves garlic

1 medium red onion

1 bunch swiss chard

3 TB olive oil

6 cups chicken stock

3 cups water

1 cup penne

2 cups canned cannellini, drained

1/4 tsp fennel

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

salt & pepper

parmesan cheese

Directions

Steel knife: With food processor running, drop garlic through feed tube and mince. Add onion and chop coarsely, using 6 to 8 on/off turns

Remove leaves from chard and reserve. Cut stems into feed tube lengths.

Ultra thick: Stand stems in feed tube; slice, using light pressure.

Heat oil in heavy 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add contents of work bowl and cook until soft, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

Add stock and water; bring to a boil. Mix in penne and cook 5 minutes.

Ultra thick: Roll up chard leaves and arrange in feed tube. Slice, using light pressure. Add chard leaves to saucepan.

Mix in beans, fennel seed, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.

Bring to boil and cook until penne is tender, about 3 minutes.

Can be made ahead. Pass the Parmesan cheese

I also made banana bread yesterday. Cinnamon rolls I made the day before using sliced up apples from the tree in our backyard. They went great with our breakfast dinner :)

Our Town

We live in Rowley Iowa. It is what we consider a small town with less than 300 residents. We dont actually live in town but 2 miles outside of town on our small acreage. Some of the businesses in Rowley include an excellent meat locker (Marks Locker), two hair salons, a small animal trapping service, a bar/grill (with great food at an excellent price), auto repair service, a John Deere dealer, a Co-op and a bank. There is also a post office that was briefly closed when there was a mold problem...thankfully now it is back open. At one time there was a railroad, grocery stores, a lumber yard, a hotel, a hardware store, implement dealers, service stations, a creamery, a bank, a public school, and a dentist. The railroad is no longer in existence and the tracks have been removed. There was a public school located in Rowley, a beautiful old school that was built in 1916. Unfortunately the school board voted to close the school and tear it down. Our son was lucky enough to attend South Elementary for Kindergarten, a great small school where there was one of each grade, a wonderful place to learn! The school met the fate of the wrecking ball on November 6, 2006. It was a sad day for our family and the rest of the town. Fluffy, one of our rabbits had babies this morning. There were 2 dead at the front of the nest box which was sad...Im not sure how many are in her nest. I didnt want to disturb them too much so will let my husband do the count later. I also saw a very nice looking buck cross the road today. Bow hunting season opened yesterday plus the rut will be starting here soon. Our neighbor has a very nice wooded area and was nice enough to let my husband put up a tree stand, so hopefully we will be able to put a deer in the freezer too!

Just Ducky

Ducky

We have an incubator and have lots of fun hatching eggs in it. Chicken eggs only take 21 days to hatch, give or take a couple of days. Duck eggs take a bit longer from 28 days (muscovies take 35 days), give or take a couple of days. The temperature and humidity needs to be monitored in the incubator as well as turning the eggs so the little embryo doesnt stick to the inside of the egg. This spring I was doing some looking on Ebay and found some hatching eggs with several different kinds of chickens and the package also included ducks. We havent had ducks on our little farm before and thought that we might enjoy them. The chickens hatched out pretty well with what looks like now to be mixed breed chickens, but thats ok they still lay eggs that are eatable. We then were anxiously awating the pipping of the duck egg. Pipping is when the bird begins to break out of the shell...the baby bird has a little bump on the beak that helps them go around the inside of the shell and crack it open so they can emerge. The little bump is called an egg tooth and the chick generally breaks out of the larger end of the egg where the air sac is. The picture above is from our first duck appropriately named "Ducky". Ducky was just out of the shell when this picture was taken. You can see that the feathers are still wet. Ducky stayed in the incubator until her feathers were nice and dry and she was moving around well. I am saying her because Ducky is a girl. Female ducks are the noise makers....they quack where as male ducks make a hissing sound. Ducky sure is loud...she makes quite a ruckus when I go into the barn in the morning, greeting me with a series of loud quacks. We hatched out a second duck too. It is a Muscovy and took 35 days to hatch. This second duck is named Ducky Jr...arent we creative?

Can you see how their coloring is different? Ducky is dark brown while Ducky Jr is dark brown with pale yellow. They sure do grow quickly too and it seems much faster than the chickens. Ducky Jr did have a problem though and we were not sure if he was going to live. I found him laying outside on his back unable to get up, kind of like a turtle. So I scooped up Ducky Jr and we checked him out fairly well, not finding any visable signs of any injury we put him in his own little cage with food and water. It took a couple of weeks and it looks like Ducky Jr has healed fairly well from whatever problem he had. He moves around like a champ and no longer has to stop for breaks and doesnt fall over onto his back anymore. Its just a guess but we think that maybe he grew too fast for his little legs and didnt have the strength to hold himself up. We are guessing that Ducky Jr is a male. Muscovies are pretty quiet ducks, from what we have read and Ducky Jr doesnt really make any noise besides a little hissing sound. So maybe we have a male and female????? Now if they are a male and female and we hatched out fertilized eggs from them the resulting duck would be a mule. This mule duck would be infertile (unable to reproduce). The ducks have been nice to have around. They do like to play in water, eat grass and other greens plus a generous helping of bugs. We are awating eggs here soon. The chickens should be laying towards the end of October, ducks take 20-24 weeks to bein laying eggs. About the same amount of time for chickens to being laying

Here Chick chick chick

Well, I went into the chicken coop the other day and started to grab up roosters. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? I think that I counted around 11 hens, I thought that we had more but maybe not. We did lose one to what we think was a raccoon. The hen didn’t come inside at night, we didn’t notice when we locked the chickens up in the coop. I had the pleasure of finding it the next day under the lilac bush minus its head. Raccoons typically eat only the head and leave the rest behind. The other day there was a large raccoon dead in the road, so perhaps he met the same fate that our poor little Buff Orpington did?
Ok, I got off subject…back to the roosters. Now if there are 11 hens, give or take that means there are about 19 or so roosters. Yikes!!! That is way too many. Especially going into winter. We don’t need to feed all of those extra birds and during the winter time they are not able to go out to explore as much as they would like. They eat so many bugs, grubs, worms and greens in the summer free ranging that we dont have to feed them a whole lot. Just a bit to get them in the coop at night. In the extreme cold their combs (red part on top of their head) and wattles which is the red skin hanging under their beaks can get frost bit. The skin then eventually dies and falls off, just like it does with humans. So here I am in the chicken coop, hunched over trying to grab scurrying and squawking birds. Right now we have the chickens in a large dog kennel inside the barn with some boards laid over the top so they cannot escape. Once the corn comes out we are going to move a chicken coop to our place that our neighbor gave to us. Corn needs to come out though so we can drag it through the field on skids. Needless to say the birds are freaked out since I am in there and also since I have a couple of birds hanging by their feet from my left hand. There are a few birds that don’t follow the others when it is time to come inside. The others are really good ….I can yell “come on girls” and they come scurrying to the barn…they know its feeding time and don’t mind the gender thing . We have a 12 ft cage, long and narrow hanging by the “coop” which our neighbor used for bantys. Its big enough for rabbits so we have one rabbit in it now, its perfect to put those roosters in so I start filling the empty spots with roosters. Right now I have 6 birds in the cage, with space for I think 3 more? During the spring/summer months I saved some of those individual serving pudding cups (empty), it seemed just a shame to toss them and I thought that I would get seedlings started in them. I poked 2 holes in them and used some wire to put 2 in each cage. One for food and the other for water. The day before we decide to do the deed the food will be taken away so their system can be flushed pretty much clean. When we first had chickens we butchered them ourselves. Its not really that bad, but oh the smell! Once the chicken is dead you dip it in scalding hot water so you can pluck it. Let me tell you there is nothing like the smell of hot, wet dirty chicken with a hint of poop. Now there chickens are not spanking clean, certainly they are not covered in filth but they are outside animals. Think of wet dog only much, much worse! For these roosters we didn’t want to take the time plucking them or taking them to the poultry processors so we thought maybe we would just skin them. We don’t really eat the skin that much, I don’t make fried chicken, other than oven fried and that doesn’t require the skin. So today I did some research on skinning chickens and it totally looks like something that we can handle. No plucking nasty feathers or messing with scalding hot water. It looks similar to how we will butcher the rabbits. Just pull the skin off kind of like a sweater. We will hopefully be doing them this coming weekend and I will try and let you know how it goes.