Year-end egg count

Total eggs for 2009, since they started laying 9/18, is 424 eggs. Not too shabby!

December Egg Count

108 eggs.

Egg count

The girls are killing us! We've gotten so used to fresh eggs and now they're withholding from us. Down to 13 this week!!!

Egg count

Holy cow.... the girls have drastically dropped this week. Only 24 eggs!

Big pigs!

Our potbelly (Sausage) and mixed breed (Bacon) are getting BIG!

Egg count

Slowly but surely decreasing as the weather gets colder. 32 this week.

Egg count

34 this week!

November Egg Count

150 eggs.

Thanksgiving dinner

Notice the beautiful bird on the table. We're hoping next year we'll be able to raise a couple of turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner instead of getting a frozen bird from the grocery store. Something to look forward to and work towards.

Egg count

35 this week.

Egg count

39 again!

Growing piggies!

It's amazing how quickly the piglets are growing. They could potentially eat us out of house and home!

Egg count

37 eggs this week.

Egg count

39 eggs again! We are loving our hens!

Animal Swap Day - again

Today is the animal swap again. We're still looking for sheep and anything else that catches our eye. We arrive again at 8am, but this months venue is even smaller than last. What the heck? Anyway we look around and since we have the two cages we bought last time in tow, we're better prepared.

After we look around a bit, we decide on 4 Californian does and 1 Californian buck. Total cost for all 5 was $40 total. Not too shabby. Also, the nice lady that sold us the buck told us that we need to get there right when they open at 6am to get the best selection. She said some people even arrive early around 5:30am to start looking over the animals. Hmm.... who knew?

We stopped at Buchheits to get rabbit feed, waterer, hutch-building supplies, etc.

Egg count

Wow! Big week for the girls! 39 eggs!

October Egg Count

155 eggs.

Egg count

35 eggs

Egg Count

31 eggs

Egg Count

This week: 29

Animal Swap Day

So today we're driving 40 miles southwest to an 'animal swap'. We've never been to one before, so we're not entirely sure what to expect, but it should be fun none-the-less. The flyer says they'll have animals, veggies and flea market items for sale and trade.

We're going looking for sheep. As we drive up around 8am, we realize it's a pretty small venue. But they do have quite a few animals. No sheep though. Well, I hate to leave empty handed, so we start looking at some cute little pigs. We do a little haggling and we leave with 2 miniture pigs, 1 potbelly and 1 mixed breed (and two cages to get them home in.) Cost: $80.

We make a quick stop by Buchheits to get some feed, waterers, etc.

Here are little girls and guys:

Egg count

This weeks production is really ramping up! 21 eggs!

Total Eggs for September

11 eggs.

Egg count

This week: 8

Egg count

Eggs our first week = 3

Eggciting Day!!

Our first egg! Actually 2! We just found our first eggs from our little hens... so exciting!!

Pasta Sauce and Salsa!

This weekend will be spent making jars and jars of pasta sauce and salsa - two things that our family eats a ton of. Besides we have to find something to do with our excess tomatoes. I think we have about 100 sitting on the kitchen counter right now.

Canning... take 2!

After our first attempt at canning not going so well, Dan was determined to get the canning process down. There were several problems that needed to be solved. First, we need to get our giant canning pot full of water up to a boil the in the shortest amount of time, in the most economical fashion. Second, in order to avoid putting all of that hot, humid air into the house in the middle of summer, it has to be outside. Third, and most importantly, the water needs to return to a boil as quickly as possible after we put in our jars of food. That was the downfall of the firepit. It took so long to return the pot to a boil that it way overcooked our pickles.

So, what's our new method of choice?

That right... the turkey fryer!

Incredibly hot, intense, direct heat equals very fast boiling and minimal extra cooking of our canned goods. The bonus is that it comes to a boil, and returns to a boil, so quickly that we end up using very little propane.

Our canning will still be done outside. However, for 'take 2', instead of making more pickles this time will be salsa. Delicious, fresh, tasty salsa.

Pickles!

To say we have a few cucumbers is an understatement. We have a lot of cucumbers and we need to find something to do to preserve them... pronto.

Dan's parent came up a few weeks ago with all of his Mom's old canning supplies in tow. It's time to crack the boxes open to see what we have. Large pot? Check. Rack to immerse jars in pot? Check. Jars, lids and rings? Check. It's time to make us some pickles.

We thought it would be fun to have a pickling date night. We'd get our cukes ready to go together and put the pot on a hot fire on the fire pit. Seemed like a good plan. Although we had fun, our fire pit proved not to be hot enough to to keep the water boiling. The pickles are tasty, but not very crunchy. Oh well, you live and you learn. Dan has another idea... but that's for another post.

Freeze! You're surrounded!

By a fence, that is.

As Dan said, we started sinking fence posts and we have the ENTIRE garden surrounded by 7-foot high deer fencing. Granted, we haven't had a problem with deer, but since we were taking the time to put up a fence, we decided we might as well protect it from as many creatures as possible.

As you'll see in the pictures, we didn't use store bought fence posts. We used small cedar trees from the property. Dan, a true Yankee, is always looking for a way to use things we already have.

After we had two sides of the fence up, Dan saw a small bunny in the garden and went about his usual tactics to shoo it out. Deer fencing, if you've never seen it, is practically invisible. The bunny proceeded to run straight into the fence, bounce back and sit on it's behind shaking it's head wondering what just happened. It made another go at it, but to no avail. It finally figured out to root at the bottom of the fence to make it's way out. We've since staked the bottom so no bunnies will make it in or out.

Humans = 1 point
Bunnies = zero

Good fences make good corn.

It seems that every time I told somebody new about my plans for a garden one of their first questions was always “Are you going to put up a fence?” Then they would go on to explain how the deer would devastate our garden if we didn’t. My response was always that I would wait and see, as there had been very few deer sightings on our property.

Fast forward several months. The garden had been doing great, with nary a nibble from any critters, deer or otherwise (some insect issues, but that’s a different post). Our peas came and went; the tomatoes and cucumbers started producing like crazy, and still no bothersome animals. We also survived several heavy rain/windstorms that literally leveled every corn stalk in the garden. After each storm we stood each stalk up and hilled around the bases; very time-consuming, but the thought of that fresh, delicious, super-sweet corn made it worthwhile. In time the corn started putting on ears and it looked like we would have a bumper crop.
Then one morning I went out to the garden as usual and found one of our almost-ready-for-picking ears of corn lying on the ground, half eaten. The stalk it had been attached to was still upright, none the worse for wear. I was puzzled, but didn’t find any evidence pointing to the culprit. The next day, there were three half eaten ears; the next day, about eight more. Now I was beginning to be upset. On day four when I went out, there was even more damage, and right in the middle of it were two fluffy brown bunny rabbits chewing on ears of corn. As I stood there speechless, one of the rabbits calmly reached up to the nearest corn stalk and nipped off yet another ear of corn. Apparently the quarter eaten one at his feet was no longer satisfying.
That was the last straw, so I grabbed a handful of stones, and yelling some garbled, angry nonsense, began hurling stones at the marauding bunnies. Incredibly, they didn’t stop eating, even as I began moving toward them, still shouting and throwing stones. Finally a rock whizzed close enough to one of them that they decided it would be beneficial to them if they moved on. They darted away from me and scrambled through the fence that separates our property from the land next door.

It was on.

Here the dilemma though: I have to sleep at night, and I work a full time job 30 miles away from home, leaving me precious little time to stake out my corn patch waiting for thieving bunnies. In addition, we have neighbors living fairly close on one side so shooting bunnies with any type of firearm was out of the question. This meant that every morning when I went out there was more and more devastation, leaving fewer and fewer ears of corn that might mature enough to be harvested by the humans that planted them.

Last weekend my parents drove the 6 hours from their home to ours for a long weekend visit. My fervent wish was that we would at least have enough mature corn to cook for one meal while they were here. So, Sunday afternoon, my mother and I went to the garden to take a look. The scene was heartbreaking. After taking a quick inventory, I decided to pick every single remaining ear of corn, in the hopes that some would be mature enough to eat. Out of 450 linear feet of corn stalks we harvested 2 dozen ears. Of that 2 dozen maybe 10 were mature, with the rest somewhere between “throw it away” to “you might get a mouthful of corn off that one”. So, we cooked up what we had, and it was delicious.

This week I’ve started sinking fence posts.

Our first carrots!

Cute little guys aren't they? The little one on the left looks like it could get up and walk away. It turns out carrots need very moist and very loose, loamy soil. Unfortunately, this patch didn't get tilled nearly as deeply as it should have, and we also neglected to run a soaker hose down this row. So in other words, even though we're going to get a boat-load of carrots this year, they'll mostly be stumpy and woody like these two. Oh well, one more item for our live and learn list for next year!

Serves you right!

Remember the lovely hornworms I told you about? I did some more research on them and found out that a type of wasp exists only to lay it's eggs in hornworms. Ecosystems are a funny world. I showed Dan a picture of what an 'infected' hormworm looks like in case he ever sees one. Well... sure enough... we have a hornworm sitting on one of our tomato plants with wasp cocoons just waiting to hatch. Serves him right for noshing on our tomatoes, if you ask me! Anyhoo, the research advised that if not infected, you need to get the worm off pronto, otherwise you provide an all day smorgasbord. However, if it IS infected to leave it alone. What?? Leave it alone? The website proceeded to say that the worm will be immobilized (therefore not doing any more damage to your plant) and you want the wasps to hatch, grow up and go lay eggs in another hornworm, immobilize it, and so on. Hmm... this is a good thing. Interesting. Now we watch for the cocoons to hatch. They haven't as of this morning. We'll keep watching!

Cukes, cukes and more cukes!

Some things in the garden aren't doing as well as we'd hoped. Some are doing ok. Others are doing great! Cucumbers are in the 'great' category. We have no shortage of cukes this year! However, you can only make so many dinner salads and tomato & cucumber salad before you have to start looking for new recipes. That's when pickles popped into Dan's head. He went online and found a couple of recipes. We spent Friday night, our 'date night', making pickles. We had a blast! Turns out it they are beyond easy to make and delicious - better than any pickle you'd find in a store. I can't wait for more cukes to make more pickles!

Does the farm wait?

Today I am finally confident I'm getting a cold. I don't get colds very often, but when I do, they are usually 'doozies'. It's rainy and blah today, so I don't particularly have much to do outside. All of the plants were watered by mother nature. Everything that 'had' to be picked was early this morning.

However, my progressing cold has me thinking - a farm can't wait. It can't wait to be watered, harvested, chickens fed and eggs collected. Nor will it wait for an extended vacation. Or a short vacation for that matter. Once we have sheep or goats, they can't wait to be milked and fed and watered. Fences won't wait to be repaired. The larger the farm gets, the more that won't be able to wait.

Sigh. This doesn't particularly sound fun or relaxing to me. Part of the reason we moved back to the country is because we wanted a slower pace of life. A simpler life. Room to breath. We will be able to breath acreage-wise, but what about workload-wise? I'm not so sure. There's no conclusion to this post - just a thought being typed out. I suppose I will just have to either 'wait it out and see' or adapt. I foresee adapting in my future.

If I could only get to those birds!

Dan calls Buddy 'the BEST cat EVER!'. He is very cute, but sometimes his 'bossiness' is a bit much. "King Biscuit" we call him. This morning though, was one of his cuter days.

Over the weekend, Dan installed a new storm/screen door on the back of the house so we can have a cross-breeze blowing through the house. However, Buddy thinks the door was installed so he can see the chickens even better (as this is now the best vantage point from inside the house).

This morning I went out to take some pics for the blog and when I turned around, Buddy was tirelessly trying to get out to the chickens (aka 'his girlfriends'). He doesn't seem to understand why he can see them and now even hear them(thanks to the screen), but not get to them! Buddy is all the entertainment a person needs.

Grow, Garden, Grow!

Some of our veggies are doing great! Others, not so much. Cukes and tomatoes are growing like crazy, but green beans are just kind of sitting there not doing much of anything. Lettuce is doing pretty well, but aren't getting as big as I thought they would. And even with all our poor corn has been through, it still seems to be healthy and is getting tiny little cobs on it.

Tomato Killers!

Hornworms are EVIL! We never see them on the ground, nor on anything except our tomatoes! Where do they come from? Straight from hell, that's where! One evening we pulled 15 of the fat suckers off our plants. The next morning 2 more. Tonight we pulled 2 more off. Annoying little buggers!

Just a thought...

Ok, so we've learned a lot since Spring arrived. Who knew sticking some plants in the ground could be so labor intensive and scientific? I'd like to know why weeds grow with no assistance at all.... yet flowers and veggies that you give tender loving care are so resistant to grow?!?

Rain & Corn - not necessarily a good combination!

One thing about summer in the Midwest- weather moves in fast and furiously. A huge rainstorm moves in early afternoon. Well, not much to do outside now. We decide to head to town to do some shopping.

Upon arrival home, our once proud, and vertical, corn is now horizontal. You've got to be kidding me! We chuck our cold grocery store goods in the fridge and head out to try and salvage our 9 rows of corn. First we carefully straighten it up and pack soil around it. It's mostly vertical now. It's late and we need to make dinner. After dinner we head back out to 'hill' the corn. This seems to help give it extra support. I'm curious to see how it holds up during the next rainstorm.

But what did we learn? Planting corn 1 1/2 inches deep is not enough to build a strong root system. Next year, we will plant deeper. Oh also, as a reminder for next year... plant rows 4 feet apart so we can get the tiller in between the rows. Good tip!

What does every farm need? That's right... a big honkin' tractor! In our case, a big honkin' tractor with a loader. Trouble is, tractors are expensive, and even more so with a loader. What we needed was a fixer-upper. And what better place to find a fixer-upper than eBay?!
Our tractor criteria was pretty simple: it must have a 3-point hitch, a loader, be within 100 miles of home, and be under $2,000 dollars. The search began.
4 months later (!) my eye caught a listing for the tractor in the photo above. It was the first one I'd seen that met all of our criteria. So I watched and waited. The starting bid was $1800, and I figured that it would soon ne out of our price range. A day passed with no bids. Another day passed with no bids. And another, and another. Finally the final day arrived, and I checked the listing every hour to see how high the bidding would go. Hour after hour, and still no bids. So, I figured that I was not the only sniper waiting for the last moments. Note: A sniper in eBay world is someone who waits until the last possible moment to place a bid, knowing that other bidders won't have time to react and re-bid. Sneaky? Maybe, but effective. Anyway, at last, with 60 seconds left and no other bidders, I placed my bid for $1801. By the time I clicked "Submit Bid" there was only 30 seconds left, not enough time to bid higher if another sniper bid $1802. On the edge of my seat I refreshed the screen every two seconds, fully expecting to be out bid. With the last refresh I saw the wondrous message "Congratulations, you have won this item!". Huzzah!! We had a tractor. Now we just had to get it home, and that is a story for another post.

Garden's Growing!

The garden is doing quite well! We're very happy that we aren't having too much of an insect or animal problem - which is really exciting considering we are growing completely organically - no nasty pesticides!

What About Bob?

Say hi to Bob.
When our son Danny learned that we had planted corn his response was "Well then we need a scarecrow." Now I'm personally not sure a scarecrow does anything other than give the crows a convenient place to perch after all their corn-eating. Nevertheless, I've always liked the idea of a scarecrow, so I immediately said "Okay!"
Our scarecrow's construction is very simple. First, we stuck a 7-foot long cedar post about a foot into the ground. Next we screwed a 3-foot wide board (the shoulders) across about a foot down from the top, making a cross. Next a 2-foot wide board was screwed across for some hips. An old pair of pants went around the hips and an old shirt (plaid, of course!) went around the shoulders. Two aluminum pie plates formed the head, an old ball cap was tacked on top, and some pieces of aluminum foil were folded and shaped into hands. The pie plates and hands really dance around in the wind, giving our new scarecrow some life.
When we finished I mentioned to Danny "Our new scarecrow needs a name." Without hesitating, Danny replied, "His name's Bob." Okay then.

The Girls are getting big!

The girls are starting to actually look like chickens! It's amazing how fast they grow. Here they are lounging about in their chicken run - eating bugs and grass...

Our other feathered friends

Here's a trivia question for you: What is tiny, territorial and can eat you out of house and home?

The answer, of course, is a hummingbird.

We saw hummingbirds when we first moved to the farm a year ago, so we assumed the previous owners must have had feeders for them. This spring, I promptly went to the farm store to get a feeder so they would stay this year. We had a beautiful, ruby-throated male adopt the feeder. Shortly after, some juvenile hummingbirds wanted to dine as well. However Ruby (our creatively named male) would have none of it! He shooed away all other birds. Ok, time to do some research. Sure enough we found out hummingbirds are extremely territorial. Luckily, I received a second feeder as a Mother's Day gift and hung it about 15 feet from the first. Nope, no good. That too, is apparently in Ruby's 'zone'. So it was moved to the other side of the house, outside of Ruby's view. Right? Wrong! Ruby now buzzed back and forth between the feeders running any intruding hummingbirds away. What a jerk! If he wants to play mean, fine, we'll play mean. I went back to the store for yet a third feeder. Let's see him try to monitor three feeders! He tried, but for the most part other hummingbirds get to drink now. Ruby tends to stick to the first one he found, the ladies mostly use the second and the juveniles like the third.

Everyone is happy and apparently very thirsty. I have a hard time understanding how such tiny little birds drink so much. Where does it go? I'm not sure, but I do know that we and especially Buddy enjoy having the little birds around.

The day I was blessed!

We are not full-time homesteaders. It would be pushing it to even say we are part-time homesteaders. We work regular 9-5 jobs and do all that we can around the property after work and on weekends. However, today my life just got a little bit easier.

I work for a major corporation. I know, I know, a lot of people don't like mega corporations and I don't always either. But mine happens to be awesome, with great benefits, including a new one! Today is my first day working remotely. That's right... I work everyday from home now. This is a huge time-saver in several aspects a) drive time -2 hours each day b) getting ready in the morning c) having dinner ready earlier so we have more daylight to work outside after dinner.

Don't get me wrong, I still work 8-hours a day, but it's a flexible 8 hours where I can go outside and pick some veggies for lunch, say 'hi' to the girls, water the plants, etc. The cats will LOVE it too. Hmm... I don't think I've mentioned that we have 2 cats. Buddy and Ivy. They are both the BEST cats ever!

I'm looking forward to my new lifestyle!

Tilling for corn

We have quite a few veggies in the ground. Peas are starting to grow. Now is time to till for our corn patch...

Chick's arrival

It's bright and early Sat morning and we're getting ready to head to our local farm store to pick up our chicks. We've got the shed near the house converted to a coop and have a fenced in area for the chicks to run around.

At the store, we look over all the different chicks, all about a week or two old. We try to pick some bigger chicks with the hopes that they will be healthier. We end up bringing home 2 Rhode Island reds, 2 New Hampshire red and 2 Black Sex Links. They are just too cute!

We refer to them as 'the girls'. We were told not to name farm animals like pets, but it's hard just calling them 'the black one' or 'the red one'. We decide we will name them, but not cute cuddly names. We decide that since at some point, after they stop laying, they will be dinner, we will name them after chicken dishes. Our 'girls' are: Blacky (short for Blackened), Nugget, Pollo, Kiev, Cordon Bleu, Coq au vin.

To cold frame or not, that is the question!

We read a great book by Gene Logston and were introduced into the world of cold frames. What a great idea! A mini greenhouse... we'll get veggies even sooner.

How to build one? Well, we have some left over square bails of hay. That will make a nice insulated 'frame'. When we bought the property, we replaced the basement all glass doors with something a little more secure. They'll be our cold frame 'lids'.

We proceeded to plant in our cold frames. Tomatoes, cukes, peppers, etc. Nights are still getting below freezing, but daytime temps into 50's and 60's. Easy enough, put the lids on at night take them off in the morning. Hmm... we have a quandry... today the temp is only going to get up to upper 30's. We'll play it safe and leave the lids on and head out to work. We decided to check the weather from work..... holy crap...... it's almost 60 out and we left the lids on!!! (which means it's probably at least 100 under the magnifying glass like lid.) Crap! Upon arrival home, we run to the cold frames yank the lids off. Little plants wilted and burned. Crap!

We'll have to get a handle on this cold frame thing.

A little too eager!

The 'beginning' of our homesteading and what we learned thus far. Well, mostly things not to do, but learning none-the-less.

1) Don't start cucumbers yet... it's way too early! (Not even in the cold frame.)

2) Start tomatoes in small containers, but don't move outside... transplant into larger container, then into larger and so on. When it's nice out take them outside to get used to the outdoor weather. Then once big and strong, into the ground they go. Don't bother with the cold frame, it's still too early.

3) Don't start lettuce or carrots indoors at all.

What's with all the cedars?!

Cedars, cedars, everywhere!
Alright, technically they're junipers, but they're commonly known as red cedars. And they are everywhere here on Thayer Farm. Of course, that's partly because most of this land is a stone-covered ridge. And it turns out that red cedars are one of the few trees that thrive on this type of soil.
My biggest problem with red cedars is that they are growing here like weeds. Seriously, you can't turn around here without bashing into one. And this means that as I'm clearing brush I'm also creating this colossal red cedar mound. Kind of like a great green pyramid that smells like the inside of your grandparents' closet.
Now about the time I'm contemplating this gowning green mountain, Michelle and I are also beginning to plan for fences. Lots of fences. Fences around the new chicken run, fences around the new garden, a very long fence to replace the so-called "fence" that lines the back of the property, etc. One of the more expensive parts of any fence is the fence posts, and we are going to need a gazillion of them. Suddenly one day a light bulb came on courtesy of my favorite farmer/writer/blogger Gene Logsdon. He posted a very interesting blog regarding red cedars and what great fence posts they make. Eureka! My red cedar and fence post problems have been solved.
"The Lord will provide." Amen!

Pics of the new farmstead!