Sunday Homestead Update

We had an excellent holiday weekend, including some delicious red, white, and blue, Fourth-of-July-Fruit-Salad!

We are enjoying fresh strawberries from our strawberry patch this year, and they are sending runners and filling in the patch nicely.  Next year it should look a lot less sparse.

We have started foraging for wild medicinal and edible herbs on the property.

The jam we canned last week turned out wonderfully.  The recipe using fresh grated apples instead of pectin and honey instead of sugar worked well and we plan to use it in the future with the same berries (raspberry blackberry mixed) as well as try it out with other berries and berry combinations.  We found the recipe at The Blissfully Content Life.

Every summer our poor farm dog has flies try to eat his ear away.  There is a very soft spot where his ears bend down and the flies never fail to attack this spot.  Because it is nearly impossible to bandage an ear, and we don’t want to take away his ability to hear by wrapping his ear to his head (although we have seriously considered this option) we just continue to put salve on it 3-4 times a day.  The salve keeps the flies off for a few hours, but as the heat and activity of the dog melt the salve and it gets rubbed away the flies quickly find it again.  Poor pup!

We have a lot of ladybugs showing up, which we are glad for because they can help with the aphids.

But we also have some ants farming aphids for honeydew and they are killing the Crandall clove currant bush.

This week the main project is sewing.  I am making some more chicken jackets as well as some summer dresses for the girls.  The hens back have been healing nicely since they have been without a rooster for a few weeks.  But they will need protection until they do a full molt, and we are about to move the cockerels back into their pen.  So I want every hen that has back damage from Boaz to wear one so they can hopefully heal.  And then we are hopeful the breeding roos we pick for this year are gentler with them.

This time the chicken jackets are different patterns,  I figured if they needed to wear them anyway I should make them different so it will help me know who is who without having to try to read their bands under their leg feathers.  I can tell most of our hens apart, but the 4 Dark Brahma girls are impossible, as well as a couple of my solid black hens.

We are really enjoying the summertime happenings and weather on the farm!