Mild Winter…Early Spring?

They are predicting an early spring. Not at all surprising with how very mild this winter has been. We have only had 2 really cold snaps all winter, and they were short-lived. We have had many many mildly cool days, and some downright warm ones this winter. We have had very little precipitation, though we are supposed to be getting some this weekend. Not sure what all of this will mean for the coming months and seasons. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, we have been working on outdoor projects – as they say, “make hay while the sun shines.” We finished putting up all the hay for winter. This is normally finished by early fall, but this year everything was different. Thankfully, our hay dealer is a wonderful man with plenty of barn space and he was willing to hold onto our hay for us this year until we could get around to getting it all picked up and moved to our property. Nice to finally have that done.

Sheep and Goat Housing

We built the permanent fencing for the birthing barn pen. It was previously horse panels with welded wire hooked on. We also moved the three goats up to the pen as two of them are due to kid in the next few weeks. The chickens are also able to access the birthing barn and pen from their pen so they can scratch through the stalls and used hay. It is so nice to see the permanent fence, and the whole area is 4 feet longer each direction, adding quite a bit of square footage to the pen.

Before – the temporary fence

After – the permanent fence

The new lambing barn is dried-in and looking SO good. I am very excited about this new barn. It will have 6 jugs (lambing stalls) and it is small and insulated, and thus cozy and warmer than the big 3-sided horse loafing barns that the sheep are currently using. It will be wonderful not only for birthing season, but also will be a cozy barn to have the ewes live in during the winter months. It is closer to the house as well, which is convenient for lambing and for cold months. Added to the current birthing barn, which has 2 permanent jugs and one temporary one, we will have 9 jugs to handle lambing season. That will be very nice!

Garden

We also finished 2 of the 4 garden boxes we need to build. The building of this garden has been a 3-year process. First year we built the snake-proof fence and planted in hay bales. We used cardboard from our packing boxes to keep the weeds down in the walkways.

1st year garden – fence, hay bales, and cardboard on pathways

The second year we built raised beds around the exterior, leaving the composting bales on the bottom and putting good compost on the top. The center areas were left with the composting bales and we added a few inches of compost on top to create planting mounds. We added used carpet in the walkways to keep the weeds down.

2nd year garden – wooden raised bed on edges, raised mounds in center, used carpet walkways

And now we are building the center raised beds and will fill them in on top of the composted bales with good compost. Then each year we will add more compost to the beds as it settles and to refresh the nutrition in the soil.

As you can see, the design of the center beds is different than the outer edge beds. Both use pallet wood, but in different ways. I like the look of the center ones better, but I think I will like the function of the outer ones better over time since it is easier to replace the boards as they rot and break. But the building process of the center ones was faster and easier. Installing the posts on the outer edge boxes was time consuming because we had to get them lined up just right and measured out just right for the wood to slide in. Plus the preparation of the posts with the cut out areas for the wood to slide in.

3rd year, partially finished – raised beds around edges and in center, used carpet walkways

2 center beds finished

2 still to build

The process garden goes along with what I was talking about in my last post – slow and steady. If we can’t do it all the way, we just do what we can do and add more as it is possible. Over time, stuff gets done, one step at a time.

It has definitely felt different to have such a very productive January as far as outdoor projects go. Most Januarys are filled with heritage arts projects, kitchen projects, and indoor house remodel projects. I have completed some of the regular January indoor tasks – garden planning, seed inventory, and restocking and preparing the lambing/kidding kit and vet kit. 

Gotta take what you are given and when you are given a mild winter, work outside! 

Breeding Season and Autumn on the Homestead

Breeding Season

Breeding season is in full swing here at the farm.

This year we did something different with the goats. We don’t keep a buck, so normally we take them to the breeder and leave them there for about 45 days or until they have had the chance at 2 heats with the buck. Our breeder has been very generous and milked the girls for us while they were there. But we have found that the stress of the move and breeding and hormone shifts causes us to have much lower milk production when they come back from the breeder than when they left. So this year we decided to lease the buck from the breeder and bring him here to our farm. He is a young buck, born this last spring. I love the “fringe” of color he has on his ears. The kids tease me since I really enjoy the different colors of all our herds and flocks – obviously, we are selecting for traits more important that color, this buck has them, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying the color as a bonus. 🙂

This has been a new experience, and has reminded us why we don’t keep a buck of our own. What a blessing to just borrow one when needed! But, he has done his job, and while the girls’ production did go down when they were in heat, it came back up afterwards. So we are hopeful this will be a better way of doing things. The buck is now back at his home, and we will now switch over to sheep breeding season.

We are trying to space out the kiddings/lambings so that our birthing stalls can accommodate everyone. We still dream of building another birthing barn that has more stalls, but for now we have to try to space things so they fit in what we have. The sheep will head into their breeding groups later this week, which will be a relief because the 4 rams have been all charged up for about a month now and there is a lot of fighting and fence ramming going on.

It is a fun time of year as we dream of what babies spring will bring!

Autumn on the Homestead

We had our first frost last week, so the gardens have gotten quite a bit of effort lately. Before the frost we brought in all the green tomatoes left on the vines and put them down in the root cellar to ripen. we have been doing a lot of canning this year and the shelves are filling up. I love all the different colors of tomatoes we got this year (there I go with color again – LOL). Red, orange, yellow, and purple – all look so pretty together in a bowl getting prepped to be canned.

We have also planted the garlic for next year, and done a lot of clean-up in the gardens. This year we are trying a few tents for a fall/winter harvest. We have been planting in the tents since mid-august and now we have quite a good salad-bar going in there, plus carrots and beets as well. We are enjoying a lot of it on our plates now, and are also planning to leave some and see how long they can last in the tents into the winter before they get damaged by freezing.

The frosty weather also caused us to get out our hand-warmers for the first time this season. We love these things and use them all winter long. They are very helpful during chore time when it is cold, especially during milking. We have a container of “fresh” ones at the back door, and right next to that a container for the used ones. When the used container gets pretty full, we boil them to re-set them. That way we always have some fresh ones ready to stick in a pocket for use. If you homestead in areas that get cold weather and haven’t tried these out yet, get yourself a pair – or more!

Along with putting up food and hay for the winter, we are also getting the firewood put up to keep us warm. We have had a couple of mornings that were cold enough for a small fire in the woodstove. But nothing like what winter will bring us.

A busy season of preparation on the homestead!

Sunday Homestead Update: Good Mama Hen!

The rain has continued. Our pastures and gardens are flourishing, but it has caused some issues for the area at this point. Mainly, no one has been able to get their first cuttings of hay and alfalfa in because it has been too wet. We have heard of horse boarding facilities that are out of hay and trying to graze way too many horses on what little pasture they have just to make it through.

We ran out of alfalfa (what we use for the dairy animals) and hay about 6 weeks ago. We moved everyone onto the pastures early, but because of the rain the pastures are doing well, and we are supplementing the dairy girls with alfalfa pellets and grain. It definitely makes us contemplate our dependence on alternate feed sources off the property, and we are very grateful that the pastures are doing so well and that we have enough space and not too many animals so it can sustain them into the fall months.

Poultry Mamas

We have a chicken hen and a turkey hen setting now. This will be the second chicken hatch and third turkey hatch this year – what a blessing!

We find that having hens hatch and raise chicks (whether turkey, chicken, or duck) is a much better way to do it than with an incubator and brooder. Granted, you can do higher numbers in an incubator/brooder, and it can be hard to find a hen that is a good setter and mother, especially with those characteristics being bred out of poultry. But, in our experience over the last 15+ years of hatching and raising chicks, in which we have used both incubators/brooders and hens, we have found hens to be superior.

First, the hatches under hens routinely have higher hatch rates than in the incubator. Second, and probably most significantly different, is the percentages of chick loss in the first week or two. We very very rarely have an infant chick die that has a mama hen, whereas chick death in the brooder in the first week or two is a common occurrence. And lastly, we have found that chicks raised by a hen are better adjusted, better at foraging, calmer, just overall thrive better and turn out better than ones raised in a brooder. Another benefit is that we can do hatches under a willing hen when the weather is colder and not have to worry about the chicks because they constantly have a warm mama, whereas in a brooder if it is kept in an unheated outbuilding it can’t be done well in the colder weather due to drafts and such.

This week, we had an occurrence that we can add to the list of why we like to use hens. During morning chores we went in to check the food and water of the mama turkey that is currently setting on eggs, and there was a dead snake in with her. It was a small one, but snakes will eat eggs and chicks. Mama hen had killed it and protected her eggs. Good mama!

Garden

We are eating salads from the garden daily now, have harvested cabbage and have kraut fermenting, and have enjoyed a lot of strawberries prepared in all different ways. It is wonderful to have the garden growing so well. This is only the second year we have had a garden at our new location and in the new climate. Last year we did the straw bale gardening method because we didn’t have time/resources to build the needed raised beds. It did ok, but nothing substantial, and no leafy greens grew, nor root veggies. So we are relishing the abundance of leafy greens and have even started to harvest some beets and carrots too. The raised beds made a big difference. Though I believe that the composting straw bales from last year, which made up the bottom-most layer in the raised beds, was a very beneficial first step to get the beds filled with some good nutrition.

The rain has also helped the compost heaps move along faster. We live in such a dry climate that last year, even with watering the heaps when we could, our compost was not breaking down well. This year is quite the different story. We will have plenty of compost to top off all the beds we built this year, plus what we need to fill the beds we plan to build this fall.

Rain, in Excess

We have been getting a LOT of rain this spring. Which is such a blessing, but also came in such large quantities that it is causing some problems in our area. Flooding hasn’t effect our property, besides causing some barnyard soup in the one low-lying barnyard and almost all the hoof stock are out on pasture now, so it doesn’t effect them much anyway. It has made for some lush pastures though, since we are dryland pastures, which is a blessing. We have done a lot of ditch and roadwork with all the water, keeping it from flowing into a couple different outbuildings and keeping the roads from having huge ponds has taken some extra work.

Gardens

The rain has made the gardens flourish. We are eating fresh salads from the garden a few times a week now, and everything is growing very well. This year we tried some new types of greens – tatsoi, mache, and purple mustard – and the adventure of trying new flavors has been fun.

We harvested an enjoyed garlic scapes and rhubarb. And the pea and strawberry harvests are just getting going…plus a lot of herbs that we are using fresh and hanging to dry.

We are also harvesting kale. We like to put kale in our kefir smoothies, so I buzz it up with OJ in the food processor and then freeze it in ice cubes. That way we have plenty for later once the kale harvest is done.

In the Farm Kitchen

Speaking of kefir smoothies…we make them a lot, especially in the hot summer months when we have abundant fresh milk to feed the kefir. Last year, when we needed to be done with kefir for awhile, I dried and froze my grains. This week, as the milk is building up in the fridge from the sheep and goats, I decided it was time to get it out and bring it back to life. Bring on the smoothies!

We are also busy making cheeses and other dairy products now that the milk production is on the rise – mostly mozzarella and butter – the faster things. We are going to freeze some of the sheep milk to make the aged cheeses later when we have more time.

The Flerd

With birthing season over and all the sheep out on pasture, the lambs and kids are growing like crazy. We enjoy watching them in their antics, and in their adorable nap time.

We are now busy with milking, making dairy products with all the abundant sheep and goat milk, and selling lambs and kids.

We purchased some more electric net fencing this year and have been able to get the ram flock out onto pasture. They have never pastured before, so it is quite a blessing to have them out there eating from the land. It is also giving us a chance to do some much-needed repairs to the ram barn.

Poultry

We did our first go-through of chickens for the year – picking breeding stock and selling extras. I am hoping to have another hen want to set soon.

The turkey poults are growing like crazy. The second hatch was an excellent hatch as well. We had 2 early losses, and one very unexpected loss this week, but still have 20 poults now that are over a month old. We had to expand and revamp the turkey housing to deal with the sudden influx of babies and to be prepared to house them all as we grow them out.

We separated all the poults from the adults now that they are fully feathered and doing well, and we are hoping the hens will get back into the setting mood again here soon.

It has been a very full, abundant spring on the farm and we are very grateful for that. On to summer!

Sunday Homestead Update: From a clear 93F to Snow

We had quite the spectrum of weather this week. We had 2 days in a row that were sunny and hot, up to 93F at our farm. Those were followed by a morning of rain, then sleet, then snow, then back to rain. It was wet and cold. We are very grateful for the precipitation, we need it badly. We just had to work a little extra to be sure all the lambs were staying dry and warm, especially the youngest ones.

The Flerd

We are officially halfway through our lambing/kidding season. We have had amazing numbers this year, and broken several of our own farm records along the way. We have not had any single births yet. Half the births have been twins, and half triplets. A 250% birthing rate! We even had a yearling ewe, who we were sure would single due to her age and it being her first, give twins. What a blessing! We had 4 lambs born to 2 mothers in one hour – one of those ewes gave birth to the first and last lamb born, the other ewe gave birth to the second and third lambs that were born – we have never had ewes lamb at exactly the same time before.

We did have a scary, and potentially deadly, first on the farm as well – a transverse lamb. The ewe couldn’t dilate due to the transverse position, so the vet came out for a c-section. Amazingly, the sedation and moving the ewe into position on the ground for the surgery moved the lamb’s position enough to dilate her and right before he started the c-section we had natural delivery start and were able to deliver the lambs without the c-section. That ewe then almost died in the days following from the trauma of it all, but, thankfully, pulled through and survived. She accepted all her lambs and they all survived as well. So it was a happy ending. But, I hope and pray we NEVER have a transvers again. It was very stressful and traumatic for all, and very likely could have ended with ewe and lambs all dying.

We have a little 2-week break now from birthing before we start the second half of the flock/herd. We are soaking in the chance to get some rest.

Poultry

Our broody hen hatched out 5 healthy little chicks and is happily mothering them.

They are a barnyard mix and it looks like we have some fun colors, including a splash.

We have two turkey hens setting on eggs and we are looking forward to those hatches in the coming weeks. The turkey hens are SO protective of their nests and chicks. We do our best to just leave them, and when we do have to interact with them for something, we wear long sleeves and gloves because they attack like crazy. They have perfected the don’t-mess-with-me stare.

The Gardens

We finally took the plunge and are trying out some apple trees. All the neighbors in our area have struggled to get trees going, and most say it is pretty much impossible out here. We have tried to learn from them about what didn’t work, and we waited until we could do it up as best as we know how, and now we have planted 5 apple trees. Hoping and praying we can keep them alive and that they will be productive.

The drip irrigation systems are in all the gardens now. At our previous homestead we learned how much better plants do with drip irrigation and were anxious to get it set up here too. It makes watering so much easier, lasts longer, and is so much healthier for the plants. I am so excited for this new addition to the gardens.

We have been planting seeds, some seedlings, and the onions in the gardens over the last couple of weeks. I have a bunch of seedlings being hardened off each day on the patio in hopes of getting them moved out this week. My herb pots are out hardening as well, even though they won’t go out permanently until after last frost.

The barn cats enjoy sleeping and sunning themselves on one of the carts in the container herb garden. By the time my herb pots move out there it will be too hot for the cats to want it anymore, so I am happy to let them enjoy it for now.