Around the farm

Today we managed to get the electric wiring done in Pasture 2 so we could move the pigs into that pasture. It took us all day, first moving the shed, then finishing the barbed wire fencing in one area and then putting in the electric. But it's done! I am so glad DH built the pig shed on skids so we could move it from area to area. The Farmall got put to work today!

All we haven't done yet is put a pig water nipple on the waterer on that side, so we left the small gate between the two pastures open and will add the water nipple tomorrow.


This is the double sided waterer we were lucky enough to inherit with the house and land. If you look closely, you can see my wonderful DH has added a pig water nipple on the front and connected it to the waterworks. SO wonderful not to have to carry buckets of water around! The pigs love it too. We installed the green gate on the left last weekend, that is our human gate between the two pastures, we don't have the livestock gate in yet, so the animals use this too. Butterbelle was a bit hesitant, but has since adapted to it quite nicely. DH is going to add another water nipple on the other side of this waterer so the pigs will have water available in both pastures.

Exploring the wonderful green grass. I am pretty excited that our rotational grazing plan is coming along nicely. We still need to divide the third area in two and then we'll have four pastures total, with a possible fifth in our vegetable area.

Our little Daredevil. He has caused a bit of havoc on the farm in the last week! He was climbing on the haybales and knocked one onto the chicks container after I moved them into the garage. They haybale broke the container so I had to figure something else out for them. What we have now is actually better, I'll share a photo of that later. He also rode into one of our newly planted fruit trees today, luckily no damage, but he was grounded from the ATV for the rest of the afternoon.

The tree in question, as you can see it's just fine. Look at those buds! Other things are doing great on the farm as well....

The garlic.

The spinach, broccoli and cauliflower bed. They are doing wonderfully well. We had some really strong winds here the last few days, and a lot of the greenery you see is those "helicopter" seeds blown down from one of our trees.

The gooseberry bush we got from Henry Fields. I cut it down to half its height after we planted it. We've never had gooseberries before.. so we really hope they're good!

Grapes coming along nicely.

DH gave lessons to our oldest DD and oldest DS on how to drive the tractor. They both did great!




The chickens haven't quite been pulling their weight. We have 13 laying hens and only get about 8 eggs a day. They've definitely slowed in production, so we're looking at adding oyster shell to their feed again.

Today was a very busy, but productive and satisfying day!

Tick season is here!

Pictured is a dog tick, also known as a wood tick, freshly removed from my youngest DD.

I love spring, but I hate the ticks that come with it!

Just a friendly reminder that the best way to remove ticks is with a pair of tweezers. Grasp tick as close to your skin as possible without squeezing the tick's body and gently pull out without twisting. DO NOT apply vaseline, nail polish or anything else to the tick to get it to back out.

Read the American Lyme Disease Foundation's website for more info on ticks and Lyme disease.

Tomato seeds have arrived

Today we finally received our tomato seed order from Seven Acre Seeds. I placed the order towards the end of March and they shipped in a timely manner, and I waited.. and waited... Finally after about 10 days from the shipment date I wrote and asked if I should be concerned that my order hadn't arrived yet. They very quickly shipped out a new order, which arrived today! I should add that we currently have temporary mail carriers and the mail delivery has been.. interesting. I am left wondering who got the original order of tomato seeds.

Unfortunately I had decided that it was getting too late, so last week I started tomato seedlings with seeds I already had on hand, so these will probably have to wait 'til next year. I specifically ordered crack free/resistant tomato varieties since so many of our tomatoes cracked last year. Some of the varieties I already had on hand we never planted last year, and they're said to be crack resistant, so I think we'll be okay. We planted out 105 tomato seedlings. According to MO's extension site that should be enough for our family for eating fresh and processing.


Tomatoes should be planted out about May 10th in our area so I'm off to a bit of a late start this year.

Kudos to Seven Acre Seeds for their excellent customer service, as well as for the free seed packet (Golden Egg) which was included in the order :)

Today is a really gloomy day, the ducklings are outside and loving it though! Tomorrow we hope to get Pasture 2 electric fenced so we can get the pigs in there and out of Pasture 1. We will have to move their shed, but that's relatively easy. Right now they have taken over Butterbelle's shed and we need to have that available to her when she calves at the end of May. We still need to get the milk stanchion made and get her used to it before she calves.. so much to do!!!

I also got another package today.. watch our Etsy store for new arrivals happening soon!

Dandelion Jelly

We picked oodles of dandelion flowers and made this beautiful jelly. We loosely followed this recipe. The natural color is lovely and it tastes very similar to honey. Lots of work, but sooo good! The oldest two girls have already picked me another quart of blossoms to make another batch!

Fruit trees galore.. and more!

This weekend we worked on getting our newest order of fruit trees planted. They all got planted in the "horseshoe field" that our driveway encircles. We ordered 2 peach trees, 2 pear trees, 1 cherry tree, 1 plum tree and a brown turkey fig tree from Stark Brothers. We also got a gooseberry bush from Henry Fields as part of their free $25 order promotion. The fig and gooseberry bush got planted in our soft fruit area. Now I'd love to be able to impress you with photos of these trees.. but really they just look like sticks. But in case you don't believe me.. here's a pic for you of three of the trees. We have surrounded them with cages to protect them from the marauding chickens and dogs.

And while I'm here, I may as well share some photos of things that are starting to bloom, it's an exciting time of year on the farm!

Strawberries starting to do their thing!

The grapevines are starting to waken and push out shoots.

I planted some mint in the small little garden area at the bottom of our deck steps. The chickens are leaving it alone and I'll be able to contain it easily enough. Plus it's really handy for picking for the kitchen.

I love Spring!

Dishcloth set

DD16 has been very busy with her crochet work. Here for your viewing pleasure is her latest creation, a dishcloth/hot pad/kitchen towel set. Beautiful work. If you would like to own this set, you can buy it in our Etsy store by clicking here.

Dandelion Coffee

DD14 has been using her foraging book she got for her birthday and tried her hand at making Dandelion coffee. It came our really well, and tastes quite nice. It does have a bit of lingering bitter aftertaste though. Maybe we can work around that somehow.