New Chick Housing

Remember when I mentioned our little Daredevil broke one of the chick containers?  I had to think up something really quick.  Luckily we had some panels from a shower we removed that the previous owners had started installing in the mudroom.  Not a great install so we took it out.  I joined two of the panels together in a circle and this became a pretty awesome home for 33 chicks in the garage.  We lost one of them when he got squished by his siblings, so we no longer have 34 :(

Their new digs, they love the extra space!

Terrific Tuesday

Photos around the farm taken by my DD16 :)

Green chickens and other weirdness

So I have decided that for the amount of chicken feed we go through (even with free ranging) that getting 6 to 8 eggs a day just isn't cutting it from 13 hens. So I'm on a mission. Every so often I went out there this morning to see who was in the nesting box. Now my kiddos can tell every chicken apart.. I can't.. so I've been putting a drop of green food coloring on each chicken who was sitting on a nest. And THAT is why I currently have six green tinged chickens.

Six green chickens.. six eggs in the carton.. that adds up... BUT!

Notice something funny? My kids thought this was hilarious! I have no idea why one chicken laid such a teeny tiny egg.

That's a regular size egg, and the tiny egg. Weird.

Anyway, I have been reminding the chickens about the "You don't lay, you don't stay" policy I first told them about when they joined us last year on the farm. They just look at me with that blank chicken stare though..

And now I better get off here so I can get outside and put the 8.5 lbs of Kennebec seed potatoes that I bought for the bargain price of 99c in the ground! The other potatoes are already sprouting beautifully. I also have to go supervise the tilling DH is about to do, we're getting ready to plant corn!

The ducklings have been growing.. again!

This is where they sleep at night, in our mudroom. They sure do go through their food and water FAST!

In the morning we put them outside, which they love. Oldest DS cut off one side of a mouse chewed water container and turned it into a little mini pond which they love to swim around in. It is clean for about the first 5 seconds after getting filled. People are not exaggerating when they say ducks are dirty! We love them though, they hang out in a group in the backyard and go everywhere together.

Exploring their new world.


I added a little video of the ducklings for your viewing pleasure :)

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!