Double Trouble

Some of you that are on facebook may have already seen this picture.  What you may not know is that these two boys are always getting into trouble around here.  Their poor behavior is only redeemed by the fact that they have their sweet moments, those times they crawl onto our laps and cuddle.

Sir Charles (on the right) is the ring leader, Couvu is the follower.

We added a new member to the farm yesterday so I have been spending more time than usual out at the barn to get her settled in.

 

Sir Charles has decided that he will be part of the welcoming committee, only problem is that his idea of welcome is to hide in the hay mow and scare her.

 Can you see him peeking out from the hay mow?

 This is him reaching out to "pat" the new goat......maybe he is just trying to shake hands.

Our animals never cease to bring a smile to my face.  Now to keep the little monster out of the hay mow.  Any ideas?

Bottle babies ~Layla's twins

Meet Layla's Twins.  The doeling is on the left and the buckling is on the right.  We decided to bottle feed these guys since we won't be keeping them.  We are hoping to sell them as bottle babies.  What that means is that tonight they are in the house and have been getting colostrum (first milk) that we milked from their Momma about every two hours.  Luckily most baby goats sleep all night so we don't have to get up and feed them.  Tomorrow we will feed them 4-5 times during the day,  the next day 4 times a day for about a week then three times a day for a month or so before we drop it to twice a day.  We are hoping that we won't have them that long though.

Our kids were at college when Layla decided it was time so my husband was forced into action.  He did great helping me dry the babies and introducing them to their Momma.

The little buckling had quite a bit of fluid in his lungs and Pat had to help me hang him upside down to drain it out.  For a little bit I didn't know if he was going to make it.






We disbud the babies anywhere between 2 days old and 2 weeks old.  It still amazes me that there is such a difference in the bucks horn buds and the does.  The little bucks come out with horn buds that need to be burnt off in the first few days and the little girls horns are tiny and not really ready to be burnt until a week or better.  We learned early on that it is better to do them earlier than later, especially if you don't want scurs.  This is not a fun job but it goes quick and the babies are nursing their Momma's or bottles in just a few minutes and have forgotten what just occurred.

Rosies twins are busy romping around the barnyard and bouncing off the walls of the barn.  It is so much fun to watch them play.

Funny thing happened with Rosie and Peppa (our big Alpine herd queen) the day after she gave birth.  Seems Peppa picked a fight with Rosie and they bashed heads for 20 minutes.  Peppa lost the caps off her horns and was all bloody before she decided to give up.  Rosie is the boss now......it is so funny to see Peppa slinking about the barnyard in fear.  One good thing that has come of it is that Dora (the low goat on the totem pole) now gets to eat hay and hang out in the barn without any issues from Peppa.  You go Rosie girl, you rock!

Disaster has struck!

We had a visitor in the night.  I sneaky, diabolical, evil, murdering, turkey eating visitor.  Now we have poor Tom turkey without his mate.  He was wandering around the pasture like a lost soul calling out for his girl this morning.

I am looking out my window as I type and it looks like he is trying to be adopted in to the chicken tribe.  If you know anything about chickens you will know that he would have to go through the "pecking order" gauntlet and if he lived he might be deemed worthy of a lower perch in the coop at night.  However, with his size maybe this isn't a problem.

The boys have spent the morning devising plans to catch the "turkey eater" and string it up by it's toes.  Well, maybe they are planning something more sinister that I will not say in this post.  Personally, I don't want to risk losing our Thanksgiving dinner and want to put Tom Turkey up at night where he will be safe and secure.
The problems is where to put him.......................maybe he will have to be introduced to the freezer sooner than I thought.

Once Upon A Rainy Night

So, why do bad things happen on rainy nights?  I still can't figure it out...

Our farm has had more than one shady character invite itself over in the middle of the night (most of the time when it is raining or storming).  Before you worry, I will say that the 'shady character' was not a human.  Anyways, enough with the mystery...for now. 

Our first encounter was on a stormy night around 12:00.  Our ducks were shoved back under a pine tree with a tarp over the cage to keep them dry.

- Rain pattered on the roof, lightning lit up the sky.  A shadow slipped in and out of the dim light, watching, searching -

Sorry, I had to add a little drama...........................

I was sleeping and I was rudely awoken by my sister digging around for clothes to throw on.

"Whats going on?"  I mumbled.

"Something got the ducks..."  She replied.  She looked sick.

"What???????!!!!! Are my rabbits ok?!"

"I don't know."  Was all she said.

I traipsed out to see what the goings on were.  It was dark and I was worried.  Dad had the pellet gun out because we couldn't find the ammo for a bigger gun quickly enough. Two of the ducks had been gotten hold of and chewed on through the cage bars.  Dad had to do-away with them :(

None of the flashlights had batteries and dad was getting upset, he wanted to get whatever had torn up our ducks. One of the brothers spotted eyes up in the pine tree.  Muahah!

Dad pulled the van up on a rise in the yard and shone the high beams into the tree (what desperate measures we take!).  It was a raccoon. 

Anyways, the end of the story came with a really big bang...

That was two years ago.  Since then, we have had opossums and fox carry off our chickens.

One event that we never have figured out was the brooding duck (Harriot) that we had who disappeared along with her mate (Ozzy) on the morning their eggs were supposed to hatch.  That night it rained.  Never a drop of blood or a feather was found.  We would like to think that they were shirking their duties as parents and packed their bags for warmer parts.  We did, however end up with their 14 babies!

Last night it was raining and my puppy started barking.  She sleeps in a cage on our porch.  Well, she must have to go pee or something, I thought.  I let her out and she ran right to the door wanting to go in the house.  That's funny, I thought.  I did everything I could to get her off the porch.  Nope.  I put her back in the cage and went back to bed.

In the morning it all made sense.

My sister went out to take care of her rabbits.  The male rabbit's cage was dragged from it's spot and he was found lying dead next to the driveway.  Disturbing, yes?  Betty's cage and stand was smashed to pieces and she was no where to be found.  Basically, the rabbit community of ours has been shaken and left partly dead...

Big paw prints were found around the cages.  No wonder the pup was scared! Well, it looks like we'll have to figure some things out.  We think it was a big dog or maybe coyote.   We just don't know.....

Learn from our mistakes! 1.)  Be prepared  2.)  Have your gun loaded  3.) Beware of rainy nights (don't be superstitious, I'm just saying, creatures like to eat other creatures on those nights.)

Post written by Rachel.

New Addition to the farm and family

Hi Y'all, I wanted to give you  a quick update on what we have been doing around here and post a couple of pictures of the new puppy.  Rachel sold her horse this spring and wanted to get a puppy, well we finally found one and she is cute.  She has only been here 5 hours and she is spoiled.  She is a Catahoula Leopard dog in case you are wondering.  Bella and her are getting along fine, Bella would think she was a lot of fun if she would just stop trying to nurse. 

We had a storm come through on Monday and blow our corn down, it was head high.  Even though we have considered twine and duct tape, I am hoping that it will stand back up if we leave it alone.  We are praying that is what will happen anyways.  We can't complain our neighbor had the roof torn off his barn and some friends down the road had a tree land on both their cars.  Thank you God for it just being our corn.

I have been making jam and a tomme of cheese today.  We are picking  tons of yummy vegetables and I have a confession to make.  The yellow cherry tomato plant had a few ripe tomatoes on it....they didn't make it into the house.  I considered them part of my lunch.  What the rest of the family doesn't know won't hurt them, right?

I went for a walk around the perimeter of the pasture yesterday and found that the chokecherry trees are ripe but it doesn't look like I will be able to harvest any for jelly since the birds have eaten all of the lower ones and are doing a number on the high chokecherries.  Chokecherry jelly is interesting, it is already high in pectin so you don't have to add any when making the it.

I had to banish the pumpkin that Paige brought home from a field trip last October since it was finally starting to get some white spots on it.  Truly amazing that it lasted so long and in such great condition.  Did you know that the more nutrition, sugar, enzymes, and minerals a vegetable or fruit has in it, the longer it will last without spoiling?  This is something to think about, I know that when I am forced to purchase from the store the vegetable's and fruit just don't last as long.  All that mass production where they produce the crops with chemicals to get them to the market as quickly as possible.   All the chemicals and artificial fertilizers keep depleting the soil so more and more has to be used.  I would much rather eat something that I knew was teeming with good stuff for my body.

I didn't mention that we were also catching up on laundry.  Our washer broke down 4 days ago and my wonderful husband a son tore it apart and figured out which part was broken, ordered the part, and put it in today.  Did I tell you that they are my heroes?

Farm Cat

This is our barn cat "Squeak".  He was rescued from certain death when only about a week old.  He was so tiny when we got him, he squeaked when he tried to meow so he became "Squeak" to us.  When we first moved here, he was young and still learning to hunt and take care of himself.  In fact there were a few sleepless nights when we were awakened by the horrible sound of cats fighting and screeching.  Only to go outside and rescue Squeak from the clutches of a villainous neighborhood cat.



He has since matured and is able to care very well for himself.  He loves to catch and eat  Blue-tailed Skinks and has (much to our dismay) depleted the Skink population around the place.  The first time we saw him do this we were disgusted but now it is such a common occurrence and he gets rather irritated when we try to take his food away so we just let him have them. 

A barn cat is nice to help keep the mice out of the barn and away from the house.  We had a mouse in our Black oil Sunflower seed bag last week.  I was pretty proud of myself for not squealing before I put the lid back on the bin to trap the mouse inside.  Squeak happened to be hanging out by the barn since it was milking time and he occasionally gets a treat.  We scooped him up and held him on the edge of the bin.  He had that mouse in his paws in two seconds flat.  I was amazed at his quick, calm, demeanor. 

He now has a new favorite thing to do every morning.  He makes the rounds to all the grain bins and stretches up to see if there is a snack hanging out in them.

Our experience with Dark Cornish Meat birds

 We have had laying hens for a few years and this year we decide to try some meat birds.  Not being into fast food we purchased Dark Cornish Chicks instead of the White Cornish most that is purchased in the store.  This is a picture of the hens and roo's plus a Maran rooster who thinks he is a Dark Cornish.    The verdict isn't totally out yet but we have not been as pleased with these birds as we thought we would be. 

For one, it has taken them 5 months to get to the size you see in the picture.  We have butchered and few along the way and had some yummy roast chicken but the food to weight ratio has not been good.  They are however, exceptional foragers and can be seen ranging far and wide on the farm in search of their meal.  The Hens are starting to lay and the yolks are a really dark burnt orange color which we really like to see since it tells us that there are a lot of omegas and nutrients in these yolks.  That is plus but I am waiting to see how they lay.

I would not purchase these birds again for meat but maybe for the foraging ability and nice egg quality I might consider keeping a few.  We will probably just stick to the extra roosters we get from hatching out the laying hens each year.  They grow much faster and are ready to butcher sooner.

Spring at Raisin' Acres

Life around the farm has been hectic to say the least, those of you who have animals or plant a garden know what I mean.  Spring is a busy time of year around a farm.  Nature has come alive after a time of rest and starts to burgeon forth with new growth and starts to reproduce.  We have been happily planting seeds and plants for a couple of months now and are being rewarded for our labors with a small harvest of greens, strawberries, and herbs but the best is yet to come.

I planted 6 different kinds of heirloom tomato plants from seed this year, a total of 40 plants.  Some of the plants are just beginning to bloom.  I can't wait to sink my teeth into some juicy tomatoes.  The garden is really starting to grow now. 

We have had chicks and goats kids born on the farm this year:

Ameracauna Chicks 2wks old

 

Layla's Buckling

Yoko and buckling