Once Upon a Dream

As usual, the dreamer in me has come up with a new dream...

I'm not sure how true the dreaming part is, but I can see it. Tom says that I am the one that comes up with the ideas for our farm. The hoop house, the chickens and assorted poultry...the pigs. Although, I believe that Tom was the one that was more interested in getting the turkeys and geese. I love the turkeys, the geese and I have an understanding. They are not my favorite and I am definitely NOT their favorite. They respect me though - it helps when I am carrying something to remind them that they are not in charge. 

I digress...

About a week ago I was thinking about how I "need" to grow more tomatoes. Did you know that on bushel of tomatoes (or about 53 pounds) will make 15-18 quarts of  tomato juice? Also, it will take a little less to make thick tomato sauce. I haven't been able to grow that many tomatoes in the last 4 or 5 years.  Anyway, I was thinking about how and where that would happen.

We only utilize about half of our property for our house and out buildings and critters and the garden. There are large portions that are not usable, even though it appears so. We have discovered that a couple of inches below the surface lies all sorts of asphalt toward the back of our property. These areas are where the old barn and the equipment shed are located and the weeds and grass have taken over quite nicely. 

So, we can use just about any area that is located at the front of the property - probably about half of it. We can only assume that the old farmer did not require asphalt in these areas.

This photo was taken by our neighbor across the street who has a drone and was messing around with it and took some photos for us. Our piece of the old farm consists of 2.71 acres and is the only portion that is mostly square and not long and narrow. We are guessing that the top third of the property had asphalt all around the old shed and where the barn used to sit (upper right).

My current garden space is opposite the house on the other side of the driveway. I've been very happy with this location, but now that I have discovered food preservation by way of canning (pressure and water bath) I am VERY interested in growing LOTS of vegetables. Making sauerkraut via fermentation has been one of my new favorites. The big garden has been a great space for the past few years, but now I need more space!

Back to where I want to create more space...

This space has four 4x4 garden boxes that we built waaay back in 2008(!). Those boxes are so old, but holding up well. The other garden boxes are from when my friend Mary was gardening here at our home. After a couple of seasons she decided that life was getting too busy to maintain a garden at our house and gifted the boxes to us. Really though, would she have taken them to her house anyway?

In the past three years we used the boxes for a variety of different things and they worked well. They are big though and it's hard for me to weed the 4x8 boxes without getting into them while filled with my plants. Also, they are not holding up well and the wood has completely rotted out. So out they went. Not all of them though, I still have something in one of the big boxes and rhubarb in one of the narrow ones.

This is just the beginning. We have a lot of work to do, but a little bit here and a little bit there will get the job done. We started by taking out a couple of big boxes and on of the narrow ones. The last big one has my sweet potato experiment in it right now, so that one won't be going anywhere anytime soon. 

There is enough pig poo to help the soil, but we'll need to get some sand to help fluff up the soil. We do have quite a bit of wood chips so that would also help the garden space out. We'll see how things go over the next few months.

Another reason why I have been thinking about a new space - the critters. The pigs and the chickens get into the garden boxes regularly and it's hard to keep them out. The pigs will do anything to get into a space that is alluring to them which means they have been going underneath the chicken netting that I have around my new space. That wasn't to keep them out, but to visualize how much space I would have to work with. How will we keep the critters out? Well, there is a welded wire fence that encloses the big garden, so we'll do the same with my new space. The pigs can't get underneath that fence and the chickens don't jump onto the top of the welded wire fence because there is nothing for them to perch on. 

So yeah, I am the dreamer and mostly and a problem solver - to a certain degree. Now that I don't have work issues to think about I can think about the "issues" here on the farm.

Farm Life!

It's Been a Minute

We Had a Pig Rodeo...

It's crazy to think that my last post was when the momma's farrowed at the end of May/beginning of June. Here we are nearing the end of August and we have reduced our piglet herd by six. We could still sell a couple of the babies if someone were to ask, but we might just keep them for meat. 

Last week it occurred to me that I should maybe check my ad on Craigslist. I had received ANY queries on the pigs when I usually do. Well, the first week I usually don't. When we decide to pray about the piggies selling then we start getting responses - funny how that works out. We also decided to post a flyer at the feed warehouse again. There wasn't any interest when we did that in the spring, but this time Tom got a call from a woman who wanted to purchase a boar for her one year old gilt. I also had received a message from a family that wanted to purchase 4! 

Tom's customer, Linda, had gotten his number at the feed warehouse and he was texting and talking with her about what her preference would be. The other party, from Washougal, was my task and I ended up exchanging texts with Andy for a little bit before they decided that they wanted to come and meet the piggies and at least start with two baby swine. 

They both came Saturday afternoon - oh boy... the pig viewing window went from 1pm to 3pm. They both arrived within a half hour or so of one another. I was pretty happy that the 1 pig couple came sooner than later since we could get Brutus out of the mix fairly quickly and then continue on with the family. 

Since Tom had talked to Linda about registering the hog later we had to at least get him tagged so that could happen if she decided she wanted to register him. He was easy to grab and get into the cage, but then I realized that he still needed an ear tag, poor dude. It's bad enough that he was tricked into coming close to be grabbed. Then he was alone in the cage, but now he needs to get a piercing. Not cool people...not cool. The hardest part about that is getting said swine to sit still just a little before proceeding to pierce its ear. Fortunately, the pain is minimal (as far as we know) and a little bread to distract them afterwards is always good. Later in the day I got a message from the buyer and he was settling in nicely with his new older female friend. He is an over-achiever ;) 

Once that was done and that couple left, we could focus on getting the four caught and into crates. Since the family was out and about picking up their craigslist finds they had a very long trailer that had a few large diamter PVC pipes on in. So they could not pull into the driveway. He was able to park on the path in front of our house though, so not all bad. 

After a bit of discussion about AGH in general and them seeing our hogs they decided to go with getting four baby swine after all. Two boys and two girls. They hope to breed for future meat and to maybe harvest one or two of these for meat for their fam. 

Oh, so I mentioned that we reduced the herd by six, if anyone was keeping count...we had a random sale a couple of weeks ago. A woman who was at a week long church reunion next door to our farm came to tell us that a couple of our pigs were outside of the fence area...Blah Blah Blah. We were ready for church and on our way out the door when she dropped by. After a minute we saw Ethel (she's the bad one) and a couple of the babies running back then we were on our way. EXCEPT as the woman was walking down the driveway she did ask if the pigs were for selling or eating. To which I replied both. This then started a longer conversation that I am not going to post about here...it's far too long and it's an old story now. Let's just say that after more conversation later in the day and my satisfaction that the one pig that she wanted would not be just a pet, we sold her a gilt. I am not sure what kind of farm she went off to, but my hope is that she (the woman) is living the self-sustainable life that she claims and that our little pig will be a part of their homesteading journey for a while to come.

ANYWAY...

All in all, Saturday was a good day - a little hectic with the sales to two separate parties, but good. I'm very please with these buyers though, they wanted breeders and they got them! Rexy & Fiona have done a good job together in their three years. Bridgette was bred twice by her littermate, Victor, so we are fairly certain that she will continue to do well.

The vibe is definitely different now. We only have gilts left - maybe they miss their brothers...hard to say. They might have been traumatized by the activities of Saturday afternoon. 

Four of the girls on Sunday morning

Hopefully they will move on from their funk and back into their piggy shenanigans before too long. Their purpose will be a year long project as we are venturing into selling meat on the hoof. That's a different chapter in this farm story though, so check back for that.

Farm life is the best life, even when sending pigs to new homes. 

JUNE!

The May homestead challenge turned toward things that I wouldn't be interested in blogging about so I just abandoned the whole thing. There were a couple of days that I thought I might write something, but decided not to.

So, the remainder of May was busy, but at the same time not very. I got started with getting the garden planted which was halted after several days of 90+ degree days. Not my kind of weather. I can tolerate the mid-80s, but anything more and I'm no longer interested in spending time outdoors. 

Then at the end of the month our young sow, Bridgette (aka Little Momma) had a litter of 5 piglets. I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting her to have another litter. However, looking back I should have known. She hadn't had a heat cycle in several months. Duuuuh. All of her babies are doing quite well and this is her second litter of 5 and she hasn't lost any, this litter or the last one. They are quite skittish and even after a couple of days of sitting with them they are not interested in letting us even pick them up without sounding the alarm to momma.

Two days later Fiona (aka Big Momma) farrowed 9 piglets - her biggest litter so far. The difference with this litter is that she stayed outside and away from the other pigs for a few days. So Tom didn't do anything to move her. A good decision since she probably wouldn't move anyway. When Tom discovered that she had her piglets underneath the pear tree he found that there were 8, but later found that one had been squished. Friday morning, even though the remaining 8 made it through the night, one more had been stepped on and died.

We have been spending a lot of time with Fiona and babies - due to her size we try to keep a watch (as much as possible) on her litters so to keep the losses to a minimum. In a few more days once the piglets are a little bigger we won't have to keep an eye on them as much. The first week is pretty critical. At least where Fiona is concerned. She doesn't move fast and we aren't sure that she knows that she has landed on one of her babies once she goes down. Even so, she wouldn't be able to get up quick enough to set the baby free.

The other thing that we have with her litter are two very runty piglets. One of them, a female, didn't seem to be putting any weight on as she should within the first 24 hours and continued to look listless and weak. On Thursday I had the sense that maybe we should get the powdered colostrum out and start bottle feeding her. The itty-bitty piggy took to the bottle and kept coming back for more. A barista friend of ours from Starbucks had come for a visit to meet the babies and helped with getting the colostrum to the runty baby. Alicia was so taken by her that we decided to name her Alice. Alice might be a keeper, maybe. 

Even after all of our visitors had gone for the day little Alice continued to come to suckle on the bottle. Quite a bit actually. By the evening she had so much in her that she actually started to pee after she ate - a good sign!

Alice

We were able to go to bed without worrying so much about her. As of Friday she had zero interest in the colostrum and actually looked like she filled out a little bit, overnight! Kinda crazy that they can change so much in 24 hours.  I spent a lot of Friday and some of Saturday observing her. Alice was feeding right along side her siblings and seemed to be much more feisty. A VERY good sign. She was so feisty that when one of her littermates started to play with her she would start playing too! Oh, my heart...

We LOVE her!!

With each litter that is born here on our farm we learn more and more. Even just the day before Fiona actually farrowed I noticed some different behavior in her. She had been spending a lot of time over by the pear trees and in the back yard in general. The day before she had her piglets was a very warm, so I spent a lot of the day under the tree with her and reading and playing Pokemon GO. During that time I witnessed Fiona chasing off one of the junior swine. She was not happy with Edith hanging around, not even a little! That was a very out of character thing to see in her. Later in the evening I spent more time in the yard and watching her - it appeared that she was breathing very heavily. In retrospect I should have investigated before heading in for the night. She probably was laboring while I was sitting there watching her because the next morning were piglets.

Because she had decided to farrow al fresco we "had" to create a safe space for Fiona and her babies. Tom slapped together a pallet house next to the pig house, mainly for Rex. However, it wasn't used much so Tom relocated most of the pallets and built a wall around Fiona's area.

This is phase 1 of Fiona's special accommodations

It isn't totally predator proof, but at least there is a little bit of a barrier to ward off something becoming interested in Fiona and kids. Also, this offers a little bit of a wind block. Not as much as I would like, but enough that the babies have a safe space to goof around. There were showers in the weather forecast for Saturday and just to be safe we decided to put up the old canopy that was hardly used over this space...

Welcome to Pigopolis 2.0

I thought we would really look more "hillbilly" like, but it's not too bad, I suppose a tarp would have really topped off the look ;) This mostly keeps the area dry, although I think because she is under a tree that is all leafed out, she would have been just fine. So the canopy is mostly for our own peace of mind. 

The last thing that was added was a heat lamp. Fiona farrowed on the evening of the hottest day last week and the temps have just been going down from there. The piglets don't have any fat on their little bodies to keep them warm so the heat lamp seemed to be a necessary item. Well, we thought so anyway. The babies had no interest in the tank or the lamp all day yesterday so we just unplugged the lamp until evening and we were heading in for the night. This morning, all seven were in the livestock tank (creep) enjoying the heat of the red bulb. Perhaps they will embrace the creep for it's intended purpose instead of using it as their bathroom facility as one of them did yesterday. The biggest one went into the creep after feeding and proceeded to pee. Fortunately they are small and are not producing a ton of pee or poo. We'll see how they progress with their pooing and peeing as they grow older.

We have decided to keep the sows separated from Rex so they can have a break. They both had a two litters in the last 6 months. Poor Fiona never had a chance to get her bikini-body back. Once these litters have been weaned we'll work on making sure that Fiona gets her physical condition back in check. Once she is back to a more reasonable size/weight we'll go ahead and let her breed again, but not before and certainly not two litters so close together. I love the piglets and all, but they take a lot of our attention when we have so many other things that need to be done here on the farm.

No matter what I wouldn't trade this life for anything else - we have a blessed life here at Windswept Farm!

May Homestead Challenge

 2021 Goals!

I dream plenty - now it is time to take action!

My goals for this first year of retirement is to transition from filling my days with working for someone else to working for myself. Whether my day is filled with all sorts of projects or just a couple, my goal is to be cool with being home full-time. 

It's a big thing to work away from home for 26 years - working in an office environment and serving the public. Always representing the fire district well during while at work and sometimes when away from work.

These days I just want to be me and represent the Lord well. I'm working on relationships right now and with that I'm making myself healthy. It is slow going, because I want to be a hermit, but that's allowed. If I allow myself to become a hermit then my retirement will not be as full as I would like. I would be home doing all the farm things that I like, but that in itself is not fulfillment. There is no balance. I have to be intentional in allowing others into my world. Even if it's just a couple of people walking past our house and asking about the critters. Sometimes I have to reach out and ask someone for a coffee date or whatever. If I can get into the habit of asking other people how they are doing and how I can pray for them or how I can support them - that would be a step in the right direction. 

People are not the problem (not totally at least) just me in this transition from 40 hours per week away from home to being home all the time. At least once a week I ask Tom if I'm doing enough, because I don't feel like I am. The irony is that I may have filled my day with doing inside chores, baking bread, working on a sewing project and then helping with the outside chores in the evening. If I could just realize that doing all of those things ultimately make me feel content and somewhat accomplished, then I would feel better about being home. 

It's a perspective thing. It's a lot to be around people all day long, day after day who just want the latest new shiny thing or "need" to go on a big vacation. I've done my share of wanting and traveling. Now I need to be home and grow this space into something special to share with people around us. People who are neighbors or people who are friends.

My other goal is to have a kick-ass garden. Last year was so bad - I thought I would just give up growing a garden forever. So far I have plants that I started from seed to plant in the garden and I'm hopeful. Anything going forward will be much better than last year! 

May Homestead Challenge

Favorite Homestead Meal

Had to think about this one for a minute. In the last few years we have shifted our view on where our food really comes from and that it is better to grow as much as we can. There is all sorts of satisfaction in knowing exactly what went into growing the chicken or vegetables that we put on our plates. Anytime we can sit down and eat a meal that incorporates veg from the garden and meat from the field we feel pretty good and are so very grateful for this farm and that we CAN do what we are doing. 

So, when we do a roasted pasture raised chicken and beans and potatoes from our land that would definitely be my favorite. Now that we have our own home grown pork that will make meal time really special

Our first real meat grown here on the farm - Victor Chops

A couple of weeks ago I was rooting around in the fridge looking for something for lunch and I came up with this...

Eggs from our chickens and jowl meat from Victor. This was a few days after we had Victor slaughtered. So very tasty!

So anything that we grow is my favorite!

May Homestead Challenge

 Day 5 - What is my favorite mock/cocktail?

Since I don't drink that often - only when we are out in a restaurant - I really don't have a favorite.

Although pre-covid there were a group of us that liked to go out for happy hour at a local restaurant (which closed last summer) and get pitchers of Sangria...OH MY! They had the BEST! However, I think I'll stick to this:

It's not bad for a bottled sangria.

My other "drink" of choice would be coffee. How could I not include coffee? We ARE in the Pacific NW. 

May Homestead Challenge

Today's homestead challenge topic is fences. Where do I start?

In the beginning, before there were critters we decided to build a Privacy Fence. This would allow us to work in the yard where I had four garden boxes without anyone checking out the activities in the yard.

This is the privacy fence a couple of years ago - when we added a fence around my garden to keep the feathered creatures out. 

Once we added chickens and ducks we found that we had some free range chickens and my goal was to keep them away from the garden. I first used some short fence/netting that I ordered from Premier1 fencing. It worked fine for the first season, but I really needed a real fence that meant business and would keep the chickens and ducks out. So a couple of years ago we (Tom) put in this welded wire fence around the garden. I think it looks pretty good. 

We also need to use a variety of Premier1 fencing products to keep the chickens/geese/pigs within their areas. For the most part the fence works. Especially if we use the solar chargers on them. The Premier fencing/netting is great because it allows us to move our critters around the farm and installs and pulls up pretty easily. This is like an advertisement for Premier1 - check them out they have all sorts of stuff!

The latest fence project would be along the front of part of our property to keep the stinker-marinker piggies on our side of the road and not on the other side. 

This fence also extend on the other side of the driveway and in front of the house. It's pretty effective and it was worth to time and money to get it installed. We are more at peace with leaving the house to run errands and what not. The perk is that I no longer receive texts from neighbors saying that some critter is out and about wandering around.

I'm thankful for our farm, but even more thankful for fences!

Spring Babies

 #mayhomesteadchallenge for May 3rd Spring Babies...

These are our new White Holland Turkey poults. This year I got myself a Brinsea incubator and hatched out these three. We could have had four poults, but for some reason #4 just quit. I think these three were too much and jostled the egg around too much. Which is just as well since I don't think that we could negotiate more than three chicks as they grow bigger and get more adventurous. 

Also, this might be upsetting to some, these littles are destined for freezer camp come fall. Until then we will treat them well and give them the best life that we know how to give them. In return they will bring joy just as their parents do now. It's hard to watch these littles and not smile. They have the cutest little personalities - which will turn into fun big personalities.

#farmlife

May Homestead Challenge

Okay, so I'm a day behind AND on the wrong sharing platform. This is a thing on Instagram and today is supposed to be Spring Babies - but I'm going to do a catch up post for May 2nd's Intro day, then Spring Babies...

So, this is me on a good day post morning chores. Actually, this was from last year as now that I'm retired, I stay inside during morning chores and do the post breakfast clean-up. 

May is the beginning of month 5 of my retirement and I have to say that I am finally into a little bit of a groove. I spent 26 years at the Fire District and it took a couple of months to get used to not going to work. I think I have needed to retire for several years - like when we started this who farmy-farm thing. If you read back in my posts you'll see how long ago we've been doing the Pigs and Poultry thing. 

My overall bio has been:

Brain Tumor Survivor-Triathlon& Duathlon finisher-Wife-Friend to Many-Supreme Smart Aleck. I'd like coffee and a book please. It's still me, but I came up with that bio a few years ago when life was much more full and less farm like. Now that I'm older I like life to be uncomplicated - on the farm and in relationships. I've quit doing multisport and my friend circle has gotten a little smaller (thank you COVID). Our overall goal is to meet the people who come by to look (gawk) at the animals. We ARE a spectacle!

If I could just be on our farm and leave only when necessary I think that would be my happy place. 

Visit my Instagram pigs_and_poultry_farm to follow our farm adventures there.

Who Needs A Dining Room Anyway?

The tour continues...

Once upon a time a few years back the second upstairs bedroom was my very own sewing room. It was a spare bedroom/sewing room for quite a while and then the day bed was sold and I got to use the space for sewing for a long time. It worked great for a while and I enjoyed working on projects upstairs by myself. I was set up with a TV and could have shows going in the background while crafting. Over the years I started to feel a little isolated and it was super cold upstairs and during the winter months and it took forever to heat up. 

Fast forward to 2015/2016 the walk in closet that we had was more of a hallway turned into a closet. It was hard to keep clean and organized. After many years of living with that mess I suggested that we turn the spare room into a dressing room. That idea was well received and we planned to start the conversion. However, that meant that my sewing stuff needed to go somewhere else. 

That natural somewhere else was the main floor. and the only space that made the most sense was the dining room or living room. After setting up my brand new Arrow Sewing Cabinet in both the Living Room or the Dining Room at different times I decided that the dining room was the better location, mostly because I could be near a window and close to the kitchen. Until this year my sewing adventures were minimal as I was working full-time which made it easy to store stuff on the cabinet since it is just another horizontal surface when it is all closed up and my machine is stored away.

Now that I am retired I have decided to set up "shop" in the dining room and leave my machine out and ready to go. I also have relocated the ironing board to the same space so I don't have to use the table top version. I have resurrected so many projects in the last couple of months that I can keep busy for a good long time.  

I finally finished the quilt on the wall - after 17 years of it sitting around.

View from the Living Room into what used to be the Dining Room

The space still needs some help, but I can make changes over time

There are still some things that need to be organized, but that will happen in time. For the past year or so I have been storing some fabric, miscellaneous tools and patterns on a card table in our front entry. We are not a front door household, back door guests welcome! 

Anyway, this space has been quite comfortable and I look forward to spending a lot of time here sewing and creating fun quilts and other crafts.

Tour

Well, I think it's time for a little tour of our home/farm. Today I'm sharing our Kitchen. This kitchen is not necessarily the most user-friendly space I've ever had in any house that we have lived in. I suppose that kitchen functionality wasn't a high priority way back in 1937 or maybe the original owner of this house wasn't much of a cook. Who knows?

Anyway, we are trying to fit modern appliances and work tables into the layout of the kitchen. To do that we had to take part of a cabinet away to get our updated refrigerator into the space. The stove is a stand alone, so it didn't require anything special. Come to think of it, the house came with the stove and fridge. The previous owner/realtor left the appliances for us. There isn't a lot that we could do to make this space more usable other than adding the Ikea table in January 2020. That table has made being in the kitchen more enjoyable. I can leave my Kitchenaid out and it has been used more this year than ever before. Before the table I would have to lug the mixer from a bottom cabinet and hoist it up on the counter. Okay, it's not that bad, but still. After a year of having this table I wonder why it took us so long to figure this out. 

When we first got the table we  had it situated as an extension of the counter. That was fine and all, but only one side of it could be used. So because I'm a thinker, I decided to make an "L" at the end of the counter and move a couple of things (coffee cart) to make things work out. Because of this move we are now able to get into the cabinet that houses the storage containers more easily. There once was a cart that sat near the stove, but blocked the cabinet. The cart also made it easy to be lazy about not putting containers away. The easy access makes the kitchen less messy now. 

The one thing that I would like to do is update the cabinets - not so much get new cabinets, but get new drawer pulls and maybe paint. The counter is super ugly, but we've lived with it since 1998. So, it's safe to say that we'll continue to live with it a while longer. 

One day we'll update the kitchen. For now we'll continue to make do with the space that has worked since the beginning. So many projects - so hard to choose. The kitchen is an important space, but the animal infrastructure is a little more important right now. 

Being retired really isn't so rough...:)

March?

Okay, I'm not like the rest of the world when it comes to time...I guess. Earlier this week on one of the YouTube video's we watch a late night talk show host had a compilation of different news stations exclaiming that it was March again...Wow. Whatever people...you'll get over it and pretty soon it will be spring and then summer and then March will roll around again. 

So, for me January was all about rest and February I started to do some fun stuff along with regular daily chores.

BUT...

March is when we get busy around here. When I was still working I think it was more busy. March was the month that I would take off a week of vacation to do all the things that I needed to do to kick off food growing season. I would try packing every little thing into a week. Starting seeds cleaning the garden and the hoop house, getting ready to bring home chicks from the hatchery and so on. Inevitably, I wouldn't be able to do everything on my list. That just meant I had to cram things in whenever there was extra time. 

This year is different. Now that I am into month three of retirement I am ready to get things going without the fear of running out of time. I've already gotten seeds into trays, but that wasn't without issues.

This is from this past Monday - March 1

STARTING SEEDS

On Monday I decided to start getting my seeds started. My preference is using my soil blocker and placing them into trays. I can get 9 rows of blocks into a standard size tray and get all sorts of seeds sown. Over the weekend I did run into a little problem. All of the domes/lids for the trays were nested together in the corner of the hoop house and were damaged from all of the heat...Oooops. Since I got all of the lids at Wilco, I didn't think anything of it and planned to trek out to Battle Ground to purchase some more lids.

Issue #1 - I drove all the way out to Battle Ground. It's not far, but it's also not as convenient as popping down to Freddy's. I know, first world problem... Anyway, arrived at Battle Ground, marched into the store and to the garden area only to find that they did not have the domes. What the WHAT? They had all sorts of trays, but no lids. Not all was lost though, as there is another Wilco in Clark County. Instead of heading over there I decided to be smart - I asked a clerk if they could check the Vancouver store. Nothing there either. Mind you, the Vancouver store is nearly as far away from our home and a little bit of a trek from Battle Ground. I was not in the mood to go there. 

DANG! 

So, off to home I went. Although, out of curiosity I decided to stop and see if Freddy's had any. What on earth was I thinking?! Of course they didn't.

Issue #2 - The next best thing...Amazon of course. After a couple of searches I decided it was not worth it to buy FIVE lids for $30. You've got to be kidding me these things are plastic! If I'm going to spend that much money I'm just going to get another set of mini trays. 

The mini trays that I chose are same size as the ones in the photo above, BUT the lids have vents. That's a bonus in my mind. I placed the order on Monday and they delivered a couple of days later

These vents - so very cool! The other thing that was different about these - the cell tray is clear. Tom mentioned that this way I could see the roots - which is always cool! So this was a win. 

The soil blocker will still get used though. When it's no longer +/- 40 degrees I can get stuff into the trays without using the lids. I think I had done that in the past and it worked just fine. 

MEATIE CHICKS

We have ordered our meatie chicks from Jenks for the past three seasons. Just to be different and not go the Cornish Cross route we decided to go with the Freedom Ranger. Our last batch was the FryPan Special - we did not like that batch at all. You can read that post HERE. We REALLY like the Freedom Ranger, but they take several weeks longer to grow out. Like fourteen weeks, not eight or nine weeks like the CC. As much as I like the Rangers, I think after this batch we'll try the CC. It would be nice to harvest the meaties after a couple of months - tops. Less time = less feed. I think I'd be okay with the chubby CC.

We order from Jenks Hatchery which is a nice drive down the Willamette Valley. It's nice to get out of Vancouver now and then. Also, we take the opportunity to do a little Pokemon hunting :)

PROJECTS

Like I'm really helping with projects. What I do is come up with projects  I'm the queen of thinking up projects! Yesterday (March 4th) Tom built a simple table with the shelf underneath it so I could store my canners in my new storage space in the basement - 

I wasn't looking for anything fancy and just wanted to get the canners out of the kitchen. This works out perfect!

Today Tom is out building a new brooder for the meaties. The big brooder currently has a dozen pullets in it and the livestock tank that we bought to  brood the last batch of chicks is actually a nesting shelter for one of the turkeys. ANYWAY - chicks coming home on Tuesday means we or Tom needs to build a new brooder. That should be done this morning. 

So, even though I've got more time than ever, I'm finding that I don't necessarily have the energy. I'm still spending time resting as I did throughout the month of January, but not napping as much as I did then. I'm trying to designate different activities to specific days of the week. That way, if/when that project or task is done I can focus on doing other things. That's how my days get filled up when I fill in the "free" time with stuff. It can be something enjoyable as sewing or cooking/baking. A lot of times I'll hang out and watch some TV shows or read. Things that I didn't have time for while work. Well, we did watch TV, but usually YouTube videos. 

Anyway, I welcome the month of March because it means that it's time to grow stuff! That's really the whole point of us and our farm.

Crafty

Sewing has been something that I have dabbled in for over 25 years. Ever since my first project in high school when I had to sew from a pattern a piece of clothing. Which, by the way, was a skirt. It was just a project for a class and I didn't wear that skirt, because back then I didn't wear dresses or skirts.  I chose a skirt because it would be easy-ish and also included the requirements for the piece. A zipper and a buttonhole, neither of which I have done since then. 

It's been many years since that first real sewing project. Also, it's been a few years between then and my first Singer sewing machine. It was the most basic machine ever, but an upgrade from the sewing machine that my mom had. I sometimes wish that I had grabbed that machine when I left home, but who knew that I would be knee deep in fabric and creating projects here and there. 

It has been a few years since my last quilt project - so many that I don't remember what I made and who it was for. Working full time did not allow the kind of time I wanted to devote to sitting at my sewing machine. There were plenty of other things that seemed more important at the time, so sewing did not happen a whole lot. Every now and then I would get inspiration and found a quick project that involved fabric and minimal sewing so I didn't totally abandon my sewing machine or fabric. 

Last fall I was over at Craft Warehouse during my lunch break from work and I came across some cute 5x5 charm packs. After checking them all out and finding an Atkinson Designs pattern called Mini Brick Road (the full size Yellow Brick Road pattern is a fave). At that time I decided I would make special gifts for my two closest and dearest friends for Christmas. I love to create gifts for friends and I didn't realize how fast time would go and that there would be NO time to even set aside for these two projects. 

Now that I'm retired - have I mentioned that before now? It's pretty awesome... Anyway now that I have all sorts of time for all of the things, I can work on sewing projects now. This pretty table runner went together quickly and when I was ready to sandwich it for quilting I figured out that in my plethora of fabric there wasn't anything that would actually make sense as a backing. Another trip to Craft Warehouse? Dang! A half yard of a fabric from the same fabric line as the charm pack was all I needed, but I got a full yard to have extra for my stash, obviously.

Blah, blah, blah...ta-daaa - the quilt is done. 

Honestly, this quilt is not perfect and I forgot how to do the binding, but I'm not perfect. Perfection is over-rated anyway. Even so, I know that it will be appreciated and cherished because it was handmade and the colors and theme fit my friend perfectly. Happy dance! 

When I make gifts for friends and family it allows me time to focus on that person and to pray for them and be thankful for our relationship. This particular project didn't take a ton of time, but I did think about my friend a lot and that was a good thing. Part of that time she was on vacation and away, so I kept her close to my heart while working on this. I'm looking forward to giving this to her!

I look forward to my next project for another dear friend. The time that I can pray for that person will be time well spent. In farm life there is time for crafting and to spend thinking about and praying for friends. 

Farm life is a blessed life. 

Border Wall

Not exactly a wall, but if you are a pig a three foot tall fence may as well be a wall.

Over time I think we have gotten pretty relaxed about how we are keeping the pigs 'n poultry within the confines of our property. The ducks usually free-range every day and they are good about going into their house at the end of the day. Most of the chickens stay within their area, but there are days when a lot of the flock decide to see what kind of goodies they can find outside of their run.

Then we brought home the pigs. In the beginning nearly three years ago we had kept Rex & Fiona within their paddock and they were happy to just hang out in their area. Every now and then they would get to free range which was a treat for them. 

Then last year - the year of the pandemic - Fiona had her first successful litter of piglets and she was confined to a different area and Rex was still in their original area.  After a few weeks we would let her have a break from the piglets and let her out into the field where she happily grazed away at the fresh grass. Then after a while we let her babies join her. Soon that became the norm. Letting her graze on her own and then letting the piglets out. Eventually we let Rex rejoin the fam in the new area. 

THEN

It became an all day thing. Grazing and wandering our small farm all they wanted. At first when the junior swine were still fairly young, we weren't terribly concerned about where they would graze. They usually stuck close to momma because they weren't 100% weaned yet. 

Fast forward to January 2021. Mr. Victor, from Fiona's 2020 litter, has turned into a repeat offender by knocking down the temporary fence to graze just on the other side of the fence. Normally, this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but now their are some new junior swine who are keen to follow their daddy out and about. This is unacceptable. 

After a week of what feels like constantly chasing him back to the safe side of the fence we had enough. With a trip to Home Depot we were ready to start making the fence more of a permanent thing instead of the premier1 fence that we had been using since last summer. It was fine until now. I'm not sure what was going through his brain to help him get into trouble in no time flat. The funny thing is that the last time we had to chase him AND the turkey girls back he saw Tom marching out their and ran back. He knows what side his butter is toasted on. 

For the time being we have Big Momma, Big Daddy, the junior swine and all of the babies confined to an area right outside of their little house. The fortunate thing is that they adapt pretty quickly and they are happy to be in their space toward the back of the property. It is temporary, but they don't know that. 

Looks good from the road

Eighty feet of fence installed

The beginning of the long stretch toward the church next door

Just about a week ago we started the fence project and have finished the first stage of it. The first part is along the road on the garden side of our property - it went fairly quick. The post went in pretty easy because the ground is fairly soft from all of the rain that we have had in the past couple of weeks. For once we are thankful for our Pacific NW winters. The next section might require a little more effort. The fence will be next to the path that goes in front of our house. That path is asphalt and I'm not sure how much of the yard has grown over the path if it has at all. All I know is that the first post that I attempted to start was extremely hard. The post is five feet tall and I can't work up enough force to get the post to even pierce the ground. So, I'll be leaving the next stage of post install for Tom to do. Not gonna lie, it was hard. I'm usually okay with hard work, but this wasn't going to happen for me. 

OH WELL.

Once the fence is set in front of the house we'll just use the step in posts to go toward the back of the property as far as 18 posts will go at least. A couple of hot wires should keep the swine from crossing over to the rest of the field. The ducks will still be able to go underneath the wire, but they aren't the problem right now.

So much to do and all sorts of time! Farm life is the best life!!

Adding to the Flock

When I retired I had received a gift card to Wilco Farm Stores from the chiefs and other staff members. The card was for $150 - a very generous gift. It didn't take long for me to decide what I would use it on - CHICKS! Wilco starts making chicks available toward the end of January and continues through to late spring. Then they have more during the month of September. 

We need to back up here a little...

My M.O. has been to add pullets in September so that by the time Spring rolls around, they will be ready to start laying. Last September I added six Buff Orpingtons and six Sapphire Blue Plymouth Rocks. As of today we only have two of the six Buffs, but all of the Saffies. I'm a little disappointed, but those little Buffs decided to explore and didn't get into their house one night. Farm life right? We usually lose at least one once they are outside full-time, but to lose three at once? That was new.

One Buffy and One Saffy

The young hens are getting close to laying. They have been making the laying hen sound which is kind of a There's-Something-I-Gotta-Push-Out sound. In the next week or so we'll be moving all of the hens to the back of the property where it is nice and clean and not yet poopy or muddy. The young hens will be joining them out there as well. 

Okay, so yesterday Tom and I went out to Wilco in Battle Ground and I picked out a couple of breeds that I have been wanting to add, but either didn't want to spend the amount that they were priced at or they were not available. So, to give myself an idea of what might be available I checked out what they might have in stock starting this month. The breeds that I decided on were the Speckled Sussex, Cuckoo Maran and the Delaware. Of the three I really wanted the Speckled Sussex, but they didn't have that one. However, they did have the Cuckoo Maran (the most expensive of the three). The other breed that I decided on was the Easter Egger, which was listed as an Ameraucana Easter Egger on the receipt. I'm not sure what that means, but I wanted to add another color of egg to the mix. As the name implies, Easter Egger, they lay blue or green eggs. The Maran's eggs should be a dark brown - I've been wanting dark brown eggs!

The BEST part - during this month Wilco has a deal on chicks, buy two get one free. Score! Before I knew about the sale I was thinking that I would pick out three different breeds and get six of each. After I read through the last Wilco email that I got I decided to go ahead and get a dozen - which means that I would only pay for eight chicks. After my purchase I had to study the receipt to figure out how they charged me. This is the weird part, the Ameraucana EE's price was posted at $3.99, but the receipt showed $3.89. The Maran's were $5.99, but were $5.89 on the receipt. There must have been some other crazy deal that I'm not aware of, I'm not complaining. Just confused. Meh...In the end I got four of the Ameraucana's at no charge and paid for the remainder. Now, I have quite a bit left on the gift card, so I might just wait until fall and add more layers. We'll see.

A little vid from their ride home from Battle Ground...

These littles were quite lively yesterday afternoon I swear they grew!

So, why are we adding to the flock? Well, many of the girls are from our original 2017 flock and the average egg laying cycle of a hen is around two and half to three years. Rather than continuing to feed hens that are no longer producing eggs, we would rather add to the flock and process the older hens and use them as stewing hens. Yep, a purpose for everything. We are a little behind as far as culling the flock goes, but that should happen sometime this spring. Well, that's what I'm hoping.

Just how many laying hens do we have? The simple answer is that I don' know. I think a year ago we had around 30-ish hens. This number included the 10 hens that we received from one of the captains at the fire station. Currently I think we have maybe 25 hens, but 7 of them are not producing anything so the new buffs and saffs are their replacements. Once the new pullets are ready to join the flock we may be up to 30+ hens. 

In a way I'm ready to have eggs coming out of our ears and running out of space to store all of them! Since our last sale of one dozen eggs last month we have had enough eggs to meet our own needs. 

My goal is to have plenty of eggs available for those friends/neighbors who have been coming to us to buy eggs. Once all of the hens are laying we'll be able to use the egg money to offset the feed costs. Winter is not our favorite time as the hens are not laying much, if at all. There have been a few days when there were NO eggs. Fortunately, we haven't been totally out of eggs because the ducks are still laying. It would kill me to actually buy eggs at the store. Especially since we haven't bought eggs since the summer of 2017!

Farm Life, Best Life!

Full-Time

Farmer! Now that I am officially one month into retirement, I thought it was time for a post here.

January was a month of rest and relaxation as well as trying to figure out life without a work schedule. Not gonna lie, it's been little rough. It never occurred to me how hard it would be to quit work cold turkey. It's hard, like really hard. It took a little while for me to NOT think about the stuff that I started and hoped that it would be done. Not just done, but done well. In the first week I woke up thinking about whether or not the apparel for the new hires would be done in time for their first day (which is today).

ANYWAY

SLEEP

Sleep is something that I don't do well. My goal for January was to make sure that naps happened. So almost everyday I took a nap. A nap that was as short as twenty minutes or as long as an hour or even just a little longer. Amazingly, I was still able to get to sleep at night. Even now, on this first day of February, I might still need to take a nap. In the last week I don't feel nearly as tired as I did in the first week of retirement. 

PROJECTS

There were some things that I wanted to do and made the time to do them. While a lot of the things that I wanted to do was indoors, I did help Tom with a couple of outside projects. Tom wanted to replace the pet carrier nesting boxes that we have used since 2017. After a couple of days we ended up with - 

New and Improved

Same Cart different set up

Once we put the finishing touches on the cart I wheeled it out to the chicken run and most of the older girls immediately had to check it out. The ironic thing is that the older girls are from our original bunch of girls from 2017. They may have slowed down their laying or completely stopped. I think we'll find out for sure in a few weeks. 

FENCE

In the last week and a half Mr. Victor has been breaking out of the safety of our yard/property. A couple of neighbors sent texts to me to let me know that someone was out. One day Victor and Little Momma found their way down the path a bit and close to the private road between us and the church next door.  STINKERS! Last week we had at least two neighbors text or knocking on the door and another time our friend Robin sent me a text saying that her neighbor asked to let us know that there was a pig out. The only problem then was that WE were out...blah blah blah...

Now we have fence materials and started working on getting the fence installed.

Thirty Feet done

This fence is 36" high and will go across along the road on the garden side of the house as well as on the other side in front of the house. This should help keep the swine where they are supposed to be.

BAKING

January was also the month for baking. French bread, sandwich rolls, pizza all the good stuff. My goal was to make bread of some sort for sandwiches and I succeeded! 

So many fun things in my first month of retirement and I am feeling pretty good about being retired. As I look ahead I can see that a lot of work that will be done from now until forever. Just writing this makes me pretty excited about the possibilities that are on the horizon. Things that I could only dream about. Things that I would have to cram into a weekend or a week of vacation. These days I can make goals for the month and not just the weekend. If I don't get something done one day, I don't have to feel bad - there is always the next day. 

I'm going to go ahead and end this post and go do something fun or take a nap or play a game or read a book...

Farm Life, Best Life