President's Day Snow

Yesterday's weather forecast was for snow. There wasn't much during the day, not enough to cause any problems. However as we were heading home from our mini small group meeting it was starting to snow steadily still not enough to be concerned about. This morning we woke up to a "skiff" of snow on the grass...just enough to change the landscape. I took a look at the 10-day forecast and it appears that there will be several days of snow/rain mix. Swell.

Back to this morning...the chickens had NO interest in "playing" in the snow. The two hooligans, on the other hand...well...if they get a chance to get out of the hen pen, they will gladly take the opportunity. For those two it is business as usual foraging must go on! So, Lenny & Shelly went touring around the yard and had a grand ol' time. When it was time to return to the chickens they (Lenny) happily returned without much coaxing.

Before there were chickens and a duck and a goose, I spent very little time outside. The only time I would go out was when the the weather was decent or at the very least not raining. The only other time I would head out in poor weather would be when we were running more regularly.

Since adding the girls and dudes we spend more time doing outside stuff, almost like we live on a farm of sorts. Most weekends I find all sorts of things to do while letting Lenny & Shelly forage fresh grass.

Now that the days are getting longer again we (I) let the dudes out one last time after I arrive home from work. They like to go into their pools and splash around while Tom and I will chat about the day we each had. As far as the weather goes, I find myself outside even if there is light rain.

These days make me long for this farm life more and more. One day, sooner than later, I hope to be home full-time running our small hobby farm with chickens, ducks, pigs and the Goose of course.

When we add the girl ducklings and the pigs I might have to start camping outside...

Partly Cloudy Skies

The days have been pretty decent since the weekend. There really hasn't been rain...maybe just a sprinkling here and there. The typical Pacific Northwest winter weather has been missing in action. The 7 day forecast from a couple of local TV stations. Looks good to me!

 from KGW.com

from  KPTV.com

Sometimes a long range forecast can make a person think funny things. Like scheduling my floating holiday (One of the benefits that I get have at work). So after looking ahead at the forecast (because we know it won't change...) I decided to schedule my floating holiday on the Friday before President's Day. That will be a nice long weekend! It will be nice to have some down time. Sometimes work can get draining and I need to get away from the crazy! Even if the weather does turn, there is always something to do around our farm, so the day will not be lost.

The other thing that I am contemplating is taking a week of vacation time in March. March is pretty quiet at work and I usually take my spring vacation in March or April. With so many things that I want to start and with such great weather lately it's hard to not think about taking a week off from work.

There are a couple of projects that we need to do...hopefully we will finish them during that week. At the very least we'll get the shelter ready for the American Guinea Hogs. I really would like to work on the chicken tractor, but that might not happen. It will be started, I know that.

The shelter I would like to build:

The shelter that is more likely:

I think my vision of this style will look much better.

The chicken tractor that we will build:

This is a John Suscovich chicken tractor

I'll post more about this guy in the next week...but this chicken tractor looks easy to build and it might not take nearly as long as it took to build the Chicken RV which we worked on every single day of my vacation last March. Even then we still didn't get it done!

Here's hoping that the partly cloudy skies last until my vacation in March. That might be a bit much to ask for. So we'll just have to take it one day at a time and enjoy the day and not look too terribly far into the future - but sometimes we just gotta know what the weather might be. 

I am looking forward to longer days though, so partly cloudy skies help out! Especially since the two hoodlums (Lenny & Shelly) get to leave the Hen Pen and forage before the sun goes down.

From Cold to HOT...

In no time flat!

Early last week was pretty chilly then by the end of the week and into the weekend we jumped over twenty degrees - which is just wrong. How are we supposed to function when the clouds go away and there is blue sky to be seen? Fortunately for me, I didn't have to be stuck indoors all day everyday last week. My goal was to get gardening stuff done. It took all week, but we got it done - well, started.

A couple of weeks ago, the weather wasn't so bad so Tom rototilled the area that was mostly "free range" last year. The area is approximately 24' x 55' at least that is what I am remembering. My plan is to just have rows that are 30" wide by around 15' long. Well, the length went longer the further down we went. Doesn't matter, I'm not going to be all weird about the garden. Well, not totally.

By the end of last week this is what we had - this is the side that is closest to the house.

By late morning on Saturday we had all of the raised beds dug out! That would be thirteen total. Yep THIRTEEN! It was a lot of work, but we got it done and the planting could begin!

On Sunday after returning home from church I got to work! It was pretty warm by the time I got started - so I took a lot of breaks.

The whole thing is a work in progress with pretty much everything being an experiment. The dimensions will be a new thing for us and I'm hoping that all will work out. If not, we just call it a learning experience and move on the next season.

Anyway, with 13 raised beds I have a lot of space to grow all sorts of stuff! The first day of planting was all about the tomato plants that I started earlier this year. I ended up with 15 tomato plants with 4 different varieties. Each variety occupies space in one of the raised beds. Each bed will also have plants that will play well with the tomatoes (i.e. Borage, Onions, or Greens). Since we had rain for almost all of the spring, I am hoping that the sunshine will be with us for an extended period of time. Some rain will be nice so I don't have to water as much, but more sun wouldn't be a bad thing.

Here is the break down of the varieties/plants that are in the beds so far:

• Mortgage Lifter (4) - a favorite from last year. A nice slicing tomato which kind of took it's time to finally produce fruit, but once it did, we had a lot of them!
• San Marzano (4) - this is a new one for our garden this year. This is in lieu of the Roma Tomato that we had in the hoop house. I wasn't disappointed with the romas, I thought I would try something a little different, but kind of the same.
• Blush (3) - this was a variety that I got last summer from Johnny's Seeds. Go HERE to check it out.
• Garden Peach (4) - this was too interesting to pass up. From Uprising Organics. Check it out HERE

The planting went well ONCE I got the goose to stop trying to nip at the plants.

It's hard to stay upset with these little creatures - they are too stinkin' cute!

Once I was able to deter his little bill from nipping at the plants, he decided to settle in nearby and just watch. He may have been plotting, it's hard to tell.

The other thing that I was able to get done was the potatoes. Those were purchased a few weeks ago and just sitting in the fridge until it was time. I was pokin' around on Pinterest one day and found a very interesting method for growing potatoes - laundry baskets. We have done a couple of different ways - the traditional dig a trench, drop in a piece of potato and cover with soil until new growth and cover. With the potatoes actually being hilled up at least six inches or more. The first time would be way back when we lived in a rental house not far from our current home. We had potatoes galore! A couple of years ago after reading an article in Mother Earth News or the Farmer's Almanac magazine we thought we would try to grow them under straw, but that wasn't nearly as successful and there were only a few potatoes. Last year we used a bulb planter which worked great - we didn't dig a trench, or maybe not much of a trench. The harvest was pretty plentiful, but once we got through all of the plants, we kind of wished we had planted more.

I'm not sure how well the laundry basket method will work, but I have a lot of extras which will be planted in a traditional manner just to be sure we have a decent crop of potatoes.

I just can't bear to get rid of good seed potatoes - I have quite a few pieces that have eyes that have sprouted. We'll put those in the front yard that needs a second rototilling.

The weather has been cooperating, however it is a little warm. Too warm really - I am not a heat loving person. I like the sun, but I would happily do without the heat of anything above the high 80s.
The temps have cooled the past couple of days which has been very pleasant in the evening. Which makes for an enjoyable time of sowing seeds and putting plants into the raised beds.

This week I have been working on getting the other Tomato friendly seeds or plant into the garden and thinking of what to plant next. I'll be trying succession planting this year and even starting seeds for the Fall/Winter garden at a more appropriate time and not at the end of summer like last season. I think that with our garden season just now starting up I'll be starting new things for later this year in a couple of months.

The dudes will be much bigger and possibly no longer free ranging with me in the garden. It will be harder to keep Mr. Lenny away from the plants. I supposed a little taste here and there wouldn't be  a problem though.

as of today these two are 29 days old!

Sunny Weekend...Whaaaat?

It's true, the wet soggy Pacific NW had SUN! Both Saturday and Sunday! 

Saturday was my Girl's Breakfast Club...that was my project for the day. I thought that I would do some stuff outside in the hoop house and the garden boxes, but not a lot happened. Actually, I did do some weeding,  but these two little goobers happened:

Seriously, these two are so cute and they don't venture far from either of us. This made for a short weeding session in the garden boxes. Which was fine, because this is what happened next:

Yep, it was easier to just sit in the grass with the boys and enjoy the sun! I don't know if this is a good thing or not, they just don't go too far from either of us and they LOVE to hang out close to me. Actually, Leonard (gosling) is more attached to me, Sheldon just follows his big brother (from another mother). I am concerned that they might not want to commune with the chickens when it comes down to it. Maybe we need to plop them into the brooder with the little ladies sometime soon.

I don't know though, these are the little ladies in their almost feathered state. They are older and the boys are only 13 days old...not terrible aggressive and quite needy. 

Overall, the weekend was good and our feathered friends all got some time outside in the sun. The forecast is calling for showers/rain/drizzle after tomorrow (Wednesday) so we'll have to at least get the little dudes out as much as possible. They will be missing their time out foraging in the yard.

Here are the boxes - 3 of them weeded and the one at the end is chock full of clover. Got out last night to get the Kale, Spinach, Mesclun and Romaine seeds sown. If I'm lucky the peas will go in tonight.

It was easier to plop these two in with the leeks while weeding. They were enjoying foraging the weeds in the box and then sunned themselves for a very short time. 

FINALLY...

tired of the stinkin' stupid rain.

You'll remember from my week off -

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

Last week was a whole lot of rain with major downpours a few days even.

This past Saturday was decent - until the evening and it started up again. The good thing is that we were  at a charity event and having a lot of fun while the rain came down. Then Sunday was fairly decent again with only spits here and there.

On Friday evening, the little ladies were taken on a field trip and got to go out on grass for the first time! It took a minute or so, they weren't sure what exactly they should do. After awhile they figured out that it was warm and they started to forage in the grass...you know, act like chickens. One even found an itty-bitty slug and commenced to run around in their very cramped enclosure. She finally decided to settle down and gulp down her prize. The others were still getting used to the great outdoors and one figured out that being outside meant more than just Chick Starter food.

They were treated to a second trip after church on Sunday. There are no photos, but their enclosure was a little more roomy. I thought why not use the corner posts from the Electric Poultry fence kit for now. So this fence material was zip-tied to the posts at the opening and the bin that we used to transport them was a safe place/block for the open side. While they enjoyed their little trip out and we had to bring out...

The baby duck and baby goose. Yeah, we came home with a couple more birds for the brood. These little ones were 3 days old on Saturday when we brought them home. In all the time that we (my family) had all the chickens, ducks, geese and other winged creatures, I do not remember ducklings or goslings. I'm guessing that we had broody ducks and geese...who  knows? I think there were little ducklings running around the property...how else would we get more?! Anyway - I promptly forgot what breeds we went away with. I want to say that the goose is an Embden, maybe. The duckling? Unsure. Maybe if we find ourselves out at Wilco again I'll see if they still have some of these little guys.

The goose is very sweet and very needy. As of today they are both 6 days old and still very much babies. I have to keep reminding myself of that. They don't have a momma to help them get food or to keep them warm, so we have  to do our best to keep them fed and watered and happy. Boy do they cry A LOT! The moment they lay eyes on us it's time for them to start talking! So we do what needs to be done and then pick them up and give them some attention and a little bit of time out of the box. They will be stuck in the box until they get too big for it and we have to get a bigger bin or until the Jersey's are big enough to get out of the brooder. However, I have a feeling that they will grow faster. Which would be okay, because as soon as they are able to defend themselves better we'll introduce them to the flock and they will need to start living together with some understanding that they both belong.

This coat has a duck pocket!

Another thing that will most likely happen within this week is the addition of some older pullets. We made a trip to Thrifty Feed yesterday to take a look at which breeds they had and about how old they are. I had my eye on the Cuckoo Maran chicks a couple of weeks ago and the fortunate thing is that they still have quite a few in the brooder. YAY!

I found out that these little ladies were delivered to the feed store on March 24th. So they are supposedly all pretty healthy and active. The question now is how many and where do we house them?

Since the Chicken Mobile is essentially finished they could live in there - and I'm thinking that 5 or 6 would be a good start for the egg layers. The reality might be different, but a girl can hope right? However many we end up with will have super deluxe accommodations for sure since the Chicken RV is 6 X 6 and will seat many chickens comfortably as well as the goose and the duck :)

Soooo, the weather forecast for later this week is predicted to be in the 80s. Okay, that's just not right. Why can't we ease into the heat? We are thinking that the weather is just a tease and that it will be back in the high 40s and 50s for a little while longer. Summer will arrive and last precisely one week.

Wouldn't that be awesome? (she said with a sarcastic tone)