August 4-5, 2018

It's hard to believe that out of the Six Mother Earth News fairs in the US that there is one in Oregon! Albany to be exact - a location that is not terribly far away from where we live.

We have gone to the fair the past two years and have had the opportunity to sit in on a couple of seminars that we have brought to life on our property! The first year (2016) we arrived in time to sit in on the Backyard Chickens talk presented by Jeannette Beranger from the Livestock Conservancy. In April 2017 we got chickens going on the smallholding.

Here it is January 2018 and we are still getting some eggs each day. With 10 layers we'll have plenty of eggs that we need and then some.

At the 2017 Fair we went to two different seminars - one by Rebecca Thistlethwaite which was about raising livestock for profit. I think it may have been specifically about pigs, but I could be wrong. I did buy one of her books and chatted with her for a minute - I wish I could say that I was really engaging with her, but I wasn't. I don't know...I just get all tongue-tied. Meh...Afterwards I made my way over to where the next talk was going to happen and we sat in on talk by Jeannette Beranger about raising PIGS.

You know where this is going...

In a couple of weeks we will be visiting a farm that raises American Guinea Hogs and plan to glean as much information as possible to get ready to add a breeding pair of AGH to our mini-farm. I figure we go now and we'll see how much needs to be done. Maybe we'll add the swine in late spring. We'll see...

We really need to be mindful of the seminars we choose this year...things seem to happen

Happy New Year...

Yeah, yeah, I know...today is the 5th. I've been a little under the weather...

Starting today I am going to post about what I have been thinking about our mini-farm. I'll tell you now...I think a lot of things about our farm!

This morning I was thinking about how blessed we are that we are STILL getting eggs everyday! That's right...eggs. We get a few as 2 and up to 4 every single day. The little Australorps are doing a great job!

On New Year's day we got to use a dozen of those eggs for brunch....and it was so good! We invited a few of our favorite people over for Huevos Rancheros, Refried Beans, Cornbread and other yummies. It was a nice way to start off the New Year, sitting around the table and visiting with friends - long time friends and newer friends too.

Anyway, eggs...baby...we are still getting eggs! Every now and then one of the big girls (Jersey Giant) will lay an egg, but it's usually the little girls. I have read that Australorp chickens are very good layers and that one laid 364 eggs in one year!

The thing about chickens is that they require a minimum of 14 hours of daylight to keep egg production up. So the Jerseys are not keen on laying right now and we'll forgive them. The littles are doing a pretty good job, even 2-4 eggs a day is a lot for us actually. The days are very slowly getting longer, so the Jersey girls will be laying before too long!

Note to self: Always keep a few Australorps in the flock.

Aaannnd...

Just like that the year is almost over! I'm not sure where the past couple of months went! As I look back on the year I am amazed at all that we accomplished and the things that didn't seem to work out at all.

Adding poultry went very well!  We didn't lose any as chicks from the original 10 chicks to illness. One cockerel was cannibalized later after they were relocated to the great outdoors. We added six more pullets since our original 10 ended up being half pullets and half cockerels. Early last month one of them decided to run away from home. Not  long after getting the first chickies we we brought home the duck and the goose. They are quite the characters and we love that we decided to add them to the flock!

They didn't seem to mind the snow. Although before I took this photo they were
huddled in their little shelter next to the coop.

We successfully processed three cockerels on Labor Day. They were about 19 weeks old and about 10 weeks past their prime as far as being considered broilers. They were excellent stewing chickens though. Labor Day morning was interesting go HERE to read that experience.

So we know that we can raise chickens and waterfowl!

What didn't go as well would be the garden. Hardly anything worked. I decided to try growing the tomatoes in the big garden this year and they did okay, but not great. We hardly had anything to harvest that wasn't affected by the blossom end rot which. We did have a few that we brought in ate with a few meals which were good, but not enough to actually make sauces to save for later. The two hoodlums (duck & goose) enjoyed most of the tomatoes since I pretty much gave up on them.

The tomatoes will go back into the hoop house in 2018.

I did get greens, carrots, peas and loads of potatoes. However, no beans - thanks to hungry bunnies - one of the easiest things to grow and we didn't get enough to make a meal. I had direct sowed over my seeds and had over 20 little seedlings pop up only to have almost each one nipped off a few weeks later. I'm blaming the deer for that. And the bunnies for keeping the plants trimmed to almost nothing. No flowers except for some really late germinating Cosmos and even later blooming. Tom's pumpkins worked out pretty well, but with them being planted in the front yard - they were shaded by the tree that is smack-dab in the middle. There were a few decent pie pumpkins and a few carving pumpkins. They more than likely cross pollinated so they turned out slightly off from what they should have been. To say the least the garden was very disappointing.

The plan for 2018:

1. Add a few more pullets - at the neighborhood holiday party we connected with several people who are interested in buying eggs.
2. Add a half dozen or so of little girl ducks for Mr. Shelly. It would be nice for Sheldon to have some of his own kind to boss around and not the chickens. Plus, duck eggs are fantastic!
3. Meat Chickens - processing our extra cockerels was not a terrible experience. It was nice to have a little extra food that we grew in the freezer! 
4.  Pigs - Maybe a breeding pair...maybe a couple of piglets for meat. We could raise the offspring for meat or sell the piglets...this will be a totally new learning experience!

A little ambitious? Maybe, but we know that we can raise poultry from chicks so that won't be too much of an issue. We got our feet wet by processing three of our own chickens already and I know where we can rent the equipment - so I'm not freaked out about that. The other thing that we'll need to do is build that Chicken Tractor for the broilers. Also, I have the idea to modify a small room on one end of the parking shed that would be perfect for the little chickies. They will be spending a few weeks in the brooder in the garden garage. They will grow out of that box fast though, so we gotta start  thinking about what needs to be done to make the modification. More on that later...

The one thing that I am concerned about is the pigs. The only other mammals I have been responsible for keeping alive have been cats and dogs. So, this will be quite the learning experience. After some research (not much, but enough to make a decision) we have decided that the American Guinea Hog would be ideal for our mini-farm. The basics of these little guys is that they top out at around 200 lbs for males and 150 for females. Other breeds would be slaughtered AT 250 - 300 pounds...that's a lot of pig!! So, in my quick research I have figured out that these guys would be a great addition to our mini-farm. They don't root around, but are more of a forager. They are pretty friendly and on the smaller side. Also, there is a YouTube channel we have been following, Art & Bri, they recently added pigs to their homestead and they are American Guinea Hogs. Coincidence? Perhaps...but it will be another place to observe the habits of these swine. Another help will be the farm that specializes in these guinea hogs and they are located not terribly far from us. I hope to schedule a time to visit and take a look at their operation and get more information on raising these pigs.

So as this year quickly comes to an end I look back and see more success than failure. We have to fail in order to learn...so really, this year has been one learning experience after another.

Here's looking forward to 2018!!

Day Before Thanksgiving

I've been away from this space for a little while and bam! It's the day before Thanksgiving! I'm tired, but thankful for a variety of things. So here we go...

Let's start with having Tom home from the hospital! Way back on October 25 he was feeling not so great and visited Urgent Care who in turn said - You've got appedicitis, you need to go the hospital. Oh okay - simple appendectomy. Not so much. After two and half weeks and a second surgery he was discharged and came home on the 12th. Yay!

Having Tom was in the hospital meant it was up to me to keep the outdoor feathered creatures and the indoor furry creature alive...okay that worked out. Yay!

A week after Tom was admitted I came home from work to this sight:

The coop lost it's lid during a wind storm. 

After I took this photo I pretty much lost it. It felt overwhelmed and didn't need to see this upon my arrival at home. The good thing was that we didn't lose any chickens due to this minor catastrophe. My dinner plan for that evening was to spend it with friends at their house, but after seeing this - that wasn't going to happen. So I sent a short text and the photo to my friend Dani and said that I needed help getting this put back together. It wasn't that the top was heavy, it's just too big for me to handle. Good Friend Dani came right over and then her husband Dan shortly after and we were able to get the roof back on the coop and then I weighted it down (as it should have been) and called it good. Tom will need to do the repair - again.  Yay!

We had planned to get the chickens moved to a new spot the weekend after Tom happened to be admitted to the hospital. So I had to go to plan B which was to wait and see when he would be coming home. Once I realized that he would not be anytime soon, I then asked for our small group peeps to help with some chores that needed to get done and were put on hold. A couple of hours during the morning of November 10 and the chicken fence was relocated and the front yard garden was cleaned up. Yay!

This was taken after I rolled the coop to the new space.

Later the same day after visiting Tom and then running some errands I arrived home to find that the chickens were not in their temporary area. Dopey me didn't secure the fence before heading out for the afternoon. Perfect. Actually it WAS perfect - the coop is pretty heavy when all of the birds are in it! Jersey Giants are BIG and a little hefty! So wheeling around an empty coop is AMAZING! Yay!

Of course, now I have to get the girls and Thor into the new space. After trying to herd them in - which is like herding cats...I had to think about it for a minute. I then realized that if I wheeled out their food bin they would probably follow. So I did and they followed! Yay!

The new space where the chickies promptly started working on Mary's garden boxes.

The only other thing that REALLY needed to be done I need to transplant some plants into the Fall Garden space. I could have had someone stay and help with that task, but I felt that they did enough and I didn't want to ask for more. I suppose all is not lost...I'll have a chance to do that this coming weekend. It will be late, but it can't be  helped. It will be an experiment - like most things are in our gardens.

After all of the fun things that happened at our house, Tom finally got to come home!! Yeah, it was an appendectomy, but it wasn't so routine. I am thankful that it wasn't even MORE serious than it was, and as it turns out, it was pretty serious. In this I got a taste of what life would be like if he were not around. I'm not so sure that I could do this working full time and trying to maintain a mini-farm.

I'm incredibly thankful for our friends who said they would help and they did - providing meals for me, helping on our property and visiting Tom in the hospital as well as being awesome prayer warriors! Once again I am reminded that we are not meant to live life alone. We were created for relationships whether the times are good or otherwise, we need other people in our lives.

Here's to the 2017 Holiday season which seemed to come so fast this year!