So, this is April

 I was swearing doing morning chores at 8 AM yessterday and the humidity was pretty thick much of the day. Yesterday afternoon the kids and I walked in to Hobby Lobby. Rachel was wearing shorts. We walked out 20 minutes later. The temp. had gone from 76 degrees to 46! It sprinkled on the way home, around about 3 PM it sounded like elephants walking across the roof. I looked outside to find these....

Ice hail balls

pelting everything!

It poured for a good long while, then yesterday evening was off and on sprinkles until about 8:30 PM when the sky opened up and one of those amazing thunderstorms began. The constant cracking of lightening across the sky, the huge heavy rain drops, the much needed moisture!

It poured for many hours, at about 2 AM the power went out and flickered on and off for a good long while. A thick coat of ice coats EVERYTHING this morning.

I worried about the 2 month old chickens in the chicken tractor all night long. Their protection is a heavy duty tarp that I hoped would not be taken off by the wind. They are in the chicken tractor because a hawk swooped down 2 weeks ago and took one in plain site. They will not come out of that tractor until they are close to being full grown.

I suited up at 5:30 AM to check the barnyard to be met at the gate by a flood of frozen water. I had to go back up and change into boots. The grass crunched beneath my feet. It was still quite dark and the wind blowing through the trees made them sound like glass chandeliers. This is April!

The tarp held. The tractor, hardware cloth, and tarp are all coated in so much ice I cannot see the chickens inside. I cannot open the northern door, it's shut tight with ice. Fortunately there is a small door on the opposite end and while it was frozen from the inside, I was able to push it open to be sure everyone was still alive an kicking, they are.

I planted strawberries 2 days ago. Who knows how they'll be. I should have covered them in straw, I didn't think about it. They are in 15 gallon buckets so it's not like I could move them inside though they are sheltered by the greenhouse on their north flank so maybe they'll be OK. I did put my blueberry bushes inside. We got the fruit trees in the ground Sunday. The only thing the ice may be good for is the new grass seeds we planted. I am sure not thrilled to go out to do chores. I fed everyone at 5:30 when I was out there, but I still haven't milked or watered.

I am not anxious to get out again.

My poor Red Bud was about to be gorgeous!!!!

Growing

It was a busy spring break to say the least! Everyone is back at school today (Tuesday). We got quite a bit done! The orchard once had a couple of willow trees growing in it, they were near dead when we cut them down 2 winters ago but it left such a mess it's pretty much just sat for 2.5 years. The willows would send up shoots and the goats would feast on the leaves so we never bothered to clean it up until we knew the trees would be going in.

The trees are here and the orchard is finally a reality! Last week we picked up 2 plum trees (Santa Rosa and another. They are not self pollinators and need each other to pollinate), 2 pears (not self pollinating), and we had the room for 3 semi-dwarf apples (not self pollinating): Jonathan, Golden Delicious and a Cortland. We also picked up 1 of each of the following which are self pollinating: peach, apricot and a nectarine. We have room for just one more and I think it will be a peach.

A friend of ours also mentioned Lowe's had gallon containers of blackberries on clearance. It looks like they may have gotten zapped in the last freeze we had but at $1 each and already bright green showing new life, we figured it was worth it! After military discount we got them for .90 cents a piece. We picked up 6! Those will go in the orchard too trained to a trellis (with the vine being be cut back yearly. One fruits on 1st year growth, the other on 2nd) and yesterday I couldn't help myself but get 2 raspberry vines(fruit on first year growth) and a "Pink Lemonade" Blueberry (2 fruiting times each year) and a "Patriot" Blueberry bush ("early" fruiting)! I think we're maxed out on space!!!

We went to a farm auction on Saturday that had cattle panels. We picked up another 15 or so and with that we can finish the main pen. I also snagged a heavy duty food mill for $3 and a few other odds and ends one of them being a water hydrant for about $4, those things are $60+ brand new and there isn't a whole lot that can go wrong with them. Providing the seals are good, which they are on this one, they are pretty indestructible!

The weather has been weird. Warm and cold, rain and snow and sleet and hail. It's April now, I'm tired of the cold! The weather has not been conducive long enough to get some of the seeds in the greenhouse to germinate. Some of them are peeking their green little heads up out of the soil but I feel behind this year as last year I had inch high tomato plants on March 10! Granted, this year has been colder longer and we're getting rain so I'm thankful.

I think we've decided the pigs will be going off to the butcher sooner rather than later. We may get some piglets again though I seriously doubt we'll go through as much pork as this will yield enough to need to raise more piglets this spring. I don't have a whole lot of extra milk anyway and they were part of the main reason for getting pigs.

We got as much of the grass seed in as we wanted to. Now we sit back and wait and watch the rain fall.

Easter was quiet. We had been invited to a few places but after a week of work and running non-stop, I just wanted a day to relax! We had an egg hunt for the kids and we didn't end up relaxing entirely, we finished cleaning up the rest of the orchard but all in all it was pretty low key.

We started on a play structure for the kids but the progress has been a little slow on it and taking a back seat to some of the other projects. The holes are marked for the trees but we didn't quite have enough time to get them in. Maybe this weekend.

Drew started swim lessons at the YMCA yesterday evening, Rachel goes on Thursday. Obviously it's an indoor facility and really very very nice.

The kids have less than a month of school left.

Jeremiah bought a truck yesterday. Lord have mercy, we are the owners of FOUR trucks and one SUV. How pathetic that we are only a 2 driver household one of which rarely goes anywhere! In his defense, he had mentioned wanting to find a 70's model Ford to pilfer some parts off of for "Bessy" (the '65). Doing a disc. brake conversion would cost upwards of $800 and he also wants to change the tranny out for an automatic. He loves "the three on the tree" but we're not hell bent to keep it original and no matter how much he insists I can learn to drive a manual, I'm 32 years old and can make my own decisions and thank you, but unless it's an emergency, I won't drive a manual. He's hard pressed to get me to drive the tractor (manual) and the lawnmower (manual) is about as good as it gets. What is so bad about not wanting to kill people with me behind the wheel of a manual? Nothing as far as I'm concerned. I am sure if I practiced it would be like riding bicycle. I've driven manual before I'm just not willing to go practice and be completely stressed out about killing someone while I do so.

Speaking of riding a bicycle, someone thought it would be a good idea to take the kids roller skating last week on spring break. Rachel has not had the same concrete jungle experience that I had while growing up and so therefore has little practice on roller skates. At her age, I could virtually do flips and of course had no fear of falling and hurting myself, which I did often. She, on the other hand, has toned down ever since she broke her leg last year and it's no wonder she's afraid of hurting herself. So, she strapped on skates again for the 2nd time and for the 2nd time, it sucked. Jeremiah thought both of the kids needed to see one of us skate and I was feeling pretty good about putting 4 wheels underneath my feet again feeling like it was just yesterday I was making smoke rings in Skateland. Fast forward to virtually the same "Skateland" in a different state about 20 years later and I can honestly say, I should have let bygones be bygones. I didn't fall and I am sure I was a little bit of a confidence booster for the kids but if I had to do it over, I would have let sleeping dogs lie. It sucked and I will not be putting on skates any time soon, if ever and I'm OK with that! Swimming yes, skating no.

So back to the truck, it's 1975 extended cab F100. It's actually in fairly decent shape and runs but we just want it for parts. The rest of it can go including the engine, which is a 360. We'll keep the power steering, disc brakes, and chassis and bed. We're tired of our trash route, and since the dump is free and more often than not we have things around here to take off that don't fit in the can, it's just easier to haul off our own garbage. Trailers under a certain weight do not need to be registered in Ks. and it's pretty common to have trash trailers made from pick up beds and Jeremiah can easily convert the bed trailer.

Mostly I am sick of rolling the can out to the rd. and rolling it back, not that I do it, Jeremiah does but every Tuesday is a pain to remember and all of the stuff that doesn't get hauled off like broken fence posts and animal feed bags, empty paint cans, etc. we end up taking off ourselves anyway.

 It's strange that the house is silent again, strange that it's now April and we're still running the wood stove most mornings. 4 does 3 to kid this month and then a break until June, Mags had three buck kids this morning. Bah! We've sold several does and kids and despite still having a herd of around 30, it seems to small and the barn seems empty. But it's a good thing.

 Have a great day!

Spring Break, Musicals and Roller Coasters

The shelves are now installed in the greenhouse and most of the seeds are planted.





We had quite  bit of snow last week and although we're thankful for the moisture, it has made winter just seem so long especially right when it was warming up and we were thinking maybe real soon the jackets could all be put away. I am tired of the cold and the wind and the lack of sunshine. I am tired of frozen buckets and frozen hoses and frozen soil. I am tired of dressing up and dressing down and if I have to look at my coveralls, gloves and hat much longer I really a seriously contemplate crawling under the covers and not come out.

Have you ever seen the movie/musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? After the girls from town are "kidnapped" by their would be assailants (who are forced to live in the barn for a time), they were all in the attic of this old house singing "June Bride" - which is actually about being a June Bride- and I can't help but sing the lyrics over and over and over because some days it just seems like spring will never comes and while the snow usually does not last but a few days, the cold and wind gets to be very old:

 ...In November the snow starts to fly, piling up, ankle high.
Come December it's up to your knee, still a bride's a bride to be.
January it's higher still, up to the parlor window sill.
February finds a drift, and the storm seems never to lift.
March come in like a lion, what else? Still the snow, never melts.
April showers will come so they say. But they don't, and it's May.
You're about to forget the whole thing, all at once one day it's spring.

I can't help but think one day soon, the trees will pop, the grass will green up and one day we'll wake up and will be like everyone waking up in The Wizard of Oz...another comparison to a movie/musical. How odd.

Anyway, We're only about half way trough kidding season. We're ahead on the doe count by just one. Some of the buck kids have found new homes already and we're keeping on the doe kids, at least for now or until most of the does kid and we know what we're "working with". We had to put one of our older goats, Iris, down a couple of weeks ago. Surprisingly the kids took it rather well. It's never an easy decision, of course, but such is the nature of the farm.

The puppies are about ready to go on to their new homes, they will be 7 weeks old tomorrow.

Jeremiah and the kids are on Spring Break this week, 4 days officially in and I am so sore and tired! It's been nothing but go go go since day one. This time 2 years ago we were (overly-optimistically) installing new perimeter fencing (and expecting to get it done in a week!). We finished one pasture in that week, the weather was a lot nicer than it is this week and that was after (what I considered) a hard winter. Blech!  This year we're planting seeds and let me tell you, this farming/home ownership/livestock "business" is for the birds. At least, that's what I think some days. It's obvious I am tired, things are not looking so optimistic right now.

We do not own a seed drill, as I mentioned in my last post. What we've finally decided to do is hook up the spring tooth harrow. I mentioned recently in a Facebook post:

"We're going to get this brome in if it kills us! Saturday we planted in the snow/rain/hail/sleet freezing cold to get the seeds into the ground before the moisture fell. We did oats too in one pasture. The oats are more of a fun experiment and if they fail, I won't feel too badly. I think our neighbors think we're crazy. We probably are. Not because we're planting oats and brome (or rather, this Los Angeles native has convinced her country raised husband it's a good idea to plant counting on (maybe in vein?) lots of moisture this spring for a good start), it may be because we "braved" the weather to get it in.  I think they may think we're crazy mostly because of HOW we're doing it.

Honestly, I don't even know if I should come out and say this as I know a lot of (real professional) farmers might die of embarrassment for us with all their high tech seed drills and super wazoo GPS driven combines. Our "seed drill" and "GPS driven combine" consisted of me, sitting in the bucket of our open air no cab tractor (though it does have a roof over cab) with a hand driven seed spreader and my husband at the helm dragging a spring tooth harrow (that we were the lucky recipients of when we moved in)!

If you Google "spring tooth harrow" I think the first thing it says is "A mostly outdated implement", couple that with me sitting in the bucket with a manual seed spreader and Jeremiah using the scratched surface of the pasture as a guide of where to go next and you've got one sophisticated operation around here! Ingenuity is our middle names! My apologies if we're making a pigs ear of it, but necessity is the mother of all invention. I'll wait to tell you about fertilizing everything, I think it may just be ingenuity overload."

To be honest, I think it worked rather well. And, for this girl who is not really much of a fan of roller coasters any more, yesterday was (admittedly) kinda fun! I had to look back every now and again to be sure Jeremiah wasn't having as much as I was because there were times where I was about thrown out of the bucket and I thought he may have been driving like a maniac on purpose. In actuality the harrow's springs were getting jammed with the damned (hell sent) yucca plant leaves and he'd have to do some lifting of the harrow to get them loose. Climbing some of the hills and keep a steady pace also meant going a bit faster up the hills so as it was not too hard on the axles. Anyway, it was a good afternoon and the kids were over a friends house all day so it was just he and I out there. All in all my body was jolted from side to side and my muscles are telling me not to climb back in the bucket. My brain, however, is telling them to shut up! 

In total we have about an acre planted in oats and 4 now in brome. I'll tell you about our fertilization method later. FOr now, we're headed out to lunch and to pick up lumber for the kid's new playhouse.

 

Greenhouse & seeds

Minus painting the exterior, the green house is done! We installed the shelving on Sunday and we've started planting!


 

The puppies are getting so big!



 
 
We're on spring break next week. Full week planned. We're hoping to take the kids to the wildlife park in Wichita. I keep hearing it's amazing and nicer than the zoo even and Wichita has a spectacular zoo!

The weather's supposed to take a big dive in temps over the next few days, after we just got over a cold spell it seems though I won't complain, if it brings rain or snow, we welcome it! But snow in March doesn't really sound like something I'll enjoy too much. Snow in any month isn't really something I enjoy but snow in winter and easier to accept than snow in spring!

Jeremiah and I drove up to Junction city which is in the NE part of the state west of Topeka last Saturday. I've been wanting to buy brome seed to throw out in the pastures for the past couple of years. We put some out last fall but the rain did not come as it was predicted and the wind is always so bad here I am sure the majority of it just blew away! Doesn't look like anything is coming up anyway which is a drag!

Jeremiah has been having some issue with the tractor breaking the arm in the back that holds the implements. He'd end up removing the arm, re-welding it only to have it break again and again and again. Two Saturday's ago we were at a farm auction and he was looking at a few of the tractors they had and came up with a pretty good idea to "fix" ours. The arms were homemade by the last owner who, oddly enough, owned a welding and fabrication shop. However, after removing them to fix them, Jeremiah discovered they were not even the same length! Makes ya wonder! So, after some fabrication, Jeremiah put it all back together, got the brush hog out on Monday evening and not so much as a single crack so I would venture to say the fabrication he did worked! FINALLY! I was getting a little annoyed the thing was always out of comission.

Back to the brome though. A little history, brome is cut for hay generally in late May/June. It's a cool season grass and will somewhat go dormant over summer. In the fall it picks back up growth again and some will let it go to seed, others will harvest the seeds and sell it. Brome is like bermuda that will seed itself and sends out underground rhizomes as well so it does not HAVE to reseed itself to come back like rye, wheat, etc.

We have a local place that sells seed as do some of the grain co ops. I bought about 20 lbs. for $2.20 a lb. last year. This year, or rather 2 weeks ago it was $3 a lb!!! That should tell you that people ended up doing a 2nd cutting on their fields in the fall (which almost never happens), to use for haylage because of the drought. At any rate, I called back to order it and it had jumped to $3.50 a lb. plus freight and I thought that was rather obscene! I contacted a few other places and one place was as high as $5.50 a lb.! NOT GONNA HAPPEN!

A friend of mine saw an ad on Craigslist for seed that had been lab tested for germination at $1.50 a lb. You can bet we were on the road quick and in a hurry to get up there. It's about a 2 hour drive. We came home with our coffers full of brome seed. YAY! So, like I said, Jeremiah went and finished up the mowing on the "back 40" so we can figure out how to get this seed out. It's best to drill the seed in but we don't have a grass seed drill. It's possible just to broadcast it too but requires more per acre and then there's the chance of it blowing away. We have a harrow, I think I'll broadcast it and then either lightly drag the harrow over to cover some of the seeds or rig up some kinda heavy roller to pound it into the ground. I suppose if nothing else, rig up a "drag" just to get a little dirt to cover it so it doesn't blow away. I have to wonder how the hell farmers survived living in the mid-west. Farming of any type seems to freakin' hard sometimes! If it's not the wishy washy moisture, it's the wind. If it's not the wind, it's heat and if it's not the heat it's the cold and if it's not the cold it's the cheat grass or some other noxious weed. UGH!

Anyway, I am sure we'll get it figured out. If not, live and learn.

This week will be/has busy getting seeds started. Have a few goats who've/will have left by weeks end. Have a few due to kid any day so it's always an exciting and busy time!

Hope all is well with everyone! Until next time...

Wordless Wednesday: Photos

 

The Little Greenhouse That Should

Jeremiah and I are nearly finished with the greenhouse. The snow storm the weekend before last dampened our efforts and Saturday there was still a good 8" to 14" on the ground (from plowing). The entire garden was covered in a thick blanket and since we decided not to put a door in the back of the greenhouse (so I could utilize more shelf space), we had to walk into the garden to do any work on the back side. It's not huge, but it'll do fine for the pepper and tomato plants.



I figure I'll get over 100 square feet of shelf space, 142 or there abouts with shelving at the back using the ground as a "shelf" too. That's plenty!

There's been some question from people as to whether it'll hold up under snow. I'm happy to report that if it gets more than 200+ lbs. of snow on the roof, I'm moving. Jeremiah can hang from the center and it's entirely sturdy. The front and back frames do a good job at supporting it. If we added any more panels, I would suggest a vertical support or ridge pole. I have seen people build these with ridge poles.

It needs paint and shelves but I can get my seeds started this week! YAY!

Candling eggs

We bought an incubator. Replacements chicks from the hatchery are too expensive and now that I think we have the fox issue under control, at some point our chickens will need to be replaced and I don't want to spend another $4+ per chick to do so. We're just doing a barn yard mix from a friend right now. So far so good. We'll run two of those and pay off the incubator and once we have a rooster old enough, we'll just incubate our own wyandottes.

Rachel and I candled all of the eggs on Monday at day 8. Darker shelled eggs are harder to see through. White eggs are said to be candle-able at about 3 days easily. I checked at day 3 and saw nothing! Day 6 I candled a couple more and saw nothing but an air sac, which is a good sign but I was looking for veins and an eye ball. Some friends came over Sunday and showed me exactly what I was looking for and what do you know, 5 are questionable and 34 are definitely viable, hooray! Rachel and I marked all of them depending on what we thought. We had 8 or so green eggs and I find those VERY difficult to. 2-3 were maran eggs which are like an olive green and it is said the very dark eggs are next to impossible so I stuck a "?" mark on them and we'll see what happens. The light greens are from "Easter Eggers" and the rest are Wyandottes and who knows. I put a few of our own in there too.

It's difficult to get details when it's this dark in the room but the black speck is the growing chick.  If you could see it clearer, one eyeball would be quite a bit darker than the shadow-y part. In person, you can also see veins as well. Pretty neat. Due to hatch March 7!