Mostly photos

Snow had her pups on 2/6/13 5 altogether, 4 boys 1 girl.




 
 


 
 
We had more chicks arrive in the mail last weekend- Golden Laced, Silver Laced, and Blue Laced Red Wyandottes and a freebie Dominique.

I hope to get some regular meat bird chicks in a few months. The pan friers take entirely too long to grow out to eating size, not that we had many last year to butcher after the foxes, so I think we're going to go with the cornish cross that take about 6-8 weeks to reach butchering age or something like a Red Ranger broiler. Given that they take so little time however, I'll order them when the weather warms up and they can be in the shop in a brooder. Right now the brooder is shoved in the hallway bathtub and it's a real pain to shimmy out being wedged so snugly in there. Although, sometime this week they can probably go down to the basement to the back room where it's about 62-65 consistently. Right now they are pretty cheap to raise though being upstairs, all I have on them is a brooder lamp and a regular old 70 watt bulb. Moving them to the shop even with a 250 brooder bulb would probably not be enough to keep them warm right now with our temps and moving them downstairs may require a hotter bulb. May as well keep them upstairs where I know they are toasty, even if it means listening to peeping while ya pee! Any idea what they are saying? "Food, food, water, water, food, food, water, water." That's the extent of their vocabulary until they become old enough to lay and then it's "food, food, water, water, I just laid an egg!". The simple life, right?

The glass on the woodstove suffered a bit of a mishap last week and was broken. Ordering a new piece from a company in Wa. saved us about $160 as opposed to ordering it in town. With shipping it was still $80 and although it only took 5 days to get here, those 5 days had me sick and tired of that furnace!

We're still growing fodder for the goats, pigs and chickens down in the basement. We're still not growing as much as I'd like to. I'm at about 2 trays total a day, I'd like to be up to 6 but it's working very well so far and I am pleased with the results. We're not on an automatic watering system as of yet so I haul water down everyday. It doesn't require too much, about 3 gallons 2 times a day. The valve is there to install a hose from the pressure tank, we just haven't gotten to it yet and with the sump down there, I just dump the water straight to that though eventually once I find a tub that fits well in the shelving until, Jeremiah will just plumb a pipe from the tub to the sump.

Jeremiah's been gone 3 weekends in a row, last weekend being the first full weekend he was here. He's been trying to come up with ways for the students to raise money for Skills so if they go to Nationals again this year, they would have to come up with little to no money. Being winter and all (is that what this is?), we figured firewood may be a worthy sale and being as how we have LOTS of wood that would just go to waste if left to sit and rot, we had 3 students come over last weekend to help split and stack. Our wood pile was looking rather pathetic really, which isn't entirely a bad thing. It allowed us to use up the wood that would not have been "FIFO" (first in, first out) because we stack from back to front. We should stack side to side but anyway, the log splitter worked really well and we got about 2 truck loads split and stacked and enough rounds of hedge pulled out of the woods to give them at least 1.5 good size truck loads full, it just needs to be split. It's well seasoned as it is and ready to burn and that hedge, if you're not aware, burns LONG and HOT! It's our favorite for night time fires and there's always really nice coals in the morning.

All of this seems very redundant and boring to us, day to day living, you know?

I mentioned around Thanksgiving we installed an invisible fence for the dogs since their desire to wander had become increasingly irritating and we'd had enough and the choice was find a solution (not that we hadn't been trying) or re-home them. That fence has worked wonders and we've not had an escapee since they day we hooked it up and had the settings set correctly. Don't tell King, but he doesn't even wear a collar, we never did end up getting a second. Snow wears the one full time but I am fairly sure I could take it off of her or unplug the unit and both of them would still be where they are supposed to be in the morning. Though, I am not going to chance it for one, or teach them them to test it, though Snow won't go far now at least for a couple months with her new pups.

With the dogs staying put, there was no need for the back yard fence to remain and Lord knows those panels are expensive enough so we went ahead and took the panels down in the back yard. There was a locust tree that has been dying and needed to come out so last weekend Jeremiah felled that with the panels gone so it wouldn't hit it. I think there were 7 full panels that came off the fence and a few shorter pieces. With spring around the corner, I want to get a green house up to get some seeds started. I've seen several ideas using cattle panels bent into a hoop shape and covered in thick plastic. It was the intent last year to get one underway and we bought the plastic but it never came to fruition, this year however, I am bound and determined to get it done and next weekend is the date! The front and back will be plywood and it'll be sort of framed up with lumber. It's a little hard to explain but I'll take photos as we go along. It need not be elaborate but it needs to be something! Every season puts us a little bit farther ahead.

I fully do not expect to have a summer of average rain fall again and running the sprinkler non-stop so the plants won't die just isn't working. We have several blue plastic food grade barrels, one of them with a spigot already on it. My plan is, since the main garden sits on a hill, is to put the barrel in the highest corner and run drip irrigation lines from it to the rows. Filling the bucket with the hose is easy and it may need to be done once a day, maybe less? Jeremiah put in that water spigot in for me last summer near the garden & pig pen and it's made life so much easier! Little steps =).

I occasionally let the pigs out to graze in the orchard and they have done a good job rooting up a bunch of bermuda for me. We had picked another location for the garden originally but the bermuda was to thick and too much of a hassle to try to get up so we moved it to the hill. However, if I can keep the chickens off of the place the pigs have tilled up once I plant, I'd like to put in row crops of corn and other tasty treats for a "pig and goat" garden. I planted some oats last fall but I don't think we got enough rain for them to germinate before the turkeys came through but I'll try again in about a month or two here and see if we can't harvest a little hay. It's more of an experiment than anything.

We've had 4 goat kids born so far. One of the buck kids went to his new home at a week old as a bottle baby. Iris fell ill during her last 2 weeks of pregnancy. How's she's still here, I don't know but I swear that goat is determined to get as close to dying as possible and rebound. She drives me nuts, truly. She's not making a lot of milk and to feed a buck kid who would probably end up in the freezer when I don't have another goat in milk and the freezer supply quickly dwindling, it was better to send him off early.  And a nice family from near the Ok. border was going to use him as a home milking herd breeder so it was win win. The little girl is a sweet thing and has nowhere near the CBB (Crappy Bottle Baby) personality that the full time CBB's have. I am sure that has a lot to do with the fact she may still get some milk from Iris and she's left full time with her, or maybe it's just her. Who knows. She was sick at about a week old. I am still not entirely sure what from but this weather we've been having reeks havoc with everyone in regard to respiratory issues! The cold again hot again, single digit nights above freezing nights just throws everyone off. I had wool and cotton goat coats but ended up tweaking my pattern a bit and changing fabrics and came up with these dandies...

That's Dawn's doe kid, by the way. I call her Roxie. She's full of it but super sweet, very outgoing. I think we're going to keep her. She has spots, they are dark right now but they will lighten and Dawn has such a nice udder, I am glad we kept her. Andy is the kid's sire and it's a bit of a line breeding on the kids but I think they turned out really nice and Andy has thrown so few doe kids so far that I'd really like to keep what he does throw to see how they turn out. His kids are always really growthy and mostly spotted. His doe kid from FD last year grew out so well we bred her to freshen as a yearling. We'll see what the udder looks like on that one! His buck kids put real nice meat on quickly and I've debated selling him as he can be such a pain in my rear in rut but he is herd king and when all the bucks run together, I can understand he wants the others to know who's boss. For now, I think we'll keep him around.

Iris' doe kid, we call her Mischief, is on the mend, though has suffered a bit of a setback growth-wise but she'll catch up, I'm sure. She gets 3 bottles a day right now and is almost 4 weeks old. She's not as jumpety as the others but I did pump her full of stuff to save her, most of which was immune support. She'll probably be like her mama, determined not to die no matter the circumstances!

I have had people calling from Mo. and Ok. and Kansas of course for milkers and I just don't know that I can fill the requests this year for everyone asking. Most of the does have not even kidded yet but we did, or I feel we did anyway, such a herd cut last summer and fall when hay was still high that what we've got is a lot of what I'd like to keep! Though, I do have a few does in mind so we'll see.

Other than that, Jeremiah is finishing up writing all of his test questions for the state revamp that he volunteered for. He has one more meeting to attend, probably in Denver again. His students did pretty well in Mo. those 2 weekends he was gone for that. I don't think he's attending the Tulsa competition this year. The only student who wants to go is being taken by his parents and really, Jeremiah needs time off from traveling.

We've had some major issues with his blood sugar being entirely too high the past 3 weeks.  I was unaware he was not taking his evening medication while we were gone to Ca. as he was afraid of his blood sugar dropping while driving. For a while his BS was in the 400 range and normal for him is about 120. He saw the dr. a couple weeks ago and had to take his BS 5 times a day for about 10 days. Toward the end I could recite word for word what he'd say about his "poor fingers" each time he got his meter out. It's slowly dropping and we're slowly getting it back under control, it takes a while for the medication to do its work but the dr. still wasn't pleased it wasn't coming down fast enough so she put him on something in addition to his regular but that was just a couple of days ago and we've not picked it up and just the past 2 BS readings have been almost "normal" for him (and he had low BS at work the other day when all he ate for lunch was a salad and skipped his soup) so I'm almost reluctant to have him take the new medication seeing as how it just looks like his body needed more time than "usual" to readjust (and just because that run on sentence wasn't long enough, I thought I'd add in that it was a very long winded sentence, wasn't it?). Who knows though, it has literally been like ALL over the place and there's been no rhyme nor reason.

I am sure the stress and constant go go go we've been experiencing the past 2 months has not helped matters. We really need to get things under control. We've been fortunate enough that he is not insulin dependent and I'd like to keep it that way, for as long as possible anyway.

It has made us more aware of the ever constant battle that is diabetes...and health, for that matter. We've been fortunate that he is not worse. Our biggest issue is not crappy food, it's portion control! People who don't love food scare me. All kidding aside, we're determined to get more cardio activity because despite the grunt work we do around here, the cardio is what we need. So, here's to getting our heart rates up and keeping them up for it to do any good...unfortunately, the military was not kind to Jeremiah's knees and shins so we'll have to figure out something for him as even walking is kind of high impact. As for me, walking my happy butt around the pastures is sufficient! It's getting out and doing it...same song and dance, I know. Jeremiah wants to know why I bother to clean stalls by hand when we've got the tractor...I figure it's at least a work out...it's just not exactly the kind I need. But with warmer weather on the horizon (not that it hasn't been on again off again warm), I'll make it happen...somehow.

Well, I guess this turned in to more than just a photo post. Like I said, all pretty mundane to us. We've talked about putting up a new milk barn. The school's building construction will build us a custom shed if we come up with the materials first. I don't know if that will get done this school year as we really don't have a spot for it yet.The lean tos are still in good condition but do need some work and since the southern lean-to does not have access to any of the pastures, I think we'll disassemble it and put the milk barn there.

The assessors just came by here recently and with our nice hike in taxes (due to a stupid school bond), our taxes went up. I think we'll just keep the same footprint and call it a day so as not to see our taxes jump any higher! There is already electricity run to that shelter, no water but that's easy enough! It's nice for the bucks in the winter to be able to run a de-icer for their water but those things get expensive running them all the time and the past 2 winters have not really been bad enough to need them much anyway. Anyway, it's not a big deal to run electricity and water to the northern shelter (which is accessible from the western pasture), it's just a matter of doing it. However, that lean-to needs more work than the southern one and I'd like to cut the pen down some anyway so we may as well sort of reconfigure it and maybe, finally, finish out the 3rd pen we started when we put up the high tensile fencing and either turn that into additional buck area or make it pig area.

I like the pigs a lot I just don't know that we'll keep them here for breeding. Granted, finding them at a decent price was not entirely easy but keeping them is not entirely cheap either with the drought! I'd like to see if maybe we can try to pasture them over the spring and summer in the back corner of the woods and see how that goes. The fencing is electric and they have been trained to it. It would require fencing off two sides to form a grid square but that's easy enough by just running some t-posts or fiberglass poles and aluminum wire. They take so little care and there would be plenty to eat out there. Trucking water would be required but that's not a big deal every couple of days with a big enough tank and the glorified lawn tractor. Or heck, 2 buckets morning and evening and I get a good work out! It just takes time, not something we always have a lot of but I am sure we can make something work!

I started talking about the garden and our plans this year but didn't finish my train of thought. The drip irrigation lines will be run to the individual rows and each row will be covered with straw, hopefully that will cut down on water waste and time by avoiding having to go out there and change the sprinkler location every couple of hours. We were loosing a lot of potential growing room too with where the sprinkler wasn't hitting and watering plain dirt is a waste. Live and learn what works! I should not have to do a bit of tilling thanks to the pigs! They have tilled that entire garden right into the corner...saves me from having to run the 'tiller and ya can't beat that. It would be nice to move the pigs and use their pen for growing corn, but it's not something that has to be done right away, if at all this year.

Well, I suppose it's time to get going. The kids have a birthday party to go to and then it's back home to work around here. We may get some rain later today...no snow since New Years though we did get a real nice thunder storm a couple days ago...didn't drop a whole lot of rain but any is better than none. It was really foggy yesterday morning and below freezing so all the moisture froze on the trees. Even when I went in to town about noon it was still very cold and all the trees looked like they were coated in glass. Kinda pretty.

Hope all is well for everyone. Have a great weekend.