Shadow of Eden Farm

Coming soon.....

2012-01-04T12:00:00.004-06:00

The puppy we acquired last spring, Titan, is now an all-grown-up handsome male dog.

Hopefully, he and our female, Lilly, will soon be blessing us with a litter of livestock guardian pups. Gestation time is around 63 days, they say. That is a bit earlier in spring than we were hoping, but she went into heat earlier than I had planned.

I'm sure sometime in early March we will have our hands full of fluffy white balls that will be a great mix of the LGD breeds of Akbash, Anatolian and Pyr. They will grow up around geese, chickens, ducks, turkeys and goats, and get accustomed to guarding the place.

Washhouse

2011-12-22T16:08:00.013-06:00

Steven has spent considerable effort this year trying to get all our outbuildings restored and into shape to last another 50 or more years. He did a great job on the garage earlier, and all this fall, he concentrated on the Washhouse.

Of course, we no longer use the wash-house for washing (as it was originally designed back before the farm had indoor plumbing -- people did their bathing and clothes washing in the washhouse. It had a hand pump inside, and a wood stove for heating water, etc.) Now these days we use it as a tool shed, and we have an overflowing amount of tools in it. However, some wood lapboards around the base needed replaced, some structural work done, and then a good tightening up of the whole thing. We had the roof replaced a year or so ago.

Steven took one side at a time. Scraped, repair, foamed cracks, caulked. On each old window, he carefully removed the glass from the window panes so it could be cleaned, then he cleaned and sanded the window frames and primed them while the glass was out.

cleaning the window frame to prepare to put the glass panes back in

laying down the bead of glazing for the pane.

my job was to place the glass and put in the points to hold it before he put the top layer of glazing over the points.

West side is done, starting on south side, and the process begins again...

brother David came out to lend a hand with the primer coat (each areas took two coats of paint)

KIDS - don't try this at home! Steven has excellent balance, but it still made me nervous that he was standing on top of the ladder painting around live power lines...

almost done at this point. It was totally finished shortly thereafter. Steven even painted the hardware on the door (black). I guess I didn't get a photo after it was all complete.

[EDIT - I decided to take and post a better photo of the finished shed]

This was all back in November. We also attempted to do some tilling of the garden to ready it for the winter-over. However, it was so terribly dry at this point:

Only got a little of it done before the tiller had a tire problem.

December has been better -- finally some moisture in the way of rain. We could still use more, but feel blessed for what we have received. Some neighbors helped us out on getting enough hay for the goats to make it through the winter. Now it is just "sit tight and wait until spring" mode on the farm.

Tracy

Three months later....

2011-10-27T13:39:00.018-05:00

Okay, so it has been nearly three months since I blogged. I guess I'm not a very avid blogger (spend too much time on Facebook these days). Plus, it has been a hard summer, and there isn't much "good news" to blog about when everything is drying up and withering away. We are hoping for a better 'next year'. I only like to share good news, when I can.

So now we are into autumn and getting ready for oncoming winter.

Last week, there were a couple of nights that were in the 'frost' and 'freeze' categories of nighttime temperatures. We still have tomatoes and peppers in the garden, and they were just beginning to start to produce (after the dry hot winter that kept the blossoms from being fertile most of the growing season). So we want to leave them out in the garden as long as possible, just in hopes to get the fruit to ripen enough for the seeds to be viable for seed-saving to plant next year.

So on the cold nights, we wrap the tomatoes up tight in blankets. (My son said my wrapping job makes them all look like "Bubushkas").

For the peppers, we got creative and put together a tarp that is made entirely of old feed sacks stapled together :) We put this over the green pepper bed, and set a drop light down inside to create enough warmth to get them through.

Now, these green pepper plants will be dug up and put into pots and brought inside, just as he did last year. We got some great large pots off Craig's List, and we will put them in the bay window of the dining room for the winter. They will continue as a perennials if you don't allow them to freeze.

One thing that did well in Steven's garden this year (with lots of added water) and that hasn't yet been affected by the freeze is his peanut crop. It really flourished. Should be quite a crop.

As for the tomatoes -- the variety "OSU Blue" is turning out quite interesting. It is a very dark color (these are small since they didn't get much time to grow and develop)

And here are just some other photos from around the place:

Ummm. yummy tomatoes - just didn't get very many this year.

Fine looking cattle -- that the McCurry Brothers keep in our pasture. Someday soon we hope to have our own herd.

Our fishing ponds have lost a lot of water. I think the herons are having a feast on fish in the shallow waters.

Silver Lining

2011-08-11T14:41:00.005-05:00

A silver lining in not having homeowners insurance (due to the age/condition, etc. of our house) - is that after a major event like that June hailstorm, we have the 'luxury' of getting our damage fixed quickly and efficiently -- unlike our neighbors who still have plywood on their windows, waiting for insurance adjusters or waiting for the back-logged contractors to get around to getting their insurance-paid repairs done.

Sure it was a setback some financially, but at least we could handle it on our own quickly (with the help of good friends too). Got the windows taken into a repair shop immediately. Then Steven and our family friend Mickey (who is an expert carpenter) began needed repairs on the window frames (some of which has been needed for years) so that when the new glass was ready, everything would be ship-shape.

I was very pleased with Steven's work on this. He didn't want to do half-measures, but totally got rid of any dry-rotted wood or problem areas and got it replaced right, then primed and painted so these particular areas hopefully won't have to be addressed again for a long time.

For the bathroom window (above), that included complete rebuilding the lower sill, and also having to take off some wood siding under the window and do repairs under the sill area, before the whole thing could be rebuilt. The header at the top also needed new wood; and then he primed and painted all of the windows frame and pieces, so they are sealed tight.

On my bedroom window (below), Mickey helped show Steven how to make a completely new "header" at the top -- matching the old decorative header that was there (which is common on this age of house). The old one was in pretty bad shape, so they got trim molding and used the mitre saw to cut everything at just the proper angles to replicate the antique style it has always had. It looks extremely good.

The windows were then ready for the repaired storm windows that went over them externally. We were back in business and good to go by the end of June, while our neighbors still deal with insurance. But then again, we have a higher need for working windows, since they are our primary means of cooling and ventilation during these summer months.

Now, we just need to get around to painting the rest of the house. But this is a good example of why that project is taking so long -- we don't just need to paint; but we need to also repair, refurbish, restore before we ever get the paintbrush in hand. It takes time and patience.

We have been thankful for this week's break from the unseasonably hot weather, and for the small amounts of rain we have received. Over 30 days of over 100 degrees was beginning to weaken our pioneer spirit a bit. :) Nice to be back to normal.

* * *

(oh! and I just got a brand new front screen door too - finally! The dogs tore up the old one a couple years ago - we've needed a new one since, that could handle the dogs, but have enough screen area to allow good air flow. Finally found what we needed, and brought it home, sanded it, primed, painted and hung. That east breeze is heavenly!)

HOT

2011-07-20T07:43:00.006-05:00

And that's about all I have to say about that.

Unbearable heat that has no end in sight (forecast out 10 days future still shows all over-100 days). No rain (at the farm, we didn't even get that '.33' inch they list there above). All we are doing is watering, watering, watering to keep things alive as best we can. Have lost two chickens to the heat. Garden is burning up.

It does remind me of 1980. However, that year, I had spoiled myself by having moved away from the farm, and happened to be living and working where there was air conditioning. As most of you know, we have no type of air conditioning at home (and don't want it, most of the time). We have box fans in the windows; we depend on shade and a breeze, which we don't always get. We are used to toughing out a few extreme heat days each summer, but this year has been unbelievable just in the number of days with no break in the heat. Truly living like the pioneers now -- except we are very grateful for running water.

June 9th Hail Storm at the Farm

2011-06-17T12:11:00.006-05:00

Well, the photos kind of tell the whole story. These hail stones were collected by Steven awhile after they had started melting. He said some were easily as big as baseballs when they came down. Hail & high wind.

This was actually a plexiglass sheet on our back North porch door

My bedroom window, inside and out. Destroyed all layers of glass - 2 levels of storm window and casement window. Glass all over my room and bed. Embedded hail and glass in opposite wall, in both my room and the bathroom. Pretty much the entire north side of our house was hit very hard. The hail came from the north and east.

Steven's greenhouse was not spared. I don't think there is a single panel without some damage. Some of the hail stones went through the roof with such velocity that they smashed stuff down inside the greenhouse.

And then, there's the garden:

corn

Holes everywhere in the soft dirt from where the hail stones hit

Tomato plants (surprisingly, many of these have recovered)

We had lots of tree limbs down - this was in the driveway

And across the front lawn
It was probably almost an hour after the storm that Steven and I went out to check the rain gauge, to find it broken on the ground. And the offending hail stone still next to it.

One of many, many places hit on our roof.

This is not our corn. This is my neighbor's field (one of the benefits to us only owning pasture ground). All the corn fields in the area were not a pretty site. The fields where wheat wasn't yet cut looked not too happy either.

Bulls-eye

2011-05-24T15:51:00.008-05:00

We are in the bulls eye tonight for severe storms forecasted (like high probability of tornadoes and damaging hail!) So bad is the forecast, that even the two local colleges cancelled all night classes as we eye the radar of massive storms coming up from northern Oklahoma. Keep us in your prayers. It would be painful to have years of work wiped away in a storm; as so many others have already experienced this year.

But we also need rain so badly. We got 1/4 inch one day last week, 1/4 inch another day, and about 6/10ths the third day. Not enough to help our parched ground after months of drought.

Thought I would throw a few recent photos up here real fast, to share, and for posterity in case we're blown away... (HA)

We still have quite a few "babies" around the farm.

Most recently, our new friend Donna Inkelaar hatched for us (with her incubators) these fine young chicks for Steven's breeding project.

(this was taken about a day after we brought them home. They are larger now, and spending most of their time in the outside enclosed pen)

Also, teacher-mom-lady Marie hatched out several duck eggs for us, but also using them as a teaching tool for her own young children and the kids she cares for. I think this was an awesome idea. They are growing fast:

Not long ago, one of our hen ducks hatched out an entire nest of eggs she had been broody over. We have no idea how many eggs were under her, because some of the other ducks kept laying in that nest for several days before she started brooding. So we were amazed when she hatched out 22 ducklings! That is a lot for any momma duck!

Our goslings are getter bigger each day. Almost as tall as their parents, but not yet feathering in...

and the chicks we got from our neighbors, the McCurrys, have turned out to be an interesting assortment. These pullets have feathered in nicely and are quite pretty:

Last but not least, a lot of our time is spent in the garden. Steven has really worked hard on it this year, and has a lot to show for his time. But it needs rain. Very badly. Praying for rain tonight, but without the hail and damaging wind.

Spring Story with Photos!

2011-05-06T14:13:00.011-05:00

What a busy spring this has been!

Like many fellow bloggers and homesteaders, our place is overflowing with babies this time of year. Baby geese, baby chicks, baby ducks, baby pigeons, baby goats... and now even a puppy!

Puppy and Lilly

We picked up our new puppy last weekend from a local family. He is half Great Pyrenees and half Akbash. We are hoping he and our current Anatolian Shepherd/Pyr mix, Lilly, will make a fine pair. We haven't firmly decided on a name for him, but are leaning toward Titus or Titan. As you know, we previously have had a hard time getting Lilly to accept another dog on the place -- she is ferciously protective! But by introducing a puppy, she seems to not see it as a threat, and it is great companionship for her, too!

baby goslings with their parents

It is still so very very dry. *sadness* That has not change in the month since I last posted. We have not had an measurable precipitation since the snows in February. Steven is having to water the garden every day. He has everything planted, including yesterday setting out about 40 tomato plants!

Because of the lack of rain, we are taking the goats out to graze each evening for an hour or two -- just shepherding them and allowing them to roam to where they can find what they want, but keeping them off the road and away from harm.

The adult goats prefer the tree leaves anyway, so as we take them to the big pasture, they go for the new leaves on the mulberry and hedge trees.

While the young'uns prefer to just play 'climb the mountain' on all massive the old tree stumps. They are sure fun to watch. The kids are getting old enough to do quite a bit of browsing, too; yet go back for momma's milk now and then.

I love standing out with the goats in the evening light this time of year - it is so peaceful and nice. Looking at the huge old hedge trees that have been here a century....

The goats know the routine so well now, that as the sunset drops to the horizon, they mosey back toward the gate and are no trouble to put away for the night.

And I will leave you with one more pic. Our iris garden is in full bloom -- lots of different colors and styles and sizes. But this one has always been my favorite. It is called Dotted Swiss.

(as always, you can click on any of these photos in order to see a larger version)

Spring Chores

2011-04-12T10:44:00.002-05:00

Spent part of the weekend giving the "winter shutdown, spring clean-up" to the area around the woodstove. When I do this, it means I don't plan to fire up the stove again until cool weather arrives in the fall. So let's hope I am right and we don't have any more unusually cold nights this spring!

Cleaning it out included cleaning the firebox itself; clearing out the remaining pieces of wood we had brought inside (taking them back to the firewood stack) cleaning the wood rack, the ash bucket, etc. and then sweeping and mopping the tile floor all around the wood stove. Scrubbing and cleaning the window on the front of the woodstove (noticed we need to replace the gasket around the window before using it this fall), wiping down the stove and generally getting the ash residue off of everything.

If you don't own a woodstove, you might not realize they do generate quite a bit of dust/ash in your home. It doesn't seem like it when you are using it, but over time you will begin to notice the layer of ash dust on everything in the room. So it is good to have a time in spring to clear all that out and make it fresh again.

Wish I could post some video on here of the goat kids playing together -- we shepherd the herd out to open areas (since we STILL haven't had rain, and our pasture is getting thin) and the kids all romp and play while their mothers graze. It is like a bunch of children on a playground - they especially like it when we take them into the trees, because they find stumps and branches to climb up and on and jump off, sometimes onto each other. They are so playful and cute at this age. All seem to be doing well.

We are still in a burn ban and high fire risk zone for this month, and it is cramping our pasture management style, but we will live. However, unless it rains soon, this is not going to be a good year for anything. I am 50 years old and can't personally remember a spring with this little moisture this late in the year. April is usually our wet/rainy month, and we've had nary a drop. There were storms in Kansas a few days ago, however, they all missed us (went east). Which may have been a slight blessing, since they also carried damaging hail.

Pray for rain for us, please.

Last of the kids

2011-04-05T16:09:00.003-05:00

Our final doe goat had twins last Friday, her first time as a mama. This was the final nanny we had left to give birth, so we are done with goat births for this year. In total, we have 11 new kids -- 6 females, 5 males, I think. Steven will decide which he will keep and which he will sell at a later time.

So we began 2011 with a herd of 7 and now we have.. 18? Hope the rains come soon to wake up the pasture for spring!

Doubled the herd!

2011-03-23T14:49:00.004-05:00

So Steven's goat herd has over doubled in size in less that 72 hours. Four sets of twins so far. Two more girls yet to deliver. Could be a very busy week. So far all are very healthy and cute and we are very pleased with how they have done.

More pics for you.

Kids galore!

2011-03-22T15:23:00.006-05:00

We love this time of year!

Sunday afternoon, the first of our six pregnant nannies gave birth to healthy, beautiful twins (a boy and a girl).

Then, as expected, that 'set off' the rest of the girls, and we got another set of twins Monday morning (another boy/girl combo) and another set on Monday afternoon (two girls). Three more mamas to go (which might have already happened - as I haven't heard from Steven yet today).

(I hope to get photos of the new kids up this week too)

Very busy time of year - but the kind of busy we like.

Sold the Boer buck over the weekend. Got all the potatoes planted, onions are up and we planted more — love the feel of that fresh-tilled earth in my fingers!

Steven has the entire bay window of the house packed with seedling plants (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes from seed, and I don't know what else) rigged up with three major grow lights and lots of sunlight coming in the windows.

A funny thing recently -- our female goose has been busily 'setting' on a nest of 15 eggs. For the first few days, her male companion, the gander, very possessively guarded her (to the point we almost couldn't walk through the back yard, he would get so upset!). However, after a few days of that he seemed to become bored; and now instead he spends all his time during the day just 'hanging out' with the Tom turkey. Like best buds, wherever the turkey goes, the gander does. And they have quite the "conversation" the whole time! Very loud chatter between the two of them makes for a noisy barnyard!

Is it March ALREADY?

2011-03-11T15:25:00.010-06:00

I have been trying to get time to post on here for weeks..... hopefully I can get it actually done this afternoon. Life just seems to busy right now.

We've had much to keep us busy lately. The first farm auction of the season we attended was a huge affair not too far from us. We can home happy, carrying most of the items we had gone specifically to try to win: wire cattle panels, t-posts, hog-wire panels. I also picked up a good workshop vice, and a 22 foot log chain for very good money. Was a productive day, and we thank our neighbor for allowing us to borrow his 16' trailer to get the panels home. They are already erected in the orchard area (thanks to help from second son David) and ready for us to use for mobile grazing.

Steven has already begun his seedling operation for spring -- has the dining room bay window set up as a mini-greenhouse with grow lights and all. Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes seeds and I don't know what all else he has planted there and dutifully tends.

We have been able to check off some big items from our to-do list, which is nice. Late in February, I had a local electrician come out and drop the power line that goes around the house to the tool shed (washhouse) so that we could remove one of our biggest and oldest trees, which is directly behind the house. Since it has power lines on two sides, and buildings on the other two, we always knew it would be tricky to take down. Very sad, too -- that tree is like a landmark here.

Funny thing about us and trees. They are kind a big deal to us. I've read the journals of our ancestors who settled out here and had no trees visible for miles -- nothing to burn for firewood or use for building during the settling of this area in the 1870s. I appreciate trees. I appreciate that former generations of my family planted all these trees for a purpose.

But this massive, once-beautiful Siberian Elm tree had to come down. In the big windstorm of 1994, it was tore up pretty bad -- many large limbs dangling from the top that could crash onto the house. At that point we had to have it partially topped to get the deadwood out of the tips -- it used to be SO tall! Then ice storms took their toll, and little by little the tree died.

In this photo of our house taken in 1955, you can see the tree towering over the back of the house (all you can see is the top of it). My mother says she remembers the tree always being there as a mature tree as she grew up, and she is 73! So this is an old tree.

1955

A local (very friendly, Mennonite) tree service, came out with their bucket truck to take her down gently. We told him to just drop it in sections as he could, and we would clean up the mess.

(He had already taken down a bunch of it before I thought to run in and grab the camera)

After he got it down to about 4 foot, we took care of the rest. Brush went out to the goat pen (they like to strip down the smaller limbs). Some rotten parts were put on the burn pile. We began slicing away at the small still-live portion of the truck with the chain saw, but it was too big for us to cut clean through. We did not cut any up for firewood - we have found Elm make poor firewood, and is extremely hard to split (considering we hand-split all of ours). We prefer to burn only hedge inside. However, some pieces would make a nice burn for an outside campfire/firepit if we were to ever have guest over for a roast...

So Steven set the dead portion of the trunk on fire. It burned all day as we watched it. Then he and I finished off cutting it flush with the ground with the old two-man saw. (That was work!)

Yes, the white stuff is fire - well, very hot burning tree. The fire is down inside (it had some hollow areas)

As we hauled pieces off, we were left with several really massive and heavy sections; trying to decide what to do with them! We had used them as "benches" when working around there, so we decided they would be 'benches' for the time being for the whole area. They were too heavy to move anywhere else. So Steven man-handled and rolled them into place, to make one big circle of benches around our wash-water ditch (not very pretty in winter, but in summer we plant gourds and flowers and stuff here to hide the ditch, and because there is a lot of moisture there all the time). Yes, I climbed on the roof just to get that photo.

(the little flat area at the right is where we cut it flush with the ground)

*******
We have baby kids due near the end of March -- anxiously awaiting. Our goose has begun to lay eggs and hopefully 'set' as well. (which makes the gander ornery as heck - chasing everyone away from his lady!) Turkeys don't show any eggs yet - but the ducks and chickens are picking up on egg production.

Sorry this is such a long post -- I hope this catches you all up on what we've been doing the last 30 days.

February 2011

2011-02-18T14:10:00.003-06:00

Sorry it has been so long since I put a post up -- it has been a fairly turbulent winter 2011 for us so far -- maybe we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!

Two weeks featuring two different major snow storms for our area kept us bundled up and pretty much house-bound. For much of the time, I stayed in the city with my daughter (so I could make the drive to work) while Steven kept care of everything at home -- no small feat in that kind of blizzard weather! I really appreciate all he does.

We got very low on firewood, having to burn it hot and non-stop like that to keep the house at a bearable temp; but we got through it, and have since had a chance to cut more and get re-stocked.

This past week has been just the opposite of the former two: a week of record high temps (78 degrees yesterday!) with lots of sun -- all the snow has melted, and we can taste spring around the corner! I think Steven even put some onion seed out in the part of the garden I was able to till during the last warm snap -- he can't wait to get his hands in the earth and get the garden started - he just loves doing that so much.

Speaking of garden -- we have a bit of greenery inside the house this winter!

Late last summer, we were disappointed with how our green bell peppers plants had performed. They were slow to take off, we had a very dry hot summer, and we got almost no fruit from them at all. Most people just allow their peppers and tomatoes to die with the first frost and try again the next year.

But not Steven. He knew that in more tropical areas, peppers can survive year-round if there is no freeze. So he dug up his three pepper plants that were left, potted them in big pots and brought them in the house to set in the big bay window. And they have done great! I thought they would just survive during the winter inside, and we could replant them in the spring; but instead they have flourished-- blooming and setting on fruit inside!

It is amazing. Although I don't think these peppers will make it to full size inside, I went ahead and harvested a few of these little ones to use in Texas hash and other cooking projects. It was so good to smell fresh peppers in the middle of winter.

We have a busy weekend planned coming up (three day weekend off from my work). We will be removing a large elm tree in our back yard that has been mostly dead for some time and in danger of coming down on the house. That will also open up a bit more sky to his greenhouse. There are many more projects on the list!

Breaking Ice

2011-01-26T14:33:00.008-06:00

Ice Portal to the goats. :)

Steven just sent me these photos he took this afternoon. Since much of December and the first part of January was extremely cold here, the big concrete stock tank at the windmill began icing over, deeper and deeper. Eventually we gave up on chopping the ice, and just provided the goats with fresh water daily in tank in their barn instead. So in the meantime, the ice in the big tank froze deep (our poor goldfish are under there somewhere).

Today we had the first of a small warming trend. So Steven went out and started up the windmill to allow water to flow over the iced tank to loosen it.

Then he cut the ice into big chunks with a handsaw, and manually muscled the hunks of ice out with a hay hook and brute strength! He only did one small area of the entire tank - the side where the goats drink.

These photos show how thick the ice was - nearly a foot deep. The keyhole photo (with the goat) above - the hole was made by the pumping water, melting it where a cattail had poked up through the ice (yes, we keep a few cattails in the tank as cover for our fish).

You can see the entire tank in the background of this shot.

The residual snow and ice around the farm should all be melted off tomorrow - a forecast high of nearly 60 by the end of the week! Yippee! (the fate of the fish is still unknown. Not seen yet)

Winter Wood

2011-01-12T13:56:00.009-06:00

Sorry I haven't had time to do much blog updating lately. I always have ideas, but rarely time to get them written down. On a positive note, we received about four inches of snow early this week, the first real moisture of this winter. We are very thankful for it, and hope that more rain or snow will come soon to our parched ground.

During our winter time, most every weekend or daylight hour that we are both home (there isn't much of that during the weekdays) is spent working on making sure we have enough firewood, as that is our primary heat. Especially this week, as wind chills have dipped to -15 F during the nights, it is important we be well stocked with wood.

Steven and I have fallen into a system/pattern which seems to work best for us.

During the weekdays while I'm away, Steven uses any extra time he has to go out into the grove or shelterbelts, and find dead wood hedge (osage orange) and he drags as much of it as he can up to the house and creates a pile near the chopping block on the sheltered south side of the house:

(The stump at the left edge of the photo is Steven's
wood-splitting block - an big old hedge section that we've about worn out)

(Thanks always to our great-great-grandfather and pioneer fore-runners who planted all these trees back in the 1880s, when there was not any kind of tree within 3 miles of the place when it was first homesteaded)

Then whenever I'm home and have daylight hours, we both bundle up, I get my trusty Husqvarna chainsaw oiled up and ready, and we begin an assembly-line style of wood cutting. He lifts and feeds the big limbs to me as I cut them off at acceptable lengths. I'm like a human buzz saw :)

Then we set the large chunks aside for Steven to split with the maul, and the smaller stuff that can be burned whole we load into the wheelbarrow to stack in the corner of the greenhouse to keep it dry and ready.

Unlike many people, we do not let there be any waste. We are not picky about size and shape of wood pieces. It all burns. Some people like their wood stack to be nice and neat and uniform, but we save even the smallest twig of hedge (good for starting fires) to the biggest part of gnarly stump or root that is dry and able to be cut and fit into the stove. So our stack isn't pretty - and sometimes we may have to load more into the house at a time, but there will be no wood wasted on our farm!

There is the old adage that firewood "warms you twice -- once when you cut it, and once when you burn it!" I certainly agree with that!

Moisture

2010-12-13T09:41:00.003-06:00

While I feel empathy for the parts of our nation currently suffering through record cold and blizzard conditions, along with many inches of snow (and I'm glad I am not there) -- part of me wishes at least a bit of that moisture could dip down our way.

We already have the very cold arctic air dropping our temps; but we are so dry. The city weatherman said this morning this is day 25 with no recordable moisture of any kind, and I think for our farm it has been even longer, because what hits in the city, often misses us. Plus the last system that promised rain just barely spit on us.

Fire danger is high, dust is blowing. My fellow bloggers, pray for some rain or wet snow for us - we really need some moisture. Sufficient pasture for livestock is very hard to find right now.

A Blessed Year

2010-11-29T14:48:00.005-06:00

From our table to yours, I hope you and your family had a very Blessed Thanksgiving, and spent it with the ones you love.

from left to right at our table, my Uncle Paul, his sister my Aunt Ida, my mother, my oldest son Steven at the head of the table, my son David, and my daughter Amanda.
(you can click on the image to see it larger - it is not-so-well-done merger of two photos, since my camera could not take in the whole thing at once)

Tracy

Wood Heat This Year

2010-11-24T13:12:00.005-06:00

Well, we've put in a change this year.

We went from this last year:

To this:

(yeah, I know - two different cats too. That's not the point of this post, though.
Both cats are still alive and well)

There are pros and cons to the switch. I think the pros outweigh, though.

We loved our Franklin stove last year -- wow, the amount of wood it could hold at once, how grand it looked, how well it heated our home.

But the newer, smaller stove has many pluses. For one, it is much more airtight. We had trouble venting the Franklin stove last year because we were trying to manipulate its 10-inch diameter flue to work with our 4-inch diameter chimney. That was just too big of a reduction to allow air flow properly, and we often ended up getting smoke in the house.

Also, on the Franklin, I always had to open the doors to see if more wood was needed yet. I love the window in the newer stove. It is like watching a fireplace :) Plus it lets me know how far down everything is burning, without having to open the door. It does have a smaller chamber (takes smaller pieces of wood, and less wood at a time); but seems to burn somewhat slower as well, and radiates the heat very well.

Just like last year's stove, we got a great deal on this unit by purchasing it used from an individual off a Craig's List posting. We've found some great deals that way. It was pretty dirty and beat up when we got it, but Steven put lots of elbow grease into cleaning it up, replacing the inside firebrick, fixing all the parts, and polishing it to look almost like new. (The firebrick, too, are a big plus -- although it takes quite a bit of burning to get them all heated up and going, they stay hot/warm for a very long time, allowing us more leeway in getting the stove reloaded).

So far, so good. I'm very happy with it. We haven't had a true trial, though, until we get to the really bitter cold days, and see if it can keep up with our drafty old house.

Happy Birthday to Steven!

2010-11-16T07:35:00.002-06:00

Today my oldest child turns a quarter-century old! (Which is amazing, of course, because I haven't aged one bit!) *smile* Happy 25th Birthday to my son, Steven. Praise God for you, and for your choice of continuing the legacy of our homestead.

Home Remodeling/Repair

2010-11-15T15:09:00.006-06:00

Steven has been on a kind of home improvement kick lately (not that I'm complaining!) trying to get a whole lot of pretty big projects done all at once before winter. It's exhausting to me (on those days when I'm home to help) and lumber is expensive -- but I know all of this is worth it to try to maintain the 'infrastructure' of our place, as he says.

He has worked off and on for several weeks getting boards replaced on the garage, then sealing holes with insulating foam, fixing windows, prime coat painting and then top coat painting the whole thing. Our garage looks really spiffy and like new now.

Then he tackled the rotting-out lower house siding on the back side of the house - especially that large hole created by a opposum trying to use our crawl space as its living quarters. This is a lot of work -- very old wood siding (we want to keep from having to replace any more than necessary) and boxing boards underneath that need replaced or repaired. We got one section of it done last week, two more larger sections to go. Wood lap siding (as used to be used on all old farmhouses) is very hard to get now -- we only found one lumber yard that had a random selection of it at a very high price. But we got enough to finish that section. He also got all of that primed and painted to keep it from rotting out again so easily.

Well, I took a four day weekend, and one of the big projects this time was a new cave (outside cellar) door. I won't even put up "before" photos because it looked so horrible and rotted out, full of holes. Our house water pump is down in the old "cave" so we need to keep it warm in winter. To do that you have to have a decent door, which we haven't for several years.

First, we started with building up a new frame over the concrete for the new door to rest upon, as the old sill was pretty shot. Blessedly, these treated 2x4 boards were free recycle from some dear friends who replaced their privacy fencing and gave us all the old structural boards.

Then used more 2x4 to create the framing for the door itself. We overlaid that with 1x8 cedar planks. Lots of screws involved in this process.

(I love those pipe clamps - come in very handy! We used my old flatbed trailer as a work table)

(cutting off the excess length of 1x8's. Actually did this with a regular old manual hand saw - it was easiest. But boy, does that make your arm tired!)

Then we fastened the new (and heavy!) door onto the cellar opening frame, using four exterior grade hinges. Installed a new handle, and it looks great! Now, perhaps a coat of polyurethane or something to help it weather even better.

Steven today put in a post to use as a door stop/brace when we have it open, because it is a bit heavy for myself and my mom to muscle around too much.

Snug and secure for winter.

What's New at Our Farm!

2010-11-02T14:16:00.007-05:00

Well! Much to write about -- lots of new things to share!

Recently Steven bought his first pair of turkeys and geese. The beautiful Bourbon Red turkeys will be his breeding pair to hopefully rear some baby turkeys next spring! I have to admit, these birds are really gorgeous! However, it was hard to get a decent photograph of them together. Mr. Tom sure likes to strut around and show off.

The pair of geese (which we HOPE are a male and female, we aren't sure) seem to be mild-mannered, and not noisy and annoying as I feared they would be. They are also beautiful birds.

I was surprised to find that even as large and heavy as they are, they still can do a low fly quite a distance! (much like pheasant do) They wandered out to the goat corral one day, and I closed the gate, thinking they would graze there for awhile, but they didn't like being locked away from the house, and flew quite easily across the corral and into the backyard.

Steven's plan is to put the geese, and perhaps the turkeys, out in the orchard next spring, to help keep the grass and insects there under control. The geese won't hurt the young trees, as goats or other grazers would.

Neither pair of birds seem really used to free range yet. Perhaps they had always been kept locked up. For the first couple of days, all they did was follow us around as we worked outside. We do pen them up at night, for their own safety.

Did I mention that a couple weeks ago Steven also finally got a new buck for his goat herd? Hopefully this will mean a nice crop of spring kids.

Tree planting time

2010-10-28T13:38:00.007-05:00

Have I mentioned before on here how much my son loves trees? I mean, really, really loves trees. Loves starting them from seed, transplanting them from pots to ground, trying new varieties, reading about trees, etc. etc. So that is why fall is one of his favorite times -- it is tree-planting time.

That is also why he was so excited to read that a local nursery was auctioning off their tree stock to clear it out. Even my ever-frugal son was willing to take his wallet and browse their rows and rows of trees in hopes of finding something special at a great price. Which he did!

Although he bid on several, at the end of the very long day, Steven took home the tallest tree in the sale -- a 20 foot Dawn Redwood! (Yes, I know you're saying, 'a redwood in Kansas?') He got a $400 tree for $40. I loved the tree as well, but was skeptical we could get it home in my old farm pickup!

After recruiting little brother to help with the heavy lifting, and the digging of a large hole, the Dawn Redwood is now securely in the ground behind the house. (My only requests were: 1) don't plant it close enough to the house that it falls on the house when it gets to be 100 feet tall; and 2)plant it far enough away that it doesn't attract lightning to the house).

It is an awesome tree, or will be. One of the very few deciduous conifers, it will actually turn a gorgeous cinnamon color in the autumn and them drop its leaves/needles for winter, greening up again in spring. The area we planted it will give it access to all the groundwater it wants at about 10-15 deep, once established, and we will clear some of the brush tree out of the area to give it more sun. Steven said, "This tree better live 150 years, as hard as that was to plant!" I told him in that case, he better be preparing to put lightning rods on it!

Yes - it stuck out this far from the truck bed all the way home - even with the root ball clear up against the cab of my full-size bed pickup! We just drove slow and took back-roads.

A big deep hole!

Steven and his younger brother David, after some very hard work getting the tree off the truck and safely into the hole, pretty late in the day. (The boys are both over six feet tall, if that gives you some idea of the tree height!) Some of the leaves have already fallen for winter, so we are anxious to see how it will look out when it leafs out again in spring!

We've done some other tree planting lately, as well, for windbreaks. I will write more about that later.

Blog updating

2010-10-20T15:07:00.003-05:00

Wow - I have about three or four separate posts I need to get around to putting up here on the blog -- but where does anyone find the time?

My other friends who blog daily, or often -- how do you schedule your blog time? It is always difficult for me -- resizing and editing photos, writing it out and formatting.

One of these days I hope to catch up, and then there will be something new here to read. By the time I get it posted, it might all be old news!

Wasted week?

2010-10-08T21:47:00.002-05:00

The last seven days around here have been picture-perfect weather by farm standards. Highs in the low 80s, low winds, just gorgeous. This is the kind of weather we wait for all year in order to get many of our projects done.

And all week, everyone in this household has been sick. Kind of a bummer, to finally have the weather we waited for, but then not feel good enough to do much with it. Steven is mostly well now (bugs never keep him down long), but myself and my mother are still really battling this cold.

On a very positive note, with the help of a very good friend and neighbor, Mickey, - Steven and Mickey were able to get the tractor started today! We have been unable to use it all summer (and you can tell it by the height of the grass that never got bush-hogged!) As soon as I feel well enough, I'm going after it fast and hard. I should be able to get everything cut down once - which is all it needs before winter. Some areas we leave standing for winter grazing for the goats. But we need to mow around the orchard trees, especially.

Won't be long until the days are short, the nights are long and cold. So much to do before then!

Back Home

2010-10-05T15:34:00.008-05:00

We are back after nearly two weeks away visiting Texas and stops in-between. This was my first trip to what they call the "hill country" of Texas (we stayed in Kerrville) - and I was impressed. I think Steven was also impressed on the trip down, when we saw many rural homes that had Boer goats! Many more goats than we had! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop and talk with any fellow Boer goats owners in that area - but you can tell it is popular in Texas. (yes, we decided we would not be able to take any 'new' goats home in the backseat of our Chevy Impala).

(Speaking of popular - in a future post I want to address the proliferation of driveway gates in Texas - remind me to come back to that. I am a fence/gate person -- everywhere we go, I notice people's fences and gates. That is just my own interest.)

We experienced beautiful weather the whole time there. In fact, the only down side to our whole outing was when the car blew a head gasket and we had to have $1500 in repairs to get it home. But all is well now.

Leaving Texas, I took the long way home, and drove over to be able to meet in person my blog friend Susan of Queenacres. That was a great visit. I just love meeting new people; especially those who have much in common with us! Thank Susan, for the time and visit! I sure wish she were my neighbor up here - I could sure learn a lot from her!

Me with two of Susan's diary goats

I loved her two Anatolian Shepherds -- great dogs!

Steven was looking over their new crop of special chicks

Susan and I at her place! What a great visit!

Steven got to feeling a little under the weather on the way home, but we still made it through Stillwater and Perkins, OK to see cousins on both sides of my family. In order to keep this post from getting too long, I will post about those stops later this week.

Got back late on Saturday, and Steven spent Sunday checking out how everything fared while we were away. He lost his largest hen duck to a passing vehicle (*sadness*) but other than that, things were fine - his brother and grandmother took good care of the place.

He was amused recently to find that his bushel gourd plant had grown up the elm tree behind the house recently, and so now we have gourds hanging from the tree! :)

September

2010-09-20T16:02:00.004-05:00

Well, it has been a very very busy month, and I just haven't had time to update the blog as I had hoped. I'm going to try to get this quick post up before Sukkot.

Labor Day - Steven and I spent removing everything from the greenhouse and re-leveling the floor in preparation for using all the extra used quarry tile we had been given to cover the greenhouse floor. Once Steven gets it all laid out, he hopes to haul in sand to fill the cracks. However, gophers and moles are not making his life easy -- they keep burrowing under the green house floor and causing soft spots and raised areas. (have photos of this project when I get time to upload them)

We are needing rain quite badly.

We are anticipating our trip to Texas this week, and hope to also get a chance to meet some fellow bloggers during our drive. But so much to do to get prepared, and so little time!

Seckel pears are all gone, but picked quite a few of the full size (Dutchess or Bartlett, not sure which) yesterday to share with others. Was able to get quite a bit of the mowing done, but still not as much as I would like to. Wish I could get this tractor working again.

Fall Pears

2010-09-03T15:02:00.004-05:00

...pear puree', pear sauce, roasted pears, pear pie, spiced pears, canned pears, frozen pears, dehydrated pears.... sell some... give some away.......

This week has been all about pears. Our Seckel Pear tree has produced so heavily this year (so have our Dutchess and Bartlett full-size pear trees, but we haven't even got to those yet!) that we are overun with wonderful, sweet pears.

Steven, not wanting to wasting a single fallen fruit, have made every day this week a "pear processing" day. Trying to save every morsel for possible future or winter needs, we are coring pears and sometimes peeling pears, and storing pears in every conceivable way you can store them. We have to process quickly, because pears don't keep very long and ripen very quickly on the kitchen shelf.

Speaking of kitchen shelves -- every counter in my kitchen is currently covered in pears; and pears in sacks on the floor. We get one brown paper bag full of pears done and I realize he has brought in two more. I think there were six full bags on the floor when I went to bed last night.

I like pears. But not so much so this week.

Seckels are a wonderful pear, I have to admit. A mini dessert-type pear that sits prettily in the palm of your hand, it is a perfect snacking pear and much sweeter than any other kind.

But I'm almost to the point people get when the zucchini starts overtaking their garden at the end of each summer --- my neighbors my find gifts of pears on their front porches in the morning...

Yoder Heritage Day

2010-08-30T12:28:00.009-05:00

Had a great time this weekend at some of the Yoder Heritage Day events. I always love this annual gathering, the fourth weekend of August, to commemorate the founding of the small community of Yoder, Kansas. As they say on their little website,

"In 1906, A.M. Switzer plotted the little town of Yoder as a central point for surrounding Amish communities. Today, Yoder is still considered to be that. Though many businesses and homes have moved in around Yoder, the picturesque town has stayed the same size."

Bright and early we watched the teams of horse-drawn farm equipment plow up the sod in a demonstration on the south end of town. We toured the vendor booths, watched some of the childrens games, and most importantly, found a seat for the parade. Even though the parade doesn't start until 10:30, you had to find place by 9:30 or earlier if you hope to have a good view. So while I saved seats for Steven and for my sister, Steven roamed about checking out more activities. He purchased two wonderful old screw drivers from a junk/antique type booth, and picked up a few things we needed anyway at the Yoder Hardware Store.

Here are some of my favorite shots of that part of the morning:

After that, everyone walked to the north edge of town (town is only about one block long) and gathered around the arena for the buggy races and the horse events. There weren't as many Amish gentlemen entered in the buggy races this year than last, it seemed, but still a good show.

They had a horse/shooting showmanship display, and then started "horseback football" which pitted the local Amish young men and their horses, against a team from the Wild Mustang and Burro training program out of Hutchinson. Last I heard, the local gents and their very well trained buggy horses were quite a bit ahead in score in that game. (The game involved two teams of men on horseback, one small ball, and two barrels, one at each end of the arena. The goal was to get your ball down field and into the barrel to score. Much horse and men jostling occurred. They could pass it off to teammates, etc.)

There were many other events I would have loved to watch but we were limited on time. It was absolutely perfect, beautiful weather. Good crowd of people, of all types, from all over the country. I am always surprised how many use this as a "home-coming" event, and travel long distances to attend. The announcer for the parade as for a show of hands of people who traveled 100, 200 and over 300 miles to attend. It was impressive.

I also asked my sister to take a photo of my son Steven and I, so I would have a more recent picture to put up here on our profile.

Almost September!

2010-08-27T13:25:00.005-05:00

I am so thankful for the cooler weather we have been experiencing this week! It is amazing how that helps lift the spirits and gets everyone in the mood to get things done. The full moon at night has also been bright and encouraging.

After a couple of August weeks with very hot temperatures here in central Kansas, rain has cooled us off and it has been beautiful. Last night we went to the poultry auction (sold our oldest rooster, New Hampshire, and our white-n-brown drake duck) and it was gorgeous weather for the outdoor auction. We thought about buying a set of turkeys, but they weren't quite what we wanted. There was a good turnout, although many of the "regular" people didn't seem to be around.

There were also some "tourists" at the poultry auction. Yoder will be hosting their annual "Heritage Days" this weekend, and that brings in people from all over the country. Well, some of them were there early (snowbirds in big RVs) and they came over to watch the poultry auction. We got several chuckles out of things we would overhear them say to each other about the birds -- it was obvious many did not understand anything about poultry!

On the way home we stopped at a farm to purchase a few bales of prairie hay to keep for the goats during the worst parts of winter. Always good to have on hand, and great to find a local supplier that we drive by once a month on our way to the auction.

Steven says we are now pretty much "set for winter" -- meaning we really don't need to sell or buy anything more (livestock-wise), except for a new Boer buck. He is looking for a young buckling (doesn't have to be registered) or younger buck, but has not yet found exactly what he is seeking, as of yet. I think that about him -- he is picky enough to get quality, and patient enough to wait and keep looking until he finds exactly what is needed.

Preparation?

2010-08-16T09:44:00.007-05:00

I don't have any firewood cut.

That thought dawned on me yesterday when we finally got a break from the record-setting heat of last week, and enjoyed a gentle cool down with blessed rain. While traveling yesterday, I saw blackbirds flocking up, noticed the corn almost ready for harvest, heard locusts drone their evening chant, and saw young white-tail fawns in the pasture, which brought to mind upcoming dove and deer hunting seasons.

That's when it hit me -- it is almost fall, and I'm not ready. Not nearly ready.

It is hard to think about wood cutting in the heat of summer. It's hot work anyway, but who really even thinks about the coming winter when it is 105 outside? I know that last winter I told myself I would use summer time to go mark the best deadwood and get a supply cut up and put away for this winter. But somehow those plans never came about. Winter seemed like a long ways off.

We were blessed last year (our first year to heat with only wood heat) to have quite a bit of "pre-cut" wood in the back 40 -- some that had been cut by friend several years prior and left to lay -- all we have to do was pick it up and split it. But that supply is all gone.

Technically, with good planning, a person should be cutting two years in advance -- like I should be cutting now what we will use in the winter of 2012 -- to allow plenty of time for it to season and rest, even though I only cut deadwood. So I am not only months behind-- I am YEARS behind.

You probably think it odd that I talk about chainsawing wood - since I'm female, and have a grown son at home. But actually that is an 'understanding' we have around our place. I'm kind of the "bwah ha ha ha Tim Allen" type when it comes to power tools; while Steven detests power tools and likes to do as much as he can by old-fashioned hand tools (and he absolutely hates the noise of power tools). That is why I cut, and he splits. I still think I get the better end of the deal - especially because he still does all the gathering and stacking and loading and feeding the logs toward my saw -- all I have to do it stand in one place and cut. (he wears ears plugs when I do this). We have it going as a really good system, actually. Understand, he could use the chainsaw if necessary (and has). This is just the way we choose to do things.

I think this week I'd better make a priority of getting the saw out of the shed, taking it apart for maintenance and cleaning, a little tune-up, fresh fuel, sharpened chain, and get busy.

Summer Heat

2010-08-04T10:36:00.004-05:00

I feel I should post an update — after all, it is August already — but don't find that I have a lot going on to talk about lately. This is the part of the year where we simply endure the hottest days of summer (109 degrees yesterday) and keep the critters watered and don't get a whole lot more than that done.

Steven has been painting the garage (I will hunt for a pic to post) so it a stark bright white now, compared to our other buildings. Eventually they will all get a fresh coat.

The weeds and grass around the place are armpit high in places, due to my tractor and bush hog being inoperable at the moment. They will just have to stay like that for now — fall and winter will come soon enough, and that will knock everything down to where we can get a handle on it again. We aren't big on "appearances" or aesthetics (making this 'look pretty'), but more interested in using our time on improving the overall infrastructure of the farm, and on growing things that provide food for us year round.

We don't have air conditioning at home (never have). My mother pointed out last night that she has made it 72 summers without a/c, and she figures she came make it through this one and all the future ones, as well. In the evenings, as the shade begins to lengthen, we sit in chairs on the lawn and enjoy the breeze. While sitting there, (instead of in front of the TV like so many people stuck inside with a/c do) we can busy ourselves with shucking corn, or shelling beans, or eating melon, or doing nothing but talking to each other. I think it is a fine way to spend an evening.

County Fair

2010-07-19T13:38:00.006-05:00

I don't know what it is about County Fairs and State Fairs, but I love them. Part of it is tradition, part of it is mingling with others who also like "country" stuff, and part is just the fascination with all the entries and displays and offerings.

A couple weeks ago went spent an evening at the Sedgwick County Fair. It was a perfect evening for our visit - overcast to keep the heat down, not too windy, not too many people. We had a great time.

Of course we always go through all the barns an inspect every specimen of livestock and make comments ("not near as many sheep this year"). We admire the vegetable garden entries, and enjoy the Fair food (my favorite part!).

Below are a few photos I took that evening.

Waiting for their turn to show off.

Steven and his sister enjoying some fair food.

(I liked the red & white one)

(Well, she quit washing the sheep right as I snapped the photo. Oh well)

One of the pen full of bulls for the Bull Riders Blowout (which we did not see)

and

This little gal went home from the fair with us! This pullet was being shown by a young 4-Her, and Steven liked her coloring to fit with his breeding program. So we made a deal with the owner, and she became ours. She has a very tame temperament too! (Wish I had a photo of her standing up instead of lying down like this)

= = = = = = = =

This week at home, our young peach tree split in half under the weight of too many peaches on the branches! :( That was sad, but we saved all the peaches, and I will probably can them this week. We're not sure if the remainder of the tree will survive. Our pears and other fruit trees are also very heavy laden this year (it is a good fruit year) so we will do all we can to prop up their limbs or thin down the amount of fruit per limb so we don't lose any more branches.

It is extremely hot here this week - dangerous heat index warnings (like, around 110 degrees heat index). Not a lot we can do but take it easy and make sure all the animals are cool and well watered. Since we don't have air conditioning in our home, we have learned to endure the few days of summer that are almost unbearable like this; enjoy the other summer days that offer a breeze and a more modest warming to get things done, just as our forefathers did!

This week Steven also purchase a Black Copper Marans rooster that someone had listed on Craig's List. He is young, but very handsome. This all fits somehow into Steven's master plan for his poultry breeding project.

Photos to share

2010-07-06T12:10:00.017-05:00

Haven't updated in awhile, so thought I'd share some photos of what we have been busy with around the home place.

First, several of our chickens went broody around the same time, so Steven put about a dozen eggs under each. As we got into the very hot weather a week or so ago, the success rate wasn't as high, but we still got several chicks. These will probably be our last batches for this year. Steven will go through and select the ones that best fit with his breeding program, and sell any others at the poultry auction.

Also, we still have some of the older chicks, which are doing well (we already sold a few of these). The brownish/strange colored one is a cross between our Iowa Blue hens and our New Hampshire rooster.

Steven also did some maintenance on the windmill head. He makes it look like its so easy. (I should note there were also hornets up there who didn't appreciate his interference, and buzzed around, but nothing stung him)

Then this weekend, we got a deluge of rain that pretty much flooded the pasture. You can click on this link to see the whole album of photos of it.

The rain has made the weed-work in the garden quite taxing. That is why I'm not sharing any garden photos with you this time. *wink* Things are still growing, it just isn't pretty. However, our young peach tree is really loaded!

and Steven found a bird nest in the lower branches:

This week

2010-06-25T07:35:00.005-05:00

Canned up some gooseberry and some cherry pie filling - so maybe I can make pies in the winter this year.

Steven got the garage all patched up with new lumber in the weaker areas, and then sealed. Now it is ready to paint as soon as I can purchased paint. We are trying to do what we can to keep our old outbuildings from deteriorating any further by doing some maintenance/fix-up/restore on them now.

Been a very hot week, but that has helped with all around us who are cutting wheat. I think the wheat harvest is about all done for our area. I did some mowing last night, but it was really tall stuff out by the orchard trees, and I think it 'did a number' on my sinus', the way I'm feeling this morning. But it needed done.

Tonight is the poultry auction, of course.

Oh - and I forgot to add -- one of our hens hatched out a new batch of chicks yesterday! *smile* We have three hens 'setting' and this was one of the three. Should have more on the way soon.

Gooseberries

2010-06-17T08:07:00.009-05:00

It is June. That means gooseberry picking time!

We have both gooseberries and currants growing on the farm (thanks to my English-heritage grandmother who planted them years ago and allowed them to spread through the wooded areas). So every June the fruits begin to ripen, and it is a race to get them before the birds.

Gooseberries and Currants are somehow related, you can tell immediately by looking at both plants - the leaf shape and structure are the same, the conformity is very similar. But there is one big difference - gooseberry bushes are very very thorny, whereas our black currant plants are not. (We are not sure what variety/type of currants we have. They could be jostaberries) The gooseberries bloom with white flowers, the currant blossoms are bright yellow and smell very spicy.

Most of our currant bushes are planted up near the house, and frequently fall victim to wayward goats, who love the bushes (I'm sure they would decimate the gooseberry bushes as well, if they could get into the lower pasture where they are).

I actually don't care much for the sour taste of gooseberries (you have to add a lot of sugar to them when making a pie or jam) - however, my son loves them. (He likes more sweet-tart plants, like rhubarb and gooseberry). It is somewhat a family tradition in our household to go gooseberry picking at least once per year. It takes the full year to get over remembering how painful the previous picking episode was. *smile*

So as Steven, Amanda and I picked and talked, you could often hear "Ow!" "Ouch!" "Ooooo" and we weaved our fingertips between the thorny branches to try to grab the berries. This is not an easy task. Yes, I have tried it with gloves on, but you need the nimbleness and dexterity of a gloveless hand to have success. The berries hide in the underside of each branch and are actually quite hard to spot at first, but as you gently find a thornless spot on the branch to hold and lift to look underneath, you see loads of gooseberries ready to pick. This year has proven to be an especially bountiful year for everything fruit-bearing at the farm (peaches, berries, pears, etc. - all bloomed heavy and are loaded with fruit). We didn't get very far through the half-mile hedgerow where the bushes reside down in the shade of the osage orange trees, before our buckets were filling up fast, and our backs were aching from bending over to pick.

After nightfall, Steven sat in the living room removing the tips and tails (bits of stem on either end of the berry).

Tonight, I suppose, I will bake a pie.

Bee Swarm

2010-06-16T13:08:00.004-05:00

Well, late last week our bees decided to break off some to begin a new colony (swarm) and we weren't really prepared.

And now we know that Steven definitely is not allergic to bee stings.

When a hive population starts to grow beyond the capacity of your hive box, bees will choose to raise up a new queen, and the new queen and a portion of the bees will break off (swarm out) to go find a new place to live. It is bee population control.

It is also a great way to get a new hive. If you are prepared, have another hive ready, you can help them with the move, or you can capture them after they swarm and 'show' them their new home.

We weren't prepared for them to swarm because when we checked them in April, the hive numbers seemed small. They must have had a very good spring.

They swarmed last week - gathered first in a tree just a few feet from the hive, but very high up in a locust tree. This is where Steven first saw them. Thinking perhaps he could just drop the swarm in temporary box, he got out the extension ladder, extended it all the way out (it still didn't reach the swarm). And prepared to climb to get 'his bees."

He chose, for some yet unknown reason (probably the heat) to not wear any bee gear. At all. Gloves, mask, suit, etc. Nada. After all, we've had bees two years and he hadn't yet been stung even once. They seemed very cooperative in our little hive.

Well he made it up the tree (he can climb better than a monkey) and got to the swarm. Snipped off the branch to drop the swarm into the big bucket he had taken up to capture it. That's when the trouble started.

After the bees began physically protesting all over his face and upper body, his attempts to put the lid on the bucket failed. So he simply dropped the bucket (bees and all) to the ground; (it only stunned them); jumped to the ground, and went to the house. Went out later to retrieve his glasses, his bucket, his ladder, and his dignity. LOL Bees had long since found some other place to go hang out.

He picked stingers out of his skin most of that day. Next day he ran a low-grade fever (probably from the sheer number of stings) and felt pretty crummy. Day after that he broke out in a red rash all over. But the following day all was back to normal. His body successful in warding off the attack.

So the swarm was missed this time. Learning experience for next time. Would be nice to capture a swarm and put a new hive out closer to the orchard.

I also told his grandmother that I need to buy her a video camera for any future episodes like this. I would love to have seen this one in replay.

The List

2010-06-09T14:59:00.007-05:00

On our home computer, we have a Microsoft Word document that opens every time we boot up. I purposefully saved the file into startup for just that reason. As soon as we turn on the computer, before we get sidetracked by Facebook and forums and other peoples' wonderful blogs -- we see our farm "to do" list.

The List has morphed some over time, but here is what I like best about it: nothing ever falls off the list. Originally it was a simple reminder list of some things that needed doing. To that we sporadically added some almost wish-list types of things that need to be done, but are bigger and need more money. Fifteen items, then 20, then more... but early on, I set the list standard by deciding to never remove items from the list. When we accomplish a listed task, we simply use the ~~strikethrough~~ font to show it as done.

Why is this important? Because work on a farm is never done. And sometimes you can get very overwhelmed with the feeling of "so much to do!" that you forget to step back for a moment and see how far you have come, and how much really has been accomplished.

After awhile, the list was a random jumble of strike-through lines and non-striked, so I began making the "to do" ones in red font, and the completed, striked-through in black. This helped us see at a glance what the possibilities were for the day.

The List has big projects and small ones. Ones that will take minutes and ones that will take months. "Mulching the potato patch" to "building a new lean-to shed".

Currently, there is around 170 items on the list - only about 30 or so are in red. This makes me feel good. I can look at not only what lies ahead, and the potential, but also how far we've come.

May photos

2010-05-25T13:33:00.015-05:00

This past weekend one of our Iowa Blue hens that has been setting hatched out a few chicks. This was a breeding-cross that Steven specifically planned for certain traits he wants in the new chicks. He will keep the ones that meet the criteria he has in mind, and sell the others:

Meanwhile, over in the duck pen, mama ducks eggs are due to hatch today. But nest-sharing kittens keep eating up her food (who knew cats would eat grain?) and playing right in front of mama duck. We keep moving them; they keep coming back into the pen.

But can you get upset with kittens that are just so darn cute?

Our goats and other batch of ducklings are also doing well.

Under the watchful eyes of our guardians, Bella and Lilly

and our garden is doing well -- we have receive sizable amounts of rain this week for it

(Dear God, you can stop the rain for a few days now, please.
We thank you for your answer to our prayers for rain when it was so dry)

This was across the west sky this morning as the sun rose on the east horizon and the rest of the sky was drenched with rain.

Birds of a Feather...

2010-05-19T08:45:00.004-05:00

So we had a very peculiar thing happen on the farm this week.

For several weeks, a mama duck has been setting on a nest inside the secure duck pen -- a nest Steven created out of a half-drum-barrel. Her eggs are about ready to hatch into little ducklings sometime next week.

Over the past few weeks, we have had something on the farm stalking and killing baby kittens at night (most of our cats are somewhat feral barn cats, used only for rodent control, so that is not necessarily a big loss). However, our very favorite and best cat, Peggy Sue, had her very healthy kittens under the wheelbarrow in the garden.

Sometime over the weekend, though, apparently something spooked Peggy Sue into thinking her kittens were in danger - so she move them to the most secure place this intelligent cat could find -- into the duck nest!

Now understand, Peggy Sue is also our best "hunter-cat" - and we often have to watch her away from any baby chicks and ducks on the place. So who knows what is going to happen next week when Mama duck's eggs start to pip out? We have tried to convince Peggy Sue to move her babies to other locations, but she consistently moves them back.

What is baffling to me is how she got Mama Duck to allow her to "nest" next to her. Mama Duck won't even let us get within three feet of her nest without having a fit.

We should have a very interesting time next week! :)

(you can click on the photo to see it larger)

Spring planting and blooming

2010-04-23T16:07:00.012-05:00

I haven't had much time to post any news on all the things keeping us busy (and there is LOTS) - so for a quick post, I will upload several recent photos of spring at the farm. In the meantime, just know we are always somewhere planting, mowing, cleaning, painting, working -- and waiting on rain!

My sister holding one of our new baby goats - this one is a real cutie!

Uncle Paul and Steven working on the tractor's starter.

I love the crabapple tree in full bloom. It is a glorious display!

The goats are loving the spring grasses.

Fruit trees are blooming! (this is an old pear tree)

We put a new top box on the beehive and checked on the bees.

The currant bushes all bloomed, and smelled wonderfully spicy!

Steven working in the greenhouse. Here he is starting slips of arborvitae
so he can plant a windbreak of them north of the house.

Hope you are having a wonderful spring!

New Goats

2010-04-02T08:27:00.005-05:00

We made a trip about a week ago up to the Emporia area to take a look at several goats a nice man up there had posted for sale. Some of his stock was from the Kensing Spanish line, and Steven had read quite a bit about that breed, and had thought about incorporating some of that blood line in his current Boer herd.

However, after seeing the Spanish goats, he was surprised at how small in size that breed is, so he decided to not purchase the ones with Spanish blood. But while there, he did see a couple of mixed-breed girls he felt would make good additions to our herd. (probably Kiko and other blood lines) Plus, there was a good chance they were already bred, and that made the price more than reasonable.

Well, yesterday one of the two does had her kid! Steven said he could tell all day she was going into labor because she kept separating herself from the rest of the herd, and calling out. She gave birth to a very cute little white w/red splotches kid. The Mama is very shy and skittish, so we didn't get close enough yesterday to determine if the new baby is male or female - Steven will probably let me know that today. Did get her rounded up into the smaller pen and barn, so she can have her own space for awhile.

The other doe we bought will probably also kid soon.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo - it was taken with my cell phone very late in the evening, with limited lighting in the barn.

(Addendum! -- Steven just called to tell me that the other doe had her babies this morning - twins. Gender not yet determined. One is "mostly black" and the other is "colored like a Boer but with a black head". And he has determined that this baby shown above, born yesterday, is a female.) :)

Special Time

2010-03-31T09:12:00.002-05:00

May you find God's blessings during this wonderful Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread season.

First seeds in the ground!

2010-03-15T13:56:00.005-05:00

Yay! There is almost no better feeling than churning up the soil in the spring, smelling the newness of it, seeing the dark, richness that reminds me of ground coffee. We anticipate all winter long for the opportunity to do this, and finally this weekend we could!

While we got plenty hot and sweaty getting the garden cleaned up, tilled and ready, sticking a thermometer in the ground said the soil was still only 49 degrees -- too cold for much to germinate yet. Even so, we put in our onion sets and planted peas -- Steven will get the lettuce planted later this week, but at least our garden season is off and running!

(not to distract any from the wonderful plants Steven has already started indoors under his grow lights -- but it isn't the same as when we break garden ground).

There was a elm tree, about 20 years old or so, that had been taking over the west edge of the garden, so Steven girdled it a couple years ago to kill it; and this weekend, we took it down, as well. We left enough of the stump to make a nice resting stool for the gardener. It was really very pretty wood, for elm.

The cut is slightly darker on the one side because I began the cut with my chain saw, but ended up finishing most of the cut through with our two-man cross cut saw, by hand, to make it smoother and more level.

(sorry these photos aren't all that great - took most of them with my phone rather than run back inside and get a camera!)

Spring Goats

2010-03-11T13:57:00.005-06:00

Last Friday (March 5th) we had some more kids born. Our last two nannies both gave birth about the same time in the early morning. However, one doe lost hers (stillborn) while the other had a live birth of a little male (buckling). Then both girls proceeded to spend all weekend fighting over who the live baby belonged to! (Steven got to play King Solomon). We really don't know for sure which one had the successful birth, since they were all the in barn together. However, they seemed to have settled on "sharing" the little boy, and he gets the best end of the deal by nursing on both mamas.

Steven with two kids - one male, one female, born a week apart.

Steven's herd really won't increase in quantity this year -- because we plan to butcher our oldest doe for our freezer; and we plan to either sell or butcher our buck, and get new buck blood for our next 2011 season of kids.

Our buck is for sale now (or we might butcher him).
He was born here last February, 2009.
He's been a great Billy - gave us good kids,
and has a good temperament for a buck.

New Doeling

2010-03-03T13:35:00.004-06:00

Well, the first of our three expectant mama goats gave birth this past weekend. Actually, first to kid was our smallest doe. But she seemed to do fine. When Steven went out to the barn to check the girls early Saturday morning, this mama had just given birth. (Steven had rightly said on Friday night that this doe seemed very close to giving birth - probably within 24 hours). She actually had one male and one female (I was very surprised she was big enough to carry two!) but the male was stillborn.

However, the new little doeling is doing quite well. We watched them closely the first day, as it was this doe's first time as a mama, and at times she seemed a bit confused about what she should do. But finally they got the nursing thing going and baby girl has done quite well since then.

(there is audio with this, so turn up your speakers to hear her!)

The other two Does are still leaving us waiting -- Steven keeps a close eye on them in case they should need any help when the time comes.

Now I'm working on getting decent photos of our Billy goat in order to advertise him for sale. He's a great Billy, but related to these does, and we need some new blood. The kids born this spring show he is fertile and able to "do his job" and I hope someone will want him for their own breeding buck. He's a bit smaller than some bucks (he is not a year old yet) but I am sure he will get as big as his daddy was. Plus he has a lot better temperament so far.

Auction Day

2010-02-09T15:15:00.005-06:00

This past week we spent a day at a farm auction.

This one was kind of unique, one of those once-in-a-lifetime chances, as the family selling out were old order Amish farmers. They planned to move back east somewhere (Iowa or Ohio, etc.)

I realized, while walking around their place, that this auction would be much like one if we were to ever (God forbid!) sell out. Generations and years of accumulated stuff, from antiques to knick-knacks to junk, stuff buried out in the trees, rusty machinery, etc. It was grand.

We picked up a few small items at the sale. The place was absolutely PACKED with people - hundreds of people tromping down this poor family's place -- until it was a hog-wallow muddy mess. Steven wanted some special items-- a hand-crank seed sorter and an old cast iron forge with hand-cranked bellows. But both items went too high -- to the out of state antique dealers who were there and drove up prices on everything.

I tried to stay back in this photo and not get any of the Amish in it,
since they prefer to not have their photo taken.
Doesn't really show just how many hundreds of people were there.
It was like a Carhartt coverall convention!

Steven (left) and Mickey (a neighbor and friend) look over the old forge
and some of the other equipment offered. The wagon there in
the background went for about $4000.

We were there from 8:30 am to after 5 pm -- finally had to get back home to get firewood cut for the forecasted storm. And they weren't done yet!

More Snow

2010-02-05T15:39:00.007-06:00

It certainly has been a snowy winter. Reminds me more of the winters I remember as a child than the ones we have had the past few years. In the past month, as well, we've had more foggy days than I can ever recall -- makes us feel like we are living in London instead of Kansas. Kansas is supposed to have wind, which blows fog away. Not lately.

Late last week we got another 7-8 inches of snow. It was beautiful, I have to admit. Although I'd rather not drive in it, and cutting and hauling in more firewood last weekend pretty much did my body in for the week.

We broke down and purchased some alfalfa hay from a neighbor for the goats, rather than making them dig through the snow for grass, to keep them on our pasture-only management program. Besides, the three gals are pregnant mama goats, and we want their kids (which should arrive mid-February) to come out healthy.

As you can see, they couldn't even let us set the bales down for a minute to open the gate to the storage area. The buck jumped up on top of one of the bales, which was already precarioiusly perched on top of a plastic bucket. They munched away, not waiting for us to cut the wire and dole it out properly to their hay area.

I'm tired of snow now. Ready for spring. Steven has already ordered all his garden seeds, got the seeds he saved ready, and has seedlings started indoors. He is browsing his Stark Bros. catalog for his next fruit tree purchases. We have spring fever full blown.

Checking the orchard trees planted last year

Lilly and Bella are glad to see us out and about.

Winter time

2010-01-12T14:41:00.006-06:00

It's been a rough winter, overall -- with temps much colder than we've been spoiled with the past few years. Since this is our first year trying to make it through with only wood heat, it has definitely been a learning and growing experience.

After much effort and modifications, we finally got the wood stove fully in place and operational in late October, I think. Then we began the learning curve of building fires just properly, trying to control or create updraft, etc. Since we have a stove with a 10" vent, and we funnel it down to a 4" chimney liner, it has been a real challenge.

I might just review all the steps we went through all of last year to make this happen:

Purchased used Franklin Wood Stove
Found someone giving away used floor quarry tiles
Re-arranged living room to make room for stove.
Ripped back carpet and underlying linoleum in wood stove area of living room.
Helped good friend lay tile in the area
Ripped paneling off East living room wall
Cleaned out old brick chimney
Repaired/mortared loose bricks in chimney
Took out chimney liner, repaired, added to, replaced and cemented
Took many layers old wallpaper off east wall, down to old plaster
Replastered both wall and chimney exterior, multiple coats
Cement board over old furnace air intake
Stove board installed on back wall
Adapted stove vent from 10" to 4" to work with chimney

It was a months-long project. But so far the wood stove has provided us with warmth sufficient for the below-zero wind chills we had over multiple days. Only this week did we begin to have issues - we believe some creosote was partially plugging our already-constricted vent, causing much more smoke inside the house than should be. This should be resolved this week, as we finally get temperatures warm enough that we can clear out the fire for awhile.

Been doing lots of cutting and splitting of wood lately.

Much else has happened in the two months since I last posted. More than I can list. Spent two weeks in Branson, MO. Had a good Thanksgiving meal with family at the farm. Had a visit from my daughter's boyfriend over school break, and we all visited the Cosmosphere, among other things.

Right now, we're just counting the days until spring. Browsing the seed catalogs, waiting for the ground to thaw...

Bella and Lilly

Slacker

2009-10-15T10:40:00.004-05:00

I know, it's been OVER a month since I last made a blog post. I'm a slacker.

It is amazing how much I feel like I can't post since my digital camera broke. I just don't like to write without photos to share.

Here are the highlights of the last month:
1) 10 days in Branson, MO -- very enjoyable, even though it rained almost every day and was cool.
2) Broken hot water pipe at home under the laundry room floor. We are STILL working on it. Have been without hot water now since October 1. :(
3) Another new dog, to keep Lilly company -- Bella is part Great Pyrenees and part St. Bernard. She is wonderful and has an awesome temperament. Now we are just working on getting Lilly to accept her into the family. Lilly is so protective (which is exactly what she is supposed to do!)
4) Wood Stove project still not totally done yet. Relying on a borrowing electric room-heater to keep the chill off at nights until we get this fully installed.
5) 14 straight days of below-normal temperatures for this area, overcast and drizzle and/or rain. I'm in sore need of sunlight!

Tile is Done!

2009-09-16T13:02:00.005-05:00

With the help of our good friend Kurt at KAP Tile (actually he did ALL the work), we have the tile laid in the main room of the house to prepare for the wood stove installation.

We have been blessed through this process in many ways: 1) having a good friend like Kurt willing to take on our small project and tutor us through it. 2) receiving the actual quarry tile free from someone on Craig's list who no longer wanted it (it is used tile). Both huge costs savings that made the otherwise impossible project possible for us.

When we pulled up the carpet in this area of the main room, we first found this very interesting linoleum over the wood floor. From the outstandingly large paisley pattern, I'm going to guess it is from the mid-1930s. Luckily, it was not glued down, so could be removed easily. Almost hated to, though. It was like an antique. :)

So now the tile is done (yes, I know from the photos that I need to repaint my baseboard and stuff -- one step at a time!) Next on the project is to tear out that paneling on the wall behind and begin working on the chimney, and figuring out how to get the stove pipe installed properly.

All advice from friends welcome!

The Goats let the Pigeons out

2009-08-31T10:48:00.004-05:00

.. that is the line my son used on his Facebook status, and it is just as hilarious as it sounds.

His pigeon-breeding aviary is in the corner of the goat barn. Well, one day late last week, the goats, (knowing Steven feeds the pigeons grain) figured a way to hook their horns around the wires holding the door shut on the aviary, and rip it open and get inside.

This, of course, scared the pigeons clean out. Except for the one mama pigeon who is nesting on an egg and refused to leave her nest (thank goodness).

Since originally they stayed in the barn, Steven was able to capture some with a net and put them back in the aviary. But one young bird soared out of the barn and into the tree tops and went AWOL for a few days. We were sure she'd been eaten by a hawk or something.

Late Saturday, she came back to the area, and we hoped she would go inside the barn at nightfall. However, when we returned home after dark, she was roosting on the top of the barn, outside. Steven climbed up there at 11 PM at night -- flashlight in one hand, net in the other. He was able to capture her, but then was faced with how to get off the very dew-wet, slick metal barn roof, without a light, as both hands were busy holding the bird. Luckily, I began to wonder what was taking so long and went to check, so was able to be an couple extra pairs of hands so we could get both bird and man off the rooftop safely.

It was urgent we get them captured and back in, because tomorrow (in Kansas) begins dove-hunting season. I doubt the hunters in this area would be able to tell the difference between a mourning dove and loose pigeon during the wee hunting hours of the morning.

Wood Stove

2009-08-27T13:16:00.011-05:00

We have a Franklin Wood Stove!

[CRAIG-LISTERS: QUIT USING MY PHOTO ABOVE FOR YOUR ADS or I'll TAKE IT DOWN!! THIS IS MY STOVE!]

As some of you know, we have been pushing hard to get our house off propane heat and focus on wood heat only, especially after last year spending several thousand dollars which just barely kept the house at bearable warmth (65 or less) during the winter.

So we have been searching ads, both online and off, for some time looking for a good used woodstove that would suit our needs, was within our budget, the right size for our space, etc. We feel this was a real God-send that we happened across this ad, and it ended up being only 8 miles from our house! (I didn't like the idea of taking the old farm truck many miles away to haul something like this).

The people selling it are going to use a wood pellet stove instead. We wanted a true wood stove, because we have access to so much free dead wood here. The boys did a great job of getting the heavy stove onto and off of the truck. It's currently in the garage, still waiting for us to get the tile laid on the floor in the living room where it will reside. We must hustle on this, as the nights are turning cooler, and we refused to use our furnace even one more day - in fact, we plan to remove the furnace entirely.

As our two baby Cayuga ducks have grown so fast and so large that you can barely tell which ones are baby and which are mama, we have also welcomed in 10 new baby mixed-breed ducks (Mallard-type) from our tan duck. The baby chicks I showed early and now sleek young pullets (and cockerels) and I need to post new photos of them. (I have not yet fixed my camera, but was able to pull these photos off the memory card with the use of card reader).

I'll end with a photo of our best hunter/outdoor cat -- Peggy Sue -- sitting pretty.

Summer is winding down

2009-08-19T08:40:00.005-05:00

Last week, my sons worked hard on getting the greenhouse erected.

Still a few roof panels to set into place and fasten, and extra reinforcement to add all the way around. This photo doesn't really do it justice, as to how large this building is. Again, we are very blessed to have received it, and Steven did an excellent job of getting it put together solidly. I have no idea what all he will use it for just yet, but I'm sure he's making plans. (Personally, I will be glad to get his bedding plants off the south porch each spring, and into a proper greenhouse!)

David isn't able to help Steven finish the work this week, as he just had oral surgery and will be laid up a few days. So Steven and I will have to finish it up ourselves (probably mostly just Steven). David will probably also be going home to McPherson as soon as he is well enough.

In other news -- our tan duck hatched her chicks! Seven little ones so far, I think. I only have a photo of one, because she is very possessive of her nest, and keeps them close under her at this point.

And on Sunday, we traveled to get our new livestock guard dog. She is turning out to be a real sweetie! Lilly is half Anatolian Shepherd and half Great Pyrenees. Steven has been working with her daily to teach her what is expected, and walking the property with her so she will know her boundaries. She seems to have a great personality and I'm sure she will be great asset to the farm. She is only about 8 months old, so still has more growing to do. (She is on a chain in this pic only because she's new to the place, so we pen her temporarily when we are not out with her to keep and eye on her and train her about where she can and can't go).

meet Lilly

This Saturday is Yoder Heritage Day, so we are looking forward to the activities there again this year. We've had several good rains this week, making August much greener than in past years, and meaning I need to get the mowers back out!

End of July

2009-08-12T08:07:00.008-05:00

Well, I had hoped dearly to be able to post up photos of the greenhouse progress, however, my digital camera decided to just totally die. This is going to make photos for the blog (going forward) much harder to acquire and load. I will fiddle with it more tonight and see if I can get it fixed, or if a new one is in order.

Here is the last photo taken during the end of July on our greenhouse project

The contraption in the center is a "water level" devised by Uncle Paul. That man is absolutely amazing. He is 91 years old and he knows how to do everything the "old" way by hand. Steven loves learning from him. Uncle Paul came out to help Steven level and square the base of 4x4s we put down for the greenhouse. This water level helped them get it level all the way around. I don't know how it works, as I didn't get to witness this part. The greenhouse is approx. 12 ft. x 21 ft. in size.

We consider ourselves very blessed to have been given this used greenhouse by someone who didn't want it anymore. It was a lot of work getting it dismantled after it had been in the former location for probably 30 years, and it will be a lot of work getting it back up. But it will be wonderful to have it.

A few other photos to share until I get a chance to update again:

Onions from the garden. When we harvest, I braid them like this, so we can hang them in the shed to dry. They keep much better this way and don't sprout too early. We kept several through all winter in these braids.

Our billy goat kid is really growing.
He is going to be a very fine buck.
Now Steven just needs to decide if he is keeping him,
or selling him.

This little calf is not ours -- he is one of the resident herd from our leasee. But I thought this was a cute photo. I'm sure they are going to cull him/her out though, as they raise only purebred black Angus, and this little one was apparently the product of an errant neighboring Limousin bull. Wish I could purchase this one.. even if just for locker beef.

In other news, the baby ducklings are out most all day during the day now, really growing big. The baby chicks are getting their feathers in and we let them out for short periods of the day -- still too risky to have them out as much as the older chickens. They sure are a variety of colors from Steven's genetic-cross program. I will try to post photos when I can.

And Happy Birthday to two of my three kids this week -- my younger son's birthday was yesterday, and my daughter's is tomorrow. It will be a busy week!

Goat Stew

2009-07-16T07:39:00.003-05:00

Last Friday morning, while Steven was out in the garden, we got a call from a neighbor that said the goats were out, on the road, and one of them had been hit by a passing truck.

Steven hurried out there to find his mamma doe (although all her kids are mostly grown now) had been recently killed by a vehicle, so he immediately brought her up to the house (after getting the rest of them back in), field dressed her, skinned her out, and began butchering up the meat for the freezer.

On the one hand, she was one we had strongly consider butchering anyway for a number of reasons (bad temperament, hoof problems, udder problems) but also she had been our best bearer of kids. This incident, however, made up our minds for us. We just didn't plan to butcher on one of the hottest days of the year. I'm proud of Steven for spending his entire day on this project, especially when he found all my kitchen knives as lacking in sharpness, and ended up butchering the entire carcass with his pocket knife.

Put some of the goat meat in the slow cooker on Sunday night, and we've been enjoying goat stew all week -- joined in the pot by our wonderful garden offerings of potatoes, onions, garlic, sage, tomatoes, squash and whatever else we can find to throw into the pot.

I still have much of the meat in the fridge to grind up into burgers. Plus we gave some of it to my other two kids when they were home visiting for the weekend, and they reported enjoying it much when they fixed it up at their place.

In other news, we have two new ducklings (I will post photos later) and our 11 chicks are doing quite well. We are badly in need of a rain, so keep us in your prayers for that. It has rained all around us this week, but it isn't falling on our area of the county. The garden is struggling to do its best regardless. We had our hottest day of the past 3 years, at 107, this past Monday, but now it has cooled down some, and we're hopefully the rain clouds will come by our place tonight.

Happy Independence Day!

2009-07-03T13:09:00.011-05:00

Well, there has been so much going on lately -- I simply haven't had time to try to get a new post up here on the blog. Summer is short when it is filled with projects!

However, I tried to remember to take photos as the days passed, so I could eventually get them up here to update all my friends:

First, after an eternity of waiting on her nest, one of our broody ducks hatched a chick -- a chicken chick! We knew the duck eggs under her weren't fertile, so we snuck a couple of chicken eggs into the nest while she was up drinking, so that something would hatch for her.

Mama duck with baby chicken. The chick is standing off on the edge of the nest because it was so very hot this day.

Once the chick was hatched, we took the chick away to the brooder, and eventually, after a couple more days, took the rest of the eggs away from the duck. Broody duck hens are so funny-acting, they are hilarious. They hunch down and squawk constantly (when up, not when on the nest) and made a huge dash just to get up to get feed and water. I should post a video.

This chick was from our sole California White hen (the only white bird we have). It's papa, however, is a New Hampshire.

After a few more days, the broody hen we had in the chicken house hatched out 11 chicks. These are from an assortment of eggs, both from the older RIR hens, the hens from last year which are RIR/New Hamp cross, and from the California White (crossing with the New Hamp). So she got a variety of colors. And after three or four days in the brooder all by itself, the duck-hatch chick was glad to be put in with a "family".

The little chick standing outside the nest is the duck-hatched one from above, a couple days older than the hen-hatched chicks. This photo was actually taken before all of them hatched out, so the rest are less than one day old here. We keep this group in a approx. 3' x 4' enclosure in the chicken house itself, encased in chicken wire, so the cats don't bother the chicks until they are older.

Here are some of the rest of our birds, up on the roost for the evening. Noticed how the California White hen stays off to herself at the top, preferring to roost on the ledge of the window or door instead of on the roost!

* * *

Our Iowa Blue pullets are coming along extremely well! They are a much lighter breed than our RIRs, and much more "flighty" but they are very good grazers/scavengers, and tend to stay out of the chicken house as long as possible in the evenings before roosting. They love being out and about. They are also much much quieter than the RIR breed. The photos I have of them are not very good, but give you an idea as to their size:

The garden is coming along well. I don't have any really good photos of it to share, but will post this one taken from the opposite direction of all the other photos I have posted of it so far.

Steven is trying some cool new ideas for the garden layout, putting a few stalks of corn in each hill of either squash, melons, or cucumbers, etc. Lots of companion planting. We have harvested onions, strawberries, peas, green beans, and a few tomatoes.

During the hot streak we had of 7 days around or over 100 degrees (it was miserable) Steven spent a good deal of his time trying to keep everything watered and cooled off. That included a lot of work on getting the windmill going, because the cattle herd (part of our land is leased to a cattle ranch) drinks the entire stock tank down so fast on hot days!

I almost forgot! We did finally obtained a nice Cayuga type drake:

He does have a crest, which we don't care for, but we can breed that out of our flock. Our Cayuga hens seem to like him. :) So now we've gone from no drakes (in May) to three drakes, so we will probably be eating a couple of them soon. (the other two were not Cayuga type, so weren't exactly what we wanting for breeding).

Well, we plan to have company tomorrow evening for the 4th of July. Mostly family, but also some friends, over for a cookout of hamburgers, hot dogs and a good game of softball. Should be a blast. Hope everyone that reads this has a blessed and safe holiday.

It's That Time of Year

2009-05-21T14:16:00.003-05:00

(click for larger view)

..the sweet fragrances of the blossoms of locust trees fill the air all around our farm. I love it when the locust bloom. So do the bees!

Have spent much of this week rototilling under cover-crop on the north half of the main garden, getting it ready to plant. Now that the rains has stopped, there is so much for Steven to plant, and in so little time! (Yet, rains are predicted again before the end of Memorial Day weekend)

This will probably be my last update post until I return from Pennsylvania. I wish you all a blessed growing season!

May update

2009-05-15T15:07:00.011-05:00

I can't believe it has been half a month since I updated here.

That is just indicative of how busy this time of year is for us on the farm. In another week, I will also be leaving for a one-week road trip, so I don't know that I will have anything to update until mid-June after this.

Steven spent several days this week adding on to his pigeon area. In addition to the pigeon loft he already had, now he has built a Fly Cage, taking up about 1/6th of the goat barn. This will allow the pigeons out to exercise their wings and fly about some, without having to let them totally out to fly away and not come back. (Currently the ladder in there is for them to perch on until he gets some type of perch or rooster built for them to hang around on).

(His new pigeon pair, top, and whenever he checks on them,
the goats come into the barn asking for his attention.)

The garden is coming right along. This isn't a great picture of it, but you can compare it to the earlier spring photo.

The yellowish-brown area in the center of the garden is where Steven just cut his hay crop, and put that hay up in the barn. Now it is ready to till and plant. We still have much to plant, between the continual rains we have been getting. The tall weeds in the foreground are curly dock - which Steven will also cut to put in in the barn for winter feed, once their heads seed out.

Ah - the legacy of my grandmother's flowers. I love the iris gardens my grandmother planted in various places around the farm, and they are begining their beautiful blooming now. It is a great legacy that she left behind.

My separate potato garden is coming right along
(yes, I know I need to weed it).

In the incubator, Steven has placed a new batch of chicken eggs. Those should hatch by the end of May. His Iowa Blue chicks are growing rapidly -- he takes them out to the garden with him (in the cage) when he is working out there - to allow them to get sunlight, fresh air, and peck around a bit.

Oh! and good news! We have been given a greenhouse! It's huge (21 x 12) - so now we are just trying to figure out the logistics of how to take it down from it's present location and get it moved to the farm.

New Chicks

2009-05-01T14:04:00.005-05:00

Yesterday Steven received the new Iowa Blue chicks he ordered. This is part of his long-term plan for his chicken breeding program, as this somewhat rare breed will introduce the birchen gene into his flock.

Unfortunately, it looks like none of our duck eggs (in the incubator for the last month) are going to hatch. We knew it was a long-shot, but worth a try.

Also, it's that time of year. Our Leasee put his cattle into our pastures. I have to admit with everything so green, it does make for a pretty picture out our back gate:

I Think That I Shall Never See......

2009-04-28T14:42:00.015-05:00

... a tree as lovely at this one! :)

This is our Seckel pear tree -- one that rarely ever produces much fruit (except last year!). However, it is such a gorgeous tree in form, leaf and bloom that we just enjoy gazing at it. And to think that the original Seckel pear at this site was cut down by my grandfather for being "unproductive" and this wonderful specimen valiantly grew back from the root. It deserves the spotlight.

Thought I would just post up some random shots I took over the last week around the garden and farm, to celebrate spring and upcoming summer. (You can click on any of these photos to see them larger in the window)

Our new bees are making themselves at home, and seeming to thrive well in the new hive. (the duct tape on the hive is from when we transported it - to help the boxes hold together).

Horseradish

our Asparagus line

This is turnips that Steven is letting go to seed, so we can have our own seed. This takes quite a bit of patience, because you have to let the turnips fully grow, leave them in the ground over the entire winter, and wait to see which ones survive and send up these blooms in the spring, then wait for the seed. It's almost a two-year process.

Strawberries are blooming!

Rhubarb

Woad

Steven's fledgling fruit trees -- I think he has over 10 new trees in the orchard area.

Potatoes are peeking through!

One of our Cayuga hens. Still looking for a new drake.

Alas, our pigeons have flown the coop. We thought perhaps they had become used to the feed enough that they would stay, but such was not the case. So we have plans for new pigeons for the loft, as well.

Pigeon Loft

2009-04-20T13:51:00.007-05:00

Steven was able to finish his pigeon loft last week, so his poor birds could get out of their little cages and have some room to spread their wings.

They seem to thoroughly enjoy it. They both are very docile birds, and we still haven't determined gender for sure; but they are nice to have around.

He allows them outside during the day -- but they never stray far from the barn (thankfully). They know where their food is! And we can shut them up inside the loft if we choose to -- which we will probably do this fall when dove-hunting season is in full swing around here.

For now, though, they seem happy to just fly out to the roof of the barn and perch there to look around. Too bad we don't have a cupola on the old pole shed!

Steven also still has 47 duck eggs in the incubator. Another week or more before we know if we will get any ducklings. What would we do if all 47 eggs hatched??? I suppose some would go to the poultry auction.

The Bee Cut-Out

2009-04-14T15:16:00.005-05:00

Okay, we finally did it!

This past weekend, in the heavy drizzle/sometimes soaking rain, we got our honey bees. :)

Friends had a hive of bees which had taken up residence in the basement window well of their brick home, behind a piece of plywood covering. These bees had been there probably at least five years or more - it was a very well-developed hive.

We have been working toward the goal of getting these bees since late last summer - up to this point the weather was never right for the bees to survive the move. We aren't really sure it was right this time either - we did lose a lot of bees to the rain in the process.

However, the rain also seemed to help us control the bees quite a bit. Because it was a heavy mist, they really couldn't sting us very well - it was all they could do to voice their buzzing protests. Steven and I were both surrounded with swarms of them at many various times, but neither of us got stung, that we noticed.

We had to improvise some, because we really planned on leaving our hive bodies on the truck and using the truck tailgate as a work surface, but the yard was too wet to drive the truck back into the site.

Took us five hours (not including drive time - including drive time it was seven hours) for this project. By the end of it we were soaked to skin, chilled to the bone, but very glad we had our bees, and hopeful they will survive the transition to our bee hive at the farm.

I forgot to take my camera, and so these poor photos are from my cell phone, but we don't have any of the actual process of cutting the brood comb and fastening it into our frames, etc. because.. well, we were just a bit too busy at that point to take photographs. And the bees were just a little too prolific and riled up for anyone else to get close enough for photos of the process.

(Us suiting up. I know I look dorky and fat (on the left)
but I had on several layers. The nylon jacket I have on over it all,
during the rain, made it impossible for the bees to even land or hang onto me)

Steven beginning to open the hive area in the window well. As you can see, I was already getting quite a bit of rain on my phone camera.

(the exposed hive before we began cutting out the comb,
as we began transferring the bees to our hive.
The top half there is brood comb, etc. but you can also see wax
and old comb hanging down in the bottom of the opening)

An Evening of Relaxation

2009-04-11T19:53:00.008-05:00

There are never-ending projects on any farm (as all you other farmers know) and sometimes you need to take an evening and take a break.

Such was this past week when one day I came home from work and Steven said, "Let's go fishing! The fish are biting!" (He had determined it was perfect fishing weather by observing how the fish in our stock tank were acting). There was a storm in the forecast, the barometric pressure was changing, and it was indeed a perfect evening for fishing.

So we quickly loaded up the tackle and poles, dug a few worms, and headed down to our ponds. (I always enjoy an excuse to go fishing).

Steven was exactly right -- they were definitely biting. Seems we got nibbles or bites every time we dropped anything into the water.

Most of the time, we seemed to keep catching small-size bass -- not big enough to eat, although fun to keep hauling in. We would release these further down the ponds, to keep from catching the same ones over and over.

I caught this little pretty sun perch (which we threw back, of course) but shortly after that I happened to get a strike by a large fish -- we know his size because he jumped high and thrashed-- and promptly broke my line! (I sure hope he's not still swimming around somewhere with a hook).

Anyway, as he broke the line, my bobber went flying, so Steven decided to try to "snag" the bobber with his line to bring it back ashore. He had a top-floating popper on his, and he would cast across and try to get the lure to catch on the float as he reeled his line back across it.

He was unsuccessful in snagging the float, though, because about that time his line got hit by this beauty! :

We took this nice fish home and broiled him for supper! He was superb! (oh, and we eventually go the float, as well - as it drifted back to shore!) We were there later than planned and it was very dark by the time we drove back through the pasture for home, but we certainly had a wonderful time!

Potato Planting

2009-04-06T10:04:00.004-05:00

Well, first I should mention that our big planned project for the weekend, the bee cut-out, got postponed for a week. :(

We had everything set and ready to go remove a wild bee hive from a wall of a home (where it is not wanted) and transplant it to our bee hive (where it is very much is wanted). However, when that cold front charged through over the weekend, and the winds were gusting to 53 mph, with the temps barely hitting 40 as a high, our expert beekeeper friends said it would probably be best (for the health of the bees) to defer this job until next week if possible. That is mainly because last night and tonight are going to be hard freezes (record cold tonight, they said) and this kind of move and recovery is very hard on bees -- we want to do everything we can to give them the best chance of successfully making the transition. The cold will also be affecting the very blossoms that will be needed for the bees to thrive in the new location. So we need a few warm days. Pray that next weekend will work out, weather-wise. I don't even care if it rains on us, as long as it doesn't make it too muddy to drive the truck into the bee site.

One thing that did get accomplished this weekend was finally getting potatoes in the ground. I am very late with this, I know. Tilled up the potato garden area (north area -- separate from our main garden, and west of our orchard) and put in 10 pounds of Cobbler seed potatoes, 5 pounds of Kennebec, 5 pounds of Viking, and 5 pounds of Russet. Will probably put in more in the future. After working on that for several hours, it truly gave me a deep appreciation for the part of The Farmer Boy (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) that talks about them hand planting and watering 5 acres of potatoes. I can only imagine!

(This is me, planting potatoes in our 'north' garden.
This ground is not as workable and soft as our regular garden, since it has been pasture for the past few years. We could work here this weekend because it was partially sheltered for our gusty winds - as trees surround 3 sides of the area).

Spring, Snowstorm and Squab

2009-03-31T08:00:00.007-05:00

What a busy last few days! I have much to share, and hope I don't lose your interest halfway through.

Last Thursday's poultry auction, while warmer than the previous month, and certainly a blessing that it fell on Thursday this month instead of the following day — there just wasn't much to choose from. About half as many items for sale, and half as many people. There weren't any Cayuga ducks (for me to make good on replacing my son's drake), and no geese or turkeys that Steven was interested in owning.

However, ran into another friend of ours there, and he purchased a huge lot of pigeons (to use to train his bird dogs). In that batch of pigeons were two which stood out from the rest, because they were not colored the same. One was reddish and one was white. Steven talked with Mickey about those two, because he liked them, and ended up bringing them home:

Now, some have asked me "what good is a pigeon?" I have to admit I'm not real sure of an answer on that! Some people eat them, I know, as squab -- quite a delicacy in other cultures. Cheap meat that many Europeans used to raise. Some varieties of pigeons can be kept for competitions in messaging, or in acrobatics, etc. Apparently they can even be used in warfare! (that's an interesting article Steven found while researching pigeons). Overall, though - Steven just likes birds. All types. And he just wanted to have them. Much in the same way I want every dog I see. :)

Steven this week is working toward building some kind of dovecote in the top of the pole barn for his new acquisitions. He is hoping one would be male and one female, so he could raise little ones; but now he's thinking they are probably both female.

Then Friday came the big spring snowstorm. I left work early to make sure I could get home, and it was basically raining ice (sleet) very heavily at that time. Overall, though, the farm got much more snow and less ice than Wichita did. We estimated 8 inches - although since it came down in blizzard conditions, with much drifting and blowing, it was really hard to tell.

The goats didn't like it at all! They stayed in the barn and kept bellowing at us to bring them more food. The ducks didn't seem to mind the snow at all. Most all the other animals stayed huddled in protection somewhere unseen.

Saturday afternoon the sun came out and the melting began. Now things are a muddy mess, but we needed the moisture, so it was good.

Sunday we went to McPherson to see my other two kids, and my young men had fun building a snow fort and having a snow ball fight.

(click on any of the photos to view them larger)

(p.s. -- I think those coveralls I purchased for Steven at Orscheln (back when his sister worked there)is one of the best investments I have ever made! Now I want a pair for me!)

Thursday

2009-03-26T14:53:00.004-05:00

Okay, this photo didn't turn out at all like I was hoping -- I will need to find a way to take a photo from up high looking down or something. (you can click on the photo to make it full screen).

This is from the north end of our property, looking back across our orchard area. Steven just finished burning much of it off yesterday (hard to tell in this pic, I know). You can see our one big matriarch pear tree there, which kind of anchors the northeast corner of our land. You should be able to see, in line with it, all the young fruit trees we have planted for four rows. But they don't show up well in this shot.

Tonight we go to the poultry auction. I'm looking for a replacement Cayuga drake; and Steven is hoping there might be turkeys and/or geese (I'm not big on the idea of getting a goose).

But it has turned off cold again, and will get colder -- we are amazingly expected to get several inches of snow tomorrow. Right when our fruit trees are beginning to bloom due to all the wonderful warm weather we've had the past couple of weeks.

Spring is flying by. . .

2009-03-23T15:01:00.002-05:00

... quite literally today! (with wind gusts in the 50+ mph range!).

Hard for me to believe it has been a week since I last posted here -- and even more discouraging to realize I haven't accomplished much in that time span!

This past weekend was too busy for me to get much done on the farm. Activities at church and other organizations I belong to took all of my time - - as well as my other kids coming home for spring break (which was very nice!).

However, during the last week we finally got the rototiller going again, with the help of my 93 year old uncle who is much better at carburetor work than I am. So we got some of the main garden tilled; but I still need to do the potato plot and get my potatoes in the ground!

Poultry auction will be this week - day after my birthday ;) Hopefully will have decent weather to enjoy that.

Severe storms expected tonight. We are praying for the rain, without any of the accompanying bad stuff.

Ups and Downs

2009-03-16T13:12:00.005-05:00

It was beautiful weather this weekend, and although on the one hand we got much accomplished, on the other hand, we had to deal with bad things, as well.

Because it is so rare that there is actually a windless day in Kansas, we use every chance like that to do any necessary burning. (There had been a burn ban on most of the winter because we had such a horribly dry winter and first part of 2009.) So this weekend we burned off the thatch grass (dead, heavy, clumpy stuff) in the western goat corral, so that next rain it can begin to green up nicely and become viable pasture for the goats.

Then we went to the north edge of the property to where Steven is restoring the orchard, and were going to burn it off in sections. This area has much taller, denser dried grass -- we burned it last year. We are burning this area because it has a major issue with dense poison ivy, and we're trying to get a handle on that organically.

In hindsight, of course, there are many things I would have done different to prepare for this task.

Anyway, we just started just a small section burn, but it burned very hot and fast and I wasn't able to keep it behind the fire line on the north side. While there is nothing that direction (like structures) for it to do any damage to, it did get away with burning one of Steven's hand-raised-from-seed apricot trees before we got it back under control. He was not happy. But we hope perhaps it will come back from root -- we watered it well, and re-mulched it with wet straw after the fire.

The rest of the orchard is in other sections of our burn area, and we decided to not continue that project that day :(

However, back when we were burning off the goat corral - we decided during that time to put the goats into the front chain-link yard, where the dogs usually are. The reasons were two-fold; first, allow the goats to graze off some of the good green grass in the yard; and two, have them secured well away from the fire area. But we can't put the goats in there while the dogs are in there, so we put the dogs into a small area off the goat pen that we use just as a holding corral (like when the one doe had her baby and we wanted to separate her). It is just woven wire, but would hold both the dogs safely.

What we didn't think about (until too late) is that the ducks sometimes go through that little holding pen (because they can go through woven wire) to get to water. We went all day with this arrangement and never thought about it. The dogs are not used to the chickens or ducks being within their own fence (since they are usually in chain link). And we never imagined the ducks would wander in there without realizing there were dogs inside.

By the time we realized our mistake this weekend, we had a dead duck. And no, it couldn't be just ANY duck. We have seven ducks -- six are hens -- four of which are crossbreeds that we have for no particular purpose, and three are Steven's purebred Cayuga's for his breeding stock. Those three are two hens and one drake (male), that he had high hopes of raising chicks from this spring. So no, the dog couldn't have picked one of the crossbreds, or even one of the Cayuga hens of which we had two -- the dog had to go and kill our one and only drake. Steven was not happy. :(

As Steven carried him off to bury — without trying to sound callus, I pointed out that since he was already dead before we could intervene, his life shouldn't be in vain - we should eat him. So then we took time out to butcher our fine duck; and put his breast and leg meat into a crock pot. He has made a fine duck soup - very tasty.

But now we need to obtain a new Cayuga drake.

I think, as a tribute, I will end by posting my recent video I took of the ducks playing in the stock tank. (I think in this video the drake is the one up on the side of the tank, preening, and watching over his hens) :)

Spring cleaning - and other random

2009-03-13T11:09:00.008-05:00

Spent a great deal of last weekend with a chain saw in my hands, cutting tree limbs and full trees from the area around the garden. Steven and I have a pretty good system, when all is going well - he does a lot of the heavy lifting, and when a tree is down and we go to cut it up for firewood, he "feeds" it across the cutting area, so I just chop, chop, chop. Works pretty well, but my upper body strength is lacking after the winter, so my arms were sore a lot from the weight of my Husqvarna.

And then there is all the hauling of the brush to either the brush pile, or the goat pen (certain kinds they like to chew on).

(Steven cutting out some sucker trees)

I decided to do a type of time-lapse of images of the garden over the next 12 months, so I climbed a tree to try to take a photo of the entire main garden as it is now -- as we begin to clean it up, rake, and get ready for tilling:

(This is the main garden only - the one we have tilled for years, and have worked the most compost/organic matter into, etc. We have broken out two other new areas in the past couple of years - one for the quantity of potatoes I want to plant; and another area in the front yard for special projects) (you can click on the image to see it larger -that is our bee hive on the back left)

* *

Many mornings walking out to my car to go to work, it is very dark. Especially like today, when there is heavy cloud cover, and it's before dawn. I have to walk about 50 yards to the shed where my car is, which has no electrical power or lights. I'm always afraid I'm going to walk right into a skunk or something. Could happen, you know. I've seen skunks in there in the past.

* *

Ducks have started laying eggs again - so I guess that is real sign of spring despite the fact we got a bit of sleet/snow overnight (that has already melted). It's still cold, but is supposed to warm up over the next few days. Time to get the nesting boxes ready for the ducks, and for whatever hen goes broody first in the chicken house.

* *

We got our Stark Bros. order by UPS today! Yay! A bit cold for receiving fruit trees and putting them out, for sure -- but it is supposed to warm up over the next few days enough we should be able to put them in the ground! :)

Poultry Auction

2009-03-05T13:37:00.009-06:00

Well, I'm overdue on posting this update on our trip to the poultry auction last Friday, which I mentioned in my Cage Contest blog post.

After a beautifully warm week, Friday was a drastic change into bitter cold north wind, and everyone attending the auction froze their behinds off. However, these are die-hard poultry people who show up each month without fail.

The evening before, we had to catch the two cockerels we planned to sell, (because it is easier to catch a chicken once it has become dark and they have roosted for the night), and put them in the cages to prepare for the next day's auction

As you can see in this pic, Steven ended up having to do some modifications to his cage at the last minute. We found that the birds need a "visible" ceiling to the cage, or else they continually try to fly up and out, hurting themselves and the cage both. So he sewed some canvas cloth over the top, to calm the bird keep him from trying to break out.

Here are the birds, in cage, covered with a blanket, loaded into the back of the truck ready for the drive over. The blanket keeps them calm and kept them warm on this very cold day.

We got there fairly early, and were able to be pretty close to the top of the lot list. There weren't as many lots overall as the previous month (obviously due to weather), but there were still quite a number, and many regulars showed up as normal.

An early shot of the parking lot/auction area before it began filling up. The first row of auction items you can see - this lot will be full before the auction begins. The tractor/horse trailer along the building is the "auction office". I took my photo from pretty far back, as to not offend the Amish who run the auction. They prefer to not have their faces in a photograph. Don't let that sunlight fool you -- everyone was numb with cold.

Here are our two boys waiting for their turn for the auctioneer visit. It is actually about dark before the auction starts at 6 PM, and it was quite dark (working by flashlight) by the time they got to our lot.

Steven was very pleased with how it went. We got more per bird that most any other birds selling there, and more than we had hoped (just under $10 per cockerel). But they are exceptionally nice looking roosters, and they really deserved that. The same guy bought both of them. I don't know if this proved my point (mentioned in the cage contest post), but the bird in my old dilapidated cage did bring 50 cents more than the bird in his cage -- but that is probably just because he sold first, and the guy bidding against the winner quit earlier. :)

And Steven sure did get a lot of offers and comments on his cage! People wanted to know how it was made, what kind of wood was in it, etc. I heard one old man say to another "he must have had nothing better to do that day." *laugh*

And just to end the post - another picture of our new little buck. Just because I think he is so adorable at this age.

Baby Boy!

2009-02-25T10:34:00.008-06:00

Well, one of our doe goats surprised us yesterday with a new little baby boy!

This female, the same one who had the twin girls last year, apparently never really looks pregnant until about delivery time. We had given up on the idea that she might have been bred by the buck (which we sold the first part of November) some time ago.

Then over just the past few weeks, we started noticing she looked a bit larger than the normal rumen "bump" - so we were hopeful, but figured it would be the end of March.

So yesterday's full-term baby buck was a pleasant surprise. And it was great that it happened on a very warm day (unlike usual Kansas February days). Steven noticed she was in labor about 1:30 in the afternoon. So he moved the other goats away into an adjoining pasture, and stayed with her while she gave birth. Later, he moved her to the smaller holding pen, so she and baby could have their own sheltered area.

The baby seems to have the slightly darker red coloring that was a trait of his father, rather than the lighter head his mother has. But he does also have a white blaze on his face.

Mama and baby seem to be doing just fine!

How NOT to spend a winter weekend...

2009-02-09T15:22:00.010-06:00

So two weekends ago (or so), I ended up having to take an extra three days off work from my "city" job in order to take care of a crisis at home. Backed-up plumbing.

We're a one-bathroom house. So things not draining as they should can become a major deal. We decided to address this issue one day when it was particularly nice -- about 50 degrees and sunny. We thought we could get it all done in one day, but as with most projects that involve older homes, it snowballed into something much larger, and four days longer.

We already knew we had serious troubles in the toilet area - the floor was rotting through - water was backing up somewhere, and had been for some time. But we had hoped to delay that project until spring. When things quit flowing all together, however, we were compelled to action.

First thing we did was rip out our one and only toilet. This created a whole new problem, of course, involving discrete trips to the woods for my son and I, and a make-shift commode for my elderly mother. We also discovered the trouble was not within the toilet or immediate piping there, either.

Steven is the only one in the family skinny enough to fit in the tiny crawl space under a portion of the bathroom. So we dug that all out and he slipped under to inspect. Not good. The bathroom floor is rotted through including floor joists, as well as our sewer not draining anywhere. So this is now two separate but connected projects — one to repair the bathroom floor and toilet; and a one to clear out the septic system.

Steven starts on digging up the sewer pipe -- I knew there was a make-shift cleanout there somewhere, but took awhile for him to locate it. (sadly, I don't have any photos of his hard work on this for 5 days). The cleanout showed the bottleneck was definitely further downstream, so that meant more digging. It also meant both of us digging up the septic tank lid and prying it open (heavy concrete!) to see if that was backed up. On a positive note, the septic tank looked fine (although smelly) so the problem was somewhere between the two points we had uncovered.

While Steven continued digging up sewer line to check for breaks, collapses and clogs, I began working on the flooring. (I guess that was the easier job, since it was now into the next day and long past nice weather).

I have no carpentry experience, really, other than what I've learned watching others in times past, and a few minor projects of my own. So I was terrified of trying to do this on my own, but knew there was no way I could afford it any other way.

First photo (below) - of how bad the damage was once I got all the old four layers of floorboards ripped up (including the original 1 x 8s, which I think were there from the original construction of the house in 1880)

Then, (below) we started by reinforcing the existing floor joist by bolting new floor joists in line with them.

Then I had to cut new 1x8 boards at the diagonal angle that the old ones were. This was the first layer:

After that, we started on the second layer of flooring (which still wouldn't get us up to the level of the existing floor). These could go straight across (MUCH easier to cut) and gave it more reinforcement.

Steven (below) helped me cut the masonry board underlay I bought (all we had to work with for all this is a circular saw and a jig saw. How I wish I had a table saw!). And then we put that piece in place, and began filling in sheet rock where needed.

After mud/taping the sheetrock and filling in some areas, we placed adhesive tiles on the rebuilt area. (No redneck jokes about using a CoolWhip container over the opening to keep it covered!)

The last photo I took was after we got the toilet in place. We've done more work on the walls, etc. that I don't show here. But at least it works great and is sturdy!.

While I was doing all of this, Steven had finished digging up the entire sewer line (in 20 degrees or less) and we had rented a sewer auger, but had no luck getting anything to move. I finally gave in and on a Sunday called out Reddi Rooter, who came with their big truck and a really nice worker (about my son's age, in fact - they hit it off very well) and working together they got things flowing again! (Never use Charmin with a septic system, we found out).

So after beginning this on a Thursday morning, finally at 1 AM the following Monday we had "a place to go!" again.

Happy Kansas Day!

2009-01-29T07:33:00.005-06:00

Today is Kansas Day here - marking the anniversary of our state entering into statehood.

It has always been very easy for me to remember how old the State of Kansas is, as it entered the Union as a Free State on January 29, 1861. I was born 100 years later in 1961. So I always know our state is [my age this year] + 100 years! Today, Kansas is 148 years old!

(which, I should add, is not far off from the age of my house!)

The name Kansas is from the Native American tribe Kansa and we were always taught in grade school that this meant "people of the south wind." You can truly understand that designation if you have lived in Kansas for very long! We are known for our gusty winds!

In the next few days I may post about our huge project last weekend (which turned my weekend into a five-day work weekend!) We had to do some major reconstruction of our sewer system and bathroom -- which was actually a project we planned for this coming spring, but not for this freezing time of year!

The Cage Contest

2009-01-14T08:09:00.017-06:00

Back in November, I promised you this post, and you will see shortly why it took so long.

Steven and I have known for some time that we are wanting to sometimes take some poultry to auction, or buy some from auction. However, the poultry auction in our local small Amish town of Yoder is a "bring your own cage" event. Meaning, if you have any you wish to buy, or any you want to sell, you must bring something to carry them in.

Now, we had some old cages - a rabbit cage, a dog crate, etc. But (having some background in marketing), I knew we have nothing that would really show a beautiful rooster at full height and beauty -- an important point when selling! And we didn't think there would be a need to spend funds to purchase a commercially made cage. I had in mind exactly the type of cage I thought I could whip together quickly that would work and do what is needed (allow for full height, allow the bird to be seen from all sides and allow plenty of light). Steven had his own idea of how a cage should be built (multi-purpose, made to last, unique).

So rather than debate on how to build a cage, I proposed a "cage contest" on Veterans Day (November 11) because that was my day off. We would each build a cage (because at the time we planned to take birds to the auction in late November).

Steven came up with all sorts of new rules for this contest: No power tools; Must not buy anything to build it, but use only what we can find around the farm already, etc. A real challenge!

Nothing shows our personality differences more than this cage contest does. I am a real "time equals money" type of person. If I can make it efficiently and effectively in a short period of time, aesthetics have little value to me. Steven is as amazing perfectionist/engineering type that treats every new challenge as a way to broaden his skills and make a statement about his own ideology and values. Make it different than everyone else - make it to last - make it with your own hands, etc.

My cage of chicken wire was done in four hours on that day -- using scrap lumber, stray nails/screws and chicken wire. It will hold a bird.

Steven's is an engineering marvel. He began by creating square frame of stripped hackberry wood for the base. Interwoven on top of this were willow stalks he trekked down to the river to cut. He bent cedar branches for days around steel barrels in order to curve them for the arched top. He made hole-n-peg intersections to join saplings together. He used wood glue (his one modern allowance) and bindings to tie everything together sturdily. Then, when faced with how to create a fencing that was not metal; but not woven like the bottom either (needs to let light in and let people see the birds), he came up with this beautiful design using old-style baling twine (which we happen to have plenty of around). He worked for hours on getting the design right and tight to make it both functional and aesthetically beautiful. And he finally finished his cage this past week! ;)

So you can decide the contest winner. If I was wanting a cage -- surely I would prefer to own Steven's. However, mine does what it was designed to do - be functional for a farm auction. I think a rooster will look fine in mine. I think Steven is likely to get more people interested in his cage, than in the beautiful bird inside it.

We will see. The auction is the last Friday of the month.

(you can click on the photos to see them larger and in more detail)

Project List #1

2009-01-07T14:17:00.007-06:00

This past weekend, our oldest female goat, Bobbie Sue (the only one that is named, as well) lost the set of twins she was carrying. A miscarriage about halfway through term, it appears. Although this loss was not nearly as hard on her (and us) as the lost of her triplets at full birth last February.

We really did not plan to have any kid goats this winter -- we wanted the young does to get older, and we don't like kidding in the cold of winter -- it is hard to get a survival rate. However, apparently our buck Jeffy got Bobbie Sue bred before we sold him in early November. It is somewhat of a relief, however, to not have to worry about baby goats in February, now. At least for this year. The other adult doe does not appear to be pregnant.

Steven wondered if she miscarried because we had them out the day before, shepherding them to a new place to eat, and the other doe spooked and took off at a dead run, which made all the others run after her. While the running probably was not good on Bobbie Sue, I doubt it alone caused the miscarriage.

Okay, I'm going to start trying to keep track of some of our projects here, just so I can get organized and feel a sense of accomplishment as we get them done. I'm going to break the list down into shorter sections, for "small victories." :)

This first list is items I would like to get done before spring arrives at the farm:

Finish outhouse project

~~Repair bathroom floor/toilet~~

Begin the myriad of wood cutting we need done - mostly along the hedge rows
~~Get the now-completed beehive set outside and ready for bees for spring~~

Get electrical wiring moved so we can remove huge dead tree in backyard
Begin tear-out and re-install of south fence; west corral

~~Maintenance on mowers~~

Cut out old pear tree

~~Burn off garden perimeter~~

~~Cut down trees along garden fence~~

Burn off north pasture/orchard area (as we did last year)(partially done)

Try to get my own bedroom organized/cleaned/sorted and compressed

~~Begin starter seeds indoors~~

Study more about converting house to wood heat; begin plans

Finish the farm website

Well, that's enough to get me started. If I get too long of a list, I will get discouraged.

2009

2009-01-02T11:13:00.005-06:00

I was hoping to be able to soon post a farm project list like my friend MEL has done on her blog, but I don't appear to be organized yet enough this year to have that all written out. Although Steven and I did talk about many goals we have for the coming year.

However, I haven't updated in so long that I at least wanted to pop in here with a short post wishing you all a productive and blessed New Year. I hope to find more time to post updates in the future.

Chickens

2008-12-12T13:45:00.006-06:00

Looking back through my blog, I see that I have hardly any photos at all of our chickens! So just because I think they deserve a little spotlight, this post is going to be nothing but photos of our wonderful flock that provides so much of our food (eggs).

Our Rooster there was crowned Best of Breed New Hampshire the year we first saw him at the Kansas State Fair. I contacted the man who had brought him up from Oklahoma to show at our Fair, and bought him to service our flock of Rhode Island Red hens. He is king of the hill around here - but a very good rooster. He really looks after and nurtures his hens, and most every egg is fertile.

This past spring, we let a broody hen set on several eggs that were produced by the cross with that rooster and our RIRs, and here are some of the beautiful young cockerels that came out of that match-up. (The pullets produced are nice too, but basically just look like any RIRs).

We actually have not yet decide while one of these three boys we want to keep, and which two should be sold or butchered. There are breeding points we like about each. We have decided to hold off until spring to make that decision for sure, to allow them to finish maturing.

A Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T12:33:00.003-06:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal yesterday. It was a nice, but cool day, so we also got to enjoy some time outside.

In the above photo are(clockwise): my son David (21), his grandmother (my mother); my ex-husband (the kids' dad) Norvall (who roasted the duck for us); my daughter Amanda (19) and my son Steven (23). I had another photo that actually had me in it as well (I took this one) but that picture got accidentally deleted off my camera.

The blessing of food included our roast duck (yes, our own ducks that we butchered), mashed potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, cream gravy, dressing (or stuffing), green beans, macaroni & cheese (at my daughter's request), hot rolls, jellied cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and dump cake. We were stuffed :)

Hope all of you had a blessed holiday as well, with much to be thankful for.

Mouse, Mice, Meese?

2008-11-14T09:42:00.002-06:00

Our "south porch" is an glassed-in porch which used to be just a screened porch when I was growing up. Primarily it is a buffer between the cold outside, and the living room inside; and mainly we use it for storing tools, the chest freezer, dirty boots, odds and ends, and the livestock and pet feed.

Since we store livestock feed there, including grain for the chickens, the not-so-tight porch attracts a variety of varmints who want the feed. We used to keep a cat out there to help discourage that, but got tired of the havoc a cat can also cause on an enclosed porch.

With cooler weather, we had heard an increase in "critter" noises, so Steven decided to put four mousetraps on the porch, to help catch those stealers of our feed. Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! - very soon those four traps were full. He "rewarded" the barn cats outside with treats of dead mice. Repeat that scene many times in rapid progression. Steven's traps caught 35 mice by the end of that day! 44 by the end of the next day! And finally, about 54 mice all together before the run stopped. I guess we got them all for now - the traps have been silent for about four days. I was just amazed at the sheer numbers.

* * * * *

Walking back from the corral the other night, Steven suddenly said to me, "Is that chicken all right?"

I said, "what chicken?" (because he was blocking the view of it until we got closer).

Then I saw it and said, "Oh no. That's not normal."

There was a chicken, hanging upside down, from the top of the outhouse. (Remember from an earlier blog that our outhouse is lying on it's side on a trailer, as we work on rebuilding it. So the "top" is currently on its side).

It appeared the chicken had jumped or flown up, probably to get some insect or treat it spied, and somehow caught its toe on one of the nails protruding from the old rafter. That flipped it upside down, and there it hung, thinking it was caught, not fighting it at all. Just hanging there upside down by a toe. At first I thought maybe she was dead, but then she cocked her head to look at us. Steven went over and gently unhooked her foot. She then really came to life, squawking loudly and flailing her wings, as he dropped her to the ground, and she took off at a run, unharmed.

It was quite funny looking, and again I wish I had taken a photo, but I was more concerned with getting her loose at the moment. She couldn't have been there too long, and still had the balance to take off as fast as she did when put back upright.

* * * * *

We had an interesting Tuesday, when I was off work for Veterans Day. But I will have to post about that some other time, when I have photos to go with it. Look in the future for a post called "The Cage Contest" and I'll show you what kept us busy that day!

Thankful for the Wind (i.e. Wild Ride)

2008-11-10T09:33:00.004-06:00

So Steven and I took the old '69 GMC pickup we use as a farm truck over to the Carp's to pick up a load of straw. I only loaded 14 bales, as I didn't want to stack it too high in the heavy NW wind for the drive home.

Driving north down the county blacktop about 10 miles from home on the trip back, the steering wheel of the truck suddenly came totally off in my hands. (I know - you usually only see things like that in Indiana Jones movies)LOL. I had no ability to steer whatsoever. I had been going slowly, so I just gradually braked firmly, and the NW wind pushed the truck gently off the road, into the grassy ditch and partially up into a newly planted wheat field. I was blessed that this was an area of road that, even though there are no shoulders, the ditches are gentle, and it is Kansas flatland. There was no damage at all to the truck, and the hay load rode fine.

The whole experience was actually quite hilarious. I had noticed there was much more "play" in the steering wheel than before, but I wrote off part of it to "just being an old truck" and thought I'd check it out more when we got home. But we didn't make it home before the nut holding the steering wheel to the shaft vibrated itself clear off, and I was left holding the wheel with a moving truck.

Many vehicles went by, but none offered assistance - and I imagine we just looked like we were an old farmer's truck "supposed" to be in that field. Two sheriff deputies who just happened to be passing by did stop to see what the problem was. When I laughingly showed him our now-detached steering wheel, they thought that was also quite funny and unusual. (They were a couple young officers, early 20s, I'd say. Glad to give them some humor for their day). They confessed to not being mechanically inclined or of any assistance, so they went on their way.

Steven and I worked on trying to get the wheel re-attached to the column for over 1/2 an hour before Steven finally got it figured out and back on. However, I had taken the tool box out of the truck to use for something else, so we had no way of fully tightening the nut again. I called a nearby friend, and he brought a wrench to help us get it tight. Then I just started the truck back up, drove down the length of the ditch for a ways to a field inlet, and then got back up on the road and drove home easily. That steering wheel is tighter now that it has been since I bought the truck! Guess I should have checked it earlier.

Sure wish I had thought to take a photo of our dilemma with my camera phone while we were in the ditch (I keep forgetting my phone has a camera on it).

Odds and Ends

2008-11-03T13:17:00.006-06:00

We've enjoyed the Indian summer weather recently to use getting many chores caught up.

This weekend, we finally sold the billy goat, Jeffy. We had pushed to sell him before we were going to leave for vacation (so Grandma wouldn't have to deal with him while we were gone, in case he got out), but didn't get him sold. We had given up on that and about decided to keep him (but just keep him away from his daughters) when suddenly we got two calls at about the same time for him! He went to another local family who has a few more does than we do. I think he will serve them well.

Steven is thinking of perhaps looking for a Spanish buck, or a Spanish/Boer cross buck, next time we need a male. Currently our Jeffy had already bred our two adult does, so we don't need a billy for awhile.

We've worked (mostly Steven) on hand-removing all the thistles from the orchard area. This involves cutting down the plants, shoving them into a trash container, and then taking them to the burn barrel and burning them. We may not totally eliminate thistles for next year, but we will make a dent. And if we are diligent and do this several years, hopefully we will organically eradicate them in this way. That, and with the help of the goats...

Many other projects still to do as we ready for winter; digging the Outhouse hole, winterizing the windows and equipment; getting straw hauled in for the barns, etc. It's a never-ending list!

The Loss of a Good Friend

2008-10-28T09:28:00.007-05:00

The only thing I hate about dogs being considered man's best friend is that dogs don't live as long as we humans do.

Dogs have always had a special place in my heart. I'm much more a "dog" person than a cat person, etc. I've had a fondness for dogs since my early childhood. But I also learned early on to not let my heart get too attached; as it is heartbreaking when they go.

We've had scads of dogs on the farm -- up to 13 at a time at the height of it, and never lower than two resident dogs. Some have meant next to nothing to me, but a few hold special places in my memory and my heart. Benny, the old red long-haired retriever who was my best friend growing up; Princess, the german shepherd mama who birthed 11 pups right after showing up bedraggled at our door one day; Sheba, the rescued dog from the shelter, and others. And now written to the pages of my fond dog memories is Rodman, my beloved Great Pyrenees, who died of old age yesterday.

I had been in love with the Great Pyrnees breed ever since a neighbor's Pyr, Cujo, came to visit our farm one morning as my kids were loading onto the school bus. The kids and I adored him right off. The neighbors moved, but I always wanted a Pyr after that. So my eyes lit up in 1997 when I saw an ad in a local homeschooling newsletter saying a family needed to find a new home for their one year old Pyr. I called them up and shortly afterward, Rodman (named by them, not me) arrived on the farm.

I had much to learn about Pyrs. I got on internet mail lists and forums and group discussions. I learned all I could. Rodman, a true livestock guardian dog, loved to patrol -- he just didn't understand where the boundaries of his territory were. So it pained me when he disappeared one day -- and then I felt immeasurable joy when eight days later he came walking back into the front yard. That must have been quite a patrol!

After that we got a fence, so he would know the boundaries, but he still fiercely, yet gently, defended them. He knew friend and foe. The cats were allowed to snuggle up next to his heavy coat in winter; the chickens didn't even make him raise an eyebrow. But if a skunk or a rat got into the yard, he was a fierce bear, and made short work of them.

His low growl could be intimidating to strangers, but he really never harmed anyone, and loved people, and slobbering on them. I would hear his low rumbly bark throughout the night as he warned off the coyotes and anything else his ears picked up.

He hated thunderstorms -- a fear that got more intense as he aged. Whenever a storm was coming, he would be at the front door, pounding on the screen. We would allow him in, where he promptly took over the living room sofa -- all 150+ pounds of him, which stretched out its full length. But there he would happily snore until the storm passed; often making the entire interior of the house smell like wet dog.

I knew that at nearly age 12, Rodman was pushing the edge of the Pyrenees average life span of 10-12 years; although I never thought he would go before our German Shephard, Mickey, who is so very old, frail and can barely walk. On Sunday morning, Rodman refused to eat. Monday he was dead. I'm glad it was after I had arrived back from two weeks away, but I wish I had spent a bit more time with him on Sunday, my only day with him before his death. But he knew I loved him, and that he will always be a special memory. I remind myself he was just a dog; and I know better than to get attached to dogs. But I fail.

First Freeze

2008-10-27T14:38:00.004-05:00

Last night was the first freeze of this fall. We scrambled to get the garden ready -- since we had just returned from two weeks away at the Feast (wonderful time!) It is supposed to get even colder tonight, before warming up again for a few days.

Mostly we had a multitude of green bell peppers to pick - of all sizes. Although our peppers were very slow to produce this year, they really took off in the last few weeks, and we've had more than we could imagine from six plants! The photo on this post is the pickings from one day just before we left for Feast. Since returning home, we had multiple times that many!

The turnips are looking wonderful (and the freeze shouldn't hurt them). We also cut our fall crop of leaf lettuce. We still have fall radishes and beets in the ground. We will just allow the green tomatoes on the vine to freeze, and call it a year on them. We still have several other things to do in order to properly "winterize" the garden -- mulch around the asparagus; harvest the horseradish, spread manure and the bedding from the chicken house, etc. There is much work to be done in the garden before the first snow falls.

While we were away camping for nearly two weeks, we took with us some of our crop of potatoes, onions and bell peppers, and that made for several excellent skillet meals over the campfire. It is wonderful to have the produce of your own land to enjoy and share!

Ducks vs. Chickens

2008-10-09T09:28:00.003-05:00

An interesting, friendly competition has arisen at the farm, between our chickens and our ducks.

Of course, the birds themselves are oblivious to the race -- so perhaps I should say it is a competition between Steven and his grandmother :)

Although the farm animals and workings all belong to Steven, his grandmother (my mother, who is 70) thinks of the chickens as her birds, since she's had a long history of raising chickens. (She raised and showed champion 4-H birds in her youth, showing them in local and state shows, and traveled around giving educational talks on chicken judging). Our chickens do seem to think they belong to her, and follow her everywhere she goes when she is outside -- sometime that is quite a comical thing to watch.

She loves her multiple-times-a-day outing to the chicken house to check for new eggs. Grandma will always come back in announcing how many she finds, and dutifully writes down a new slash mark on the calendar to keep track of laying rates.

Then the ducks started laying. Now, the ducks know they belong to Steven. Their laying habits are much more random -- and can make for some interesting mornings. Since they seem to lay mostly during the night/early morning hours when they are bedded down for the night, that means we sometimes find eggs in the most unusual places. We don't lock the ducks up at night - they bed down in the grass near the south side of the house. Some mornings, as I go out first thing (and it might be still dark), I have to watch my footing, as I might step on a duck egg! We have found them in the center of the driveway, near the garage, in the walking path, and other random places.

Anyway, back to the competition. Most days we were getting 5 or 6 eggs from our chickens, and one or two from the ducks. But suddenly the ducks increased their laying, and it was a tie game for awhile! A few times the ducks offered more eggs a day than our chickens! So now it is an interesting competition between Steven and his grandmother -- who won this day? Did the chickens lay more, or the ducks? I usually hear about it each evening. There are some days Steven thinks the ducks probably would have won, if he could only find where they hid their eggs! :)

Our this-season pullets in the chicken house should stay bearing soon, and that will make the chicken numbers increase again, I'm sure, as we have many more chickens than we do ducks.

But in the meantime, the competition has been great fun!

Silver Dollar City

2008-09-30T07:41:00.004-05:00

Well, I know that I have reserved this particular blog for just happenings at the farm, but I can't resist a post about our wonderful weekend trip to Missouri.

We traveled with friends from here who also own a place on Table Rock Lake. Believe it or not, at age 47, I still had never yet been to Silver Dollar City or the Branson area, even though it is only about five hours from here.

We spent one entire day at Silver Dollar City, from about 9 to 10 AM through the night show which began at 7 PM. It was awesome. Their harvest festival was going on; and although there were crowds of people, there weren't so many as to make it difficult to navigate. I'm glad I was with people who had been there many times, however, or I would have become lost in the layout of the place.

I especially enjoyed all the craftsmen. Woodcarvers, glass blowers, basketmakers, coopers, blacksmiths, etc. Many times we would see an item and think "I could make that!" What great ideas they give, using old time skills that are nearly lost in America. The music shows (we saw two while there) were both fantastic - excellent singers and performers. We enjoyed our own music with the sing-along in the little church chapel, as well!

Steven and Amanda were with me. My other son, David, could not get off work to join us for the weekend. There was a lot of walking and we were very tired, but the weather was gorgeous and everything went very well. We even found time over the weekend to get out on Table Rock Lake in our friends' boat for awhile, and just relax on the mirror-calm water.

All in all, a very beautiful and relaxing weekend with family and good friends.

Camping and Fall Chores

2008-09-19T08:58:00.005-05:00

It has been a gorgeous week weather-wise here, and I just wish I had more time outdoors to enjoy it!

Steven and I set up the old Coleman cabin tent in the back yard. We are airing it out, repairing it, and preparing it for our camping trip to Missouri in October. He repaired a few minor holes in the vinyl, and I attempted to stitch shut a few small rips in the window netting. We still need to scrub it down good with a mild detergent and rinse it off (it must have been put away wet last time); then it should be ready to go. We probably haven't used this particular big tent of ours in nearly 10 years. It's an "oldie but goodie."

Some fall garden crops were started by Steven a couple weeks ago - turnips, beets, some fall salad greens. Just a couple days before we got that 5 inches of rain. The turnips are up well - but the beets are very slow to germinate. Whether we get much all depends on how soon the first frost rolls around. The weather has been strange this year, so it's anyone's guess.

But it is definitely feeling like fall, and I feel like the year has just flown by. It is again time to start getting the house ready for the oncoming cold of winter. Trees are dropping their leaves and turning color; the nights are cool. So much to do and so little time to get it done.

And Even More Pears

2008-09-10T07:36:00.003-05:00

Yes, we are still picking them up daily. I need to get busy canning. This is Steven holding one evening's crop.

Got the idea this weekend to maybe take some of the pear sauce we made in the slow cooker, and make a "cobbler" or "crisp" dessert dish with it. Plan to try that this week.

This is also Kansas State Fair week. We attended the opening day (Friday the 5th) and really enjoyed it, as well as had beautiful weather for our visit. We also love touring the livestock barns, and the poultry/rabbit building. Bought goodies in the 4-H building, where they sell the baked goods that were judged. Looked at livestock fencing and wood burning stoves. There is just so much to see!

We will probably go back to the Fair tonight. Had planned it for later in the week, but it is supposed to starting raining late today, and continue with rain for several days.

Pear! And More Pears!

2008-09-03T07:57:00.011-05:00

One day's pickings.

So here's the background story: My grandfather had a 100+ tree orchard north of the house. Most of it was planted around 1961 (the year I was born). Over the years, he kept a hand-printed chart of the orchard - which varieties he had planted where, and how they did, whether fruitful or not.

Grandpa lived until 1986. In the early 90s, a huge storm came through that killed most of the orchard, and I had the area mostly bulldozed to clear it out and start over. I left two trees in the orchard - one Bartlett pear that anchored the northeast corner; and one young small pear tree that was growing up in the northwest corner (the original whole north line was pear). On grandpa's orchard map, that corner had been a "Seckel" pear, which he had cut down himself and marked as "barren" on the map. But apparently it was resilient and grew back from the root. It shaped into a beautiful looking tree, with heavy blooms in spring, and beautiful reddish leaves in fall. But it has never had much in the way of actual fruit. We left it because it is a very pretty tree.

Well, this weird weather year of our ultra-late spring, very cool June, and much more cool days and rain than any normal Kansas summer, appears to have finally been the perfect year for production of Seckel Pears. And man! Has it ever made up for all those unfruitful years! I have never seen a tree so loaded with fruit.

According to all we have found Seckel Pears are the "candy" variety of the pear world. Very very sweet, yet very small -- just snacking size; about one-third the size of a regular full pear.

We have picked up pears (we wait for the windfall) every day this week, and then hand sort them into the best ones for eating now; the greener ones to ripen a few days; and the blemished ones, which we give to the chickens. We have pears everywhere at the house!

I would like to maybe attempt pearsauce or pearbutter, but it takes quite a bit of time, and these very sweet pears don't keep many days, so I'm hoping we don't lose too much to spoilage. There are still thousands up on the tree itself, so this should make for an extremely busy week!

Duck Nest!

2008-08-29T14:22:00.006-05:00

Well, we have found that ducks usually don't lay all that many eggs in a month, and they tend to chose different spots to lay on any given day.

But recently when one of our Cayuga females kept disappearing for several hours a day, we were pretty sure she'd found a hide-away place to lay. We searched for several days, but could not figure out where she was dropping eggs.

One evening Steven just happened to find it -- it was very well hidden, although not 10 feet from the house! Nestled up against a tree truck and behind our current bushes, she had actually taken time to build a complete "nest"! In it were 11 eggs already!

We left it a couple days to see if she would actually "set" enough to incubate them, but she abandoned the nest, so we eventually gathered the eggs (but now we know where to look for new ones!

As you can see the duck eggs are gradually getting a little lighter in the shell color than the first ones I posted. They are more of a dirty gray color now.

And just because I like photos, I'll end with a shot of one of Steven's green bell peppers from the garden!

Busy Weekend

2008-08-25T15:18:00.003-05:00

My legs got plenty of exercise this past weekend, as we spent most of Saturday viewing events at Yoder Heritage Day.

Yoder is a predominantly Amish and Mennonite community near us. We always enjoy watching their demonstrations of horse-drawn farm equipment, their buggy races, and especially eating their cooking! We started with the pancake feed in the morning; purchased homemade pie from their bake sale to take home; enjoyed the lengthy parade down main street; visited most all of the booths; cheered at the horse fun show and the mutton bustin' competition for the kids; and rooted for our favorites at the buggy races. (Although they didn't really race their buggys - those are too top-heavy. Most of them raced buckboard wagons or smaller carts. One even took the curve too fast and overturned, but luckily was not hurt)

I didn't take any photos there to share with you, out of respect for the beliefs of the Amish people, who prefer to not have their photos taken. But we came home happy, sun-burned, muscle sore and exhausted. :)

Sunday afternoon was a free day at the Sedgwick County Zoo, and Steven had been anxious to go, because he wanted a look at their rare sheep breeds in the "Children's Farm" portion of the zoo. We also got the name of a contact person for when they have extra livestock to sell off; which was our main objective for the trip. But while there, we toured the entire zoo, and it was really quite nice weather for such an outing -- it rained in the morning, but that kept things cool and we had an umbrella. Once the area started filling up with more people than we like, we called it a day and headed home.

Outhouse Tipping

2008-08-20T07:32:00.005-05:00

Yes, I know this topic is worthless without pictures :) Hopefully I will take a couple of photos this week to add to this post.

Usually, tipping an outhouse is considered to be a teenage prank. However, we "tipped" ours last night quite on purpose -- and what a chore it was!

As I've mentioned before, one of the "to-do" projects on our list is doing some major work on our bathroom, as the floor is rotting out and causing problems with the toilet. (Such is the upkeep of a very ancient house). We need to rip out part of the floor and re-do it. In the meantime, we will "need a place to go", as we only have one bathroom in our large house.

Our outhouse has been there as long as I can remember, and was even used daily up until the mid 1950s when the grandparents finally got indoor plumbing. It was used periodically after that, as we often lose power or water, etc; and it makes a great backup. But for the last 25 years or more, it sat mostly empty - storage for stuff, etc. The floor rotted out of it and it somewhat sank into the sandy loam. Grandpa had long since filled in the "potty hole" back when he was alive.

So we are trying to get the outhouse ready for our use during reconstruction. The roof is basically gone, but the walls are still intact. In order to begin work on this, we needed to move the privy from its sunken location and do repairs to the bottom boards.

First, it took several days to clear the area around it to give us working room; and clean years of stuff out of the inside. I'll admit I was very skeptical of Steven's plan as to how to engineer this move, but as usual he proved he is smarter than me :)

I have a small flatbed trailer (was a golfcart trailer for someone years ago) that is about six foot by eight foot. We aired up the tires on it and pushed it into position in front of the outhouse. Propped the tongue of the trailer way up so the tail of the trailer was on the ground at the shed. Then Steven and I pushed and shoved, and shoved and pushed (which was tricky, because the outhouse wanted to twist to the west) and "tipped" the outhouse right onto the trailer. Then we hooked the trailer up to my old truck, to "hold" it into position for now. Steven will try to work on repairing some of the boards and replacing the rotted ones, as it lies on this trailer.

Then, hopefully, we can place it in a new location and finish working on the inside of the privy, building a new seat area and getting it ready to use.

I will try to post photos of this process as we go along.

Olympics

2008-08-13T14:25:00.003-05:00

Not a lot to add recently, but wanted to update the blog anyway.

Although there is much to do, we can't resist enjoying a bit of the 2008 Summer Olympics on television. We rarely watch any television at all, and especially not during the summer when there is so much work to do; however, the Summer games only come every 4 years (we aren't into the Winter Olympics quite as much); and only for a few days, so we feel it is worth the break to enjoy them while we can.

Steven especially likes watching the track & field events and the gymnastics, I think. Probably because he used to be quite a runner, and was very good in track events. Solo sports like that allow you to really push yourself to a personal best.

Watching the games has not been a waste of time; we are finding small things we can do inside while viewing the games. Steven has been spending each evening shelling out dried beans. He planted some varieties from Seed Savers and is hand shelling and sorting them now into groups of 1)seed for next year, 2)ones to cook for food during our winter. It has taken him hours to shell all the ones he harvested.

Since we don't subscribe to cable or satellite TV, our Olympic viewing is limited to about 3 hours prime time network each evening, on the days there are events of interest. It is great to watch these young people, in top physical condition, strive to perform their very best.
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Today is my daughter's 19th birthday, and my second son's 21st birthday was on Monday. However, they are both living away from home, and working lots of hours, so I haven't had a chance to spend any time with them this week to celebrate. I think this is the first year we haven't all been together for their birthdays. That makes me a little sad.

Hot!!

2008-08-04T09:30:00.004-05:00

Well, having grown up on this place without ever having air conditioning, people are always amazed that we survive Kansas summers. I have always felt that if my grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather could live here without needing air conditioning, then I certainly can too!

However, for the most part, this particular summer has been blessedly rainy and cool so far this year, until this week.

We finally got into "real" summer weather these past few days with temps over 100 and a heat index much higher than that. Our severe heat advisory is mostly in affect because it has been such a rainy summer, that the humidity is extremely high for this time of year. So while temps are in the 100 to 102 range, the heat index is near 110.

There isn't a lot you can do in this type of weather, except endure your way through it. It's too hot to get much work done, and it is frustrating to have to put off projects. We are too fair-skinned to risk being out for hours in the sun. Too hot to cook in the kitchen either; but there are lots of cool food options, at least.

However, we did spent part of our weekend helping a dear friend move -- and we were pretty exhausted and dripping wet with sweat by the end. Most of the rest of the days we just kept ensuring that all the animals had plenty of fresh, cool water, and we took it easy. The chickens don't like the heat, but find shade in the tree grove; the ducks seem to take it okay, just hang around the water; but amazingly the heat doesn't seem to faze our goats at all. They act like it is the same as any other day.

Actually, I prefer these blistering days of summer over the bitter cold of our winters. For Kansas summers, these types of days and usually limited in number, and not to hard to cope. But for the winter, the cold can seem to drag on for weeks, and the more hours of darkness, along with the cold, cold house, can sure make winter feel like forever.

Weatherman says the heat will let up in two days. Then in might bring some more blessed rain and maybe temps in the 80s! Praise the Lord!

Black Eggs

2008-07-31T08:22:00.013-05:00

So what do you get when you own black (Cayuga) ducks? Black eggs!

We were surprise by our first two eggs from our young Cayugas this week. We haven't tried them yet to see if we can discern any taste difference between our chickens' eggs and the duck eggs.

All the ducks have grown leaps and bounds since we got them as chicks this spring. As you can see in this photo, the male Cayuga has the beautiful luminescent green on his neck. The three ducks (he and his two females) are inseparable.

The other six ducklings we have are nearly full grown already. It will be time to butcher the two males soon (Steven plans to only keep the females of this batch). I've never dressed out a duck before and am a little apprehensive of the whole thing, as I'm afraid it will be more difficult than doing a chicken; but we will see.
We haven't sold our billy goat (buck) yet, which we are hoping to do soon, because we want to keep his daughters and not have them breed back to their father.

The young goat girls are growing like weeds, and are quite cute while their small horns are growing. One of them is especially affectionate and fond of people, even though we are trying hard not to allow them to act like "pets". They are definiately livestock, but I'll be the first to admit goats have much more personality than the sheep I raised growing up. These goats often act just like dogs.

Daughters and Mama

I dislike trying to format within the parameters of this website; but I'm going to see if it will let me upload a video to share. This is Steven being "loved on" by his goat herd (they always seem to think poking you with their horns is a sign of affection) :)

This and That

2008-07-24T11:10:00.006-05:00

I guess yesterday the south meadow caught fire when it was getting cut for prairie hay.

This meadows borders us on the south; and used to be our property (up until 1994) so we will think of it as ours ;) but it is all native grass leading up to the big river.

The leasee was cutting the high prairie grass for hay and I guess his swather exhaust had become too hot (he had cut the alfalfa field across the road just before this). Even though the grass was quite green in color and didn't look "burnable", it caught on.

Steven ran down there on foot, and the guys were trying to put it out. The township fire department came as well, hauling water. Basically everyone (including Steven) just moved hay back and stomped fire until they got it all under control. (they were doing this in 100 degree heat). Could have been much worse if it had jumped the fence. As it was only a circle about 75 yards burned.

These two photos I took last night from the camera on my cell phone. We rode the bicycles down there after I got home. (the tree row in the FAR background - right side - is where our house is)

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Steven's new peach tree, planted just last fall, has two peaches on it. That's amazing for a first-year transplant. (Well, it only has one on it now, because Steven ate one of them yesterday).

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We roasted more squash and onions over the grill last night; along with a good piece of beef. It was a wonderful supper late after the day cooled off.

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Steven and I agree to make a list of major things we hope to accomplish yet this year before winter, prioritize them, then start throwing all of our daily efforts into getting them done. I hope that will help us stay more focused, help with time management, and give us a sense of accomplishment. We realize that other things could interrupt of course (like those escape artist goats); but at least we will never have to say "what shall we work on today?"

Mid-Summer Blues

2008-07-19T10:25:00.004-05:00

Even though this is the best season of the year (warm weather, home-grown goodies, etc.) I get the feeling we are both somewhat discouraged. Maybe it is just because we have so many projects lined up, and it seems to be taking them so long to get done. It's like having a huge too-big bite of chocolate cake in your mouth - it's yummy but suddenly you're afraid you'll choke because you can't chew it and enjoy it.

The frequent (and unusual) rains we've had this year had been great for plants - but that means for unwanted plants as well. We can't keep up with the weeds. While we are getting nice garden produce, the garden itself actually looks bad because we just can't keep up, even working on it daily. In addition, I'm way behind in mowing, so we don't have the 'picture-perfect' place we are striving for. I know our goal is to eventually have enough pasture animals to not have to worry about mowing at all (just use sheep, goats, etc.) but we are a long way at this point, from having enough animals to keep up with our acreage.

Plus we have major projects bearing down; like rebuilding the outhouse (so it can be used temporarily while we do structural changes on the bathroom inside the house) and fixing the lean-to shed next to the washhouse; putting up tons more fencing for the rotational grazing; painting the house; doing some dirtwork, etc. I think we see summer slipping quickly away, with not as much accomplished toward our goals of self-sufficiency as we had hoped. We really wanted to be off propane and be able to heat the house with wood heat only this year, and that process is not going to be in place in time.

I have to remind myself that God does know our struggles (Luke 12:22-28) and He will always provide our daily needs. I need to strengthen my faith and trust in Him that all will get done in His time, and I must have patience.

So to brighten this post a bit - I will end with a photo of yummy new potatoes.

Grillin' Time!

2008-07-10T10:18:00.002-05:00

We finally had a gorgeous day (as Kansas summer days go) yesterday - high in the 80s, overcast, calm.

So I finally got the chicken that we butchered last Friday on the grill. In addition, Steven had used the perfect day to burn off a couple of large brush piles, and I oiled up several large potatoes, wrapped them in foil and buried them in the hot coals from his fires

And hour later we have a wonderful meal. Then took a walk for a good end to a perfect evening.