Bulls-eye

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!

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

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

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!

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!

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?

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.