Sunday, March 22, 2009

A Day in the Life of Homesteading






Well, alot has happened here since we lost Carmen. We got another goat on St. Patrick's Day. She is a Boer goat that was born on February 18th. We all thought that a name pertaining to St.Patty's day would be nice for her. So, after going through many name ideas we all settled on "Clover". She was one of three triplets born.Her mother is notorious for only wanting to take care of one baby and shunning the others.So, her owners had to raise her. She was raised in their home and bottle fed. By the time we got her she was down to three feedings a day and only during the day. We were pretty thrilled about that. She is being kept in a large kennel in the garage during the night and let out during the day, for now.

A couple of days later we got 20 baby chicks! This was part of Jade's Birthday present. We told her that she had to wait 3 weeks for the rest of her birthday present to arrive. Because the D & B feed store here in Twin Falls weren't getting their supply of chicks in until then. Sebastian and Matthea also get to raise some of the chicks. Let me think, we have some Golden Laced Wyandotte's, Auracana's, Barred Rocks, Brown Leghorns, and Rhode Island Red's. It was a straight run purchase. Meaning, that the sex of the chicks are unknown.So, we are hoping that at least some of them are hens that will lay for us. Unfortunately, with a straight run purchase you usually end up with a larger percentage of cocks (roosters). But, that would only mean that they will end up on our dinner table in about 2-3 months. Which is the ideal time to butcher your chickens. Anything older than that isn't worth eating unless it's stewed or used for making broth.
Which brings me to our next adventure.....

The very next day, some friends of ours, brought over some roosters. Craig sees them at his work on occasion and they have a large farm with cattle, goats and chickens. They have been wanting to help us out with a few animals once we had our land. Well, they called Craig and asked if we were ready for some roosters to butcher.Craig thought they had said 3 roosters, so he told them to bring 'em on over! They showed up with 30!! As they were unloading they had realized that two stowaway's were hens. So, we were left with 28. Craig didn't know what to say except for thank you and off they went and there we were wondering if Craig could have them all butchered by the end of the day. HA! The next day, Craig and Sebastian picked out the lucky rooster who was going to be their guinea pig. It was a large Rhode Island Red. They both did a fantastic job with the whole procedure, that was carefully studied beforehand. The bird ended up looking rather scrawny when it was all over with. But, these birds are for practice anyway. We roasted the bird and...well....it was rather tough. I believe these birds are around 10 months old. The flavor was there, in fact the flavor was great! You just needed a lot of time on your hands to chew your meat! Like I said earlier, the best time for butchering chickens is when they are between 2 and 3 months old. They will be tender instead of tough. So, the chicks that we have now will probably end up in our freezer in a couple of months.
We had the rooster's in another outbuilding separate from our other flock of chickens. Something that you need to do as a preventive measure to not spread disease, before introducing new birds to your old ones. Plus, we didn't want any roosters fighting with the Polish rooster who isn't use to being housed with other roosters. After a couple of days I made the guys take them out and put them in the backyard. They were making quite a mess out of where they were. And if we were not keeping them for long I didn't want the housing mess to worry about. They roosted in our Pine tree that first night.We were down to 27 since we cooked one. That night I caught our neighbors dogs in our backyard.The roosters made enough noise for me to wake up. The next morning we were down to 24. Craig found one of their carcasses in the neighbors back pasture. That was enough for him to go and have another talk with him. (I forgot to mention that, after the killing of the first goat, he talked to the neighbor about his dogs. The guy told Craig he would keep his dogs locked up at night.) Well, he went back again to just give him the facts of what his dogs have done and that if the dogs are caught harassing animals on our property they will be shot. So, a co-worker has let Craig borrow a gun and he is ready. The dogs were not out last night though. Not sure if it was because we had a lot of rain last night or if the neighbor took Craig seriously this time. There are way too many roosters for us to butcher,just for practice.So, we will try to give them away or in the meantime, they will be dog bait so that Craig can use the borrowed gun. We have talked to other neighbors that have had a problem with these dogs and would love to find a way to stop this problem. Hopefully, we can get this resolved.

On a brighter note, our hens have been laying about 2 eggs a day for us!!! I keep meaning to take photos of them. But I don't remember until after we have eaten them. I did however take a picture of the eggs cooked! Today, our hens have laid four so far!!!! Very exciting! We're wanting to maybe hatch a few eggs in an incubator as part of their science class. I don't know if we'll do that this year or wait until next spring.

The snakes have come out of their winter hibernation. I believe we have found between 8 and 10 so far. The kids enjoy taking out their machetes to go snake hunting! We have been cutting back some brush near the canal and have a huge pile of branches that we have been burning little by little. Sebastian takes the snakes that have been killed and throws them on the fire. Roasted snake anyone???? yuck..... We have made a huge dent in the brush clearing. We are all suffering from sore bodies. Even the kids are moaning and groaning before bed and complain of backs hurting and sore legs and arms. But by the next day, when they see all of their hard work, they are very proud of how much we have accomplished and they comment on how good it makes them feel.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Our First Farm Loss

I am so saddened to have to type this post.We are all just mortified at finding our poor Carmen,the goat,fatally attacked sometime during the wee hours.We are not sure what killed her, unfortunately. There are a couple of possibilities. We have had a little problem with our neighbor's two dogs.They have been jumping over our fence into our property and growling at Matthea.Only her though, I guess because of her smaller stature.Craig has tried to put up a temporary blockade where they normally jump over.But, they jump over with such ease that they could go to another section as well.So, we suspect that these two dogs,who have formed a pack with another dog and run around this area chasing everything in sight,may have been the culprits. On the other hand it is very possible that it was your typical coyote kill.

A gun purchase has been on the list since the dogs started their harassing. Craig, Sebastian and I are all more than ready to shoot one of them if we are able to catch them on our property again. I am going to talk to a few neighbors who own goats and chickens around here and ask them what sort of problems they have had with any losses and their solutions. We have planned on getting a guard donkey and most of the neighbors do have one.So, maybe that has been their solution as well.

The children are all so sad and shocked.We all are. We have a baby goat that is suppose to be coming soon to our farm.She is going to need more care than Carmen. She is still being bottle fed and will require frequent "feedings" throughout the night.But she will be locked up at night until she gets older and we can be sure that we have something to guard her at night.Our herd may just have to have four walls with a door in the end. We'll see.

Having a dog, which we no longer have,may have alerted us that something was going on. When we were in the process of looking for a place and faced with the possibility of not finding something.Which would have meant we would have had to move into Cactus Petes housing and they don't allow pets.We put all three pets in the paper;Brownie,Pickles and Silver. We got a few calls on the cats and a couple on Brownie.The people who called about the cats never called back and the last lady who called about Brownie wanted her right away.We took Brownie to a family, here in the area, who has 40 acres for her to run on,they have animals,another dog, and several children.We all miss her,but she is much happier with the situation that she is in now.She has the freedom to run,run, run.Which she needed so desperately.

The cats were on their way to the pound if we didn't get into something soon.They ended up making the move with us. As a matter of fact Silver is still on her way to the pound. Pickles will probably end up staying with us (in the garage) or she will fly home with Johnny when he comes out to visit in a couple of months. No indoor pets for us anymore....never say never...huh? We keep the cats in the garage at night and they are out during the day.Silver doesn't do much exploring.They would never survive outside as farm cats.They are both de-clawed and, as city cats who have lived a pampered indoor life, would not have a chance.The two dogs go nuts when the see Pickles roaming the property. They would eventually have their way with her,for sure.

Friday, March 13, 2009

We Have Our Goat!!!!!






Our goat is finally here and there already is some excitement happening.We thought we had the garden area secure enough but.......she escaped through one of the holes in the fencing.She got her head through after struggling a bit and almost got stuck as her body was making its way through.Looked as if she sucked in her belly and "pop!" out she went.Craig,Jade and Sebastian all hopped over the fence and went after her.I wish I had some loud rodeo music playing and a video recorder.It was quite the site.

They finally had her cornered in the canal area in some brush and Craig picked her up.We put some rope around her neck and Sebastian is holding her while we are putting up some chicken wire around the lower half of the fencing.

More later......

Our Budding Chef , Matthea






Matthea has been wanting me to put a picture of her homemade pizza, that she made for all of us, on my blog for quite some time now. This is a ham and olive pizza. She made just a plain olive/cheese pizza for Jade, the vegetarian in our family.
She is an eager cook!! I will have to see if there are any of her macaroons left,so that I can photograph them and put them on here as well. She has filled many happy belly's here in our home.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

The Farm is Growing

We are still neck deep in our boxes trying to make some sense out of all of our "stuff".But, Craig and Sebastian have been able to get some things rolling here, outside on our farmette.They both have been working real hard on repairing some of our fencing and clearing some brush by the canal.Today was such a gorgeous day to be outside.


The girls have enjoyed helping when they can and love just being outside exploring.They all get up as early as they can to take care of the chickens and check, of course, for any eggs. Oliver is just happy being in the midst of all of this, with his two bottom teeth finally making their arrival! I'll get a picture of Matthea in here on the next post.

We all are real excited to announce the arrival of our chickens!!! We have acquired 1 Polish rooster, 2 Polish hens, 2 Buff Orpington hens, and 1 Golden Laced Wyandotte hen.The Polish hens have not produced anything for us as of yet.In fact, the Polish hens have been establishing their pecking order by "pecking" on the other hens.Their life here may be real short.Looks as if we will be having hen stew real soon,unless they start dropping eggs! But, our other three hens have given us a few eggs so far.The children were just thrilled to see the eggs in the nest and bring them in.

Here is the Polish rooster standing behind the Polish hens....
A Buff Orpington hen and the Golden Laced Wyandotte hen.....
We are getting our first goat as well, tomorrow.She is a six month old Pygmy,and we will breed her soon in order to get milk! So, for now, we are setting up temporary quarters for her in the fenced in garden area until the corral fencing is completed.We just told the children about her today.They are still in the middle of their elated joy of receiving chickens and now they are unable to contain their happiness about getting our first goat too!

We all are very happy and eager to live out this season in our life. Life on the farm is finally starting....ahhh...what a good feeling.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Nineteen Wonderful Years!!!


It's amazing how much time has gone by with my son,who is now 19 today. So many
great memories of being able to raise this young man.


All of us have been able to enjoy him and love him.

The summer time fun...and his comedic antics!!!

Taking time out to ponder with "Smokey"...during his
serious moments...
How blessed I have been to be his mother.How blessed we all have been
to be a part of his life now and hopefully with many
more years to come.I thank my God for the years He
has given me with him.

Happy Birthday Johnny!!!