Thomas the Ramming Ram

 Nathan got published! http://www.powerhousegrowers.com/aquaponics-a-diy-approach-to-organic-gardening/
Look at how fast SoZH is growing! I guess it's to be expected based on the size of his dad...here he is snoozing on my knee in the sun:

He still isn't quite fully feathered and he likes to stay warm however he can.

I think Squishy is getting tired of having him cramp her style...I took over chick warming duties for a bit.

The dogs have been very helpful with chores lately.

Rearranging the wood chip pile:

Speckles helped, too. Her foot is finally looking much better! Took long enough...

Abby helping to clean the chick coop.

The goats have been helpful, too. 

Cleaning some fall brush.

Looking hopeful as I walked by with a handful of kale for dinner (our dinner...but they love it).

I noticed that they need their hooves trimmed so we'd better do that soon. I would hate to start having hoof problems with them! Oprah and Amelia (previously "no name")'s feet are looking good. They're in the electronetting paddock that we've been moving around the orchard so they can eat the nice grass there. Once they've spent another week or so back there, it's date time with Thomas! 

Thomas has been getting antsy. First he escaped from his paddock through a gate that he's always pushed on (we've since fixed it). Nathan came out of the greenhouse and found Thomas just standing loose out there, looking a bit confused. Thomas converts any emotion into the same action: ramming. Hungry? Ram. Thirsty? Ram. Curious? Ram. Annoyed? Definitely ram. I ran to get some grain while Nathan distracted Thomas to keep him away from Nathan's mum and grandma who were sitting nearby. You have one guess as to what Thomas did when he saw me coming with a bucket of grain. Yep....I dropped the bucket and hopped over the fence into the horse paddock. Luckily Nathan is braver (we'll call it brave) than I am and he managed to call Thomas back into his paddock.

Then, yesterday evening, while Nathan was at work, we noticed that the horses and cows were all in with Thomas and Zeb. Our landlord noticed first and commented that it was nice that we were letting the animals all intermingle. Nope, not on purpose...the fence at the back had come down. I started running around the outside of the paddock so that I could get to the opening to try and call the horses and cows through. Our landlord headed right into Thomas' paddock. I warned him that Thomas has been pretty 'ram-my' lately but he said that he'd gone in recently without any problems. He got to the broken fence first and Nathan's dad and I started pushing the horses and cows that way (we were along the edges of the paddock - easy escape from Thomas plus he doesn't seem to notice that you're in there if you stay on the edge), so that after they went through, the fence could be patched up behind them. At first, Thomas and Zeb just stayed off to the side away from the action....but suddenly Thomas must have felt some emotion and you can guess what happened next. For a big ram on stick legs he sure can move...he took off right towards our landlord, who was holding the fence open in the middle of the field. I have never seen someone climb an 8 foot deer fence so quickly. I wouldn't even call it climbing...it was more like his legs became springs. One second he was on the ground and the next he was up the fence, straddling the brace. I'm pretty sure I heard a shriek first, but in case he reads this blog we'll say that he jumped in manly silence. Even though I realize that Thomas could really hurt someone...I was laughing too hard to do much and wondering whether filming with my phone would be appropriate. Eventually we got it all sorted out but wow...it is worth having a ram just for the life-endangering entertainment value.

Six Months Later

We've been farming for 6 months now! I can't even put into words how much we've both learned. I think that going into this with no experience has been one of the best things about it. We've made some mistakes, but without experience we had no expectations and we were able to jump into it without the pressure of knowing how things should be.

We went from never having even touched a chicken to owning over 20 of them, building coops and runs, eating and selling eggs, slaughtering chickens ourselves and hatching a chick from our own stock (Squishy did most of that).

The chicks in April - too scared to walk around on grass for the first time.

The chickens now - too spoiled to want to walk around on grass in the rain.

We went from never having grown anything to growing a greenhouse full of organic vegetables and eating, storing and selling them.

Little basil seedling in April.

The herb garden now...

We went from never having owned livestock to owning sheep, goats and a llama - and building fencing, gates, shelters, stalls and a barn.

April - just the horses and cows on the leased paddock here.

Now: Goats and sheep enjoying the grass - Thomas and Zeb were just off to the left behind that gate.

We went from knowing nothing but the definition of "aquaponics" to setting up a fully functioning system complete with Tilapia and a bunch of vegetables (Nathan gets full credit for this one). 

Aquaponics system at the beginning:

Grow bed #3 last month - I'll have to take an updated photo. Nathan also just finished building a compost pile next to it (with polypipe running through it) to hopefully heat the water over winter.

We went from never having bees to....having a hive ready and still never having bees. Oh well. It may have been a little bit much to handle in the first 6 months, anyway. We got a ton of wasps, instead. 

I leave you with...Flying Goat!

Hay Hay Hay

I have been way too busy to blog!

We had some more guests on Saturday for the day - they brought their dogs so we went on a nice hike along the river and then had a farm tour and bbq. They are already planning their next trip back.

On Sunday we did a bunch of work on the farm and then took one of the fish to a pond store for a scraping to try and figure out what's wrong. For almost 3 weeks we've been losing a fish a day. The scraping didn't reveal any parasites - the problem seems to be some kind of bacteria. There are different treatments for bacteria in fish but none of them are to be used in fish intended for human consumption. Since the water is also circulating through the plants that we eat, treating the fish with a non-food treatment isn't really an option. This weekend, though, Nathan switched to using pond water for the fish instead of regular (degassed) tap water. So far no more fish have died....it's still a mystery, but hopefully the pond water has fixed the problem.

Yesterday I started my great hand haying adventure. You know that expression about reinventing the wheel? Well, I feel like I've gone back about 70 years and am figuring out for myself why people worked so hard to invent mechanized hay equipment. It seems ridiculous, though, to let a field's worth of hay go to waste and then go out and buy bales of hay from someone else's field to feed our animals. So out I went on Monday morning with my (stupid, heavy, splintery, not-intended-for-hay) rake and my trusty companions.

This is what the field looked like after the landlord mowed it. The cut grass was lying in rows and was pretty much fully dry already. 

I raked down each row, gathering the hay into piles. I lined up the piles to make collecting it easier. There was barely any damp hay left, but I tried to leave the damper stuff on top of the piles.

After hours of raking, I left the piles to dry in the sun in the afternoon. That's when Nathan called to say he had hurt his back at work (picking up bales of hay, of all things). We were going to meet for a swim in the lake after work but when I got there, he was sitting on a bench and he could barely walk (I'm not sure how he thought he would enter and exit the water). We drove to the one walk in clinic in town, which turned out to be full for the evening...so we had to go to the emergency room. After 2.5 hours there, he finally got a prescription for some muscle relaxants. 

The next morning he woke up and couldn't stand up. After crawling to the bathroom, he realized that he couldn't go to work. He took his pain killer cocktail and once it had taken effect he was slightly more mobile - mobile enough to drive his truck back and forth along the field while I gathered up the hay. It was pretty bouncy, though, and I felt bad that he was out there with his bad back. When he passed out in the afternoon from more pain killers I took the truck out myself and finished the second truck load. 

I tried baling some of it by stuffing it into a tupperware that I'd lined with twine, then tying it up when it was compacted. It worked well but it was way too time consuming.

I think I raked and collected about a third to a half of the field and ended up with two compacted truck loads. I unloaded all of the hay into the garage in a chicken wire frame/fence thing that I put together. By the end of it I was sweaty, itchy and exhausted but seeing those two big piles of hay that I'd collected for the sheep for the winter was incredibly satisfying. 

What was incredibly dissatisfying was going out to lock the chickens up in the evening and finding the newly stacked hay pulled apart and eaten by the horses. I had put a tarp on top and weighted it down but they still got into it. I don't think they ate very much of it; they have *so much* fresh grass to eat. Stay away from my hay!  If anybody had told me a year ago that I'd be angrily grumbling, as I fell asleep, about stupid horses eating my hay, I'd definitely have laughed at them. 

They look so creepy in their fly masks.

I'm tempted to go out and rake some more hay today, but I've been busy this morning. 

A few hours of picking these:

The stand sold out yesterday! Three pounds of tomatoes, 5 cucumbers, 2 bags of peas, 2 zucchini, a bag of basil, a bunch of kale...all sold. It was our best day yet!

Then I bought some more grain for these guys: 

Yes, Speckles has her head up Zebra Head's butt. I have no idea why.

And then, I picked up my reward for haying the field. 

Six Ameraucana chicks. My excuse is that they'll lay blue eggs, which is really cool. The truth is that I'm on the fast track towards becoming a crazy chicken lady...

Death on the Farm

Just as I was sitting down to write about the chicken slaughter, the power went out. I called hydro and they don't know why - they're working on it - but it means that the pump in the aquaponics turned off (so the water isn't getting oxygenated). I rushed outside after calling Nathan but one of the fish was already dead. Now the generator is on and the pump is plugged in. That fish was the first accidental farm death - pretty good considering we have (had) 17 chickens, 58 fish, 4 sheep and a llama.

I was going to comfort myself by baking a cookie with the dough in the fridge but the oven has no power (duh). I really hope the power comes back so that all of our labour from yesterday isn't wasted in the fridge and freezer.

An hour later and the power is back!

We did it: Our first chicken slaughter and butchering is complete. We killed our two biggest meat roosters and our landlord's buff roosters. I didn't actually feel as sad as I expected to - we killed the roosters quickly and it has been in my head since before they arrived that they are for meat. Tomorrow night we'll see how our free range, 'happy' chicken tastes. They ended up being over 4 lbs each at 12.5 weeks. We learned a few things during the butchering experience:

1 - when you're killing the chickens and dealing with the post-death convulsions, you'll probably get blood sprayed on you no matter how careful you are. Make sure you wash that blood off of your light blue t-shirt (..and face..) before you rush into the house to get the pot of hot water...where your visiting parents are eating their breakfast and pretending that slaughter 101 isn't happening outside.

2 - also pertaining to visiting parents, when you choose a location to perform the slaughter you should worry more about whether they can see you from the dining table than whether your other chickens can see you. Your other chickens won't notice. Your parents will.

3 - when you scald the chicken to make plucking easier, you actually need to keep the water at scalding temperature. Any cooler and plucking is extremely difficult and time consuming. The skin tears, the feathers break and you end up with a porcupine chicken.

4 - you will spend a lot of time bent over and plucking feathers so your table should be at a comfortable height for doing so...otherwise you end up hobbling around rubbing your back for the rest of the day.

5 - when you're poking and prodding the chicken trying to get all of the feathers out, any pressure on the carcass will agitate the vocal cords and cause the chicken to 'squawk' in a very disconcerting way through it's headless neck. The internet tutorials never mentioned that...

6 - when you grin at your boyfriend as you're wrist-deep, eviscerating a chicken and say "I'm actually having a lot of fun!" he may look at you strangely.

7 - don't freeze the chickens as soon as you're done...they'll be in rigor mortis. Not only will they be extremely difficult/impossible to fit in to freezer bags, the meat will also apparently end up tough. You're supposed to let them 'rest' in the fridge for 2 days. Oops. We will have to let the one that we froze 'rest' when it's thawed prior to roasting.

Abby and Ryan were happy to eat their share - the feet, kidneys, livers and hearts. I accidentally threw the gizzards away with the intestines. Lucy wanted nothing to do with the meat. If you look carefully here you can see Abby under the table with a chicken foot in her mouth.

Working at our too-low table.

Bagged and ready for the freezer (should have been the fridge). 

All in all the process went smoothly and I really am excited to taste this chicken.

Clearly the hens weren't too traumatized by the morning's events. They were very involved in helping Nathan jump start the mower. After a dead battery, a dead battery charger, no gas, a hidden 'safety' switch that was on, and an equal number of things wrong with the weed wacker, we finally got the lawn mowed.

Look - the first aquaponics cucumbers! Speaking of cucumbers, the pickled cukes are delicious - very garlicky and vinegary which I love.

The greenhouse is becoming a jungle.

Today I'm going to make Thomas a halter. He really enjoyed being brushed yesterday and wasn't interested in ramming me. I'm not sure if it was because of the brushing or because he only goes after testosterone...

I think Mother Clucker is looking in the wrong place for her new man. The worst part of the whole chicken slaughter was that we took Buff away from the hens. Maybe they'll choose one of the other roosters instead.

Yesterday was Ryan's first successful time moving the ewes! We let them out into a larger paddock behind the one they're in now, and after they'd grazed for 20 minutes or so I went in with Ryan and sent him out. He went around them and pushed them back through to their original paddock. Good boy! He lay down when asked and he was relatively calm (no barking, at least, and his tail was down) about it. 

Lucy went home with my parents but before she did, she had one last hurrah....chasing Zeb all over the place. That poor "guardian" llama looked like he couldn't believe he was running from an 8 lb terrier. Back and forth across the field they went until we finally got Lucy back...I guess she's feeling better after her toxic plant mishap!

The Debut

Yesterday the farm front stall made its first appearance. 

We have had a grand total of...0 customers. I've seen at least 3 people stop and look and not buy anything. I'm thinking that it will be more popular when we have more than lettuce and herbs available (hopefully!). 

I pulled up the first carrots yesterday. The one in the middle must have hit a rock while growing. They were delicious!

Mmm more basil for pesto - this time it went on a pizza with zucchini, radish, onion, garlic and sundried tomatoes. It was one of our best yet!

The name "Sweet Million" isn't much of an exaggeration for these tomato plants. They are *covered* in vines of growing tomatoes. 

The lettuce (romaine and manoa) that I harvested for the stand yesterday. It's hard to keep it from wilting. I put it and the kale on damp towels on the stand and I stood the bunches of herbs up in some water. That seems to keep it pretty fresh. 

Nathan got some red wriggler worms to add to the aquaponics system. They help to break down the fish waste for the plants. He put them in the grow beds and they tunneled right down into the media. 

Our landlord is digging a trench to lay irrigation pipe from the rainwater pond by the greenhouse to the orchard. Nathan had a small work team of 3 to help him dig.

All of the dogs had had a pre-weekend bath. Back to farm life...

First Visitors

Happy "Put Your Mother to Work Weeding" Day!

My parents came for a visit this weekend - plus their dog, Lucy, and cat, Darla, too.

Lucy (all 8 lbs of her) tried really hard to intimidate Woolly Bully and the cows but she wasn't too successful. They didn't even blink at eye. It didn't help that she was running away in fear while barking...

We got a lot done in the greenhouse. I weeded everything and staked the smaller tomato plants up using bamboo posts. I also finished planting the rest of the row with some pumpkins, eggplant, more tomatoes and a few of the brussels sprouts (just to see how they do). Our landlord cut a big vent in the top of the greenhouse to try and keep the temperature down on hot days so hopefully it won't be quite as extreme as it was this last week.

Nathan built a strawberry tower with five plants going up the length of pvc. Water trickles down through each pot from the top. I'll take pictures of the completed tower tomorrow - it's really cool.

We were admiring our hard work this evening when we heard a funny noise behind us. Ryan was lunging/pouncing at a Garter snake. He didn't quite know what to do with it (kind of like how we think he would make friends with a bunny, if he ever actually got close to one. All he wants to do with the chicks is lick them...). 

We were all interested in the snake.

Dinner time! Quiche with baby greens, ham, spicy sausage, tomatoes, cheddar and parmesan. Yummy.

The First Crow

 Grow bed #1, April to May - big difference! 

The two bathtubs weren't providing enough filtration for the water (the ammonia levels are too high) so Nathan added two more grow beds.

This one has eggplant and tomatoes. The other will have peppers.

Tomatoes this morning:

We dug up the first arugula (the plants that had been started back at the beginning of March) because they were getting way too peppery and replanted some new seeds. The arugula in the greenhouse tastes pretty peppery, too - I think it's just too hot in there for it, even for eating the greens when they're tiny. We'll stick to planting it outside until it gets too hot.

We've been trying to figure out which of the chicks are pullets and which are cockerels. They're almost 7 weeks now and apparently you should be able to tell males vs females by the size and colour of their combs and wattles (bigger and darker at this stage in males) and by their feathers (the males have less developed feathers on their backs). Of the meat birds, there seem to be two pullets and four cockerels. Zebra Head is definitely a boy....and today he tried to crow. It sounded more like burp/chirp sounds, but I'm pretty sure he was trying to crow. Magpie and Magpie's twin are unknowns - their mohawks make it hard to tell. The two brown chicks (the ones that are supposed to be sex-linked) seem to be pullets and of the three Light Sussex, one (Squishy) looks to be a pullet, one looks more like a cockerel, and one is iffy. Fingers crossed for a girl - although our four hens are giving us more than enough eggs. We're up to two dozen in the fridge even with constant baking, quiches and poached eggs!