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!

Farm Life

I think we showed our 7 guests this weekend a pretty good farm time. Highlights included:

-fresh eggs for breakfast (with ham and cheese on an english muffin) served with hot lattes. Nathan and I got a taste for what it would be like running a bed and breakfast.

-a bbq and campfire in the paddock - a 3 minute walk from the house but we drove over in the back of the truck for farm authenticity.

-target practice with Benjamin and some old coke cans.

-a sudden downpour right at the end of the bbq that lasted just as long as it took us to get soaking wet rushing everything inside.

-roast chicken, pork and veggies for dinner served with garden fresh salad and plenty of beer, wine, rum and whiskey....which led to

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-a sheep naming contest in which the winning choices were Ewean and Eweneequa....

-a quick ride on Molly

 -multiple tours through the greenhouse (this basil made a big batch of pesto for all of us and barely looked touched after pruning).

-a taste of the first few ripe strawberries.

-almost everybody (including me) seeing a head of broccoli growing for the first time.

- chicken handling 101.

-an adventure hike along a creek to the ocean.

-4 extremely happy and tired dogs.

Ruffled Feathers

Meet Bully Buff and his ladies. 

They belong to our landlord and they out grew their city coop over the past 3 months. They moved into the hen house next door to the chicks a few days ago. Bully Buff and Buff Buff (maybe we need to get more original with names) might be pullets (our landlord still wants to think they are)...but I'm pretty sure they aren't.

Bully Buff marched right into the playhouse coop and took over. 

Luckily, even though Bully Buff is all brawn, he can't get up onto the roost. Even giant Zebra Head flew up there to get away.

 Yesterday we cracked the first double yolker!

Oh, and we borrowed a lawn mower to go over the bits we missed with the weed whacker. 

Farm Guests

We had a long weekend full of visitors. First we had Erika and adorable Maelle come stay with us. Maelle is such a great baby - she was happy the whole time she was here and she didn't have any trouble sleeping in a new place.

What were they watching??

 Then we had Emma and her dogs, 7 and Odd, visit for the day. Odd thought the chickens were new friends for her. She tried to get them to play with her (until they started charging her).

7 was more into staring at the chickens while vibrating slightly, waiting for his chance to get in there with them (he never got his chance).

Ever since we started letting the chicks free range, they don't listen to their "recall bell" anymore and they don't seem to have all that much interest in us, except when we're refilling their food. They really are teenagers. Tonight when I lifted the last little (not really so little, anymore) rooster up to put him in the coop he grabbed my finger and gave it a good shake! 

Apiarist Wannabees

It seems that I may be easily influenced by the media. 

Last night we watched "Queen of the Sun", a really good documentary about bees. This morning I woke up and the first words out of my mouth were, "Nathan, we should keep BEES!" (this is one week after "Nathan, we should get RABBITS!" and two weeks after "Nathan, let's get some SHEEP!"). 

Nathan was a good sport about it and we spent most of the day building a beehive - a top-bar beehive, to be exact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-bar_hive). I had some compelling arguments. For one thing, it would be great to have bees living right outside the greenhouse so they can come in easily and pollinate our veggies (trying to induce forced melon sex doesn't sound like a good time to me). Also, honey bees aren't doing so well in general (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130510-honeybee-bee-science-european-union-pesticides-colony-collapse-epa-science/) so keeping bees in the middle of an orchard seems like a good idea. 

The almost completed hive. Wedge shaped bars sit across the top (with a roof over them) and the bees build the honey comb down from the bars.

Taking a break.

The completed hive. I'm looking into the holes we drilled for entry/exit.

We want to try and attract a swarm of "feral" honey bees to their new, beautiful home. In the spring, a new queen bee sets out with a huge group of worker bees and they all gather on a tree or a fence. Scout bees fly out to look for a new hive - that's where our contraption comes in. We put some lemongrass oil in it to try and attract the bees. If that doesn't work, we'll find some old honey comb to add to it. 

We let the chicks out to explore while we worked. Abby was a little too interested in Zebra Head. She went into a trance-like stare at him and as I tried to snap her out of it, Zebra Head walked up to her, cocked his head, and pecked her right in the eye. Abby took it well, considering, and ran into the coop to find some tasty chick poop.

Ryan just lay in the grass and ignored the chicks - which brings me to the most horribly disgusting thing that happened today. We had just finished setting up the hive when we saw Ryan staring at a baby bird on the ground. Normally we wouldn't grab a baby bird, but this one had what I thought was a dog puncture on it's face. I picked it up (it was tiny - even smaller than the chicks were at a day old) and we realized that it wasn't a puncture - it was a maggot in the bird's face. Nathan pulled the maggot out...and then we saw another in the bird's head...and another...and another. We must have pulled 10 maggots out of that poor bird. We put it back on a low branch near where we found it, then walked away so the parents could come back. A few minutes later we came back, having decided that we should put the  bird out of it's misery - there was no way it would survive with those nasty holes all over its body and it must have been in a lot of pain. Ironically, after thinking wrongly that the bird had a dog puncture in the  first place, Ryan (chicken butt-licker, dog who turns his nose up at fresh rabbit) beat us to it. Luckily I was able to dispose of the bird before he ate any of it. I have never seen anything so disgusting before as those maggots coming out of a live animal. 

Fish Mani

Grow bed #2 is all set up and looking good with romaine lettuce, manoa lettuce, a mustard mesclun blend (we scattered seeds), basil, cayenne peppers, zucchini and tomatoes.  

 The fish started out skittish and shy but not anymore. Now they nibble on our fingers.

The mustard blend is delicious. We've been having them as a baby greens salad every night. One of the purple types tastes especially good - it's like eating dijon mustard.

I planted some peas and beans around the chick pen to trellis them up the chicken wire, thinking it would be simple and would end up looking really pretty. As soon as I planted them, though, the hens came running over to dust bathe, flinging peas and beans all over the place. I used some twine to make a little fence and they hopped right over it and started scratching around and pecking. In a last effort I used some of the extra bird netting from the top of the pen to stretch over and block the soil. It's possible that planting seeds right around the chicken coop was a bad idea...

The failed twine 'fence' with sunflowers in the pots. Today we let the chicks out for a bit when the chickens weren't around and they jumped right into the sunflower pots, of course.

Speaking of chickens, I think our hens have mites (*edit* they are lice, not mites). I was petting Denise today and I noticed a tiny white bug on her face. I've been doing some research and the solutions range from some pretty toxic stuff to putting your chicken in a bag of diatomaceous earth, holding her by the neck and shaking her around. Seriously. Shake without the bake (yet). 

"What the WHAT??"

Ryan finally ate his portion of the rabbit after I threatened him with the amount of guilt I would feel if the bunny went to waste. I'm not so sure that he enjoyed it, but he did eat it. Maybe farm life is making him want to become a vegetarian.

Spa Day

Don't worry, not dead.

Just resting after an intense first dust bath. 

The chicks all seemed to discover dust bathing yesterday. Apparently they do it to clean themselves and to get rid of parasites. Our hens seem to spend a large portion of their time at the little spa that they dug out next to a tree. It's pretty funny to watch.

Magpie's name should be Elvis. What is with her head feathers?? 

Abby looking a little too interested in the chicks.

 This is the chicken feeder that I made. I drilled a bunch of 1.5" holes in some 3" pvc. It should theoretically hold a bunch of food and self-fill as it empties, but the food seems to get a bit stuck in the elbow joint. It's still too big for the chicks but the hens use theirs. 

We are 2 days away from fish! Nathan got a test kit yesterday for the water. pH looks perfect at 6.8.

The water gets pumped out of the big green fish tank and into the grow bed.

 As it fills the grow bed, the water feeds the plants (after the nitrogen cycle has taken place on the fish waste water due to bacteria in the grow bed media). The water fills the grow bed slowly and then gets gets siphoned out quickly back into the fish tank due to this very cool (*nerd alert*) bell siphon that Nathan built, causing an ebb and flow effect through the bed.

The water in the tank was a balmy 26 degrees yesterday afternoon. We have to get some shade mesh for the tank - heat might be more of a problem than cold.

Oh, and one more bit of news...we go pick this up this afternoon:

I'm very jealous...but I've been assured that I will get to drive it (and not just from the backseat) as much as I want.

Empty Nesters

The chicks moved out today...to their new coop. They seemed pretty happy to have more room to run around. We hung the heat lamp on a chain attached to the ceiling and zap strapped the wire up the chain, along the ceiling and out of the playhouse coop. We closed the coop door tonight to keep it warmer but we'll open it during they day so they can have the outdoor part to play around in, too.

We had 4 fresh eggs again for breakfast and then a giant harvest of our veggies for dinner!

Yup, that's the giant harvest. 8 arugula leaves. That's ok, they topped our delicious homemade pizza.

 Hot genoa salami, green olives, onion and garlic (and the patented sesame seed crust). 

Ham, sundried tomatoes, blue cheese, onion and arugula.