Looking Up

These are some happy farm dogs. It looks like I photoshopped Ryan's smile but no...that's just his face.

We went to take some photos in the orchard and found Amelia (the ewe) tangled in the electronetting. That wasn't so happy. She is fine but we'll have to be more careful about consistently testing the fence. I think the battery died and Oprah made a clean escape, then Amelia tried to follow and her escape ended in near disaster. An animal getting tangled in live electric fence could end pretty badly.

After leaving the orchard, we found all of the chickens huddled together under a clump of trees, which we've never seen before. We were wandering around trying to figure out what had spooked them when a hawk suddenly flew out of one of the trees. Ack! We've been so lucky about no predators so far with the free ranging chickens - I would hate for that to change. I met a woman the other day who has lost 30 chickens this summer to ravens. I never even thought about ravens going after the chickens - the dogs do a good job of chasing them away whenever they spot them. 

Then the owner of the horses and cows showed up to give them some treats. As the horses, dogs, cows and chickens were all going nuts for any crumbs, 2 large ravens landed amongst them all and started eating the crumbs, too. I encouraged the dogs to chase them but Abby and Ryan were too busy looking for scraps...when suddenly Speckles raced up to the ravens and chased them away! They tried to land again and she did the same thing. That's Speckles in the bottom left corner. She's one tough chicken!

Abby looks tiny next to Fred.

Mac and Molly (the other two Belgians) went to a retirement home a few weeks ago so it's just the 3 big guys left. Barney and Sam don't always seem to get along too well - today we saw them backing up towards each other and kicking each other with those huge, powerful legs. I'm constantly making sure that Abby and Ryan stay away from those feet! I hate to think about what could happen with even one small kick...

Barney (I rode him around the farm the other day- he was so good!):

Sam - the biggest horse I've ever seen:

Planet Farm

We outdid ourselves with visitors this weekend - 3 different sets in 3 days! We hiked, had bbqs, swam in the river, went to an unexpectedly big party at our neighbours' house (who knew that our town had a real live jazz/blues band!?), ate pizza at a cidery, had a few campfires in our new auction-won firepit and taught two very awesome kids all about cloacas and ram testicles. 

I never had a chance to take any photos, so these are all courtesy of Jeff and Billy.

Planet Farm

Zebra Head announcing that it's mid morning..or maybe midday...early afternoon...late afternoon..

Bella holding Speckles. We had to perform bumblefoot surgery on Specks since it seemed like I didn't get the infected 'plug' out the first time. This time we got a bunch of hardened gunk out so hopefully her foot will heal now.

Charlie and Skyler T. Those are blackberries in the food dish that the girls picked for the chicks.

Ryan bringing the sheep over so that we could feed them. There are 4 new horses here that are boarding in the sheep paddock. They're really sweet but they're making it hard to take care of the sheep. They push the sheep out of the way when I want to check eyes/feet and crowd the fence for any treats I have. I'm hoping we can put them in a different paddock soon or else divide the current field in two sections.

The new horses - I don't know their names yet.

Sam is also new to the farm. He's the biggest horse I've ever seen in my life.

Jax wasn't sure what to make of the farm animals. Here is he learning to ignore chickens.

We wanted Little Brown to come teach Jax a lesson when he barked at the chickens. She chases Abby and grabs bits of Abby's hair, if she can. She wouldn't do it to Jax.

I'd better go pick some tomatoes. We skipped a few mornings and there are so many ripe every day now!

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...

Mohawk Chick

 Just sitting down to do some blogging...

Look at Magpie's new head feathers! Very strange.

We got 4 eggs again this morning! Even later though...this time they only laid them around 11. 

The little brown chicks hang out together. They all like running around in the sun in their coop (they come inside after 'play time'). 

Today Nathan worked some more on the aquaponics set up - he siliconed a piece of aluminium mesh over the bottom of the big tank and started building the drain pipe.

I prepared the rest of our greenhouse beds and transplanted the cucumbers, melons and gold nugget tomatoes. Then we got the rest of the drip irrigation set up - it's set up for 40 minutes every morning at 7:00 am.

Morning scritches for Barney.

The Farm is Growing

Grazing together

We got a lot done today! First we picked up our 4 new laying hens. They were in a pretty crowded barn and had been replaced with this year's model...they might be a year old, as we were told, but who knows, really. We'll see if they lay us any eggs in the next few days! Omelettes tomorrow? Or roast chicken next week? (just kidding....)

Checking our their new digs. One is big, one has white speckles, and the other two look alike. We had to catch them tonight to put them in the hutch-coop and they weren't very nervous of us. We haven't finished the fully enclosed outdoor part of that coop yet, or they would have been locked in there today to get used to it. 

In their coop this evening. It's small but they'll have the enclosed outdoor area too, and they'll mostly be free ranging.

The playhouse coop with the netting over top. This is when we realized that we'd fully enclosed a chair by accident.

The chicks had their first day outside today! This is how they reacted to the great outdoors at first:

Luckily they had their trusty guardian looking over them.

Perhaps not so much of a guardian...Ryan seems to think he has a stake in a chicken share. Raise the chicks now, get a chicken later?

 While the chicks hung out just outside the greenhouse (the nice warm air blew right out into the xpen), we worked. I transplanted the hot peppers, bell peppers and tomatoes. 

Nathan cleaned the dust off the expanded clay balls that will serve as the grow bed for the plants.

 The bathtub will be the grow bed - it will drain back into the fish tank.

Fred deciding if he wants some hay.

Sniffly Chicks

Not too much to report today - it was pretty cold and rainy so we spent the morning doing some errands and then organizing the house. We've been here a week and we hadn't even unpacked our suitcases yet! The house is looking more organized now. 

Later in the afternoon we went out to bring the horses in and give them (and the cows) some hay. We went to check the greenhouse and it was nice and warm so we ended up staying in there for a bit and planting some lettuce (a mesclun mustard mix and romaine), arugula and shallot sets that we got today. We checked the weather and it shouldn't go down past 2 degrees tonight so we'll chance it and leave the tomatoes and other potted seedlings in there tonight. 

We got some garden bird netting ($8 for 12' x 12') to use for the top of the chicken runs - hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow so we can finish those and do the rest of the mulching in the orchard (we didn't put enough mulch down the first time...oops!).

The feed store had oxy-tetra (oxytetracycline hydrochloride) antibiotics in stock today for the chicks. About half of them are occasionally snuffly so I think it's better to be proactive before it gets any worse. We'll use if for 5 days or until the symptoms go away. We also got some apple cider vinegar to add to their water (supposed to have a variety of benefits for them). 

One of the little Rhode Island Reds...possibly the cause of all of this snuffling!

Zebra Head is HUGE. Look at her compared to lil' red!

Magpie (...I'm not naming them or anything) is still tiny and agile.

 She always goes up on the platform now. I don't even think the platform would support Zebra Head and the other meat birds...

Zebra Head taking a rest after eating...before eating some more. And then pooping. And then eating some more.

One of the Light Sussex chicks. This one always comes out and sits on my arm.

Brave lil' red.