Gimme Shelter

Some photos of our locally produced dinner:

Last night's wraps had tomatoes, too. They're delicious - so sweet.

Nathan built the sheep a shelter to replace the temporary tarp that I'd put up. He claimed that it would be "at least twice as wide" as the current shelter.

....

He made it all nice and cozy for them by taking a non-proverbial roll in the bedding hay.

The sheep were very suspicious at first, but this morning they were all lying down in their new shelter.

New ewe still needs a name! We should probably come up with one today before our big group of weekend guests arrive...we don't want to end up with another "Ewean" or "Eweniqua" situation.

Ewean, who was originally the shyer lamb, now comes running over to me for scratches. 

Another day, another dead fish. We don't know what's going on; the water tests are all normal. 

This little guy survived in the quarantine bucket for another few hours after I found him on his side.

Ryan is still being weird. He has tried to climb into bed with us the last two nights (he never does that), and lies there panting, then runs off to sleep in his crate. He wants to be touching me at all times - including trying to climb through the greenhouse beds to sit against my legs. When I tried to get him to go outside before bed last night he jumped on Nathan's lap, shoved his head under Nathan's chin and hid.  He's eating normally and is full of energy. He got shocked by the fence two days ago - maybe it really freaked him out...or scrambled his brain.

He never puts himself under the covers. 

Farm Fare

We had our first fully farm produced meal a few nights ago! The roasted chicken was delicious and went perfectly with steamed broccoli, baked green beans and a big salad. We also ate the first few cherry tomatoes, sweet peas and raspberries this week.

I'm spending my morning tagging along with Fred, touring the town. The animals seemed to sense I was leaving for a few hours...so they all started having issues, of course. Ryan has an upset stomach or something - he wouldn't settle down all night and was panting a lot this morning. Another fish is dead even though ph, nitrites and ammonia levels all seem fine, and Denise seemed to be having a lot of trouble laying an egg this morning. Fingers crossed everyone is sorted out when I get home. Except the fish....it's too late for him, unfortunately!

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.

Hot Days, Frosty Nights

We have another frosty night ahead, apparently. We spent a good half hour covering the fish tank, the grow bed and the greenhouse plants with various tarps and cloths. We closed the greenhouse up early so hopefully it will retain enough heat to stay above 0. 

Nathan has gone to check the fish water temperature in the middle of the night the last two nights (*note that I never volunteer for this task) and it has stayed consistently between 18-20 degrees. There's a small aquarium heater in the tank, it gets covered at night, plus we attached insulation around the outside of the tank. Those things all seem to be working to keep the temperature up. 

First net full of Tilapia going into their new home. We transported them in that black tupperware in the back of my car - going around corners was a little sloshy but all fish were fine upon arrival.

They like to hide in dark corners and in some plant pots that Nathan put in the tank (or "pot plants" as Nathan says they call them in Australia. I'm not so sure about that...) 

Salad greens looking good in the grow bed. 

Tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini.

I took Magpie away from the other chicks to have her photo taken and she wasn't too happy about it. She is *loud*!

It was so hot in the greenhouse today...and yet Abby and Ryan insist on lying in there, panting away.

Hillbilly Deluxe

Such a pretty truck...Ryan is apparently bored in the back.

So we decided to put something a little more interesting in (on) the truck.

Just kidding! That isn't Nathan's truck...but that is the truck we saw when we pulled up to do our little Tilapia deal today (from the guy who had advertised the fish in the classifieds a few weeks ago).

When we pulled up to the interesting property I was just about ready to jump back in the car and drive away, but the guy turned out to be really nice and he had a pretty cool tank/grow bed set up.

We ended up with 58 (if we counted right) Tilapia fingerlings (1-3" long).

The dogs don't really care - they would rather play in the sand pile.

Woolly Bully doesn't care either. He just wants to ram in the mulch pile. He got out through an open gate the other day and dove head first into the mulch. He's pretty nervous so he ran back in when Nathan walked towards him.

 We forgot the camera with the fish pictures in the greenhouse. I'll put them on tomorrow!

Greenhouse Update

Everything's growing really well (including the weeds).

Clump of oregano (I couldn't bring myself to thin it)

Mulched tomatoes - these are the first ones I started, back at the beginning of March. They're "Sweet Million" cherry tomatoes and they're already about 8" tall.

Peppers

Kale - it's at the end of the greenhouse where it should be cooler. It's doing much better than the kale outside, a few feet away.

Cilantro

We went on a mission today to find a bigger pump for the aquaponics. The volume of the grow beds has to be about the same volume as the fish tank for the filtering/cycling effect of the system to work properly (plus it's nice to have more grow beds) so a bigger pump was needed to supply water to three beds. We finally found one at a pet/pond supply store.

We're going to pick up 50 Tilapia tomorrow! 

Mother Clucker!

Only 3 eggs this morning...we're blaming Mother Clucker but it may have been any of the ladies who slacked off today. 

In other news, finding Tilapia for the aquaponics was turning out to be the hardest part of the setup - Nathan was thinking he was going to have to order them online and have them shipped for a pretty high cost. We were looking through the local newspaper the other day at lunch and just happened to look at the classifieds...and we spotted this! The only ad in the section:

He should be ready for the fish soon, maybe this weekend.

I planted some more bush beans, edamame and butternut squash today. Everything seems to be growing well (the weeds, too!).