Winding Down

 I think it's nearing the end of farm stand season - everything in the greenhouse has slowed way down. Today I got a handful of cherry tomatoes instead of the pounds I was getting just a few weeks ago. We'll still have cooler weather stuff in the fall (lettuce, kale, winter squash) and hopefully some eggs...but no more delicious tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans or zucchini!

Ryan trying to sell some produce (and probably himself, too - he isn't a big fan of his foster sister Lexi).

I thought there weren't many beans anymore but I picked a big bowl full this morning.

Nathan's first foray into preserving - this tomato relish/chutney is really spicy and really good.

Ryan getting ready for another day on the farm. He gets to bring me the sheep almost every morning since I've been checking Ewean's foot. 

Walt's also doing some morning stretches.

From L to R: Hank, Skyler, Walt, Saul and Gus. Skyler and Gus are the definite (and I think only) girls.

Hank the rooster.

But not the King Rooster. Zebra Head just keeps growing...

Nom nom nom blackberries.

Another case of bumblefoot...at least this time I knew what to do. Sheba is a lot heavier than Speckles so she's having more trouble hobbling around.

The girls were pretty excited to come out for another walk today.

May stretching for the tastiest leaves. This is how Maggie now stands up for grain - it's almost on command.

It's hard to get pictures of Maggie because every time I bend down, she comes running over to see if I have anything for her. 

Mother Clucker helping with the brush removal.

We leave for our trip tomorrow. It's a bit nerve wracking leaving all the animals (the dogs are coming with us). I had to stop myself from writing an essay to our landlord about goat care. I limited it to a paragraph...or two...

Zip Zap

We got our electronetting! It's definitely not the cheapest fencing available but it's so easy to set up and portable that I think it will be really handy to have. We used our farm stand money to buy it - along with the goats, 2 tickets to the agricultural exhibition we went to a few weeks ago and soon, a larger freezer.

Now we can just move the sheep or goats to wherever we want them to mow/weed. 

The energizer box that we got can either take D cell batteries or a 12 V battery. We're using the D cells now and even with some vegetation around the fence we're getting a charge of 4000 to 8000 volts...enough to make poor Abby yelp and run across the orchard when she touched the new fence.

Our cheapy fence tester 

 The sheep enjoying the first row of the orchard. The first time Oprah got zapped, she unfortunately ran forward right over the fence (it bent under her weight) and the others followed (of course). I think my mistake was not leaving the fence open to their regular paddock. If she'd had a safe escape route, she would have just gone back through there instead of through the fence. I changed the fence set up and so far so good - I've seen each of them get zapped on the nose and then jump back and continue grazing away from the fence. The goats will definitely take a lot of training/observing before I'll trust them in there...

We're still having troubles with Ewean's foot. She came to us limping (dumb new sheep buyers! we've learned our lesson - she was likely a cull animal and we bought her with foot rot already present) and throughout the summer we've trimmed her feet regularly and treated them with a copper naphthenate spray. Her left front never quite heals, though, and now I've seen her grazing on her knees occasionally. We really need to get it under control before the wet season when it could spread to the other ewes and to Thomas. We're going to give her some injections of penicillin and then if it's still bad after a week, we'll try foot baths in zinc sulfate with pasture rotation (the foot rot bacteria dies in the soil after 2 weeks if there are no sheep in the pasture). If it hasn't cleared up by the end of October after that regime, we're going to have to think about butchering her. That sounds harsh for a foot issue but we got our sheep for meat production, not pets, and foot rot is a pretty serious condition to deal with. You don't want it in your entire flock and you don't especially want susceptibility to foot rot being passed on in your breeding animals (there is likely a genetic component to how susceptible an animal is). It's also a painful condition for poor Ewean. 

On a happier note, I took the (totally back to normal) goats for a little walk this morning! At first they just wanted to follow me (the lady with farm crack in a bowl).

Naughty jumping Maggie (but so very cute).

Suddenly they realized they were walking right by all of these tasty blackberry bushes.

It was easy to lead them back to their yard with some grain after awhile - I guess grain still beats tasty leaves. 

So thirsty after their adventure.

Chewing their cud in the firepit.

Squishy's still diligently sitting in her nest. This morning I went to candle the eggs again for the last time so that I could double check that two of them are unfertilized and then take those out of the nest. Since we're going away for a week I don't want to leave them in there to rot and possibly explode after the others hatch. Unfortunately, there were only 4 eggs left - Squishy seems to have eaten one of the fertilized eggs. Maybe it cracked and broke, or something was wrong with it...or she just decided to eat it. Let's hope it's one of the first two options. She's only 6 months old but I think she'll be a good teen mom.

I 'chick-proofed' her brooding area with chicken wire over the too-large x-pen gaps, hardware cloth underneath to prevent predators digging in, and chicken wire across the top of the xpen so nothing can climb or fly in. I really hope at least one of the two remaining eggs hatches normally!

The Ameraucana chicks are getting big. I think they might actually be called Easter-Eggers since they're crosses of the different Ameraucana colours instead of being the 'right' colour types. I'm not that much of a chicken nerd (yet) that I care. I also think that three of them are boys. That I do care about...Gus and Skyler are definitely girls but Hank, Saul and Walt are looking iffy.

Taking a communal dust bath.

I was building a new compost bin (very fancy, I call it 'le palet' style)

and I noticed this little meeting taking place. I think Abby's explaining the ways of the farm to the chicks...mainly "I'm in charge, here, and don't you forget it". 

Goodbye Jane

Fully stocked farm stand! Except cucumbers - those seem to ripen in batches so we suddenly have 5 ripe and then a week with none.

I can't get enough of these cherry tomatoes...which is a good thing since we're picking this many every day right now!

Time to make some pesto for the freezer.

I thought there weren't any zucchini and then I looked a little harder...oops!

It was a sad morning for me yesterday when I went outside and found one of the chicks dead. I think she got her head through the mesh and got stuck, then the adult chickens on the outside pecked her to death. Apparently chickens (like dogs) will sometimes respond like that to distressed sounds.  It was kind of awful to find her like that. I've closed the yard so the chickens can't get close to the chick pen. RIP Jane. There are now 5 chicks left that we've named Walt, Skyler's Ts, Gus, Jesse and Saul (if they're hens, they just have to deal with their masculine names. We have a minor Breaking Bad addiction). I'll have to take some photos of them - they're huge, already!

Abby's healing up nicely. That's one of the dead fish (from a few months ago - bleh!) that she managed to find buried under blackberry bushes. We waste nothing around here...

Ryan is relieved to be taken off farm patrol duty.

We have 12 hens...I think: Speckles, Denise, Dorothy, Mother Clucker, Magpie, Pagpie, Little Brown, Tiny Brown, Raven, Sheba, Clarice, Squishy. Yup, 12. The young ones are 5 months old now so they should be laying eggs, but we're only finding 5-6 a day. I'm thinking there are hidden nests all over the farm but we can't find them!

"Nothing to see, here..." (this is in the hay pile). 

They grow up so fast!

The chicks already have all of their wing and tail feathers and some on their shoulders, too. Their legs also turned 'slate' coloured, which is one of the traits of Ameraucanas.

I have to get a better picture of this one. He has the prettiest feathers - so he'll end up being a loud, obnoxious rooster, I'm sure. 

Speaking of which, 3 roosters is still way too many around here. They're loud (they seem to have crowing competitions with each other starting at 4 am and lasting all day), they eat a ton and they seem like they'd serve a far better purpose on our plates than chasing the hens around pulling their feathers out. I've been told that nicer roosters will do a little flirty dance for their hens and call out to them when they find bugs and worms. These guys do none of that! We've got two meat roosters left and then the Light Sussex rooster, Hannibal the biter (his 'girlfriend' Light Sussex hen is Clarice). Zebra Head will get to stay, for now, to see if one rooster around here is more manageable. He is huge but he's still more interested in lazing around than in any jerk rooster activities.

Our tomatoes look so fancy on the stand in their new containers!

Chick Playpen

It has been so much nicer this time to be able to let the chicks hang out outside all day instead of under the heat lamp, inside. The other chickens are interested but mostly in the chick food. Two of them have started laying eggs so we're getting 4 normal eggs and 2 mini eggs a day!

We're still at about 2 lbs of tomatoes a day and 3-4 cucumbers. I harvested and ripped out the edamame plants and the rest of the carrots, as well as the broccoli. We planted beans in their place and some more carrots. I let some of the beans get really big (accidentally) so I replanted the beans from those pods. I'm not sure if that will work or whether you have to let them dry - we'll see!

Trim Your Bush Friday

I like my tomato plants well pruned. We trim off all of the branches below the first fruit, any leaves that look unhealthy and all of the suckers. It has worked well so far - we've got lots of fruit and it's easy to find.

The landlord is more into his plants au-naturale. 

He's got tons of stuff growing but you can't find any of it! He's away at the moment so he asked us to pick his cucumbers. I ventured in and found these...most are way too big and some were rotting on the ground. I have no idea what to do with all of these cucumbers...I hate seeing food wasted. I'm going to a bachelorette party this weekend - veggies for all!

This spaghetti squash is huge.

The first of the aquaponic tomaotes to go out on the stand! The sold in less than an hour.

I think these chicks might be even cuter than the last ones. It's so nice and warm out that I turned off their heat lamp and brought them into the sun, instead. It's fun to watch them catch bugs already, even though they're still so uncoordinated.

When they heard a loud noise they all ran towards me and hid in my lap.