Hay Bales and Piglets!

Hey Ya'll! We've had a busy day yesterday here on the farm. In preparing for winter already we had our hay bales delivered yesterday. Four huge bales, and they are super heavy if you haven't ever tried to move them. Of course they just rolled them off the truck into the drive way so Frank and I had the chore of getting them down by the fence tucked away with the tarp over them. It doesn't look that pretty unfortunately, but its practical. The animals are really enjoying the hay already.

We also have piglets! I don't actually know when they were born I just found them when the kids and I went down to check on the electric fence. I don't usually go into the barn every day and I guess Peppa was hiding them in there and now they are starting to venture out and about. They are super cute but definitely little squealers, hopefully they will only be around for 6-8 weeks.

 The work is never down around here, especially when we keep adding animals to the mix. Our next project is going to be trying to  get the basement set up a little bit better so I can get storage shelves put up for our canned vegetables. If I can figure out how i'm going to start canning since our new house has a glass top stove and you can't use a pressure cooker on a glass top. Any suggestions are welcome! Thanks for stopping bye and we'll see you next time!

Beefy has arrived!

Welcome back Ya'll! We've had a busy couple of weeks around here. Time just flies by! Firstly it was finally time to cut back our potato plants. Then you have to let them sit for 5-10 days. We didn't quite get as many as were expecting but we still did get a big storage bin full of them so i'll take it! I think it was because of the dirt we used. We had a whole truck load delivered when we started building the garden and it wasn't exactly the kind I wanted. It was a mix of dirt and that clay dirt. So to fix the problem we spent all day yesterday tilling the garden beds; adding good dirt, compost, and pig manure. This hopefully will yield more potatoes since they will be able to grow in better soil. The next round is planted and now we can just wait and see. Look for a canning post soon!

Secondly we have two new arrivals to the farm! Welcome our new Nigerian Dwarf goat Rick and surprisingly we now have a Jersey Calf! We were planning on getting another male goat to bred with our two female dwarf goats Maggie and Judith but the cow was somewhat an impulse buy. We have been toying with the idea of a cow for a while but I've been on the fence about it. They get so big and  I just wasn't sure. Plus they are expensive, normally a few hundred if not more. However I was browsing craigslist and found a post for a baby Jersey Cow for just $100! Apparently he was so cheap because he still has to be bottle fed twice a day. So now that's added on to my daily to do list. He's so cute though! He's not getting a name, (Frank is calling him Beefy) I thought about calling him Hershal but have decided against it. Ya'll can probably understand why. We'll have him for maybe year or less and then should get about 600 lbs of meat out of it. In the end i'll let you know if this was all worth it or not. Stay tuned. In the mean time here are some super cute pictures of him!

Welcome Daryl!

Welcome back ya'll! I'm so excited to share that we have a new addition to the farm! His name is Daryl (keeping with my Walking Dead theme) and he is a hair sheep. They are good for breeding and also are meat sheep. They don't have wool so we don't have to worry about shearing them either. He's still a baby and is so cute! He's about the size of a young Lab to give you a comparison. We should be getting a couple ewes (females) soon to start breeding with as soon as they get old enough. Get ready for super cute lamb pictures in the future!

We've also been tryin to figure out why Carl isn't growing. We've ruled out parasites and anything like that so I think he's just the runt (he was a triplet). Our other two little girls Judith and Maggie didn't seem to be growing either so after a lot of research we think we figured it out. Judith and Maggie are dwarf Nigerian goats so they are going to stay small and hence we probably won't be able to bred them with Billy. Billy and Daisy are Alpline goats, which is what Carl should be as well since we know exactly who he came from. Now we need to decide where to go from here, stay tuned!

And Last but not least we think Peppa is pregnant so we should have little piglets here in an few months! Life on the farm, never a dull moment!

Daryl

Goats, Pigs, and Chickens Oh My!

Hey Ya'll! It's been a scorcher this week! I was just out feeding and filling all the water for the animals earlier and thinking about how hot its been and how I haven't even posted about them yet. We currently have 10 chickens, 2 guineas, 1 duck, 2 cats (well 3 but the kitten is going to his new home soon), 3 dogs, 3 pigs, and 5 goats! Whew...It started with our oldest Charlie who is a Brussels Griffon and grew from there. Then came Haven, a black lab, and Zoey, we think either a lab/pit mix or lab/boxer mix.

Charlie with Madelyn

Our Goats are Billy, Daisy, Carl, Judith, and Maggie. If your a Walking Dead fan you'll notice I've started naming our goats from characters on the show. Billy and Daisy are our adults right now that we breed and sell the babies. We just bought Judith and Maggie to increase our herd so when they are bigger we can bred them as well and will have three breeding females. We had an interesting experience when Carl was born this year. He wasn't able to nurse so I ended up bottle feeding him. He lived in our laundry room and is now more like a dog than a goat. He's my baby! Follows us around and is very loving and social. We also learned how to milk a goat so look for future post about making goat cheese and soap!

Carl (he's grown some now of course)

Daisy with two babies we sold.

Our pigs are name Miss Piggy, Peppa, and George. If you have small children you'll know where the last two names came from. We just Miss Piggy has become a pet so she most likely won't go into the freezer but hopefully the offspring of our two younger pigs will keep us supplied with plenty of pork so we can cut costs at the store. Similar situation we with the chickens, eat and sell the eggs. Which, if you haven't tried farm fresh eggs you are missing out! The guineas are actually really good watch dogs and keep the bugs down. They are so loud when something new comes near its almost super annoying. Between them and the dogs no one can sneak up in this yard! Anyway on with the rest of the day! Thinking about taking the kids to the pool since its so hot out. I hate being cooped up inside. If anyone has any ideas about how to keep two almost 4 year olds entertained in this heat send them my way! Have a great day!