"Sprummer" in the Hollow

It's not even officially Summer yet, but the garden, critters, and occasionally, the weather, are all in Summer mode.

Those 3 or 4 days we had of 90+ degree heat we had a few weeks ago seemed to put our raspberries over the top. We've been getting a pint per day as of late, and they haven't even hit their stride yet. I think I'll be making a LOT of jam this year!

The strawberries are doing good as well, but tend to fall victim to the slugs and roly-poly bugs if not picked the second they become ripe. Thankfully, the duck yard is directly next door to the garden, which keeps the slugs and bugs in check, though a few still get through and leave their unmistakable mark.

The pumpkins, beans, carrots, sunflowers and watermelons are all up and looking decent. The potatoes are growing like gangbusters - we need to hill them up again!

The snow peas have finally bloomed, and will hopefully have their first fruits ready by this weekend. Besides a little Sungold tomato or a sun-warmed raspberry, snow peas are my favorite garden sneaky-snack. ;)

The pollinator bed is taking a little longer than usual to get going. The borage, not surprisingly, has reseeded itself con mucho gusto, to the point where I may have to pull a few out to ensure that my breadseed poppies, calendula and phacelia have half a chance at making it.

The lemon balm and spearmint have all but squeezed the chamomile completely out of the tea bed, meaning that a minty-reckoning is overdue. Since none of our critters are terribly fond of the stuff, and I have waaaay more already dried and put up that I could ever need for tea, I think I'll be offering up cut mint & lemon balm this weekend to anyone who is willing to take the stuff.

As for the critters.... OY.

The ducks are doing well, but their egg production is down due to thieving ravens. We're looking to add a net or some sort of barrier/deterrent to the duck yard/Quack Shack to keep the hungry little buggers at bay. Especially since we want to hatch out some babies, which we learned the hard and heartbreaking way, are also a favorite food of hungry ravens. :(

The chickens are doing well. Ruby the Easter Egger took off for about a month and came back with a single little black and yellow chick. We're calling her Garnet, though he/she is still way too small -and fast! - for us to get a good look at in the hopes of accurately sexing him or her. I suspect that Garnet's papa is our Cuckoo Marans rooster, Godzilla, which would make Garnet, if she is in fact a she, an Olive Egger pullet. The other gals in the flock seem to be falling prey to chick envy/baby fever and have been trying to sneak off to raise families of their own. Wrangling our stubborn laydies has been more challenging of ever as of late.

Just hatched! "Kotori", Japanese for "small bird". :)

Our quail flock is expanding! We have ten 5-week old babies, and another four 1-week olds coming right behind them. We'll be hatching out more later this Summer, but the ducks have dibs on the incubator next.

The bees are humming along (see what I did there?)! We have three top-bar hives and one Langstroth, and as of last week's peek, all are looking healthy and full o' honey. Beekeeper Bill says that we should be able to pull some honey at the end of this month! These were all new packages as of this Spring, and they're off to an awesome start owing to everything blooming so early this year. Let's hope that our luck (and theirs) holds.

The goats are happy. We're down to just our two old ladies - Sophie and Chardonnay. They're doing a pretty good job of keeping goatlandia mowed down, and will soon be the recipients of a big windfall of blackberry vines just as soon as Bill and I can find the time to bushwhack the chicken yard. There's never enough time for everything!

So, that's about that. The critters seem happy, the garden seems happy, and the lawn and weeds are out of control, as ever. Life is busy, but good. :)

Today's Take - 6/8/2015

Three out of four of our broody mama ducks finally hatched out their babies this week! Blueberry & Drusilla each had five babies, Kiki hatched out three. Now hopefully they'll get back to laying some of their wonderful eggs for us.

The garden is finally starting to feed us. ;) Peas, lettuce, herbs and raspberries are starting to roll in and we're really enjoying the homegrown salads every night.

For the record -
Chicken eggs - 10
Snow peas - 8 oz
Buttercrunch lettuce - 1 head

Baby Goats!

Chardonnay has her babies on January 6th - one boy and one girl. And I was so sure that she had at least three in there! D'oh!

At 2 days old - the dark kid is the doeling, and the tan fella is our lone buckling, Cocoa.

After fooling me several times, Chardy finally, actually went into labor right around dinner time on the 6th. Farmer Bill was up the hill to feed and came scrabbling back to tell me that Chardonnay was delivering her 2nd babe. We all trucked back up the hill to check on everybody, help Mama dry everyone off, iodine their cord stumps and give them their first dose of colostrum/vitamin supplements. Chardy came through like a champ and her babies are healthy and beautiful!

And then again last night, Sidney did practically the same exact thing. Bill noticed two little new, wet babies at feeding time and came back with the report that we had two new pretty little girls.

The twinses!

Sidney and her darling doelings.

It is highly anticipated that Blue is also expecting shortly, but as she tends to be rather rotund on any given day, who knows for sure?

Three girls and a boy so far. YAY! :)

Today's Take - 8/18/13

Zucchini - 3 pounds (another 2 or 3 were thrown to los puercos)
Yellow squash - 3 pounds
Pattypan squash - 10 ounces (just one squash)
Tomatoes - 8 ounces - mostly cherries
Yukon Chief sweet corn - 2 pounds
Chamomile flowers - 1 ounce
Sweet basil - 2 ounces
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon
Eggs - 6

We have two visitors in the goat pen this next few weeks - Fritzen & Oreo! They are here for "pregnancy camp" and Buckley is ON THE JOB.

The pumpkins and summer squashes are taking over the garden! The flower/botanical bed is getting invaded by the naked-seed pumpkins and the strawberry bed is being taken over by the sugar pies. I've had worse problems. ;)

Still only the one sunflower open. Seriously - what's it gonna take?!?

Bill harvested just enough corn for dinner tonight. It is GORGEOUS!

Critter Update - 4/20/13

Today four baby goats went to new homes! Both of Sophie's kids, Sidney's boy and Hope/Liberty's (I can't keep them straight) girl. The folks who took the goaties brought us a few chicks too. We now have six Light Brahma/Americauna chicks being fostered by our silver-laced cochin, Lacy.

Since kid-fest '13 began, we've sold 1 doe in milk and six babies so far. Hop & Liberty are on hold for another family, pending Hop's little guy's successful weaning, and one little wether and one little doeling are earmarked for one of the hub's co-workers, who will be trading us turkeys for the two kids.

Since Sid & Soph are still well in-milk, we'll start our much-anticipated milking tonight. Chardonnay, who was the last to deliver, is still nursing her twins for another few weeks, but will eventually also be a milker for us this year.

I can't wait to make cheese, soap and cajeta again with our milk, and I'm sure the pigs are looking forward to having a belly full of milk-soaked bread and pastries each evening for dinner too.

Besides the joy that is the influx of milk made available to us by weaning off and selling a few babies, I also  very much appreciate the reduced feed and hay bill, and the lessened impact on our pasture. At our fertility/baby boom peak, we had 20+ goats on this little piece of property, which is waaaaay more than it could sustain. We're grateful to the babies for bringing their Mamas into milk for us, but we don't plan on keeping more than one this year. It'll be one of Chardy's babies, who are so identical that I can't tell one from the other. Pictures forthcoming!

Today's Take & Critter Update

Well, it appears that we may have two goat mamas left to kid instead of just one. Brother...

Scarlet & her bud, Thea, were checking out the baby goats and new piggies, when they saw Blue sitting all by her little self in the middle of the pasture. They went by to say hi and said that they swear they saw kicking in her ever-rotund belly. My knee is well enough now that I can take an occasional hike up to goatlandia, and so off I went to check out my Bluey girl. I wish I'd taken a picture! Her girth alone might not have been enough to convince me that she was pregnant, but a gander at her lady-region has me feeling pretty confident that she's extremely pregnant.

Our permanently portly, Princess Blue

She didn't have any discharge happening, but, as happens with most extremely pregnant animals, it looked like her bum-bum was going to explode. :\ We definitely didn't plan for her to ever kid again, but if all of this is just fat, well, then I'm really worried about her, because then the bulging-bum-thing would require a visit to Dr Natalee to see what on earth is happening inside of Blue.

Chardy is also nice and fat, and pretty well bagged up, but no discharge yet, so, going by her history, she has at least another 24-48 hours to go yet.

The piggies have settled in well. In less than 24 hours they managed to root up all of the grass that had been growing in their pen. They also inhaled the slops I made for them, which featured such culinary delights as Kid Milk Replacer, freezer-burned apple slices and onion bagels. Yummmm!

The Guinea hens have settled in well too. They are in their own closed section of the coop for now, until they know for sure that this is home. Some websites suggested that I leave them in for up to 6 weeks before letting them out to free range. Boy, that seems like a lot to me, but then again I'd hate to see them up and fly off on their first time out. We'll leave them in for a few more days at least. No eggs yet from the Guineas either. I sure hope that we get a few before Easter. How cool would that be? ;)

Today's take-

*Eggs - 6

Kids?

Today I finally managed to work myself up to making the trek to the goat yard, so that I could eyeball the lassies for myself and see if I could figure out who was pregnant.

Bill thinks that they all look a little too thin, which tends to happen after a cold Winter eating past-its-prime hay. To my eye, they look in fine flesh, especially blue who is built like a barrel.

My best guess (because it is only a guess) about who's pregnant - Chardy looks pregnant, but not "ready to go", Hop is *maybe* pregnant, and Sidney looks pregnant, though not bagged up, but I did see a little discharge on her lady bits, so I don't know whether she's pregnant and getting close (though not yet bagged) or just fat and in heat.

Time will tell! Between 8 does, I can only hope that we end up with at least one milker!

Stay tuned...

Oreo comes a-courting

Our sweet Miss Oreo and her Mama, the feisty Fritzen, moved on to a new home together a few months ago. At the time we were all but certain that both girls were pregnant. However, as time has gone by, it looks more and more like we were mistaken.

Fritzen has a history of quadruplets, so when she's pregnant, she is PREGNANT. If she was bred when we had our initial billy-goat jailbreak, as we suspected that she was, she'd be about a month away from kidding. Her "figure" and the softness of her belly have lead me to the unfortunate conclusion that she is either a) not bred or b) not as far along in her pregnancy as we had thought.

And so, her new Mama is keeping an eye on her for signs of either pregnancy or coming into heat, so we can try and get her with a buck ASAP if she's still open.

Meanwhile, her daughter, the sweet yearling, Oreo, has very definitely gone into heat, and was therefore promptly trucked back to our place from her new home for a little overnight rendezvous with our yearling buck, Barley. We observed them for a little while and saw a lot of interest & flirting between them, but don't know for sure if they sealed the deal. While young Oreo was away on her lovers tryst, poor Fritzen bawled for her baby and had to literally be lulled to sleep by her loving new owner.

Bill brought Oreo back home to Fritzen tonight and said that Fritzy was very joyful and sproingy upon her baby's return. It was nice to have our little Orrie back for a little while. I sure hope that this breeding takes! Can you imagine how cute the babies from these two will be?


Young Miss Oreo


And our dear little Barley boy

El dia de los Pollos

I probably mangled the Spanish, but what I'd meant to say way "The day of the Chickens". Does that sound like a bargain bin children's book or what? ;)

Today started with Bill & Liv butchering Thunder-chicken. We tried multiple times to re-home him via Craigslist, but in the end, had no takers. He was such a pretty boy, I'd hoped that he could've gone off and made some harem of lonely hennies happy, alas it wasn't to be, and so soup he is.

We also delivered our 26 three week-old chicks to their new owner and made just a few bucks more selling them than it cost us to raise them to this point. That's farming for ya. We're lucky to have made anything, I guess.

We still have the 10 six week-old "babies", and plan to raise them up for meat. Though I'm slightly tempted to keep a hen or two, just to see if they got their mother's blue egg gene. How cool to have a frizzled, crested, blue egg layer! :)

Alright, enough bird nerdiness for one day. Mama Bird - out.

22!

That's more than half of the eggs in our incubator that have hatched so far! We haven't lost a chick yet either, though we have one little guy who is struggling, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Four more in the incubator have substantial pipping. I hope that they bust out of there soon!

Meanwhile, the smell coming off of the incubator is gnarly. It's not a rotten egg smell, per se, but it's still pretty nasty. Please hatch, bambinos, so Mama can clean that thing and put it away. :P

On the edge of my seat...

waiting for my babies to hatch. They've started peeping well, and so far two have small pips in their shells. I need to go to sleep, but I don't want to miss a thing!

How nuts would it be if I went to bed and woke up to every last one of those 42 eggs hatched?

:)

Here we go again!

A brand new batch of eggs just went into the incubator. 42 this time, which is as many as the egg turner can hold. This next batch will have a more diverse mix of babies, including purebred Australorps, Lorp/Polishes, Lorp/Turkens and (please, oh, please) Turken/Polishes. There'll of course also be more Americauna/Lorp & Americauna/Polishes, which are what this most recently hatched lot all were.

I'm seriously praying that we get at least one Turken/Polish frizzle out of this batch. He/she should look a little something like this -





Turkens seem to be a love 'em or hate 'em breed, and I just adore them. They are so dang awkward looking! But a frizzled Turken - you have to admit that that's one cute little chickie.

Fingers are crossed that we get a good hatch out of this latest batch, since we seem to have a lot of interest from folks wanting chicks, pullets or meat, and should be able to sell or eat every last one of these little peepers.

Chicken & Eggs Update

The chickens are on night #3 of their antibiotic regimen. No new chickens have fallen ill, so this course of tetracycline and electrolytes will hopefully fix anyone who might have been a bit sick, and prevent any other chickies from contracting whatever the mystery illness was.

The one thing that we're sure that it isn't is Fowl Pox, which is what took two of our bantams last year. Before our vet was able to rule the fowl pox out, I was really stressing and kicking myself, half convinced that that must be what was making our hennies sick. Fowl Pox is a nightmare - not only does it spread like wildfire from native and migrating birds to livestock birds, killing them fast, but we actually have the flippin' vaccine for it in our fridge, but just haven't got around to administering it yet. Well this was a wake up call for sure. As soon as these antibiotics are done and everybody is on an even keel health-wise, it's shot time!

We've collected 14 eggs so far since we've had to stop eating our eggs. We have them on the porch, as the weather has been cool, still deciding whether or not we want to toss them, hatch them or decorate them.

Two days ago I was begging people to take eggs off my hands, and today I had to turn a egg buyer down. Bummer! I'm as sad about them not getting to experience our amazing eggs as I am about having missed an opportunity for a sale. Ah well, we're doing what we have to for our babies. God & weather willing, there will be more eggs to come.

The eggs in the incubator are on day #5. The yolk no longer moves freely through the egg, the blood vessels are quite visible, and the size of the air sac (in the point of the egg) has increased. If I remember correctly from our last foray into incubating, somewhere around day 7-10 the babies will actually start to react to the candling light, and move around a bit. So excited!

I also can't wait to see if we end up with any frizzled chicks in the lot. Curlie gets around, so the odds are decent. :)

Shoot me a comment or email if you are interested in hatching eggs or some of our (hopefully) 20 mutt layer chicks. They're due to hatch in 16 days!

*Update 9/18/11* I forgot to mention yesterday when I posted this that Bill made 1 1/2 gallons worth of Feta on Saturday, and 1 quart's worth of cajeta. :)

The Year in Review

My musings on my first year as a Farm Chick, followed by some potentially boring farm statistics. ;)

Short and simple, this year has kicked our butts.

We bought this place just over a year ago now, and as much as I'd love to tell you that we have, through the sweat of our brow, transformed this place into a working little farm in that time, I'd be straight up lying my butt off. We have stumbled and struggled, battled issues of health, money, time, depression, bad weather, ignorance, exhaustion, and unyielding soil. We weren't starry-eyed enough to think that this would be a cake walk, but the ass-whooping handed to us has been a real eye-opener. We are barely keeping our heads above water right now, but there is hope that things will improve in the coming year.

For one thing, we've realized that we need some professional advice in how to best lay out our farm to maximize the sunlight, water and soil that is available to us. My new friend, Brighida, at DeVa Designs is undertaking the task of designing/plotting our yard, garden and pasture for us. What a relief to have someone who knows what they are doing to get us started moving in a designated direction toward our goal of a functional, sustainable and FUN farm!

In the category of minor triumphs, we have the goats. We've taken on dairy animals, and actually done reasonably well with it! The goats have been one heck of an adventure. They are so smart, and for the most part, loving, fun little critters to have around. AND you get milk from them! It's like a dog with benefits! ;) We have successfully bred and delivered mamas and babies, treated hoof-rot, ear infections and lice, and wrangled everything from love-struck bucks to ticked off mamas, all without getting gored or kicked in the face even once. I call that victory.

Our chickens have continued to be a source of enjoyment and great food for us. We moved into this house with four layers and nine baby bantams. The bantams have all gone, and have since been replaced with another 19 hens and 5 roosters, all standard size. Bantams are evil. I won't make that mistake again.

We presently get anywhere from 1-5 eggs per day, with an increasing number of the eggs coming from our Americauna pullets, who are just beginning to lay the cutest little baby blue eggs you've ever seen. :) If every hennie did her bit, all on the same day without fail, we'd be getting nearly two dozen eggs per day/fourteen dozen per week. Someday, someday.

Our eggs have a very loyal following among our friends and Bill's co-workers. The girls are in charge of collecting, ledgering, cleaning and packaging the eggs, as well as extolling the virtues of a free range organic egg to anyone and everyone who will listen. We fetch $4 a dozen for our beauties, and our eggy "income" is finally almost enough to cover our feed expenses. It will get there, especially once the army of Australorps start laying, but for now, half of the benefit of having the chickens is just getting to sit and watch them do their thing. I dare say that I enjoy them even more than the goats at times, and have come to see that they too have very individual personalities. When I need to clear my head, I take a lawn chair and a glass (or bottle) of wine out to the chicken yard and sit under the canopy of my sequoia tree and watch my chickies graze and dust bathe. It is my answer to watching fish in an aquarium, plus wine. ;)

Our garden this year was a flop-a-roo. I thought that I'd go ahead and plant straight into the ground, as opposed to using raised beds, as we had in the past. I was fooled by the gorgeous color and texture of the soil. Epic fail! A soil testing kit later revealed to us that we have too little nitrogen and too much something else that I can't remember. Remediation and supplementation are what's called for, and the quickest way to reach that end is to literally build up the soil with raised beds and compost. Alas, our compost was not yet ready when planting season finally arrived this year, so I tried to supplement with some organic bat guano liquid fertilizer, worm tea and a little top dressing of bunny and goat poo. It all helped to some degree, but the garden overall just didn't perform. I'd had visions of running my own CSA. In reality, our garden didn't even provide enough food for our little family of four, let alone enough to share or put up. This is seriously the first year that I can remember ever having to buy a zucchini in peak season. :(

If there is an upside at all to our garden woes, it is that we actually have had some success with a crop that has failed us miserably every year before - pumpkins. Why the pumpkins are going ape but the zukes aren't is a complete mystery to me, but I'll take it anyway. We may not have much to eat this Fall, but our jack-o-lanterns will rock your socks, baby!

Between the shortcomings in the garden and being kept insanely busy by critters, children and attempting to maintain a social life, we've also fallen short on the amount of foraging and fishing that we normally do. We've managed to grab up and sock away a few crab and flounder, and I found a new love of stinging nettles that will definitely have me grabbing up more of them next year, but I'm waaaay behind on my berry picking. Canning season is bearing down upon me, and I don't really have anything to can. Such a bummer. I will count as a triumph my making two different kinds of cheese, feta and chevre, from my own goats' milk. We have a gallon and a half of goat milk in the fridge right now that will soon (with a little luck) be transforming into a farmhouse cheddar. It will need to age for at least six months, so that's putting food up too, even if in a different way that we've done before.

Turning back to the wins as far as foraging, I did manage to forage a lot of my animal food this year. Fir tree branches, blackberry brambles, miscellaneous weeds from the yard and scotch broom were all gobbled up gratefully by bunnies and goats. At least somebody is getting some fresh food for free!

We've slowed down on our beer, cider and wine making this past year, but are hoping to get that going again soon. I presently have a few gallons of rhubarb wine working, and hope to try some hawthorn flower and maybe make some more cherry wine before they go out of season. Sooooo much to do in such a small time frame!

Anyway, that about sums up our year here in the Hollow. We've learned a lot, and look forward to putting much of what we've learned into practice in the coming year. We haven't really established goals for the year just yet, as we're too busy running around to ever stop and contemplate what lies around the next bend. But we will get it together, and we will keep pecking away at all of it until we either fall down or fly. Wish us luck and strong backs, we're going to need them. ;)

Edit: My darling husband pointed out to me that I failed to mention all of the infrastructure changes that we (mainly he) were able to knock out this last year - a new 8x12, 4-run chicken coop; 3 goat pens; a tilled and deer-fenced 25x85' garden and a hand-built goat stanchion/milk stand. No too shabby for a couple of noobs. ;)


Goats Bought - 7
Goats Sold - 4
Goats Born - 7
Goats Died - 1 (Fritzen's stillborn doeling)
Current Goat Count - 9

Starting # of Chickens - 13 (4 "big girls" and 9 bantam pullets/roos)
Chickens Bought - 35?
Chickens Given to us - 3
Chickens Sold/Given away/Harvested - 5 (Scout, Sunny, Snowflake, Harold & Mr. J, all evil roos)
Chickens Died (illness, injury, predation) - Hens - 5, Roos - 3, Chicks - 8? (that number seems a little low)
Current Chicken Count - 28 (5 roos, 23 hens/pullets)
These numbers don't seem like they jive quite right, but my memory is a little fuzzy, so it's only a general count.

Starting # of Rabbits - 2 (Both supposedly female - NOT)
Rabbits Bought - 0
Rabbits Born - About 25
Rabbits Sold/Given Away - 4
Rabbits Died (illness, injury, cold weather) - About 20 :(
Current Rabbit Count - 3 (one doe, one buck and one neutered male)

Lucky #13

Gert finally had her baby. Just one, a little girl, at around 11pm last night, Mother's Day. Kinda nutty considering that our bunnies we're born on a friend's birthday, Chardy's baby goats were born on another friend's birthday, Fritzen's on Valentines Day, and now Gert on Mother's Day. Weird!

We're still mulling over names for the baby. Bill likes Lucky, as in Lucky 13, but I'm maybe a little too superstitious to name anything Lucky.

Anyway, mother and baby are both looking good. Gert has been very protective of her little bambina, bleating and lunging at the other Mamas and babies that come to check them out. Very un-Gertie-like, but understandable for all that.

Here are some snaps of the proud new Mama and her sweet little girl -

Gertie the Pregnant Goat

For the past four months, we couldn't tell whether or not Gertie was pregnant. We deduced that she was by her increased appetite and the fact that she didn't come back into an obvious heat, but with the nature of goat bellies being bloaty and round, it was too close to call.

Around four weeks ago, it finally became obvious that Gert was expecting. Her middle is now at least as wide as it is tall, and her udder has magically appeared, chock full. Her little bum-bum area looks fit to burst, but it has for about two weeks now, so we're on pins and needles looking for that for-sure sign that it's "go time".

Jen thought she saw Gert's belly contracting yesterday, but by the time that I got up to the pen, they had stopped. I managed to wrangle her and lay hands on her sides, but I couldn't feel the babies kicking. I'm worried. I really don't want to miss this birth, since it will be Gertie's first, and since I fear (hopefully irrationally) that these kids might be in trouble.

So I slept like crap last night, starting at every little squeak and creak, worried that Gertie was delivering unattended and scared, or that newborns were wandering around the pen wet and cold. Thankfully she has held on through the night. I would very much appreciate it if she delivered these babies in the daylight hours, but I know we're on her schedule now, so I'll come when called, whenever that may be. Hopefully soon!

Pictures are forthcoming. I just got an awesome new camera that I haven't figured out how to download yet. ;\

Goats Behaving Badly

Today we're bringing the "little boys", Blackjack, Barley & Buckley, down to the lower pen. Firstly, because Blackjack is just not holding his own very well against Spike & Archie, and secondly, because the little ones, Barley and Buckley, have "come of age".

Having no sons, I was not prepared for the trauma of watching my sweet boys turn into rutting, sex-obsessed playboys overnight. Granted, they are all still sweet, a trait not often found in bucks, but they are also trying to hump everything that moves. Men!

Bill caught Barley & Blue in the act - more than once. I don't know who I'm more disappointed in. Barley boy, that's your Auntie Blue! No-no! Not cool, man. Blue, dear, you are nine years his senior. Cougar behavior is not encouraged here in the Hollow. I hope that your new nickname, Mary Kay LaTourngeaut is punishment enough to discourage future dalliances with the babies.

Aside from the inappropriateness of it all, I'm a little worried for Blue if this pregnancy does take. She is a wee-bitty tiny lass, small even for a Nigerian, and Barley is a Mini-LaMancha, about twice the size of Blue when full grown. How big might this baby be? Not to mention that Blue is getting on in years. Fretting now...

The Spring Warm Up

Unfortunately I'm not talking about the weather - yet. I'm talking about these old bones of mine, and more pressingly, my mental organizational abilities. Time to dust off my gardening tools and bust out my treasured seed packets and get this farm a-rollin'!

It'll still be a while before I can put anything in the soon-to-be garden plot, as most of it is still under and inch or so of water, but I can and have started a few flats of starts inside and am chomping at the bit to start some more. There is something so incredibly gratifying about watching new life unfold - whether it be in the form of a sprouting seed or a wobbly newborn kid - that feeds me at least as much energy as it requires of me to sustain. And with the coming of Spring, sooner or later I will be immersed in it.



What's growing/producing this week:

*We're averaging 3 eggs per day now since Gracie started laying - finally.

*Seedlings - 1/2 flat of "Golden Self-Blanching Celery"; 1/2 flat of "Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans"; a whole flat of Nasturtiums; 8 cells each of cilantro, arugula and Thai basil; a flat of lettuces including red romaine, mesclun mix and rouge d'hiver. (Most of these seedlings will be for the school plant sale next month. I will keep a few of the herbs and some lettuce in my windowsill though. Can't beat the homegrown!) :)

*Mama goats are all still in milk, and we're 90% sure that Gertie is pregnant after all, so she should be kidding in early May.

*We are 99% sure that Cinderella bunny is pregnant again, with a new litter due within the next week or so. Papa Prince Charming was neutered, but not before he snuck in one last hurrah, the stinker.

*Narcissus, Snowdrops, Crocus, Daffodils, and Forsythia are all popping up and open. :)

Outnumbered

I was just updating the critter stats in the sidebar, and had blazing, spooky moment of clarity. We aren't just outnumbered by critters now, we are buried in critters. 33 chickens + 7 Bunnies + 12 goats + 2 parakeets + a turtle = 55 animals! We moved into this house with 17. Maybe it's time for us slow the acquisition/breeding down just a touch?

The Saga of the Boggy Hollow Bunnies

This week has been slightly rabbit-centric.

First, the bad news. We lost a baby bun-bun two days ago due to what looked like a prolapsed colon/rectum. By the time we noticed her lethargy and saw the protrusion, she was already extremely weak. She passed away within an hour.

In happier news, the rest of the baby bunnies are looking really good. They all had opened their eyes and started hopping about by the 23rd, which means that they were probably born on the 7th of February, even though they weren't discovered until the 11th. This litter started out at 7 and is now six, only one of which we're probably keeping. Scarlet immediately staked out one of the albino babies and named it - uhg - "Milky-Silky Jackson". We've agreed that her middle name/nickname is Snowdrop, since I refuse to call the poor thing such a humiliatingly cheesy name as Milky-Silky. Not to mention that it makes her sound like a disreputable character from Starsky & Hutch.

Last night after dinner we brought in all of the bunzos into the house and made them an impromptu hutch out of one of the goat kennels (yes, we have goat kennels) and set them up in the dining room. Everybody seemed very contented by their new surroundings, some, maybe a little too comfortable, as it seemed to be a bunny honeymoon going on in there. Prince Charming must have known what the next day would bring.

Bright and early this morning, PC went to the vet to be neutered. He was as calm as can be, calmer than me in fact, when the vet tech told us that the odds of Princey not making it through the surgery were substantial enough for us to pause and possibly rethink going through with the procedure. Apparently "prey animals", like rabbits are prone to shock. But keeping him seperate from his Cinderella for the rest of his life didn't seem like a viable option either, so with frazzled nerves, we consented to the operation.

When we got a call from the vet this afternoon, we were all strung as tight as piano wire. But we needn't have worried, PC came through the surgery just fine and is now back at home resting comfortably. The girls have been fawning over him and bringing him his babies and his lady-friend over to visit him one-by-one, so that everybody knows that everybody is ok. He's such a good Papa! The babies snuggled right up to him and one even shared his nibble of lettuce.

With all of the frisky bunny action last night, (I can't mentally handle the image that might be the sort of thing that goes on every night, so indulge me here) I suspect that we will have one last batch of babies in another 4 weeks or so. The first 6 won't be ready to leave Mama bunny until they are fully weaned at 8 weeks old, so if she has another litter, it's going to be bunzo madness around here.

Keep in mind that our current six will be ready to be re-homed right around Easter, folks. Call me! ;)