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!
The building of a small family farm from scratch, warts and all.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
First (Late) Veggie Starts of 2013
What can I say? The fact that anything got started at all is pretty close to miraculous at this point. ;)
Germinating away on the seedling heat mats -
*One flat of mixed greens - Mervielle d'Quatre Saisons lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, Cimmaron lettuce and Russian Red kale
*One flat of assorted tomatoes/tomatillos - Tomatillos Verde, Black Cherry tomatoes, Roman Speckled Paste, Silvery Fir Tree
*One flat of peas - 12 of Mammoth Melting. 12 of Lincoln Homesteader.
...and that's it, so far. I'll have to start a lot more inside if we don't get a break in the rain soon. Urggg...
Update 4/15/13 - Peas & greens are starting to pop up! We only spotted one lonely little tomatillo sprout so far though,. Hopefully we'll see more sprouts tomorrow, and by this weekend we'll be able to move them off the seedling heat mats and put them under the lights. Yay for homegrown! :)
Germinating away on the seedling heat mats -
*One flat of mixed greens - Mervielle d'Quatre Saisons lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, Cimmaron lettuce and Russian Red kale
*One flat of assorted tomatoes/tomatillos - Tomatillos Verde, Black Cherry tomatoes, Roman Speckled Paste, Silvery Fir Tree
*One flat of peas - 12 of Mammoth Melting. 12 of Lincoln Homesteader.
...and that's it, so far. I'll have to start a lot more inside if we don't get a break in the rain soon. Urggg...
Update 4/15/13 - Peas & greens are starting to pop up! We only spotted one lonely little tomatillo sprout so far though,. Hopefully we'll see more sprouts tomorrow, and by this weekend we'll be able to move them off the seedling heat mats and put them under the lights. Yay for homegrown! :)
Monday, April 1, 2013
February/March Crafting Totals
Knits -
Fingerless Mitts - 2.5 pair ($18/ea)
Bike Helmet Earmuffs - 3 pair ($15/ea)
Dishcloths - 5 ($4/ea)
Small Baskets - 2 ($5/ea)
Total - $120
I missed my goal of $5 per day by kind of a lot, but considering that most of the last half of February I was zonked out from knee surgery, I suppose it's not really all that bad.
The Easter bunny brought me a few cute skeins of yarn, so we'll have to see what those end up telling me that they want to be. ;)
Fingerless Mitts - 2.5 pair ($18/ea)
Bike Helmet Earmuffs - 3 pair ($15/ea)
Dishcloths - 5 ($4/ea)
Small Baskets - 2 ($5/ea)
Total - $120
I missed my goal of $5 per day by kind of a lot, but considering that most of the last half of February I was zonked out from knee surgery, I suppose it's not really all that bad.
The Easter bunny brought me a few cute skeins of yarn, so we'll have to see what those end up telling me that they want to be. ;)
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Seeds for 2013
...or seed candidates, anyway. We'll have to see how many of these badboys make the final cut, since, regrettably, we do not have infinite garden space.
Tomatoes - Paw Paw, Speckled Roman Paste, Silvery Fir Tree, Black Cherry
Tomatillos - Toma Verde
Melons - Minnesota Midget Melon
Flowers - Calendula, Rocket Larkspur, Borage, Hungarian Blue Bread Poppies
Herbs - German Chamomile, Mammoth Dill, Bouquet Dill, Thai Holy Basil, Slow Bolt Cilantro
Carrots - Nantes Scarlet (guess who picked that one!), Royal Chantenay, Atomic Red, Red-Cored Chantenay, Little Fingers
Peas - Mammoth Melting, Lincoln,
Radish - Cherry Belle, French Breakfast
Beets - Cylindra, organic sugar
Cucumbers- Delikatesse, Homemade Pickles, Lemon
Fennel - Sweet Florence
Beans - Golden Wax improved, Kentucky Wonder, Cannellini
Corn - Yukon Chief
Summer Squash - Early White Bush Scallop, Cocozelle (zucchini), Early Prolific Straightneck
Winter Squash/Pumpkins - Small Sugar Pumpkin, Cinderella, Burgess Buttercup, Williams Naked Seeded, Hokkaido Stella Blue
Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe, Miriam Edible
Salad Greens - Arugula (rocket), Cimmaron, Buttercrunch, Merveille de Quatre Saisons, Rouge d'hiver, Red Romaine
Hardy Greens - Russian Red Kale, Chinese Kale, Pak Choi
These are all of the seed packets that I could dig up, yet this seems like not quite enough to be my whole stash. Hmmmm.....
In addition to all of these, it is pretty much guaranteed that I will pick up a few starts from the Farmer's Market, once it's open. I guess I can't control myself. :\
Friday, March 22, 2013
Today's Take - 3/22/13
We had a hard frost overnight. Just when you think Winter is really gone...BAM!
*Eggs - 6
*Foraged - a handful each of stinging nettles and dandelions
*Eggs - 6
*Foraged - a handful each of stinging nettles and dandelions
Monday, March 18, 2013
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.
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
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
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
Piggies, Birds and Disbud-a-palooza
This was a very full weekend for the residents of Boggy Hollow. First of all, two of us turned a year older, which, hot on the heels of a knee replacement surgery does not tend to make one feel Spring Chicken-y, generally speaking.
In addition to the clicks on the odometer, we managed to cram a whole lot of farm stuff into those 48 hours.
Firstly, Bill finished building a pig pen and pig house on the site of our first (completely flopped) garden, in the bottomland. Plants didn't grow well there, but we're hoping that piggies will.
Secondly, we bought ourselves some piggies. We got two gilts and a barrow, also known as two girls and a castrated male, 6 1/2 weeks old and already weighing 30-odd pounds apiece. They are mutts, essentially, being primarily Berkshire/Duroc crosses, with a little Yorkshire somewhere in the mix way back. They're fairly mellow little things, who managed to root up the grass in their newly built yard in a single evening.
Against the advice of some, Scarlet has decided to name this motley lot Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie). I personally have no doubt that any inadvertent sentimentality for these gals & guy will go out the window just as fast as the first whiff of frying bacon (or Baykin) finds its way to my kids' snoots.
These will not be the first animals that we have harvested for food on this farm, but these will be the first that we will have raised for expressly that purpose. I certainly hope that knowing that going in will make it that much easier to harvest and eat these lil' oinkers. For the record, the pigs cost us $95/each. 95x3= $285
As if our dances with pork weren't enough for one weekend, we also were gifted a pair of strikingly pretty/odd Guinea hens. These gals are useful in guarding and alerting our chickens to the presence of the nasty coyote who killed Cotton and who keeps dropping by. I'm not sure if they'd defend our flock or just raise the alarm about a predator in the vicinity, but either way, these gals are a very welcome addition to our rag-tag flock.
Per Wikipedia, Guinea fowl are voracious consumers of fleas, ticks, lice and other insect pests, and will keep your coop and garden relatively bad bug-free. That's a pretty sweet deal, no? I have to admit that I'm also quite in love with their super-cool polka dot plumage. I think that Bill could tie some really cool flies with those feathers!
And as if that weren't enough to fill up a weekend, we also enlisted some help getting our 9 baby goats vaccinated, disbudded, and (where applicable) castrated. The gal who came out to do the deed was kind enough to show Billy the ropes, so that maybe next time we can do the disbudding and banding all by ourselves. For the record, the gal charged $15 per kid for the disbudding/vaccination (with our meds)/castration. x9= $135
Just to clarify, because I feel kinda like I need to justify our descision to disbud, we personally do not care at all whether our goats have horns, but since we're looking to sell these kids to folks, possibly within Olympia city limits, where horned goats aren't allowed, we thought it prudent to go ahead and have the babies dehorned. We also went ahead and castrated all of the bucklings, since one uncontainable buck is plenty for this little farm, thankyouverymuch.
So, that was our weekend. Even with having had goats and a whole mess of chickens for years now, something about bringing pigs and exotic birds into the fold makes this farming-thing suddenly seem super legit. I am going to do my level-best to keep good, accurate records about how much this pig adventure costs us, and how much meat we end up with for our trouble. I'm really, really hoping that between excess goat milk, bakery outlet scores and garden/kitchen scraps, that we'll be able to feed these pigs up, on the cheap. Come harvest time, which we guesstimate will be in August or September, I'll have to crunch the numbers and see how much this experiment cost us. More importantly though, will be whether or not this pork tastes ho-hum or crazy delicious.
Only time will tell!
Today's take:
Eggs - 8
In addition to the clicks on the odometer, we managed to cram a whole lot of farm stuff into those 48 hours.
Firstly, Bill finished building a pig pen and pig house on the site of our first (completely flopped) garden, in the bottomland. Plants didn't grow well there, but we're hoping that piggies will.
Secondly, we bought ourselves some piggies. We got two gilts and a barrow, also known as two girls and a castrated male, 6 1/2 weeks old and already weighing 30-odd pounds apiece. They are mutts, essentially, being primarily Berkshire/Duroc crosses, with a little Yorkshire somewhere in the mix way back. They're fairly mellow little things, who managed to root up the grass in their newly built yard in a single evening.
Against the advice of some, Scarlet has decided to name this motley lot Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie). I personally have no doubt that any inadvertent sentimentality for these gals & guy will go out the window just as fast as the first whiff of frying bacon (or Baykin) finds its way to my kids' snoots.
These will not be the first animals that we have harvested for food on this farm, but these will be the first that we will have raised for expressly that purpose. I certainly hope that knowing that going in will make it that much easier to harvest and eat these lil' oinkers. For the record, the pigs cost us $95/each. 95x3= $285
As if our dances with pork weren't enough for one weekend, we also were gifted a pair of strikingly pretty/odd Guinea hens. These gals are useful in guarding and alerting our chickens to the presence of the nasty coyote who killed Cotton and who keeps dropping by. I'm not sure if they'd defend our flock or just raise the alarm about a predator in the vicinity, but either way, these gals are a very welcome addition to our rag-tag flock.
Per Wikipedia, Guinea fowl are voracious consumers of fleas, ticks, lice and other insect pests, and will keep your coop and garden relatively bad bug-free. That's a pretty sweet deal, no? I have to admit that I'm also quite in love with their super-cool polka dot plumage. I think that Bill could tie some really cool flies with those feathers!
And as if that weren't enough to fill up a weekend, we also enlisted some help getting our 9 baby goats vaccinated, disbudded, and (where applicable) castrated. The gal who came out to do the deed was kind enough to show Billy the ropes, so that maybe next time we can do the disbudding and banding all by ourselves. For the record, the gal charged $15 per kid for the disbudding/vaccination (with our meds)/castration. x9= $135
Just to clarify, because I feel kinda like I need to justify our descision to disbud, we personally do not care at all whether our goats have horns, but since we're looking to sell these kids to folks, possibly within Olympia city limits, where horned goats aren't allowed, we thought it prudent to go ahead and have the babies dehorned. We also went ahead and castrated all of the bucklings, since one uncontainable buck is plenty for this little farm, thankyouverymuch.
So, that was our weekend. Even with having had goats and a whole mess of chickens for years now, something about bringing pigs and exotic birds into the fold makes this farming-thing suddenly seem super legit. I am going to do my level-best to keep good, accurate records about how much this pig adventure costs us, and how much meat we end up with for our trouble. I'm really, really hoping that between excess goat milk, bakery outlet scores and garden/kitchen scraps, that we'll be able to feed these pigs up, on the cheap. Come harvest time, which we guesstimate will be in August or September, I'll have to crunch the numbers and see how much this experiment cost us. More importantly though, will be whether or not this pork tastes ho-hum or crazy delicious.
Only time will tell!
Today's take:
Eggs - 8
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