Goat kids any day

Carissima is due any day now. We've fixed up a nice birthing stall for her. The boys have decided to sleep out in the barn to let us know when she birthing. Not that they need to. In all probability she will do her business without any one even knowing.

The school year is winding down. I'll be sad to be leaving this job, but it is time to move on anyway. I'm feeling much more comfortable with the layoff. I'm sure that God will provide. Even if it is in a way that I do not expect. I hope it is via another teaching job, but who knows. I am open to all possibilities. I've been meaning to get an application in at the local food co-op as a bread baker. That sounds like lovely work.

We are currently struggling to contain the chickens. They have a huge run, but they have been totally free ranging all fall, winter, and spring. We put them in the run for the summer months to give the garden a fighting chance. The run is in disrepair, and they keep escaping. More work on the run in the morning. They ate a bunch of the new lettuce transplants. We need to get them locked up soon before the other veggies start coming up.

Just a short check-in. I'll get out with the camera soon. Blessings.

Sunshine

The Sun made an appearance here in N. Idaho today. It was most welcome. It was a lovely gift on this Easter weekend. The long slumbering farm is re-awakening. The goats will soon be giving birth. The chickens are producing an ever increasing number of eggs. Piglets will be coming on Friday. Baby turkeys will be coming soon too.

Usually at this time of year we start corralling the chickens too keep them out of the garden area. Unfortunately that cannot happen right now due to septic construction. Therefore, the garden will be late going in. Sigh. We've planted some new cherry and apple trees though. Along with some raspberries. I'll be putting in an asparagus patch soon too.

Life is mighty fine here on the farm. We are truly blessed. I'd love to be planting more, but it will happen soon enough. By next weekend the construction on the septic will be done and we will be in a whirlwind of gardening activity. I hope your gardens and critters are all coming along. Whatever vegetables and animals we end up with will be a gift. God bless.

Big egg, little egg

Oh yes, it's the classic big egg little egg picture. Every egg farmer has one. But dang, you gotta wonder how a hen did that.

I made venison picatta tonight. 2 out of 3 boys liked it. Both of the adults loved it.

I was excited to come home from teaching and see Jenny and the boys. It was a great day of teaching. I love it when it just "clicks" with a student. One of my students who has autism is really learning to read...finally. Sometimes it just takes a long effort with little sign of success followed by a cognitive growth spurt. It's great to watch. Earlier in the week I had another student leap ahead in mathematics. What a blessing.

Carrissima is looking more and more pregnant. I'm still sort of assuming she is, as I have not done a blood test on her. It'll be so exciting to add baby goats to the menagerie. The baby chicks are due to arrive the 15th of March. Yay. We've already got enough eggs to fill our standing orders, feed our family, and sell a few dozen to the food co-op. I believe we are coming out a little bit ahead on the eggs which is hard to do.

The house is getting unpacked. Jenny has been a hero in that regard. I've been too busy teaching and trying to make up for all the snow days. Times are tight, but I still feel so very blessed to have everybody here. I know that everything will continue to work out. There's certainly no chance that we will starve around here. What a blessing. The plants are taking off in the grow room. I'm hoping for a banner garden year. Who knows, maybe the farmer's market will be a go this year.

I feel so truly blessed. What an adventure. I still marvel at how quickly life can change. What an amazing gift.

New hens

No pictures today. Jenny was in for a short visit and it's been crazy busy. She'll be returning in just a couple of days with the boys for a week visit. I am so looking forward to that. As a life-long childless bachelor it's going to be quite a shock. Jenny and I worked hard moving stuff in, organizing, lifting, and assembling.

The other thing we did was acquire 20 free laying hens! It was more work in cramped quarters to get them caught, loaded in the truck, and released in the hen house. They've already started laying in their new home. Sometimes new chickens will be "off" for a couple of days, but these seem to be settling in fairly well. I don't think they are used to free ranging because they haven't left the hen house yet. I need to get them eating a little more calcium. There egg shells are thin. Oyster shell for starters and then bugs and weeds when they decide to venture outside. In any event, the extra eggs will be a big help. I've been struggling to meet some orders and with the boys moving in would have been short some eggs. This will definitely solve that problem.

I met with some friends briefly after Jenny had left. Good friends are such a blessing. Having Jenny and her boys moving out to the farm is a blessing too even if it is a little scary sometimes.

A Happy gang on the farm

What a happy crew on the farm. We played with the goats, collected eggs, played in the hayloft, made an apple pie, and made French stuffed pumpkin for dinner. We are having a ball. I'm sure the goats are too.

Jenny and the boys go home for a couple of weeks today. We'll try to go steelhead fishing net weekend as a family. Then Whisper goes to "goat-camp" to get bred. We will be looking forward to multiple goat births in early summer. That'll be a wild time.

The stuffed pumpkin had mashed potatoes, onions, and venison/pork sausage in it. Along with traditional pumpkin spices. Nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and ginger. It turned out great and so did the apple pie.

We are having a bit of a windstorm. It must have knocked the power out sometime in the night.

What a wonderful time we all have had. We made a lot of connections at church this weekend. We are looking forward to getting involved in 4-H. We are looking forward to getting involved in the youth activities at church.

It is going to be pretty lonely this next couple of weeks out here on the farm. Plenty to do though. With teaching and getting the house prepared for Jenny and the boys to move in, plus all of the regular chores, I'll be pretty busy.

Well, as usual, I am feeling blessed. Blessed to have such wonderful new adventures coming into my life. Cheers.

Rogue Chickens

This group of Rhode Island Reds has decided not to live in the coop any more. I'm pretty sure they are roosting in the plum orchard. A couple of them have been using the nest boxes in the coop to lay. I don't know if the rest are laying in bushes or what.

It has been extremely hot and dry here. It's great for the plants as long as I irrigate.

A friend of mine is coming over tomorrow to help build hog fencing. I tried to do it alone, but I could see that it would take me five times as long to do it alone as it would with just one other person. We should be able to get it done in an hour or two.

It is so comforting to have a routine of farm chores. I spend an hour each morning on the animals, then another couple of hours weeding, fertilizing, fixing stuff, and whatever else needs to be done. The routine of doing hard work each morning until it gets too hot is keeping my head screwed on straight.

I am feeling much better than I have been in the last few weeks. Things are going well. I'm spending lots of time with some really good friends and meeting new friends along the way. I am looking forward to going to Mass early tomorrow morning and then to a breakfast for the new priest. I am truly, truly blessed.

chicken found a new coop

This chicken has taken up residence in the back of my truck. There's some straw and hay in there that she has built a nest in. She likes to hang around the truck during the day too. I don't know where she's laying her eggs.

I got some needed rain today. Just gentle showers all day. I spent a good chunk of the day hanging out with friends. Was feeling a little lonely so I called friends and family and talked on the phone.

Spent some quality time with the goats, the kitties, and the dog too.

I've just had an attitude of gratitude all day. Just so blessed to have all these wonderful people in my life. Wonderful animals, wonderful farm, wonderful job. I've never had it so good.

Wish I had a picture

This is a picture of a great horned owl on the chicken coop. We had no idea he was getting in the coop.

In the last week we've found three chickens beheaded with their necks eaten. We didn't know how it was happening since we found them all in the hen house. We actually thought it might be the rooster. He's been pretty rough on occasion.

Last night at about midnight I heard a ruckus in the hen house. I ran out with the big flashlight and a shotgun expecting a coyote, weasel, stray dog, or mean rooster. We found another dead chicken, only this time when we looked up on the perches there was a great horned owl just perched among the chickens. Owls are federally protected so you can't shoot or even harass them. He eventually flew off. Somehow he was waddling through the chicken door to get into the coop at night.

So now, after years of leaving it open at night, I guess I will have to shut the door at night and open it in the morning.

Mystery solved. I wish I had a picture of that owl just perched among the chickens.

flowers and fuzzy butts

The first fuzzy butts of the season are here! 12 Rhode Island Red chicks. They will round out our laying flock and probably begin laying by August. They are currently staying in an old coop we have on the property that we made out of an aluminum tool shed a few years ago. They have a heat lamp, but they only need it at night right now.
You know it's spring when the chicks start to arrive! We've also been planting lettuce, beets, radishes, and onions outside. Of course, there could always be a late spring hard freeze that would wipe us out. Never know.
Aren't they just darling? Below is a picture of a million daffodils in our orchard. I hope they keep blooming until the apples, pears, and crabapples bloom. Wouldn't that be a pretty sight?
It's supposed to get to almost 80 tomorrow, but then it will cool down for a hand full of days. Signing off to plant some more onions. We are blessed.

Giant Egg!

We got a giant egg the other day. It was off the egg scale. It wouldn't even fit in an egg carton. It had two large yolks inside. Weird. Ouch!
I'm just relaxing after a day of teaching in the morning and puppy patrol in the afternoon. I found a great but, alas, impractical solution to puppy energy. Every time she woke up I took her hunting. Walked about a half mile down to the end of the pasture and back. She got into the creek, chased rabbits, found a rabbit skull and chewed on that. I even took a couple of shots at the rabbits with a 20 gauge. She doesn't seem to mind the slightly louder sound of that either.
We went out hunting three different times. Of course, this took about three hours of my day. But after each time, she came back and slept like a baby.

Twenty Eggs!

Holy cow! Twenty eggs today. The chickens must think it's spring here in Northern Idaho. It's been in the 40's and 50's for the last week. We are letting our customers from last summer know that we have eggs for sale again. We've been selling a few dozen a week all winter, but now production has really increased. We recently acquired a free refrigerator to keep in the garage for eggs and farmer's market produce. We may have to plug it in sooner than expected.

Tomorrow is my "long day" of teaching, as I refer to it. I have six hours of face time with students and families. That is way more face time than an ordinary public school teacher has in a day. I'm not complaining though. It leaves me Friday off for steelhead fishing.

Lost chicken rescue operation!

We noticed a chicken missing from the coop the other night. That's not too unusual. Sometimes they wander off and spend the night in the garage or in the chick coop. After another day, we began to wonder about predators. I was looking for the bucket of oyster shell that we sometimes feed them to boost calcium for egg production. The bucket was upside down and when I turned it over there was a cold, wet chicken sitting on two eggs. She had been under there at least of couple of days. Cold and wet is a bad thing for a chicken to be, so we brought her in a warmed her by the fire for a couple of hours. The cats were mighty curious. I wish I had a picture of the cat peering over the rubbermade tote we had the chicken in. After a couple of hours, we re-introduced her outside and she seems fine. All's well as ends well.

Chilly Chickens

The chickens don't seem to mind the cold. Other than laying fewer eggs, they seem oblivious. They are waiting every morning for me to open the door and let them out, so they can run around in the sub-zero yard. They are certainly eating more. I don't like doing chicken chores in the cold though. Carrying waterers into the house to thaw by the stove, patching holes in the coop, carrying bags of feed to the coop. All for six eggs a day. I'm assuming egg production will go up slightly when temperatures go up to above freezing. When this cold snap ends, we are hearing reports of snow, so it will be interesting to see how the chickens react to that. We purposefully chose "cold hardy" heritage breeds, so they will probably be having snowball fights or something.

We've been hauling water from a friends house due to the broken and/or frozen plumbing. It is beyond my abilities to repair and we can't get a plumber for another day or two. Apparently, everybody's pipes froze on the Palouse. We will have to work out some kind of system to avoid this problem in the future.

On a more promising note, I saw thousands of geese in the valley yesterday. They should be coming up to the Palouse to search for grains soon. Setting up a blind and a decoy spread in the fields surrounding the house will be a fantastic break from sitting in the house and worrying about the plumbing.

I've been worrying about the plumbing and taking flights of fancy into, "what other disasters await us as the owners of a 100 year old farmhouse?" All I can do is just pray to let it go. The weather, the plumbing, the foundation, the floor joists...are all beyond my control. If something happens, we will handle it then.

Warm chickens

The chickens have been staying warm in their cozy hen house. They wouldn't go outside this morning until it warmed up to about freezing. I don't think they liked the snow on their feet. Later in the day, as the snow began to melt off, they were rooting around for bugs under the trees and through the snow. They'll be getting lots of leftover treats from our house warming party yesterday. Happy chickens!

Happy Chickens Lay Healthy Eggs

Our rooster and some of his hens gleaning fallen apples. Chickens with a healthy diet of grain feed, leftover fruits and vegetables, and bugs and other forage food lay healthier eggs. The shells are much harder and the color of the yolks is a dark orange instead of pale yellow.