Is It Really Here?

Spring on the farm!


The chickens have started to lay again (good thing as I was getting down to my last 3 dozen eggs). I froze eggs this year in batches of 2, 3, and 4 for baking, but never needed them. Now I haul them out of the freezer and give them to the barn kittens, they love them!

I've had some coon problems the last week or so, so the chix are locked up again, unless I'm around and can hear the commotion, and the 22 is loaded and by the back door, just waiting.

My new batch of chix is due here the first week in May. I have to wait and get them later in the year because of the temps. We are "officially" zone 4, however, because of this little microclimate that we enjoy, it's probably closer to a 3.5. Anyway, because of this, unless I want to keep my chickens in the house until they're half grown, it's just easier to wait until later in the spring to get them. This year I got all Buff Orphingtons. Last year in my "mix-o-chix" I got one and she's such a nice size, lays nice big eggs, is docile and tame, so this year, we're going with all of them. I ordered them from Mt Healthy Hatchery and they had a special. I wanted 25, but if I ordered 50 or more I got 25 free, so I jumped at it. Only later did I realize that while I only really wanted 25 chix, I'm now getting 75. Good thing I like me my baby buk buks. And, it's still a crap shoot as to whether I walk into Tractor Supply and find turkeys that call to me. I like raising turkeys, but they sure are messy, and dumb. Turkeys are really dumb, but oh, so personable!

It's time to start seeds too. Tonight after work, I'll start some hollyhocks, tomatoes, peppers, and parsley as my parsley that I brought in died over the winter. It's a good thing I brought dirt from the garden up to the barn so I'd have some to start seeds. The garden itself is still under about a foot of snow and the dirt beneath that is frozen.
Part of my front yard will become garden this year, I'm thinking maybe the potatoes, and I'm going to start them early, outside in tires (which we have about a million of them around). Then, as they grow, you put in more dirt, and add another tire, then more dirt and another tire.... To harvest, just knock down the tires and you don't have to dig for the taters. Plus the tires help keep the soil warm during the cold nights.
And, if I have tires in my front yard, that's less yard to mow, right? The front yard is also going to see more berries. Raspberry and blackberries to be specific. I'm just flat out tired of mowing everything and I might as well use it. Want to extend my grapevine wall too, it will border one side of the chix pen, which I also have to enlarge, because in some strange universe, ordering 75 chickens when you only wanted 25 makes sense.

Have some fences to fix tonight too, while I was out chasing coons I noticed that the cow fence is down in at least one spot, so that needs to be fixed. Bu-Dawgh also pulled one end of his run line loose, gotta grab the ladder and secure that before he pulls it all the way out.

Tried a yarn dying experiment this weekend. I dyed some angora yarn in the crockpot using koolaid. Result... didn't use enough koolaid but it did smell good. The colors are more pastel than I wanted. Pink socks? Not so much, oh well. I'm in a sock knitting frenzie lately, they're a good take it and go project, can't ever have too many of those. My shrug is almost done, actually, probably tonight I will finish up the knitting and sew it up. Big Bang Theory is on and that will command my attention in front of the screen.

Also made yogurt in my crock pot. (Not the same one, I have 2) Don't know if it took or not, I'll have to try it and let you know.


It's a beautiful day today, me and the Bu-Dawgh walked to work and it was about 30! This afternoon, walking home it will likely be 45 or maybe even higher. The daylight is shining longer and longer during the day making outside chores more pleasant, but we're still burning wood at night. That will likely continue until May.

Getting anxious to ride my bike, but there's still ice on the back roads, of which I live on one, and salt on the main roads. So I really need to wait for a good spring washout rain to take the salt off the roads and that will also likely help to melt the ice. (I road my bike on ice once, didn't turn out so well, and while it seems I like to learn the hard way, eventually I do "get it").

Update on the stove project, - yeah, it's gonna be an outside thing when I start sanding, so I will also wait on that for a bit more.

In Which Cleaning Out The Barn is Crappy!

It was a nice weekend. Beautiful. The sun was warm, with a cool breeze and the barn, after a hot summer was getting a bit on the stinky side. Hubby was home (so he could start the skid-steer for me) and I had all afternoon on Saturday to clean out the barn.

Backtrack a bit here. It is in my nature to take the most disagreeable task and get it done first, then move up my list, so by the time I'm ready to quit, the only things left on my list are so easy and so neutral that it's easy to get them done.

That's how it's supposed to work.

Back to the barn.

Obviously, (or maybe not so much if this isn't something you do on a daily basis), one of the most disagreeable tasks in the Cleaning Out Of The Barn festival we do twice a year whether it needs it or not, is actually donning the muck books and getting into the calf pen. The calves themselves are fun. They are convinced that the only reason I'd actually be in the pen with them is to play. They're not small creatures. When they play, sometimes it hurts. Especially when you're old.

So, we're (me and the calves - not hubby), are up to our shins in calf doo doo, with a pitch fork and old gloves shoveling (or pitching) calf crap into the bucket of the skid steer (or bob cat - happy li'l bro?). This is enjoyable, some of the hardest work on the farm is enjoyable because it's soooo physical, and not mental at all and there are actually tangable results. The bob-cat can't get the crap out of there by itself, because it's all one big mat, someone has to break up the mat so the bob-cat can haul it away. So the machinery loosens it, and then I, with my pitchfork and playful calves, fork the broken up hay/doo doo, and other stuff they've drug in there, into the bucket of the bob cat.

This is enjoyable, for the first 10 minutes or so.

Then things start to hurt, and it starts to get annoying getting butted in the butt by the calves whose only mission in life is to play. And it is annoying when you hoist a pitchfork full of cow crap into the air and have it fall off the fork. And it's annoying when hubby is laughing at me. And it's really annoying when the skies cloud over and start to rain, which makes things get a bit slickery. This isn't like horse crap. Horse crap you can throw on the lawn, kick it around and eventually it goes away. This doesn't go away. And it's waaaay to hot to put it on the garden (hot being a chemical term in this application). This needs to be hauled a long way away from where human noses are, put into a pile and then let set to "cook" for a year or two, then it will be nice black dirt.

And once again, I swear that I'm going to do this every other day, or at least once a week, so I don't have to do a marathon session twice a year. But I won't. It will take me that long to quit hurting.

And I actually put it on my list to figure out how to make bio-fuel out of this stinky stuff.

On a side note. We got frost. I don't know when. I'm going with sometime last week, at night. But it killed my tomatoes. Grrrr. Usually I get a heads up on these things, that's how distracted I've been lately. Usually someone from Southern California will tell me we're expecting frost, I'll deny it, then I'll hear it on the news. That and I can usually feel it coming. Oh well, so much for the Over Wintering The Tomatoes And Peppers experiment. No reason now to hurry on the greenhouse. The lettuces still look good and the peppers that were covered by leaves... are still ok, but the tomatoes are gone. I have room in the house for the lettuces and the peppers, so I'll start hauling them in.

Tonight, I'll get all of my pots filled with dirt (for spring seed starting) and find a place in the barn for them. This serves two purposes, it gets all of the planting stuff off the deck to make room for the firewood, and I'll have my dirt already in the spring. It's hard to find dirt to start seeds in March or April when it's under 3 or 4 feet of snow and frozen under that. This way, I'll have it already in the pots, just bring it in, let it defrost and then plant away!

Oh, and, out wandering yesterday... I found a whole gob (lots and lots!!) of grapes. So I gathered them up and now have to figure out how to make wine. That will be an experiment, but look at it this way, the next time I have to do a marathon crap forking session, I can ease the aches and pains by getting smashed on a bit of home brew!

Life on the farm is never boring. But it's alllll good!

Counseling of the Snowbanks has Been Postponed!

And we won! Touch and go until about the last 11 seconds, but they pulled it off! Go Wings!! One more game until the playoffs start. Of course it goes without saying that I'll have to totally clear my schedule so the whole playoffs can be monitered. I mean, who could live with the fact that a favorite team lost solely because I wasn't there to watch?


And the 120 Days Ago Sweater is DONE. Wait, let me repeat that for the benefit of all of you who have been following this saga since before 120 days ago. The 120 Days Ago Sweater is DONE!!! Not blocked yet, but here it is in all its unblocked glory! Complete with Bu-Dawgh, who of course insisits on being in almost every picture, as cute as he is, who could resist??

When I got home from work last night, I found that the Counseling of the Snowbanks could be postponed, hopefully indefinitely. No doubt it was my threats that spurred them on to further melting. The 52 deg. on the bank clock may have had something to do with it, but I'm going with that they are just flat out in aweful respect of my counseling abilities. So when do we start riding? Well.... while the road is clear, there is still the matter of the snow and ice from the barn to the driveway, so either I wait until that melts (I'm nothing if not teachable, and I did learn this one the hard way) or ask hubby to get the bike out (he's not teachable, and that's all I'm saying on that issue!)

Dirt! That's the word of the day! I found dirt in my pasture. And a picture has been posted for your viewing satisfaction, or to prove that we really don't live in snow and ice 12 months out of the year. It's only the tip of my compost pile, but it's there, so this weekend seeds will be started! I'm so excited! Yeah, there's nothing like a bit of dirt to get me all ready for spring and everything. And today it's supposed to rain, so I will find more dirt tomorrow to start seeds with. There have been seed starting supplies on my front porch for almost a month now, how's that for optimism?


Turkey egg count is at 11, nothing has hatched yet, but anytime now!