Winter Cold

The cold temperatures have finally arrived and for the first time a few of the eggs are cracking due to freezing. 

 

Not a huge deal until you realize my egg production is down to 5 eggs a day.  I have some ideas how to resolve this.  We will have to see if they are good or not.  I was talking to someone and they were talking that they were getting their husband the shirt..

I feel like this motto also fits at our house.

I don’t normally talk about work but today I was in a meeting and I heard over my radio a call for custodians to come to my office and it was an emergency.  I hurried to my office to find a rainstorm coming from the ceiling.  We hurriedly moved all my stuff and I headed to the second floor.  I arrived just in time to smell a pretty strong odor and hearing the teacher discussing new locations.  As I headed into her room, I discovered she also had a rain storm.  Third floor, here I come, and discovered the head custodian working on the heating system.  As I looked more carefully, an observer noticed two small pipes with water draining out… right to the carpeted floor.  Once we got the water turned off, we started to hear a weird noise in my office.  We also discovered a vent was leaking steam and they had to also turn off that switch.  Ironically, this didn’t really faze me.  I have been trained in a middle school and anything is possible.😉

The only other news on the farm is working through this cold temperatures and managing the feed.  The goats are huge so have lost all grain.  They are sneaky and I caught them hanging out with the pigs to swipe some goodies.

Jack Frost has arrived

We have been blessed with a mild winter this December, however that luck ran out this week.  Low temperatures and high winds have been dropping our temperatures.  The worst is the wind.  The chickens have been doing well in the barn but have no interest for snow or going outside.  I have still been getting a few eggs.


All the girls have their winter coats and I finally caved tonight and put a heat lamp.

The pigs have also had some excitement with their water tank freezing.  I bought a tank deicer which is working but the shoot for the water to go to the hog tray had frozen.  Off to Fleet Farm I go.  The pigs were not interested in moving out of their shelter into the bitter cold wind to see the commotion of the second deicer installation.

We are just hoping for the wind to settle down.

Salt Update

After spending 4 hours at the emergency vet with Salt a few days ago I was doing a strict routine of, ironically, salt baths to try and soften her behind.  It slowly seems to be working but we are not out of the woods yet.  Salt has become quite accustomed to this routine and doesn’t fly away rather just sits in the warm water. 

Once she has soaked for awhile she gets to dried off with a towl and air dries on the sunroof for overnight and head back to the barn in the morning.

I was also happy to see that with the warmer weather the snow was melting which all the chickens were taking advantage of. . .even my little ones.  I have to admit that there are not very small anymore.  these ones still do not have names since I am predicting there are some roosters in the mix.  

Chicken Hospital Run

As we have continued down this farm journey we have occasionally been concerned about a chicken that we have to make the dreaded decision to put the chicken down or head to the chicken hospital.  I think it reminds we that these hens are not just for egg production but also family pets.  Salt has been having some difficulties over the past couple of weeks so we decided to send her in.

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Of course it is always late at night when you finally decide to take her in and of course it is in a middle of a snow storm.  After several hours with the doctors, we head home and to be honest still not sure if she will make it through.  I am becoming more settled of the need to put some chickens down so they don’t suffer and honestly, it is not reasonable to spend so much money.  I think what we face is the continual reminder of life and death every time you have to make that decision and it always seems to be tied to loss in our own lives.  Last night I settled that it was worth the money.  This morning, I knew back then I should have just put her down.

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Here is Salt hanging out in the house this morning.

The rest of the other animals have mixed feelings about the new snow.  The pigs are still happy as ever, even in the snow.  While the chickens want nothing to do with it.

 

We have enjoyed some unseasonably warm weather lately for November so we took advantage and did a barn clean out.  What we were chuckling about was the goats relaxing and enjoying the view while we were doing all the labor.

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It is also nice to use all this old hay for the pigs.  The pigs also took advantage of the warm weather and were laying out in the sun.   We also had quite an entertaining moment when were were cleaning out old canning jars and putting them in the compost pile for the pigs to dig through.  Several years back Dustin received a canning pressure cooker and went on a surge of canning.  Some did great, some not so much and we have been moving cases of canning vegetables from place to place.  There were 2 jars of old apple butter and I dumped one out and the pigs began to slurp up the leftovers.  I opened the second jar and fed them directly.

Pigs eating apple butter

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Not only were we cleaning up our animals but we were visiting the neighbors and the kids were learning how to clean out the fish tank.  It is quite a sight and the kids end up learning so much.

Outside of that we have just been watching all the chicks get bigger.  They have been hanging out with the older ones and roam during the day.  They are approximately 17 weeks old and all looking good.  We were using an old ladder for their roosting sticks and I had Dustin put tape over them.  There were left overs of metal bars on the ladder and when the weather turns cold we were concerned that the chickens might freeze their feet.  I am still waiting to see who is a hen and a rooster.  I have a feeling I have a couple in the mix.  We will have to see if anyone will challenge Bob to be the big man in charge.

Halloween “Farm” Style

One of the important criteria we discussed as a family in settling on this house was the true mix between country and suburban life.  We have our acres for the animals and gardens but we also have neighbors.  And I will admit these are not just normal neighbors.  There are approximately 10-12 houses in our mini neighborhood and there is only 1 other family with kids.  Even though there are only 2 houses with kid (that is including us) all the families stay home and make elaborate halloween goodies especially for the kids.  They know the kids by name and make sure the kids end up with bucketfuls of full size candy and toys.  One of the neighbors is even selling his house and is not even living in his house and had his lights on with a bucket of candy for the kids.  It really is a true celebration of community.

This year we treated everyone with not only the kids getting dressed up but also the goats.  The kids decided on their costumes based upon what the goats were wearing.  Sadie settled on a police officer while vanilla bean was a unicorn/ police sidekick.  Eli was a viking imitating Aspen and Charlie was solo as a lumberjack.

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Leading up to halloween we were able to capture some good old farm fun with the animals.  Since it has turned cold, we have discovered that Oliver, our adopted cat, has begun to start sleep in the hay loft.  What has been so entertaining is how he gets himself up and down.  With the weekend, we capture it on video.

Oliver in the hay loft

While Oliver has been hanging out in the hay loft, the pigs have enjoyed their little homemade shelter and fresh hay.  Hard to capture with a picture so here is a video to enjoy.

Pigs taking a nap

The pigs also got a present of a new water container.  Since we didn’t quite know if we were committed to this pig raising we didn’t want to make a huge investment so we would carry buckets of water out to the pigs.  We would need to water them twice a day and every time we would check on them the buckets were empty.  I am guessing they were dumping it shortly after we would leave.  I had finally had it so headed to Fleet Farm and purchased a new water trough with a pig section.  I am pretty impressed and super excited I don’t have to walk the water across the field.

While the kids and I finally had a weekend to enjoy staying close to home.  Dustin had a guys weekend away and really enjoyed pheasant hunting in South Dakota.

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October Farm Fun

 

Broody Lahaina

One of the first things you learn if you own Silkies is when they say that they are a good mothers, they are very serious.  Lahaina takes it very serious her broodiness and we were able to catch it on video tonight.  Enjoy!

My youngest chicks are approximately 15 weeks now and are really settling in to the barn.  When the older hens start to settle down for the night, the young 5 get adventurous and wander all throughout the barn.  I was able to catch a picture of them all which made me realize that at least one of my rhode island red chicks is a rooster.  In the picture you can start to see some metallic colors in his tail feathers.  I am hoping it is the only one but the kids have said that the reds have pecked at them and there is slight coloring in the other chick’s tail feather.

Finally, here is my goat update of enjoying a sunny fall day with Aspen and a cool evening with the pigs bedding down.

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Mackinac Island, MI Fall Road Trip

The family took advantage of a couple days off and headed to Mackinac Island.  The kids and I had headed there in July but wanted to see how the fall colors were.  Heading from MN we enjoyed all the barn quilts that we could see throughout east Wisconsin.  We enjoyed taking the ferry from Mackinaw City to the island and biked around the island.

We were super excited to have timed the trip with the peak of the fall colors.  We were able to spend time on the island biking along with spending some time at the shipwreck museum.  We also discovered some random excitement such as a pancake machine at our hotel.

A Really Long Farm Update Before Fall.

The weather has dramatically begun to turn into fall over the past couple of days and with the busy work schedule, I realized I have not posted for awhile.  This is a quick review of farm activities over the past couple of weeks leading up to our last few days of warm weather.

COOKBOOK:

My parents have been de-cluttering their house and my grandparents over the past year and they came across a cookbook that was revised in 1964.  It was given to me and I was impressed with the fast expanse of recipes that were printed in this cookbook- everything from wild game to canning.  Scanning through the recipes and deciding which one to try I discovered a fairly simple recipe for popovers.  One of my biggest challenges.  I can’t ever get them to pop.  My first attempt turned into burnt popovers- however they did pop.  My second batch was a little under-cooked- so had no crispy outer coating.  But third is the charm.  I was super excited that the family agreed that I have conquered the art of popovers.

HOG UPDATE:

The hogs are starting to really gain weight- along with significantly increasing their food intake.  In the beginning, they were eating 1 bag of feed every couple of weeks.  Now they are going through a bag in almost under a week.  I will also add that no matter what someone tells you, pigs stink.  I try to let them free range when I am home and every where they go, they leave a stench.  They also have become quite good at digging up my yard.  So, they have now been banished to the back part of the pasture and the compost pile.  Put their digging skills to good work.  Other new discoveries we have learned is how fast they are.  When I let them out of their pen, the trio goes running across the field as fast as they can and I usually have to make sure there are no chickens in the way because they become very easy targets.

This is what my yard looks like after the pigs have had 5 mins. in the area.  Speaking of destructive, their pig pen really is a pig pen with at least a foot of solid mud.  The mud was getting into their feeder and blocking the food.  We spent the weekend adding hay and raising the feeder on a pallet.  So far so good.

GARDEN UPDATE:

Speaking of using the pigs for good and not evil.  We have been trying to pull the remaining garden items for the season so the pigs can tear up all the leftovers but we have continued to find little surprises of harvest everywhere.  This last weekend we filled a milk crate full of carrots, summer squash, zucchini, peppers, onions, and gourds.  The pigs will have to wait a little longer to have some new fun in the garden.

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CHICKEN UPDATE:

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This might be some of the hardest news to discuss in all the updates.  It is always amazing how attached you become to your animals.  Several months ago, I purchased a group of bantams.  The hope was to have hens and one rooster to breed with Ladybird.  We were ecstatic to discover we had 3 hens and 1 rooster- Loki.  Over the summer we had several severe storms which caused some commotion in the barn.  As a result, Loki was injured and we have been working with him all summer to try and get him back to normal.  It has been amazing how well he got.  However, over the past few weeks, his condition has rapidly deteriorated.  What made this so hard was his spirit was so strong but he was unable to really move around.  He was most content laying in someone’s lap or being carried around.  The whole family knew that this could go either way.

While we were contemplating what to do with Loki, we had another chicken incident.  One evening after dark, I headed out to the barn to put the animals away and check on the pigs.  I had let the trio free range for a little bit before bed time.  With my flashlight, I went searching for them and found them in the corner of the pasture.  They were smelling something I could really recognize, which I looked closer to see a black feathers and a body.  My initial thoughts was it was a crow that was injured or dead.  I scooted the pigs back to their pen and went back for a closer look and was sadden to discover that it was not a crow but one of my bantam hens.  Looking even closer at the body, we noticed that the head was gone along with all the breast meat.  It reminded me of a thanksgiving carcass.  After doing some google searching we guessed it was a hawk or eagle.  All other possible animals would have taken the whole bird, eaten it differently, etc.

Getting back to Loki, he got to such a point watching him struggle that we knew it was time.  We put him down and he is now buried by Warhammer.  This was a tough one.  Not only because we had spent so much time with him but to ride this roller coaster of having good days and bad days with the ending be this causes you to get a little emotional.  I think we also look at death differently when you have faced losing a loved one.

The remaining bantams are suppose to be 2 hens.  However, one has been acting quite strange that I think it is a late rooster.  It has longer neck feathers and saddle feathers.  Take a look for yourself in the pictures.

The last little update is I picked up a few more chicks.  I wanted to add a few more laying hens before winter so they would be laying for spring.  It is always fun to see how fast they grow in the fall.  They tend to feather out faster due to the cold temperatures.  I picked up 2 Rhode island reds and 3 americaunas- since Autumn, my only blue egg layer is either hiding her eggs or hasn’t laid in about a month.

GOAT UPDATE:

I will end my blog with my spoiled trio.  They have a good fall coat on and are just a joy to hang out with at the end of a long day.

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