Persimmons

It's persimmon season and our few little trees in the back yard are producing lots of fruit! I've read that it's best to harvest the fruit before it becomes totally ripe to keep the birds from eating their way through your harvest. 

 So I went out with our big bushel tub (thanks mom!) and pair of kitchen scissor to lay claim to our fruit. I tried to harvest anything that no longer had any green coloring, but most of the fruit was still very hard.

 This one actually ripened on the tree without the birds or bugs finding it!

 And my clumsy self dropped the dang thing while trying to harvest it. This variety of persimmon gets extremely soft when ripe, so my perfect fruit got a bit smooshed. Oops!

 My day's take. 

We are still not sure what we are going to do with the fruit when it ripens. I'm not a huge fan of the flavor, but I am tempted to try my hand at making preserves. I've just read that they can make a good salsa and even cookies. Mostly likely though, these  guys will end up becoming wine under the Big Onion's expert hand.

Chicken update

We are STILL waiting for our "meat chickens" to get big enough to process. I finally lugged a scale out back, and they are weighing in at around 3.5lbs. Ideally, we'd like them to be at least 5lbs before processing, but we may have to settle for 'cornish game hen' sized birds. They are certainly growing faster than the small group of Buff Orpington girls that are being raised with them, but not nearly fast enough for my taste.

In order to encourage them to grow up big and strong, I recently gave them a special treat...

That's a tub of cracked corn and whole oats soaked in the leftover whey from my last batch of goat cheese. I normally save this special treat for the ducks, but the young chickens loved the change of pace.

As a side note, I cannot get over how pretty these chickens turned out. We are contemplating keeping a couple of this batch as egg layers, but choosing our keepers is gonna be tough.

We also just hatched out another, smaller batch of chicks. We are hoping these guys will perform a little better since they were all fathered by our giant, super awesome rooster, Fernando. You can see his strong genes in how many little white chicks we got this time. 

Raw Pet Food

All of the dogs and cats around here are fed an exclusively raw diet. It's something I have been doing for many, many years and something I feel very strongly about. When we got the farm, one of the goals was to be able to feed our animals from our own livestock. We quickly discovered that just like people are looking for better quality meat for themselves, there was a demand for local, properly raised meat for pet food. 

 

One of our best and most reliable sources of income has been making these ground mixes of meat, organs, and bone. Both cats and dogs seem to love them, and their owners love have a reliable source of clean and quality meat.

I work in a holistic vet's office so we have also had success selling the meat through my office. 

Hunter has been raised eating raw meat from the day he came to the farm. Now he's getting pretty good at catching his own version of a raw diet!

Hay Day

Next to our farm is a big, huge open field that we recently found out our neighbor uses for growing horse hay. He told us next time we saw him cutting to just come on over. Well, I was out doing chores last weekend when I saw this...

Hey, it's hay!

I finished up my morning chores and grabbed the Big Onion, and we hot-footed it over to the neighbor's place to get us some quality goat foods.

Watching all the giant farm machinery work was a real treat for us former city slickers. That's the baler working in the background to compress the already cut and raked hay into bales.

This is a star wheel rake and it's used for raking the hay into neat rows so the baler can do its job. I think it's just really cool looking.

We were super excited to have a source of hay so close to home. We grabbed 3 bales and literally tossed them over the fence into our yard. Not to mention we got those 3 bales for under $10. A real steal considering the local TSC is asking $9.50 PER BALE!

While we were over, our neighbors showed us something really cool....

They have tortoises! 

They said this handsome dude is over 40 years old!

They also brought us inside to show us all the babies that they incubated and hatch. How cool is that!

During our tour, the neighbor asked if we raised any banties. When we said we had few silkies, she asked if we would like to take this tiny little bantam chicken. This girl is actually full grown. She had gone broody on a nest of unfertilized eggs, and our neighbor was worried because she was getting picked on by her flock of full sized chickens. This poor little gal didn't stand a chance against those giant birds

We moved her in with the silkies (Reggie, Bianca, and Bebe) and even though she smaller than them, I think this feisty chick will hold her own. It took her a little while to get over being moved off her eggs, but she is doing great now.

We still need a name for this gal. Any suggestions?

Barley vs the Cottonmouth

It seems that we have have been having a whole series of bad luck around the farm these days. In keeping with tradition, in the last week Gwen has managed to injure both her foot and her face. Poor thing is walking around with a limp and a swollen jaw. I whacked myself in the face with a crowbar then had the pleasure of being on the news with a shiner. But I think Barley wons the bad luck prize over the weekend by getting bitten in the face by a cottonmouth.

We had just come in from doing our evening chores when Big Onion noticed that his face looked a little odd. We brought him inside and found that half the poor guy's face was swollen and he had blood dripping from one side of his mouth. A closed inspection revealed several small puncture wounds inside the lip.

It was obviously painful so I got the vet on the phone and started treating him with homeopathics right away. We kept a very close eye on him for any breathing problems, but after getting a remedy he seemed to perk up and be feeling ok.

Meanwhile, Big Onion grabbed his trusty pellet gun and started shaking the bushes out back to find the culprit. He wasn't having much luck. Barley kept going to the back door so I let him out. He went straight to his dad and started helping with the hunt. Not 2 minutes later Big Onion saw him sniffing at some tall grass by the house then jump back and point. Our goofy dude actually pointed out the snake. That pellet gun made short work of the snake and we were able to confim that is was a cotton mouth.

Thank goodness dogs aren't effected by snake bites in the same way as humans. By the end of the evening, most of the swelling had moved to a pocket under his chin. After a few days the swelling is pretty much gone, and he's left with just a couple little spots inside the lip that are slowly healing.

Barley's back to being his goofy self. 

Superstars!

Check it out! A local news station did a short piece on our farm....

http://www.abc26.com/videogallery/72917652/Environment/High-Tail-Farms

Thanks to Molly Rosenblatt for coming out to visit us. We had a great time showing off all the animals and talking about how we do things around here. Sorry your camera man left with a little something extra on the bottom of his sneaker.

I think the animals made a nice showing. Everyone came when called and the newest batch of quails even managed to get themselves hatched in time to make their debut on television!

I do feel the need to note (even though I'm assured that it is barely noticeable) that I have a bit of a black eye in the video  because I managed to smack myself in the face with a crowbar over the weekend while taking apart another pallet to make more raised garden beds. I'm totally fine, just slightly embarrassed and a complete klutz. 

Gwen's day out

Since she was born, Gwen has had this little cough. She aspirated fluid when she was first born and never could get totally rid of the cough. It always seems to happen after she is nursing and occasionally in the morning. Since she was fine and healthy otherwise, we kept watching and hoping it would go away. It finally made me nervous enough to pack her up and take her to visit our local large animal vet yesterday. 

 Gwen rode in the car like a champ. I just tethered her by the collar to keep her from jumping into my lap while I was driving. She walked into the vet's office on leash, got on the scale and stood still, then quietly waited with me until it was our turn. Heck, she was better behaved than most of the dogs that come into our office.

The vet gave her a thorough exam, and I am happy to report that little Gwen has been given a clean bill of health. Heart and lungs are clear. Apparently, it's pretty common for goats to carry a bug that makes them cough occasionally, but they are otherwise perfectly healthy so no reason to worry. He said that she was in great condition. He also thinks that she will stay a small goat, only around 40-50lbs.

Everyone in the vet's office just loved her. She was bright and curious and had a great time headbutting one of the receptionist's french bulldog.

Eating rocks outside the feed store.

After the vet visit, we went to the feed store. Gwen decided that the stock guy looked like a good challenge and kept headbutting him in the leg until he squatted down to pet her. It was really funny to watch people double take after thinking the little creature that was happily following me around on leash was a small dog. In the parking lot, one man actually slammed his truck to a halt, rolled down the window and yelled, "Hey! How much for the goat?"

Yeah, our Gwenny is not for sale.