Front yard vegetable gardening

 Over the weekend I built two more raised beds from pallets for the front yard vegetable garden. We've got beans and peas out there, also tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, squash, and potatoes. Eventually I'd like to have a full two rows of beds out there.
  Despite the face that we have about 8 acres of pasture, gardening in the front yard makes sense for us because it is away from hungry goat mouths and scratching poultry feet. This area also gets full sun all day long. It may not be pretty, but over the winter we made many a meal from the cabbages and broccoli growing out front.

 The potato plants are growing like crazy in the deepest and biggest containers I could get my hands on. I'm hoping we'll have luck growing them like this, though I suspect that we will end up with some oddly shaped tubers.

  I seem to be having a problem with some kind on fungus on the cucumbers and squash. I've been spraying them with a diluted milk solution that 'the interweb' swears works on this sort of thing. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

 Proof that I can, in fact, grow tomatoes. Every year, I dream of bumper crops of tomatoes that I can turning into a pantry full of canned sauces and salsas. Every year, our tomato crop just flops. Not this year, darn it! This year out motto is tomatoes or bust!

How (not) to Administer Copper Wire Particles to your Goats

  Last weekend we went to a Small Ruminant Field day at one of the local universities. In addition to learning how to do fecals, getting our FAMACHA certification, and connecting with a lot of other local people who raise sheep and goats, we learned about using copper wire particles as part of a worming regimen for goats and sheep. 

  Our area is very copper deficient, so supplementing the goats with copper is essential to their health. Recent studies have shown that dosing both sheep and goats with copper can reduce their worm load by 30-90%, and since our area IS copper deficient, proper dosing should not cause a toxicity problem with sheep. 

Home grown

Things out in the garden are doing well. The raised garden beds turned out to be a great idea with our less than super soil. I have been buying a combination of the cheapest dirts at Lowes (organic compost, hummus, and top soil) and mixing it with all the sheep and rabbit poop I can load into my garden cart and drag up to the front yard.  The neighbors probably think I'm crazy stirring up a giant pile of dirt and poop on a regular basis, but the veggies are growing like gangbusters. A couple weeks ago, we got to enjoy of the fruits (well, veggies) of my labor...

 Behold the brussel sprouts! 

I tried for years and years to grow these pesky vegetables and never had one lick of luck growing even one single sprout. I had actually sworn off the things completely, refusing to even attempt to grow them for many years. I would classify this stalk as a minor success considering it was the only one of the 6 plant I had out there to make anything resembling brussel sprouts. 

I also managed to grow a respectable number of turnips from seed despite my complete failure to thin the patch once the seeds had sprouted.

Our dinner that night was all things grown right here on the farm. One of our delicious chickens with steamed brussel sprouts and roasted turnips. It's a really good feeling to sit down to a meal where I know exactly how everything was grown and raised. Plus all this homegrown goodness just tastes way better than anything you can buy in the stores!

Lousy with Lambs!

Here on the farm we started lamb season a little later than everyone else....

 Marcie is getting bigger every day. In fact, she is growing so fast that sometimes at a distance we confuse her with the yearlings! A couple weeks ago she scared us by developing a swelling around her jaw that we were just sure was bottlejaw. This was a little mystifying since she has been growing so fast and looking so healthy. We checked her eyes and they were as pink as could be. (Normally, bottlejaw is an indication of severe anemia due to parasites). We gave her a dose of dewormer and waited. She stayed fat and healthy, but the swelling just would not go away. A little more research and we realized that she actually had a milk goiter which is completely harmless and should go away once she is weaned. I guess we should thank Pepper for making such good milk!

Hopping mad

 Today Gwen learned that getting caught jumping the net fence around the chick pen is a bad idea. She knows better than to go over that fence so when she got caught she tried to book it back on the other side only to get tangled up in the netting and face plant in the mud. I snapped this picture after I stopped laughing at her. If goat looks could kill.

Meanwhile, the latest batch of bunnies are doing well. They are about a week old so they are covered in a short coat of soft white fuzz, and their eyes should be opening pretty soon.

 Clover had 9 bunnies. T had 7. Both very respectable litter numbers. Clover had two more that she gave birth to outside the nest box. They got too cold and died before we found them. Since then we have had no more bunny losses. Always a good thing. The giant bun in the picture above is one of T's. This is her second litter and both times she had huge, monster babies.

 The older bunnies are living large in the giant rabbit tractor that Big Onion built for them. It has an extra layer of x-pens around it because certain canine miscreants decided they needed to get up close and personal with the bunnies.

The bunnies are doing a great job of mowing the backyard for us. Plus having them on the ground cuts way back on feed. Now we just need about four more tractors like this and we'll never need to mow the backyard again!

Sick Kitty

Our poor little barn cat Hunter. Since we got him as a kitten, it seems like he has had one problem after another. As he grew up, he developed a habit of wondering off the property, getting in fights, and coming in terrible shape. We were constantly pulling ticks off him. He once came back with a wound on his hip so bad that we had to put him on antibiotics and drain and flush it daily. He still has a lump of scar tissue over his hip bone. All the wondering and fighting had to stop, so we decided to have him neutered a little earlier than we had planned.

 It wasn't long after he was under the knife that he started feeling bad. He was acting lethargic and picking at his food but we just figured he was mourning the loss of his "boys." A week or so went by and he didn't perk up. I finally decided to bring him in to the vet when he noticed that his gums were pale, his lymph nodes were swollen, and he was extremely dehydrated*.

I brought him into my vet's office. She took one look at him and said he was so anemic that he probably should be dead. We ran blood work and initially my boss thought he might have developed lymphoma which would have been crazy for an 11 month old kitten. After more discussion, she and I decided that a tick borne disease was the more likely cause. We started him on antibiotics, vitamin K, and sesame seed oil to try and bolster his blood counts.

After just a couple days of treatment, the little guy was perking up. His appetite improved, and he started following us on our walks around the property. We had kind of forgotten what a quirky ever-present little guy he was while he was ill.

These pictures were taken just a few days after we started him on the meds. I was actually out taking pics of the sheep with Hunter in tow when he wandered off into a little thicket of trees and brambles.

About 15 seconds later, he wandered out with a giant vole in his mouth.

Doesn't the little dude look proud of his catch?

We are just really glad that our kitty is on the mend and living up to his name! 

Ugly Betty

  Betty first came to our attention when she was still a little chicken, barely feathered out. She had a deformed or maybe injured beak that made it hard for her to eat normally.

  Despite looking very odd, she never let this get in her way. When she was young, she would fly up and into the hanging feeder so that she could have her own private meals. When dinner was too slow, she would fly up onto one of our shoulders to hurry us along. 

  As she got older, she developed a habit of jumping right into the bin of chick food, standing in the crumbles, and filling her craw by repeatedly pecking at the mounded food at her feet. Every day she would be the first out of the coop and escort us to her feed bin. She'd fly up on the edge and "bawk bawk bawk" her impatience with us. Every night she would be the last bird put away. She would start her dinner as soon as we went out for evening chores, and when we were done feeding birds and milking goats, we would scoop a now stuffed chicken into our arms and carry her to the coop to tuck her away with the other birds for the night. 

  You can imagine that we got a bit attached to this quirky, tough little girl. When we had visitors, we would always scoop up Betty for a greeting, our goofy looking chicken emissary. She even let small children stroke her soft, if often disheveled, feathers on many occasions. Of all the poultry we have out there, Betty found a way into our hearts, and I know both Big Onion and I thought of her as a beloved pet. 

  A couple of days ago, it was getting close to time for evening chores and the Big Onion and I were puttering around the front yard, checking on the raised garden boxes full of new veggie plants and seeing how some of the fruit trees fared the winter. Normally around this time Betty would wait for us at the back gate so that she can escort us to the poultry house for her dinner. Big Onion was just telling me that the evening before Betty was waiting up on the gate for him when we heard one loud squawk. We looked at each other and hurried through the lanai to the backyard where we found a chicken just taking its last breath. I rushed over and sure enough it was our Betty. 

  I guess she got impatient waiting for us to come out and decided to fly into the backyard with the dogs. In her defense, Betty grew up with Luna running around and herding all the birds but her so she had no reason to think she would be in danger. Although Luna and the other shelties are safe being surrounded by chickens and ducks and geese out in the pasture, a bird flying into the backyard with four loose dogs is a whole different story. 

  I scooped up Betty's now lifeless body, and it was obvious that her neck had been broken. It had happened very quickly. As I lifted her up, something fell onto the grass at my feet. It was a small, soft, half formed egg. Big Onion and I had always assumed that Betty would never lay due to her deformity and her small size, but it turns out she was one of the chickens producing the small eggs that we consider little treasures since we have to save all the larger ones for sale. Betty had been making eggs for us. 

  It was rapidly getting dark so we brought her body out to the poultry house and laid her on top of her feed bin while we got everyone put away, fed, and milked for the evening. Luna stood vigil by the body. She is always so upset when any of her charge comes to harm. I took a few of Betty's pretty wing feathers and hung them on the poultry house door.

  After all the chores were done, Big Onion, Luna, and I grabbed a shovel and a flashlight and buried Betty right next to Mrs. Duckie another of our pet birds that met a sad end.

Goodbye Betty, we're really going to miss you!