A year on the farm (almost)

Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the day we bought the farm. One year ago we were ecstatic, freaked out, a bit overwhelmed, and super excited. One year ago, I was packing and packing and doing more packing. One year ago I was looking through hatchery catalogs looking to see what kinds of chickens I wanted.

So how'd the year go?

We got the chicks on Feb 4, when they were three days old. We built a brooder area in my office and they lived there until we could  move them outside. Had to wait for the weather to warm up and for the chicken coop to be delivered. Now we have 13 hens, three roosters (one is a Wellsummer - he was my "free exotic chick with purchase"), and this October, we hatched out some chicks and while we started with 13; we are down to eight but they are a large healthy size now so they should make it through the winter with no worries.

In February, we bought four American Guinea hoglets - two males and two females. After about two or three weeks, we added two more males to the mix for friends of ours. By September, they were big enough to go to the butcher. While the meat is great, the sausages are tasty, the bacon was fantastic, this type of hog is more for lard than meat; going to try something different next year.

The garden beds did really well. I'm going to be expanding the garden to make it even bigger but this spring/summer all I could manage was two rows containing seven beds that were 8' long by 4' wide with 3' paths in between. We've had the hogs in a fenced kennel that we've been moving all over the area where the garden will be. They are rooting up all the grass, digging up, turning over, and fertilizing the soil. Should be perfect next spring.

Thirteen Chicks

We're up to thirteen chicks now. Three of them are Welsummer and Buff Orpington mixes and right now, have buff bodies and dark stripes on their wings. Very cute! This one was born last week. 

Makin' Bacon

Brined for two weeks and smoked over apple wood. 

Chicks!

We had six chicks hatch last week. Mama Buffy is taking excellent care of them. 

This is the first one that hatched. It looks like we have Buff Orpington chicks as well as at least one hybrid. That one has dark stripes on its head and back. 

Critters

I was gonna post something snarky on Facebook about how a coyote was in my yard chasing my chickens and I ran out to have a meaningful dialogue about how he shouldn't be using his might over poor defenseless animals and perhaps he should think about moving to another area but he was blatantly ignoring my olive branch so I shot him.

Unfortunately, he ran off...with any luck, he won't be coming back.

Unexpected but wonderful!

I had a really wonderful surprise guest this week. On Mon or Tues, an unfamiliar car parked in my driveway. That's a big deal because my driveway is 4/10 a mile long. If you're parking, you mean to BE here. 

Turns out, it was an older African-American woman who had worked for the Words for 30 years. 

The Words sold this house in 1997. They were the last of seven generations who owned this place, starting in 1775.  So, even if 1997 was when she stopped working, that means she's known this house since around 1967. 

Of course I let her in! She told me all kinds of neat stuff like missing doors, stairs, apartments; there was a bathroom in my pantry area at one point.  

Her son was with her; he was a playmate of the Word's only son, David. He told me about sliding down the bannister and David's toys, riding dirt bikes in the woods, and hunting there too.

She asked if she could come back. I told her she had to bring pictures next time. 

Rodents

I'm somewhat annoyed by a FB "friend" who insists on commenting pushback shit. If you don't have anything nice to say, than don't say anything. Isn't that common knowledge?

I have a rodent problem on the farm. Woodchucks / groundhogs are eating out of the garden, pilfering chicken feed, getting a little too close to my chickens and Nigerian Dwarf goats, and digging tunnels all over, some are just too close to the house.

Apparently, I'm to try and humanely get them off my property. And take them where? To the animal shelter for them to gas and then send to a processing facility? Set them free in the woods and hope they don't find their way back?

They are nasty critters and seem like they have the balls;  if they got close enough, they wouldn't think twice about trying to bite one of my kids or my dogs. 

She throws out statements like "whatever your justification" (not "reason" because I'm apparently irrational) and "it's not my Khama" (I'm an atheist so whatever), and Buddha (again...) WTF?

These are big rats. Rats. RATS!

At least my shoot em, kill em, and throw in the woods method feeds some of the carrion birds around here.