New Life, Hope, and Moving On

After the horrible storms of February 29th, I was blessed to discover a sign of new hope:

On an emotional level (as opposed to a rational one) Cochins are my all time favorite breed of chicken. They are so calm and friendly. Even as chicks I can tell a difference between them and other breeds I've raised. I think they are adorable with their fluffy butts and feathered feet. They remind me of antebellum girls at a ball.

The primary reason I have only ever had one or two at a time is because you typically have to buy them straight run. I do not wish to have half a flock of roosters, thankyouverymuch! I have never, ever seen Cochins for sale sexed.

However, on Friday, March 2nd I was at the feed store, which just happened to have silver laced Cochin pullets. Of course, I couldn't resist! I am thrilled to report that they are all alive and well. They are beginning to feather out, so I thought I needed to post some pictures before they enter their gawky adolescent stage.

I have to clean out and refill their water dispenser twice a day because they kick the paper shreds into the trough until it is completely full!
I love it, though! Raising chicks is one of the most fun parts of homesteading.

In Like a Lion?

This is what I woke up to on Wednesday morning, February 29th. Tornadoes and straight line winds ripped through SW Missouri last night. Notice the goat shed we built in the fall? It's upside down and blown into the fence. No goats were harmed. It was still in the garden spot, but they were moved back to their lean-to at the barn with it's adjoining bit of pasture a couple months ago.

I'm very sad about this one. I absolutely loved that we had a working cistern with a pump on our back patio. The way the handle is broken, I don't know if it is repairable or not. (Not to mention the repurposed gym light glass/mini greenhouse being broken. THAT will be fun to remove from my whiskey barrel planter, won't it!)

This is the north side of that massive limb that is taking up most of the back yard. We had no idea there was a bad spot in this tree. The limb grew out sideways and was perfect for Wayne to hang deer on for skinning. The damage to the tree is so bad that the whole tree will have to be taken out.
Here is a long shot so you can see the whole back yard.

This tree sits immediately west of the house. It has made me nervous since we bought the place. I am SOOO thankful that it didn't come down on the house! See that huge limb that is caught in the tree? We will definitely be removing that limb and as much else as we can reach. I REALLY want the whole tree out, but it's going to take a skilled woodsman to get it down without hitting the house, other trees, or the electric lines.

I'm sad for the woodpeckers who called this tree home. I've wondered what made our place special enough to host them, never dreaming it was the very tree that gave me so much worry each time it stormed.

Here is the west side of the tree with the huge limb trapped. That will be fun to get out, huh? We have big plans for cleanup this weekend!

I received an e-mail asking about how the handle to the pump got broken. Maybe you couldn't see in the first picture, but a large limb from a cedar tree fell on it and then blew over. I think it's more visible from this angle.

Update

Well folks, it's been a LONG time since I did a post. Teaching a grades two through five class and rushing home to do chores, cook from scratch as much as possible, and stay up on things like making soap leaves little time for the blog. I could keep up better if we had Internet access at home, but we don't. I only have it on my cell phone, which doesn't work as well as I'd hoped for blogging. Anyhow, I wanted to let you know what's been going on.

The biggest news on the homestead is about the goats. I currently have a herd of eight. There are four boys and four girls. :-) My boys are all wethers, and three of them need new homes desperately. Perle is due to kid in March, Sassy, her daughter is due in April, and then we have a long wait. Twilight and Miracle have had a hard time "settling" this time. I took them both to be bred only to have them come into heat again after we were back home. It doesn't take long for this routine to get old. Now they are at the home of their chosen bucks to stay for a month. Fingers are crossed that they will come home thoroughly impregnated with multiple kids! :-) I don't think it's a problem with the girls fertility, but with their owner's observation skills. When I do chores in the dark both morning and night, it's really hard to discern when they are in heat, even when I'm trying my best to pay attention to such things. If everything works out Miracle and Twilight will both kid in June. I am not thrilled about them kidding so late in the year, but it sure beats a year with no kids. :-)

Like all homesteaders, my thoughts have turned toward the garden. I am so anxious to get started with it! I have learned that having the garden in the location of last year's chicken pen is the BEST way to do it! The things I planted at that location grew wonderfully, had virtually no pests, and the location was almost weed free. The few weeds that did appear were very easy to pull from the loose, rich soil. With that in mind, my garden spot is going to be about one third the size I've had in years past. I am going for excellence over quantity. I think if I have a smaller plot that mostly consists of the area the chickens have occupied I will have an excellent garden spot that will produce more per square foot than the huge garden that is an all out war with Bermuda grass and other weeds. My thoughts are about what I really want to grow, because with the smaller plot comes cuts in the availability of space to grow veggies. I will definitely not have as many of any one variety of plant, but I will also have to limit the number of varieties of plants I grow.

My chickens are doing better than ever. Dare I say I've got this chicken thing down? My flock size has held steady for several months, despite the hawks I frequently see and the owl who roosts in our barn. They are healthy and attractive. Laying is almost at a standstill. The only eggs I've gotten have been from the banties for the past six weeks or so. I am not unhappy with that, though, because I want my chickens to lay according to their biological signals as much as possible, and our winter has been mild enough that I haven't needed to use a heat lamp on them, so their bodies are getting a much needed break from production. I hope to see them start laying in a month or so. I also want to add more birds to the flock this spring. I really want Golden Laced Wyandottes, but I don't know if that will be an option. I love the consistency of the banties for laying, but I would like to have eggs to sell, and for that I think most people are going to want eggs from standard sized chickens. I also want to increase my flock size so that they can prepare more ground for planting next year. :-P

Spring is just around the corner, and I'm ready for it!!!

Goat Shed

Several weeks ago we implemented a plan to help keep hay costs down as well as clear off the garden that we let go once we saw that the plants weren't going to produce due to the drought. We used cattle panels to make a small goat pen and let them eat the weeds! This necessitated the building of a small shelter for them, since the herd queen takes the little dog house and refuses to share with anyone else. :-) (Not that they could have all fit in the dog house any way.)

Wayne was able to gather shipping crates and pallets from his work that we disassembled and used for the framing, and the sheathing is made from my old brooder boxes. I hope that I will never have 100 cockerels again!!! That was an experience I never care to repeat.

Here is another view showing the inside. We are not quite finished yet. We will completely close off one end, and the other will be mostly enclosed with a door that is just big enough that I can get inside in case I need to care for them in it.

On Wednesday, we got our first snow of the season! It was a shock to us all. On Tuesday evening it was 70 degrees. By Wednesday night we were supposed to have a low of 24 degrees, but there was no precipitation in the forecast. However, we got quite a good little snowfall for a couple of hours. The ground was so warm that it instantly began to melt, but it was frozen on all the high spots when I got up for chores on Wednesday. We were all very thankful for the little goat shed!

Hen House

One of my favorite things about our home is the outhouse. It's the Cadillac of outhouses, I tell ya. It has a concrete toilet, a wooden dowel for the tp to hang on, a coat hook, and vents with shutters! I think it's pretty special.

However, the chickens were in need of a home that is better than the chicken tractors that we started out with, and so we decided to remodel the outhouse into a chicken house! I love it, and hope you will enjoy a little tour:

Standing in the front looking in. What appears to be a jagged hole near the ceiling is actually a heat lamp reflecting the sunlight. We use it when the weather dips below freezing to prevent frostbite, which our birds experienced the first winter we had them.


This shot shows the perches and the vents with shutters at the top. You can also see the corner of the nest boxes to the left. Do you spy the egg on the floor?


Here is a better shot of the nest boxes.


I am working on a new way of using the animals to increase our food production. This little garden spot is last year's chicken yard. The photo was taken the second week of August. See how small everything is? That is because of the drought. We've only had three rains from the end of June until now. Even though things look pretty green, nothing grew or produced very well after early July, until the fall. This little patch and my row of tomatoes are what we chose to keep hydrated and nurse along. It has paid off well. The soil is just beautiful in this spot. It is so rich, loose, and nearly weed and bug free. Our plan is to rotate the location of the chicken yard to enhance the garden spot. We are working on a plan for housing them through this transition. We will either have lanes for them to travel to and from their house, or we will build a portable chicken house on skids.