Internet at Home and Updates!

Last night we went and bought the things necessary to have Internet access at home through our PC. If this works out, I will be able to post regularly! Woohoo!!! So far, though, Wayne is unimpressed with the speed of the Internet service. It does take a while for pages to load, but I'm not surprised given our location. I'm just excited to be able to have Internet without having to buy a satellite! We have two weeks to decide if we are happy with the service and if so, continue on. If we are unhappy with it we will simply return the items we purchased for a refund and the contract will be cancelled. I really, really hope it doesn't come to that.

Homestead updates:

Garden:
I really wanted this to be the year I had a successful garden. However, life had other plans. The storms that ripped through our area in late March/early April caused a lot of unplanned work in the yard and interfered with out ability to get the ground prepared for planting in a timely manner. One thing I've learned is that I MUST get the garden in as early as possible in order to get a harvest before school starts in the fall. I absolutely do not have the time to deal with the garden once school starts. However, I can plant a bit in the evenings and weed on the weekends in the spring until we get out of school for the summer. All that is to say that I planted what I am calling a "micro-garden." It contains tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuce, basil, and cilantro. I also have some tiny yellow day lilies, mints, and lemon balm that are supposed to be permanent residents in that bed. I have containers with rhubarb and hens and chicks as well.

Early in the spring I planted grapes, muscadines (one of my favorite things in the whole wide world!), and raspberries in the front yard, at the perimeter of the orchard. Most of them are doing well. A couple of the plants appear to have died back, but I am continuing to water in hopes of something springing forth from the roots.

We lost almost all of our orchard due to the hard winter of 2010/2011 and the drought of the summer of 2011. I have planted nine fruit trees since we moved here. Only three remain. Two are peaches and one is a pear.

Poultry:
Our chicken flock has grown dramatically. At the end of winter I had four Welsummer hens and one Welsummer rooster, one Delaware hen, and five bantam hens of unknown origin. A good friend decided that she didn't want to mess with chickens any more and gave me her hens, who are less than one year old. That added seven girls to the flock. One of them lays a lovely olive green egg! They are what she calls "barnyard mix." There appears to be two barred rock, one Welsummer mix, one Cochin, one Black Austrolorp, one Rhode Island Red, and one (?)blue grey beauty!

I found Silver Laced Cochin pullets at Atwoods about the first of April. I seized the chance and bought six of them. Cochins are my favorite breed. I hope they will turn out to be excellent layers as well!

I had ordered six Golden Laced Wyandottes through my feed store (Midwest Ag in Carthage) in very early spring. I got the call that they had arrived the first week of May. When I got to the feed store only four of my chicks was there. Someone had accidentally gotten my Wyandottes! I was pretty unhappy about that, since I had ordered so few to begin with, there is little margin for error. One of our big goals is to have enough eggs to sell, and I know that Wyandottes are the best layers I've ever had, bar none! The only other chicks the feed store had on hand that I would even consider adding to my flock were Easter Eggers. I ended up taking four of them.

This brings my chicken flock to a grand total of 32! Eeek! My goal was 25 hens. Oh well, that just means more eggs, right?

The week after I bought my latest eight chicks I was back at the feed store and they had ducklings for sale. Now, I've been wanting Khaki Campbells for a long time, but they were always too pricey, and I thought it would be years before I could get any. I offhandedly asked what kind of ducks they hand and when they said Khaki Campbells I embarrassed myself with the squeal that escaped my lips! I bought five. This has been an adventure and an education! What I read about them has proven to be untrue thus far. I really hope it wasn't all a lie! Khaki Campbells are supposed to be land ducks and not require water for swimming. Everything I read said that they enjoyed it, but it wasn't necessary. Those poor babies were FILTHY by the end of the first week!!! I ended up bringing them inside and filling the bathtub with warm water because they are still downy. I added the water a little bit at a time because I have heard of people accidentally drowning their ducklings. Apparently mine were ready, because as soon as there was enough water, they took off! It was so much fun to see them swimming and preening in the nice, warm water. When one decided to take a dive (like ducks do) it freaked all the others out. It was so funny! A couple of the others tried it and they had great fun. Every time I would think they were getting tired and it was time to let the water out they would get a new burst of energy and start all over again with dunking their heads and scratching them vigorously, standing on the water, splashing, etc. They are definitely very messy critters, but what a joy to watch! I love their call, too! It makes me smile every time. The benefit to the homestead (according to my reading) is that they are avid eaters of bugs, snails, and slugs. Supposedly, they won't bother the garden plants, but will eat broad leafed weeds with relish. I sure hope SOMETHING I read was true! The ducks will definitely be getting some sort of pond of their own!

Storm Cleanup

Remember the storms of leap day? We've been cleaning up from that mess ever since. It's gotten much, much worse before it can get better. This elm tree had a branch of about 10" diameter that hung over our roof, rubbing it and posing danger should there be an ice storm that caused it to break free of the tree. I wanted to just cut off that limb, but if we cut it off the limb beside it would also die because of they way they were joined, and if they both died the entire tree would no longer be viable, and at best we might nurse it along for another ten years or so. For these reasons we decided to go ahead and take the entire tree out. We were not happy to do so at all, but felt there was no use in putting off the inevitable. In the end we are very glad we did. When Wayne cut it, he hit a very large bolt. It is at least six inches long. Apparently the tree split early in it's life, and rather than take it out, it's owners decided to bolt it together. The wood of that interior portion was rotten. Many of the limbs were also rotting from the inside out. Here is is before we cut it. I nearly cried when I counted it's rings. This tree was about 120 years old!

Next to be addressed was the ominous tree to the west of our house. You remember the one with the very large rotten place at it's base? It is now on the ground, much to my relief!

The dark core you see is completely rotten. That tree was a crushed house waiting to happen!

What's worse, the bug damage you see is on the west side of the tree, making it that much more of a threat to our home. I didn't count the rings on this one. I'm not one bit sad it's gone. Well, maybe just a teensy bit. It did shade the west side of the house.

Here you can see how close it was to the house as well as gain proportion to how big it was.

Finally, the ash tree that split during the leap day storm. It was a lovely tree. I'm still astounded that it had to go. I never dreamed we would be without it.

Our place seems quite bare now, though there is still a LOT of cleanup work to be done. We are plugging away at it each afternoon. It will be so nice to have all the wood stacked and ready for winter, and the brush cleaned up!

St. Patrick's Day Kids!

Perle delivered two bucklings and one doeling on March 17th. It was a difficult delivery. I knew for a couple of days that something wasn't right, but hoped that Perle would be able to get them straightened out. She did lots of stretching and getting up and down. When she finally had them one of the bucklings was in the birth canal the entire time the other two were being born. I ended up having to pull him, and he was upside down and backwards! When the first kid started to emerge there were three feet showing. I was trying not to enter her if at all possible, so I just watched and encouraged her. When that kid was born one of the feet was still there! I watched and waited for 20 minutes before calling my more experienced friend. She didn't answer the phone. I waited ten more minutes before calling another friend who is also more experienced. She said, "If it's been 30 minutes, you've gotta get that baby out NOW." I hung up the phone, told Wayne what she'd said and that I needed him to hold her head, and poured providone on my hands. I turned around to Perle and there was a kid on the ground, still in the sac! I said, "Sweet! She's done it on her own!" Then I looked up and said, "No!!! That foot is still there!" I hurriedly cleared the second kid's face of the sac and proceeded to work on getting the stuck kid out. At first I couldn't find any parts because he was so high inside her. I decided to wash off the exposed foot and push it back inside. When I did that he put the two feet together and I was able to begin pulling. It was HARD WORK! I was sore for two days afterward. I don't know how long it took to actually get him out, but it felt like about 30 minutes more. When I finally got him out he was so long and thin. I thought he was dead, but I was clearing his face anyway and I felt his heartbeat! I began to swing him as my training had shown me how to do, and it worked! He was not one bit impressed by it all, but he was breathing. It took him a good two hours to be able to stand on his own, where the others were up in five minutes, but now you would never guess there were any problems at all! I was calling the boy who had to be pulled Scooter for the first couple of days, and then Wayne decided that the boys should be named Thunder and Lightening. The little girl is still nameless. I'm working on it. I want to give her an authentic Irish name since she was born on St. Patrick's day.

This is Thunder.

Perle and Scooter/Lightening having a heart-to-heart talk.

Our as-yet unnamed doeling catching some zzz's.

Scooter getting a little nip. I LOVE the heart on his side! He is the prettiest baby born to my herd so far.

Perle and all her darlings getting ready a nap.

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.