Life on the Farm

Things have been super busy here at the farm.  We have had lots of birthdays (four) in the last ten

days of June, as well as LOTS of company.  It has been one of those times where I have been too busy living to do any writing about it.  Also, since the company has left, I have been getting caught up on my rest.  

 One of the projects we have done recently  to build a hoop coop.  We found the plans on the Backyard Chicken Website.  It is really simple and uses three steer fencing panels and some chicken wire.  It has a basic wood frame.  We did buy treated lumber for the base to increase the structural longevity.  

It has a simple wood frame and we put in two roosting poles.  Recently, My DH was given a bunch of white tarps.  We have used a couple of the tarps to provide weather protection.  

We cut off part of an old screen door to give access.  We wanted it to be tall enough that someone about 6 ft can stand in the center.

We put the little chicks in there and it has worked well.  We were able to move them out of the garage and get them on grass.  After three days we opened the door and let the chicks free range inside the electric fence with the old hens.  I was pleased to see there were no issues between the hens and the chicks and everyone seems to get along.  The hens even come in and visit the chicks and get a snack or a drink.

Here is the almost finished structure.  We still want to put a tarp on the back end of the coop for more weather protection.  We are still trying to figure out a way to make this coop more mobile.  We need to figure out a wheel system.  Right now, we slide it along on a couple dollies.  

One other potential use for this structure would be to use it for a simple green house in the spring.  The white tarps let a significant amount of light through and tables on the edges would give a good planting surface.  

Here is a recent picture of the fields.  A close examination shows that there are lots of beans, sunflowers, radishes, corn, sorghum and several other plants coming up nicely.  We planted a grazier nurse crop on the field which contains a mix of about ten different seed types.  The purpose of it is to build organic mass in the soil, also known as topsoil, and to encourage the restoration of nutrients to the soil.  It is nice to see them turning green!  We are hoping to get some cattle to feed/graze on there late this summer.  

The herb bed is looking good.  The plants all seem to be thriving.  No casualties yet.

One of the plants in the herb spiral is bee balm.  It is flowering and does give it a nice dash of color.

I love the purple flowers on the clematis.  We have several in the front and a pink one on the side of the shop.

Elizabeth found a very cool snake skin in the front garden.  We welcome anything that keeps the bugs down.  We tried to encourage the hens to snack on the Japanese beetles in some of the gardens, but they were a little rough on the plants and they were more interested in digging up the dirt and looking for worms than eating beetles.

For all those people that were wondering, yes, the pond can and is swam in.  It is a spring filled pond and also gets filled with rain water.  When the weather is warm, we do get some pond scum, but Thomas has been faithfully raking it out and putting it on our compost pile.  

We also have these super sized bug catchers, also known as bull frogs.  We had some young men here who caught three that were HUGE!  They wanted to use them for frog legs, but we requested that they return them to the pond so they can get more bugs.

This is some of the recent happenings on the farm.  Stay tuned and I will try and get some more posts up soon!

This Week on the Farm

This has been a good week.  The weather has been springlike.  Warm but not hot and quite a bit of rain.

My Dh gave me a dump truck load of manure for Mother's Day with the promise of another load if needed.  It came from the neighbor's down the street.  I am putting it in the bottom layer of my vegetable garden.  We'll see how it goes.  My brother has promised me another load of his aged to the point of dirt horse manure some time this week.  Should I be worried that I get so excited about animal excrement?

This week one of my big projects was to teach the chicks that it was OK to be outdoors.  I worked hard to chase all of them out of the stall and into the fenced area.

They kept trying to run back into the barn.  Their food and water was out there, but they still were 'chicken'.  They crammed against the area and the side of the barn.

Every time a car or truck went down our road, which is very frequently, they would run towards the barn like the sky was falling.  It was pretty funny to watch. They would timidly move into the fenced area and then come running full tilt back cause a car went by.

Black Jersey Giant Rooster

 It was helpful that the free range hens that roam the yard came round and presented a good example of calm behavior in the yard.  By evening they were gradually coming out.  Then we had to work to chase them BACK into the barn.  Silly birds!

Barred Rock hen

 After almost a week of this they are finally getting with the program.  They come running out when I open the barn door, they have learned to love to eat grass and dandelions, and they head back towards the stall when it gets dark.  Yeah!  Keeping chickens is pretty easy most of the time, but this was harder than I anticipated.  I probably spent 8-10 hours on these silly birds.

My DH is working diligently on building our mobile coop.  We have a deadline of next weekend to complete it as we have another batch of birds, including some turkeys, coming then who will need the bird stall.  The old chicks will need to live here and be outside most of the time.  When they are outside they are so much healthier.  They eat bugs, grass and a lot less feed!

My DH and Paul are building it out of aluminum that he has scavenged off of jobs that required demoing.  This will result in a lot lighter weight structure that will be easier to move around.

Sunday was Mother's Day!  We had everybody in the family over that was local.  We also celebrated Mom's birthday at the same time.  Michelle made a nice birthday cake for her.

Our neighbor's joined us for the celebration.  None of their children are local.  Earl is the guy who has rescued us so many times here on the farm.  They are both very sweet.  Ian photobombed it!

It was really nice to have the family together!

I forgot to take pictures during the meal.  The adults ate the desert while the children were outside playing.  It was pleasant and peaceful.  Yummy cream puffs and a slice of birthday cake.

Shell

 We were glad to have My brother's family spend the day.

Michelle and Miss President took a picture together because they 'matched'.  This is what it looks like today...

But someday they will be almost the same height!  Miss P is a tall girl also!

My DH continued to work on the coop.  The siding was given to us by a neighbor.

The coop is becoming 'Joseph's coop of many colors' as the siding was from several different projects.

The chicks are a popular place to hang out.  Elizabeth likes to study them.  She is such a farm girl already.

This is the white leghorn rooster.  Our hatchery did a really good job of sexing our chicks.  I think this is the only one that they missed on.  He is a little guy.  So far he gets along well with everyone.

Spring is in full bloom here at the farm.  We are enjoying the flowers and trees.  The garden is growing well.  The shallots are looking good and the lettuce is growing quickly.  Life on the farm is good!

Chicken 'Coop'

We had chickens at the old house.  They had a really nice coop that my DH built.  Alas, it was too big to travel by road to the farm intactly.  So where to keep the chickens until we can move the coop over....  We had several family pow-wows to make the correct decision.

So what did we decide?

The back of the barn has a 'run-in'.  A run-in is a shed like structure that is built on the back of a barn.  It is a place to give animals protection in bad weather,  a place where they can run in and be dry.  We have a large run in and so we decided to build the chicken coop in the end of the run in.

 Paul did the labor.  He had to make sure there were no holes for wayfaring critters to come in and get a chicken dinner.  He used some excess barn siding and a nice door.  We used the nesting boxes from the old coop.  The chickens moved in easily and felt real comfortable.  We know this because they are laying well.  The downside of the run-in coop is that it doesn't have much light.  The windows in the door is the only source.

The chickens are happy having a dry place to scratch.  There is very aged manure in the run-in, and they love scratching through it.

We can cut through the barn to get to the chickens,  It is a bit muddy in the pasture area outside the run-in.  This has worked out well.

The chickens have total access to the outdoors, but they only seem to go out when the weather is fine.  They like the dry dirt rather than mud.  

We do hope to get the coop moved in the next month or so, but until then we have happy hens in the run-in.