I bet you thought I had forgot I even had a website 😉 I didn’t…I’ve just been completely swamped at my 9-5 and on the farm. Our CSA’s started three weeks ago, its transplanting and planting season for the summer crops, I’ve got 3 does in milk and 5 kids to tend to, plus watering, weeding, pruning, starting seeds and rotating plants in and out of the greenhouse! Not to mention the pigs, chickens and 2 legged kids to take care of…and trying to keep my house clean and dinner on the table!
Anyway, enough about me! What’s going on on the farm?!
We moved the 25 pullets into the chicken coop with the older laying hens and the transition went smoothly. They go into the coop to roost at night with no problems! Except its quite crowded in there and I think J, M and my pop are gonna have to tackle a hen-house expansion this summer. We’re only getting about a dozen eggs a day right now, from 18 laying hens…but I can’t figure out who isn’t laying! Or where they are hiding the eggs! We’ll be overrun with eggs this fall when the pullets start laying and hope to be able to offer our eggs to local restaurants and in our CSA baskets.
Poppy and her kids are doing great! The little buckling and doeling are still so tiny compared to Sabrina’s triplets…but they boing around the barnyard with the best of them! We started separating all the kids from their dams at night so that we milk in the morning. I’m getting approx. 1 gallon in the morning and 1/2 gallon in the evenings from 3 does (2 first fresheners!) If Sabrina wasn’t feeding those piglets uhh…triplets, I’d be getting A LOT more from her. Her two little bucklings (Thing 1 and Thing 2) have been weathered and will be going to their new home in just a couple of weeks. I know that the family they are going to is really going to enjoy them…they are so sweet! So, that’ll leave Ivy and Poppy’s twins. I think we will name Poppy’s doeling Primrose and the little buckling is still being called Thing 3 and I’ll probably not end up naming him. His fate is still undecided 🙂
We will have some does available for purchase later this year…not sure which ones yet, and that is for a different post!
The garden is keeping me very busy…All of our spring crops; broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, radishes, head lettuce, snow peas, arugula, spinach and leaf lettuce are growing and ready to harvest. And the summer stuff is getting planted and starting to sprout. We planted 150 onions last week and have another 180 to plant this weekend. I hilled the 50 potatoes we planted last month and planted another 100 just this past week. 75 tomato plants and 50 eggplant and pepper plants will go in the ground this weekend, and there are another 50-100 of each started in the greenhouse. I also have tomatillos and garden huckleberry plants that are ready to plant. And another round of 50 each of those started in the greenhouse. Weeding is a full time job around here, but at least I get to be outside while I’m working!
We’ve decided to have an open farm on Sundays’ from 12-4…if you’d like to see our operation or play with the animals come on by!
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