Tag Archives: hay burners

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A Wee Bit of Rain

It’s sooooo dry this year.
Lake Midnight never even appeared.

Ducks in Lake Midnight

^^^^
That’s what our pasture normally looks like in the spring.
The arrows at the top are pointing at the fence posts that define the pasture’s border…
Yeah, we’re usually wet, wet, wet this time of year!

I don’t think we’ve ever been under a burn ban from the municipality this early…at least, not as long as we’ve been here.
So last night’s drizzle that 1/2 filled a 55 gallon rain barrel and left us puddles on the drive way was very welcome!
The mud?
Not so much.
But it’s not so bad that I have to be worrying about the horses’ hooves.
When you get water like that ^^^ thrush treatments happen a lot!
The last few years have been on the drier side so much that I haven’t treated anyone for thrush in almost 2 years.
Good for their feet, not so good for growing their food.

So fingers crossed for more rain at just the right times.
Both for garden health and for the hay fields.
I’ve been Dreaming about cutting hay for months now.
Oh how I miss the movement, the quiet swish of the scythe, the turning and raking and the baling…
Soon.
Soon.
❤
After the snow forecast for Monday melts.
😂😂😂

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Finally!

We have emerged from the polar vortex!
And I am happy about that.
Boy am I happy about that!
Weather sure has been challenging humans across North America this month.
I feel for those caught up in patterns that they don’t normally deal with.
It’s easy for those of us with cold experience to sit back and say shitty things (please don’t do that, ‘kay?) but the fact is, even we get slammed with hard-to-deal-with weather.
So before you make some joke about Texas or any of the southern States dealing with cold and snow and no power and frozen pipes, remember, “there but for the grace of God go I…”
We just came out of -50*c weather…imagine if we’d lost power!
I can’t even.
So just try to remember to be kind.
That’s it.
Don’t be shitty and be kind.

Today, as I type this, we’re at -13*c.
After the past 2 weeks that positively t-shirt weather.
And I’m thankful for it.
So are the horses, the hens, the turkeys and the ducks…oh and the cats.
It was so bad there for awhile we were feeding jar after jar after jar of wet food to them, just so they had enough.
Normally a 1/2 pint is a good supplement to their kibble.
They went through a case of 12 in 2 days!
But, food keeps furnaces stoked, and wet food helps keep kitties hydrated.
So I feed ’em.
🙂
But it also means we’re running low on homemade cat food, so Hubby went and bought a few big cans to have on hand, just in case.
And come fall, I’ll just do a few extra jars, bigger jars, to make sure everyone has enough.

Meat birds are ordered.
I added an extra 25 meat chickens, so we’ll be getting 75 chickens and 10 turkey poults.
So. Many. Birds.
Though chicken math means it’s really not more than 12.
😂😂😂
And I’m thinking I might fire up the incubators this weekend.
If I start this weekend, I can get 2 full hatches in before the one hatch that needs to coincide with the arrival of the meat birds.
I ain’t downsizing the amount of birbs I hatch, let me tell ya!!
Hatching out as many as I possibly can.

Hubby brought home the first bag of potting soil yesterday.
And a pouch of fava bean seeds.
I’ve never grown fava beans before, so I had to read up on them.
Turns out the entire plant is edible, so yay for that!
And with today’s trip to the post office, I’ll have the seeds I need to get the garden going as soon as I can.
Whew!
It’s gonna be a lot of beans, tomatoes, carrots, peas and beets this year.
Stuff we eat a lot of, stuff I can a lot of for winter.
As excited as I am to get growing, I’m tired just thinking about the work too.
lol

Ooooh, I told y’all I was pondering extra apple and saskatoons?
Yup, those are ordered too.
The Food Forest is expanding!
And for the last few nights, I’ve having vivid Dreams about cutting hay.
Oh, I can’t *wait* to get scythe in hand and cut hay again!

But for now, I’m just thankful for the warmer weather, that we made it through the coldest snap we’ve had in a very long time, and that Spring is coming.

Our 3 chubby monkeys, who are doing so well this year…even with record breaking cold!

Sharing with Brian’s Home for Thankful Thursday.

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Rain

Yesterday and last night we got rain.
A lot of it.
Which is good because I hate watering the garden. My hose doesn’t reach so I have to use watering cans,
I do it, but I complain about it.
Mostly because my garden is fairly big and watering can after watering can gets tedious.
It’s kinda hilarious…especially since we’re working on expanding it.
😂😂😂

But the rain has also made the grass grow, and that becomes hay.
That’s what I’m doing today.
Cutting hay.
Hay here in the Farm yard.
Then hay up on the side access road beside our property.
Then hay over at a friend’s place where she can’t get into with machinery.
Here hay, there hay, everywhere hay, hay…
😂😂😂

Not that I’m complaining because every bit of hay I cut and put up gets us closer to being able to keep a ewe or 2 over winter.
😉
Because sheep, and I refuse to keep animals I cannot feed.
So, I work my rump off to make sure we can feed ’em.

Then tomorrow I’ll be back at weeding the garden.
Which is food for not only us humans but them darn meat chickens…because meaties do love when The Food Lady tosses them weeds to eat.

My new statue addition…

Check out my new-to-me statue!
She came from the local dump.
Yup, our dump allows us to “shop” so that things can be recycled.
I ❤ LOVE ❤ that.
We’ve gotten building materials, gardening things, hardenable steel for Hubby’s forge, and now a new garden statue.
She’s concrete and just about 15 inches tall.
Ima clean her up, give her a fresh coat of paint and enjoy her beauty.
🙂

And now, on with the day!
Gotta go cut the hay.
😉

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Still Here…

Still plugging away.
Working on getting the garden All In.
Ain’t there yet.

It’s been a spring of ridiculous winds.
Like way worse than normal.
So we tried a thing…

With no money to build the green/hoop house we wanted to do, we’re attempting to wrap the entire garden to create a micro climate that, hopefully, will help give our tomatoes and peppers a chance.

So far it has not quite worked out to plan…the very next day we had wind gusts in the 70km range.
*sigh*
We have an idea to use strips of wood to anchor the plastic better to the fencing.
We’ll try that this weekend.
Fingers crossed.

I have gotten some seeds planted though, and with much better rainfall so far this year, there is hope for growth.
I’m pretty meh about it all right now.
It will or it won’t.
Every year I get to the point of que cera cera and let it go, but this year feels different.
I’m tired and pretty over it.
But I’m trying to keep plugging along because I know I’ll regret it if I don’t. :/

Poultry seems to be doing well.
This coming weekend we’ll have the eggs in the big incubator start to hatch.
The duck eggs that were in the small one were fertile, but didn’t hatch.
By day 40 there was nothing going on so I opened them up.
1 had expired without much development.
The other 2 had beaks, feet and fluff.
If you want to see the pictures of the wee ones, go here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBOTdH0ACFU/

At least we know our drake is fertile. lol
Not so sure our last one was.
But we have 2 hens sitting on nests and a 3rd nest being built.
Hopefully this bodes well for ducklings.

Then, after this round hatches, I’ll fire up both incubators for one more time before calling our hatching season done.
That way the last round of chicks will have a chance to grow big enough for us to tell who’s a rooster and who’s a pullet, and the roos will grow big enough to go to freezer camp.
From there we can clean out the brooder for the year and prep it for next year, when I hope to be able to start hatching a wee bit earlier.
We had very good luck with 2 heat lights and some crazy cold weather this year, so I think we could get away with running a few hatches even earlier next spring.
The more food I can grow, the less we have to buy.
🙂

And here’s a sunrise picture of Astrid…to tide y’all over ’til the next post.
This is all I got for today…

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Monday Morning Round Up ~ May 11th, 2020

Things have been fairly busy on the Farm.

We moved the 43 first hatchers from the brooder to their transitional home in the poultry yard.
They are almost ready to move into the bigger meat chicken house.
That will happen this coming weekend.

We hatched out another 40 some odd chicks…lost a few due to my forgetting to plug the 2nd heat lamp back in.
100% fail on my part.
😥
I haven’t made that mistake again.

We brought home 10 turkey poults on the 28th…

Hello turkey!

Almost a week old here, and nearly a full pound in weight already!

With the turkeys we brought home 50 cornish x meat chickens.
We timed the hatching perfectly, so that the meaties and the turkeys are in the brooder with the hatchers.
We find that meaties learn how to “chicken” from the egg layers so that we don’t have eating/pooping machines. 😉
It gives everyone a better life that way.
And the turkeys…
Yeesh.
So much attitude, so ugly they’re cute, and doing very well.
Fingers crossed they continue to grow well.
They’re broad breasted whites, so they’re like the meat chickens of the turkey world.
Bred to grow big, fast.
I’m hoping the do just that.
🙂

And on May 1st, we refilled the incubators with 64 chicken eggs and 3 duck eggs.
After this hatch, we have 3 more we can squeeze in before our hatching season ends for the year.

Hubby went a did a welding job for a friend.
I tagged along to take pictures.
As usual.

Not so easy to take daytime welding pictures.
I’ve asked him to do some night time ones with scraps so that I can capture the full lightshow.
Looking forward to that.

In other Hubby news, he went back to work today.
His work is set to reopen fully on June 1st.
His dept. is part of the crew getting ready for the regular line workers to be able to do their jobs.
So, they started 3 weeks ahead of everyone else.

I am torn on it.
I wanted him to go back to work, because money. lol
We have a lot of mouths to feed here, several very large ones…running on short income gets hard to do.
But I also enjoyed having him home, working here.
And of course, he gets the call just as things are drying up enough here to be able to work on building projects that need doing.
*sigh*
No surprise.
At the same time, I do also have a bit of anxiety about all this.
It’s hard not to.
6 weeks of doom and gloom and terror tactics used by govt and media to instill fear over Schrödinger’s Virus will do that to the most sound of mind people…let alone those of us who live with anxiety in the first place.
Hubby has been the one doing the bulk of the supply runs and being in contact with the world at large anyways, so how much I actually need to worry?
I don’t know.
But I am tired.
Tired of being told to stay home to protect others, being told that if I go out I could kill people because no one really knows if they have it or not (hence Schrödinger’s Virus) and I am tired of the hearty helping of fear created by those who have our “best interests” in mind.
When people are afraid to leave their homes because of what the govt and media are saying, that is straight up using terror tactics to control the public.
No matter how you feel about this virus, that is bullshit.
And I am tired of it.

In garden news, my tomatoes are huge.
Ready to plant.
So are my peppers.
I’ve collected all the seeds I want for this year…
Still need a few more plants though.
The greenhouse in town was open last week, so I made a trip through there.
Bought some extra tomatoes and peppers (because I can never grow enough of either 😉 ) and some pansies.
I’ll go back as we get things into the garden and get more of each, plus look for some johnny jump ups (violas) just because they’re edible and they draw pollinators.

I’m still planning the expansion for next spring.
Found a source for the berry shrubs/trees I want to add out there.
Now I’m looking for a large piece of black plastic to create the large permabed area come the fall.
We have a few dairies around us that use silage plastic, so we’ll see if we can take away some from them once they’ve used the bales.

And then before the end of April, I took a few early morning pictures of the horses…because I can.

Ruby shaking off the after effects of a nap.

Sable having a lovely nap in the straw pile.
❤

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Happy Spring

First day of Spring today.

My pepper seeds are popping up through the soil.
They’re up enough that it was time to turn the lights on.

Tomorrow night we take the turners out of the incubators and they go on lock down until hatching…which should start Sunday/Monday and finish by Wednesday.
Then we’re on a break until the 5th of April.
I’ll fire up the incubators again then, so that hatching will coincide with the delivery date of our meat chicks and turkey poults.
Yup, I’m gonna take the plunge and try raising turkeys this year.
Wish me luck!
lol

I’ve been reading Gabe Brown’s book “From Dirt to Soil” and had a bit of an epiphany when he talked about their personal gardens..

He talks about planting flowers in the food gardens to attract pollinators.
And the light bulb went on for me!
See, I’m a “grow all the foods!!” kinda gal, so I never really paid much attention to flowers.
But it makes sense that flowers to attract pollinators will help increase food crop yields, right?
D’Oh!
And then I started thinking about edible flowers.
Or flowers I can use in soaps.
Or feed to the poultry.
And then it made some sense to plant flowers along side my veggies.

So that’s what I’m planning this year.
I have an abundance of marigold seeds, so I’ll start a bunch of them in a few weeks.
And there will be, of course, sunflowers.
We’ll see what else I can find to add.
Hopefully some violas (johnny-jump-ups) because they re-seed and spread like crazy. And they’re pretty. And tasty too.
I may also let a mint run rampant in the garden too…

I think I’ll also be harvesting our dandelions a little harder this year.
Young greens for salads, older greens for cooking/canning.
Flowers for wine/mead.
Not the roots.
I tried dandelion root coffee once and did not like it.
Besides, digging roots takes away the renewable plant for other uses.
It’s an abundant resource we have, and I’m going to use it.

But for now, it’s just dreams and plans.
We’re still under a bunch of snow and will be for another month at least.

Happy Spring!

Dozing in the sunshine…

Sharing with Brian’s Home for Thankful Thursday…because I know how blessed I am to have, not only these resources to use, but the ability to use them.

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Capture52 Week 11 ~ NQR

Yep, behind again.
lol

NQR stands for “not quite right” and for that I offer you this:

It is a very cute shot.
I love, love, love the faces a horse makes while having a good shake after a roll.
Makes me smile every damn time.
But, it also makes it hard to get a good, crisp image.
And that’s part of why this one is “not quite right”.
Focus isn’t spot on, Astrid is in an odd spot in the frame and the snow is blown out in the background.
It’s not a bad enough image that I’d cull it.
Let’s face it, perfect images are awesome, but the not quite right ones are fun too.
And, rules are made to be broken.

Sharing with Comedy Plus for Happy Tuesday.

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Ruby the Painted Alien

After the Area51North shoot, I had the bright idea that I could put the “alien” head wear on Ruby.
Handing Voldemort to my Hubby I said “Here, hold my camera and watch this…”
These are the images he captured while hilarity ensued.

“Uh, I don’t think I want to wear that…” says Ruby.

“Well…maybe just the headband part…”

“Whoa!!
What the hell is hitting my ears?!
What’s going on here??!
You’re trying to kill me!”

“I coulda DIED y’kno…wait…are those cookies I see in your pocket?”

Here, my very brave Painted Alien, have a cookie. ❤


And in the end, the final image was worth the snorting, the pulling back, the cajoling and the feeding of many, many cookies to get our Painted Unicorn to, ever so briefly, become The Painted Alien.

Sharing with Comedy Plus for Awww Mondays
and
Word of the Day Challenge for Kick…because I sure got a kick out of these images and coming up with the captions for them.
😂😂😂

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Yay it’s Saturday!

Got a whole lot of stuff going on today.
We had a March storm blow through yesterday…literally!
With wind gusts in the low 90Km/hr range, it was a bit breezy.
Today we’re cleaning up after that with some snow moving and then it’s rooster rehabilitation day.
Which means 6 of 9 roosters are going into the freezer. 😉

More tomorrow (or Monday) after the work is done.
And then I’ll have a story to tell about how Ruby scared the carp out of me…
Everything is fine, Ruby is fine, so no worries.
It’s just gonna be a story about an over worrying horse owner and lazy horse.
😉

She’s so darn cute.
❤

Sharing with Word of the Day Challenge for Everything.