Monday Morning Round Up ~ April 12th

It’s snowing!
😂😂😂
We spent the weekend getting ready for this storm, because it’s been predicted for almost a week and we knew we had to get things ready…

Hubby finished re-furbishing the former pig house.
Our last pigs were savages.
Literally.
The big male was chewing on the wood sides for fun.
They had toys, endless food, giant stumps to throw around and he still loved to just chew the wood off the side of the shelter.
He was something, that boy…and he was the *nicest* pig of the 3.
The girls were crazy assed bitches.
I have never been quite so happy to send animals to Freezer Camp as I was those pigs!

Anyway, Hubby got the shelter re-furbished, wood on the sides and a new door…then he fixed the gate to that yard and it’s now the permanent duck yard.
We didn’t replace the pallet fence yet, but it’ll be fine for another year yet.
Then we moved ducks.
How did we get sooooo many ducks??
😂😂😂
Oh.
Yeah.
It’s because we let the hens sit nests.
Speaking of…
Our best mama hen, Ripple, has 22 eggs under her.
Fingers crossed that she hatches them all (or most of ’em).
She seems to have adjusted to moving her and her nest fairly well.
We initially left her in with the turkeys, but turkeys is assholes and they were beating her up, trying to force her off her nest. 😡
So Hubby and The Kid caught her and moved her in with the rest of the ducks…gave her the eggs she was sitting in her own little space, and this morning, even with the storm wailing around outside, she was happily chirruping at The Kid whilst sitting on her new nest.
We are hopeful.
❤

Then everyone got new straw.
We’re working off the last round bale we bought in the Fall for the horses…so that means wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load moved to the poultry houses.
But it works well, even if it can be time consuming.
We just do what we have to, to make sure all the critters weather the storm safely. 🙂

Hubby pulled a new bale of hay out of the garage.
We’re at that point in the year where we start using the ones we have stored for next year…but because weather is so odd (she said while looking at the snow/rain coming down outside her window) we pull 1 at a time.
We pay way too much for dried grass to waste *any* of it!
And never, ever think I am disparaging our Hay Guy!
Oh. Freakin’. No!
He makes amazing hay that keeps my Merry Mares fat and sassy throughout the coldest of colds and wettest of wets, and he stands behind his product.
No complaints from me.
But I won’t waste a stem of it if I can help it, because hay is a precious commodity and that’s all there is to it.

Chicks got another light…
Thankfully we had an extra, so now they have 3 heat lamps…but really, there’s a lot of them, and they’re 3weeks apart in age and the Little Red Shed isn’t insulated…so we give ’em heat lamps to cuddle under…and everyone was doing awesome this morning.

Speaking of lights, my grow light is up and over my tomatoes now.
The peppers have been growing gangbusters, so are in need of transplanting. Especially the Shepherd peppers, where every single seed seems to have germinated and they are packed into their little cells.
lol
No complaints, I love roasted red peppers, so I’m happy to grow many, many peppers.
This year the plan is to smoke a bunch, dry them and grind them as spices for winter.
That’s part of the reason for the diversity in heat levels too…

And today we’re watching the precipitation come down.
Maybe we’re not too chuffed about it being snow, but it’ll be melting by Saturday and the land needs the moisture.
Like I wrote last week, Lake Midnight never appeared this year, that’s how dry it’s been.
While that seems awesome, that means not enough moisture in the land to get a good start on the growing season.
And here, the growing season isn’t just the garden, it’s the grasses that we eventually cut and feed to the animals too.
Nothing was greening at all. Just brown, dry and crunchy.
This will change that.
And hopefully, our May 1st celebration can include a Beltane fire.
We didn’t get to have our Samhain Ancestral Fire because of crazy wind and weather, so I am hopeful that this moisture will give us the chance to celebrate Beltane with fire.
As it should be.
🙂

Tuesday Morning Round Up ~ October 6th, 2020

Somehow, October has crept up on me and bowled me over like a bull in a china shop.
Gee, surprise!
🤦‍♀️🙄
So much surprise (not) that I started writing this yesterday, when it would have been a Monday Morning Round Up.
😂😂😂

So, what have we been up to?
Welp, I do believe we are caught up on roosters.
For now.
We’ve got a handful that need to grow some more in the bachelor pen before going to freezer camp.
Next up, ducks.
That’s this weekend.
Then we’re finishing the turkey/duck yard so we can move the turkeys to their new house.
They’re growing very well, but not enough that we’ll have turkey at Yule for dinner.
Naw, more like in March…but that’s okay.
We’ll have a better idea on hens and toms then and then we can weed out the boys we’re not going to keep.

This also happened:

This little guy hatched out from our chocolate hen.
She had this one and one other duckling….but she decided she didn’t want to actually *have* ducklings, she just wanted to sit on a nest.
So she let the chickens try to kill the bebes.
We didn’t catch them soon enough to save both, but did save this one.
And for now (a temporary time) we have a house duck.
Ain’t gonna be for long because I detest having birds in my house, but right now I have turkeys in the brooder (still) so no place to put a duck on his own.

So, to sum up…busy, busy busy.
Roosters.
Freezer Camp.
Ducks.
Building.
Just trying to get shit done because, as we all know…

Winter is coming.

To quote a friend… “even the livestock are sick of 2020” 😂😂😂

Another Monday Morning Roundup

Back on my old old old blog, I used to do this a lot.
The MMR to catch everyone up on the goings on in my world.
Because sometimes, Farm/homesteading life means you fall off the edge of the world for a bit while working your butt off to be ready for winter.

Winter.
Is.
Coming.

But I’ve had a chance to get out with the camera in between all the work, and that’s a darn good thing.
Did a thing for a group that I can’t say anything about yet, but it’s a damn good cause and I was prouder than a peacock to be a part of it…even if my part of the thing isn’t included in the final product, just getting to do the thing was ah-effing-mazing. ❤

Saturday my own Merry Mares gave me some lovely shots.
I have a few to share with y’all today. 🙂

She’s so odd.
That front leg out is something she does a lot when she’s laying down. I don’t know how it’s comfy, but she’s always done it.

And this one…
She was so sick this summer, for so damn long with no real answers…we were all starting to worry about the worst possible outcome.
But, she seems to have rebounded beautifully, with even the large lump on her tmj shrinking to a small hard spot.
So, she’s still retired, but she’s doing very very well!
❤

I love this shot of Astrid dozing with Sable in the background.
We haven’t had enough sun lately, so everyone was just soaking it up like crazy. It was good to see!
🙂

And now, being Monday, I’m back to work on canning…
I took a break this weekend to help Hubby with some winterizing projects (okay, him and The Kid pulled out the a/c while I picked carrots to go with supper 😉 )and clean up the beets to get ready for today.
Pickled beets are the theme for today, with a side of carrot pulling before the next round of rains start.

Have a great day folks!

Sharing with Awww Mondays at Comedy Plus.

Monday Morning Roundup

Back on my old blog, before we bought the Farm, I used to do the Monday Morning Roundup…a post that covered our weekend activities. I was thinking, since we’re always busy on weekends here and there’s rarely time to blog, that bringing it here would be a great idea. 🙂

Saturday mornings are hectic, and this past one was no different. We’re getting ready to go to The Kid’s riding lesson, getting all the animals fed, setting up beet pulp for when we get home, finishing any odds and ends that need doing before we go…oh, and I try to squeeze in my Friday’s Hunt post. Really, I have to start posting it on Friday and updating the linky when it goes live. That would be soooo much easier! lol

The difference for this last Saturday, though, was we were going grocery shopping while Kid had her volunteer/theory time.
Since Hubby has spent his Saturdays helping on the house rebuild at the stable, he’s been doing groceries on Fridays, before he comes home. It’s been good for him. lol I don’t think he 100% realized how difficult it can be, sometimes, to make that grocery budget stretch enough to get everything everyone wants. Honestly, a lot of times, we don’t get everything that everyone wants. But, that’s life, right? I mean, I’d love to buy 10 lbs of cheese at a time, or a beef tenderloin or two…but, if the budget doesn’t allow, well, the budget doesn’t allow.

So, for the first time in a long time, I was getting to grocery shop. I had nearly $40 in cash back rewards from our local gas station, plus a $25 off a purchase of $150 coupon…I was a little excited to be able to get some extra $$$ off the groceries, and add to our basement stockpile. 🙂
By the time I was done, I had a huge cart load of groceries, and after all was rung up, I had saved just over $88, using my coupons and taking advantage of the store’s buy one get one offers.
With the $$$ we saved, we went down the street to our usual store and stocked up on a few other things that weren’t on sale at the first store.
Gotta say, felt pretty darn good loading the truck with a whole lot of groceries.

Then we headed back to the stable, to watch The Kid’s lesson.
That went really well. She and her lesson pal were doing jumps on their ponies, and all was good (even if I do hold my breath every time The Girls jump…can’t help it. It’s a Mama thing) until my Kid made a slow, unscheduled, less-than-graceful dismount.
She and her mount had a “Oh! We’re not gonna make it! Oh! We’re going anyways! Oh! Crap, we didn’t make it!” moment.
Both were okay, Kiddo popped up quick and easy, remounted, and they went through the series of jumps again…just to make sure they both had confidence in each other to get it done.

And then there was the ride home…whoooo…
Let’s just say, highways were so bad that if we hadn’t had to be home to feed the horses, we likely would have overnighted in the city. I’m sure Hubby will say I’m over reacting, saying that, but no, the roads were really bad. 😦

Sunday made up for it though! Holy, what a difference in weather!
+6*C, no wind, sunshine and melting…so nice to see the melt going on. That meant out I had to go with the camera.
But first, this…

It’s a pig in a top hat!

That hat is teeny tiny.
That pig is only 6 inches tall.
That hat has alligator clips under the brim.
That hat is going to sit on every pretty head in the pasture.
Why?
Because that hat is so damn cute I just can’t even…I mean really.
Just.
Can’t.
Even.

This happened…

Astrid did not care. She was 100% fine with him being up there. ❤
This summer, Astrid will be back working under saddle. Yay!!
She does have some training (60 days with a reputable trainer for sure) but has been a pasture puff for the 2ish years she’s been here.
She is such a sweet Girl, so willing to please, having her ridable will be fantastic…and she loves the attention.

Cookie had a lay down for a bit…

The Madam decided she wasn’t interested in wandering with the others and wanted to have a nap instead…

Just off wanderin’…

They’re restless. They’ve started to shed, they know spring is coming…they want hay, but don’t want hay. If I give them hay, they toss it around and mess in it…if I don’t give them hay, they wander like I’m starving them. As you can see ^^^ they are not hurting for food! They’ve got some good winter weight on them! 😉
I compromise, and give them hay in the trough, and tell them once that’s done, they can have more. If they don’t eat it, I don’t add more.
It’s warm. They don’t need the same huge amounts they did when it was really cold.

See what someone did?!?

When I first edited the above image, I thought I saw a pile on the straw bale…I wasn’t sure, so I walked out there to check.
Yup, someone pooped right on the bale. Brat!

A good shake after having a nap. 🙂

And our weekend ended with a bbq, and a few drinks on the deck.
So nice, sitting out there without having to bundle up in parkas and boots.