Blog Mojo

Somehow, I lost my blog mojo.  I miss the habit, and I want to catch myself up!

Who would have thought I would prefer freezing temperatures, but, oh my - the mud has been remarkable.  Especially where the animals walk.  We had record breaking amounts of rain here, but finally cold enough temperatures for some of that precipitation to be a real snow and for the ground to freeze solid.  The donkeys were frisky and wanted to play.  We  can watch them frolic in this video: 

In anticipation of the coming cold spell, Brandon made Wendigo a new dog box for her sleeping place in the barn.  She is warm and comfortable inside her new box, even at night when the temperature drops.  

Look!  A winter rainbow!

I've been hibernating, but Brandon has been busy building dog boxes and erecting the frame of a hoop house.  Last summer, we found a good deal on a used hoop house and spent a sweltering day dismantling it from someone's back yard.   I think this person bought it used from someone else, with big garden dreams in mind, which didn't work out when they never got it fully assembled.  Taking a hoop house apart is much easier than putting it back up!  We've done it twice now, so we are practically professionals, right? 

Now it stands in our back field waiting for a solid cover so it can be our future hay storage.   It's big - even bigger than we thought since we counted wrong when laying it out and ended up with an extra hoop... how does that happen?  Not quite professionals after all. 

The greenhouse is mostly empty right now, but I have a few garden experiments in place that are working well. 

The onion bulbs, gifted to me from a friend, were planted on December 3, and now have green leaves that are several inches long and could be harvested for chives. 

The lettuce greens that were planted near the end of September grew wonderfully under the plastic dome, and were harvest-able all the way until this week, when the freeze got them despite the plastic.  If I weren't used to hibernating during the winter months, I could have been harvesting fresh greens for nearly four months.  Next fall, I want to plant even more greens, and then encourage myself to actually harvest and eat them instead of just admiring them.  I have a mental block I think - I'm not used to food harvest chores once the leaves are off the trees, but I'm going to overcome it.  Remind me, would ya? 

It's a double rainbow!  

Wendigo is napping with the chickens.  If you remember, I've been raising some Red Ranger chickens to harvest for meat, and some Pearl Leghorns to be our youngest egg layers.  

These chickens are three months old now, and are voracious eaters.  They follow me in a giant flock and peck at my boots hoping I will drop some food.  With thirty young birds, plus a dozen or so old birds, sometimes I can't make any progress walking because the flock swarms around my feet honking for food.   

The red meat birds are growing fast and should be ready to harvest any day now.  I'll be glad to thin the flock.  I prefer raising these birds to those white cornish cross birds.  These grow fast too, but they are mobile and good at foraging. 

The young birds sleep in the mobile coop. 

The old birds sleep in the coop attached to my barn. 

We made some upgrades to the barn coop this winter.  We added some steps to the perch, a wall from the roof to the ground on the north side, and built a new nest box. 

Rooster Cogburn was the first to try out the nest box and let me know that it needs a curtain for more privacy. 

The stork should visit Peaches in March and Noobi in May.  More baby goats! 

Why do I want more goats?  Good question. 

The beautiful snow and nice solid ground is gone again, and the rain and the mud is back.  I overhead farmer Joe say that if you have the right clothes, it doesn't matter what the weather is.  It's a good thing I have muck boots!