With all the rain we have been having it's made two things difficult.
One: planting! Two: lack of internet!
So this is why our postings are s l o w!
Rain hasn't stopped us on the homestead. But it has made it slower to getting the garden areas ready. We managed to get our potatoes planted. We are still needing to get the onions in.
The girls and I worked on getting the potatoes in.
We planted 71 white, 71 red potatoes. Kaitlin planted another 20 regular store bought ones.
Meanwhile Tim was mulching branches.
Got to work together to get the job done in between the rain.
The meat birds are getting bigger. Another week and they will be going outside full-time.
Thunder is growing fast.
Bolt is growing, just not as fast.
Kaitlin and I feeding alfalfa hay to the cows.
I took some of the little - bigger chicks out of the second stall and put them in with the bigger hens. They look so small in comparison to the full size ones.
Needed to make room to add more baby chicks. I kept about 20 back.
Sassy-Pants has a chick starting to hatch.
Here's her with her baby chick.
*UPDATE: She has hatched out 7.
A while back Tim and I filled out this paper for Arbor Day.
Well, they sent us our 12 trees. Today is tree planting in the misty-rain.
Tim and the girls are working on the cages for the trees.
Meanwhile, I will be getting some soil blocks made to plant some seeds.
Check out this nifty soil block maker. We just got that and the trays in.
I planted 50 pepper plants, 7 calendula, 7 echinacea, 5 fennel, 5 yarrow, and 5 marshmellow plants.
They got this down. In no time they got all 12 trees planted.
2 Washington Hawtorn
3 American Redbud
2 Lilac Trees
2 Sargent Crabapples
3 White Flowering Dogwoods
Check out this dandelions flowers.
I have never seen anything like this before!
Tim got the compost pile moved.
We found out that it wasn't good to have raspberries planted near your blackberries. Found a different location for them and dug them up.
Getting the t-post in to put the cattle panel on it.
We got our raspberries moved.
Now we just wait for the fruit!
Not sure who all knows this but I was talking with one of my friends this afternoon about chickens today. I mentioned my broody hens, but she didn't know what that meant. So here's the scoop.
When a hen goes broody she wants to want to sit on top of her eggs all day in order to hatch them. This will take 21 days.
If you’ve never seen a broody hen before you might be wondering, how do you know if a hen is broody or not? Believe me, once you’ve seen the signs you will be under no illusion about having a broody hen.
- She will stay in her nest all day- and we mean all day, she won’t even go back to roost with the rest of the chickens at night.
- She will normally become very territorial over her nest- this includes puffing her feathers out and squawking at anything that tries to get near her.
- She will peck and try to bite you if you try to move her.
- She may also pick out her breast feathers so the heat from her body is passed through to the eggs.
A broody hen can be a godsend if you are trying to hatch chicks. No worries about incubators, brooder boxes or heat lamps...the hen will take care of it all.
Meet Ms. Boss, she decided to go broody. She is our other Black Copper Maran Chicken.
We will see how well this goes. We tried moving her but she has refused. Not sure the exact amount of eggs she is sitting on but thinking about 7. If she stays with it looks like in 2 weeks we will have more hatching chicks.
A couple of days ago I had another hen go broody. She is my Barred Plymouth Rock. Kaitlin took her off several times and she seems persistent. We will keep a eye on her. I haven't named her yet. If you have a suggestion, please leave me a comment below.
I picked up these little ones the other day.
They are silkies. Silkies tend to go broody.
This gives a little tid-bit of the rain we have been receiving.
Great for the vegetation, but my poor chickens!
The duckling has buddies.
Not sure what was happening with some of the photos.
Sorry if some look blurry.
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