Incredible Edible Eggs

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We sold three dozen eggs today, and I’ve got another sale for a dozen lined up for tomorrow. This is a very good thing. Our refrigerator was becoming overrun with eggs. So, so many eggs. How can seven little ducks lay so very many eggs? It wouldn’t be such a big deal if eggs didn’t make me hurl these last few months, but right now we only use three or four a week for baking. The ducks are laying about 6 eggs a day. You can see how things have gotten out of hand.


Garden Prep

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It’s time to get the garden ready so we’ll have a place to put all those plants we are growing in the office. I spent eight years getting the gardens at the old house to almost perfect condition, and it’s hard to have to start all over again. The dirt here is pretty crappy. We don’t have any beds built. I get tired just thinking about it.

The folks who lived here before did have a garden, so there was a sort of garden-shaped space with an overrun asparagus bed. Last spring my mom and I put fencing up around that area, and Andy planted some tomatoes there, but we didn’t get much. Partially because of the sad dirt. Partially because of the very dry summer. Towards the end of the summer, Andy put in an irrigation system.

This year we decided to pretty much start all over. Here’s how the area looked when we got started.

We pulled up the fence and posts and irrigation system, and while Andy started tilling I dug up the asparagus (and found the bunnies). Andy tilled and tilled and tilled and tilled some more. At one point, Andy yelled, “MOVE!” I think I almost got tilled. That thing is huge and powerful, and it has a mind of its own. Yaieieie.

I decided to seek a safer locale, so I ran off and mowed between Christmas trees. (Mowing is fun. Mowing on a steep slope around a bunch of Christmas trees is less fun.) After an hour or two of backbreaking (and scary) work, the garden area looked like this.

Off in the distance you can see Andy unloading the compost we picked up this weekend from a local farm / organic gardening supply place, Seven Springs Farm. It sure seemed like a big lot of compost until we dumped it onto the garden area. I think we’ll go back next week for another batch.


Not real farmers

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Two things have happened lately that have made me realize that we’re not real farmers. (Other than the whole not growing tons of stuff to sell for our livelihood.)

Thing One: Gimpy Chicken
Andy was moving the chicken tractors last weekend, and I was watching to make sure he didn’t squish any chickens. White-spotty Jap got very close to the edge of the cage, so I hollered to Andy to stop and he did. I didn’t think she got her foot caught, but she sort of flopped on her side and wiggled her foot in the air. Andy said that white-spotty Jap had about a week ago gotten wedged in behind the perch and maybe she hurt herself then. She seemed mostly okay. The next day when we drove by on our way home from work, white-spotty Jap looked dead. We hopped out of the truck and I was sure we had another dead chicken. She was on her back with her feet straight up in the air. Andy went over and poked at her and she squawked, but she didn’t roll over. We decided we should kill her. A real farmer would probably have just snapped her neck then and there, but not us. Andy went up to the workshop and got a bucket and a rag and some turpentine (or paint thinner or something of that ilk), and headed back down to “put the chicken to sleep.” I went inside and hid. He came back pretty quickly and said he couldn’t do it. White-spotty Jap was up on her feet wobbling around and he couldn’t kill her. She’s made it through the week — though Andy has gone out a few times to flip her over when she seems to get stuck on her back.

Thing Two: Baby Bunnies
We worked on the garden today. Even though I know it’s probably a bad, bad time to do so, I dug up a bunch of the asparagus patch because it was sloppy and annoyed me. While I was digging, I saw what looked like dryer lint and was wondering how it got there. I scooped up a shovel full of dirt / dead plant stuff and pitched it and heard “WEEEP WEEEP WEEP WEEEEP!!!!!” I shrieked and looked down and saw a pile of baby bunnies. Oh no. Andy came over and we scooped the bunnies and their nesting material up and dug a new hole and put them in and put the nesting on and put some rocks around it so we wouldn’t step on it. Hopefully when night comes, mommy bunny will find her moved babies and feed them. Hopefully no one else finds them. Real farmers would probably have smashed them with a shovel.


Getting Wood

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The last two weeks seem to have been all about the wood.

Wood Part One:
Remember that huge ice storm we had a bit ago? It brought down oodles of branches from the pine trees. I guess living out in the boonies no one would really complain or send the Tidy Neighborhood Brigade after us, but we still figured we should gather the branches up. We spent a couple hours dragging the branches out of the trees and loaded them up in the truck and stacked them up in a pile near the sheeps.

We made four trips and built a huge pile of branches. Andy’s been tossing a few into the sheep area every day or two, and the sheep love it. Soon all that will be left is branches. Then….you are all invited over for a huge bonfire!

Wood Part Two:
We have a wood stove. We haven’t used it yet because…well…we don’t really know how to use it. I also think it would be a good idea to have it cleaned out before we use it. Plus, the wood is sooooooooo far away. However, someday we’d like to use the wood stove to help heat the house in the winter, so we’ve been keeping our eyes open for free wood. A guy in Bburg had a huge walnut tree cut down, so we went and picked up a truckload of the wood. Our need for a chainsaw continues to grow.

Wood Part Three:
I got tired of having piles of paper forming Close Encounter mountains in the kitchen, so I drew up plans for a recycle bin and bid Andy make it. We bought some hinges, but the rest of the materials came from wood we got from freecycle a while ago. It’s painted with “oops” paint, and…oh, yeah, we did buy the polyurethane stuff. The center isn’t painted yet in this picture and the door isn’t on, but if you squint you can imagine it in all it’s crayola yellow and electric green glory. (There’re slots in the top to put the paper in. One slot for glossy paper, one for newspaper, and one for regular paper. The bottom slots are for cardboard and the paper shredder.)

Since we’re pretty much done with wood for a while, we’ll be switching to grass projects this weekend. Anyone wanna come help us mow 3+ acres with a push mower? It’s orange!


Eggs and milk

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This morning there were seven eggs from the ducks. That’s one egg per duck!

I also got down on my hands and knees and looked under our sheep today (the girls, I already know what I’ll find under the boy sheep). It looks to me like Pearl and Sadie are starting to grow udders. I couldn’t see anything on Pumpernickel, so either she isn’t knocked up or she’s too dark for me to see her budding nipples. Part of me hopes she isn’t pregnant, since she was still so small this past fall.



QUACK QUACK QUACK

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We buy waterfowl food for our ducks from a company called Mazuri (which I believe is part of the giant Purina Mills entity) – but for the last few months it has been on back order at the store, so we’ve been feeding them the same poultry layer food we feed the bantams. Around Christmas the food finally came in, so we switched them over – and after a week or so of adjusting their bodies, they’ve gone laying 2-3 eggs a day to 5 eggs a day! Duck eggs for everyone!

Who knew there was such a difference between feeds? Although now Cabol worries that we will use up each duck’s ‘supply of eggs’ too fast. Maybe we need to buy more baby ducks this spring…


WSWF: World Sheep Wrestling Federation

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Interesting Facts:

1. Sheep love to eat pine leaves.
2. Pine leaves stay green even after the tree they were on has been cut down for two months.

Here’s proof — sheep eating pine leaves on branches from a tree cut down two months ago.

Sadie and Pumpernickle are still coughing off and on. We thought they were all better, and then they started again. We called the vet about it a while back, and she said it was either pneumonia or allergies. We checked their temperatures (don’t ask), and things seemed to be fine. We figured it was allergies. But, they keep coughing, and coughing is not good for sheep because if they cough too much their girlie parts and/or poopie parts can fall out. So, this morning we decided to start them on a round of antibiotics in the hopes that it will knock out whatever is causing them to cough. If it is indeed allergies, this obviously won’t help. Not sure what we’ll do then.

It’s tough to give sheep medicine. Andy lured them into the barn with grain, and then we tried to close the door. Alas, the doorway was blocked with bedding and we had to push old hay out of the way and wasted precious time. (The grain won’t last forever, you know!) Finally we got the doors shut. I stood to the side with a syringe in one hand and the lantern/flashlight in the other. Andy nonchalantly meandered up to Sadie and GRABBED her. She flung him round and round and finally he sat on her and got her still. When she realized she wasn’t going to get away, she drug Andy back over to the feeder so she could munch grain. I snuck up and jabbed the syringe in her leg, and we were done. Pumpernickle was next, and the dance was pretty much identical.

The whole time we were chasing and jabbing, the non-chased girl sheep were running around, but Sydney just kept munching. Doo-doo-doo. That’s Sydney. He’s the friendliest of the sheep by far. He’ll eat out of your hand.

And he’ll even give you a smoochie!


Don’t quit yer day job

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Yesterday morning we were cleaning house when a knock came at the door. In the city, when you aren’t expecting someone and the door bell rings, you can usually count on some unwanted bother: sales people, politicians, religious folks. Out here, it’s just plain strange and startling. My first instinct is to run and hide. (Especially after that time the weird fruit tree homeless guy bugged my mom while I was at work.) Andy answered the door, and I heard something about trees (AIE!) and then the person left.

Turns out, someone wanted to buy a Christmas tree!! So, Andy went hunting for a saw and went down the hill to the tree patch by the barn where we actually managed to trim a few dozen trees in the summer. We decided not to sell trees this year because we didn’t get many trimmed into shape and, well, honestly I don’t want to spend my weekends sitting in a cold shack waiting for people to come by to get a tree.

When Andy came back up after the folks found their tree and got it in the back of their van, he told me the story of how these folks ended up knocking on our door. It was a grandma and her son and granddaughter, and they had bought a tree here for the last few years. They even came out last year and trudged through the snow to find a tree. They’d looked around at trees in Roanoke this year, but they couldn’t find a tree they liked. The little girl said, “I want to go to the field of trees!” So, they drove out to our place. They were confused not to see the any sign of tree sales, so they drove on up to the house to see what was up.

It was neat to sell a tree, and it hit home that we probably really should have tried to sell trees this year because now all the “return” customers probably have found a new tree place. C’est la vie.

In other farm-type news, I’ve sold five dozen duck eggs at work in the last few weeks. There’s a lady there who told me she’d pretty much buy whatever we had, so we have some regular income from the farm. (HAHA, $2.50 a dozen, about a dozen a week, so yes it’s regular but noone around here is quitting his/her day job!)

All the critters are doing okay, and we haven’t had any more chicken disappearances/deaths. I still think the silkie will return one day with a suitcase covered in stickers from the far-off-places she’s been to.

Haven’t taken many photos lately, but for your viewing pleasure here’s the ducks splashing about in their pool a few weeks ago, back before things started being frozen.


Chicken week

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This has been a sad chicken week on the farm. On thursday I discovered our female Japanese bantam Priscilla (companion to Elvis) face down in the hay of their house, dead. There didn’t appear to be any signs of foul (hah) play, and none of the others in her cage appear sick, so hopefully it wasn’t something contagious. Good thing Elvis has the two younger Japanese to keep him company. Unless they are really pigeons.

Sometime last night, the strong winds popped the top off of the d’uccle cage, and this morning the d’uccles were all huddled up…but the silkie has gone missing. I’m not sure if she flew off on her own, or something snatched her – it would be strange for a predator to leave the others, however. I hope if she is still alive she will wander back, she was one of my favorites (I have a soft spot for the chickens that look like they are wearing little Russian hats).

The ducks have been hiding eggs. I was picking up the visible ones when I felt one hidden under a lot of hay in their nesting box. Then I found another….and another. I don’t think they’ve been there for too many days (they didn’t smell, anyways), so they should still be good. But we’ll keep them for our own consumption just in case.