Cute Surprise in the Compost!

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You’re probably wondering what kind of cute surprise would be in our compost pile. Normally if there’s any type of surprise in the compost pile, it’s most likely something that doesn’t smell too good, or something unrecognizable… or even something you really don’t even really want to know what it is. Finding a cute surprise in the compost very rarely ever happens… but last weekend was an exception. When we were adding compost to the garden, Michael scooped up some compost and out tumbled 3 cute little baby cottontail bunnies… poor things! We picked them up and put them in a box to keep them safe from the cats and dog, and also so we wouldn’t run over them with the tractor.


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All Work, No Play, No Fun!

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Last weekend sure made up for the weekend before last that was full of fun and play. Yeah, last weekend was full of work, more work, and well… lots of work. It was all worth it in the end though because we really did get a lot accomplished.

Saturday we spent the entire day bringing in compost and dirt to build up the beds. What started out being a small project of just adding a little compost over all the beds, turned into an unexpectedly larger project. Of course Michael was giving me a hard time about coming up with such a large project and making him work so hard, but…
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Preparing a Raised Row Garden

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Have you ever started a project with plans of doing it a certain way only to end up changing it up and making it into a huge project that made you wonder what in the heck you were thinking? Well, over the weekend we had one of those projects.

Last year I decided I wanted to make raised beds in the garden. With the size of our garden, it’s impossible to keep up with the weeding and upkeep of it so I figured having raised beds would make things a lot easier. The problem I ran in to was the expense of it. Buying the wood or other material to make the boxes, and then buying dirt to fill them just wasn’t in the budget. Even if we did have the money to do it, I still would have had a hard time spending money on that because one of the biggest reasons we’re raising a garden is to cut back on our food expense.
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No Rest, All Play!

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Last Saturday was so beautiful! It was sunny, warm, very little wind… just perfect! It was one of those days where you wanted to just spend the entire day outside just resting, relaxing and soaking up the sun. Of course, around here, there’s always something to do or something that needs to be done that it’s hard to go outside and just do nothing. And Saturday was definitely one of those days! We all headed out with plans of just sitting but we found plenty of things to do to keep us busy…


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We Did It, We Survived the Winter!

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Summer before last we decided that we needed to get a fish or two to keep in the stock tank. I remember putting a few goldfish in a stock tank when I was a kid and enjoyed watching them grow big. I figured my kids would enjoy that too. So one day after chores were done, we headed out of town for a day of fun. On our way home, we stopped by the pet shop and the kids picked out a couple of koi. We brought them home and added them to the stock tank by the barn. One did really well and the other didn’t survive the summer for some reason.

The following winter was a tough one; there were endless days of freezing temps and more snowfall than normal. We were feeding a couple pigs that winter, so we got two de-icers, one for the tank out by the pigs and one for the tank by the barn where the goats stayed. The wiring in our barn is really old, and so the breakers couldn’t handle the amount of electricity both de-icers used. We had to move the goats out to the shelter by the pigs so they could all use the one tank. Unfortunately that meant the tank that had our little fish in it froze over. There was a period of several weeks where the temps were so cold and the ice froze so thick that it was impossible to break it. We all worried about our little fish and hoped he’d make it even though it seemed his chances weren’t good.
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Indoor Garden Update

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Things have been so busy lately that I’ve been kind of neglecting our little indoor garden we started a while back. The seedlings have grown lately and are pretty root bound. Plus I’ve been bad at remembering to water them so I’m actually surprised they’re doing as well as they are.

I had planned on getting them transplanted to pots a few weeks ago but my potting soil was outside. At that time, it was snowing and blowing out, so it was one big frozen blob. I brought it in to thaw out but I’ve never had a chance to get it done. My niece is out of school on spring break, so she’s hanging with us some this week. I decided transplanting the tomatoes and cucumbers would be a good project to keep her and Miley busy for the afternoon.


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Last Kid Has Arrived!

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I’m a little late sharing about this, but several days after Sugar had her kids, Nutmeg kidded out. Now kidding season is over for this year. Yay! This kidding season was really short lived because we only had two kidding, which made it pretty nice. Not that I don’t like kidding season, but it’s just a relief when all the kids are here, safe and sound, up and running and doing great.

Nutmeg only had one this year, which is a first. She’s always had twins all the other years we’ve had her. This time she had a little buckling…
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Mysterious Funk

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With all the endless projects we’ve got going on around here, there’s times when our house can become over taken with funk. Sometimes that funk can be mysterious and we have no idea what it’s from; other times it can be pretty obvious and easy to remedy. Like recently for example, we had the baby chicks in a brooder with a heat lamp in the house. For the first week it’s fine; they’re small, don’t eat that much and their brooder can be changed every few days without becoming too smelly. Then once they reach a week old, things start getting a little stinkier, to where the litter needs to be changed once a day. Then, with each day that goes by, they grow bigger, eat more, poop more and by the end of the week… wowzers… no matter how many times a day you change the litter, there’s that never ending, lingering little chick funk. At that point, it’s a sign that the chicks should have been moved out of the house like 5 days ago.


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Lost a Special Friend

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When you live on a farm and have lots of animals, occasionally experiencing the loss of one is inevitable. No matter what, the loss is always tough. It’s especially tough with you lose an extra special one, one that’s been around through the thick and thin, and all the ups and downs of life over the last several years. We lost Miley’s cat, Dusty. He was a good one.


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