How will we fit farm chores in now that school is starting?

Creativity, my love. Creativity.

With school starting back, the children are a little worried about their various beloved farm animals missing out on so much attention that they've gotten all summer. We really didn't have anything but laying hens until school was out.

I've got it all worked out with each child doing about 15 minutes (max) of animal chores before school. Noah will feed and water goats. Jessica will take care of bunnies and cats. Annie and Lizzie will feed chickens, but Dad and I will do the water because it's HEAVY. Dad and I will take care of the puppies, the ducks, and the bantams in the garden. THERE! Everyone's fed.

After school, the children will attend to the animals again, but at this time they'll have time for petting and playing and talking to them at length. Noah has been letting the boys out to graze - unfenced - for a short time each day, and I want him to keep that up. Jessica has been taking out the baby bunnies and holding and petting them for a time each day, so they'll be ready to be a good pet for someone. Annie and Lizzy pick up the chickens and pet them, too, for the same reason. The ducks are great to "play" with, but they don't love to be held. They like to follow me around in the garden and taste EVERYTHING - dirt, plants, crickets, whatever.

There will be lots of adjustments as the kids start back to school, and we start our business back up in our new town, but we'll get through it.

Experimenting with Ranging

Today we allowed (okay - forced) one of our hens out of the "hundred pen" to roam around for the day. She's not one of the purebreds that I can sell as such, so she was chosen for her unmarketability. It's not that we don't love her though.

Anyway, she did great all day long pecking and roaming about, and generally staying close to the pen. We put her back in around 7pm with the evening feeding.

We have only 6 Americauna hens left, and now I can distinguish between them so well that we named a few of them. The black headed with a golden body is Cleopatra. The black headed with red body is Pocahontas. The black headed with grey body is Jemima. The all white one (we think she's Americauna - there are a few tan colored spots on her) is Marilyn. The white one with lots of tan on her is Martha. The all grey one is Phyllis Diller. I was going to name one Farrah as a tribute, but she got purchased Sunday afternoon.

Back to ranging, I decided to close the garden gate and allow the ducks out of their cage for the first time ever. They were SO cute. We'd just mown the grass in the walkways and I'd pulled lots of plants, so we mowed there, too. There were just dozens of crickets hopping around. The ducks began their systematic search of the garden floor, meandering in every area I led them to. They tasted mown grass, weed leaves, purple hull peas (they did NOT like), and lots of crickets! When the time came for me to house them for the night, I simply filled their waterer and they went right back into the cage. I'm SO looking forward to them ranging all the time! They are getting SO big!

The garden is ready to finish tilling and begin the August planting of carrots, more rattlesnake pole beans, purple hull cowpeas, squash, potatoes, leeks, and lots of other goodies. It's going to be interesting to record all this and make decisions about the garden next year based on this year's data.

Gardening and Canning Today . . . .

Today's agenda is very full.

*Feed and water animals.

*Pull squash plants and spent purple hull pea plants and put them in the compost pile.

*Mow the tall grass between veggies in the garden.

*Till for new plantings.

*Plant according to the fall planting guide I just got from the county extension service - at least squash, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, swiss chard, etc.

*Wash, snap, and can about 20 pounds of green beans.

*Pick up a load of free pears and start peeling for processing tomorrow.

Making pear preserves, pear relish, pear peel jelly, and maybe pear honey. I'll put some recipes in tomorrow while I'm procrastinating by blogging like today!!!! I gotta get going.

I think Spencer is a fainting goat, and I KNOW he's a little fatty butterball!

Spencer is beginning to exhibit strange behaviors that - if I hadn't ever heard of before - would scare me to death that he was neurologically disturbed or something.

Noah was holding him like a baby on Sunday, and his little beer-gut looking belly was all round and puffy. Noah put him down awkwardly and Spencer tumbled over on his back. Well, instead of immediately trying to right himself, he went stiff-legged and his eyes rolled back for about 10 seconds or so. Then he started trying to get up and then walked away.

When I remarked about how odd that was, Noah told me that when the dogs had startled him the other day he flipped over backward and did the same thing!! He must be a fainter. I have to look them up and find out more.

More Quail Babies!!!

Hubby went to visit a new friend yesterday who raises quail. After a two-hour visit, he'd learned a great deal about hatching, brooding, housing, mating, and then slaughtering and cleaning quail. He even got a new recipe for pickled quail eggs that we are excited to try.

He brought home 11 new adults, one of which has already laid an egg (YAY!!), and 28 day old quail babies! We quickly retrieved the 10-gal aquarium we'd bought at the flea market and outfitted it with special non-slick paper and a shop light for heat and moved the babies from the shoe box they traveled in to the warm make-shift brooder.

They quickly began to get their "sea legs" and stand, making it to the small pile of ground up game bird feed and to the waterer. They are SO cute and we can't believe our quail babies were that small only two weeks ago!

BIGGEST tomato hornworm I've ever seen . . . .

Today, I visited the rain-soaked garden and noticed much lush greenery missing from some of my newest tomato plants in the roma patch! I mean branches stripped nekkid of leaves!! Well, on closer inspection, I spy the well-camouflaged fiend. How could I miss him??!! He's bigger than the trunk of the plant, for cryin' out Pete!! Yikes!

He was about the size of my middle finger - 1/2" in diameter and about 3" long. BLECH! It gives me the willies just thinkin' about it. Hubby plucked him off the strange-looking tomato plant sans leaves, and we dropped him into the chicken tractor with the bantam chickens. They looked at us like, "What the heck? How we gonna eat that? No knife, no fork, and it's still movin'? Nuh uh. Not us."

Well, smart new farmers that we are, we picked him back up and put him in our little basket and took him over to the duck pen and tossed him in there. The 3-week old ducks walked all over him getting their water. Two of them finally noticed him and pinched him a couple of times with their beaks, then went back to the stupid feeder and waterer.

Disgusted, we walked away. I looked back and the hornworm gave me the eye and stuck his tongue out at me. I shook my head and kept walking. Like the Terminator, he'll be back.

Hens, I want eggs, dang it!!!

OK, I've begged, I've pleaded, I've cajoled, and now, I'm going to start threatening! My hens were 6 months old in mid-July, and they were supposed to start laying in July. Today is August 1, and not ONE egg yet.

I stuck a rooster in there for about 2 minutes on Thursday, and I've never seen a bigger CHICKEN than HE. Those hens had him on the run the second his feet hit the ground. They let him know right QUICK they didn't need his kind around.

So, I'm left with no option. I'm going to walk in that hen house and tell them how it's gonna be. I want eggs. I'm going to fry one hen every day until I start getting EGGS!!!!! That'll show 'em.

Hmmmph. (envision me hands on hips, neck moving, and snapping 3 times as I turn and stomp off)