Category: Our Farm Animals

Last Day of Summer

I received a report this morning that the last of the chickens in the goat pen is dead due to raccoon. I really liked that chicken, and am sad to know it. I will be out in a bit to feed the animals, and I’ll clean it up then.

I bought animal feed yesterday, with hopefully enough to get through October, apart from hay, which I won’t need for about three weeks or so from now. If so, this will be the cheapest month on record for us for years, ringing in at just under $100. With only two pigs left, and the animals still on the field, the cost is low for the moment, and will be till around November, when I need to get the livestock off the field and start feeding them hay.

With costs low for the moment, I am taking advantage of it and tooling up the workshop to be able to do some wood projects. I started last night making a drawer, complete with dovetail joints. There are a couple more tools coming to help me finish it. Starting it has helped me figure out what I still need, and what is hard to work with, and what will be easier. I want to be able to build a dresser by hand before say, November? Not that I need one. I want to be able to do it. I am really enjoying the hand tool odyssey. It is far less violent than power tools, and it is a lot quieter. It is helpful to make mistakes at a much slower pace, too. I buggered up my first dovetail, and fixed it because I did not want to redo all the other ones as well as it. All good lessons.

The drawer I am making will probably be used in the kitchen where we will soon be putting in a new oven, and I will reset the microwave box above it, leaving a space for a drawer above, below, or between them, which I figure will be great for holding the hot mitts and such, handy for the cooking appliances! There may be enough space when finalized for a second drawer, too, which might be good for stirring utensils and such. I will know for sure when Home Depot bothers to send me a notification to tell me the oven is in.

It was cold again this morning. We bottomed out at 28 degrees! And no, that is not Celsius! I have a fire going in the wood stove, and it is clear that it is time to replace the gasket around the door! I should probably pick that up when I am getting the oven and the wood to finish around it.

Autumn begins tomorrow at 1:20 PM. It is time to get serious about getting the firewood cut and stacked! Lucky I got dry wood in the spring when I was hunting it. It will be ready and fine to burn in a few weeks when we are really needing it to stay warm. The propane tank was filled yesterday. That was a costly thig to do! They charged over $400 for it! We only have a 360 gallon tank! Still, I would like to get both furnaces serviced this year, and running. That would probably be good for time to sell the house!

Two Pigs Sold

Today the people who bought the pigs the other day came to pick them up. That’s two down and two males to go, which is great, because they cannot possibly become pregnant or get any other thing on the farm pregnant, either. There is no way we get swamped with pigs again! No more worrying about that fence between the pens. And I have moved the two males into the pen the females were in, which is more secure, so no more worrying about the boys getting out! The guys who picked up the girls today said that in a week or two they expect one of their friends to come and get the males from us, too. I will keep them listed, of course, but if he does, that is good enough for me.

I think that per pound, pigs are by far the most expensive animal to keep on the farm. For four small pigs, we were buying eight 80 pound bags of feed at about $16 each per month. That works out to about $128 per month before Uncle Sam puts in his bill. They were eating a little over 5# per day by that reckoning. I am sure glad to have this at least part way off our feed bill. There is enough in the bins right now for the pigs to go a full month from now without buying more. This coming new month will be pretty cheap compared to where we were in the springtime!

After I moved the boys into the girl’s pen, I took their old pen apart, and gave the llama pen more space for now. I am using the old fence from the pen to reinforce some of the weak points in the property boundary fence. I was able to put both of the water barrels into the pen with the boys, and I will repurpose the extra house for the dog to use in place of the one he has had. Hopefully that will be a huge improvement for him!

Finally, a quick mention. The temperatures are going to drop over the next two days, with the highs in the 50’s and the low’s dropping into the low thirties, even below freezing! Nice way to ring out summer!

Listing Animals

We are listing animals for sale. I have the pot belly pigs listed, and someone has already said they would like to come pay for them tomorrow and pick them up on Saturday. I will be listing some of the goats soo too. We have a couple of llamas that will need to find new homes as well. Though they are old, or one that is young and needs to breed elsewhere because he is related to the girls we are keeping.

If the pigs do go, then we will lower our feed bill substantially, which is great! I welcome that. It is an expensive hobby to keep animals around for fun. Having some money free should allow us to focus in on other hobbies, too. We plan to get back into this animal business on the other side of a move.

This weekend we relaxed again. Missus has a lot of stress at work right now, and needs these weekends to come down from it a bit, and get her head back to Earth. We had our grandson by, too. That is always fun! We did comb the rabbits, and picked and carded some llama fiber.

This week coming will likely see us putting the new oven in, and hopefully getting that trailer in the front yard cleaned out and moved empty into the back. The weather should be cooler, so I really should get the chainsaws sorted and ready to cut some firewood down to size ready for splitting. I keep putting it off for cooler weather, so I won’t overheat doing it.

My spare time is spent looking for hand tools for woodworking. There are a few I want to get so I can get going on specific projects. There are a few specific tasks I would like to be able to do, and while some could be done with power tools, there is just no need for all the noise and danger of power tools for what I have in mind. It is getting time to order a new tool as soon as it is available from the tool maker, so I am getting excited, if you could not already tell. There is in fact one that I am getting when it is available no matter, even if I have to pay it on credit. It looks that useful. It is a tongue and groove router, and in my thinking, it is going to do a lot more than just allow lapping of wood panels. I see it for inserting backs, making drawers, and even making cabinet drawers with. We’ll see if I am right in only a few days after one comes available!

Missus has shown me a bobbin lace pillow that she likes, and I would love to be able to frame the wood pieces of it for her ready for her to put together the padding and cover. I think we can do this. I’ll need to get her some good wood, rather than doing it in pine and having it causing her troubles to do it being a softer, inferior wood to something like oak, which I think would hold pins for the cover much better.

So that’s where we are at on a Sunday night. The school week is about to start up again, and I have more than a few things to do this week, though none as stressful as helping little one through a meeting with her teacher, or getting her set up for testing, as we did last week!

We Sold A Goat

We sold one of our male goats this evening! I am glad to have one out the door and only one more male to go. The one remaining is the mostly all black goat, and the one sold was a black and white one. The buyer wanted to use a payment app that I have never used before, so I got that set up while he was on the way over and accepted payment in the prescribed method. Based on what I see on the classified ads, it is a common method, so I am glad that is set up and I can work with it now.

With that all done, and my confidence up on how to do these things, I am eager to get the rest of the animals sold that we need to sell prior to moving. Maybe tomorrow I will get them listed.

In other news, I was out in the shop today messing about with scraps of wood and the hand tools I have. It was good to work with my hands, and it was good to get a feel for the tools, especially the new scrub plane. I also refreshed a really bad rake handle and put some fresh boiled linseed oil on it. I should probably do that to all the tools this autumn.

Blending Birds

The chicken flock is back in with the Peafowl, in the proper egg coop, rather than the pen to the side of it. They have been where everyone could see one another, and be used to each other. Putting them back together was a decision based on the water that would hit the chickens during watering, and the size of the Peachicks, which are getting fairly big. Also, the disposition of the birds, and how protective the larger Peas are of the little ones.

I have checked on them repeatedly today, and happily, have found quite a few eggs in the coop, to the tune of half a dozen. The chickens are adapting well, and getting along fine in the coop, despite the Peafowl pecking at them and keeping them at a distance. Apart from one egg, the chickens have laid all their eggs in the nesting boxes.

Missus nor I have been feeling well today. She got some wrapping done, and I helped along with packing. She also worked on fiber and her art. I have rested mostly, apart from my runs out to the chicken coop to check the state of the birds, and a couple of other runs to get air and see how things are outside.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but hopefully we will both feel better!

Missus just reminded me she picked half a crate of llama fiber, and reminded me that she wove her first basket today, which she did really good at!

We Are Out Of Eggs

We are out of eggs, but we have chickens. Can’t beat that!

Remember the other day when I said I would take the deck off the mower and cut the weeds in the vacant llama pen? I did that today. Now I just need to take the deck off again to get the mower out again. I finished the empty pen, then opened the fence between the pens and cleared all the weeds from the pen Mystique is in. With both pens nice and clean, they look a lot better from the road, and from my point of view! Also, they are ready to take in llamas should the land over the road sell soon.

Our farmer friend forgot to come by yesterday to help me put in the water monitoring pipe I need for keeping the records on our water level under our place for the septic system. It was my fault for forgetting to put in in when we filled the test hole the other day. I will have to see if he can come by this weekend or early next week to help out, at his convenience, of course.

Walking the yard and having the stumps removed has been amazing! The yard looks so much better now! Especially where Old Blue was out front. That was a 65 foot Colorado Blue Spruce that left a large stump out front. Now it is just a bad memory. It was too big a tree to have that close to the house!

The young peacocks are growing just fine so far. They are about seven or eight inches long, and learning to do a little flying now. I cannot tell the gender yet, but they both have crest feathers sticking up on their heads. They are still too small for me to put the chickens back in with them. Who knows, maybe the chicks would leave them alone just as they do the partridge, but I cannot risk it. I don’t want to end up with one being pecked to death! When they are about the size of the chickens, I will probably give it a go. I want the chickens back in their coop by Autumn, or mid Autumn, well before winter. It’d be nice to have the new flock laying in their laying boxes, rather than on the ground.

That’s about all for now. See you again real soon!

The Llamas Looked Alert

The llamas looked alert this morning, so I started watching, thinking maybe the neighbor’s horses got into our field, but I cannot see well below the canal, and the weeds growing up along the canal path this year. Then a human head bobbed along, and it did not look right to be the neighbor. I had a meeting set to start on Zoom for my daughter’s school, and did not have time to chase a trespasser! So I went upstairs to see if I could see better from the balcony. From there I noticed Sverro’s truck parked at the corner of the field on the other side of ours, so figured he has lost control of one of his animals while picking them up. Sverro is the man who leases the field next door to ours on the other side.

Sverro is pretty good about being aware of our animals, so I did not worry about him. But I did talk my eight year old through what the llamas were doing and how I was able to tell there was something amiss on the field. I suggested to her that I would normally have to go now to chase off a trespasser.

To that, she replied, “Let him get his animal off the field first, then go chase him off.”

“I don’t have to worry about the way you think,” I told her. “You are just fine!”

Today Was Restful

We decided not to do much today. Missus has wrapped up so much in the past week, and her arms and shoulders have been hurting for it. We were also thinking that the girls start school in the morning, but the school has not been great at communicating till I checked back into the calendar today and found that it is not actually meant to start for another week. So, all that rest today was in vain. Well… as they say, hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now. What is a wasted day of rest?

I worked on the firewood holder next to the wood stove today. It has a box built in under it, and some robust pieces of wood planking on top of that to set the firewood onto. It is meant to hold the wood off the ground so I can reach it without bending down too much. Atop of all that is the cast iron shelves, and it is all set into a corner next to the stove, and between the wall and the built in hutch.

For a long time I was not too sure how I was going to finish the planking as it has firewood thrown on top of it all the time in the winter. It has held up really well as bare wood, especially as it is rough cut fir, and does not show indents from the firewood. So today I used my hand planes to smooth the plank tops down some, leaving a little of the saw marks for the distressed look, then finished them with linseed oil, to give them that almost varnished look, while keeping them easy to refinish as necessary, and waterproof at the same time. They look really good!

My oldest daughter came to me this afternoons and said the boy goats were out. We have two young Billy’s we are keeping in the chicken run, to keep them from the girls. They managed to push the gate open, and leave. The gate is about 18 inches high so that there is a fence along the bottom, which makes it easier for me to get in and out of when the chickens are close as they cannot just walk out, and it is elevated to make it easy to open when there is snow on the ground, too. I went out, and walked around the other goat pen slowly, which pressed the escapees round it, showing me they did not want to be messed with. Kirynie was still in getting shoes on to come help. I grabbed a scoop of corn and put it on the ground in the run, and left the gate open. I put the scoop back, and looked back, and the goats were at the gate, looking in. Just then, Kiry came out the back door and looked up at what was going on as the two goats jumped back into the run, and I stood there cool as a cucumber while they did. She smiled and laughed, as she was expecting to come out and chase them! I walked over and closed the gate, and added an extra fastener on it after, while Kiry laughed, and high fived me for being so effective. I am glad she learned the ways of the wise today.

I have more boxes to put into storage tomorrow. I need the farmer to bring us some hay as we will use the last of it tomorrow morning. I also need him to dig a test hole for a new septic system. I need to fill out some paperwork, and get the county inspector over, too. I also need to set an appointment for the girls and I to get our eyes tested, and buy new glasses! That seems like a good plan for tomorrow! Aside from all that, I can carry on packing boxes, ready to go to storage.

I tried chopping at the weeds in the empty llama pen today with my scythe. They are long, and it is hard to reach through to get their stems and cut them down. I tried fitting the riding lawn mower through the gate, but to do it, I would have to remove the mower deck, and that is just enough of a pain that I am not that interested in it. It would really improve the look of this place if I got those weeds down. Lessons learned here are to use wider gates, and to make the pens goat tight so I can set the goats loos in it to sort out the weeds. I like the way I set the gates up to be able to use only two gates side by side and combine the pens into one, but next time, either way, wider gates are a must! The four foot ones are too narrow to be useful when a machine is required for mowing, or for removing a dead animal.

I’ll probably take the mower deck off tomorrow or the next day. Depends on how busy other things get.

Finally, our oldest has at last asked his girlfriend to be his fiancée. I have heard nothing of a date yet, but that is fine. They have a lot to think about, and a lot to do to take the next step after that. What’s most important is that they do things that make them happy, and at a pace that makes them happy, too. But congratulations to them both for taking this step. Whatever and whenever next is next, at least everyone can know he has designs on her, and is committed to her, and her to him. They have been together too long to doubt it, but this is a step to make it something more.

Bye Big Pig

Big Pig was dead in her pen this morning. She is going to be missed quite a lot around here. She was a big, 400 pound puppy, loveable and trusting. She leaves a letteral and figurative hole in our farm, and we will never be the same without her.

Giving Up On The War Against The Grass

We are uniquely cursed here on our place. We have grass growing here that I cannot remember the name of, but it is a blended type that when cut short serves as a wonderful lawn, and when left to grow long serves as an equally lovely pasture. It is a curse because I have burned holes through it with burn pits, I have tilled it to death, and I have even in the distant past used grass killers on it in places. In every instance, within two years of letting up these attacks, the lawn has been back, and by the start of the third year, the place where it happened has been completely indistinguishable from any undamaged part of it.

This is a great place to be if your life is about your lawn, and cheap upkeep, or if it is about grazing cattle, and you want an easy pasture to keep.

It is not so great when your wife wants a flower bed, and so you till and prep and cover and till again, and by the end of the year the flowers have all but succumbed to the weeds, and are followed the next year by a lawn that will choke out even them.

We have put in raised beds with no bottoms, we have put in raised beds with cardboard bottoms, and we have put in raised beds with plastic bottoms, and the grass has come up through and overgrown the tops of the beds. I have pulled raised beds out again, too. I am in the process of doing that, now. The only place where we have succeeded has been where the raised beds have been covered at the top with cardboard or plastic and mulch. We have done a fair job of keeping the grass at bay with those efforts. So that is the direction we are looking now.

So this year we begin anew with a different approach to the flowers. We have a couple of beds where we have flowers coming up through plastic, and mulch all over that. We also have purchased half barrel shaped plastic tubs that will sit on beds of plastic and mulch, filled with flowers. It is not necessarily the look we would like, but then, neither is “pasture choking petunias to death.” It is just too grim.

I have a bed right in front of the house that I would like to till, surface with the appropriate slope, cover in plastic, and mulch today. It is not too big, so that should be an attainable goal. There are five tubs for that space. I am not going to win against the now two Russian Olives growing there, but I suppose I can trim them back till I can get my dream tractor with a hoe, and dig out the stumps.

There is work to still be done in the herb garden, but we have got to the point it could be easily said it is half way done. We were working out a watering solution for it yesterday, then I went with a shopping list to the stores down in Logan, and while I was at one of them, I spotted a pair of copper-toned sprinklers that were about three feet tall, and decorative, almost Celtic, and got those to put up in the garden, along with feeder hoses that worked out really well. I could not decide between a green one and a red one, so I got one of each, and while I had other plans for them, they worked for the sprinklers to the point that the green one now sits across the grass, and the red one across a mulch bed of nearly the same color. I could not believe it.

We have a space under the kitchen window that needs doing, and against the back of the garage where Missus would like a she-shed, or a space where she will be able to sit outside and work in the future. By, ‘in the future,’ I mean after that noisy goose finally dies of ole age! But then, a quick Google search suggests that he may be with us for another 20+ years… Maybe it is time for him to move to the water across the street! Apparently he is not like to leave us anytime soon.

With the flowers in place in the spots I have discussed, I think that planting season is about done here. If anything is to get root, and flourish it needs to have been in by now, or at least sooner than we can afford more. I can see a couple more trees going in, and I will be putting in the potato starts in either today or tomorrow. I have about 330 feet of potato rows to plant into in 11 rows. I may be out doing that tonight at sunset, or after, when it is cool. I know it is getting late in the season, but that is fine, as Missus prefers New Potatoes anyway.

We have a short, almost cool spell on us till around Friday, so it is a good time to get some mess cleaned up and sorted out. I would like to see the girls and myself picking up firewood down at the Logan City Dump on Friday. I am pretty sure we are all stocked up for the coming season, but I would like to get a trip or two in before summer’s weather is hot in earnest, and then go back down again in the autumn for the rest of the following year’s supply.

Our rejected goat has been staying in the duck run, and making friends out there in the daytimes, and coming into a crate in the house at nights. We are bottle feeding her milk from the fridge, same as we drink. In the days since we brought her in, she has started walking correctly, and even becoming more playful, and she has gotten fatter across the mid section where he backbone was starting to show before. She likes to follow us around in the house. It looks like she is becoming a part of our family! She’ll have to go back out with all the other goats when she is better, and when she is big enough to take a full hit from her mother and either withstand it with no problem, or even deliver it back to her.