Weekend warrior

What a lovely weekend!  It was cold but we had lots of sunshine and our new BBQ was delivered so I had a smile plastered on my face all weekend.  We had steak Saturday night which is rare in my house and then steak and eggs Sunday.

The double yolk isn't from our girls - grocery bought.

The chickens are starting to produce more eggs everyday so I will soon be able to stop buying them again.  With 19 hens I'm sure we'll have more than enough for friends and neighbors as well.  We integrated the 10 new hens into the existing 9.  So far the new ones are steering clear of the older ladies.  We've all been out checking on them over the weekend and everyone still has all their feathers.  

This girl "escaped" from our temporary pen in the coop and stayed well away from the others.

"This is my turf"

Our little group of baby chicks are doing well.  Their current mission is to escape the rubbermaid bin.  The girls and I are having fun collecting the lady bugs and flies we find and feeding to the troop.  They tear them apart in seconds, it's quite funny how excited they get.  

"Got bugs?"

And last but not least an update on my Sugar Snap peas - they are doing well!  I am so glad they sprouted as this gave me confidence to start my tomatoes and peppers.  

Other than a couple of hair cuts and getting a room painted, that was my weekend.  Can I just say, I'm so glad the sun is out later in the evenings?  I don't mind leaving for work while it's still dark when I get to look forward to coming home to the light.  

I will never tire of this view.

Back to the grind!  

This Moment

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. 

Inspired by www.soulemama.com

On this first day of spring

Welcome spring!  Welcome chicks and chickens!  Welcome pea sprouts!  Yes there is still snow on the ground and the seasonal temperatures are well below normal but the Farmers Almanac is calling for a warm spring and a hot summer - and that's good enough for now.  The weather is something my husband and I are always watching and talking about on the farm.  Thankfully it's been warm and sunny enough that my pea's finally sprouted and this makes me very happy ...(edited to mention that I'm growing peas inspired by Jenna at www.ColdAntlerFarm.blogspot.com.)

I'm also happy to share a pic of the new chicks.  My girls are in love with them, how could they not be?  We've been singing to them, holding them and watching them run around.  They are so fluffy and make the cutest peeping noises.  I asked Donny what kind of chicks they are and he has no idea!  Next year I'm ordering the chickens if we get more.  I think they are Brahmas.  

We made a temporary run for the new chickens inside our current coop.  We are hoping this will cut down on the stress for all of them when the time comes to integrate them.  We will do this Saturday night and I'm really hoping there is minimal impact to the new girls.  Happy first day of spring!

March break and getting ready for the hens and chicks

What a wonderfully busy week last week.  It was March Break for my girls.  We had my nephews for 4 nights and a good friend and her two amazing kids overnight too.  Lots of great memories were made last week.  When my friend is over she always insists that we continue with our farm work and not save it for another day.  So on Saturday I asked them if they wanted to help clean out the chicken coop.  I am always pleasantly surprised at a child's willingness to do manual work.  I had 4 kids and my friend helping and not one complaint.  Afterwards I bought them all hot chocolate at the local coffee shop to thank them for their hard work.  It made me happy.  Oh and we did get away from the farm for a show and lunch in the big city.

I planted my sugar snap (grocery store) peas for the sugar snap pea challenge from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm (soaked and put into planting mix in the window in indirect sunlight) and I received my little Marvel Pea's from Annie's Heirloom Seeds.  Planted March 12, no sprouts yet.

And Wednesday we are picking up 10 ready to lay chickens and 5 chicks.  We are reading a lot about integrating them into our existing brood of 9 chickens.  If anyone reading this blog has any advice, I'd be happy to hear it.  We are getting the new 10 from the same breeder and we've talked about quarantining them but have decided against it.

What we've decided to do is:
1.  Create a space in the coop where the new chickens can hang out and our current chickens can see and smell them on the day they arrive but they are separated.
2.  Hang a cabbage from the ceiling of the coop to distract the hens.
3.  Create hiding spaces for the new chickens so they can get away from any excessive bullying.
4.  Let the new chickens into the full coop at night.

Our chicken coop is not an outdoor space, it's indoors right now with a run to the outside of the barn.  The run outside needs to be secured and have some work done to it so coyote's can't get near the chickens since we have a lot in our area.  We figure our current coop can hold 30 chickens so the 24 we will have after the chicks have grown and we fix the outdoor space should be more than enough room for all of them.  The chicks I'm not so worried about.  Keep them dry / warm / fed / clean and with lots of fresh water and we should be fine.  We don't have a brooder for them and instead are going to keep them in the downstairs bathroom until they mature and then integrate them as well.  I just hope our home raised chickens don't get hurt or upset the pecking order too much.  Wish us luck!

This moment

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. 

Inspired by www.soulemama.com

I am not a farmer

I would be honored to be called one but I'm not one, not yet.  I have not yet dealt with death (my husband has gotten rid of the three hens we lost this winter), I haven't had a growing season, I haven't pickled anything and I've never tasted fresh milk.  Oh and I don't knit or sew or play the banjo.  And I'm not sure I could kill anything to eat it - I may have to outsource that one.  Here I sit, with my seeds and my plans, in a snowstorm, patiently waiting for spring so I can learn to farm.  And I wonder, should I get a seed mat?  Do my seedlings need extra light?  These are precious things to me these seeds.  I don't want to waste them or kill them.  So I'm planting my sugar snap peas first - a welcome challenge to grow something in this dreary March.  And that will be a start.

In other news, our hens and chicks come next week and other than an old heat lamp and a rubbermaid bin and some cedar chips, I don't have anything else ready.  Another confession?  I'm quite worried about my garden, about preserving, that I will fail.  But enough of that.  Chin up, because surely this is all part of becoming a farmer - worry, trial and error, failure and success.

And then we moved to a farm

I am a firm believer of visualising of your goals to help you to make them happen.  That is to say, anything you want in life, you just need to dream it / picture it / put it in a frame and on your wall and you will get it.  It will come to YOU.  You will subconsciously make decisions in your life that will push you toward that goal.  You'll tell people your dreams and they will help you achieve your goals.  That is not to say that I've have never written down a goal but I'm amazing at how many things have come to me simply by putting a visual image in my head of what I want for the outcome.  This is true for my career, for my car, for the farm.  All are things I had a vision for, a specific idea of how I wanted those things to be.  It helps that I've always been a glass half full kind of girl and that I have no trouble putting myself out of my comfort zone at times to get what I want.  

I've spent years reading farming blogs, about living on the side of a mountain in the middle of no where.  These are my favourites: www.soulemama.com, www.coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com, www.fuoriborgo.com.
After I stopped reading blogs about being a mom it was my natural progression of reading, I was drawn to it.  We started looking at properties on MLS that were out of the city- but not too far out of the city, that had a larger property but wouldn't break the bank, that we could get groceries within 30 mins of our door but nothing was popping out at us as realistic.  And then one day this opportunity fell in my lap.  A lead from a friend who I had not known long, but who I had told about my dream.  We lived in a lovely, large, modern townhouse in the city surrounded by stores, neighbours and family.  I had no idea what I was getting into with a 100 year old fixer upper.  With chickens and horses.  But I jumped right in, how could I not?  It was paradise to me.  And I didn't want to spend the rest of my life thinking "what if."  I knew it would make my commute a nightmare - but this year my boss encouraged me to work from home 2 days a week.  Serendipity.  But it hasn't been easy.  It was a big move, stuff got broken, the girls missed their friends, I miss my family, we have leaks, the house is drafty and we really need a wood stove.  What I'm saying is that you should just put it out there, send it out into the universe and see what comes back.  Right now I'm trying to figure out if I will raise chickens and pigs for meat and visualise how my future will look at this farm and I'm having a hard time.  So what I'm going to do it put it out there, leave it up to the universe and see what comes back.  Maybe someone will offer me a pig.