Coyotes suck

Well, as some of you know, we're part of the SCA and as such we go to events during some weekends. Well, while we were at June Crown we had something come in and devastate my Dorkings. =( So now I'm down to 1 Dorking Cock and 1 Dorking Hen. I'll be picking up some some geese on Monday so hopefully that will help. I also plan on cutting down the rest of the wheat so that we can have an open area in the back. Also picking all the mustard so that we can actually make a batch of mustard for next year.

The babies are growing, but I still don't want anything to happen to them if we leave.

The turkey's are getting big and we're supposed to be out of town for this weekend so we'll be locking up and we'll see if they're still alive.

I'm just a little black rain cloud...

Hovering over a honey tree.. dododoo

I was able to experience a once in a lifetime event. =D The other day I got a call for a honey tree in Paso Robles, so I said I would love to go by and take a look at it. Apparently, the other 3 beekeepers that he had called had told him to exterminate them... I'm not sure why they would say that but I wanted to get a chance to do this. Image?? Being able to actually go into a tree and steal honey like they did in the middle ages? If this happens more frequently I might try to one day do it in my garb and with period tools. (That would be so awesome!!) I took Jed to go look at the tree with me. I kind of made him because he didn't realize how rare honeytrees are. I'm pretty sure he didn't find it as exciting as I found it, but I thought it was awesome. I called the guy back and let him know that I would definitely be back out there to take the bees.

I went out yesterday and took out the comb and the brood and moved it to a hive. They made the new home buzzing with their bums but there is still a lot of scent in the tree. I'm heading back out there today to clean up and to bring the bees home. I'll add the pics of the tree and the bees tonight. =)

Doing the math

Well.. in a way, Jed is right. There is such a thing as Rosie math.

Remember that at first we thought of having... oh.. 4 or 5 chickens.. well in a way I can explain the quantity of poultry we have at home right now.

Count:
28 - Dorkings, Andalusians, Old English Game, Spanish Bday - 3/14, Amauracanas
28 - Polish, Buttercup, Giants, Frizzle, Leghorn BDay- 6/14
3 - Turkeys Bday around May9th
6 - Runner Ducks
Total = 65 potential meals... But also.. the numbers 6 and 5 are close to the numbers 4 or 5... in in truth it's all right because they aren't anywhere close to 7, 8, or 9.. which would be wayyyy too much. =D See, it works.

I was thinking about picking up a male runner duck and possibly a pair of breeding peckings... we'll see. I think we might be fine for the winter. ... unless if I move to binary... that would so totally be awesome and I will never get to high since I'll only be in the ranges of 0's and 1's.. Rock!!

Soo for any of you who would like to learn how to raise chickens or would like some laying hens.. let us know. We'll move some over your way. Especially if it means I'll be able to bring home some more ducks or geese to take their place. =D

And the surprise barnyard assortment contained!!!

CHICKENS! .. yup, we got 28 more chickens. =) We'll have to look around for additional ducks, guineas, and geese. We'll see.

Soo, for the line up we have a straight run of the following:

3 Buff Laced Polish
4 Black Jersey Giant
3 Black Polish
3 Black Sumatra
3 Buttercup
3 Golden Polish
3 red Leghorn
3 Single Comb Light Brown Leghorn
3 Frizzle

As the Giants are supposed to have a carcass weight of 10lbs... that might be a breed we keep just for those occasions when we want to feed a lot of people with one chicken... The frizzles are just fugly.. in my opinion so we'll see.

That much closer to being done... main bathroom

When we first got the house there were many issues with the main bathroom.. for starters the shower pan was lower than the drain and the walls were rotting. This project has gone through so many variations that it's a bit funny to see how it's turned out. Sam and Jed took out the insert from the bathroom, because they stood for a moment too long and I walked into the room. This was a while ago. After it was taken out we thought of many different ways that we could get the bathroom up and running.

Through many different variations of the design we ended up finding a tub at Restore (Habitat for Humanities) and so brought it home. It's one of those random things that is sold new for about $2000... which we could never pay for a bathtub but at a more reasonable price we would definitely bring it home. We started working on the frame and were all set for setting it up during the weekend.. but it was way more work than we originally thought so that the project stretched out to weeks and then to months. And since it was high on my list of things to finish.. .when the pig killing did not go through and I had people at my house... buahahah, I ended up having them help me put the tub in. We got the plumbing all hooked up and then worked on setting up the shower and the bath... all totally ghetto but oh so totally us. =) I'll be watching the plumbing to make sure that it doesn't leak (it didn't when we were testing) for a few more days and then I'll finish putting the dry wall up. We'll see about fixing the knob to turn the water on or off since it's all cruddy looking.

My goal is to completely finish with the bathroom before June 29th, which is the day last year when we closed on the house. That would be totally awesome. As soon as the dry wall is in place I'll put up the ring to have the shower curtain go on and then be pretty much done. I hope it all goes well. =D

It's coming right for us!

Sooo, you'll never guess who came back.

I was trying to take a nap Sunday morning because I had driven back from A&S late Sat and then driven Jed to work on Sunday morning and was beat. As I was starting to doze off the doorbell rang and it was my neighbor.

Her words were, " Guess who's come back?"

That's right... PiggE

So I did the only natural thing.. I called my friends with guns and had them come over to help me kill it. We waited a bit since it was the middle of the day and I didn't want to slaughter in the middle of the day when it's 95 degrees. I went over and visited their animals and found out that Sachi's neighbor's had Barbados sheep... I would eventually like to get wool sheep, but hair sheep might work out for now if I can get meat in the freezer. Sachi has this adorable goose and duck. We set up a pen area with a kiddie pool for them and then came back for the piggy.

We saw the piggy on the far corner and took the gun, wheelbarrow, and knives over to commence our revenge ritual... but as it turns out the pig had a different idea. She took one look, (she has tusks now, btw) and ran from my neighbor's back yard to her back yard neighbor's yard and then to the next yard beyond that. I had to go meet new neighbors to explain to them that my psychotic pig was in their backyard. Well, we heard the pig but the bum ended up absconding with the neighbor's corn, but no other trace was left. This morning Ginger (neighbor) said that the pig was back. ...

She will be mine.. oh yes.. she will be mine. I will have my bacon... and eat it too.

Kitteh found

On Tuesday of last week Jed and I were leaving to meet our new doctor and as we were leaving we heard a tiny "meow". I looked over and mentioned that it sounded like a kitten. Jed agreed so I walked over to the bushes to see what it was.

I found a tiny calico kitten tangled in the bushes and unable to get out. She didn't have anyone with her and I'm not really sure how she got there. So I did what any Rosie like me would do... I brought her inside and gave her food and water and then left to the Dr's.

I was able to go over to the neighbor's house to see if they had lost any kittens and it appears they did not... even though 16 cats came over to see what I was doing...

So far she is at home playing with the cats and waking us up at night. We hope that Sharon actually gets her. =D She's adorable and she's adapted pretty well. At first she was very skittish and hid but now she runs out and greets us as well as lets anyone pet her. She also does all those adorable things kittens do because they know that they have evil powers over us... she climbs into boxes and falls asleep, she attacks Jed's socks, she bounces on the bed trying to play, chases her own tail because it's taunting her, attacks Calvin's tail because she has a death wish, and doesn't attack McGee's tail because he doesn't have one... although she did try to jump on him and he did this awesome mid-flight strike that sent her rolling across the room. Pretty impressive... They all get along now, at first the two other cats let her know she was at the very bottom of the totem pole... she would fall on her side, expose her tummy, hiss in an apologetic way, and beg not to be disemboweled.

We'll see how things go.. we weren't planning on getting any more kittehs for a while so if Sharon doesn't take her we'll probably see what we can do to find her a good home.

Funny

I find that no matter what I would like to get to in one day... it's really up to the weather, animals, and materials as to what I'm actually going to do. That and I find myself having little time to type up the events of our homestead while at home... There is usually so much to do and work on. =) I am sooo totally not complaining. It helps out the slight ADD part of me. I have so much that I can work on and keep working on. We'll see what I'll actually finish next.. hopefully it will involve me slaughtering another pig.

Big goat - freezer time

She's finally dried off. I milked her yesterday and got less than a quarter cup of milk. What that means is that she's now going to be allowed to dry off and to eat as much as she wants to that she can be as heavy as possible for when we slaughter her later on this year. Who knows, if we get another cold spell in July like we did last year we might even do it then. I look forward to having goat in the freezer.

Which reminds me, Jed and I decided to make up our own anniversary day presents. We've been following a set of present guidelines but as we have been unable to find it since the move we decided to just make them up. We're thinking of a freezer put our livestock in once we're ready to slaughter. =) I think that sounds like a fabulous present we can give to each other.

What this also means is that we are lacking any milk producing animal right now. We might look into a Toggenberg doe or maybe a Dexter heifer. We'll see what we end up with. .. =) Maybe both.

Bee facts

The more I read about bees the more amazing I find them. I used to eat honey like it was going out of style... well I still do, but now I appreciate it a lot more. Here are a few things to think about when thinking of bees and honey.

Honey is bee food. It is not made as a bi-product that humans can eat. So when you eat honey, you are eating the food that the bees made in order to live and to maintain the lives of the bees in the hive. When you take honey, you must understand that you are taking food from your hive and thus are risking their health.

Honey is also bee medicine. As honey is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and a whole lot more they eat it as food, but they also use it to maintain the health of the colony.... so think about this when you take honey. Especially when you expect to have a hard winter.

Additional bee facts:

*Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.

*Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.

*The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.

*Beeswax production in most hives is about 1 1/2% to 2% of the total honey yield.

*About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.

*Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.

*Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees!

*During honey production periods, a bee's life span is about 6 weeks.

*Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.

*A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.

*Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph.

I took these facts from : http://www.indianchild.com/bees.htm. They can actually be found in pretty much any beekeeping book or book with bee information.

So just remember when you have beeswax candles that all the wax that goes into them took a long time for the bees to create.

Death of a cock

Too bad. =( It was my white face, black spanish. He was really gorgeous and I was hoping to keep him and eat the Blue Andalusians. I found him under the bridge but without any marks on him. I'm thinking it was probably the heat. I'm not sure, but we'll keep watching over them. I saw him yesterday and he was fine. He was hiding his head under his wing to stay cool in the morning.

So now we have the dorking cocks and the blue andalusians for our breeding.. =P I guess they will do. They both are very fast developing and well built birds breeds. None of them are skittish and we'll still have the Spanish pullets to work with. The Andalusian cocks don't show the true blue but white with some blue markings.. we'll see how that shows up in the genetic make up of the chicks.

They're only 3 months old (on the 15th) but already they are bigger than the Amaurecanas. So we might end up with some pretty good sized meat birds that also lay well. We'll see. =)

Coyotes

Soo, we lost another guinea last night. They took the male and I was woken up by the female looking for her mate. She was kind of sad walking around calling for her mates. If she's not eaten tonight then we're most likely see about slaughtering her and putting her in the freezer. Either way.. it's not the way we wanted her to go.

Home

There are so many different meanings to this word... I like what we've found. I love:

walking to the backyard and picking grains
digging ponds or holes
watching the chickens fight over bread and running over to see what we have for them
watching the ducks swim in the pond when they don't think we're looking
coming home to a clean house
watching the goats dance around and do a happy goat dance
keeping the goats from eating my trees
having plants that actually grow because the animals aren't eating them
seeing the bees enjoy their home
watching wild pollinators fly around
watching the sun set
being surrounded my family and feeling loved
getting to work on my house
working on projects
being with friends
being able to invite friends and family over
having a turkey stand on my shoulder because they like it when I walk around with them
having sleepy cats pretend that they weren't asleep
growing my own food
slaughtering my own meat

There is a lot that I love and a lot more to be thankful for. Thank you all for sharing this with us.

Characteristics of our flock

It might be that we did not raise the ducks and the guineas from day olds, but the rest of our flock has a tendency not to be skittish nor shy. We walk out and we have a flock of chickens run over to see what we're doing and what we're bringing. They wait for the water and food and they also like coming over just to see what we're doing. When we sit on the bridge to watch them they just sit or stand by us to catch the same view. When we got these breeds we were going for the heritage breed characteristics but were also hoping that they would not be true to the descriptions of "skittish, flighty, avoids human contact" I think we got a good bunch and we look forward to breeding them so that others can have these interactive tame birds.

The same can be said for our turkeys. They let us pet them and come over to see what we're doing. I look forward to their breed.

Why I love Jed

Soo, Jake, Jed's brother, once asked if I had gotten too attached to the pigs thus preventing me from slaughtering them. I had to laugh.. =)

On the other hand, we have Bugger that runs after Jed and jumps on his lap whenever he goes out side and sits down. She is what we might call a "lap goat" she sits there and just fawns over Jed. Jed carries her around and plays with her and lets her sit on his lap while he pets here.

Jed has also taken a liking to the little bantam chickens because they totally have the "Napoleon complex" they seem to not be aware that they are 1/4 the size of the other chickens.

It's been an amazing trip going from no farm animal experience to seeing Jed take care of the animals and help me milk the goats when I just don't have any time. I think he's actually enjoying himself. =) I just hope he doesn't mind when we have to make chicken appetizers out of the bantam cocks.

Talking about bantam cocks: Next time you read To Kill a Mockingbird take notice of chapter 17 when Scout describes Ewell as a bantam cock. It's hilarious as hell if you get the references to the antics of banties.

Exploding egg of doom

I was out back when I heard a loud "POP!" I had an idea of what it was and my idea was confirmed when the ducks jumped up and started quacking. They have been laying on a set of eggs and I figured that the once that weren't fertilized were going to start exploding if I didn't move them away... well they did. One popped underneath one of the ducks and they all ran over to the pond (BTW, I was frustrated the other week and I dug a pond that is about 4.5 feet deep in some areas about 9 feet long and about 6 ft wide in some areas) and they washed off. I walked over laughing because my first thought was "that duck is never going to go broody again" They're still laying on the remainder of the eggs so we'll see what happens. Not sure if any of the eggs were fertilized but we'll find out soon enough. I wish I could take them away for a bit and candle them. I might just do that tomorrow night to see if there is anything in the eggs. We're due a shipment of poultry next week and if there are any ducks I might just put them under the ducks so that they can raise them as their own. I hope we get some meat ducks... Rouen would be nice, or maybes some pecking.

The tale of the Chickens

Sooo we went away for the weekend and we returned to find chicken carcasses around the back yard. Whatever ate them mostly ate our fat laying hens, which sucks. We're thinking it was coyotes, but not sure. Reasonings: found a few with their entrails eaten out - coyote or predator sign. Found other in different areas w/o any disembowling but simply head bitten off or toyed with... might be dog. but all in all it kind of sucks. Those were the laying hens we were hoping to gift to people as they were already laying and were reliable. Instead they left mostly the weaker of the layers.. which sucks but still.

... time off for McGee to flip out and attack Calvin.. aparently Calvin has been a butt towards him all day... Calvin is now letting me know that McGee is killing him and that I should save him... I wish he would learn how to pick his battles...

Moving on..
Dorkings are getting bigger ... heck so are the White Faced Black Spanish and the Blue andalusians.. Due to the death of the older chickens we might have too many roosters at the moment which means we'll be eating some roosters this fall. Most likely the Blue Andalusians since I am not taken with their deamenour nor their looks. They're not bad, just not what I want. If someone would like to raise the BA please let me know and I'll save them for you guys. Otherwise they're going to the freezer.

The roosters keep trying to crow and it's hilarious. =) The bantams sound so cute and Jed has taken a liking to them. The roosters have also been trying to assert their dominion over the chickens.. which doesn't go well as the older ones are not taking any of their lip. If one of them tries to mate with them or to over power them the older chickens just pecks them until they run away. It makes me smile... and sometimes laugh until my tummy hurt. They just keep trying. We'll see when they get big enough.

Out front

As a short update... May was a month of ups and downs. I might post more about that in the future, once it doesn't hurt as much. We slaughtered some guineas for a really neat event and they were nummy! We're left with a pair but they have not started laying again. I did see them mate so I know the guy is at least in a breeding state of mind. We'll see if they give us anything. The ducks are still laying on the eggs. I'll have to post the egg story. =) And also the chicken story. =(

Sooo, up front I planted a lot of items from seed so now we have the following coming up:

4 types of beans
onions
grapes are doing a lot better now that Bugger is no longer sneaking in and eating them
We ate our first loganberry the other day
herbs are growing well
strawberries got burned with the sun but we have two hanging on
trees are doing well (3 citrus, almond and the apple)
melon and watermelon

I'm waiting on: corn and carrots to come up

Need to plant: tomatoes, strawberries, spinach, tomatillos, chilies (I guess others call them peppers...), and pickles. I'll see about doing this on Friday since I have that day off.

I love getting to see the seedlings come up. It's like christmas every time I see a new seedling sprout.

In the back we have all the trees growing, asparagus and mint hanging on, the onions spreading their seeds so that we have wild onions next year. We're harvesting mustard leaves and the grains. We're also saving some of the hay for summer food. Bees are thriving as I have to keep adding boxes as they keep filling them up with brood and honey. I need to build more boxes. Again, something I can work on on Friday. .. So much to do, so little time. If I totally can't sleep tonight (ate indian food for dinner... aka will not sleep due to tea) then I'll clean the house.