Farm Happenings

Our younger chickens started laying their eggs a few weeks ago.  We could tell because the first few batches of eggs from a new chicken are small.  But there were two chickens that were not laying.  We have three kinds of chickens, Rhode Island reds, Buff Orrpingtons and Americanas.  We only have two Americanas, and about three or four reds.  We knew that the Americanas were not laying yet, but one finally gave us an egg!!  Can you see how we could tell?  :-)

We finally planted some things in our garden. Thankfully it stays warm here for many months. We put up some chicken wire above the fencing to keep the chickens out. The only problem was we didn't have enough to complete the job. So a few chickens have found their way to the garden and made quick work of scratching up the seeds! We just got some more chicken wire to finish and hopefully we can try replanting what was eaten up. Silly chickens. They have been venturing farther from home lately. We think it is because they have exhausted the bugs around the immediate area. Too bad they can't cut down on the flying bug population! We were having problems with the chickens laying eggs where they are supposed to. It was pretty much an egg hunt each day, but even then we were only getting about six eggs a day. A far cry from the twelve to fifteen we should be getting each day. So we were prepared to lock them in the hen house for a few days to help 'remember' where they are supposed to be laying their eggs. Jeremiah locked up the hens a few nights ago. However right before I went to be I decided to check the weather. It was forcasted to be 100 degrees the following day. Not exactly good weather to be locking up chickens in a small barn. When we let the hens out later the next morning there were six eggs in the nests. I had them go back and check a few hours later because Jed and Jonah were requesting more eggs for lunch and I had used up the ones we had. I sent Moira out to see if perhaps there were one or two eggs out there. Imagine my surprise when she came back with TEN! wow! We will have to make it a habit to lock the chickens up each night and keep them there till mid morning. We go through a LOT of eggs in this household.

The goats have continued to give us 2 to 2 1/4 quarts of milk each day. In the beginning of the milking season I figured we would have enough to freeze some for the winter. I can assure you if you look in my freezer you will find *zero* bags of frozen milk. We go through a lot of milk around here too. It's hard not to when we can make our own yogurt, cream cheese, dips, and use the milk in our smoothies and other recipes. I'm thinking we may just very well need to get us another goat or two so that we can save up milk for the winter time. Either that or get ourselves a cow. Yes, I said a cow. We do have the land, we just don't have the 'right' land. A cow needs pasture and we have woods. Hmmmm, we'll have to see what we can do. A cow though would give us the cream necessary for butter. I just got done reading that brown jersey cows have the same type of milk protein that goats have, making their milk more easy to digest.

My sister sent me this great link to some homesteading DVD's. They also have a blog that tells some of what they do on their farm. I was so inspired. We really are not taking full advantage of the land that we have. Granted we are just coming out of time that there was no way we could do anything with the land (Jed's issues). But now that Jed is coming around health wise I think it may be time to invest in the outside. In the DVD;s they show you how to butcher animals and canning the meat. I had never heard of canning your own meat! We thought about raising chickens for meat. Between this diet we will be doing (meat intensive-well sorta) we might just have to rethink it. We wouldn't need to get a freezer, just more glass canning jars. One of the reasons I have not been fond of canning is the loss of nutrients that occurs from the canning process. But their web site claims that meat is one food that does not lose it's nutrients in the canning process. That would be really cool! Jeremiah just went to the health food store to buy some free range chickens and some soup bones. The bones were cheap, the chicken, not so much. Maybe, just maybe, if we can learn the whole process for ourselves we could give it a whirl. Start small with a dozen or so chickens and see how it goes.
I think that's all that's going on on the 'farm'. Our goal is to become more and more self sufficient. We still have a long ways to go, but it's nice to know we've taken some steps.