A winter of firsts

This winter has been a little harder than most on the farm.  Normally we are outside for most of the season working on various projects, but this years weather has been harsh.  When temperatures are tolerable in the single digits, the winds have been blowing a gale causing fingers to go numb quickly.  Pounding posts for the greenhouse has been impossible as the January thaw which usually has us outside with our first campfire didn't show up this year.  But alas, when you can't get outside, you work on other projects.  It has been a winter of firsts - but definitely not lasts.

Our chickens have continued to lay, despite the weather and we got our first blue egg this weekend.















I tried a new flavor of jelly - plum apple.  It is beautiful in the jar and even more delicious on toast.

We attended our first winter farmers market last week and we did pretty well.








Spring does promise to arrive eventually and temperatures are creeping closer to tolerable each week.  Today I will clean out and ready the brooder box, baby chicks are scheduled to arrive this weekend.

Weights and measures

In high school I hated Geometry - just despised it.  Worse even was trigonometry: sine and cosine and tangent.  Experiencing such a strong emotion for this discipline must have helped me retain something.  Each time I put a new roof onto a shed, coop or hut, I manage to figure out what angle the chop saw needs to be set at to accommodate my roof rafters.  It may not be perfectly square when I am done, but since I am not building any houses (yet), I am managing just fine.

Along with angles, weights also play an important role on the farm.  For example, it was time to worm Zeb this week.  This medicine is dosed by weight.  Last time I checked, a six to seven foot long pig doesn't fit on my bathroom scale.  There is also little chance that I would get him into a sling to measure him from a hanging scale.  Thankfully they make a formula (darn that algebra coming into play in adult life)!  Measuring squirming pigs isn't easy so I am certain that my weights came out a little heavy but they were close enough to ensure Zeb got enough medicine to combat any parasites.

Zeb - 750 lbs
Sally - 700 lbs
Little One - 250 lbs
Chicken - 6 - 15 lbs

Chickens you can put in a milk crate from a hanging scale - they are easy to weigh.  You can also step on a scale without a chicken in your arms and then back onto the scale with the chicken and the difference between the two is the weight of the chicken.  

Sunday I was pretty thankful that my girls are a little well-endowed.  The boys (two-legged ones) had settled in to watch the race and I went to write this blog post after my driver wrecked.  As I logged in, the squawking and crowing from the front yard immediately drew my attention.  I couldn't see what the rooster was upset about so I stepped out in my stocking feet.  (It is mud season here.)  At the corner of the house, the hawk had one of my newest layers pinned.  He wasn't the least bit deterred by my presence or my hollering.  I went back in to grab my shoes and the camera of course.  The second time the door opened he knew I meant business and flew away before I could even aim the camera.  I scooped up the bird, brought her inside, checked her all over and gave her a couple of treats for her ordeal.  She had lost a couple of feathers but otherwise wasn't much worse for wear.

Whether you choose to home school, un-school or go the traditional route - make sure you find some good old-fashioned math for your bag of tricks. 

Chickens & Eggs

As February passes the halfway mark I am thinking about firing up the incubator.  I have been incubating chickens on the farm for several years.  Unfortunately in 2015 I didn't add any new hens and the girls that were here were upwards of three years old.  The incubated eggs from last spring did not do well and we had less than 40% hatch/survival rate.  In order to increase that rate this spring, thirty one new birds were purchased from the feed store and added to our flock last fall.  One rooster was purchased to freshen up my breeding stock and the remainder of the birds were allegedly pullets.  Amazingly I now have seven roosters in my flock when I went into winter with only three.  So far the extra boys haven't been too much trouble.  As the weather gets warmer, they will start to fight over the top roost in the coop.  In addition to my seven boys there are 53 girls.  

Before the new birds were added to the general population, most of the older hens got three days solitary confinement in the brooder box to see who was laying and who wasn't.  Each of the girls who gifted us with an egg got a blue band.  Those that didn't lay an egg gifted us with a good meal.  This year, depending on my hatch rate, between 12 and 25 birds will be ordered from the feed store.  I will choose a different breed of heavy layer, this time by color alone.  Last year it was golden comets and silver-laced wyandottes, each of them got a yellow band.  I will probably go all white or all black for a stark difference.  All seven boys are completely un-related to the girls so my hatching success should be much better.  The choice of band color will be left up to Little man.  Anyone who doesn't have a this years color band or a yellow band will go into the freezer at the end of the 2017 season.  Birds that are given to us or traded to us will get yellow bands if they were last years birds or blue bands if they were the year before that or older.

In addition to keeping better track with a physical identifier, I have been much better at keeping track of numbers.  Little man's father collects the eggs most days and he and Little man count them as they are put in the refrigerator.  That number is entered onto the calendar and once a week they get entered into a spreadsheet.  Unfortunately for some of the girls, the number of eggs being produced (20-22 on average) is far less than the number of birds (53 laying hens) in the coop.  It will be time again to start segregating birds.  The brooder box will be solitary confinement until a few days before the eggs are scheduled to hatch then it will be cleaned and made ready for babies.  Since we have been pretty good at eating down last years stores, there is room in the freezer for chicken n' biscuit or chicken soup chicken.

I've thought about getting rid of all but a few of my chickens for personal consumption but many of the summer visitors to our small town enjoy bringing their grandchildren down to visit the birds as they run all over the farm.  Next winter, however, I will need to do a better job about lining up customers so that I am not carrying 50 - 60 dozen at any one time in my refrigerator.

Moving chickens

It still never ceases to amaze me how fast time flies around here.  It seems like only last month when I was starting seeds and bringing the first batch of baby chickens from the incubator out to the brooder box.

The third batch of birds has gone through the incubator and the brooder and are now out on the lawn in their chicken tractors.  A few pullets were sold so there are only 47 new birds in various stages which will replace our aging flock.  At least three are roosters and will find their way into the freezer when they are old enough.  I will keep at least one of the older, un-related roosters and one from the birds purchased from the feed store.  That should bring some fresh blood into the flock and allow for a healthier batch next Spring.

The current flock stands at 36, four of which are roosters.  We are getting about a dozen eggs per day, leaving me with at least 20 free loaders.  Now that the brooder box is empty, the process of paring down the active layers from the older girls will begin anew.  They will get three days of isolation.  If they lay an egg on any of those three days, then they get to stay.  If not, then they will go into the freezer for chicken and biscuits or chicken soup.  While this sounds a little harsh, the feed to keep a bird who is not laying, can get pretty expensive.

For now, they wander about, picking bugs out of the tall grass; occasionally getting into the garden or the raised beds where they are promptly chased away by Little man.  They appear to be jealous of the little ones in the chicken tractors.  Apparently the feed inside the tractor must be very different from that which is inside their coop - even though it came from the same feed bag.

Getting ready

The new window for the incubator arrived this week.  

Getting ready!

Mud Season = lots of water, not necessarily where I want it

Warm weather this week has allowed us to venture outside and start those tasks which have been eagerly awaiting snow melt.  I took out my farm planning list from March last night and frowned at how much wasn’t crossed off.  A few such tasks were moved up to March from later months based on the warmer winters of the past couple of years; perhaps 30 years of living in northern New England should have cautioned me to leave them in April.  Lessons learned.  When I sit down this fall to update my farm plan I will do it with the 2015 Old Farmer’s Almanac and my disparaging notes on this winters weather.

The fifth season has arrived here with the increase in temperatures.  Copious amounts of water pour down the driveway and running past the front of the garage creating a pond out of the driveway.  Over the past couple of years we have not maintained proper grading of the driveway, changed the parking plan and removed two huge rock maple trees from beside the driveway.  What this means is that water that historical was used by the trees, fell off the side of the driveway or ran through the back yard, this year, ran straight down the driveway and into the garage.  There are drains in the garage and in any other year water in the garage wouldn’t be a big deal, this year, the rabbits are still in there.  Imagine what several inches of water can do to your nice neat piles of pine shavings underneath your rabbit cages.  Quite the mess!  But even wet rabbit pellets and pine shavings are pretty east to clean up.

The water continued flowing and the drains were by then plugged with wet pine shavings; water went over top of the threshold and into the chicken coop.  Chicken droppings are not so structurally sound and when mixed with water simply create muck!

I shed my jacket as I shoveled what seemed like feet of slop out of the coop (in reality it was only about two inches, but it was heavy and I am out of shape!).  From the coop I moved to the garage floor shoveling, scraping and sweeping wet, sloppy pine and poo section by section.  Little man’s father worked diligently on the frozen drainage situation and was finally able to get the water to start flowing away from the garage.  By Tuesday night I was finally done cleaning up from Saturday and Sunday’s water damage.

Yesterday I continued the work of cleaning up the mess that December’s ice storm made out of the pine tree.  The pile is big and waits for a day of calm winds before it can be disposed of.  The brooder box in the garage was cleaned and disinfected, the reflector lamp tested and a new light bulb added to the shopping list.  The last turn of the eggs in the incubator was done this morning – some of the eggs are already moving!  New baby birds will be here this weekend.

As I sipped an adult beverage and watched Little man run up and down the driveway, the smell of boiling sap wafted down the hill from our neighbors.  We decided not to make our own syrup this year.  There comes a time when you are forced to realize that you can’t do absolutely everything.  Not boiling has given way to progress in other areas and some quality time with my son.  I will gladly barter or trade some rabbit, chickens, pork, eggs or vegetables, for our syrup this year.

Making progress

Winter is truly the time to hole in and do a lot of planning and organizing on the farm.  I am taking that to heart this year.  Revisions were made to my daily chores list and a new one has been posted to the refrigerator.  It still requires some tweaking but the house has stayed much more tidy this week as I endeavor to complete the basic tasks every night.  Many of the household chores were being neglected without something or someone to hold me accountable.  The month-to-month farm plan, while in its infancy, is also working well.  Spare minutes find me pulling it out and tackling a task to completion (like ordering my garden seeds for this year) or allocating time each weekend to ensure progress.  With an extra day on the farm this weekend I am hoping to knock out a couple of extra tasks weather permitting. 

In the past week:

• I have found the work bench in the back shop which was long ago buried under miscellaneous tools, associated scraps dropped there between one or ten quick fixes of various items, and any number of items left on the desk or kitchen table in the kitchen which were just dropped on the work bench as a place to get them out of the way before dinner.
• Two chickens were dispatched to the freezer to decrease our flock to a more manageable size.  New bedding was placed in the chicken coop. 
• Nest boxes were disinfected and placed in cages with two of the three rabbits which I bred this month.  Unfortunately one of the does discarded her entire litter a little more than a week early.  I am not sure exactly why as she appears very healthy but am thinking that she might have gotten scared or upset at something outside the garage.
• All of the pictures of Little man from birth to 24 months have been edited, cataloged and prints ordered.  There remain a few photographs taken by family members which I want to collect to complete a few photo collages, but otherwise, having gone through and edited over one thousand pictures is a pretty huge accomplishment for this girl!
• Garden seeds inventoried, old seed discarded, storage box cleaned out, list of seeds to order for our much smaller garden this year completed, online order placed for same, shipping notification received.  This past week of warm temperatures has tempted me to get outside and work in the yard or start seeds in flats in the basement, but it is still too early.  I resisted as temperatures are predicted to plunge back to the single digits and below zero over night next week.
• Semen located and ordering details ironed out and veterinarian lined up for the end of the month when, if my calculations are correct, pig will be ready to be bred.
• Progress has been made on the electronic filing which has backed up since our computer had hard-drive issues this summer.  Each night I have allocated fifteen minutes to catching up with all of this accumulated paper; at this rate I might be caught up by the end of May.

This weekend's goals include:

• Putting the plastic back on the hoop house as this past week's warm temperatures (for January) have loosened up the top layer of lawn providing access to the base of the greenhouse again
• Locating, cleaning, sharpening and oiling all of the tree pruning equipment and then finding a single location to store all of it so I can find it when I am ready to prune fruit and Christmas trees.
• Clean up and burning of the pine tree branches which are strewn around the back yard from the late December ice storm.
• Repair of the shed roof where Little man's father broke it while trying to get the tractor unstuck from the above mentioned ice.
• Repair of the roof on pig's house where a small leak has developed
• Thorough cleaning of the chicken coop and the rabbit cages.
• Complete the new chicken feeder which didn't get done last week as I got side tracked by an indoor house cleaning project.
• Making at least one batch of jam or jelly from juice which was frozen after harvesting berries this summer and fall.
• An hour or so to read a new book from the library
• Perhaps some time split between house cleaning and catching a glimpse or two of the NFL playoff games (a girl can hope).

If I can manage to stay on track and not get dissuaded by the big picture and continue focusing on this task based approach, I am confident that we will make progress this year.

Missed breeding opportunity and egg watch

As I came back to the farm last evening I noticed an unusually large amount of food remaining in pig's pen.  She is pretty good about cleaning her plate/bowl/bucket unless it is full of potato peelings - a girl can only eat so many potatoes.  There were oranges and a hunk of meatloaf - those are not items she would normally choose to leave behind.  A bit concerned, I turned the car with the headlights towards pig's pen and checked to make sure her path wasn't too icy or if she appeared injured in any way.  Immediately she popped up out of her warm hay bed headed straight for the fence grunting and squealing as she came across the icy pasture.  Exiting the car, I gingerly walked down the short but slippery slope to her fence.  I scratched behind her ears and rubbed her back thinking that she was a little stiff, I hoped she was staying warm enough.

Although the temperature was hovering around 12 degrees her water was mostly unfrozen so I headed back to the car.  I noted that her house was looking a little worse for the wear, like maybe she had been chewing or rubbing on it a lot.  I haven't been out to see pig much in the past week.  I had gall bladder surgery on January 2nd and am not allowed to lift anything heavier than 15 lbs for at least ten days.  Admittedly I have been lifting my son probably more than I should as well as toting out garbage and moving some bins full of holiday decorations weighing more than 15 lbs that await the end of the restriction period to be stored until next year.  Carrying five gallon buckets of water (weighting far more than 15lbs) across the door yard to pig has also been out of the question so Little man's father has done that chore since the New Year began.

Inside to evening chores and dinner, pig had settled into the back of my mind until Little man's father mentioned that she had gotten her appetite back eating more today than she had in the past three days.  It was then that I realized that we had missed this month's opportunity.

Pig came to us as a rescue from a farm that could no longer care for her.  She is a four and half year old Gloucester Old Spot. She has farrowed before and we are hoping to get one or two breedings from her to keep the farm in pork and perhaps generate a little extra income.  Our hopes had been to line up a heritage breed boyfriend for her before the end of last year.  Without the possibility of a local suitor, we have been monitoring her heat cycles planning to order semen and have her artificially inseminated.  I am hoping that my research and education in addition to participating with the vet to breed her this winter will allow me to do it myself for any sows going forward.  We do not currently have the facilities or fences to keep a boar on the farm and I have promised myself no permanent new additions until we catch up on all of the projects that are already in progress.

After dinner I went back out with a flashlight and talked to pig, and confirmed that she was in fact in heat.  Her back end was red and swollen and when I pressed down on her back, the stiffness I noted earlier was confirmed as her standing and bracing herself in preparation for the weight of a boar.  Other tell tale signs of a sow in heat include loss of appetite, chewing like the damage I saw on her house, demanding attention, and being very vocal.  Pigs go into heat every 21 days.  I have marked my calendar for 19 days to start watching for signs again and I will order semen on the 20th or 21st day depending on how she is acting.

If she comes into heat on schedule and the vet can come and semen is available then we should be breeding her by the end of the January for piglets around Memorial Day.  It will be fun to have piglets on the farm again!

Egg watch - two days of 11 and 13 eggs respectively, then back down to 7 per day.  With the warm weather predicted for this weekend I am hoping to add some chicken to the freezer and perhaps decrease the competition for the nest boxes.  The new feeder will also be completed this weekend allowing for them to free feed throughout the day and allow for less competition at feeding time.

Eggs

The winter solstice has come and gone and along with it our egg production.  Even in the coldest of days we were getting 10 - 12 eggs per day.  Over the past two weeks our production has halved giving us between five and six eggs daily.  We couldn't put our fingers on the cause.  Examining every possibility from water and feed consumption to length of day provided by the electric light and cleanliness of the coop, we couldn't narrow it down.

For the past week we have been closely watching every change we have made in the coop.  New bedding and clean nesters were the first test.  Our flock has doubled in size from last year so the coop isn't staying as clean as it could be.  Focusing on cleanliness, new bedding was added and nesters cleaned as soon as any accumulation of droppings were noted - no change in production.  Water has been carefully checked twice a day since temperatures have fallen and remained below zero.  We noted that the floor in the coop has shifted with the ice outside so the water container was leaking on the floor of the coop - no wonder it won't stay clean.  Balanced platform and steady water supply - no change in production.

Feed has been supplied twice per day since the chickens arrived on the farm seven years ago.  As the number of chickens increased, the amount of feed has increased.  Last night I stayed in the coop and watched the birds eat.  Three and one half pounds of feed were scattered on the floor of the coop to allow all the birds to eat without stomping on one another.  Watching them consume that 3 1/2 lbs in less than two minutes, I realized, they were hungry.  All the birds are still exhibiting good body condition, full breasts and good skin condition, most with large, moist vents.  Feed was the last thing we needed to try. Off to the good old search engine as the reference materials I have did not state how much feed an average laying hen consumes daily.  My search determined that an average laying bird consumes approximately 1/3 lb of feed daily.
To make sense of this, you need to know that we are up to 45 birds in the coop.  Four roosters and 41 hens.
Divide 45 by 3 - 1/3 lb per bird per day - and you get 15.
Divide 15 by 2 - feeding them twice daily - and you get 7.5 lbs of feed.

We were feeding them half of what they needed per day of feed.  They were maintaining their weight, but not getting enough nutrition to lay eggs.  I doubled their feed ration last night and they left some on the floor indicating that they were full.  This morning Little man's father fed them eight pounds of feed. 

If we get seven or more eggs today then we will have solved that problem.  I will let you know what we collect today.

2014 Planning

This is the time of the year when the planning for the farm begins/continues in earnest.  As we close December I look out at all the things that didn't get done.  The roof never made it back onto the greenhouse this fall; many tools and flower pots now sit under three to five inches of snow, two inches of ice and today's predicted two to four inches of new snow.  The same holds true for the lawn tractor, some tractor attachments and so much more.  Too many good tools and equipment now sit under snow and ice because we did not make the time to get them under cover.  Clean up projects remain on the list which should have been completed this fall but will now wait until Spring.  Attempts and efforts were made at the end of November and earlier this month, but too much remains outside.  Returning to full-time, off-farm employment in September brought fall preparations to a complete halt.  With high temperatures next week forecast to be below zero, it is looking like reclaiming these items might be a ways off. 

I could sit here and lament about all the things that weren't accomplished or I could pull up my big girl panties and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again.  Choosing the latter, I reached out to my local library for a book by Cynthia Bombach.  The Complete Homestead Planner takes all of the tasks and chores from around her homestead and breaks them up into a month-by-month to-do list.  An electronic version of this book is readily down loadable on line but I am an ink on paper kind of girl.  In New England ice storms like the one this past week I don't need to worry about a battery dying.  At the very least I hoped it might be a starting point.

What it did do was make me think about the whole farm.  This past year I have been putting out fires which I started for myself by taking on too many projects and not having a firm grasp on the time each would take especially with Little man in tow.  Laying things out over the span of a year and incorporating tasks into a monthly to-do list has allowed me to see, on paper or computer screen, the big picture.  Looking at some months, I can see that there aren't enough hours in the month to accomplish all that is listed there.  Some of those jobs will need to be reallocated.  This book was also written with heartiness zone 5-6 in mind.  Northwestern Vermont is located in zone 3-4 requiring a few changes in planting dates, seed starting dates, winter tire change-over dates, etc.

I could have done what Bombach did in her book all on my own and for that reason I would not recommend purchasing this book.  A trip to or request from your local library would be sufficient to get an grasp on what you need to look at for your farm or homestead.  There is also a lot of repetition in here as some chores you need to tackle monthly if not more frequently.  And, this is definitely not a how-to manual, it is exactly what it says, a planner.  A handy guide for beginners, those thinking about jumping into homesteading or farming from their perches in the city or someone like me who has let too many years of grand ideas get the best of her; this is certainly not for the established farm or homestead where things are running smoothly.

Over the next month I will refine the list for our scaled down farming ventures, incorporate some projects that require immediate attention and delete some that are not feasible given my time and budget.  As I look over my 2014 plan I realize that if I had sat down and created a business plan before planting thousands of Christmas trees or increasing the number of chickens in my flock, I probably wouldn't now be stepping back, reeling in and starting over. 

Lesson learned!

Taking a step back and restoring focus

This summer on the farm passed in a blur as I tried to balance working off-farm part-time, spending quality time with my Little man, and attempting to secure sufficient income to put fuel in the tank and food on the table for the winter.  Heated arguments ensued - the word 'quit' came up several times in those less than calm, collected, discussions about who didn't do what and why we were 'never' going to be successful.

We agreed on one thing only - Little man comes first no matter whatever we decide to do.

Labor Day brought with it a garden that had all but succumbed to the weeds.  We collected a few wonderful meals worth of fried green tomatoes, but didn't get back out soon enough to put up any green tomato relish.  The club size zucchini went soft as they lay neglected after they were one of the few things that managed to survive the weed pressure.  Onion sets, peppers, spaghetti squash were all lost to rot under the weight of the falling weeds.  The herb garden did well, although the basil crop was severely stunted by lack of attention to weeds therein as well.  Tomatoes that didn't get transplanted out of the green house fell out the sides when the roof was removed and a few precious fruits were harvested, but most went to the chickens and the pig.

Farmers market went well with fresh baked and value added items taking the lead and fresh vegetables and produce from around the farm and that of our neighbor coming in a close second.  Unfortunately by the time I came home from my off-farm job, spent some time with Little man and then set-in to bake for the following day's market, it was well into the morning before I got any sleep.  It felt like weeks passed with my brain in a fog.  I was too tired to play outside with an eager toddler - the decision had to be made soon.  September brought with it hard fought glimmers of hope that we might be able to make this work - Little man, I can only hope would hardly remember this summer of rushed, crazy, pressure.

The following week I got a message from a colleague who told me that she might be moving on to pursue a different career opportunity.  Decision time had dropped out of the sky like an anvil onto the roadrunner.  I was beat-up, over-tired, feeling like I was neglecting my child, knew that I was neglecting myself, and having a difficult time trying to figure out which way was up.  Last year's propane bill hadn't been paid, we were behind in every utility and car payment and I was looking at trying to come up with thousands of dollars for taxes and propane and tires for vehicles before snow flew, let alone any other projects that had to get done before it got too cold.  Through all the sleep deprivation and fear, there remained the faint flicker of hope that all this summer's hard work was finally putting up some concrete numbers.  If we can just improve on those numbers - I might be able to work a little harder or go without another 30 minutes of sleep each night... 

I would love nothing more than to work on the farm and make it a sustainable venture.   Unfortunately heat for the house is a necessity in Northwestern Vermont.  I want to be at the end of the driveway to see my son get off the school bus each day.  It takes a community to raise a child and for the past couple of years we haven't had that community as we strove to build our farm venture.  Debts long ago incurred refused to be neglected.  Little man's father works at the base of the mountain requiring snow tires sooner rather than later and if I don't get my oil changed and tires put on my vehicle soon, then my car won't leave the driveway if the weather turns.

It was one of the most arduous decisions of my adult life,

I went back to work full-time.

I am determined to continue, albeit on a much smaller scale, farming on this piece of land to which I have become a caretaker.  The pig will be bred this fall and rabbits will continue to be a part of the farm.  We are in the process of scaling back to between four and six does which will keep us in rabbit as a good source of protein and have a few extra for family and friends.  Gardens will be relocated to make them easier to tend in closer proximity to the house so when I can carve out five minutes, it can be a productive five minutes.  The green house will be used to start plants again this spring, but I will only be planting enough for personal use plus ten percent for loss.  Focus will be shifted back to the Christmas trees ensuring that they get the appropriate attention this year so we can have some saleable trees next year.  Chickens and eggs will remain a staple product and perhaps I can consider adding one or two value added items to the online farmers market.

We will be shoring up our existing ventures and getting ourselves out of debt.  No more livestock, new projects or new ventures will be added until we have gotten each of the existing enterprises to sustain themselves or each other with no additional inputs required from off farm income.  The search will begin for a sustainable heating option for the house so that our reliance on propane can be limited.  Solar options for electricity and water will be researched and accumulation of free or bartered components will begin for all of the above projects.

It was not an easy decision, but it is the smartest option for us at this time.  We will take the coming year to be better prepared, to hole in and get all of our outstanding debt taken care of and to think through all of my grand ideas and put numbers and time lines to each.  The decision to take up any of the grand ideas will be subject to intense scrutiny and if starting the next project will in any way cause detriment to our existing ventures it will be shelved or tossed completely.  I still hope to someday add a lactating animal or three to the farm along with fiber animals and the value added products associated with them, but not right now.

The blog will continue to share the details of the farm as it continues on its much smaller scale, but will also include things like meal-planning and weatherization.  Our pig is still in search of a boyfriend for the holidays and the rabbit shed has rafters but is still missing a roof.  Little man is better for the time we are spending together as it is certainly better quality then it was quantity.

I hope you will stay with us as we step back, reign in the craziness and start again with some valuable lessons learned under our belts.

Chicken tractors and transplant trauma

More chickens are hatching this week which requires more houses to hold them.  Yesterday Little Man, his father and I tore apart a couple of pallets and together with some leftover fencing, crafted another chicken tractor.

The boards were pulled from the top and bottom of the pallet.  Eight of them were notched at the ends and nailed together lengthwise to create eight-foot long sides.  Three were cut in half to make the upright supports on the corners and the middle of the eight-foot span.  The 2x4 center pieces of the pallet were ripped in half and created the cross-bracing for the ends of the box.  A couple of pieces of scrap plywood and USB were nailed to the top to create a hinged access point and the whole thing was wrapped in hardware cloth.  Finally some tarp material, salvaged from our wind damaged portable garage, was tacked around the sides to both keep the smallest of the birds in and predators out.  A new waterer was assembled from an extra feed dish and a lidded bucket with a hole drilled in the side.

Three laying birds will be added to the flock of 31 who call the chicken coop home.
50 meat birds will go into the older, large chicken tractor tonight after the hens are removed.
19 pullets were moved from the small chicken tractor to the new, larger one.
15 (and counting) new pullets went into the older brooder box.

This afternoon six holds will be added to the twenty four currently in the garage, to house the new litters of growing meat rabbits.

This morning, in between re-housing critters and regular chores, I have been trying to finish planting the garden with Little Man in tow.  He has been extremely helpful.  For each flat of transplants Momma puts in, Little Man follows behind with his new shovel and rake and pulls one or two back out to give to Momma.  I think I will wait to work in the garden until his father gets home.

This week's progress

Our calendar for the Spring, while marked with pre-printed dates of import like President's Day, Ash Wednesday, or even Town Meeting Day; those are not the dates that we are focused on.  Circles and highlights mark our important farm happenings - nest boxes to first four does; first batch of eggs; start group A plants this week, etc.

Last week - the first of the does were bred for an early March delivery.
This week - the incubator has been started for a mid March delivery; the second set of does was bred for a mid March delivery; doubling our taps this year required additional sap buckets, those were ordered Tuesday; orders will be placed for the first batch of meat birds for mid/late March delivery.
Next week - the third set of does will be bred for a late March delivery.

This weekend I will be catching up with my cousin to transfer ownership of a large piece of plastic and the forecast snow storm permitting, the roof will be put onto the greenhouse. Fellow market farmers and friends of ours who use supplement heat in their greenhouse already have tomato plants 3" tall.  I am jealous - but our progress continues.

Forecast for tomorrow - 45 degrees!

I purposely omit the frozen precipitation they so ominously include since at forty-five degrees there is little chance of it hanging around very long.  Unfortunately, Friday will be the last of the warm days anywhere in the extended forecast.  I am eager to use this day to its fullest and get outside and tackle every project on the to-do list including ones which require far more time than I will have available. 

My lofty goals include small projects like putting the roof on the rabbit shed - by myself, while the ground is still frozen and icy, while I am the sole person home to take care of Little Man - and the nearest ambulance is more than fifteen minutes away.  Along comes the common sense fairy with a smack on the back of the head like Gibbs to Dinozzo, 'Pick one, Jen.'  There is only so much one can accomplish with Little man in tow or during the short 90 - 120 minutes that he is snoozing.

While I still have the desire to jump head long into my to-do list weather be damned; I waffle between taking the evaporator pan out of the basement and cleaning it up outside or working on the chicken coop.  Both smaller projects which can, ideally, be almost completely accomplished in less than two hours.  All will depend on how much regular farm maintenance Little man and his father were able to get done today while I was working off the farm. 

The plans for the chicken coop include removing the rotting/damaged floor, removing ill planned chicken nesters and replacing them with roosting poles and installing fewer, new, well-placed nesting boxes.  I like some of the Chicken Chick's idea's in this post and hope to incorporate a few of them into our coop before summer.  A complete overhaul of the coop (a project which has only been over a year in the making) WILL happen before the snow flies this fall.

Spring chickens

Our chickens are currently providing us with a dozen or so eggs each day.  This is ideal since we are soon planning to start the incubator.  We can take half or more each day for hatching and keep the other half or less for sale or consumption.  Nothing fancy, our incubator was purchased at Tractor Supply (I think) and cost around $25.00.  It doesn't have a fan nor an automatic egg turner; however, it has served us well for the past several years.  We started with a plan to hatch about fifteen new laying hens.  33 eggs were placed into the incubator and we diligently turned them morning and night for eighteen days.  The last three days you don't turn the eggs so that the chicks can get their bearings and plan their escape.  About half of the eggs hatched and only one didn't make it due to a genetic anomaly or other such problem.  This first batch was a successful rooster breeding venture and of the fourteen chicks, I think nine were male.  They tasted pretty good.

For the past two years we have run out of eggs during the summer for farmers market sale.  Last year I thought I had planned accordingly and started our incubation early, by my standards, in March.  At the same time as I had planned for extra egg laying birds, we had a lot of interest from friends and neighbors to purchase pullets for their own home flocks.  Three batches of eggs went through the incubator and none of those birds remained on the farm to augment our flock.  Seeing that I wasn't going to have laying hens would still be laying for mid-summer 2013, in July I ordered 25 birds from a hatchery, thirteen hens and twelve straight run (a mix of males and females).  Those were not sold and after predators and one with a broken leg, we ended up with thirteen laying hens.  They are currently producing the majority of our eggs.  I put one last group of eggs through the incubator in mid-September and those birds, nine or ten hens and two or three roosters (one of them is confused I am sure of it) remain in the garage in a makeshift coop.

Chicken eggs take 21 - 23 days to hatch when properly incubated at 99.9 degrees and proper humidity.  Counting back from a March 15th hatch date, as opposed to a March 15th start of incubation date, we will be firing up the incubator over the weekend of the 23rd.  We will plan on running at least four batches through the incubator with our last planned hatch date being June 15th.  Assuming that we plan ahead and if our roosters are doing their jobs properly, we will have enough hens ahead to provide us with some stewing chickens for the freezer.

Our flock started with a mixture of Orpingtons and Rocks.  We had a couple of Leghorns added to the mix and then were blessed with two Red Laced Blue Wyandotte roosters.  These boys have the most wonderful heft, gorgeous coloring and appear to be very effective at doing what they are supposed to do.  The roosters that resulted from their breeding last year were fantastic roasting chickens.   We have only a few Rocks, no Leghorns, and only one Orpington left; the girls I ordered this past summer are Wyandottes making them the primary breed in our flock.  Roosters resulting from our incubation this year will be added to traditional Cornish cross meat birds, which I will have delivered, both for sale and for family consumption.

Plans for a second brooder box and two more chicken tractors have been completed and will be constructed once the snow has melted.  The tractors will travel between the Christmas trees adding not only wonderful nitrogen rich fertilizer but having the added benefit of decreasing the amount of mowing required between the trees.  The forecast for this week predicts an early start to the sugaring season and incubation will start before sugaring is complete.  Spring looks like it will arrive early on the farm this year.

Update

Lest someone think that the absence of blog posts the past week means lack of work or progress, rest assured it hasn't been all swimming in the lake and reading the latest Nora Roberts novel.

The heat has taken its toll on our rabbit venture.  We lost nine in total from loose stools associated with the richness of their diet accompanied by the heat.  I have finally learned how to intervene and have managed to successfully save two pregnant does and one small rabbit who had started to get sick.  Quick intervention and one week later are still with us and back on solid food again.  Procurement and installation of an industrial strength farm fan has drastically improved air circulation; I am not looking forward to the electric bill.  Fly controls have been installed, although they are not nearly strong enough to control our rising fly population.  We remove all of the pine shavings and waste once a week with removal of piles of manure occurring each day - they remain a problem and research is being done on other control measures. 

Across the driveway the piggles are thriving in their 1/2 acre divided pasture.  Since arriving in May they have only worked on clearing/tilling only half of their pasture.  Before August 1st we will open the second side of their space and allow them to start on fresh grass and roots along with a notoriously wet section of ground.  If August proves to be as hot or hotter than July, they will be very happy improving the soggy section into a full fledged swail.  They continue to eat like queens with most of the scraps from farmers market production going their way.  This week that included the leftover filling from both strawberry and peanut butter whoopie pies, hulls from the strawberries, cannoli filling and a bunch of lettuce that we couldn't consume before it started to get soggy.  Commercial feed continues to be a staple in their diet since the summer has been so dry, the beets/mangles  and corn that we are growing for them are coming very slow.

Chickens have been a popular product here on the farm.  We sold most of the pullets that we incubated for our own production and had to order some pullets from a commercial hatchery.  They arrived around the first of July and will soon be ready to go out to the small chicken tractor while the roosters who remain in the large tractor finish off to roaster weight.  Our layers have decided, right in the middle of our highest egg demand, to slow down on their production.  Five or six eggs per day is sufficient for the baking I do for farmers market, but our garbage men are a little disappointed that we have not been able to consistently supply them with their regular demand.

The riding lawnmower has broken and the replacement part is outside of our budget at this time.  I am getting some great exercise push mowing the four acres of lawns here on the farm and have lost eight pounds since leaving full-time employment.  Perhaps before the snow flies we will have found the Christmas trees amongst the weeds which have taken over in all three of the fields.  The lilac bush which I have been hoping to prune for the past three years was finally pruned and while farmers market continues to occupy a lot of my time, it has proven a successful venture.  We are planning on our first trip to the processor in over six weeks and have three more does scheduled to kindle this week.  Now I just need to spend some more time in the garden.

Cucurbit conundrum

We built a new greenhouse this year which has held up reasonably well to spring time in Northern Vermont.  A few of our early season thunderstorms have proven that PVC cross connectors are nowhere near as strong as I thought they should be, but the 6 mil plastic covering has held up extremely well.  Properly watered plants are thriving inside, not the least of which are the cucurbits which we started from seed in late May. 

These 'seedlings' shot right up and were far past transplant stage, but we gave it a shot anyway.  I watered them and then carefully dug rows of blue hubbard squash and two types of pumpkins and transplanted them into mounds on the hill in front of the house but above the garden.  The first day it appeared as if I had killed them.  I was dismayed that all this seed was going to be wasted because more sleep wasn't sacrificed to ensure their survival by transplanting them earlier in their lives.  Sad, seemingly lifeless vines lay withering on the hill in the sunshine.  Sufficient water was provided by both Mother Nature and supplemented by me, but they languished there anyway.  I watched them for three days while it rained and DH and I added a little extra water - still nothing.  Lesson learned, no more than two weeks in the greenhouse before transplant and then it needs to be marked on the calendar much like we track our rabbit breeding dates.

DH and I learned our lesson with poor record keeping a few years ago when we attempted to raise meat birds.  These were Cornish crosses who are bred especially for meat and are meant to be slaughtered at eight weeks, no more, no less.  We started these guys inside the house in an extra bedroom - as I have mentioned before DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME - and then moved them outside to the chicken tractor.  Eight weeks came and went as DH and I discussed how heavy they were getting but both of us certain we had another week or two before we needed to put them in the freezer.  We had an early warm spell when the birds were between ten and eleven weeks old.  Upon opening the tractor in the morning we found several of the birds barely clinging to life when the outside temperature had barely reached seventy degrees.  A couple had perished in the night as they were too heavy to carry their own weight around any longer.  Plans for the humid, warm, late spring day changed to cleaning and dressing the remaining twelve meat birds.  Normally one plans on dispatching chickens on cool mornings keeping not only the smell down but stray feathers from sticking to your sweaty person.  Neither worked in our favor this day.

Now chicken, pig and rabbit birthdays are tracked in either a computer spreadsheet or in my calendar (someday I will go completely electronic but there remains the feeling of a nice piece of stock and the rolling of the ball point as history is recorded while it is made). This year I have learned that cucurbit birthdays will also have to be recorded especially those started in the greenhouse.  Just over a week after transplant, the vines are beginning to perk up.  Half of them are showing signs of life.  Those 'seedlings' remaining in the greenhouse include a variety of pie pumpkins, a couple different gourds, some spaghetti squash and hybrid acorn squash which still have a fighting chance.  Weather for this week is forecast to be more summer like, I will wait until later in the evening to transplant the remaining vines.  Wish me luck.

Homeless chickens

Last week we spent one of our mornings re-housing chickens.  21 days before we took the eggs from our chickens and placed them in the incubator at a toasty 99.5 degrees.  At the time we were only receiving 5-7 eggs per day, over four days we put every egg into the styrofoam container marking each with the date they were placed there on its shell.  Twice daily we turned the eggs and made sure there was water in the well at the bottom of the container.  The incubator needs to simulate the conditions which would be found under the mother hen.  Consistent moisture and warmth are required to get from a basic fertilized egg to a hatchling.  Eighteen days into the incubation, we stop turning the eggs.  The little ones need to get their bearings and know which way is up.  Our diligence has been rewarded with sixteen baby chickens.
Throughout our chicken raising adventures we have been through three chicken tractors, three different brooder setups and two chicken coops.  As we learn something new or acquire more chickens their housing gets modified.  Our chicken adventures began with twelve laying hens and a Bantam rooster in 2007.  Much like my other animal tales, we didn't intend on raising [insert type of animal here - cats, dog, ferrets, lizards], but sometimes they just show up and you make a home for them. 

Coop #1 was four plywood walls, salvaged from a shed which was torn down) around four cedar fence posts with a plywood top and hay bales for insulation from the winter cold.  It was about 3' x 3' x 3' and had one row of three nest boxes.  The following spring we purchased our first pullets from the local farm store and brooded them in a cardboard box in the workshop before building our first tractor out of salvaged pallet wood and left over chicken wire from a farm project long past.  Our next coop came very quickly when we realized it was impossible to house sixteen chickens in a 27 cubic foot coop.  My father used a saw-z-all and cut a hole in the side of the garage where we built a 6' x 8' x 8' coop with two rows of nesters and a couple of roosting poles.  Attached to that is a fenced in yard allowing the chickens access to the outdoors, but remain safely inside a fence away from predators or trucks who are zooming around the farm.  During the day we let the chickens run amuck, but there are times when they need a little extra protection for their own good.  The roof is starting to leak and the mice have done a number on the floor so we are hoping to make some modifications (and expansions) to it this fall which will include waterproofing and removal of the floor.

Brooder #2 was a recycled ferret cage inside a spare bedroom - DON'T EVER DO THIS - unless you like vacuuming three times a day and dusting twice that much.  Chicken mash is a dusty product - they made a complete mess.  Brooder #3 has been a complete success.  It is a large box made from reclaimed pine lumber, lined with a waterproof shower wall substance and is built onto the wall next to the chicken coop.  It has a chicken wire top allowing for great air circulation and as long as we choose not to breed chickens in the dead of winter then a single incandescent light bulb is all that is necessary to get them started.

Tractor #2 included the original chicken tractor with modifications for a small box on one side of it to allow the young ones a little more protection from inclement weather.  This design was far too heavy on one end and it quickly fell apart after less than one season's use.  Our third chicken tractor has been a complete success (the third time's a charm).  We used the thicker cross bracing from salvaged pallets along with four purchased 2' x 4' x 12's, some newer leftover chicken wire and a hinged lid made of someones left over OSB picked up from a free pile on the side of the road.  This tractor has worked very well for going on four seasons now and with only minor repairs to aging chicken wire, it is still holding strong.

We have incubated three sets of eggs this spring.  The third set just went into the brooder last week leaving the second set to join the first born in the large chicken tractor.  Not such a good idea.  Our tweens have developed quite the attitude and were not at all welcoming to the new birds.  Into the tractor I went to rescue the four-week old birds.  Not having lost much of my baby-weight, I was a sight to see trying to climb around in temporary chicken housing.  Homeless, our middle birds went into a cardboard box while we worked on housing for them.  Resurrected from the bowels of our storage system (anywhere it will fit) came the original chicken tractor.  It was in pretty bad shape.  A piece of ripped 2 x 4 here, a rusty hinge cleaned up and re purposed there, some chicken wire patching and the original chicken tractor came to life again to house another generation of baby chickens.  Water basin and small tin of feed provided, chickens rehoused, quick shower and I still managed to make it to work on time.

The fresh clean smell after the rain

As my days off drew to a close this afternoon I ran over our accomplishments from the past few days and the growing disappointment was palpable: 

• DH and company had gone out turkey hunting in the cool spring rains and returned with the same number of shells that they left with and no turkey. 
• I got to spend quite a lot of time with the little man as he has found his recent napping pattern no longer to his liking.  My limited time off is short, even shorter snoozes require ingenuity to play with little man and accomplish tasks like laundry and even vacuuming.
• The shed has walls and salvaged bay window installed but still lacks a door and a roof.  Installing OSB is made even more interesting when you remember you don't have a step-ladder.  Nailing OSB to the framing ten-feet in the air can present it's own challenges.  This is what they invented tractor buckets for - OSHA, don't look.
• The garage/rabbit shed has been cleaned and prepared for another week.  We moved one of the racks (empty after our first trip to the processor) outdoors for cleaning and disinfecting and one of the waste deflectors broke.  One more thing to be added to the to-do list. 
• Some basic house cleaning was done, results of the white-glove test will certainly be - Fail.  Sweeping while smiling and making faces at your little man and dancing around the broom - not the most efficient cleaning method, but moderately effective.
• All of the squash seeds were planted in the green house.  One or two of the arches has come loose from the PVC cross connectors - one more thing to be added to the to-do list. 
• Rainy weather has prevented us from working on the lawn tractor; the garage remains otherwise occupied.  Lawns were not mowed and the grass growing between the Christmas trees will require brush-hogging first and then perhaps the mower can handle the close up work when it is repaired.  Apparently there is a pulley which is frozen and will either need a new bolt or will need to be replaced entirely - the full diagnosis cannot be made until we are able to remove it from the lawn tractor.  This time I will try my mechanical skills without a five-month old in one hand and a wrench in the other.

Sometimes I get discouraged with the ever increasing to-do list and the declining amount of time in which to get it all accomplished.  I get overwhelmed with the time each task takes with older, decomposing equipment, including the time to fix the equipment as it breaks.  My son, who is nothing but a blessing, adds to my stresses because I feel that I am not spending sufficient time with him.  New starts to projects like rabbits are consuming time planned for established projects like the greenhouse, vegetable growing and farmers market.  Then there is this little thing called money which is required to pay electric bills and purchase feed for the livestock which in turn feeds us; my off-farm job requiring a 40 hour plus commitment each week.

As I felt the disappointment washing over me in what was not accomplished, I noticed an eagle fly over the Christmas trees.  I set down my bag of fresh pine shavings and watched this beautiful majestic creature who appeared not to have a care in the world as it rode the updrafts created by our changing weather.  I listened as our new roosters stretched their vocal cords in an attempt to compete with the older ones.  I heard the little man whimper over the baby monitor indicating that he had awoken from his morning slumber looking for a smile, a clean diaper and his lunch.  I look around at all of the half-finished projects and then I thought to myself how lucky I am to know this life.  Coming into the house covered in sweat, pine shavings and rabbit fur, I pass the two new litters of baby bunnies and three week old adorable little bunnies who are beginning their explorations outside of the nest box.  War wounds revealed as I get into the shower made up of black and blue from walking too close to the tractor, scratches from rough cut lumber and disgruntled rabbits, and sore muscles from a full day's physical labor.  The hot steamy shower washes most of it away although the sore muscles require a little longer for the pain reliever to work.   I get dressed and ready to leave the farm for the job that currently pays the bills kissing DH and little man good night.  Some people will never know more than the concrete jungles which consume their entire lives.  

The fresh clean smell of the farm after the rain fills my nostrils and contentment washes over me in all that we were able to accomplish during the past few days and the past few years.  Soon enough I will be able to spend all day on the farm and know that we are providing for ourselves completely.  Sometimes I just need to remind myself how lucky I really am.

Photos courtesy of Google Image Searches for royalty free photos - new photos of the shed remain on the camera.  The eagle and I have a mutual understanding about having our photograph taken.

A not so productive day

As I peeled back the covers this morning after a night of restless sleep (if you could call it sleep) I groaned at the piercing sound of the alarm clock.  The house was quiet so I jumped up fairly quickly knowing that if the alarm did not cease the house would soon be filled with another piercing sound - that of our almost five-month-old son.  He stirred in his crib but did not wake.  I found clothes and dragged my tired body into the kitchen for some much needed coffee, which I found to be barely luke-warm.  This indicated that DH had been up with our little man for several hours already.  Lest I sound like a dead beat, my off-farm job is working second shift, some days 3pm - 11pm and others 5pm - 1am.  Last night I got done at 11pm, came home and watered rabbits and fed baby chickens before I went in and laid down around midnight with sleep escaping me for what seemed like another eternity. 

I stepped outside and consumed my barely warm beverage while soaking up the sunshine and hoping the vitamin D would jump start my motivation for the day. Back inside I made a couple of telephone calls and completed some paperwork before DH came in showed me the cause of our lawn mower problems - a broken clutch cable.  Onto the internet in search of a parts diagram for a tractor that is almost 20 years old; diagram found, two more phone calls and the appropriate cable located within 15 miles, DH was off.  Working around a five-month-old's schedule is interesting while trying to complete the lengthy list of regular spring projects let alone those added to the list when one acquires several dozen rabbits.  I took advantage of his morning snooze to return a couple of emails and post some long overdue photos to facebook.  Mid-phone conversation and mid-photo posting a blood curdling scream came from the other room.  I was out of my chair and across the house before I realized I had been extremely rude to the woman I was talking to in order to check on the well-being of the little man.  He was COMPLETELY fine.  He decided that he had enough of the crib and Mom was not paying him sufficient attention.  I didn't think that they learned this trick until they were much older - I was wrong.

DH returned with the cable and we went outside - all three of us - to try and install it.  Not so efficient, but funny.  Try holding a baby, holding a wrench, balancing yourself and the baby while leaning into the mechanical workings of a lawn tractor and not knocking over the tractor, falling onto DH who was working underneath or dropping the kid.  America's Funniest Home Videos would have had a good one if a video camera had been nearby.

At the end of my day on the farm (before I had to get ready for my off farm occupation), only one flower bed got weeded and a little bit of paperwork got done, the lawn tractor still has no clutch or brakes - but it runs, seeds are not planted, and the rabbit shed is not finished; but the rabbits, chickens, cats, dog and people are fed and watered, the sun was out, and Mom got to spend some great quality time with her little man over peas and turkey and backyard chickens.