So, We've Got This Going On Here Today...

Our septic leach field failed this summer. Our house was built in 1942 and the next door neighbors who used to live here say it is the same system they had when they bought the place in 1974. So I guess we're lucky it made it as long as it did!

This puts a few other projects back a little. Hopefully, we'll be able to do a new metal roof come spring. 

The old system was buried 6 feet deep! 😳

We went through 3 contractors prior to this crew who all told us different things. Turns out the Health Department will tell you whether or not you can have a leach field. And we were cleared for a new one, so that saved us a chunk of money and we didn't have to run electric for an aerator or UV system, praise the Lord. 

This is the fourth contractor we talked to. Brandon went in person to the Health Department yesterday and they came right out the same day to consult with the inspector. They dropped off their digger last night and have been hard at it since 9:30 this morning. They've gotten 2 of the 4 lines put in already. They should have it all done by tomorrow, new 1000-gallon tank and everything.

Unfortunately, the goats will lose access to their pasture until the ground settles naturally, about a year from now. I can run an extension of their dry lot out to the right of the little red barn and double that space. I'll move all of their climbing toys up there. The 6 wethers will be going out on the farm to clear brush next spring, so that will take a load off of my hay supply. I need to run new fenceline back there anyway. It will all work out.

Hay is Up!

Today we got 90 bales of sweet, second-cut timothy/orchard grass/clover hay put in the barn for winter. Man, is that a good feeling!

We bought off the same folks as last year. The lady had a whole plate of no-bake cookies for the kids to take home. They helped a good bit and got a little wagon ride on the way home. Good times! 😊

A Reviving Rain

The garden has been at a standstill for most of June and July due to little rainfall this summer. I haven't done the best job keeping up with watering the garden, very hit and miss. My cistern has gone dry and I hate using city water and running up the bill. With the help of the kids and my husband this year, I thankfully had everything mulched right off the bat and that has made a big difference. Yesterday's continuous rains finally managed to saturate the ground and the garden (and weeds) seem to have doubled in size today. 

Here are a few of the peaceful scenes I got to soak in last evening. 😊

My luffa gourds and pole beans are beginning to climb. These all were planted during the first week of June. I only put in 5 bean varieties this year as I needed the room to work with renewing several of my tomato varieties. Also, we are low on tomato sauce and salsa, so I plan to do a lot of canning with them.

These are WV-63, an heirloom canning tomato with high yields of uniform red fruit on a very disease resistant plant. They are an indeterminate, but put most of their energy into bearing. I sucker prune my indeterminate tomatoes and these stayed short and bushy after that. I put in half a row of them and they are all just loaded.

My Feher Ozon peppers are doing great. These will turn fiery red and then will be smoked and dried for paprika. It is a sweet and slightly spicy pepper. This is the second time I have grown them. I will have seed available of these later as well. 

Now, I'll share with you a moment of peace as happy frogs sing tranquilly in the little pond over the hill. Monroe, our one-eyed barn kitty who has adopted us, photo bombs at the end. She is very demanding of affection! 💗

Keeping Busy

I hope you all are staying well and getting along alright during this pandemic. What a surreal event it has been. It seems it will be a long time before things get back to any semblance of normal.

Ordinarily, I am a homebody and an introvert anyway. I could never run out of interesting things to do or means of keeping myself busy. But the thought that you cannot do something makes it oddly more desirable. I have started a lot of different little projects around here and it seems there's always something I'd like to run to Tractor Supply or the hardware store for. I try to bundle all those things into one trip as much as possible or make do.

We have gotten a good bit of tidying up done out on the farm lately. There are many pressing projects that need attended to out there. My husband has been blessed to be able to work from home, but mediating the chaos of everyone else working from home has kept him very busy in the IT department (which he technically isn't in anymore!!) He is set up with a desk in the basement and we really don't see much of him during the day. There are lots of things I wish he had time to help me with, but this has been no vacation for him.

Here are a few pics of things I am doing lately. None of which yet have included spring cleaning, ha.

Wintersowing.

 And starting flats...tomatoes, flowers, peppers, cauliflower, head lettuce, herbs, etc. I'm going to plant a LOT of tomatoes this year and do a lot of canning. I didn't plant up all of the garden space I have available the past couple of years since I was so busy. I plan to can lots of tomato sauce so I can make it keto. 

 Planted early spring veggies in the front raised bed so far.

 Pruned my roses and working on putting down new mulch on all of my beds. I know, these are two different colors! I ran out of the mocha brown and haven't been back to Ohio to get more so I had to settle for black. Not exactly a "necessary" purchase, but if I don't get it done now, I will be fighting weeds all summer.

We bought my Dad's bass boat out of the estate and my husband has been working on the old motor which wasn't running. He bought a big, thick manual on it and cleaned and rebuilt both carburetors. It sounds pretty good, but has some electrical thing wrong with it. He bypassed the kill-switch and that got it starting for now. This is has been his quarantine project and stress reliever. I don't think he would have gotten to it yet if it hadn't been for the COVID-19 shut down. Hopefully, we'll get to spend lots of time out on the water this summer. I bought a new 12-person tent too.

We're on day 13 of 21 hatching a batch of silkie chicks. After candling and removing 6 duds, I have 19 viable eggs at present.

These are some of the parents. (The Polish hen and the Mille Fleur hen's eggs were excluded, of course.) I would love to get some more Mille Fleur D'Uccles. They are the sweetest, prettiest little banties. Our silkies are very cute and friendly too. Just the right size for the kids to cuddle.

 Raising some replacement layers. These are all female Easter Eggers. The EE's will always be my favorite for layers. They have a nice temperament and I just think blue eggs taste better. 😉 I wanted to add some Cuckoo Marans this year, but I'll have to order them. I haven't found any locally.

I am totally obsessed with goats nowadays. I got my first Nigerian Dwarf does in January 2019 and spend a lot of my time studying all about good goat husbandry. The white doe farthest left is Katie and the other two are her doelings from last spring, Heather and Astrid. Lazy ol' Juji is in the barn hiding somewhere.

These are my new registered boys, both carrying milk stars from their dams. They are looking forward to having a job to do this fall. Katie is 11, so I'm retiring her. I plan to breed Rebel (black, in back) to my 2 first fresheners. He is a slightly smaller built buck than Snapdragon (in front.)

Snappy says "Hi"! Who knew you could love something so dang stinky? 😄 Both boys have wonderful personalities and can be so cute and affectionate. Everyone got their hooves trimmed yesterday and the boys stood for me much nicer than the girls do. I'm going to give them a spring shave here as soon as the weather warms a bit more.

I've been working on building them a run. They just go out in it for the day now and sleep at night in the barn until I can finish their little shed. We're putting up a privacy fence around that side of the yard too, as extra protection against loose dogs. I also have electric run around the pen.

When I can, I try to get away for a hike and some foraging as much as possible.

 

Morels are in season right now. I've been out a couple times. So far I have only found this one tiny Tulip Morel, M. diminutiva. 

 

Naturalized daffodils scattered around an old home site. My honey hole was logged 2 years ago. I don't know how long it will take to recover. The machinery spread the daffodils everywhere when they came through.

And we've been digging ramps.

 And playing in the creek.

And Savannah is really into learning to shoot a bow lately. She's pretty good too!

Things are blooming and this is my favorite time of year. I am so thankful for spring as it makes living in the twilight zone much easier to bear. So long as I stay outside and stay busy and don't turn on the news, everything is seems wonderful here in my little corner of the world. My heart goes out to those who are sick or have lost loved ones. It is hard to believe they could let something like this get so out of control in this day and age we live. 

I hope you have a blessed Easter this Sunday, in whatever form that may be.

Broody Banty, Part Deux!

Banties are so small and so good at hiding!

The bantam Golden Seabright from my previous post gave up immediately when I took her eggs away from her, but the three of them continue to fly over the fence and hide their eggs each day.

When broody banty number 2 disappeared about 2-3 weeks ago, I immediately assumed she had gone broody, but a search of our property turned up nothing. If she had made her way over to the neighbor's big barn, there wasn't anything I could do about it, so it was wait and see.

Two days ago she finally made an appearance, popping out briefly to find something to eat. She was very impatient and nervous and demanded that I bring her food right away. She then threatened to whoop the cat if he didn't get out of her way and proceeded to eat from the cats' dish. As she briskly made her way back to her hiding spot, I was able to trail her and saw her duck in here:

A small recess in the bottom of my husband's wood pile. He has been working on splitting this wood every few days and it's a wonder she wasn't squashed by the unstable pile of logs! She never came running out, never made a peep, just laid low, waiting and hoping not to be noticed. 

The weather here has been hitting record highs for the month of December with the strong El Nino going through. Many days have been in the 60's and 70's. We've scarcely burned any firewood this year so far. But tomorrow night is forecast to go below freezing, so I made the decision to move her and her eggs to a safer, warmer location.

 

Chicken solitary confinement.

I didn't want to risk finding frozen peeps or worse yet, a frozen mama banty.

She was a little peeved with me and very agitated at first, but after she ate, drank, relieved herself and preened her feathers, she finally did settle back down on her eggs. Of the 14 eggs I removed from the nest, 5 were warm and viable. I candled the others to verify their demise. We even saw these 5 WIGGLE a couple of times. Yay! :D If I remember correctly, she has been gone at least 2 weeks, or perhaps nigh unto three. We may have some new peeps here very soon!

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. As broody and sneaky as these banties are and given how chicken math works they could multiply quite rapidly come summertime. These little girls have a major advantage over the standard size pullets in hiding their nests from me. :\

Broody Banty

If you've kept chickens for awhile, then you know that most missing chicken stories don't have happy endings.  We were so glad this one did!  We've become very attached to our three banties.  They are so sweet and gentle and just the right size for the children to cuddle.

One night she didn't turn up on the roost with the others, although I had last seen her about an hour before closing the pen when I tossed them their daily ration of scratch grains.  After a brief search of the backyard the next day, this is where we found her:

What else to do with a hoard of 16 eggs, but to set them?  

This little girl seems to have her seasons mixed up.  It has been an unusually warm November this year, so that is understandable.  Maybe in the spring I will allow her to set some.  I felt really bad taking them from her and even worse scrambling them up later!

If these were fertile, they would have been a cross between our white Easter Egger cockerel and bantam Golden Seabright.  The banties have discovered they can squeeze between the gaps in the electric poultry netting when it's off and he usually flies over daily to escape our other Easter Egger cockerel who is the top dog.  So they have formed their own little band, although the banties get along with all of my other chickens and can mingle at will.

I just bought an incubator this fall.  I can't wait to hatch some eggs!  I will post pics and stories about that when the time comes.  Chicken math...you know how that goes!  :)

Another Season

Wednesday morning's hazy sunrise.

One year without internet access has gone by quickly.  And I survived it!  Having my hands very full with other things helped to pass the time. 

Our second daughter arrived on March 8th.  She was born with a congenital heart defect called critical pulmonary valve stenosis.  Basically, there wasn't a hole where there should have been.  We spent the first eighteen days of her life in the CTICU at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH.  My daughter Ava, now five, thought it was quite a vacation staying at the Ronald McDonald House.  She is a big fan of ol' Ronald.  We even saw him in the Fourth of July Parade.

Savannah Joy is 5 months old now and doing fine.  You'd never believe the difference between how blue she was as a newborn and the big, healthy baby she has become now.  We spent our first month home tied to an oxygen concentrator and a pulse-ox monitor.  Now she squeals and "sings" with some very powerful little lungs.

I had originally coerced my husband to give up the internet, X-box Live and Netflix in an effort to tighten our belts and make a deliberate drive to get out of debt.  We made the last couple of payments on our car and managed to pay off two credit cards.  Although we hit the catastrophic cap on our insurance for this year, paying off those debts has freed up our monthly budget to pay comfortably on a few medical bills.  And we have an adorable, cherub-cheeked, baby girl to show for it.  :)

Ava and I just started our first week of homeschool "tendergarden" and we had a blast.  She is really enjoying the extra attention and togetherness and has applied herself wholeheartedly to everything I have asked her to do.

Today we began a science unit study on insects. After reading and discussing our lesson, we played a game of Cootie and discussed the different parts of insect anatomy and their functions. 

 

We capped off the afternoon with a scavenger hunt and took many pictures of insects we found in our own backyard. We'll come back to our pictures on Monday to attempt to identify them all and Ava will make drawings of them in her observation sketch book.

 

Here are a few of our finds:

This busy mason bee carried a thick load of pollen on his hind legs.

 

 

We were distracted from our hunt for an ant by this cute little roan filly that belongs to our new neighbors.  She came over to say 'hi'.

Of course we saw plenty of honey bees.  My solitary hive is still going strong, although I've not worked them once this year.  If they are still there next spring and I can fit back into my beesuit, I will take up earnest beekeeping again.  Right now I am merely a "bee-have'r", but I'm ok with that.  They are getting along fine without my intervention and I have to admit there is only so much I can keep up with right now, in this season of life.

 

Wasps...not my favorite!

Here we have one of those weird moths that look like a hummingbird.

 

And the Pièce de résistance...

A very large moth, the most beautiful I've ever seen.  What a lovely shade of pink delineated on its wings!  Ava was impressed with the large "eyes" on the moth's hind wings, used for defense.  It was like God gave us a special ending for our first week of homeschooling.