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.

New Ground

Well, hello Blog. Here I am.

Looking back over old posts and photos and just what a nice way to chronicle things this has been, I regret the massive gap in time where I quit posting.

Life has been crazy. Life has been, well...life. That's how it goes sometimes.

But things are beginning to settle down a bit. Or at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I thought I'd revisit my old blog and see what I might do to dust it off and polish it up a bit and put it back into service.

I have several things currently brewing, so I'm hoping to make this a point of contact for a few things I'd like to take on in the near future. I went ahead and bought a domain name!

First thing of note, take a glance up above and you will see I changed my blog's name. Sunny Side Acres. Note, plural, acres! I am taking on my dad's 45-acre farm as my portion of the inheritance. Once the house in town is sold, we'll be signing the deed for the farm too.

[Edit 3-21-19: I've taken the blog title back to One Sunny Acre for now. I couldn't get Sunny Side Acres for my herd name. Oh, well. I am happier with my new choice -- BrightNBeautiful. So I will probably call the whole farm BrightNBeautiful Acres. This came from a poem I love, All Things Bright and Beautiful, which I read to my children (and memorized) when they were little. I like this name much better actually! When I get things rolling, I will be retooling the whole blog for a point of contact for the farm. Not a huge priority for me right now, but I have a lot of things going on that I'd like to talk about/chronicle. I want to keep this blog's info too as it is all one journey for us and I like looking back.]

It has been a long haul: helping my dad try to fight Glioblastoma stage 4 brain cancer, losing him even yet unexpectedly, no will, I had the nightmare job of administratrix, family problems holding things up, on two different fronts at that, mountains of paperwork, many phone calls, several back-and-forth trips to three different county courthouses to sort things out, a couple of break-thrus, a fire, lots of theft, lots of cleaning up, still cleaning up... It's getting there. Moral of the story: don't die without a will!

But things are starting to look better.

I felt Sunny Side Acres was the name that best wrapped it all up. That best conveys that there is still hope and a pressing on toward the future. My eldest daughter, Ava, is a budding artist. She had done this phrase as calligraphy: "Keep on the sunny side of life and the light will reflect off of you." It just struck me as perfect. It plays off my old blog name for our one-acre micro-farm which contains as much as we've been able to neatly squeeze into it. And it envelopes the dreams we have for moving forward with the new property and the hope we have to make it all that it should and could be.

I haven't any nice recent pictures of my Dad's farm a the moment. It has fallen to neglect and will require lots of work and quite an investment of money to get it up to where it is something productive. It is basically undeveloped land at this point, with one usable outbuilding on it. The 226 year old farm house was burned down just before Christmas by arson. This has started the ball rolling, I guess. There is a little relief and closure to this for me. We were going to tear the house down anyway, but we had hoped to salvage the materials. I can only imagine there were some awesome timbers underneath, maybe even chestnut! That leaves me sad. I wish I could have used them in building a new house. But at least we are well on the way to getting things cleaned up. Here is a pic of the fire:

I have a lot to update here on the blog. A LOT. For now I'll leave you with a couple pictures of the kids so you can see how they've grown.

Ava's going to be 12 in June. Savannah just turned 7 this month. We're still homeschooling.

  

And this is my two with their cousins at Pandapas Pond in Blacksburg, VA.  

And this little girl here will hopefully give us a couple of kids in mid-May! We bought two older Nigerian Dwarf does back in January. They are registered, so her kids can be AGS registered too. I'm hoping to build up a nice herd. For now, they are the most precious and comical little members of our family and they bring us so much joy. They really brighten my day. That's something we needed more of around here. <3

It Takes a Lot of Duct Tape to Do What I Do

Chickens... Did you know you can duct tape them back together? That's what I do when they get their backs worn out by the roosters or have a problem with feather picking.

Duct Tape hen saddles

Cover the area with strips of duct tape. It will stay on for about 2 weeks and protect the hen's back or any wounds she may have while they heal and the feathers start to grow back in. It will fall off on its own as the dirt and oils get under the tape. Reapply as needed until the area is completely healed. I like to choose a plain color, close to the hen's own color if possible, and the other chickens don't seem to notice any difference.

I am really loving the color and variety in my flock this year. I've got two Easter Egger roosters and they have been such gentlemen so far. I made a point to hand feed them treats since they were young so they would like me and hopefully not flog. So far, so good.

Ava named the beautiful white roo "Buttered Popcorn". He is Broody Banty's baby's daddy. The other guy is the dominant roo. He doesn't really have a name. I am always hesitant to name roosters since they usually don't hang around long. If they make it through the summer, I'll come up with a name for him.

She has given several of the girls names as well, but those seem to morph and change often to suit her mood. This little EE girl is my favorite. I love the little black hearts on her breast! So cute!

Broody Banty's baby turned out to be a pullet. Yay! I was really hoping for another layer so I could keep her.

I bought a Hova Bator Genesis last fall and have been really wanting to set some eggs, but I've held off for now since my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer in February. I've really got my hands full with that. I'm uncertain if I should just go ahead and eat my two tom turkeys too. I wanted to find some hens and breed them, but I don't really need another project right now. Especially not things that depend on me to feed them. The kids and their daddy have been lucky to get a hot meal here lately. I dunno.

New Arrival

Broody banty managed to hatch out one little black peep on Monday morning. Unfortunately all of the other eggs were duds. This little fella will have the coveted position of permanent pet status around here. (Unless he grows up to be a flogging rooster.)
 
 

Little mama has been so cute teaching him/her how to eat and drink. She tosses seed with her head, clucks and scratches around like crazy. Half of the time, he gets up there to grab a bite and she sends him flying!

 

He has cute little fuzzy cheeks, just like his daddy. I hope it's a pullet, actually, but it will be awhile before we find out. I think we'll call it either Elsa or Olaf (girl or boy) since he was born on the coldest day of the winter so far.

I had just about given up on anything hatching. I thought it had been well over 3 weeks since she had gone missing, but she must not have gotten down to business right away. It was such a delight to come out to do my chores and hear the unexpected conversation of little peeps and clucks. This is the first chick born on our property, my first hatch ever. (Well, broody banty did all of the work.)

  

I'm going to move them tomorrow to a better brooder in the basement. It's warmer down there and we can spend more time comfortably watching them.

They've really made me itch for spring! I'll be firing up the incubator here soon. I'll be hatching eggs from our mixed layer flock first until I get the hang of it.