Boone-Doggy

I have always thought the German Short-hair Pointers are beautiful dogs. I have never been able to justify the cost of a purebred dog either. They are supposed to be amazing running companions because they can run for days!! Leigh has been wanting one for hunting purposes for a while too, but having 3 dogs and no money to burn, a GSP was not really in our future.

That was until my friend Stephanie had to re-home hers because of an idiot neighbor who complained that her dog barked (or whined or whimpered) too much (during the day mind you). He worked nights and the existence of noise in his neighborhood in the middle of the day was annoying enough to call the cops. 

She offered Boone to me for free...I just had to drive to Oakley and get him. So I did!! Liam and I decided to go on a road trip together. 

We drove up in one day and back the next. It was a crappy two days but we did it! And we got a great dog out of it! 

Boone likes Leigh the best! Which is okay with me because he is kind of an "in-your-face" kind of guy. 

When he gets hungry he sits at the table like one of the kids. 

He has also claimed Liam's bed as his own. 

The only real issue we have with him is that when we try and give any of the kids a bath we have to crate him or put him outside because otherwise he hops right in. 

He is also a pretty persistent little guy. He drops his ball politely and will wait, but if you take too long he will remind you it is there.

Boone gets a long great with the other dogs and does very will with the livestock. He has actually not killed anything and our chickens, turkeys and ducks are all free in the backyard. When we tell him to, the can flush all the chickens back into the coop. It is actually really handy! 

I was really impressed the other day because he was by the woodpile and would not come when called. He continued to bark and point so I went over to the pile. I dug through the pile and at the very bottom was 7 abandoned quail eggs. He has a great nose. 

He will start training in a few months. We have been trying to put weight on him. He is now eating twice the recommended amount of "extreme athlete" food and slowly gaining weight. I have NEVER seen a dog who has this kind of sustained energy. He fits in great at Mediocre Acres! 

Honey Harvest

It has been so long since I have posted. Lots has been going on. Today we harvested our hives. It is a several day process because we don't have an extractor...they cost several hundred dollars. We decided to use good ol' free gravity. 

In preparation you get a paint strainer and clip it over a 5 gallon bucket. 

Once you have pulled the frames you are harvesting you crush the wax and comb and all that good stuff unto a mixture that looks unmistakably like puke...

It's nice and chunky so sometimes you have to use your hands to get it out. For those of you who hate sticky hands (Mom) this would be unpleasant.

We ordered the little spigot thingy off the internet and drilled it into a $1 bucket from Home Depot. 

Then beautiful gravity does its job.

 Because the honey mixture is so viscous it takes several days to strain out everything. but for the time being we have 4 pounds of beautiful raw honey. 

It has a wonderful citrus bite to it. I cannot get over how yummy it is. I am excited that as they get more established they will make more honey! 

Strawberry Jam

Fry's had strawberries on sale for $0.97 per carton. I had been meaning to pick them up for several days but it never made it to the top of my to-do list. Finally yesterday I realized they would be going off sale today so I went out and picked up 24 cartons. 

Elliot was overjoyed at the prospect of jam!!

He likes to help in the kitchen and gooshing strawberries has to be one of the best tasks ever!! 

Noah didn't like the idea of squishing them with his hands so he used a potato masher.

There are several good things about making jam at home. One is a reduced cost. I also like that I have control over the amount of sugar that goes into the jam. I have tried sugar substitutes like homey and coconut sugar, but nothing is as good as nasty, white, refined sugar...so I just use less than I would find in commercial jam. 

Waste is also eliminated when I make it from home. After hulling the berries the hulls become chicken treats!

 Quinnie had a great time feeding them. Who needs clothes on the farm?!?!

When all was said and done, I spent $23.28 on strawberries, $9.88 on pectin, $5.97 on sugar, $4.76 on lids and made 27.5 jars of jam. That works out to a total of about $1.60 per jar. 

Woo hoo!! Now I have a year's worth of jam!

Lots of Little Ones

While we have had more loss here than we would have liked, we have also had a lot of birth. Delilah had her babies. She birthed seven babies on the 4th. All seven have survived and she is proving to be a good mother! 

Lots of chicks. Just lots. 

Our Muscovy, Helga, successfully hatched 3 chicks. She laid close to 20 eggs so three hatching is not a good turn out, but as these are the first fowl ever successfully hatched on Mediocre Acres were are excited! And as a side note, our four breeding Muscovy are named Helga, Rowena, Godrick and Salazar. (Any Harry Potter fans out there?!)

She was not a fan of me getting close to take pictures! 

Since we messed up in breed selection for Julia's poultry 4-H project we have tried to salvage the project by buying her a Silkie chick. They are bantam chickens so they will be a more manageable size for her. She is very excited. She has also decided she would like to take on a dairy goat project. We are so proud of her increased interest of what is going on here. 

When Silkie (ya, that's what she named it) grows up s/he will look like this:

They are such goofy chickens!

Nelson

Despite Nelson's initial improvement, he began to steadily decline after that day. On the 8th I noticed that he was not eating as much as the other goats. Then on the 9th he completely stopped nursing. I would tip the bottle up and milk would pour out. He would swallow, but he was not sucking. By this time, we had determined that he was completely blind on one side and significantly, if not completely, blind on the other. Blind animals can still thrive in a farm setting, but they have to be able (and willing) to eat.

On the morning of the 10th I came out to feed the bucklings and Marley and Willie met me, tails wagging, but Nelson was conspicuously absent. When I walked into the shed I found him lying down and unable to walk. I picked him up and he immediately fell back down without putting any weight on his legs. He seemed to have no use of them whatsoever.

Losing an animal is always difficult, but when that animal is less than a week old and you have taken an active role in its daily care, that loss is felt a little more sharply.

I have noticed that since the loss of Nelson, feeding time for the baby goats is less stressful. I knew Nelson was not going to make it. I knew that every day I went out to feed and snuggle him I was getting one day closer to losing him. It is easier to go out and see healthy, thriving babies.

After Nelson died I was on the verge of getting rid of our entire herd. We lost Fey on the 6th and Nelson on the 10th. There was this toxin present that was killing our goats but we didn't know where it could be. After discussing recent events with out vet, we determined that when we dug out a portion of the goat pen to put hay on the garden, we dug up some decomposing hay (which is great for the garden, but toxic to goats). Bailey ate some and got sick. Fey ate some while pregnant and it killed her and caused some amount of brain damage to Nelson. Nelson died as a result of that brain damage. .

This realization made me feel better and worse at the same time. It was our actions that caused the death of Fey and Nelson, but it was no longer a mysterious toxin lurking ready to kill the rest of our herd. We were fighting a known enemy. Now we have a plan of action. By attempting to clean out the pen right now we will be exposing all the babies, Mary Jane and Bailey to more of the toxin. In the coming weeks we will be borrowing a tractor, pulling down the fence (it needs to be replaced anyway) and digging out the entire pen. New bedding will be put down and a new feeder installed.

We made a mistake and we can not go an un-make it, but we can learn from it and improve the way we manage our herd.

Chickens, Do My Work!

We have lots of poultry right now. Like LOTS. We have 39 Cornish Cross meat chickens, 9 broad breasted white turkeys, 11 broad breasted bronze turkeys, 6 barred rock chickens (these were supposed to be Julia's 4-H project until we realized that a barred rock is entirely too big for her to show at only 8 years old.) 1 silkie chick (we got it for free and it is a far better breed for Julia to show) and 23 assorted layer chicks. This is in addition to the 4 Moscovy ducks, and 1 Peking duck. We have acquired all of these birds in the past 3 months. We have a current laying chicken stock of 10 hens and 2 roosters. That is over 100 birds on the property!!! 

Raising these animals humanely is the top priority for us. It is important that our birds are able to eat greens and bugs in in addition to the feed and water they get. Protecting them from the dogs and the raptors that fly around is also important. Our answer for our meat birds is chicken tractors!! They are 3x5x2 cages with no bottom and a hinged top. I do all the building here because spacial relations are not Leigh's strong suit. But I do use him for the heavy lifting. 

Look! It's a picture of Leigh! 

The added benefit of the chicken tractors are mobility. Coincidentally (well, it's not really a coincidence) the tractors fit into our garden beds. Every two days we move the tractor 5 feet down the bed and this gives the birds fresh greens and bugs. The birds also drop delightfully free fertilizer onto the beds. Their scratching tills the fertilizer into the soil and then we can go through with a hand tiller and dig it a little deeper.   

These Cornish crosses are 5 weeks old. Harvest age is 6-8 weeks. We will harvest closer to 8 weeks as we break ours down into breasts and leg quarters. We have found that this makes the meat go farthest when feeding a family of 7. 

These are some of the younger chicks. The darkest birds are the bronze turkeys, the whitish fluff balls are more Cornish crosses, and the light brown birds are layers. We splurged on our brooder this year. We bought a galvanized tank for $135 at the feed store. It was one of our better extravagant farm purchases! We like that the birds don't have to live on cage floor for any portion of their life. It is easy to clean and disinfect in between batches of birds and I'm not worried about my shoddy workmanship biting me in the butt. If you can purchase one of these with cash I highly recommend one! 

We are very proud of the growth of our poultry program this year. We plan on running another round of 50 Cornish crosses and another round of 40 bronze turkeys. Now, if we could just get our goat milk to be as productive!!  

Gotta Get That Green Thumb!

Leigh asked if I could take the lead on the garden this year. I am a bad gardener so that was a little stressful. Though I come from a long line of farmers and backyard gardeners, I tend to kill stuff. I give it too much water or not enough water. Sun exposure is a mystery to me. Don't even get me started on growing seasons and fertilizer! 

We start our seedlings under grow lights in the shed in February. We re-pot  into bigger containers the end of March and then transplant to the ground mid-May. Our last frost date is May 5th. (We are at 4600 feet so even though we are in Southern Arizona, we get cold!) 

We do direct sow with many of our plants but the watermelons, zucchini, melons, tomatoes and peppers are potted first. We also start all the herbs and greens in small pots. They will be grown solely in containers on top of the rabbit hutches to maximize space and help keep the bunnies cool this summer. 

They are getting to spend a little time outside in the direct morning sun now.

These mint plants are a little victory of mine! Our neighbor gave us 2 cuttings of mint that had a little bit of root growth. I potted them in organic potting mix and remembered that they like LOTS of water and a shady cool place. They have taken root and have lots of new growth. I need to remember to fertilize them! 

Speaking of fertilizer, I am thinking that my zucchini might be needing some fertilizer...or maybe it is getting too much direct sun. Maybe the air is too dry...Remember how I said I was not a good gardener? Well, this is why! I fertilized with fish emulsion and pinched off the crinkled leaves. I also am giving them less "outside time"

They seem to be doing better...I think.