Farming and making hay

Today I got the scythe out and made some hay.

Eat, Play,Live, Farm

Many things have happened since my last post. Some of the bigger news is the Nanny goat had 2 buck kids. I came home one day from service and I had 3 goats standing behind the shop instead of just the one nanny.  I will post pics of the "kids" when I get a pic to post.
In the mean time , I have a few of Owen doing what he loves to do. EAT!
 Here he experinces spagehti for the first time.

It looks like it was GOOD!! don't it...?
Owen does not just only eat, he likes to play in is sand pile. And sometimes he eats it too.

And he likes  ice cream cones too, of course.

Nyle on the other hand is my "Mr. Safety". He eats right, exercises, and takes any precautions to prevent bodily injury to himself. Even at play. Take a look and see "Mr. Safety" at play on his own swing set/ slide combo gym.

Note how the helmet prevents him from banging his head on a low part of the play structure. HEe is uninjured, thanks to taking the extra measure of wearing his "brain buckett" while engaging in some play time on the swingset.
That's my boy!
  Other news is that I have made me a milking stancion. Please note that I made it completley out of salvaged materials so as to keep my carbon foot print as small as possible... OK, it was free lumber found in a dumpster. I can't beat free! At any rate, it works very well. The goat stays put, now I can milk her. But first I will have to figure out how to turn those funny looking faucets on...

The chickens are waiting to see if she leaves any feed in the feeder. The flock really like to roost on the stancion in the afternoon. I do not really like it myself as they always "drop" something on the floor, and leave it.
 Speaking of chickens, as of today they are on lock down. The strawberries are getting ripe and I found traces of picky pecks on some of them this afternoon. So the girls are going to have to do some time for the crime. I bet they are wondering who told on them, but by the looks of my shop floor, they are all "stool pigions".
Back to Gurdy- You an tell by this picture how excited and the apprecitaion she has for her new stancion.

I know you cant see it too well in this photo, but she is smiling, and just before this was taken, she was dancing the river dance! Well, I guess she could have been trying to get the last peice of briar out between her teeth, and not actually been smiling. And it is possible she had stepped in some goat poo and was trying to get it out between her toes. But I think smile, and River Dance just figures better for sure.

 I will update this posting with pics of the kids as soon as I get some. In the mean time, enjoy the strawberries!

Over.

I can fly, or can I?

The little chickens are growing up. The boyZ are enjoying them. Here are a few vids of the fun you can have with chickens. They can teach you how to fly

The dandelions have started to turn in to puff balls. Nyle shows Owen how you can blow on them and make the little white "drifters" fly and float. Except things don't go just as planned..



So as you can see, we are still having fun on the farm.
 
Our goat is getting close to having the kids. Her utter has really filled out as you can see in these photos

Got Milk?!

Our raised bed gardening is growing pretty good now. The weather is finally warming up enough.

 Rock vs wood beds. Both were free

 Onions

 Potatoes

Cabbages and stuff

I have also been getting my radio communication station going.
I can run my ham rig via computer from anywhere I can get wifi now.
Plus I have installed a CB station in the shack.
I built an antenna from wires and 2 pieces of 1x2 cut about 4 ft long.
It works really good! My tower was free too.
Although the base needed a little bracing up to stay vertical.

The antenna is about 12 ft high. I Have talked about 25 miles on it. Not bad for a free radio station.
There are lots of locals on channel 27 around here. A pretty good group.
We just been enjoying  the simple stuff. Fun and free, that's for me.
Well that is all for this update.
73

SNOW?!

Yesterday I got up and looked out the window, and ther was snow all over the place. Now we do get snow in Indiana, but come on!, my blackberry bushes are starting to bud out!!!I am posting this photo of the white stuff.

You can see my goat looking at the camera. She looked as if she could not believe it either. Today I have a fire going in the house, and I have one going here in the ham shack/shop. I've been working on getting my ham radio station setup and usable. I need to do some wire hanging and rope throwing to get the wire I have up off the ground. However I have made a few contacts, though my loop is is only a few feet off the ground. I'd like to get it up about 32 feet. I am listening to the inter coastal radio net (14.300 usb) at the moment, and I checked in so I know that the rig is working. My ham side kick just came in and so I got a photo of him pretending to make a contact.

He is a REAL HAM!
Well I better get to work on playing with my radio.
Latter to all you in Blog land    es73 om

Later today-

Owen eats some spagheti.
He liked it alot!

Warming up to the weather.

Today was our service day. We spend all afternoon out in the field. We had a pretty good day. Did some walking and spent some time with the kids. It was warm and we worked up quite a sweat. Owen can get heavy after a while. He is the Chunky Monkey. We finished off the day by watching Baby goats being born on Youtube. Nyle is interested in the process. Our goat is due May 1. Yesterday I gave her a CD/T shot. It's good for all kinds of stuff that goats have problems. The "T" is for tetanus, which I guess goats are subject  to when birthing. By giving it to the doe a few weeks before she kids she will pass the immunity on to her kids. Otherwise I would be having to give all kinds of shots to the kids when the came out. SO I went ahead and gave her the shot. Easy as pie. I had a man call me form Bloomfield that will help me dis-bud the kids. If you want to know more about that procedure, just search about it on youtube. It does not look fun, but it needs to be done if they will be around children, and these will.
Well, I do not have any thing much to add to this boring update.

 Everything is great!
Cheers!

A King Is Born!

The weather was really nice today. I have been "under the weather" for about a week. Me and both boys have had this head and chest cold thing. It made it nearly impossible to lay down and breath. I have been sleeping sitting up for the last 5-6 days. Nyle is back to almost 100% and Owen and me we are at like 95%. It was touch and go there for a little while as to whether or not I was taking Owen to the E.R. But he was pretty tuff with his cold.
So now we are all better. Just before I got sick, I went and loaded a big load of horse manure on the Chevy. It was a decent sized load. But I took sick before I could get it shoveled off and it sit in the garage for about a week. But today Nyle and I got it shoveled off the truck. Well, I did most of the shoveling. As it turns out, Nyle was a king, and so shoveling horse manure was not in his list of kingly things to doo.
Check out the video below of Nyle stating his kingly presence. He made this statement without any in put from me. HE simply stated it the first time and I asked if we could get his statement on video, and the king kindly obliged his lowly subjects request. Check it out...

So I guess as you can see Nyle is a king!

We got our raised beds filled up and got some of the good stuff out on our Black Berries and Raspberry bushes too. I hope they grow tall and sweet. They did pretty good last year on this diet. Here is a shot of the thrown together raised beds I put together out of scrounged, scrap lumber.

Note the king has his glasses on. We out down some news paper first and then filled up the box. I  don't know yet what I am going to plant there, but it will be something to eat. The king wants garlic to be planted there. I mentioned to him the he did not like garlic. He retorted that he did in did like garlic,,, garlic bread!
So I may lant some garlic  for the king.
 we also have some more chicky chicks. I got 9 Barred Plymouth Rock. I really like the looks of them, and so far I have not had one die. But that can still easily happen.
 Gurddy the goat is doing well. She is eating more, and getting big! Maybe she has 2 babies in there, I hope.
Well I will update more as more happens, and this time of year a lot is happening on the farm.
That's the news for today. Peace.

Sappin' Is Done

Well, the update is that yesterday I pulled all the taps out of the trees and washed everything up for next year. This was a fair year for making syrup. We made over a gallon. That will last us most of the year. We lost a few batches to over cooking. Burnt them on the big cooker at night.  We have decided not to cook over night any more. We will just start anew in the morning from now on.
 I've started a worm farm as noted in another post. The worms seem to be OK, but some like to crawl up on the lid and on the sides, and that makes me nervous. I have read where they will climb out and leave if the conditions aren't right. There are some who have posted that it is normal for a few renegades to be adventurous. I suppose that is who they spread through out the earth. As far as I can tell the worm farm is in good condition. If anything, I may have too much food in there, or maybe not enough paper. I think it will be all right. I think I am just a nervous farmer .
 I have been building raised beds from scavenged lumber out of trash dumpster that were pallets in the "before life". I need to go get some dirt today and fill one of the beds I just built. It is about 2x8 feet, so it should not take much dirt to fill it. I do not know yet what I will put in there, maybe lettuce, or spinach, or carrots, or a combo of all 3.
 My little seed starter that we made from a turkey roasting pan from WalMart is working very nicely. Most of the seedlings are all ready up, and hardly a week has passed.I've got a few seeds that I hope were tomatoes from last year, but I am not 100% sure of that. I guess we will see soon.
Nyle has been sick with fever and cough and sore throat. Owen seem a little cranky today too. It is that time of the year.
Well that's it for now got to go. Oh, one more thing, I am thinking about getting a few chicks to raise  again. Jen will love that!