Well the new job pays well but on 2nd shift I work 52 hours a week and there isn't much time to do a lot of extra stuff.
Luckily it's winter and there isn't much to do except keep the animals fed and the wood pile cut up.
But this spring I think I will be a pretty tired guy trying to get everything done.
Kind of funny weather, 2 days till Christmas and it will be above freezing. Not complaining too hard though...
Have some hay to get around while Chris is off from school and lots of wood to cut up yet. Will soon be looking through the seed catalogs too!!
We had Smith Brothers come out and take care of the 3 piggies. Sold 2 of them and kept 1. Very tasty stuff indeed. I hope to be able to plant some corn this coming year so we can do more pigs.
The cows are all shaggy for winter and the goats are dried off and hopefully pregnant. Gwen looks really loaded, Tammy is hoping for triplets....
Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Been a busy few weeks.
New job is 55 hours a week! Still training on first shift but will be moving to second shortly.
Still a few birds to get done around here but the pigs are gone.
Buddy of mine has some traveling to do this winter and he asked if we would take one of his dogs. We now have 3. The latest is Molly an Australian Shepard. She is a pretty good cow dog and a very nice girl all around. Still some noises with the other 2 yet though but that should settle down.
New job is 55 hours a week! Still training on first shift but will be moving to second shortly.
Still a few birds to get done around here but the pigs are gone.
Buddy of mine has some traveling to do this winter and he asked if we would take one of his dogs. We now have 3. The latest is Molly an Australian Shepard. She is a pretty good cow dog and a very nice girl all around. Still some noises with the other 2 yet though but that should settle down.
Friday, October 14, 2011
another day
Well it took all week but the hay dried down and we got it baled up. Pretty disappointing production though, only 2 wagon loads.
Have to feed some of it out right away as the last few were baled late Monday night. Almost missed 4H!
Finally found a job this week. I will be working at Merrill Iron and Steel as a 2nd shift maintenance man. Pretty big place, looks like it will be interesting work.
Finished helping our neighbor lay tile at his new place. Almost 2000 sq ft of marble tile..my wrists are worn out from all the trowel and sponge work.
The piggies have the garden all tilled up. Knocked down all the corn stalks...all I need to do is spread some chicken manure and run the disc across it in the spring. They will be going to freezer camp on the 18th.
Brother in law came up and we butchered some chickens. He took 13 home. Quite a load of meat. We need to finish the rest up.
Have to get all the firewood cut and split yet as well. And this year I'd like to haul the hay up and tarp it instead of continually plowing the driveway out all the way to the shed in back. We'll have to see how things go.
Have to feed some of it out right away as the last few were baled late Monday night. Almost missed 4H!
Finally found a job this week. I will be working at Merrill Iron and Steel as a 2nd shift maintenance man. Pretty big place, looks like it will be interesting work.
Finished helping our neighbor lay tile at his new place. Almost 2000 sq ft of marble tile..my wrists are worn out from all the trowel and sponge work.
The piggies have the garden all tilled up. Knocked down all the corn stalks...all I need to do is spread some chicken manure and run the disc across it in the spring. They will be going to freezer camp on the 18th.
Brother in law came up and we butchered some chickens. He took 13 home. Quite a load of meat. We need to finish the rest up.
Have to get all the firewood cut and split yet as well. And this year I'd like to haul the hay up and tarp it instead of continually plowing the driveway out all the way to the shed in back. We'll have to see how things go.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
cutting hay
Well I did get to start cutting hay last night and it looks delicious.
I'll see if I can get some videos to work on here....
I'll see if I can get some videos to work on here....
Monday, October 3, 2011
Another week
Been pretty busy since I restarted the blog. Tammy has been a blur out in the kitchen canning and drying the last of the garden stuff. Lots of tomatoes are in, she made up a few quarts of apple pie filling and we done 2 dryer loads of celery. Still have almost a bushel of apples to do, another load of celery, a load or so of carrots, and will have to see how her dried tomatoes turn out.
I've been helping a neighbor tile a few rooms in his new house. This weekend I ran the electric netting around and made a pasture for the goats. Then proceeded to fork out the accumulation of manure and bedding in their pen. I have 7 loads done and maybe one more to go.
Tammy spent yesterday afternoon working on fencing in a new pen for her piggies. Basically she did the garden and will let them run through there for a couple of weeks. I believe they will go away the 18th.
Today I am going to cut some hay. We look to have a week of good weather and it would be nice to get a third crop of the new seeding.
I've been helping a neighbor tile a few rooms in his new house. This weekend I ran the electric netting around and made a pasture for the goats. Then proceeded to fork out the accumulation of manure and bedding in their pen. I have 7 loads done and maybe one more to go.
Tammy spent yesterday afternoon working on fencing in a new pen for her piggies. Basically she did the garden and will let them run through there for a couple of weeks. I believe they will go away the 18th.
Today I am going to cut some hay. We look to have a week of good weather and it would be nice to get a third crop of the new seeding.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
A few farms pics
A few more pics as long as I'm at it.
Here is our calf crop.Fireball, Jack, Big Money and Bo.
This is our sweetcorn patch. The stuff on the left is an early hybrid, on the right is Bodacious and in the middle is that Country Gentleman stuff.
Here are Tammy's piggies. Pretty close to 200 pounds. Not much longer to go.
And here is our stash of hay.
A new blog
Had some complaints about the old site being an "attack page". I like the server and the price is cheap so I'll keep that domain name on there for other things and see if blogging over here works any better.
Been a long time since I've done any updating but we've been under some stress.
Still haven't found a job.
Had a loan approved and was ready to buy a herd of organic cows and rent a parlor to milk them but due to some problems I had to back out of that, which was really depressing.
We got rid of a few of the goats and all of this years crop of kids. I have had second thoughts about that but will have to live with it. Bought in a new Oberhasli. She's a bit skinny but looks like she'll shape up well. We should have 7 or so milking if Scamp get the job done ;-)
We have a few laying hens around yet, and 80 or so big fat meat birds ready to butcher. We have a Cuckoo Maran and some sort of Polish Banty as well. The Cuckoo has been spoken for by the chicken judge from the fair. I think Chris will make what we paid for her on that deal.
Told the neighbor kid he can have 1 big meat bird for every 5 he butchers for me. He wants to buy all the layers as well. It would be nice to not have any birds over winter for a change.
We have 4 nice looking calves out back. I was able to run them through the 4 paddocks and actually had enough grass that they didn't need any extra hay this summer. I have them on the last paddock now and since it's a bit smaller I have thrown a bale in there just yesterday. They get half a bucket of grain twice a day as well. I have 1 steer (Bo), 2 bulls(Jack and Big Money), and 1 sweet little heifer (Fireball). I will be shipping on of the bulls before winter and hope to breed the heifer next year. The heifer comes from one of the organic cows I was going to buy. She was a sweet little thing that gave maybe 30 pounds a day. Perfect animal for a homesteader. I am hoping Fireball will be the same.
Tammy bought 3 feeder pigs a few months ago and we had all of our remaining corn ground into something that we could feed them and our calves as well. It seems to be working OK. the pigs are almost ready to go to the butcher. They also get the goat milk which they absolutely love. We have never had pigs before but they worked out quite well. If I can get a couple of the back paddocks into corn again, we will be doing pigs for sure.
Chris took goats and chickens to the fair this year and did quite well. Got reserve Grand Champion again with Brigette. Pearl took a first and Cindy took a second. His Cuckoo Maran took a second as did his pen of two CornishXs. But the single CornishX pullet took a first! He took a bunch of other stuff as well. His sheaf of alfalfa and recycling project (shopping bag from a feed sack) took firsts.
We made hay on the neighbors little patch and got around 200 bales of nice grass hay with both 1st and 2nd crop. I helped another neighbor make hay on his vacant lots. His daughter took all that for her horses.
We have made 1st and 2nd crop off the 20 acres we seeded last year. Not impressed with the alfalfa but we had quite a clover stand show up. The hay was not heavy but very good quality. The goats love it. We stored the hay in the small machine shed this year because the roof is better.
Got a bit more done on getting the old turkey shed torn down but it's a slow process by myself. Took a bunch of the tin in for scrap and made a couple of bucks. Took some of the wiring in too.
Got a load of gravel on the driveway by the house so we wouldn't loose any cars in potholes.....
Been busy the last few weeks getting firewood around. Got a bunch in but there's more to make.
Tammy's garden did pretty good this year. We scaled back a bit since I was busy with getting ready to milk cows. We planted some stuff called Country Gentleman corn this year....Holy cow that stuff grew tall! It is an heirloom variety. The kernels are not in regular straight rows, but it was tasty and we will probably plant it again. The peppers did OK, we planted eggplant and go at a few to trade around the neighborhood. Tammy canned a bunch of tomatoes and beans. We ate kohlrabi till we were stuffed. The rabbits took care of a lot of the cole crops after we set them out but at least we saved the Kossacks...
So we are still working at the homesteading thing and enjoying it immensely. Have a few resumes out and hope to land something soon but the market is pretty slim at the moment.
Been a long time since I've done any updating but we've been under some stress.
Still haven't found a job.
Had a loan approved and was ready to buy a herd of organic cows and rent a parlor to milk them but due to some problems I had to back out of that, which was really depressing.
We got rid of a few of the goats and all of this years crop of kids. I have had second thoughts about that but will have to live with it. Bought in a new Oberhasli. She's a bit skinny but looks like she'll shape up well. We should have 7 or so milking if Scamp get the job done ;-)
We have a few laying hens around yet, and 80 or so big fat meat birds ready to butcher. We have a Cuckoo Maran and some sort of Polish Banty as well. The Cuckoo has been spoken for by the chicken judge from the fair. I think Chris will make what we paid for her on that deal.
Told the neighbor kid he can have 1 big meat bird for every 5 he butchers for me. He wants to buy all the layers as well. It would be nice to not have any birds over winter for a change.
We have 4 nice looking calves out back. I was able to run them through the 4 paddocks and actually had enough grass that they didn't need any extra hay this summer. I have them on the last paddock now and since it's a bit smaller I have thrown a bale in there just yesterday. They get half a bucket of grain twice a day as well. I have 1 steer (Bo), 2 bulls(Jack and Big Money), and 1 sweet little heifer (Fireball). I will be shipping on of the bulls before winter and hope to breed the heifer next year. The heifer comes from one of the organic cows I was going to buy. She was a sweet little thing that gave maybe 30 pounds a day. Perfect animal for a homesteader. I am hoping Fireball will be the same.
Tammy bought 3 feeder pigs a few months ago and we had all of our remaining corn ground into something that we could feed them and our calves as well. It seems to be working OK. the pigs are almost ready to go to the butcher. They also get the goat milk which they absolutely love. We have never had pigs before but they worked out quite well. If I can get a couple of the back paddocks into corn again, we will be doing pigs for sure.
Chris took goats and chickens to the fair this year and did quite well. Got reserve Grand Champion again with Brigette. Pearl took a first and Cindy took a second. His Cuckoo Maran took a second as did his pen of two CornishXs. But the single CornishX pullet took a first! He took a bunch of other stuff as well. His sheaf of alfalfa and recycling project (shopping bag from a feed sack) took firsts.
We made hay on the neighbors little patch and got around 200 bales of nice grass hay with both 1st and 2nd crop. I helped another neighbor make hay on his vacant lots. His daughter took all that for her horses.
We have made 1st and 2nd crop off the 20 acres we seeded last year. Not impressed with the alfalfa but we had quite a clover stand show up. The hay was not heavy but very good quality. The goats love it. We stored the hay in the small machine shed this year because the roof is better.
Got a bit more done on getting the old turkey shed torn down but it's a slow process by myself. Took a bunch of the tin in for scrap and made a couple of bucks. Took some of the wiring in too.
Got a load of gravel on the driveway by the house so we wouldn't loose any cars in potholes.....
Been busy the last few weeks getting firewood around. Got a bunch in but there's more to make.
Tammy's garden did pretty good this year. We scaled back a bit since I was busy with getting ready to milk cows. We planted some stuff called Country Gentleman corn this year....Holy cow that stuff grew tall! It is an heirloom variety. The kernels are not in regular straight rows, but it was tasty and we will probably plant it again. The peppers did OK, we planted eggplant and go at a few to trade around the neighborhood. Tammy canned a bunch of tomatoes and beans. We ate kohlrabi till we were stuffed. The rabbits took care of a lot of the cole crops after we set them out but at least we saved the Kossacks...
So we are still working at the homesteading thing and enjoying it immensely. Have a few resumes out and hope to land something soon but the market is pretty slim at the moment.
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