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Mini Farm Update
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The day in the life of a stay at home mother of 4 boys trying to live a simpler life in this mass consumer age.
Here are some photos from the ‘Farm’.
Buff the Buff Orpington dust bathing in the heat trying to stay cool |
Mathilda the Australorp being careful not to get caught. |
Chipmunck the Cream Legbar and Fluffybum the French Copper Maran were not wanting their photo taken today. |
No eggs yet but any day now! |
Fava beans, Carrots, and red okra. |
Creme de la Creme melon |
Tomatoes |
Tomato flowers |
Grape plant |
Sweet pepper plant |
Bees buzzing in and out. Have to add the second hive body tomorrow! Exciting! |
one of my veggie beds. Look at all of the collard greens and brocoli and Kale. |
Just finished fencing the porch off from chickens so that we can use it and bleaching and scrubbing the deck. |
Icelandic chicken eggs in the incubator! I’m excited and hope I have learned my lesson. |
The bees are busy, my garden is really doing well with what I have planted and the chickens are doing great and I hope to see the big girls start laying soon.
I got Icelandic chicken eggs from an Icelandic girl in Washington state. I hope that they are thriving in there and that I get at least one hen.
The back porch has been fenced off and cleaned so that the family can use it again. It had gotten really gross after the chickens realized that there was cat food on the deck. They love that stuff even though they have plenty of organic chicken feed and free range of the backyard.
I will take some photos of the bees when I open up the hive tomorrow and show you how much work they have done. There was so much honey in there and my queen was laying and there was brood! I’m so excited about how well things are going. If only I could keep up with mowing the backyard too. It’s a mess. I need some sheep or a horse borrowed for a day or two to eat all of this grass.
What is going on in your backyard?
These AppleCheeks arrived in the mail and are new sponsors of my blog! |
My big boy turned 5 last week! |
Odinn decorating his cake. |
Alex getting some tickles and wearing some of the AppleCheeks we already owned! |
The new chicken coop almost finished but usable. Just need to cover the front of the coop so that rain doesn’t get in the feed. |
Buff free ranging. |
Got some plants in the garden |
Mathilda. |
He added an extra candle. LOL |
Owl! |
Guess you just started joining us at the dinner table? |
The best play yard ever! |
People ask me how I am keeping chickens and gardening. The trampoline is where Alex is happy and outside and playing so I get some free time to get stuff done. My husband also is a great help. He built the coop. I just painted it and told him what I wanted.
And last but not least….
I know it’s a mess! Wish me luck! |
I planted some Fava Windsor Broad Beans a couple of weeks ago and waiting for them to pop up and this weekend I´m planting some Organic Carrot Seeds Carnival Blend, some beets, some peas, lettuce and other cold hardy plants.
A couple of years ago I put down some weed cloth and put mulch over it. This looked great and was an awesome idea until my cats and the neighborhood cats thought that this would be the ideal place to poop. Yeah, eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww. I kept stepping in it. I got to the point where I didn’t want to go into my garden area. That, plus the heat and the bugs just caused me to quit all together. My garden became a mess and my harvest was lost since I wasn’t keeping up with it. Now I have vines and weeds growing through the cloth. What do farmers do then (this is an Icelandic saying when there is a problem)? I´m going to clean out as much as I can put down even more mulch and then put down pavers for stepping on. This means that I need to go to my city’s free mulch site and pick up LOTS of mulch.
Mathilda the s/he bird |
Owl, Buff and Mathilda getting lost in the weeds. |
OK so the chickens are growing FAST! I know one of my Easter Eggers is a rooster so his name is Dinner. I live in the city so keeping a rooster is not being very neighborly. I’m still waiting to see if Mathilda is really a girl. I go back and fourth on if she is a he or a she so right now she is a s/he. LOL. I have just started letting them free range in the backyard. They are funny to watch and much easier to keep then I thought. Don’t know why I didn’t do this a LONG time ago. If you are on the fence on this one just jump in! If this is not the hobby for you then you can sell them and people will for sure buy laying hens and your coop.
Just make sure to read books on keeping chickens so you know the basics and have a library to reference to if you start having any problems and check with your local ordinands to see if you can legally keep chickens in your city. The entertainment value alone is worth keeping these birds. I could sit around and watch them all day. In June they should start laying if what I am reading about them starting around 18-22 weeks of age. I can’t wait! I’m still waiting on my Icelandics (lay white to pink eggs) and on a Maran (lays chocolate brown eggs) and Cream Legbar (lays blue eggs). It will be so much fun keeping these fun colors in my frig and giving them to the neighbors and friends.
Waiting for my boots to arrive from Amazon. Have to have proper attire for taking care of my mini farm.
What are you doing this spring? Trying anything new? New plants, animals, hobbies?
I did it! I actually did it! I got chicks. We are now proud to introduce you to the newest additions to our family the feathery 4! No names yet. Need some help on that point. We have 2 Amereacanas (the brown ones that will lay some cool looking greenish blue eggs), one Buff Orpington (the blond one) and an Australorp (the black one). All four are 3 weeks old but boy are the Amereacanas big! Thought the Buff and the Australorp would be the heavyweights but the Amereacanas are so much heavier.
Finding that I will have to change out their bedding twice a day while they are inside. They are stinky! Thankfully my husband is almost done with the chicken tractor and I will be able to take them outside as soon as they finish this ugly stage of shedding their baby feathers and getting their big girl feathers.
Welcome chickies! Now what to name you? Any ideas form you dear readers?