Tag Archives: family-friendly farming

Chickens, Chickens Everywhere

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Our chicks moved out of the brooder house and now they’re comfortably on pasture while they finish growing up. A few more months into the summer and we’ll see their first eggs and then we’ll move them into the chicken house.

We move their pen every day or so to a fresh spot for sanitation and some fresh protein. Did you know that chickens will eat grass? Yep, some. Not like a sheep or anything, but some. They’ll also eat just about any fruit, vegetable, or bread scrap from your garden or kitchen. We also give ours some rice or pasta leftovers–they love leftover mashed potatoes! Much like feeding your dog table scraps, we just stick to a 15% rule. No more than 15% of their diet can be anything other than vegetables or bagged feed.

If you look close, you can kind of see that their ground is kind of "worn out" inside the pen...you can also see that we used part of our Christmas float to reinforce it a few weeks ago.

When we move the pen, the kids job is to make sure all the chickens keep moving forward with the pen, and that no one gets stuck under the edges. The water-er sits on a little “platform” made inside the corner by the cross-bracing so it can slid along without being pulled out. Sometimes we pull out the feeders and sometimes we just slid it along and they slid along when the edge catches them.

Mr. Fix-It has been known, on occasion, to move the whole thing by hand. I have never been know to do that. We usually use the Ranger or the mower.

One thing about having them outside like this is that their food is exposed to more moisture, etc. so we don’t use a large feeder out there. We would have to pull it out and move it constantly, for one. And if there’s an unexpected thunderstorm while I’m at work and it’s not far enough under the enclosed section, there goes a whole bucket of feed. We just use black rubber feed pans (which are used for the sheep during lambing season!) and fill them up in the morning with about 1 day of feed.

Besides, it’s good for the kids to have regular, every day chores. {grin}

The Cowboy is always up for helping out. Mr. Fix-It just tells him to get his boots on and catch up. He never asks why, never complains, nothing.

I had a fascinating discussion about farming and food choices at dinner on Saturday night with Jules, Tracey, and Amy. It got me all excited again about ways to use the farm and this blog to teach people about sustainability and stewardship. It reminded me that people really do want to know, and really do want to make good decisions and choices for their families…and maybe even get involved. (Backyard chickens anyone?)

So I’m considering doing some homesteading interviews and maybe some farming question-answer posts. I’m even kicking around the idea of a few simple farming and livestock “lesson” pages that parents could use with their kids (especially in combination with a farm field trip!)

Do you have any farm or animal questions you’d love to ask?

Running Through Sunshine

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Things at the farm are just sort of…running along. It’s the “growing season.” Meaning that everyone and everything around here is focused on growing–meaning eating!–and that’s about it.

Speaking of growing...

The lambs are just eating and growing and looking good for this September when we’ll sell breeding stock and haul a group up to the processor before we start our breeding season.

I love these pictures of Penny in full motion with the kids!

We’ve got some breeding cows listed for sale and we’ve got our bull calves eating and growing and getting ready for their ride up to the processor too. Our freezer’s getting a little bare and we’ve been completely out of lamb for a couple months already.

Can you believe that my baby is going into preschool this year? I'm crying right now.

I’ve got a group of layers growing up out in a field pen on grass right now too. Between age and an unidentified sneak-thief, my laying coop’s been decimated this year. I’m excited for some young blood in there, and I’m very excited to see how some of the new heritage breeds we picked are going to do once they’re in “full production mode” next summer.

My Ladybug's got a birthday coming up. She's 6, going on 16.

Speaking of which, Mr. Fix-It got me a 5-gallon bucket feeder for the chicken house a while back so I don’t have to be out there hauling feed every. single. day. (We don’t keep it in the house much because it takes up room.) It just occurred to me this weekend to put the big bucket feeder out with the 21 chickens in the field pen (whom I’ve been feeding twice a day) rather than with the 3 chickens in the chicken house (who have been taking nearly 10 days to eat it down). Umm, DUH!

I guess the idea of “lazy summer days” has really taken root in my brain!

Penny's growing too. She's tripled in size in the last month! (She's got to try and grow into that tail!!)

Our garden’s growing pretty good, although the heavy rains last night were pretty rough on it. We’ve got several gallon bags of green beans in the freezer already. Mr. Fix-It and the kids have been busy out there!

Oh yeah–and we’ve got TWO peaches ripening on our tree right now! TWO! Our first peaches–I’m so excited!

The beautiful fruit of their labors!

Oh yes, and our sunflowers are growing. The kids only planted half the field with their little seed-throwing party back in May, but that half looks great! It’s more than enough for them to explore, run through, and play hide and seek in. It’s like their own little playground!

What’s going on around your house?

 

Farmhands–The Under 4 Ft Edition

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Yep, we had to move animals again. We had a cow break through a fence wire, so we had a tangled mess to clean up and sheep to move to new grass last night. Under dark, dark clouds (which is why some of the color in these pictures is so…interesting). But at least it was cool and breezy.

First I moved the horses. Our sheep are mostly kid-sized. Horses and cows, not so much.

Then we opened the gates.

The Ladybug is my gate expert of the bunch.

Then the Cowboy “hyip-hyiped” the sheep. It’s his favorite job. (Yes, “hyip-hyipping” is an official job around here.)

See my boy playing border collie back there?

Even Speedracer was working this time. We’ve decided he’s not getting off easy just because he’s the baby any more.

You can always tell the rams because they're the first to leave the ground when on the move.

This was probably one of the easiest moves we’ve had all season so far.

I think the sheep respond well to the kids. They’re not intimidated, so they don’t freak out and run away. If anything, they’re more likely to challenge the kids by running at them. Some of those ewes are very canny judges of your commitment to standing your ground.

I'm sure them wanting that fresh, green grass helped too.

Then it was back to the old pasture to round up our fencing mess. The temporary fence is usually hot, but once that cow busted through it, it was off. Then it was a free-for-all with everyone going over it, thru it, and dragging it down off the posts and around the field.

Speedracer doesn't really know what he's doing, but at least he's trying.

The kids know how to do just about everything besides actually set the posts–they’re just not quite big enough for that yet.

The Ladybug and the Cowboy walk the line from end to end, unhooking the wire and gathering the posts.

But they can run the fenceline down the field hook the wire to the post. Or they can unhook the wire and collect the posts as they walk back.  They even know how to hook the alligator clips at the end to turn the temporary fence hot–although we always turn the whole thing off when we’re out there working as a family.

The older kids can work pretty far away from me because they know what they're doing.

Once everything’s unhooked, we started rolling it up. This is something I usually do, but the Ladybug really wanted to try it. It’s a bit of an arm workout, but she took it in stride.

She's got it under control!

Then Speedracer went to work, loading the reels onto the Ranger. He has to work close by so I can keep him on task. (And because his legs play out faster.)

There's 3 reels for each temporary fence section.

Those reels are heavy when they’re fully loaded.

At least, they are if you’re 3.

I was proud of him, he didn't complain or give up.

But he was game to do his part.

This is where I usually have to find some patience because it takes him forever! But I’ve got to zip it and let him work at his own pace if we want to encourage him.

He managed to get them in there without my help at all.

Then the boys took a break to start sword fighting using fence posts.

Which I put an immediate end to.

Then they started hacking at some tall weeds that managed to survive the hungry sheep with fence posts.

Which I put an immediate end to.

Then they started chasing grasshoppers with fence posts.

Which is when Mr. Fix-It came over and suggested we call it a day.

 

Farm Travel Advisory

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Spring is a great time to be out on the farm. People love to come visit and see the lambs, the calves, the chicks, oh my! And we love to have people come out.

Sometimes.

Sometimes people’s perceptions of farming are…surprising. Sometimes I forget how things look from the outside. (How I used to see things too!) And I forget that, while I’ve seen farms bigger and smaller and cleaner and messier and everything in between, sometimes our visitors have only seen us. And this is what makes it so important that we constantly allow people to come here, to bring those fresh, curious eyes, to question our methods, to stack us up against their books, their movies, their CNN Special Reports, and their grocery store labels…to challenge us to uphold the truth of what we’re doing.

So these are just some thoughts I wanted to share with you in case you’d like to visit your local farmer (with some lovely but completely unrelated pictures of our horse to keep you from getting bored!) ’cause we’ve seen and heard some strange, strange things since we started this journey…

This horse gets fat just looking at grass.

1. You should go to the farm. You really, really should. You’re eating it. You’re feeding it to your kids. (Do you know how many children die from food-borne illnesses a year?) You should absolutely be able to see where it comes from, what it looks like, what it smells like, and know who’s doing what to it.

So we put her in the alleyway between fields, away from the green stuff--and our gelding (who needs the green stuff!).

2. Farms are private property. Folks, this is not just a place of business, this is our home. And just because I said you should go visit doesn’t mean you should roll up in the driveway and demand a tour any old time ya want to. Call ahead. Or if you just stop by (because we really don’t mind that and have meet some wonderful people that way!), be polite and don’t be surprised if right this second is a bad time. (It usually isn’t, but it could be.) And DON’T–I mean DON’T–get out and starting walking around wherever because you’re just curious and want to see the baby animals.

She wasn't very happy about it so she spent 2 hours running back and forth (it's about 1700 feet long by 25 feet wide)

I can’t even believe I have to say that, but people tend to just pull into our driveway and somehow on their way to the door (I hope) just wander straight over to the nearest fence to see the animals. I’m sitting there scrapbooking while my kids are taking a nap and suddenly there’s a stranger’s head bobbing past my bedroom window…This is the country, people. That’s a good way to get yourself attacked by a dog. Or worse.  Not to mention it’s just rude. Look around, sure. If you see us, feel free to walk over. But don’t just start wandering around like you’re in a shopping mall or something–our garden hose is not for sale just because it’s laying next to the driveway.

Diet and exercise--killing two birds with one stone!


3. Don’t make smart remarks about the animals. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears (and money) go into these animals. Sure, some of them are unique and interesting looking. But if you don’t mean it as a complement (and saying “wow, that one’s eyes look really weird” is not a compliment) just keep it to yourself until you’re back in the car. (Especially if you happen to be a guy with several piercings, tattoos, hair colors, and are wearing platform shoes to visit a farm or country fair.) I’d hate to feel forced to “compliment” you back. We’re not raising 1,000s of animals here–even if it looks like a lot to you. We really do know each one and how they got that gimpy leg or funny twisted horn (and it usually involved a lot of blood, sweat, and tears from us AND them). And we love ‘um just the way they are.

And she does look beautiful in motion...

And the most important…

4. Don’t chase the animals. Sometimes they chase back.

Hidden and Not So Hidden Blessings…Thankful on a Thursday 03/03/2011

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Today I’m guest posting about my story of renewal after being put through the fire, As Gold is Tried, over at A Steady Rain for Rachel’s moving series on Hidden Blessings. I hope you’ll stop by and read through all the posts. Really, they’ve all been amazing and have brought me to tears more than once. Truly healing.

 

But since it’s also Thankful on a Thursday, I couldn’t resist sharing our not so hidden blessings this week too.

Yesterday morning we woke up and checked outside to see if we had any new lambs, just like we’ve done for the last couple weeks. And guess what we found!

"In Dixieland where I was born, early on a frosty morn'..."

You thought it would be a lamb picture, didn’t you?

Seriously adorable, no?

We weren’t expecting this little one yet, either!

But he/she seems to be healthy as a horse (ok, just for the record, horses are not known for being particularly hardy anymore, so we’re going to have to come up with something better than that eventually) and frisking about fit as a fiddle.

Molly is an outstanding mother, by the way.

I came home yesterday afternoon for lunch at about 3:30 (yes, it’s been a rough week at work) and was sneaking around to get that close-up picture of him/her and guess what else I found!

Oh! Hello there!

Yep. Our first little lamb of the season was born later that day! A healthy little girl weighing in at 10 lbs and 13 oz. While we started out the season hoping for twins from all our mature ewes this year, with this pregnancy toxemia scare, we feel extra blessed by every single healthy baby we get now.

They now sport matching green #1's painted on their sides to help us keep track of who's who in the "nursery pen."

Her Momma had her cleaned off, dried off, and warmed up without any help from us at all. That’s a good ewe! So now we’re hoping the rest of them are coming any day now (since they’re breed in groups, it seems to have a sort of domino effect once the first one lambs) and we’ll keep you posted with lots of adorable baby pictures–’cause I just can’t seem to put my camera down. They’re so darn cute!