Tag Archives: ducks

Ducks on the Loose…And Other Daily Adventures

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Our chicken field pen (also know by names like “chicken tractor”) is a few years old.  We use it to raise meat chickens on grass and raise chicks until they are old enough to move into the big chicken house. And now we use it for the ducks too. We just added a plastic pan (which is cut down from a mineral block tub) that holds about 6 inches of water for the ducks to splash around in. There’s a separate waterer, but the ducks seem to prefer drinking in … Continue Reading…

Snapshots of Farm Life

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We’ve had VBS this week. That’s Vacation Bible School if you’re not “in the know” like I now am! {grin} I’ve been manning the craft tables each evening–which involves copious amounts of school glue and washable paint and foam cut outs! It’s a lot of work to set up, it’s fun but busy while it’s going on, and then it’s a lot of work to clean up. I’ve written before about VBS adventures when I was “just a parent” {smile} Remember our year of sock snakes and paper penguins and … Continue Reading…

Fixing Fences…and Other Daily Adventures

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Beautiful Fall weather is upon us–which means we have lots of homestead chores and farm maintenance just waiting for a little attention. It’s so much nicer to take on some of these outdoor projects when the sun is shining but it’s not 27,000 degrees plus 1400% humidity outside! And lamb harvest and having customers coming around on a regular basis again is also great motivation to do a little much-needed sprucing up! {smile} Saturday it was actually pretty warm around here for October. I even managed to get a little sunburned! … Continue Reading…

Duck Transport…and Other Daily Adventures

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Well, we had another busy Fall weekend–and I wanted to tell you all about it yesterday but I was stuck in the Sprint wifi technical support automated service underworld for 4 hours and still haven’t solved our network issues. Turns out they can’t access our account without our 6-10 digit pin number (what pin number is 6-10 digits?!) and Mr. Fix-It can’t remember it and the only other option is for him to go to the Sprint store in person with 3 forms of id and see if they can … Continue Reading…

Hay Bales, Duck Eggs…And Other Daily Adventures

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Now that lamb harvest is over, we’re full-swing into prepping our place for winter. (And since it was 37 degrees this morning at chore time, I’m thinking not a moment too soon!) The first thing is food for the animals. You’re looking for a consistent quality and price for your hay–and it’s hard to find around here! Over the next couple weeks we’ll pick up a couple trailer loads of hay and a pallet of bagged feed. A pallet is 45 bags, by the way. We use Purina food (again, … Continue Reading…

Taking it Easy…the Daily Farm Adventures

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Well, I mentioned that we didn’t have any big, busy plans this weekend, and I meant it. We did a few extra chores, and had a few spurts of excitement, and got a few extra errands done, but everything was pretty low-key. Well…our version of low-key anyway. {smile} We even had company in town. My aunt came for a quiet visit and joined me in running some errands. We got our internet fixed. We did a little birthday party planning. (The Cowboy is turning 7 in a few weeks!!) And I … Continue Reading…

Cleaning the Barns, Coops, and Pens…the Daily Farm Adventures

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The crew came home this weekend. No more Momma doing the chores. It was a little soggy, but in the 40s most of the weekend. Yeah, I have to do the chores and it’s in the 20s and teens…the munchkins come home to take over again and it in the 40s. Go figure. {smile} So we cleaned out the chicken house and the duck pen. We tend to use a deep bedding system for most of the farm–particularly in the winter. That means that we go in regularly and clean … Continue Reading…

New Duck Pen

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Over the holiday weekend, we woke up to chickens out of the chicken pen. Now if you follow this blog, or our Facebook page, this is nothing new around here–it happens every few days. It happens so often I can’t even find links to all the posts about it! (But here’s one, and here’s another one!) But this time, Mr. Fix-It was home from work for the day. And the ducks were out. And Mr. Fix-It likes those ducks. Our homemade chicken pen (also called “the field pen”) is several … Continue Reading…

What’s One More? Adding Ducklings to the Homestead

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So, what’s a homesteader’s biggest challenge? Frozen water buckets? Nope. Cost (and sourcing!) of feed and hay? Nope. Storage for all the equipment, feed, animals, building supplies, and miscellaneous stuff that you need around? Not even that, I think. It’s the “what’s one more…” mentality that fuzzy feathers and woolie faces triggers. What’s one more mouth to feed? What’s one more bucket to empty? What’s one more noisy inhabitant clamoring for food, water, shelter, and attention every day? {smile} Last year we did an Easter event and had a couple … Continue Reading…

Being a Father, Being a Farmer

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So…Mr. Fix-It spend the weekend knocking things off our ever-growing (never shrinking!) to-do list while I worked on cleaning the house and trying not to scream at the football game because I was nursing a migraine all weekend. (The kiddos kept stopping in to check on me and the score because they didn’t hear anything!) Yep, Mr. Fix-It had the whole crew out with him pretty much all day on Sunday. And they were out all day playing in the woods on Saturday too–I practically had the weekend off! They … Continue Reading…

The Farm in Spring

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I mentioned last week that I came back from a conference and everything seemed to be blooming and growing–as my sneezing can attest to! Please just ignore the weed overload! A couple days of rain and a few days of 70 degree weather and we’ve had a weed explosion!! We’re working our way through with weeding and (I hope) mulching this week. So far our companion planting of strawberries and onions are doing great! The onions have doubled in size and every single one of the crew’s strawberry plants is … Continue Reading…