My Pretties...

My little girls (the pullets) have started laying! I found two pullet eggs in the hay this morning while doing chores. I've always admired colored eggs. They're so naturally pretty and hardly ever are two eggs the same shade. I've had green eggs for several years now from my Ameraucana/Ameraucana cross girls. They've always been a muted pastel green or olive green color, nothing like the vibrant pastel blue/green egg that I fiind today. I'll call it aquamarine. And I have yet to have a green egg with white doors before. I've had brown spots on them before tho.
The little brown pullet egg isn't as dark aş a typical Cuckoo Maran egg, but it has the typical copper tinge to it. Their eggs tend to get darker as they age.
I can't wait to see what the rest of the little girls start laying!

The Weather

Did the summer fly by as quickly for you as it did for us? It was a good thing for me. As much as I hate to wish away life, anytime that The Husband is gone and time passes quickly is a good thing. Granted, it was more like that saying, "The days drag on, but the years pass quickly." Or something along those lines.

There's been a lot of talk about this year's winter forecast. According to the almanac (yes, I read it and I've found it's usually pretty accurate), we're to have a "biting cold" winter with lots of snow. Another forecast I saw said lots of early snow. I'm not really sure what they count as being early. In my neck of Indiana, a white Christmas isn't rare, but it doesn't happen often either. There's been other times when it's snowed on Halloween (Not fun when you're dressed as Princess Jasmin from Aladdin, just sayin'.). Indiana weather is crazy like that.

And true to Indiana fashion, strange things have been happening with nature's way of telling us it's going to be a doozy. Of course the usual hints, like the whooly worms being brown and extra fuzzy, are showing up. One Old Wive's Tale that I had yet to try was the persimmon trick. The first persimmon you find on the ground (our type of persimmons are the kind that have to fall off the tree before you know they're ripe enough), you cut it in half. If the core is in the shape of a shovel (or a spoon depending on which old-timer you talk to), you can expect lots of snow. We actually have several persimmon trees along the edge of what we call "The Walnut Grove" where we like to camp. I didn't realize this 'till last year after the persimmons were done. Husband pointed the trees out to me, but I'm not a tree master yet so I still couldn't tell one tree from another. A few weeks ago, I decided that I was going to figure out which ones they were. It wasn't too difficult once I found little fruits on them and took note of the shape of the leaves on the trees and the look of the bark. 'Course I didn't know what a persimmon really looked like either, but I knew they weren't walnuts. We had plenty of walnuts in the backyard at our previous house, a huge one right over my chicken coop and let me tell you - they ain't kiddin' about the amount of noise a walnut makes when it hits a hen house roof! Makes a sound like a gun going off right outside your bedroom window and loud enough to wake you up from a dead sleep if your windows are open. . .
So the other night I was out walking with the kids a noticed a ripe, dark orange persimmon laying on the ground. I was excited and all giddy and took it back to the house to dissect it. . .

I've also heard it that you split a seed down the middle and the same holds true. Let me tell you - persimmon seeds are not easy to split so if you try it, watch that you don't slice open a digit.

Seeing that we've also gone from 96* to 70* in two days, I'd say fall weather is finally starting to get a good grip. I'm excited. We barely had a fall last year during the drought, and even the winter was pretty mild.
I'm in the mood for bonfires, sweaters, apple cider, and all the other fun goodies of autumn. I love all the wonderful, mouth-watering smells of the gift shops and the stands at the Covered Bridge festival.

One smell I could do without is the smell of a buck in rut. If you've never had the pleasure of getting a whiff, you're not missing much. It doesn't even really "stink", but it is a strong, part must/part urine smell. Let's just say that Mr. Tennesse definitely has a "yang" to him now that the rut has started. Goats (well, the swiss breeds like my Alpines anyway) are seasonal breeders, meaning that they have a breeding season (like their cousin, the deer) instead of going into estrus year-round like humans. The goat breeding season starts as the weather starts to turn cooler, around mid-late August and goes 'till about mid-late February. Last year, with the drought, it was still HOT in October so there were a lot of does that got bred late last year because their cycles were fooled by Mother Nature.
Being that it is September, we're into the swing of things, and my goats know it. The girls have been flagging their tails, their hoo-has look all swollen and bright pink. . . they're playing "leap frog" with each other. At least that's what I tell the sensitive neighbors/kids. My kids know what's going on (REALLY glad that when the time comes to have the "birds and the bees" talk with them, it should be a fairly short conversation. . .), but they don't know why the girls are riding each other when the buck isn't around.  .  .
T (that's what we call Tennessee for short) is hanging out over at the big farm until I'm ready for him to do his "duty" (sometime next month, whenever the girls are in heat). Despite having a pen over here to keep him separated from the girls, the temptation would just be too much and there's a good chance he'd either find a way out of the pen to get to the girls before I've planned, or there's the chance of what I've witnessed where a buck will breed a doe through the fence. Yea. They're THAT good at what they do. . .
A goat's gestation lasts about 5 months, or 150 days. Does can kid anywhere within a week (or even two) before or after her due date, just like people. The closer a doe is to her due date, the better. There's a better chance that the kids are fully developed, but without getting too big and causing problems during kidding. I plan the girls' breedings so that they kid in March. January and February are just too cold for me, you can lose kids that are born in extremely cold weather, or they can end up like Miss Baerli and missing the tips of their ears/other extremities due to frostbite. March can still get pretty cold here, like it was last year, but winter is on it's way out and it's not much longer until spring arrives and nice green grasses and the babies can be let out with their mothers to play. Plus, I just don't like having to milk by hand in freezing temperatures.

Luckily the weather is in my favor this year, the girls are starting to go into heat pretty regularly and it shouldn't be hard to get them all to cycle (and hopefully settle - meaning become pregnant) in October so we'll have a bunch of bouncing babies next March. I'm interested to see what the girls throw for me. Last year, Annie had good-sized twins, a buck and a doe (Penelope). Baerli threw triplets that were almost as big as Annie's kids! Two bucks and a doe (Miss Kay). This will be my first year kidding with Piper and Bri. Last year, Piper had twin does and Bri had big triplet bucks during a marathon labor. Bri needed a lot of help from her owner at the time (a friend of mine who is a more experienced goat-breeder than I am). She is on my "watch like a hawk" list for kidding season in case she needs help again.

But, that's all 6 months down the road. Right now I'm just looking forward to fall fun!

Going it alone

When Husband and I discussed him leaving on a second deployment last year, I'll admit that I was nervous. Nervous doesn't quite cover it - more like anxious. I'm the type that gets knots in my stomach and feels queasy when I know something unpleasant is coming up. I never quite get sick, but if things don't go smoothly, I tend to panic. Well, that was the old me anyway. Seriously, the moment we moved out to the farm, my backbone started to thicken. It was slowly at first, but then took off quickly after I became a mom and Hubs was gone a lot for Army training stuff.
But I was anxious about this deployment. The last time Husband deployed, The Toddler (who will now be known as Bo) was just a newborn, Preschooler (who starts Kindergarten in the fall, eek!) was just a toddler, and I was bored as all get-out. We went to Walmart nearly every day - sometimes not even buying anything, just to get out of the house. We went to the neighbor kids' basketball and volleyball games like we had kids playing (I'm sure the other fans weren't as appreciative of my squirming, crying kids). I know, most women aren't bored with small children in the house, but housewife stuff bores me to tears. It wasn't like we had people over all the time so the condition of the house wasn't a real priority. My priority was surviving. I did what I had to do to get through the day. I wallowed in self-pity through the winter. I got up, fed the kids, fed the chickens and the dog, and then went back inside to obsess over my Farmville game.
When spring came and things started to warm up, Bo was big enough that we could go outside more and I wasn't hammered down to 2 hr feedings around the clock. I had researched getting into dairy goats all winter. I pestered Husband enough about it through email and Skype. Finally one day he said, "Babe, if you want to get a couple of goats, go for it, if that's what's going to make you happy."

So March 19th I went and bought three does, an Oberhasli named Moonpie, a Nubian/Toggenburg cross named Coco, and her 2 week old doe kid, Belle. I came home and fired off an email to Husband complete with pictures of my new prizes. I was SO excited I was giddy. Moonpie was supposedly bred and should have kidded in about a month (turns out she wasn't) and I had my first milking goat!

Moonpie

Bo, MIL, and Kindergartener (when they were 5 mos and 2 1/2) with Belle

Coco

The first thing that Husband wrote back was, "So I see you called my bluff."
But he TOLD me that I could get goats. He said - go get you some goats if it'll make you happy. Well, that's what I heard in my head anyway, but he's learned not to bluff so much if it's something that he really doesn't want to do because I WILL call him out on it.
(I've never been good at poker, I can never remember all the rules - but I do have a pretty good poker face when I want to.)
The rest of that deployment was a mess. There was way more hardship than one person should have to deal with, but my critters and my family kept me distracted enough to make it bearable. I became much closer to God that year and I know that He is the one who carried me through it all.

So this go-'round I was anxious. I liken it to when you go into labor with your 2nd child. That first contraction hits and all of the sudden all of the pain and agony comes rushing back to you and you think to yourself; "This, is gonna suck." Only this time, I have three small children ages 5 and under; the house is at least twice the size of our old one; we have 7 acres with (currently) 7 goats, 18 chickens, a beehive, and a 40'X90' garden; plus anywhere from 10-20 dry (cows that aren't making milk right now) on the place. I knew boredom wasn't going to be a problem and so far it definitely hasn't.
But now I was worried that I wouldn't be able to handle all of it. So far, I think I'm doing an OK job by myself. What I wasn't expecting was how much Help I would need.
Help is a four-letter word (duuuhhh...) in my book. I'm one of those who is more than willing to lend a hand to anyone who needs it. I'll jump up, load up the kids, and go load hay bales at a moment's notice before I'll ask someone to do the same for me. It's a pride issue and I have to work at getting over it. Thankfully, my church family, relatives, and neighbors know what's better for me than I do.
Like this spring, a neighbor came over with his small tractor and tilling attachment and tilled up my garden SO nicely! I didn't even have to ask him, he was doing his and another friend's and just did ours while he was at it. That was a life-saver because after cleaning out the goat barn and throwing it all on the garden, my little gas-powered tiller wasn't going to cut it (it took me an hour just to try to make one pass!).

The boys were SO excited that they got to drive!

Bo helping me plant a row of carrots (barefoot, of course!), the garden looked so nice then . . .

Then, Miss E decided that she didn't like the wallpaper in the dining room and started peeling it off the wall. . . I figured I might as well do the whole room then. I realized that the hole in the wall (that we knew about) where an old stovepipe went was bigger than I first thought. It was even bigger than my second guess was too. Luckily, another neighbor and good buddy, Tim is a carpenter and was looking for work at the time so he was home playing Mr. Mom. He brought his kids over (the same ages as Kindergartener and Bo) and got it patched up (and all the other holes we found in the 100 year old plaster) like it was new over the next couple of weeks. Which was very good, because I think Husband would have killed me if he came home to the mess I had started!

Before (you can see 2 of the three layers of wallpaper that was on the walls. . .)

After - I tried to pic a paint color close to the original paint color that was put on around the beginning of the 20th century.

And then there's times like yesterday when Tim's wife, Leah sent me a text saying she was coming over to help pull weeds in my garden.(On TOP of spending several days this year so far picking nearly 70 lbs of berries and making jams. . .) Which was lucky since that was what I was already doing at the time. Not too many people volunteer to come weed, but Leah's a good ol' girl like me and she's never been afraid of work or dirt. My garden had gotten away from me since I had been so busy and for a time was under a doctor's orders not to do any heavy lifting and no aerobic exercise (yea, THAT went over well. . .). But I'm in the clear now and the garden has been my concentration.

It's great neighbors and friends like that that make farms work. It's the same way on the Big Farm too - FIL borrows equipment from other farm neighbors, and he also helps others (mostly us!) when they need it. No one can do it "alone", whether you live in the middle of a big city or you live someplace similar to out here.
Sometimes I think I'm alone working in the garden, but it doesn't take long for Mother Nature to make me realize that even if there are no other humans around, God has sent little beings to help make my work Work.
I'm sure it's part of being American that we like to think that we can do it all ourselves. That we can achieve our dreams with our own blood, sweat, and tears. Don't get me wrong - it takes all of that, but we don't realized that we can spend all the blood, sweat, and tears 'till we're bone dry and it won't do any good if we don't have God. He is the one who makes our efforts fruitful, He is the one who can take it all away too.

When you've got God in your life, you're never going it alone.

Love

Look what Hubs sent me for our 7th anniversary! I LOVE it! Pretty much sums up our life (with some kids and critters in the background, ha).

Breakfast of Champions

I'm trying out the Blogspot app on my phone so bear with me if things look funny.
Here's what my chicken's typical breakfast looks like. Scraps from the house. My two older girls who I've kept around for sentimental reasons (Dolly the Easter Egger and Missy the Cuckoo Maran) and the rooster (Rocky the mutt roo who walks like he's punching at people due to a bum leg) are free-range. I don't feed them at all save for the kitchen scraps. They survive on buggies and wormies and any grain that gets spilt around the barn.
My younger pullets (female chickens that haven't started laying eggs yet) and the rooster that accidentally got put in that batch of chicks are fed chick starter since they're penned up in the chicken coop until I can get a chicken door cut out of one of the walls. They're actually plenty big enough to go outside and I outta start letting them out to range, but I just don't have the energy at the end of the day to chase them back in at night and I can't just leave the door open to the coop or else the goats just go in and eat all the chick feed and lay around and poop in the coop.
Once the chicks are about 18 weeks old, I switch them over to a layer ration. Chickens start laying eggs at around 20 weeks old depending on the breed, and of course each chick starts laying when she's good and ready (don't we all). By switching them over to a laying ration a few weeks early, they build up calcium and the extra nutrients that their bodies will need once they start laying eggs. Again, I've got to get a door made because I prefer for my girls to be able to forage as well as go inside to get some feed for a well-balanced diet. Eggs that are laid from hens that have access to natural food sources are higher in Vitamin E and beta carotenes, so they say. There's a lot of backlash from the scientific world about these "so-called" claims that all-natural is healthier. I've got to say that on paper, animals may perform better on special man-formulated diets, but I'm not trying to raise super-chickens here. I mean, look at Olympic athletes. Their fost and regimine is controlled to the very last bîte and minute of their day, of course they out perform the average human being. But the rest of us are enjoying pizza now and then and going about our daily lives according to our own whims.
So, my average chickens get an average diet and have an average day.
I think it just keeps them happier and happy hens lay more eggs.

Blueberries. . .

Picked 15 lbs of berries at a local U-pick/Orchard, it was a good time with good friends and the kids.

Now to get to work. . .
These bad boys will be frozen, made into jam, and eaten fresh.

Where'd June Go?

Whew! I dunno about you guys, but June flew by for us! All kinds of good stuff.

I've gotten my bees settled in their new apartment. They are industrious little beings! In less than 4 months, they've filled 2 deep supers with brood (baby bees) and honey! This morning I went out to check on them and decided I'd better put a medium super on or else they'll run out of room fast and swarm.

I've gone from this:

The original hive boxes that were in baaad shape.

Fast workers!

The Queen Bee (the long one in the middle of the picture)

 To this in just a few months:

All moved in!

 I plan on harvesting honey in the spring. Commercial beekeepers, and many backyard beekeepers, harvest honey in the fall, after the bees have had all summer to gather pollen and build up their honey stores for the winter. Only, that's the problem - the bees work all summer to gather food to get them through the winter. If the honey is harvested in the fall, there's no way to predict how much food the bees will need to get through the cold weather, especially since there's no way to predict how hard of a winter we may have that year. That means that the beekeeper has to feed the bees all winter, usually with sugarwater - an artificial food source. Just like with people, when bees eat junkfood they aren't as healthy and can't fight off illnesses as well. Many bee experts believe that this is why there is a huge honeybee shortage - fairly new (and by new I mean within the last 50 years or so) diseases coupled with beekeeping practices that are hard on the bees, means that the bees aren't thriving as well.

So the plan is to follow the traditional route and harvest honey in the spring once the pollen starts flowing again. The bees have a fresh food source, any honey that is harvested is surplus that the bees can quickly replace, and I hopefully won't have to feed my bees through the winter. This will help keep my bees healthier as well and hopefully I won't have to deal with common bee problems as much either. 

Sounds good in my head, anyway.

I also hit my first goat show showing my own goats last weekend! I've gone to one other show back in May, but I was using my goat buddy, Jennifer's goats. Jennifer is who I bought Baerli and her mom, Paprika off of back in 2011. (Check out her site here: http://www.edgewoodlakefarm.com/) She's become a good goat buddy and mentor of mine.
So, last weekend we loaded up some girls and a friend of Jennifer's who shows goats in 4-H and headed about an hour away to Elnora, IN.
First up was Bri, one of my newer does. She's what we call a French Alpine, she's a purebred alpine who's lineage can be traced all the way back to goats that were originally imported from France. She's a 2 year old, first-freshener (meaning that this spring was the first time that she has kidded, and boy did she! She had triplet bucks!). She started out giving me 10 lbs (1.25 gallons) of milk a day at just 2 weeks post kidding!
Bri didn't do so hot. . . she placed 5th out of 5 goats in the class, but I knew that we weren't going to do fantastic. Not sure what her problem is right now, but she's not eating quite so much, she's lost weight and her milk production has dropped off. My hunch is that she misses her buddy Piper who went with Jennifer. Since I've gotten her home, she's done much better and her milk production is coming back. I just need to get her condition back up and we'll be in good shape. Just gotta work out some kinks, but I'm still in the learning curve.

Yea that's us (at the end of the line. . .)

This show was to be about learning, and learn we did!

Next up was Miss Kay. I was a little more excited about showing her because she's developed quite nicely and she was looking good.

Lookin' good Miss Kay!

Apparently the judge thought so too b/c she won her class! Then we went back in for the Grand Champion Junior Alpine and she won AGAIN!! I couldn't believe it! I was pretty stoked when she won her class. This was the first show that she'd been to! But then when the judge picked her for Grand I nearly cried!

But alas, all of my ups usually have a minor downer to them. . .

See, when your goat wins at a show - the judge checks the tattoos in her ears to make sure that they match what it says that her tattoos are on her registration papers to make sure that it is indeed the same goat. Goat people for the most part are good folks, but you still get some bad apples that will try to pull stunts. Well, Miss Kay wasn't very cooperative when I tattooed her and part of her tattoo didn't set in right and had faded so the judge couldn't for certain verify that it was the right goat. Now, I still got to keep the ribbon (and little cash prize), but that meant that she couldn't get her dry leg. 

"What's a 'dry leg'?"

When you show dairy goats, and your goat wins Grand Champion - they get a 'leg'. When your goat does this 4 times, she becomes a permanent champion and you get to put it on her registration papers, signifying to others that this is a doe that consistently does well in the show ring - she's a champion. You can get one of these "legs" when the doe is still a junior - meaning that she hasn't freshened (had kids) yet. So Miss Kay didn't earn hers. :( Mega pouty face.

BUT! I did not throw a fit, I was a very good sport about it if I do say so myself. I shook the judge's hand and smiled and said "Thank you". Because that's what a good sportsman does. I'm an assistant leader for the local 4-H goat club and I have kids and friends to be a role model for.

BUT MISS KAY WON GRAND CHAMPION!!!

I'm SO excited still! This doe came out of my Baerli whom I love dearly - she was one of the first set of triplets ever born on this farm (even when FIL and Hubs were raising goats as kids they never had triplets), and she was the product of a breeding that I planned with some good advice from knowledgeable goat breeders.

When we realized that her tattoo had faded, the judge looked me in the eye and said, "Don't worry about it. Go home, retattoo her so that you can see good and clear, and show her again. I have no doubt that she will win again." Good enough for me! So now to pick out another show to go to. . .

I just re-tattooed her again - and my other doeling born this year, Penelope - and it's loud and clear what her tats are so there will be no mistaking it again. 

 This is the first project that I've come up with on my own, that I have done all the work (with help of course when I come up against something that I don't have the knowledge about or that I physically can't do alone) day in and day out, that I'm passionate about and that I look forward to growing in - that I have succeeded in. In my entire life. This moment right here is why I started this little hobby farm of mine. Not for the ribbon, or 'legs'. . . but to prove to myself that I can do something that I set my mind out to do. I've always known it was there, buried deep down inside. I never had the self-confidence, dedication, or stamina to ever see any of my little pet projects through before. But I did it this time. I got over being a weather wimp and trudged my butt outside through suffocating heat, pouring down rain, bone-chilling cold, an ice storm. . . you name it - 2x a day to feed. I've carried hot water down an icy driveway to thaw a frozen spigot enough to get fresh water. I've dragged myself out to the barn to milk when I was sicker than I've ever been in my entire life. I've learned to wake before the kids (anyone whose known me through my childhood knows that I LOVE my sleep) so that I can get chores done while it's still cool in the morning and I can then concentrate on my children and the day. 

I promised myself that I would not throw the pity party that I did the last time The Husband was deployed. I feel like not only have I survived this one much better ('course we're not outta the woods yet!) but I've thrived. My kids are thriving. And not that we don't need Husband around, we always need him, we always miss him - but seeing my kids happy and healthy is a good foundation for giving us the strength to deal with the stress of having Daddy gone. 

And the best part of all? Three-year-old has decided (all on his own!) that he wants to show goats just like those big kids and his Mommy. <3 <3 <3