Farm Life, Not Always Easy

Going away for the weekend is much simpler in the summer. We fill feeders, extra water buckets, double check fences and pens, then ask my parents (our very close neighbors) to keep an eye on everything.  Pretty simple and rarely do we have problems. This time was the exception. Thankfully nothing major just a dead rabbit and a missing barn cat Louis. The rabbit probably died of old age, bought her last summer at a sale unknowing of her age.

 Louis the barn cat, not completely unusual for him not to turn up when we come out, but he usually is out later when we call. Especially in the evening when we feed him. So I wasn't very concerned last night when we got home and didn't see him, figuring he was out hunting and I'd see him in the morning. Well I got a late start to my outside chores today and still didn't see or hear him. Not too worried I went to chat with my parents and see if they had seen him near their house. Sometimes he gets into their garage to play with the dogs. That is when Mom told me she saw him on Sunday morning but when she went to feed him Sunday evening he wasn't to be found.

Louis first exploring the barn

Today is Thursday. I walked around our whole property  the front bush/tree row by the road, the old established tree row next to my parents house, around the small pasture, calling and shaking a can of cat food.  It is very unlikely I"ll see Louis the barn cat again.

Louis always was under foot when we were outside. He liked to run ahead and lay in your walking path to get attention. He played chase and wrestled with my parents dogs. He'd sit on the freshly tilled spot I was about to plant seeds. He was mostly afraid of the chickens and could get around one or two but would run away if I was feeding the whole flock and the birds came running towards him.

There is a chance Louis is just lost and will come back, but I have to be real and honest.

Barn cats come and go, I know this from Grandpa & Grandma's farm - one summers pet barn cat wouldn't be the same pet barn cat the next summer.  The life of even a pampered barn cat like Louis is rough when living outdoors. There are is the road with cars and trucks, predators like coyotes, hawks and eagles. Just didn't expect to lose him in the summer.

Louis, I'll miss you 

It has to end soon

The Rain that is. We have been getting April showers now in the end on May. I have managed to get most of the garden planted. It takes more time then I'd like and I've had to spread planting between rain days. So far I have 10 - 25 ft rows of potatoes - a solid purple variety and Yukon gold; 6 - 10 ft rows snow peas - plan to  blanch and freeze for stir fry; 6- 10 ft rows of green beans - plan to can these; 4 10 ft rows of red Swiss chard. At the south end of the garden is for squashes: 6 hills of cucumbers, three pie pumpkins, three hills blue Hubbard squash, three yellow early summer squash. And as a added bonus I planted giant sunflower seeds around each hill of squash. Maybe I can get the cucumbers to climb the sunflower stems, if not it will at least give a cool vertical element to the squash section.

One of the rare sunny days I got to garden. Louis the barn cat  helped.

I ordered 50 strawberry plants however they arrived early April when we still had feet of snow on the ground. In a panic I put them in pots in my house, then in May worked on hardening them off.
They did well up to the hardening off stage when most died. Grr, I planted what was left alive on May 17th, I think there are currently only four living plants. I've since learned I could have refrigerated the strawberry crowns for a couple weeks in April to keep them dormant. Lesson learned, that and don't order strawberries from a catalog  who's shipping dates range during our 'winter'.

Now the dwarf blueberries plants I ordered did much better. I got three of these last year, I potted them and let them be outside all summer then brought them inside with my other house plants over winter. Sadly all of last years varieties failed to leaf out this spring. Triming the edge branches proved greenish stems that were dead and brown inside. Sad. This year I planted them in the ground next to a small heirloom lilac we transplanted from my grandparents homestead. Hopefully they will survive and not get plowed under next winter when we push snow.

North Sky variety front, Top Hat variety last two

Butcher Time!

Finally the giant snow bank in front of the pig pen melted and we could get the tractor back to their pen. Now if the stars had alined we would have done the butchering a couple weeks earlier. But work schedules, weather and naughty bunny rabbits had other plans. The first scheduled day we had rain (not a big deal) but the 40+ mph wind gusts stopped us. The next scheduled day we discovered the freezer cord I'd carefully kept away from the bunny cage slipped and they ate through most of the wires, why they are not dead from the live wires we don't know. We spent that day fixing the cord and cleaning the stinky freezer then waiting for said freezer to get cold again. 

 Finally May 21st we took care of those pesky pigs. The day was very very wet rain, fog, mud. Plus we used the hose to keep everything clean making more wet mess. Surprisingly my brother had the day off from his oil field job (too wet) and volunteered to help us. What a blessing having another set of hands was. 

Richard sticking the pig, my brother in the yellow helping.

Everything went very smoothly. It was a long day but we got both pigs down and wrapped in packages in the freezer by just after 7 pm.  245 pounds of wrapped pork - Yum. We left the hams whole and I need to find a place to cure them and the bacon. 

needless to say we don't save the pig feet

Yummy pork!

 

That is all I've got for now. Here is to the rain letting up and my garden growing. 

Goat Babies and Milking

Since my last post we have gotten more snow and goat babies. I'll start with a picture of the pasture where the goats live. You can see the red-neck shelter and bales we use as windbreak. No pens or many places to corner and catch a goat mamma to milk her. A note, I am standing on the stack of straw bales next to the barn, the edge of the barn roof can be seen in the right corner.

Now for the Goat Babies:

First Streusel had twins, a week early, on a stormy cold windy day and we lost one. Everyone got blankets to keep warm the first few days. We used different colored vet wrap for each set of kids to keep track when they were little.  These are Streusel's first kids, and we planed on milking her however she isn't quite tame enough to catch every day.

Patches here got lots of attention she is a real pet.

Next Muffin surprised me one evening with triplets. Two bucks and the cutest doe ever. Muffin is an sweet doe of unknown age, she has also become our exclusive milking doe.  Kids get put in the chicken coop/barn at night, we milk once in the morning.

Socks is the little black and white doe. She was quite the handful getting stuck and needing rescuing . Her brothers don't have names.

 

Third to give birth was Cake, our bossy older doe. She calmly had twins one evening after feeding.  So uneventful was their birth I didn't take any pictures of the kids after birth. Or any with their cute little blankets. Probably because we are not planing on keeping Cake or her kids. Or more likely I was too tired.

Cake is the one with the green halter. Her twins a black doe I call Star and a tan buckling.

Finally a couple days after Cake, Sprinkles our other first time mom had her baby. As big as she was I thought certainly she would have twins. Nope I found a big buck kid back behind the flax bales wet and cold, Sprinkles only kinda knew what to do with kid, mostly she ignored him. She just isn't very high in the herd and wasn't let into the shelter. We quickly dried the buck off and he spent the night in the house. The next day after a bottle of colostrum (from Cake none the less) I brought him back outside where mom quickly  took over and he happily nursed.

Meet Silly who was born as big as Patches at a week old. He rarely spends time with mom, and  is always trying to nibble on my clothing. Hence why he got the name Silly.

Now on to Milking. 

We had planned on milking at least two of our goats if not three. However we quickly learned that in order to milk one has to be able to catch said goats, said goats have to be tame. Tame has a new definition in my book, like puppy tame, catch-able  not just eat some grain out of your hand or bucket, but huggable, and able lead. This tameness issue and our lack of pens quickly led to the conclusion of only milking our friendliest goat Muffin who has triplets.

 It still isn't easy to catch Muffin everyday, But diligence and persistence are my goal, not a ton of milk production. So far it has paid off. We catch the kids at night and they sleep in the chicken coop/barn structure. Then in the morning I chase Muffin around and around until I can corner her in the redneck shelter or over by the water tank, then we walk/drag her to the milking stanchion where she mostly relaxes and I can milk her. So really it is the catching that we have issues with, Husband works every three days and it is a blessing when he can help me catch her.

One quart a morning is now my current goal after a week and half of once daily milking. I could probably get more than a quart from her, however I don't worry because a) I am consistently getting one quart a day, b) my hands are new to milking and get tired, c) Muffin has triplets so they get anything I leave.

Milking Muffin this morning Saturday March 20, 3013

Late Winter at Wienhold Farm

Working full time and dealing with feet of snow and cold, not to mention having to bundle up like the Michlen tire guy every time chores get done. Doesn't leave much energy for blogging or picture taking. The last few days have been warmer, highs in the upper 20's and sometimes 30's, you can almost start to feel like spring might be around the corner. I however am skeptical as March in Northern North Dakota tends to get nasty with wet, snow, wind, sleet and sometimes rain, oh and the occasional blizzard.

 Currently they are predicting a 90% chance of precipitation starting with sleet, then wind and blowing snow. Yay us. The current temperature is 31 degrees F.  It is these kind of storms that I worry about my livestock and animals. We only have a hoop structure built with cattle panels  plywood, and tarps as a shelter that is protected by 6 large round bales of flax straw (solid old bales of flax straw that doesn't decompose like oat or wheat straw). This hoop structure I call our 'Redneck shelter' it functions all the livestock can go in and get out of the wet, even the pony.  It started the winter at 5 1/2 feet at the center of the hoop, since the winter and goats have helped it has fallen to one side like an airplane wing, thankfully the pony can still get inside. I worry in this winter/spring weather if it will be enough shelter, yet it is all we have and it will have to do.

Here you can see the Redneck shelter, it has fallen over a bit, but the pony can still get in and out. The goats love it.

Speaking of goats. Aren't they looking huge. Cake our bossy mean mamma goat is front and center in the above picture. She is as big around as she is long - And still has a month to go, aprrox. We just ran a billy with our girls in October due to busy life and don't know exact due dates. Here are some other pictures of the other girls.  They got an extra straw bale in the Redneck shelter to prepare for the storm.

Sprinkles is the black one and Streusel  is the multi colored one.  Both are yearlings and  hopefully bred.

fat tummy

Two babies? Three or Four is my guess.

Muffin is the white shy but very sweet goat in the back there. I  am thinking twins for sure.

The newest additions to Wienhold Farm arrived by car at Christmas time. My in-laws brought us two weaned baby pigs for Christmas presents.

cute and lived inside the barn for a week or two

Then they grew, and grew and discovered their pen wasn't very strong and getting out was much more exciting then staying in. What trouble did they cause, just digging holes to trip in (inside the barn) chasing chickens and such. So we moved them outside where they have continued to grow and be pigs. It is so nice to clean out the fridge and know they will be getting a special treat. Bacon and Sausage are their names, helps us remember how tasty they will be. I dislike the smell of pigs and just find them kinda gross animals, but love pork, sausage and bacon. We'll probably always have a couple.

Next up on our tour of Winter at the Wienhold Farm. Is the barn (chicken coop). To prepare for spring cleaning I have been trying to clean, shovel out a few scoops of manure every warm day. Not adding anymore straw or shavings to the deep litter in the barn. My hope is to make this tedious task easier by doing a little a time. Today however with sprig storm coming I broke open two bales of straw for the chickens to play in. They hate going outside in the snow during the winter. We have very happy chickens.

The weird looking thing with a cat door is the cat house. There is a  blue feed scoop on top of it.

I should explain the 'Cat House' that you can see in the pictures. Louis our resident barn kitten is afraid of the chickens, he wouldn't eat his food if there was a chicken sitting next to him or if a chicken was looking at him. Richard designed this place we could feed him where he would be safe from the chickens. It took a while for him to learn to use the cat door but once he figured it out it has been golden. There is a hinged lid on the back that we can lift out the food dish for filling. Sometimes I think he sleeps in there too.  Louis is grown since last fall when we got him. He likes to help us around the yard and barn yard, chasing and pouncing on this or that.

playing in the hay

That's all for now folks. Big news and more posts coming soon. 

2nd Annual Bath Tub Chick Days!

 Yep you heard me, I've once again got chicks in the bath tub. After a predator got my three fancy silky trio (two hens and a rooster) I was very very upset and in my upset ness I ordered 35 Silky chicks off the internet. The internet can be very dangerous that way so watch out. Twenty-five is typically the minimum order so I may have gotten carried away by ordering 35 chicks.

They even arrived a day early. Bonnie the cat is most disgusted with newest arrivals. Typically it means I sit in the recliner less so she the Queen of Lap Cats doesn't have a warm lap.  Oh well, I am getting the chicks settled in. It has been a bit more difficult finding a sutible brooder box for them to live in (in the bathtub). This is a good thing as it means we have gone through and gotten rid of most of the large boxes we moved in with.  (YAY) So I had to use a empty clear plastic tote, just means more cleaning and no more switching to a clean cardboard box. I sure get better pictures without the extra brown/yellow reflection from the cardboard. 

Cute and Fluffy

I do believe that raising chicks in the fall will be a Wienhold tradition. Someday perhaps they won't all end up in the bath tub but knowing me a few always will. Fall chicks do have their place. As my hens started last fall grew up all winter and started laying eggs right away in the spring. Spring is an excellent time for the hens to be starting to lay. But if you get chicks in the spring then they do all their growing in the summer and don't start laying until fall. Fall typically is when the chicken slows down egg production (decreasing in daylight). My hens have been laying eggs steady all summer and are now slowing down, meaning I get fewer eggs now then in July when I got a record of 26 eggs in one day. Now I get about 15 a day.

Before I lost my fancy Silkies and made a internet order for chicks, I was planning on borrowing an incubator from my neighbor to try and hatch out my own chicken eggs. Save me some money and get more hens for the summer and roosters for the freezer. So I did, I gathered a couple days worth of eggs layed by my hens, that are hopefully fertilized by one of the two roosters. And put them in the incubator on Saturday September 15th. It should take aprox 21 days for the eggs to hatch. Out of the 37 eggs I put in the incubator I am hoping a couple hatch out, any more will be a bonus.

Straw and Paint

In the last post we were quite disappointed to have to purchase straw bales but thanks to my uncle, he's one of those guys who starts his morning at the local cafe talking to everyone, we got to bale our own straw too! Some days I don't mind my family connections. Below you can see the square baler we used and a nice shot of our pickup that my Father kindly sold to us way under value. Thanks Dad. We baled about a 100 small square straw bales. Then the last few days after work we load up the pickup truck stacking high as we dare (missed the picture sorry) about 35 bales and brought them home to stack next to the barn.  I'll try to get a picture of the straw all stacked by the barn. The chickens love climbing all over and pecking the little bits of grain mixed in with the straw.

 

The 'paint fairy' was smiling on me last weekend when I went to Menards. I've wanted to paint the chicken coop since we built it, however like most things it has gotten pushed back. On a whim I went and checked the 'MissTinted Paint' section in Menards. Side note: most paint places have a section like this you might have to ask, it is where paint that gets mixed isn't quite right color and is often sold at a fraction of the regular cost. I got very lucky finding two gallon jugs of premium exterior paint in two different bold colors. The best I usually hope for is a couple different shades of brown. The first can was a great terracotta orange/red and the other can was dark green. The next day I got to painting.

Here is the coop completely unpainted

I really love this orange color

Here is with mostly complete. It was getting cold and very windy. Another nice day and I'll get the last details finished.

Meet the farm's newest addition!

IT was Labor Day and we both had the day off. Thank you National Holidays, they seem to be the only time we both get to be home together. We got a late start but went at it hard. First the small square baler needed a new tire and inter tube - we had scrounged all week finding the replacement, turns out old implement tires aren't stocked often. Richard ended up finding a very old but better than the one on the baler in our rock pile, then couldn't find a inter tube but did manage to find one a half size bigger. Yay we have a tire and tube. Next came the fight to put the new tire and tube on.

When in doubt use a hammer.

Sadly all our work was for not, as the straw we were to bale didnt amount to enough to bale. Basically the farmer left the spreader off his combine but the wheat wasn't tall enough to leave much straw after he baled. 

Then it was time to get hay for the goats. Their pasture is pretty dry and dead not much grazing. My uncle and cousin baled us some mini round bales, using their large round baler. They stopped the baler before it was full and made a smaller bale. We still have to move these bales with the tractor or they can be pushed by  a person. Richard thought rolling the closest one to the barn was too much work. He suggested using our trusty garden cart. I was skeptical but look it worked!

On a whim we decided to search our favorite online classifieds site (Bismanonline.com) during our lunch hour. We have been looking for a pony, small square straw bales, a puppy and other farm additions. This time we were in luck. "wagon pony for sale" I made the phone calls, Richard hitched up the trailer. We were off to look at a pony. We both agree that we didn't have to bring this pony home, if he wasn't right/safe we would turn around and come home with an empty trailer. It would be a 2 1/2 hour drive just to look. Boy was it worth every minute. The owners were friendly and honest, the horse was just as they told us. They hitched him up to the cart and we went for a spin. Then we talked price and shook hands. 

'Wow we just bought a pony' kept running through my head the whole trip home.  

Meet Bernie. Sounds like Barney, right?, hopefully it will stick, I really cant stand the name Barney. Images of purple dinosaurs come to mind. Anyway Bernie is a 10 year old gelding, who has only been driven. A big thing with ponies is their feet they often have hoof issues, we got lucky and Bernie has strong black feet with out any signs of issues. (such as founder) His hooves are little long and need a trim but we can handle that. 

Today I brushed Bernie until he shone then got him harnessed up for our first drive. Sure I'd driven him at his old place but here he was mine. I called the neighbor (friend, cousin and horse owner) down the road to see if I could drive him down there for a second opinion. What fun, a little pony to go places with.