Seedlings

I have a brown thumb, I admit it.  Yet I still want to have veggies. I recieved my first seed cataloge and that tended to start the whole ball rolling.  I picked a bunch of veggies with Ryan.  The only thing he didn't like was beets. I plan on pickling some of the beets and feeding some to the Goats.  I am growing some of the stuff just for the animals. 

Anyway, I got 360 spaces to start seeds.  I am also going to use some old canning jars in the garden over the seedlings to keep them safe from deer and rabbit til they are well rooted.  I have some two liter bottles also I can uses if I don't recycle them for chicken waters.  I haven't decided on that.  Hopefully I will start seeing seedlings in about 10 days.  

I plan on taking a picture every three days.  Right now its just dirt. So nothing interesting to report or show on them just yet.

and on this farm....

Its been a busy week around here on the farm.  We put up 1800 feet of fencing, installed three gates, deep cleaned the stalls, recieved 15 more chickens (chicks) and have been nursing the livestock guardian dog back to health. 

First we worked on the fence.  What I was hoping would only take a day or two took four.  Im ambitious when it comes to things I think we can do.  As I said the other day we set corner post on Saturday.  Got the truck stuck and had it pulled out on Sunday morning.  Sunday it rained all afternoon, so we rested.  Which I believe Sunday is a day of rest regardless, so that is what we did.  Monday we started bright and early.  Stretched fence.  Learned that we did need tension wire, went to get that and some sticks to twist it.  We bought 9 gage wire and that stuff is tough.  Stretched four corners and had to go buy some more wire.  We worked til dark and I was tired and hungry.  So we came in with two corners left.  I know I am  loosing a day in there somewhere, but we finished up on Wednesday afternoon, after a couple trips back and forth to the farm store. 

The southwest corner of our fence.  My son is out with our livestock guardian. We also have to move our clothes line pole but I wanted the fence inline with the stalls which are directly north of this corner.

We then let the animals out, they were quite impressed with the new surroundings.  Our horse especially, ran a bit and kicked up her heals.  Our smallest goat hasn't been with the herd much so he is needing to learn his place is with them and not us.  Hopefully he outgrows the "pet" phase.  He is our only billy, so I need him to be social with the ladies.

I deep cleaned the stalls yesterday and left it open all night to dry out, I hope.  I am currently waiting for the sun to come up so I can go out to check out how everyone did last night in there new surroundings.  Hopefully all faired well and no one found any weak spots in the fence.

We also got 15 new chickens that are supposed to be larger chickens than my last group.  Our neighbor ordered too many and offered us to buy some.  We got them at a great price so I brought them home yesterday.  They are three weeks old, so still in our brooder.  The temps are supposed to drop down again tomorrow, so I will have to see how they survive.  I think the neighbor might have been keeping them a bit warm because they are slow to feather out.  The picture below is what they are supposed to look like grown up.  We only got pullets (females), they are brown egg layers as well as meat chickens.  I like dual purpose animals.  Our chicks are not as small as the ones in pictures and have feathered out.  I plan on getting some more pictures around the farm today. 



Our livestock guardian has some hot spots on her legs that have gotten pretty bad.  We got her free and she seemed fine until the next day.  She had ear mites and fleas pretty bad.  So we started treating for the mites, which are still an issue.  Now with the hotspots I have her on an antibiotic and still working on her ears.  We are also giving her meds for the fleas.  Apparently the neighbor said the flea population is horrible around here.  Which we knew last year with our inside dog. 

Fencing

Yes we are still discussing fence around here, at least for a few more days.  Who would have thought.  We bought our stuff on Wednesday to put the post in.  Well Thursday, it stormed horribly and even gave us more of the white stuff.  Yuck.  So the ground was really wet.  Friday, I had class in the city for work.  So I drove up there and it was still pretty nasty weather and cold.  We also had a friend that was going to come dig the post holes with a tractor, that was unable to make it.  So I checked the forecast and it looked as though Saturday would be a good day to get the post in and cemented.  I ran to the store to buy a manual post hole digger and handle for the pick ax thingy. So, came home and started in on the post.  Was happy for the rain cause the ground was soft. We put in 36 wood corner and gate post. After we put those in we hadn't had enough for the day, so we put in 120 tpost.  Now, its a waiting game til the cement cures.  Hopefully by tomorrow after noon, Ryan will feel that it is set enough to put in the cross beams to the corner post and then we can stretch the fence and run electric fence.   If not we plan on going out to my great cousins and borrow his Kubota, to move some junk piles that I am pretty sure the goats don't need to get into. 

We did have a bit of excitement yesterday while putting in the tpost.  There was a soft spot in the pasture and Ryan was driving the truck around with the trailor.  We got stuck.   He went and found someone to help pull us out.  That guy got stuck too.  So tried to pull it out with another persons smaller vehicle that didn't work, so they went and got someone else to help.  Got the helper pulled out but our truck sat til this morning.  We had a friend come over with a tractor to pull us out.  We then got out in about 2 seconds.

Ryan and I are both feeling muscles from the work on the fence yesterday, but I still want to get tons done.  Not sure what I can do, but I am sure to find something.  Until then, I put a pot roast in the oven, did some laundry, and of course blogged.