Life in the summer

Life on the farm is never dull.  The pool we got this year has some fun pirate windows for the youngest to look out.

This was hard work!  Turns out the neighbor to the east planted beans.  Which means dangerous spray.  More dangerous for my garden than the roundup they spray on the corn.  I saw farmer out with the tractor and sprayer.  So I covered what I could with plastic I had.  His spray only mildly affected some of the plants.  Nothing died this year.  He must have used something different than last years farmer did.

The boys helped dad take down the row of dying trees.  The Lorax was upset I'm sure.  It's a huge, odd change as far as look of the farm goes.  Still not used to them all being gone.  



We had some archery practice even when it was nice out!


Just being kids.

A boy and his mama.  

Changes to the farm

The borage I planted last year, came back up this year.  In a huge patch.  There is atleast double what I planted last year.  Although it’s not in a nice neat row.  They plants are random and scattered in a larger area.  But that’s ok.  I’m not a fan of perfect rows.

Our south tree line.  Before.  They were mostly dead on the other side and dying all over.  We lost a huge part of one of them back in 2006 when the straight line winds came through.  So they’ve been on the list to just come out for a few years.  This was the year.  We can’t have another dead tree take out the power line again.

The youngest thought he wanted to help pick up some sticks when dad took a break.

After.  Obviously we aren’t done.  I’ll use the chips from the stump grinding in the garden.  The sky decided to open up and pour a little bit ago.  So now I’m just waiting to go back out and haul the wood chips.  It definitely looks weird.  We’ve lived here 20 years.  Those trees have always been there.  

Next spring, we will plant apple trees.  So no fear. We didn’t just tear down trees for nothing.  We want the farm to produce food wherever we can.  

2020 is half over

I've seriously slacked on my reading goal for 2020.  I started this one back in February I think.  And I just finished it a week ago.  One of the girls had some minor sugery done, so I had time at the hospital to wait.  It's nearly impossible to use the internet or data inside the hospital.  The only other thing was to finish this book.  Since everyone is still on edge with the coronavirus, masks are mandatory.  (unless you work at the hospital of course.  A lot of employees didn't have masks on.  But I had to?)  I'm done and over this virus bit.  I just put it on when a nurse was in our little cubical.  




I see my chives and all I can think is "We are here!  We are here!"  

You must have seen Horton Hears A Who to know.  

2020 is half over.  So far we've been "attacked" by the coronavirus, murder hornets somewhere, locusts somewhere else, riots all over the states, people hoarding toilet paper, and food shortages.  The prices of meat are going up very quickly.  TP and paper products are showing back up in the stores.  Limit of one per purchase.  We never ran out of anything.  We were prepared before it was cool to stock up on tp.  Kids across the States and quite possibly the world lost the last part of their school year.  The seniors didn't get their graduations.  Pools are not open this summer.  Kids can go to camp if they wear a face mask all day long.  The list is endless of things that are frustrating about this year.  But now that it's half over, we look back at what's happened and look forward to how much more we can take.  

Work = reward

I started most of my plants back in January/February.  Lettuce and Kale were two of those.  Now they've been outside for a couple of weeks and some are ready to eat.  My favorite time of year.  When the food I've grown is starting to be ready.  To know that my salads are completely organic, grown in my own soil.  No middle man.  No price gouging.  No other people sneezing, coughing or touching it.  Just me.  The dressing, well, that's not mine, but I'm ok with that at the moment.  I'll make some when my dill and herbs are ready later in the summer.

Bringing the chicken mansion home

A couple years ago one of our Pastors needed to get rid of his garage.  So naturally, my husband volunteered to bring it to the farm. The chickens needed a new, larger home. So this makes sense right?  Right. 

We took the back roads mostly.  Trying to avoid traffic.  

Until we had no choice but to go on the highway.  Several miles of crawling down the road, stopping traffic in someone’s driveway until he got past us.  He was as wide as the road almost.  

Home!!  What a slow motion trip.  But we made it without incident. 

It took another year to get it set up.  My husband and kids had to build the front wall and add a door.  

Looking good with the front wall done.  



They love to roost on the rafters.  These are four of the roosters we just sold.  

And then there’s a door that my husband built from scrap wood.  I can’t find a photo of the outside with the door shut.  This was summer 2019 before the ducks died.  The cats, dog, ducks, and chickens all coexsist in peace out here.  The cat (hopefully) does the job of taking care of the mice.  The chickens do a good job with bugs.  The ducks, well, they just make noise.  Which is why they got caught by the coyote.  


The plan is to paint the coop.  Just haven't gotten to it yet.  I can't decide if I want it to be multicolored or more toned down.  I'm sure it'll end up being a fun colored in some way.  

We have room for a few hundred chickens. But we won’t add anymore now until next year.  They sleep in a mansion. This chicken coop is huge.  They have more room than they need.  They spend most of their time outside free ranging the farm and fields around us.  They are the absolute definition of free range.  

Call me the chicken lady

Chickens.  We've had chickens for 8, maybe 9 years now.  Our oldest brought home a couple of chickens that her friend didn't want anymore.  That was the beginning of our journey.  We made a coop out of an old Pepsi delivery truck box.  The next couple of years we added a few chickens from the local farm store in the spring.  We also added some from an Uncle and Aunt to mix up the breads a little.   About 5 years ago, we bought an incubator.  That was the beginning of having lots of chickens.  Two years ago our neighbors dog took out almost all of our flock.  It looked like a war zone.  Horrifying really. They never took any responsibility.  It was spring thankfully, so I went to the farm store and bought a couple dozen chicks.  We added all of the eggs we had to the incubator, twice.  Now we are back to having somehwere around 100 chickens.  Why 100?  I don't know.  We live on a farm, the coop is a mansion, and we can.  They lay the best, brightest yellow yolked eggs.  They are well taken care of.  Good quality feed in the winter, bugs, grass, water, food scraps from the house and garden, sun, fresh air, and all the running room a chicken could possibly ever want.  We've never had the eggs tested, but I'd be willing to bet they are 100% better than the nasty white store eggs.  We clean the coop and make compost out of it that I use in the garden the next year.  If we ever need to, we could butcher some.  But we haven't gone down that road yet.  We are thinking about incubating and selling chicks too.  We've done that in the past.  It really isn't cost effective, but if the economy doesn't do well, and people want more chickens, we will do it again.   

The first and second photos are the oldest chickens.  We recently sold all of the roosters but one.  I think there are 20 hens and 1 rooster.  

These boxes are temporary.  They get all fixed up and more added in June.  The ladies sitting in the boxes at the moment are hatching their own eggs.  They are a couple of weeks out before we know how many they will hatch. They annoy me when they do this. But my husband wants to let them do the hatching work for free and see what happens. After we get the new boxes all done there will be room for broody ladies to sit on their own eggs and not be in the way of hens that just want to lay eggs and run. 

One of these birds is not like the others.....

These guys are about three weeks old I think.  I forgot to mark their hatch date. Their pens are pretty big so they have lots of room.  I tried to count them and got 28? but I think that’s about right.  They got let out this morning to the floor.  Generally they don't go out of the coop for a bit.  They're not big enough to jump the step out the door yet.  They get to know the coop and still get sun and fresh air until they're ready to make that jump over the step.  
There is one random duck.  We've had ducks before but they always get caught by preditors.  One of the girls had a friend who bought a duck and had no where to keep it.  So it came to the farm.  We've always just kept them with the chickens.  So it probably thinks it's a chicken.  Not sure of it's gender yet. I'm hoping it's a girl and will lay eggs.  It will be fall before the duck and these chicks will start to lay eggs.  

These guys are just a little over a week old.  They stay pretty close to the heat lamp still.  They are mail order hens.  It’s good to introduce new, unrelated chickens into the flock every couple of years.  With the coronavirus year, we ordered 25 hens.  One died.  So we have 24 of these gals. 

Well hello....

These guys are in the basement. Just hatched yesterday and today.  These could be hens or roosters.  22 doing good so far.  

*Three more hatched over night.  So we are up to 25 in the tub now.  They'll go out to the coop in the pen next week.  For now they stay warm under a heat lamp in the basement.*

And the eggs left to hatch.  Some have pips so they’ll be hatching   Unless they’re not alive.  Then we just have a bunch of smelly eggs to throw out. Sometimes we get a whole bunch to hatch and then others some don’t. We do the same things every time. So it’s a waiting game to see what each batch does. These would have been after we sold the roosters and only kept one.  He’s an old rooster so these may or may not all be viable. Well know in a couple of days for sure. This year we will keep a couple of younger roosters.  

Ginger and Easter

Ginger is growing! I am so excited.  So far I have two sprouted through and two more that should be up through the soil soon.  I bought a larger pot for it so it has room to spread it's feet.

The tumeric hasn't sprouted yet.  But from what I've read it takes a lot longer.   Our church friends dropped off a beautiful little bouquet for the kids to put together.  Smells like summer!  We (like everyone else) spent Easter at home.  Sure missed my parents and siblings.  The kids and I worked together to make cheesy potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and a beef roast.  It was fun to have them in the kitchen working together.  Mother Nature provided a blanket (blizzard) of snow on Easter Sunday.  Our little egg hunt was pretty pitiful.

A bunch of stuff

So I ventured out to the store today.  It was kinda chilly and rainy today.  On the way back there were some neat clouds rolling over the farm.  I like pictures of clouds so I got one.


I picked up another asparagus plant and a rhubarb plant.  I've got onions, potatoes, garlic, the blueberry plant, and a grape plant to get in the ground in about 3 weeks. 


The Micro Tomato has a bunch of tomatoes!  I can't wait until they're ready to eat.  I have three of these so I might have a ton of tiny tomatoes all at once.  They won't last long around here.

The blue berry bush is also growing good.  It's doubled in size.



This totally sums up my afternoon.  The morning was fine.  But after lunch has been one disaster after another.


Another kombucha batch is done.  It fermented for a few extra days, but I'll add some ginger or cinnamon sticks to it.


The sour dough seems to be doing great.  I've never made it before so I'm just going by what others have on their blogs.

My tea owl.  Just because she's cute.

Who doesn't need another new skill? Next up....Sourdough

Awhile back I listened to the podcast (linked below) and have had discussions about sourdough in the live chats.  Sourdough has been on my 'to do' list for awhile.  I just haven't done it.  Who doesn't need one more thing to keep track of and one more thing to add to the top of the refridgerator?  A friend asked yesturday if I wanted to do this with her.  So sure!  I finally started the sourdough starter.  Today is day 2 so it's just a rest day.  This is the first time I've ever done sourdough.  I bake bread all the time.  The old school kneeding and rising way, the bread machine way, and the no kneed bread that just rises in the pan and gets baked way.  I've mastered the other ways.  Time to add another skill during this coronavirus quarenteen.  I'll have to adjust days maybe so the kombucha and sourdough aren't done on the same day during the summer.  

If you have time, the podcasts are a great thing to listen to.  Search prepper broadcasting network on youtube, stitcher, or itunes.  The one I linked here is youtube.   

Quarantine birthdays

So far we've had one birthday during flu month and two birthdays during this coronavirus deal. This is how we "go to the movies" these days.  On the xbox.  Good thing I ordered the new couch before shtf!  Everyone has somewhere to sit now.  

Happy birthday, kids.  We'll do something fun this summer when (or maybe if) the coronavirus takes a break.  

Kombucha and seed starts

Kombucha is expensive to buy in the store.  A friend sent me a scoby and starter so I could make my own.  Best thing that happened in 2020 so far!  The bottles in the store run $3.99 and up in the store here.  So I was spending a ridiculous amount of money every week.  Now I haven't bought any from the store for a month.  So far I've done second ferments with blueberries, rapberries, cinnamon, and ginger.  The cinnamon was extra strong, but good. The others were awesome.  I have the big tea jar surrounded by one of my heated plant mats for now.  It's what I had so I used it and it's worked well.  Maybe too well.  I've read that it can take 2 weeks to get it how you want it to taste.  Mine is about 10 days.  Then just two days for the second ferment.  I've gotten great bubbles and what seems like a really good scoby both times.  Even started a tiny scoby hotel.









My girls like to buy cactus plants.  They're pretty low maintenance.  This one is growing little shoots already.















The pink celery from Baker Creek Seeds are growing good.  Celery from the garden doesn't have that nasty chemical taste that the store bought celery does.  I don't use chemicals on them so they taste like celery is supposed to taste.  Celery is kind of a picky grower.  It takes a good bit of care.


The cabbage is quickly out growing the flat.  This is a longer growing cabbage.  I really want cabbage so I started a few early.  I wont start the short growing varieties until the end of the month.



The youngest likes to help water the flats. He gets a spray bottle so he doesn't drown them out.

No April Fools joke

I've always hated April fools day stuff.  People always take it way too far.

So no jokes from me today. 

We drove up to Dordt to get K's things from the dorm.  They needed everyone to move out asap so they could use it for quarentine areas.  It was a sad afternoon.  Here's hoping the kids can get back to college in August!

We played some soccer and set up the volleyball net.  It got way to windy for the net so we'll set it up again another day.  The girls want to keep practicing their volleyball skills so it'll get lots of use.

I'm exhausted. Time to listen to I Am Liberty's show tonight on Prepper Broadcasting Network. 

Btw- if you're still looking for tp, Walmart still doesn't have any. 

The sun is out!

Yesturday's bad weather turned into a beautiful sunny day today.  I'm going out later to measure the garden and figure out square foot.  I'm expanding further to the west this year. 

I started tomatoes and peppers awhile ago. The tomatoes are coming up nicely in their pods.  The peppers are just barely starting to pop through the soil.  I used seeds from Baker Creek Seeds this year.  Baker Creek Seed Company  I'm not sure what they have left at this point.  I ordered mine in December and January.  If you want to do something local, find a farm store like Bomgaars, Fleet Farm, Tractor supply kind of stores.  They all have an abundance of seeds.  I plan on saving seed this year so I went with an heirloom seed company that's well known for seed saving. 

Right now I'm dealing with gnats.  I was using neem oil but ran out last week.  Trying to stay home and save lives, I haven't run to town to get more.  So now I have a ton of gnats.  Vinegar isn't getting them all.  So I'll have to run to the farm store and get some more neem oil and diatomaceous earth.  I think between both of them I can get a handle on the gnats in a couple of days.  

The celery appears to be doing well.  They were started back in January.  They take forever to grow and don't do well in the heat.  I hope to be able to plant them in the garden just after Easter in a couple of weeks.  

The mints that I cut and grew from last years crop are growing like gangbusters.  Mint Julep and peppermint.  I need to find a better place to hang the peppermint though.  I'm not sure it's getting enough sun.

Thyme, sage, and basil are all outgrowing their containers.  I should cut and dry them this week.  We'll see if I get to that or not.  

I started six mini tomatoes back in January.  Three of them grew. But that’s just how seeds work. The three that made it are doing great!  They should start producing tiny tomatoes mid to late April.

Having everyone home (which is 9 of us) until this coronavirus social distancing isn't necessary, takes up more time.  More laundry somehow.  More dishes.  More making food.  More pots and pans to wash.  Everyone is on dish duty rotation but it's still hard to keep up sometimes.  More sweeping and vacuuming floors with my handicap daughter making more messes.  Just more of everything.  I think everyone will be thankful to go back to school and not complain about it for awhile.