I was up late last night, past my bed time after a lovely supper visit and we were to watch a movie, I was fading fast but made it though, and after getting home, I did the hounds, and crashed, slept hard and well but groaned when the hounds woke me up at just before eight, ok, that is a huge sleep in and I know it it.. but whine! 😛
So as I stumble up the stairs and let the hounds out for a morning run, I am greeted by a very grump moo’d Girl, informing me that they are needing hay forked over, I played it safe this time and while DH was gone a work trip, I had the second bail of hay put outside the fence and decided that I would raither fork over a couple time a day then move everything around and risk hurting myself like last time.. so off I go to fork over the hay, which the sheep are loving and I like that they really clean up every bit of what I put out before I put the next out..
No Marty, hmmm, and suddenly I see him, outside the pasture, laying down by the grapevines in the sun chewing cud, so finish giving the critters hay, call the sheep up and they come running for breakfast and take a stick and calmly lead Marty to the gate and though, and then the sheep start acting all weird, and I hear them before I see them..
The mob of piglets have broke out again, this time they were roaming the pasture, not just the barn, I have admit they are looking great! and they are super friendly tikes, very easy now to tell who is a gilt and who is a boar..
Now they were snagging their own hay pile and chowing down so i had time to get a bucket of feed and lead them back up, it was going so well, they were following the training of bucket and pig, pig, pig in their feeding sing along tune and then Brandy got all interested and bossy and drove them away.. thankfully only with her head and mouth, no hoof’s or kicks, she never touched them, but she kept them back from me, I finally had to get her training stick to keep her back and then let the piglets take a tiny bite and lead them along.. once they got back in the barn, they headed right for their pen and I have done three extra fences/gates and ties, its going to take me forever to get back into their pen, which is a issue cuz it needs to be tidied daily but for right now, I just need them to stay in it, I am going to have to move them this weekend to a bigger pen that they can’t get out of, I didn’t want to do that, as their current pen is right next to mom, and they are used to it and it has a big window for letting in sunshine, the other side is my solid wall for new babies and draft free, it does not have a big window, maybe we just need to rebuild the gate, i’m thinking with a drop down board across the both sides, so they can push it out or in.. but that I could lift up as needed..
So everyone is feed and watered and hopefully staying in for now, for the moment, still not sure where Marty came out at, but I will find it..
It really is.. winter I mean, its still very much fall to a point at the farm in the sense of above average temps, its still below 0 but not by that much, and its all brown with hidden spots of green, in certain spots on the farm, there are still a number of plants that are still slowly growing.
The pigs and rabbits all want deeper bedding, give the pigs a choice and they would perfer to sleep in a pile of bedding to the point that you can’t even see them and then when they come out, their whole bodies will steam, its kinda cool really..
Little miss Tooties is so fat that her belly almost drags on the ground and she had her first heat, she is so not having babies.. not going to happen.. but she is driving my boar a little crazy, might have to re-think her placement in the big barn, because that’s just not fair to my big guy..
The mob appears to be doing just fine with having been split from their momma, who does appear to be drying up some, and who is eating very well but more important, does not appear to be losing weight anymore, I would certainly not call her thin but she got alot more lean then she normally looks and I would like to get her back to peak condition to head into the depth of the cold winter.
The piglets are being brats when it comes to figuing out how to “break out” of their pen, not that they are going anywhere at this time, just roaming the main area of the barn, and they are always back in their bedding sleeping when I go in and then when they hear me, they come popping out and then follow me back in for their food and water, I have fixed it twice and both of my fixes have to date failed.. hmmm
The expecting sheep are looking really good, and boy do I have some healthy looking momma sheep with a goodly amount of lambs on board, sigh, I just can’t get there yet, I need to get the older lambs out and I just seem to have one or another hold up.. it will happen, I know this, it always does..
My hugelculture and getting my shed done are both on the back burner, which I am not sure is a good thing but you have to flexable on figuring out the to do list, that is for sure part of farming..
so tell me, has winter (snow/cold) hit your neck of the woods, are you ready for winter? or are you still having fall in your area as well? and if so, what are you doing around the homestead while you can still see the lay of the land?
* please note that I am not saying any of this is legal and kiddo’s if you are going to hunt and or use/own rifles, DO ITÂ RIGHT! never be this dork-Â don’t try this at home.
Ok, so yesterday was one of those wonderful busy days on the farm that allowed me to slip off for a afternoon horseback ride and a work visit..
Car drives slowly by on our road.. hmmm, lost? shortly there after car, slowly drives by the other way, pull’s into what the local’s call the running road and stops, needless to say the local farmer that I was visiting headed down the road to see if they were lost.
We think the kindly think first, bet they are lost, it happens a lot in our neck of the woods, but the visit takes longer then I think it should for a “looking for z or just want to watch the geese” so I take a little walk of my own and I can hear the tone in the french, but can’t understand a word.. hmmmm
Back comes the farmer, and wow, family in the car, dad has bullet belt straped to him, with a wife and child in the car along with rifle (uncased) YIKES!
Asked if looking to hunt, guys says just looking, farmer says, got permission to hunt on any of the local land (which we know the answer to considering farmer 1 owns most of the land and Farmer R owns the rest locally) so the guy, says yes, farmer XY gave me permission, which again just shows how dumb some folks really can be, given that that gentleman owns his land in a different village area, he is in the same township but not even within 20 plus driving to where we live. – So EEEH.. wrong..
So then the guy gets rude.. and starts asking Farmer, well what land do you own then, and do you own the road, and he was not scooping out hunting, he suddenly had a flat tire (which was not flat).
Finally guy says, well just thinking I might get a few goose, ya know.. first in our county, there are rules on what you can use in regards to hunting this or that, second, you need written permission from the land owner, and third, its deer hunting season right now, not duck/goose
I have huge respect for the local’s that live in my area that hunt, I have found them to be excellent, careful and respectful of the land and those of us who live here but last night was a eye opener on just how easy it is to have someone with no respect drive up and show up in your neck of the woods.
I truly hope that you don’t have to deal with weekend warrior type hunters, they be wild and weird and give the good guys a bad rap!
Geese, Geese, everywhere you look the Geese are putting on a show on the farm in the evenings! Dh took this video, the noise is amazing..
But its not just Canadian Geese, I took this much later and darker video of the snow geese a little earlier in the week, the sheer number of them was stunning!
Wow, when something like this pops up on my daily feed, I just have to share, this mile high pumpkinsnap pie looks delightful, I can’t wait to give it a try!
Confident, mature, beautiful and flashy. This pie has definitely got some attitude. And some altitude too.
Earlier I shared a recipe for Rustic Apple-Pumpkin pie which I really, really loved.  That pie is comforting and a little more humble and unassuming. Not like this one. This pie is J-Lo all the way.
Rich, dense, not-too-sugared-up custard is a rare treat. Have I told you how much I love home-made puddings and custards? Tuck it into a pie between a crispy, spicy, gingersnap crust and a fluffy crown of meringue and it’s a showstopping dessert.
This recipe is inspired by the Mile-High Pumpkin Pie recipe from Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann’s lovely Earth to Table cookbook.  Their version is for a no-bake style of pie using gelatin.
Their reason for choosing the no-bake gelatin route is that they don’t like the way baked custard pie fillings tend to cook down…
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You see one of my duck hens was decided to go broody and she didn’t have many eggs under her and it was not one of the good sitting/broody area’s and so I figured, ah, not going to fight her on this well, darned if we didn’t hear peep-peep-peep yesterday so we closed her off with food and water and safety from the other birds and last nights check, I got a report of at least one yellow duckling, ok.. and to bed we went..
Only thing is this morning, momma duck is still sitting tight, she at least does not thing its time to come off the nest, but when I raised her wing to see this lovely duckling.. instead I was greeted by a very cute yellow chick…
yup, looks like momma duck hatched out at least one sweet little chick, I was unable to take any more beak hits to see if there was anything on the other side of momma duck, I will give her today to relax and consider getting off the nest to see what is there..
None the less I have a new chick, and I need to figure out where that little tike is going to be raised, choices include, in a rabbit hutch with duck momma, in a big pen with a heat lamp on one end with topping with duck momma or in the house, with no duck momma..
I guess it will depend alot on if more hatch or not..
The first time I saw this no sew double thick snuggle blanket was when one of the worlds cutest little one came up to me with one and a book to have read to her, I loved the idea of this and started watching and waiting till I saw some super cute thick material on sale..
Now you need to trim off the edges but don’t worry to much about it being prefect, that’s not the point of this lap throw, you will see what I mean, just give it a trim, double it over and cut it in half, and then make sure your sides are all level.
Now after its all even and level cut out your corners at the length you ideally want your stripes to be, so in my case around 4 to 5 inches..
Then cut one side into your stripes, once they are cut, then you just double knot them together and move on to the next one..
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Just another Day on the Farm 