This weeks photo challenge was to take a single photo of the mood you were in this past week.
In the end. All is fine, just some tests needed to be done.. Bless our system, while it can make you wait for routine things, when you need it, its there!
My mood, All over the place, worried, scared, relief and now.. just tired.. at some point a nap is going to be calling my name but first I need to keep a close eye on the lambs being born in the barn.. one so far.. more on the way!
We have two momma’s ewe’s that are huge, bagged up and ready to go in lock down in the big barn to control where they lamb at.. we have three ewe’s with lambs on side up in the Croft Jug pens, closer to the house for ease of checking.
This has greatly increased my chore time but its so worth it. The first set of twins was as even as can be and at two weeks are rocking it!
sadg
The second set of twins are now thriving and moved into the shared jug with the lambs and their mother above. They are a strong set of twin ram lambs and while there is a difference in size, they are both doing very well. No longer needing coats or heat lamp.
The third set of twins are also rams and there is quite the difference in size between them as well, both are white with horn buds, the big male (R1) is doing great, They are now coming on 72 hours old and he is hitting all his marks, the odds of him growing up now are excellent.
However his smaller second born brother (R2) can not have the same said about him.
He was and is “JUST” making his milestones.. I made sure he got in and got his first milk, I checked all the normal things and they were all good.. but he was off.. Look at the picture above, you can see it in his face, see the pain wrinkles, the way his mouth pulls up.. (if he was a horse and you saw this, you would start checking to see what was not working right be it tack or body wise)
You can see the difference on his twin’s face. so much more relaxed and correct!
Now being born is hard work so I took the first 12 to 24 hours slow.. but on the morning of day 2, I took my stool, got the babies up from a sleep and watched.. and watched until they were ready to go back down again.. At that point R2 was caught and given a much closer physical check as I had narrowed down what appeared to be the issue or at least sort of.
His latch is off because his mouth is not lining up properly, its not a overbite or underbite, its more a wry mouth going just a touch sideways.. I can’t feel a deform to the bone (this is a very good thing) so I am truly hoping it is a pulled tendon that happened during birth and that with careful stretching and movement by me, that I can help him length it out and get more movement. I will have to watch this carefully not just for the latch but also for how his teeth line up for chewing..
A lamb that can not successful match his teeth to chew is not a lamb that is going to thrive.. We will see what can be done and time will tell.. There is always a curve ball that each birth and season brings to you!
I will keep you posted, even if that means needing to tell you that in the end he needed to be humanely put down or if I have indeed been able to help him.. only time will give me that answer.
Looking for a way to use up those tiny baby Brussel Sprouts? This filling tasty breakfast or supper omelet will hit the spot!
This is a very simple recipe that makes a tasty filling breakfast bursting with flavour which I am loving in these cold winter mornings.
In your fry pan, add your olive oil and put your tiny baby Brussel Sprouts or if you are using full sized ones, then cut them to make small bite size bits of them and into the pan with a touch of oil at med heat, a little bit of salt over them and cook will mostly done and have some brown edges to them.
Now you can add a tiny bit of butter or you can just stay with your olive oil only, add in your 4 well beaten eggs. and cook into a brown on the edges and it is solid enough that it can be flipped (that’s a bit tricky so if it breaks apart, just do two flips as needed) and flip it over and allow to cook though, slide it out and onto your plate..
Then put your salsa into the hot pan and allow it to heat up till its warm and which takes maybe 30 to 45 seconds and then put your warmed salsa on your lovely omelet. Adjust your salt and pepper as needed for your own taste.
This could easily be made bigger or smaller if you wanted and served with a side of hash browns or salad.
Ok folks.. I am going to break a unspoken homesteading rule.. I am going to talk numbers! AHHHHHH.. run for the hills.. stats, data.. hard costs.. Hauling costs, Butcher costs and more.
LOL, no really, now that I am done poking fun at things, lets get to the meat of things.
Those are honestly real questions I have been asked over and over again.
So the first thing we have to do is get a full grasp on what I have on the farm as of Feb 2019 (if you want to see the list for Jan, Here is the link to that post )
Ok, so to make things a little easier to see, anything that changed from month to month or is new is in the slant.
590 dollars spent on new Fruit Tree’s, Nut tree’s, Fruiting bushes and Fruiting Canes. That includes Tax and shipping costs. All are bare root and between 2 and 3 foot whips or canes.
130 -Eco Farm Days (early bird cost for savings) for two full days
This is my first year that I am totally pulling back on raising extra farm gate meat for sale.. the meat raised on the farm is for our own farm use only. If this changes, I will make notes on that. Eggs however are open for farm gate sales.
All milk/milk products are for on farm use only!
Seeds/plants and plant productions are open to a point for use in farm gate sales
Photo sales directly related to the farm or farm critters will count towards farm income, however photography sessions and or sales not related to the farm or the farm critters does not count towards it.
The first thing to go will be the yearling sheep now that they are getting nice and big, they are ready to be done.. as I was growing them for my own use I prefer them to be larger/older then the “average” lamb. I very much like hoggart (over one year in age, but not older then two years of age)
The pig is ready for butcher as well.. its on the list but the weather must get better.
The intend is to grow less meat overall, but a wider kind of types and increase the amount of fruit/veggies/herbs we are growing. I can raise livestock at a rate on the farm out pace’s our own needs very easily. This is something that I need to pull back on!
So the out costs this month are in
Ok so here is our numbers for Feb
19 dozen Eggs (at 5 dollars a dozen, which is the average cost for farm gate eggs Mix of chicken/duck eggs) – $95
In the Red by $1,191
Honestly I am not worried, I know that the farm “saves” us money and that we get a yield back on our investment in a big way, plus we know how the animals are raised, the food grown and the processed.
I have tried to do a hard track year but things keep getting in the way.. the last time I did a full hard track year and was successful at doing so ALL year long was a while go.. I need to do so this year and get a firm grasp on where we were, and where we are.
However having said that, in many ways we are starting a lot of the yard/gardens over again because of what happened last year. This will means many things will be up in the air in regards to what can and will get done.
Throw in the fact that we are in for a wild weather ride and we will see..
Guest Post By Willowcreekfarm Part 5 of 5
This is our 5th and final post in this series. Click these links to read the previous posts.
Introduction
Overcoming the Terrain
Overcoming Soil Challenges
Overcoming Wildlife Challenges
We have a very short growing season (about 77 days frost to frost) and the climate here is cold, dry, and windy. Even in the summer we often go down into the 40Fs at night. And we often get wind gusts up to 100 mph in the winter. All these things present challenges to gardening, but we have found several successful ways to overcome them.
Due to our dry climate, supplemental watering is an absolute must-have for the garden. We have found that a drip system is the most economical way to go, and the plants seem to love it too. I describe the system and installation in more detail in a previous post, which you can read by clicking here.
We also use rain collection barrels to help water our garden areas and save us on water bills. If this is legal in your area, it is an excellent way to water your garden and takes advantage of what rain you do get. We have purchased barrels, but they are so expensive that we prefer to make our own. To read about how to make them click here.
The wind mostly occurs in the fall/winter/spring, which are not big gardening times for us. The way it effects the garden the most is by blowing away some of our soil each year, blowing away our mulch used to cover over-wintered plants, and wreaking havoc with our hoop tents and other season extenders.
As I discussed in the post about soil, we add a layer of compost to the entire garden each spring. This helps make up for the soil loss from wind, and adds necessary nutrition to the garden soil.
We often use straw to help insulate plants that we are overwintering in the garden for second-year seed saving. The wind will happily remove that straw for us, so we use bird netting over the straw and put rocks to hold down the corners of the bird netting.
As for the wind trying to blow away our hoop tents and other season extenders, we use clothespins to hold the fabric on, and we secure the end hoops to the wood of the raised beds when needed. We also utilize long garden ground staples to help hold things down.
One of the most important things we do to have a successful garden in such a cold climate with a short season is choosing the right varieties of veggies, ones that are suited for this climate and mature very quickly, and saving our own seeds from the plants that are successful in our garden.
Our favorite high-altitude cold-climate seed company is Seeds Trust. We have had great success with the seeds we get from them.
Each garden is its own micro-climate, no matter if it is in a similar climate as another garden or not. Because of this, saving seeds from your own garden is a great way to increase the success of your garden because you are saving from plants that have done well in your own little garden micro-climate. Always save from the best, most productive, and most disease-resistant plants.
I also usually try to save from the first-ripening plants as long as they meet the previous standards, because with our short growing season I want plants that mature as fast as possible. My favorite book on how to save seeds is The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds by Robert Gough and Cheryl Moore-Gough.
It is also important to choose vegetables that like cold weather. If you fill your garden with all hot-loving veggies, you are not going to have much success. Not that you can’t grow hot weather veggies, but they are going to take a lot more effort and maintenance and will likely not produce very well.
We have great success with beans (green beans and drying beans), beets, cabbage, celery, carrots, garlic, kale, leeks, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, rhubarb, spinach, tomatoes, turnips, herbs, strawberries, gooseberries, and grapes. We have had some success and some failure trying to grow cucumbers, pumpkins, winter squash, and zuccini. We are continuing to try to find ways to make those successful.
We start some plants indoors and transplant them as seedlings, and some are direct planted into the garden. We base our planting schedule based on the last frost, and the first frost. We have tweaked this schedule based on our garden and how things work well in our garden.
It is a starting point for your garden, but not necessarily exactly right for your garden. It is important to take good notes and journal your gardening experience year after year, using those notes to tweak your plans to increase the productivity of your garden year after year.
Start indoors (weeks before last frost): Plant seedlings outdoors:
Leeks (11 weeks) 3 weeks before last frost
Asparagus (11 weeks) 4 weeks before last frost
Cabbage (10 weeks) 4 weeks before last frost (in hoop tent)
Celery (10 weeks) 3 weeks before last frost
Onion seeds (10 weeks) 4 weeks before last frost
Brussel Sprouts (8 weeks) 3 weeks before last frost
Broccoli (8 weeks) 3 weeks before last frost
Shelling Beans (4 weeks) After last frost
Direct Plant Outdoors (weeks before last frost):
Peas (6 weeks)
Spinach (6 weeks)
Lettuce (6 weeks)
Carrots (5 weeks)
Onion sets (6 weeks)
Beets (4 weeks)
Turnips (4 weeks)
Beets (4 weeks)
Turnips (4 weeks)
Shelling Beans (1 week)
Green, Yellow, and Purple Beans (after last frost)
Someday we hope to have a greenhouse, and that will open a whole new world for us as far as gardening goes. But for now, we use other season extending methods to grow the heat-loving veggies.
We are able to successfully grow tomatoes, peppers and herbs by finding ways to extend their growing season. We start the seeds indoors 10 weeks before the last frost. Then we transfer them outside into Wall-O-Waters 4 weeks before the last frost. We have tried many different season extenders, but the WOWs have by far worked the best for us for heat loving veggies and herbs. They are somewhat expensive, but if you take good care of them they will last for years and years.
But this last fall we built some awesome root cellar racks to put them on, which saves us so much space.
To read more details on how we successfully grow tomatoes with such a short growing season and cold climate click here and here.
For the veggies that are a more cold tolerant, such as cabbage, beets, turnips, spinach, and lettuce, we are able to extend the season both in the spring and the fall by putting frost fabric hoop tents over them. These tents also prevent pests. We have minimal garden pests up here at high altitude, compared to warmer climates, but we do have some and these tents help a lot.
We use the all-purpose fabric, but by utilizing even heavier fabric, the season can be extended even farther.
The climate in the high-altitude Rockies can seem to make it impossible to garden successfully, but with some special care you can have success growing your own produce.
We have now discussed all the different ways we make our high-altitude, cold-climate garden a success. There are a lot of issues to overcome, but when dealt with properly you can have a super-productive summer season garden that produces enough to feed you year-round.
Dear Hubby and I meet when we were both 26 and its hard to believe that Dear Hubby turns 47 today, that means that I am going the same in the fall.. Where has the time gone! Here is one at 29 out in the field.. (hubby’s formal training is Geologist)
Here is a selection of photos of hubby over the past year, I look forward to many adventures this year and having some amazing photos to share next year!
This is what you see most of the good weather time.. I keep begging to color that grey and he keeps telling me, he earned it!
I never expected him to take me up on it when I laughed and said.. want to ride the bull! at the local fair.. he went twice..
Lots of photos like this in all season’s.. and more will come this year, I realized that I had lots of photos of things but nearly enough of us.. so I need to get a selfie stick so we can get our cuddle ones but also a bit more of what is around us.. I will learn how to do this better in 2019.
My boys, Dear Hubby, Bojangles and Caleb.. love them to bits!
It was so nice to have family come visit, I do not have permission to share more of them, but this one of hubby and his mom and Aunt is to special to not share here.. I know it meant so much to him for ALL the family that came out to the farm to visit. Uncle B(his dad’s brother) and to his cousin’s and all their sweet babies! 
Here is to a full year my dear! Lets lift a glass and make 2019 a year filled with laughter, love and lots of adventures!
The Starlings keep appearing and then gone in the yard, I keep trying to get a good photo, but so far, its always a “almost photo” and so here is another one, it’s starting to amuse me at this point.. See if this bird had not hidden its face at the last second, it would have been a good photo lol.. I swear I have 2 dozen photos of these guys over the past two weeks and not one is right.. tricky little things.
Babbles is a great looking ewe lamb, She is 75% hair Sheep and 25% wool sheep, the odds are very good considering what her coat is like right now that she will fully shed out just like her momma!
Here is she is showing her brown spot with her twin sister Milk Dud, they are very even, they always have been, they were born almost the same size and they were both nice sized newborns and they have grown steady in both height and weight. Their dad King has added more leg and length to them as well as excellent milk genes. Both of them are trying to chew a bit of hay now and they enjoy taking up a tiny bit of their momma’s milking ration and chewing on it.
Henry is enjoying his time in the house and really loves his sun warmed naps, his extra toes are so cool!
Guest Post by Willowcreekfarm Part 4 of 5
This is our 4th post in this series. Click these links to read the previous posts.
Introduction
Overcoming the Terrain
Overcoming Soil Challenges
Now we will discuss wildlife. Living in the high-altitude Rockies gives us plenty of beautiful wildlife to view. Not a day goes by without some sort of wildlife moving through our property. It is such a blessing. But it also presents a challenge for our garden. The specific critters that can cause problems in our garden are deer, elk, rabbits, rodents of all sizes and kinds, raccoons, and bears.
So let’s break it down into categories by animals.
Both elk and mule deer are prevalent in our area. We have herds of up to 200, although most of the time the elk are in groups of about 20-30 and the deer are in groups of 5-7 when they come through the property. They are happy to graze on anything and everything, from plants and veggies to berry bushes and fruit trees. They also will rub their antlers on trees, sometimes aggressively, and can break and kill a small tree easily when they do. And they are very acclimated to humans, so they don’t mind coming right up to the house and in human areas to get what they want to eat. They are the biggest wildlife challenge we face in the garden.
The answer for these animals is easy – fencing. Anything they like to eat MUST be inside of a 6 foot+ fence (they can jump 5 foot fences). They don’t care much for onions and garlic, so we plant those outside of the fence. And we have also gotten away with planting squash and pumpkins outside of the fence, as long as we keep a close eye on them as the fruit begins to ripen because elk and deer will happily eat a ripe squash or pumpkin. But they wont eat the leaves and the plant itself
Because we love the views up here and don’t want to have 6+ foot tall fences blocking our views everywhere, we chose what are sometimes referred to as “invisible fences.” They are made of a black mesh that pretty much disappears from view when you back away from it and doesn’t take away from the beautiful mountain views.
Here is a picture of the garden area. The far edges have the fence going along them, but you can’t barely see it there. Click on the pic and examine it. Look to the right side of the photo where there is a metal trough in the background…now look at the mountain to the left of that. You can kind of see the black mesh, but it doesn’t really take away from anything. And can you see those skinny black posts?
There is one right in the center back of the photo, in the back corner of the garden, and there is one to the left of it before the power pole. Those are what hold the fencing up.
And speaking of those posts…they add another benefit to this type of fencing. Living in the high-altitude Rockies means rocky terrain which makes it near impossible to dig fence post holes. And even if you can dig one or two, by the time you get to the third you can’t get it dug where you want it and if you want to put it in you have to move it 2-3 feet right or left and you end up with a zigzag fence line.
The posts on this type of fencing are super-easy to install. They come with receivers that you pound into the ground and then you just slide the post into the receiver. The receivers are narrow enough that we haven’t had a problem getting a pretty straight fence in as we run into rocks during the process.
The fencing is 7 feet high, which is enough to keep the elk and deer from jumping it. But there is a downfall to the black plastic mesh…
…rabbits and rodents can chew through it. Which brings us to our next wildlife challenge.
We have plenty of cottontail rabbits around, as well as mice, voles, moles, chipmunks, ground squirrels, gophers, grey squirrels, and pack rats. Any and all of them would love to have a meal in our garden.
Our first line of defense against the rodents is the barn cats. They keep the property pretty cleaned out of mice, chipmunks, ground squirrels, gophers, and pack rats. But the cats are not allowed in the garden area, since they think the soil makes a perfect litterbox, so occasionally a rodent eludes them and makes it to the garden. So we keep mouse traps set around the garden here and there to take care of that, and also a couple of the bigger rat traps set in carefully chosen locations to be sure the kids don’t get hurt by them. Also, if we find that we have a visitor munching on the garden we look for tracks and signs of what size and type it is and we set live traps over night to catch them.
To keep the rabbits out we use chicken wire attached to the bottom foot of the plastic mesh fence and then buried out another foot from the fence. This keeps them from chewing the mesh and also keeps them from being able to dig in too. You can see it in this picture here.
The rabbits are also happy to squeeze under gates or in the gaps between the gate and the fence. We use wood on the bottom part of the gates that closes all those gaps enough that rabbits can’t fit through.
(farmgal comment, I adore how her farm cats also clearly follow her around, farm cats often act far more like cat-dogs, we go with you everywhere!)
Voles and moles have on occasion made their way into our garden beds. We have tried many different traps and methods of dealing with them with no success. The only way we have gotten rid of them is to let the barn cats into the garden at night and they have been able to catch them and kill them. It does risk some damage to the garden in the process, but the moles and voles do a ton of damage themselves so it is worth it. Thankfully, they rarely show up.
Thankfully, raccoons and bears have caused us very little trouble in our garden (the barn and coops are another story – but the gardens not so much). We have never had a raccoon problem, but we know other people who have. A live trap left out at night is a good option, but that always includes the risk of catching a skunk by accident.
We have had one bear try to munch on our squash, but apparently he was not happy with how unripe it was so he left it after chewing on it.
We are pretty lucky that the local bears are not very interested in garden fare, because there is very little that can be done to keep a bear out of the garden. The 7-foot fences are a deterrent, but if a bear wanted to he could easily chew and rip through the fence. If they posed a big problem we would likely invest in some electric fencing to keep them out. But with kids running around the homestead, that is not an ideal scenario. So far, we have not had to face this issue, and I hope it stays that way.
If you aren’t interested in sharing your garden produce with wildlife, proper fencing and trap management is a must-have for a high-altitude cold-climate garden.
Good Afternoon on this cold end of Feb day in the tail end of winter.. We are below -20 with wind chill taking us down to the frost bite warnings.. so of course we have a new set of twins in the barn. Twin Ram lambs this time.. One big! white boy and smaller chocolate ram lamb, (nicknames only) is flop ear for the white and mudpuddle for the colored boy.
So far this year we have a 50/50 split on lamb sex’s born and two sets of twins.. we will see what comes with the other ewes.
If you have been reading the blog for a while, you will know that March was known as the starving month in the old days, the stores were getting lower, certain foods were turning, the ground up here is frozen solid, the waterways are getting thinner and ice fishing is becoming unsafe but nothing is growing..
That is part of the reason that the sap starting to flow was so important to drink the half way there sap water, it was a burst of fresh in the very hard part of winter.
I have traditionally for the years I have been blogging done an Eat out of your Pantry only challenge, its been outstanding at finding the holes in my programs, some years it really showed me area’s I needed to improve in and other years we pretty much went just fine, we had milking going, we had eggs coming in, we had rabbits and a lamb to butcher, we had fresh sprouts and in-house greens grown.
So this March, I am mixing it up..
I am going to be butchering one of my largest just turned Hogget, which pretty close to the size of an average deer doe and we are going to process him down and show all different kinds of ways to use different parts, odd bits, hide, bones and so forth.
A lot of the recipes will use root veggies, dried items that would have been should be available in storage still and we will see what I can find to forage to go with!
I will be sharing my own personal favorites but I am also going to be reaching out and trying a few new recipes from my huge Nordic cookbook. There are some interesting flavour combo’s in there to say the least.
I have a very busy month coming in terms of classes, seminars, course’s and training days so I took a good hard look at the calendar and the farm. I will be sharing as I go on a number of those with updates and of course I will keep up on the photography twice a week as well.
Just another Day on the Farm 