My new hobby.

I've done it! I've finally done it! I've let the chickens loose.

So now I have a new hobby...chicken watching!

I love watching them. They look so happy now.

They were just a scratching and pecking and doing chicken things.

So I took so many pictures of them, you'd think I'm a chicken photographer.

Ahhh....yesssss....my new hobby. It could become addictive.

The only problem was that at 9pm I still had a straggler. So I had to go on chicken round up.

Even the ducks didn't seem to perturbed.

Have a Blessed Evening

Lisa

Spring farm update.

For the last two weeks every morning I say "tonight I'm going to blog", then tonight shows up and I'm too pooped to pop, let alone blog. The last two days I've had a major chest cold. That didn't help matters.

It's been so long I don't know where to begin.

The gardens are all put in and for the most part they are doing well. It's been the driest spring for a long time. We've been in this house now for 18 years and I've never had to water my garden. This year I had to invest in 200 ft of garden hose to water the garden. That's not good. Mind you, two days after I got the hose it rained so hard we thought we had to go dig out the ark! Murphy's Law I guess. If you want rain spend a fortune on garden hoses.

Last year I couldn't grow a carrot to save my life, this year it's greenhouse cucumbers. I planted two that I grew from seed myself and something ate them. So I bought 2 from the garden centre and again something is eating them. I can't see what it is. One of them just died, so I'm giving up. I'm not planting another one. We'll have to do with that lonely plant. The cukes in the garden seem to be doing well, I prefer seeded cukes anyhow.

My pumpkin patch. Well...that's another story. Dave cleaned and tilled the old pig pen so I could plant giant pumpkins in it. I grew the plants from seeds. I nurtured the things till they were old and strong enough to go outside. Well guess what!?? The ducks ate the plants!!!!!!!!! I just can't win. So off to the garden centre I went again (well really it's where I work, we have a garden centre there also) I bought 4 plants, planted them and Dave put a fence around the darn thing! So far so good.

If the ducks don't watch themselves, they won't have to worry about the minks getting them. I'll do the deed for them. Heh, heh....

Last week I lost a dozen eggs. I was not impressed. I forgot that one of the hens would lay her eggs in the feeder. I usually check in there everyday. But for some strange reason I wasn't checking, yet I couldn't figure out why the egg production was down. Then one day I remembered and checked the feeder. In there was 12 eggs. I had to throw them away since I had no idea how long they had been there.

Since then, I think there's more than just her laying in there. I found 2 eggs in there today and I had checked yesterday.

For the most part, when a hen slows in the egg laying department, off she goes to the butcher. But we do have some that will never go to the butcher. Why? I have no idea. One of these is Ginger. I don't even remember where I got her from. I do remember that about 2 years ago the other hens started picking on her. One morning when I checked on her they really had done a job on her. I didn't think she was going to make the day.

I took her out of the pen and the only other place I had to put her was with the guinea hens we had at the time. I didn't know if they'd get along or not. Everyday I checked on them. The guinea hens left her alone and she lived. Now she's at least 5 years old, lays 1-2 green eggs a week, when she's not broody, and makes her home with the other hens again, but doesn't move much from her post in the nest.

Remember a few blogs ago I tried to make cheese? Well here are the fruits of my labour. I used about 6-7 litres of milk to attain these two measly little chunks of cheese! I do believe that I'm going to try my hand at making soap.

We've been making a few renovations in the house the last few months. When you make renovations yourself, it usually takes alot longer than it would if a pro was doing it. Now don't get me wrong, Red Green a.k.a. Dave is just as good as a pro, but he doesn't do it for a living, so in between delivering propane, cleaning pigs, helping his elderly parents, doing church things and just everyday life things then.......he works on the renos. We are doing some work to our bedroom. For the last several weeks this had been our closet...the living room and the clothes hampers. It's not fun!

Finally our closet has been finished so things are back to semi normal, but it's not all done yet. A little more drywalling, then painting and putting up doors and casings. I can't wait!

Well I have so much more to blog, but it'll just have to wait till another day.

Good night!

Lisa

p.s. update on the stray cat. We thought it was a female and her name was Duchess, but now that she's alot friendlier and we can hold her, we've discovered that her name is now Duke. If you get my meaning.

Houston, we have a problem.

Everything is going well, you tell your friends that things on the farm are happy, content and going along smoothly. Then Murphy's law kicks in.

We were planting two dogwood trees Monday. We were kinda late in planting them, since I bought them LAST YEAR. But anyhoo, I digress. All was going well. We were almost done our last one when J. yells, "Why is Cindi Loo out of the pasture?" Oh bugger! And she was right beside the road. I caught her no problem but we couldn't figure out how she got out. So we put her back in. Not even 30 seconds later, she was out again. She went right through the 7 strands of electric fence, pausing half way, like she was going for a stroll in the meadow.

Dave shoved her back in. We figured either the fence was off or not working. Dave touched it and Nope! it's working. Ouch. So after about 5 escape attempts, well really escape successes, she's in the barn and not coming out until we can figure something out.

This is not good. Here I was telling all my friends that my goats are happy where they are so that's why they don't attempt to escape. Yeahhhhh....riiiiiiight.

Dave figures that maybe since it's been so dry that it's not grounding the goats and they're not getting shocked as much as they should. But then why are the 3 other ones not going through. Wait, just wait and they probably will.

Have a Blessed Evening.

Lisa

The New Goat House!!!

Oh my goodness!! I am so excited. Dave a.k.a Red Green made me a goat house.

You have to admit, it is an original. And it cost a total of 14$!!! Everybody wants to get rid of all those old satellite dishes and the farmer up the road had that feeder in the field that he wasn't using. He even brought it down for us. Then it only cost for the bolts to put it together.

Now it will need a coat of paint to stop it from rusting more, but other than that, it's perfect for a day shelter for the goats.

The weather here is so unpredictable. They can say sunshine for the next 3 days and that afternoon it will downpour. I hated leaving the goats outside while I wasn't here to bring them back inside in case it rained, but I had no choice. Now they have a place to go to eat and have a lick of salt without being in the rain.

I'm sooo excited!! Can you tell! :)

Lisa

Ducks, clotheslines and Victoria Day weekend.

The following picture is now off limits for me. I have been told by my hubby to not use it for awhile. Oh I miss it. But it falls off it's track at the other end and when that happens Dave has to climb on top of the barn and then put a ladder on the roof of the barn to reach the wheel and the clothes that have gotten stuck up there. Not the most ideal situation. I don't really want my hubby breaking his neck for a few clothes.

Well Otis went to the big pasture up the road last week. Dave actually walked him there. A friend of ours actually stopped and said, "Aren't you supposed to walk your dog? Not your cow?" Dave said, "I don't have a dog, so the calf will do."

Otis actually found a friend in the pasture. That night we went to visit him and he actually made friends with a larger Holstein in the pasture. It was kinda cute, since all the rest of the cattle were what I call meat cattle and a few Jerseys. But there was only one other Holstein in the bunch and they became friends. I wonder if cattle are prejudice? Ha ha.

Pretty soon people are going to start calling me the crazy cat lady. We have a new addition to our cat family. It's not by choice. She kinda adopted us. This pretty stray has been eating the barn cat's cat food for months now and she's decided to become a bit friendlier. Well really it's amazing what a determined 9 year old and a couple of bags of cat treats can accomplish. So that means we now have 5 cats. Ugh.

Dave went to the cattle sale a few weeks ago and sold the twins. Sniff, sniff...But we cannot keep them all. I didn't get much for them either. Bummer. 66$ for 2 twin goats. Not good.

But while Dave was there he thought that he'd surprise us with a treat. So please meet our 3 new ducks. Or as I call them, "Supper for the wild minks". One has a bum leg, but you can't get with 20 feet of them. They are really petrified of humans. Hmmmm.... I wonder if a few bags of cat treats and a determined 9 year old would work on them?

In Canada this past weekend was Victoria Day weekend. It was a gorgeous weekend. I was off work!!!YIPPEE for me! J. and I did some gardening.

Well I have so much to blog, but it's going to have to wait for another post. I am having so many problems with blogger that it's now an extreme pain to blog.

I cannot move my photos around on my post, so I have to save everything, open a new post, copy and paste the body of the post to the new post, then copy and paste the photos to the exact spot I want them in the new post. So I'm doing all my work twice. NOT FUN!!!! It's almost as bad as trying to make cheese! Which I'm trying to do again tonight. Yes, I am a sucker for punishment.

Have a blessed Evening

Lisa

Cheese Making 101

Ok, I have milk coming out of the ying yang so I decided to try my hand at cheese making again.

So here it goes.....

Rule number 1

Don't call me!!! I can't make cheese worth *%$%!@#!~!!!! (that's the closest I'll ever get to swearing)

Rule number 2

If you call me for advice on cheese making, this is the advice that I'll give you.

"Get in your car and drive to the nearest supermarket! It's cheaper, easier and faster. AND you'll actually get cheese!"

That's all I have to say about that.

Lisa

Wharf Cats

One of the Mamas

I thought that I'd blog about something that is close to my heart.

Living in Nova Scotia, close to the ocean is just wonderful. I tried living away from the ocean a long time ago, but I missed it so much I moved back. I do live inland, but it takes a total of a 3 minute drive and I'm on the beach.

That said, there are bad things here also. Wharf cats. There are hundreds of wharves in the area and some people think that it's just fine to dump unwanted cats and kittens on the wharf. They think that they'll have all sorts of food to eat. Rats, mice, fish etc.... This is just a cruel practice. People are getting more responsible for their pets, but some people are still down right mean.

Some people say, "If you want to get rid of them, just poison them or shoot them." I don't think so. That's just nasty and they populate so fast that when one dies, there's another five to take that ones place. Plus if the male cats are gone and can't defend their territory, other males will come and take over. The cycle starts all over again.

Several years ago my uncle retired from his job. He noticed all these feral cats on the wharf. These poor things were starving, stunted and inbred. Some were fullgrown, but looked like kittens, with short legs. He began feeding them and building little houses for them. He told my mother, who in turn started telling other people. Then it just snowballed from there. There is now a Clare Feral Cat society.

www.petfinder.com/shelters/ns42.html

A very scared cat

They raise funds to buy food for the cats, build more shelters, buy live traps, get the females spayed etc... They need the live traps to catch the females to bring them to the vet.

Another Mama protecting her brood.

When they find kittens that are weaned, they take them away and get them adopted out. Most of these cats are now actually semi-tame. You can't pick them up, but they will let you pet them. Some are still extremely wild.

Mama going for food.

J. and I went to visit the cats. We checked the houses and we found 2 litters of kittens. They were just a few days old and extremely cute. I took a few photos, but we didn't stay long because it was freezing out and starting to rain. We'll go check on them again next week.

J. checking the condos

Cuties!!

Well I have to go. It's been a long day at work and I have goats calling my name for feed.

Have a Blessed Day.

Lisa