Come see what the Ultimate Fall and Christmas Expo is all about!!!

Come see what the Ultimate Fall and Christmas Expo is all about!!!

4 legged critters and their barn

This is Slick he came with the property. We don't really know how old he is but he has a sad story.  Slick was born to a loving family where he was broke to ride and enjoyed life. His people later decided to sell him to someone. The next people beat and starved Slick. When he became mean and unmanageable they sent him to auction where he was bought for $35 by the previous owner of this place. She didn't have much time for him and i still don't think he got enough to eat.  As you can tell from the pic he is now getting plenty to eat and is filling out to be a handsome gelding. We cant ride him yet but this past week he decided it was OK to eat from my hand and will now follow me all around as long as no one else is in the fence.  He is still very skiddish  and will bolt or go nuts over a lot of stuff. He is slowly making friends with the goats, Mini Mellow being his favorite. He talks to us whenever we come out and loves to beg watch us as we work in the yard. Hopefully one day we will be able to ride him. In the meantime we plan on continuing to give him lots of love and food.                      
Here is Portia (from Fiasco Farm) and Ram Rod. Portia is a total sweet heart who loves lots of attention. Like the other goats she loves coming in the house! Ram Rod well i bet you can guess how he got his name!  Lace is the black with white baby goat and her mom is Tippy the black goat. Tippy was my first goat and holds the rare pet status here although she is a great milker. She is now giving  1/2-3/4 gal a day with one baby still on her. Shes a smaller goat so that's a pretty good amount.  The one in the Middle is double stuff, Mini Mellows sister. Their Mother was Marshmallow whom I'm afraid we had to put down some time ago. She was suffering and we just couldn't watch it anymore. Double Stuff lost her twin sister in an accident at a friends house. She is very sweet and jealous. The rest of my goats excluding Mini Mellow whose pic i had issues downloading this time are summering at a friends house.                                
                                          

  Here's our barn. We made it half open in the front for plenty of ventilation and breezes during the summer. Come winter we will seal it better and add some sort of covering for the open part. We plan to expand at some point but this is the best we could do with scraps.                      
                                                        

   Here is the far side of the barn where we have 2 industrial nesting boxes. there are 10 on each side for a total of 40 with each box holding 2 chickens or game hens. There are several stalls in the barn with this back part that's open being the horse stall.  As you can see my kids have left a couple of things out here that I need clean up.   The other is a days worth of eggs we found int he brooding house. We left a hole in there so that broody chickens could lay and sit on their eggs away from all the other chickens.                                                   

 Here are some of our ducks. We have 4 that are not shown that will not be white. At the time of this  pic they were not old enough to have them running loose. In the pic to the right one of my ducks is lounging a a frying pan we leave out by the house with a bit of water in case they would like a drink when in that area.

Here is my hubby with a mud turtle. He was safely moved to another property as he is a threat to our ducks. Mud turtles will grab the ducks when they go out to the water, pull them under and drown them. We have lost a few this way. Thank goodness we caught this guy and moved him to a place better suited for him and us!




In the near future I will be adding posts with pics of the chickens and game hens. I will also include pics of the emergency brooders we had to come up with along with the ones we are working on in the brooding house. This is where all the brooders( a place where you keep small chicks so that they stay warm and can grow) are. We also have a few hens that like to go broody (decide they want to hatch their own chicks) in there away from the others. That place is deff still in progress, lol. I will add pics of the orchard, berries, grapes, herb garden and reg garden. All of these are new plants so most of them are rather small. The trees should be producing in the next 3-5 years. More about the plants when i do that post. Anyway I better go there is always a lot to do around here and its calling me.

Update for this year.

                                          Ram Rod

                                           Mini Mellow

                                          Tippy

                                           Portia (bought from Fiasco Farm)

                                          Bonnie (front) Double Stuff (back)
  These pics are about 6 months old I will be updating with new pics here at the new farm as soon as I can. I will include pics of this years garden, beginning of the vineyard, berry patches and the new much larger orchard with currently has about 35 fruit and nut trees. Please keep in mind most of them are small seeing as how we just planted them.
  I will also be posting pics of all our new animals and the brooders. Some are used off and on. Two are still being developed....an old fridge and dishwasher. We are still trying to clean up this place it was pretty trashed when we got it so please excuse any messes you see. It WILL get clean up,lol. I hope to walk around the property and take some general pics so you can kind of see how our land looks. There's a major difference between 1 acre and 5 acres!
  Update on eggs, considering the move and all so far this year we have gathered about 1100 eggs. This is from 30 birds-chickens, ducks and game hens. Please keep in mind some of our birds are male. We have recently gotten another 79 birds. 3 of those are turkeys, all rare breeds. 12 more ducks and the rest are chickens (mostly rare breeds) with a few game and bantams thrown in. We are only milking one goat (Tippy) right now and she has 3 babies on her but we are still getting .5 gal a day. Way to go Tippy! I believe several of our other goats are preg and are looking forward to babies sometime this summer, I'm guessing around June 16th.
  Now that my hubby is home full time with us trying to make this work I hope to actually have the time to keep this blog up. My goal is to post once or twice a week with new pics often. My hubby is hoping to start a goat milk soap business. Right now I am researching so that maybe he can develop and make a soap that would help lupus sufferers with their dry skin. Later future (maybe) a goat cheese business so that he can continue staying at home with us. Fresh fruit will be sold from the orchard after it finally reaches that point. We are hoping to sell fresh eggs and whatever other produce we can after things are well enough along. At some point he will also sell some baby chicks and some of our baby goats as we will no doubt end up with to many. Well the baby is fussy i best go tend him. See you later!