HOT, again....

 Don't let the pretty flowers fool you, it has been HOT down here in NC!  Temps in the low 100's and upper 90's. Which I guess is close to the norm, but after fall, winter, spring, it seems I always manage to "forget" how miserable July and August are down here.

Despite the weather things are going well. The garden has been providing a good supply of fresh vegetable, and we have put up enough beans, pickles, squash, peppers to see us through the winter already. the tomatoes should be coming in any time now. We have gotten very little in the way of rain lately and have been watering parts of the garden every night. I feel we are just managing to keep things from burning up.

I completed the walkway from the garage to the house. That was a major project I will gladly cross off the "To Do" list.  The rocks were watered for the picture and to clean them off., they are not that shiny.

This is an evenings quick picking of summer squash, peppers, and a few stray early tomatoes. 

These are some of our 26 teenage chickens, should start producing eggs by October. I am pretty sure I heard a young rooster crow the other morning! We will see.

And this is Momma Buff who went "broody" this spring and hatched out these four chicks from a friends fertile eggs(well her chickens' eggs!) She has been a good mother to these. She also hatched out five of our own guinnia eggs a few days after these, unfortunately she did not want anything to do with them,and killed one. At that point I had to seperate them. They are alive and well under an intermittent heat lamp.

Our guinna hen went broody on a nest of  20 eggs out in our field, but that might be a whole 'nother  story....

                            Toby continues to grow and has been an excellent "farm dog " to date!

Springtime Happenings...

Greetings from the yet to be named farmstead...

Spring has been very busy down here, thus the lull in activity here. This is a hodgepodge posting of just a few happenings, seems I never have the camera available when I'd like it. There's one New Years' resolution out the window! 

So that friendly turtle face is just a passer by I noticed walking by my stone pile that has been waiting for a couple months to be turned into a path. I noticed this girl(?) wedged between two stacks of rocks. Hopefully she wasn't there too long. I think she came up from the big pond across our yard to lay eggs, or eat chickens?...Anyway we released her and found her walking up the driveway a couple days later, this time heading out to our field. We have not seen her since. 

Also encountered, captured, and relocated lately but not pictured (darn it!)  was a five foot black snake, and  a  big possum and raccoon that had been repeatedly climbing up the chicken coop wall and crawling in between the rafters(pushing in hardware cloth put there to keep them out!) and eating the cat food. It took me a while to figure that out, but I was wondering why the cat food dish was empty the mornings after I put it in the cat section of the coop at night when the cats were not even in there sometimes. Luckily they did not get the baby chickens that were right next door and accessible. 

The baby layers have done well. (pictures coming soon) we started out with about 45 and only lost one runt. One got an injured leg, but we managed to nurse her back. After giving and selling some we still have about 25 left.  

The garden has been doing awesome, this is a picture of some general growth a few weeks ago. The tomato plants are now four to five feet tall and with many baby tomatoes and blossoms. If no plague strikes we will have plenty to eat fresh, can, freeze, and share. Same it appears,  for the cukes, cantaloupe, green beans, peppers, and squash. 

This is an average picking of lettuce and arugula over the past few weeks, but now dwindling with warmer weather. 

The radishes were beautiful with no worms or pithiness, but like the lettuce, we planted way more than we could consume. Need to work on that next year. 

I never get the dill to be ready with the pickles! 

We planted a lot of herbs that have done very well so far. Planted this sage, and thyme in the foreground from seeds indoors. Also rosemary, chives, and basil that have done well too. 

For the first time our herb barrel has done well. The secret?- a sunny location and lots of water. 

Speaking of growth Toby is quickly becoming a big dog, and Shalo has really taken to being his primary young caretaker.

The kids are all growing  as well, yes they are all standing! 

And this is my next BIG project, these are just some of the stones,...still waiting for me to make them into a nice walkway from he garage to the house! More pictures of that coming soon!  But Jacob is in no hurry, he finds they make a nice warm perch at the end of the day.

Spring is in the Air!

Busy days at the little farm. After a fall and winter without the beef cows across the way we are excited to see the return of a new herd of about 30 black and red Angus cows. I suspect some of the previous herd is in freezers across NC.  As  usual the days have been busy around here as we continue to work at revitalizing the old buildings and getting the garden started.

We have gotten the new metal roof on the garage and replaced the two front support posts that were rotten and termite ridden. That job was hired out, as we just can't do it all. Though I think we could have if we had the time. This fall I am hoping to get it resided. The framing is actually pretty sound. I dream of adding rain a water collection system at the back which would probably catch enough water to water the garden. There are two "lean too"  sections behind the main "garage buildings.

Friend Andrew tilling new plot

Karen working the Broad fork

The garden plots are all prepped for what we will plant this spring and summer. That was one of the most laborious and time consuming tasks so far. The ground was hard as a rock(almost) and after the tiller broke up the top inch or two of sod, the rest of the deep soil loosening was done by hand, and foot. The broad fork is my new favorite hand tool. With some effort it will loosen the most compacted soil to about 12 inches deep. It took about 6-7 hours of work to prep each 5 x20 foot bed. We have 10 beds...

Tomato and peppers heading to garden

Our tomatoes,  not a vineyard...

 We have the tomatoes and peppers  in and a raised bed of various salad greens that will soon be harvest-able.  We had to cover them up a couple nights this past week after a cold front brought some frost this week. It looks like we dodged that bullet. I lost a little sleep over that. After raising the plants from seed, and planting over 40 of them it would have been a tremendous loss. Hopefully no more temps in the 30's at night.  When it warms up a little more we will plant the beans, summer squashes, cukes, and melons. Strawberries are ripe and and Karen and the kids picked several small pails and we have been eating them all weekend. Karen and Ethan also made some jam to enjoy over the rest of the year.



After the garden is in, the next big project is going to be laying the five tons of flagstone for our walkway from the garage to the house, about 115 feet. Surely that will be a piece of cake! :)  I think we are looking at several weekends of hard labor there.On a brighter note, our new chicks(45) to replenish and build our laying flock arrived in the mail this morning just as scheduled. We will keep about 20 and sell the rest to friends and neighbors. I forgot to get a picture of them. Next time.





 And last but not least an introduction to the newest member of our family... just arrived last Friday, semi spontaneously, and we have yet to come up with a name that suits him. He is part American bulldog, part shepherd, and only God knows what else, but we like the final package. If I do say so myself I have never seen a cuter puppy! 

                                                             As the kids say...OMG!




                                              Until next time....the view from the back four.....

Spring Projects....

So the spring weather has really opened up the opportunity to get more things done around the farmstead. Our biggest priority right now is getting the garden ready for planting. Before we can even contemplate doing that we needed to put up a deer fence. This took about two weekends to erect the posts and then get up the actual fencing. Although the post hole auger was a help we still had to drive the metal posts(13 of them) almost two feet into the ground by hand and sledge hammer. Hard labor pretty much sums up that job! Thanks to Ross "the deer hunter" we got them all in in the ground in a few hours. Ethan was the inspector.

The only reason we are smiling is because we are done!

The following weekend we were on our own to erect the actual 7.5 foot high fencing. The garden space is 78 x 78 feet. It will take me two to three years to use all the space as planned.

This past weekend I had a couple friends from work come over to help do some barn restoration. Primarily replacing some dry rot and post termite ridden framing. I had the place carbon dated and it dates back to the early 1900's...just kidding, but probably close.

Hard to appreciate from the photo but this pole was dry rotted pretty much from bottom to top.




Look at this picture slowly as we were very proud of our work... and it took the good part of the day for three of us to complete. You can't appreciate some of the inside work we had to do at the top of that corner post. I was a bit worried thebarn would cave in when I cut out the bottom section, but it did not budge. The rest of the framing is decent, a few more 2x 4 to replace inside the front and it will be ready for the siding to go up.

This a view of the garden from by the front of the barn. You can see a few of my garden beds...almost a weeks worth of work there..but that is another story.

Warmer weather, more projects...

We had a beautiful weekend of weather here in NC. This is just a look at the chickens and guinnias waiting to get outside in the morning to start hunting for bugs.

This was my new "toy" for the weekend. A trencher. I spent most of Saturday digging (not diggin') 300 feet of 24 inch deep trenches from the house to the garage to the barn. The electrician laid the conduit to run the wire next weekend. We figure it will be a nice family project to put all of the dirt back !

This is one of five bluebird boxes Ethan and I made from salvaged barnwood. Our yard seems to be some kind of bird haven with a lot of bluebirds, bluejays, robins, finches, cardinals(state bird), woodpeckers,... and occasionally a dead bird from the cats.


Sunday Aki and I spent some time in the sun together on the front porch starting some of our garden plants. These are our peppers, herbs, and some flowers. Next weekend we will start the tomatos.

And this would be Jacob, the bird hunter...after an exhausting day of doing next to nothing.

Snow!, a couple weeks ago...

Hi Folks it has been a dry spell here again. Pretty much we have been holed up waiting for spring. I wanted to share a couple pictures of the only snowfall we really had this year to amount to anything. But this is actually from a couple weeks ago already. The house has performed amazingly over the winter from an energy efficiency standpoint. Our only utility bill is electricity and our monthly bills over the winter have averaged about $85,... a far cry from our $500+ natural gas bills last winter in the rental house!

We actually are having much more mild weather now with temps often reaching the 60-70's. Trees are starting to bud out and bloom. With that comes a spring list of things to do, so I'll keep you updated on current happenings this spring