Poultry Farm Happenings...

So hurricane Irene came and went and we sustained no real damage. We did experience some pretty strong winds, and got a measly 0.3 inches of rain.. which I am thankful for, as it is the most we have had in a month or so. Usually a hurricane brings several inches of rain, which is what we really could have used. Otherwise things have been going well. The layers are coming of age and we are starting to get a few small eggs each day. In full production I anticipate about ten a day. Two of our "hens" turned out to be roosters! Alas the first one liked to wake me up pre-dawn with constant crowing... he also was a bit rough with the young ladies... he crows no more. His predecessor, also a very similar appearing Light Brahma has better early AM manners, or is blessed with the fact that the sun is coming up more around 06:20AM now instead of 05:50AM. Or he saw what happens to un-mannerly roosters... he seems a bit gentler on the young ladies so far, but perhaps his hormones have not truly kicked in. Time will tell.

"Chicken and Herbs"

Hens dusting in the compost pile... this is the day after the hurricane.... dry, dry, dry!

Our new meaties ( Colored Rangers, or Freedom Rangers) are about 4 weeks old now. They should be at harvest age in early November. I like them so far, they are pretty active, supposed to be better foragers then the Cornish Cross we did previously. We moved them to pasture by hand this weekend, one or two at a time. We could not get them to move on land...

I think the chickens have been like pet therapy to Ethan, he loves holding them, watching eggs come out, making the rooster crow, mate, etc..

I took our last sick turkey into the local vet school diagnostic facility this AM. They will sacrifice it and do a necropsy( like an autopsy). So hopefully I can find out what I was dealing with. I had a preliminary call from the poultry vet who thought it might be a viral transmitted liver cancer. Waiting on the histopath results.

And finally the barn is getting a new roof this week, this I hired out, as I won't be much good with a broken back, leg , etc. Our kind neighbor came over on his Bobcat and saved me a week of back breaking shovel and wheelbarrow work by digging down the foundation sight for the future chicken coop. I plan on putting it on a full slab, with a low block foundation wall. I am sure we will get some good rain in the next couple days... now that the barn roof is torn out...even then, it would be a welcome sight.

The problem with free range turkeys...

We finally had a little break in the weather,.. upper 80's instead of upper 90's... which was a welcome change. I thought I would let the turkeys out to see what they would do with some open spaces. Turns out instead of wanting to roam the 4 acre field they felt more comfortable sticking around the human folks. They spent hours roaming about the yard, hanging out with us while we sipped a cup of coffee out in the yard Sunday morning. Later, when we were inside they came knocking at the front door, I guess wanting us to come back outside to play!

It all seemed real cute, later we saw them perching on our cars,... later we discovered those big claws can put some big scratches on the hood of your car!! Oh, well... that is one good thing about having an 18 yo car!

We recieved our 56 meaties (colored rangers) they are currently stinking up our screened in porch in the wading pool brooder... which needs to be cleaned out daily and woodchips replaced... that many chicks produce a lot of chick poop, which will hopefully enrich our garden next year. I am sure I will have picts of them after I get them out in the chicken tractor in another week or so.

We are looking forward to the cooler weather. It will make it so much more enjoyable doing things outside. We are anticipating a new metal barn roof in a few weeks, and building the chicken coop soon after that. I found a local saw mill that will cut the rough cut siding for our barn at a decent price. The problem with that is we may end up having to dry stack dry it for several months before we can hang it. Sounds like a spring project. Though it will go up on the coop this fall?

Inside the homestead...

With the hot weather I have been cooped up inside more, so finally took a few pictures inside the house to share, though it is really hard to do justice to things. With the camera I have, I really can't fit much into a picture inside the house. I'll share some random snippets so you can get a general idea of how the inside of house finished out. No particular order.

Well, this is not exactly inside, but it was the view from the BF nook window last evening...


Kitchen in the morning...

From up on the balcony, looking over kitchen and into the BF nook...

Karen's favorite room, ... in full production it appears...

View from the reading loft upstairs....

Upstairs balcony,...

Downstairs looking down hallway west to east....

Dining room,....pass through in the upper right corner, fireplace to the left....

Living room....east end of house..

Fireplace between living room and dining room...

Sun room doors which lead into the West entry area screened in porch...


View from sun room out to front yard....

Barn Razing!!

I know there has not been anything new here lately, but we have not been sitting around watching the sunset every day! This barn needed some serious TLC. As you will see below the right hand lean too section was in a serious state of disrepair. Our goal was to salvage the main left side structure which seems pretty solid. We decided to add a support beam down the center to give it a little more support. That could have been a separate BLOG entry in itself. It took four adults and a couple kids manning hydraulic jacks to get our beam up against the ceiling and add the posts underneath it. Overall it worked out well... and no one had any posts fall on their head..almost but not ....

This is a look at what we were dealing with on that right hand side...

Although none of us really took down a barn before, I think we had an excellent crew, we were constantly deliberating how to do it without killing anyone. We decided to start with the roof removal and salvaged the newer pieces of metal previously installed with good intentions...

Next we started stripping off the siding, again trying to salvage as much wood as possible.

We noticed some interesting building techniques with cedar support posts notched out for supporting true 2 x4 framing pieces. I have plans for using two of these for either clothe line poles or hammock supports. I would guess they are at least 75-10 years old.

After the siding was removed we decided we would need to take the roof rafters and floor joists out one at a time, and one end at a time, .. which worked out well... we all took turns using the new SAWZALL that we sent Karen to Home Depot to get... she did well, and I think it paid for itself in one day!

And this is Brenda, who showed up in a long summer dress, obviously to assure we would not make her get her hands dirty!! She did play an important role cheering the guys on every time another rafter crashed to the ground....

She particularly like the view in the " Patrick Swayze Room" !!

Finally the last wall came tumbling down to the ground.... about 9 hours later.. not bad for a days work!!

This is the exhausted, but proud demolition team. From left to right: Curtis, Andrew, Anthony, myself , and Karen' s dad. I can't thank them all enough!

And last but not least the nail pulling team!!! ...

A previous weekend project, the nest box for future chicken coop. In case they start laying before it is completed.

And another weekend project, replacing the termite ridden, delapitated stairs in the garage building!

And last but not least,... a little photographic update of the turkey progress...

The Outdoor Shower

As I continue to whittle away at my "To Do" list I have gotten the outdoor shower enclosure finished last week. I am very pleased with how it turned out. Per my brother Mark's advice I made it a free standing structure. Attaching it to our new house was making me nervous. I think it weighs at least a ton, and won't be moving anywhere. This is the progress after day one. I think that included getting the lumber.

By the end of the next day I had the Trek like decking installed, and finished framing it up


I had to special order the cedar 1x6's, so that took an extra day. But I am very pleased with the finished product.

I took Ethan for an evening of fishing at the pond just up the road after the project was completed. He was pretty successful!

Finally, house completed!!...mostly...

We are relieved and very happy to say that the house is pretty much done, at least enough that we can move in this weekend. We think it turned out very nice. Will take some more pictures after we get moved in. But here is a quick peek at the outside. It has been hot already, it will be interesting to see how easy it is to keep cool. The extended eaves have been doing a good job keeping the direct sun out.

Things have been very busy here with the house nearing completion, and critters growing. Below is my Memorial Day weekend project,... the new turkey shelter. We had them in the meaty tractor which meant they had to sleep on the ground. The turks are turning out to be pretty high output in regards to manure... which meant every two days it had to be moved. Since it is so hot, it needs to be mostly in shade. Shade was limited. So now they go in this structure at night to roost, and they get to forage in a pretty big electric fenced in area during the day. It is built on skids so I can move it once a month or so. Hope it is sturdy enough for that!

Our field was getting overgrown as we waited for some tractor parts to fix some minor leaks, the parts finally came, didn't fit, so we tightened things up for now and bush hogged the field. If I had known the neighbors behind us better I would have asked them if they wanted to make hay out it like they did with thiers shortly before. maybe next time. This is our friend Curtis, who lucky for us, loves tractors!