Swampland!

Our lower field, where we are planning on constructing our aquaponics greenhouses and fish house, is a swamp. At least, in the winter it is. We didn't notice it so much last year, but we have had a lot of rain this season and it's pretty bad down there. It's a major disappointment but I'm sure we will figure out a solution. Well, our two options are to 1. dig a big pond to try and augment the standing water; or 2. build up the hill.

The problem with building up the hill is that there is a very long and large stone shelf running through the hill. It would require some jack hammering. We are exploring both options and talking to people more experienced in this sort of thing.


In other news, the old chicken coop has a new addition to it. Last week, Aaron and I created a larger outdoor space for the chicklets. We had to put netting over the top so they wouldn't fly over the fence, which they seem to love to do. I wish we could let them free-range all over the farm, but for a variety of reasons this solution is the best. They have plenty of outdoor space to run around in and since we've expanded they have calmed down considerably. Before we did this, there were about 2 or 3 fights a day going on up there. It was too small a space for such young, active chickens. Their eggs are getting bigger as they mature and almost all of them are laying now. There are six of them, if you remember, and we have three nest boxes for them. That's plenty, in case you were wondering. They don't each need their own. They like to share and put all their eggs in the same nest box. It's sweet, but every once in a while we get a broken egg because it's just too many in one spot. If someone lays an egg in a nest box that's not where the others have laid, someone will move the egg to where they think it should be. When I first put them in there I placed two dummy eggs in the nest boxes to encourage the girls to lay there. They moved those dummy eggs to the preferred nest box.

Speaking of chickens and eggs, I should go collect today's offerings. Here are some recent photos:

The girls exploring their improved yard.

Aaron (and Callie, who came to stay with us for a week while our parents were in California) in front of the improved chicken run. Those two tall beams in the middle are holding up the netting.

Callie sleeping in my truck on the way home from her farm vacation.

Callie needed a bath before Mom and Dad came home. The farm is a dirty place for pretty little dogs!

A silk painting I'm working on. I'm still not sure what color the wings will be....

I have a mouse problem in my house so I've started letting Chairman Meow come in once or twice a week in the morning to ward off the mice. So far, no more mice!

A very handsome and excellent houseguest! No scratched furniture, no peeing on the rug! He barely even shed!

A baby quilt I made for my friend Alyse. 

Me and Atticus. I'm showing off a shirt I got from this year's Reddit gift exchange. It says, "Woofing you a Merry Christmas". Wiley wouldn't sit still for the photo. Atticus is a good boy. Wiley is mentally ill.

The photographer with the boys.

Aaron got some jellybeans and Atticus had to inspect them to make sure they weren't poison.

That circle in the middle of the photo is a post hole Aaron dug in the lower field where we were planning to construct the aquaponics buildings. He came back the next day and it was filled with water. He says the post hole was at least 3' deep. 

Fury

I know that in my last post I talked about wanting to "go Terminator" on the guineas at 5:30 in the morning, but the truth is that I do love them and would never hurt them.

Today, as I was getting ready to go to Thanksgiving at my parent's house, some evil person hit one of the lavender guineas in the road. Aaron says he was just out of the shower when he heard the car, the thump and the car driving off. He recognized the car as one that drives on our street often.

I hate that the guineas go in the street. I have been trying to coax them to stay on our property- we have such huge empty fields, I don't know why they want to be in the street or cross to the neighbor's field. But they do. And they are stupid and hard to corral. Most people just honk at them when they are in the street, and that's what I would do. But this one supreme asshole couldn't even slow down or honk to get them out of the way. Where are you going at 10 in the morning that you can't take 5 seconds to slow down?

I am glad it wasn't one of the dogs. Aaron said that if it had been, Thanksgiving would have been delayed while he waited on the porch with his shotgun for that car to come back by.

Guinea Wake-up Call

For the past few days the guineas- all 18 of them- have been starting their morning sing-along at 5:30 AM. Ocassionally it starts at 5 AM. That sets off the ducks, which then wakes up the chickens and soon everyone is making annoying noises and the sun hasn't even risen yet. Eventually, just before sunrise, they all quiet down and I think, "Ok, I can get 20 more minutes of sleep." But no, I can't because that's when I start to hear Carl snoring. Remember Carl? FIV positive? One half of the Goon Squad? He, along with the other cats, lives in the barn. I've set up a bed for him in my gardening cart and it's as if the whole barn is an amplifier and he's right there in the room with me snoring his little heart out.

I love my animals but at 5:30 in the morning I often wish I could go Terminator on them all and just get a bit more sleep.

Anyway, here are some photos:

Happy Wiley getting some love from Aaron.

Carl kept sleeping in the duck's nest and they couldn't scare him off. I made a more appealing bed for him in my gardening cart. 

Carl just hanging out in front of my studio.

The Goon Squad naps under my new pine tree in the duck yard.

Sunset from the back field, next to the old barn.

Aaron playing around with the panoramic feature.

Atticus in the tall grasses.

My Barred Rock was the first of the Chicklets to start laying eggs. We now have 3 of the 6 girls laying.

The pretty chicken and Carl one evening. She was sitting next to him but stood up the minute I opened the door to snap this photo. We now call this chicken the Nipper since she nipped me on the hand pretty bad the other day.

On the left is the Barred Rock egg. On the right is  the Ameracuna. At first we thought it might be a duck egg because she laid her first one in the duck nest. But her second was in the chicken nest box, so we knew it was not a duck egg.

Wiley and Atticus at the front door waiting for Aaron to come home.

Our garlic beds.

Farewell

It is with sadness that I must report that my pet chicken Wanda One-Eye has passed away. As we all know, she was very old. And though I will miss her dearly, I am glad that her life ended in comfort and warmth with no pain.

Her decline began a few weeks ago. She started becoming disoriented and ornery and much less active. Yesterday in the late afternoon I found her in the coop with one wing spread out and face down. She was still alive, but not what I would call conscious. I picked her up and Aaron gave me one of his shoe boxes for her to rest in. I put down shredded paper/cotton bedding to keep her warm and placed her on a high shelf on my porch. I stayed with her and petted her and comforted her as best I could. She was gone by 8:30 PM.

We will be burying her in the yard and eventually I'll create a small memorial headstone for her. She was my friend and she made this first year on the farm really special.

I am very proud to remember that I rescued her from a small cage within the chicken coop and I am grateful to her previous owner (and her namesake) for not killing her because she was a damaged chicken. I will never know why human Wanda saved her, but I am so very glad.

In Wanda One-Eye's last year, she free-ranged all over the farm. She made friends with every human and animal she met. She even started laying eggs again and was an entertaining addition to all gardening activities.

I will miss her.

Best chicken EVER.

One Year on the Farm

Well, it's been a while since I've posted. 

The summer is drifting away down south and autumn is sauntering in from the north. It was a busy summer and at times quite hot and humid. Aaron and I accomplished many things, but not as many as we had hoped. I suppose that's true for most people. Here's the basic summery of what's happened this summer:

The greenhouse is still standing but is now gutted and being prepared for phase 1.5 of the aquaponics plan which will involve a flood table and gravel bed and a lot of tomatoes. We are already beginning the phase 2 of the plan which involves building a geothermal greenhouse. We're both very excited about it and hope it will be completed by the spring next year.

The two ducks turned out to be two drakes. I really wanted duck eggs, so I adopted two more ducks for them, only to find out one was a young drake whose drake feather had yet to curl. So that's three boys to one girl. I've named them Peter, Sasha, Kevin and Penelope. Lucky for Penelope, Sasha and Kevin have entered into a homosexual relationship. I'm not sure it's entirely consensual, but drakes in general are kind of a rape-y bunch anyway, so there's not much I can do. In any case, she doesn't have to deal with all three of them trying to have sex with her. We built them a pond and fenced them in a nice little area behind my studio. They have become the bullies of the farm and can even scare off Wiley!

L -> R: Kevin, Penelope, Peter and Sasha. This was taken on the first day they met.

Everyone swims together happily in their new pond!

Penelope (on the left) and Kevin. Kevin came to us undersized and with what's called "Angel Wings". It is when the wings droop and it's a sign of nutritional deficiencies. But since he's been here, the problem has gone away and he's a big, robust boy with healthy, normal wings.

A close up. This is after they ate all the lovely plants I planted around the pond. 

Our great cat huntress, Hilda, has most definitely passed away. She hasn't been seen or heard since the late spring and the last time I saw her she didn't look so healthy. I didn't get a chance to take her to the vet. I'm being more proactive with Chairman Meow who has been taken to the vet and updated on all his shots. The Goon Squad is still doing well. I'm pleased to report that Carl- who has FIV- hasn't gotten any worse. And Lucy, his sister, is still fat and pretty. The mysterious Himalayan still has no name but has taken up residence in the attic space above my studio. She is a night hunter and quite good I think.


We now have a total of 18 guineas- 1 keet (baby), 12 young adults, and 5 full grown adults. The adults had a clutch of keets in early August and I counted 7 originally. I killed one accidentally by leaving a bowl of food out overnight while it rained. The next morning I found one had drowned. Another was killed by Atticus. He was trying to play with it and he's so big and strong- one tap of the paw and it was dead. We couldn't get to him fast enough. The others I assume were picked off by cats, snakes, owls and hawks. Now only one survived but I am confident he will grow up and continue to thrive. He's fast and can fly and is getting bigger every day.

Wanda regards some of the young guineas. They don't roost in the coop anymore by their own choice. They roost in the big oak tree across from my kitchen window. They come and go in the coop as they please.

This is during a time when one of the adult guineas took on looking after the young ones- it was as if he was giving them a tour of the farm. This lasted for a week or two. He'd herd them all over the place and they followed him wherever he went and did whatever he did- all while making an enormous amount of noise. You can spot him at the far left in this photo. He's the one with the clearly white face. Whenever they would come around to where Aaron and I were working, Aaron would say, "Look! Here comes the idiot parade!" 

They love hanging out at the pond and snatching up bugs.

They are no longer so very cute.

The six chicks I bought in the early spring are now the same size as the adult chickens and I've already found 3 small chicken eggs from them.... which is better than finding 3 small alligator eggs from them. I call them "The Chicklets" like they're a girl group from the 60's.

Wanda the one-eyed wonder chicken is still singing and having adventures all over the farm. My Mom has written a few children's stories about her and I've illustrated one and will be doing the others too. I'll have to figure out how to post it so I can share it with you all.

Wanda (background) and Betty help us dig the pond for the ducks. Betty is still missing feather, as you can see. I've tried everything but it seems that this is how she is now and that's final. I tell people she has emotional problems.

Wanda sits and waits to be taken to bed. Every evening she sits right here and waits for me to come and pick her up and put her in the coop on the roost. 

A close up of my special girl back before the ducks had the fence penning them in.

Aaron and I have decided that we hate taking care of the "lawn" here. It's not actually a lawn. There's all kinds of weeds, which are mostly quite pretty if you let them grow. The reason we hate it is that there are no flat spots of ground. It's full of small ruts, divots, big rocks and muddy patches that are easy to get stuck in. And of course, you don't want to mow when the grass is wet- it will clog up the mower so we have to wait till the grass is dry. But by the time the grass is dry in the summer, it's 90 degrees and insanely humid. And the zero turn mower keeps breaking down, to top it all off. We can't win!

My backyard garden was an interesting experiment and I learned a lot. Next year I'll be working in raised beds and turning my backyard into a flower and fern garden. I did get a lot of watermelons and a few squash, eggplant and one little pumpkin. The corn didn't do very well and now that I know what I know- it should do much better next year.

The first zuchinni!

The first watermelon radish!

It looked good! 

And here are more photos:

Chairman Meow in the cat barn with Lucy in the background.

Atticus loves to swim!

The chicken I call "Pretty Chicken" (I don't want to name her for real because she's gonna get slaughtered soon) went through a phase of getting out of the coop and laying her eggs in the cat beds. I have no idea why.

Sunrise

We had an audience during our pond digging.

Day one of pond digging.

My parent's dog, Callie, and Atticus are best friends.

My Mom got me this great table and chair set for my front porch. Wanda is inspecting it from afar.

Aaron and Atticus cuddle on the couch.

Atticus in my weeds. After I took this picture, I pulled all those weeds out and planted begonias. They looked beautiful until the chicklets came and ate them all. 

Atticus and Aaron in the pool. 

The evening hang out. Now the ducks are in their own area, this doesn't really happen so much anymore. 

The ducks chasing Wiley. Actually it's Peter who chases Wiley and Sasha serves as point man. Kevin and Penelope don't seem to think it's a good idea and only come along because they don't want to be too far from the flock.

After a hot afternoon running around, it's nice to lay down and put your snout in a bowl of ice.

Atticus and Callie napping together at my parent's house.