Spring things

Our turkeys are laying eggs...in nest boxes, which is quite a coup. They tend to want to lay out in the field and then we loose them (the eggs and the turkey hens) until a raccoon finds them and that's not good for anyone.

Asparagus is poking up.

AND THE BARN IS BEING READIED FOR SHEEP AND GOATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6 Southdown sheep (2 ewes and their 4 lambs) are arriving next weekend. At the end of May, we'll be adding two Nubian doelings that are terribly cute and hugable. There will be many, many pictures. Promise.

Sick of Solstice Salad?

Here's some photos of winter to tide you over until I write a real blog post, including some art made by the turkeys in the snow.

All the mundane updates

In news that shocked the world (or 5 people), I recently deleted my Facebook account. I realize that this leaves a giant void for all the people in the world (5) who have a keen interest on the mundanity of my days.

As such, I bring you an update of all the things that have happened since I left Facebook one full day ago.

This morning was garbage day.
This evening for dinner we ate garden potatoes for the first time this year.

Whilst we were eating, an autumn leaf fell from a honey locust on to Sugar Pie's fuzzy ear.

Bernie slept through it all as cats are wont to do.

Bill has gotten to this point in his oven building.

I have gotten to this point in my hat and glove building.

(Also, since leaving FB, I have turned into a hard core rocker chick. Hard. Core.)

We received another delivery of wood.

I know, it looks like the last delivery, but I assure you it is not. See the wood in the shed? We stacked that. Also, please note our propane tank has been downgraded from 1000 gallons to 300 something. We use significantly less propane than the previous owners and the huge tank was unnecessary. Wood is the heating source of champions!

Finally, the turkeys want you to know that their tails are growing in for the season and they don't look nearly as silly as they did over the summer.

They want you to know they are handsome again. Image is very important to turkeys.

Very handsome turkeys.

Odd Ducks...

Well, no ducks, really. Yet. But definitely Odd Poultry.

This is Leelu. She's a Narragansett Turkey, about 2 months old.


She hatched with 4 other viable turkey chicks, but she's the only one who survived a raccoon assault shortly after they were born. Leelu has been doing just fine and is a tough little turk. She's basically on her own now as her mom has wandered off into the tall grass, presumably to sit on a new nest. More on that in a future post. Narragansett turkeys are fun but they are the biggest troublemakers on the farm.


This Dark Cornish Chicken was a victim of the same raccoon. He was attacked when the birds were still sleeping on ground and we think the raccoon reached through a tiny gap between the coop and the ground and grabbed his leg.


He was pretty well beat up, but has recovered nicely - though he did loose the leg. He gets out and about with the other chickens, is growing well and even makes it up to the perch at night. We have named him Hawkbait.


Finally, we have Jesus (with the Latino pronunciation). We were out of town last weekend, and when we came back, Jesus was waiting for us outside the chicken pen. He was born, seemingly a week early and took it upon himself to wander away from his brooding mama - still incubating his brothers and sisters - and explore his world.


At first, Bill attributed his birth to immaculate conception (I'm not really sure how that works in chickens? Maybe I could buy-in to immaculate hatching though), but has recently changed his theory.... Earlier this spring we had two clutches of chicks hatch - 13 babies in total. When they were about a week old, one of the wyandottes (like Jesus) disappeared without a trace, leaving us with 12.

Bill has decided a wormhole opened up in the chicken pen and Jesus stumbled into it and was transported a few months into the future - thus showing up in our pen last week.

The baby chicken is certainly a mystery. Chicken eggs incubate for 21 days. Given when the hens started setting, we weren't expecting any chicks until this weekend. Jesus' first clutch-mate was born this morning, actually.


Pretty odd stuff!

Around the farm tonight...

Memorial Day is for painting things red

I believe that when you have done the same thing on the same weekend for three years, it officially becomes a tradition. Right?

We seem to traditionally paint things red over Memorial Day weekend. Our first year here, it was the barn. The following year, with the help of Bill's parents, it was the chicken coop.

This year...Coop Mk. II. Our "chicken tractor" for the meat flock. It was built last summer, but never painted. We initially thought it might house ducks this year. But (apparently) we had so much fun raising Dark Cornish last year, that we're doing it again this year.

What's that? You didn't know that we received 30 baby chickens in the mail last month because I forgot to tell you? Yes, this is true. It seems that getting poultry from the mailman is no longer news-worthy.

The coop:

Bill picked out the brown trim and the quilt block. We were inspired by a barn we saw in Kentucky last week (more on that later). Bill - who retains far more knowledge about my hobbies than I do about his - picked a flying geese block... geese being birds and such. He rejected the "hovering hawks" block, given the raptors tendency to eat our pullets. And, though they aren't a worry here in Indy, "bear paw" was also rejected (bears like chicken!).

The birds were a little skittish when we moved them from their brooder box to the coop. They soon settled down and got right to eating bugs.

In other baby bird news...our good mama turkey hatched 6 healthy turkey babies, who are growing well. There was a lot more mortality with our baby turks than the chickens, and our three other turkey hens are rather flakey when it comes to setting on eggs. They are still young - just barely a year old - so we hope they'll do better next year.

PS - I say "chicken tractor" because the intent was to make an easily movable coop that could be relocated every few days, giving the chickens new areas to scratch around (and not deplete), but the Coop Mk. II is a beast and isn't going anywhere unless under the force of an elephant.

A million updates in one post

This here is what we're going to call a free form post. It has no common theme, no real intro, an unsatisfying conclusion...but lots of info. It's a dashboard update. Big picture. Many updates crammed together in one place.

A few weeks ago, there was an F1 tornado in our town. It completely blew apart a barn just a few miles away. It toppled so many trees across our neighbor's driveway that it took him 5 hours to cut himself out. It sent Bill and me into our basement in the middle of the night, and it broke one of the trees in the beloved canopy that (used to) shade our house.

I took a picture, but it just looked like a tree. So, picture 1/4 of the top of a 75 year old locust tree split in half and being held just feet above our roof by another branch of the same tree.

We called some tree folks (I could not support Bill taking on this tree - it gave me panic attacks. I am not ashamed.)...and decided to take down the whole tree. The tree folks parked their truck outside my window:


...and dismantled the locust. There is an old "before" photo in the right sidebar up over there --->

Here's what it looks like today:


We're splitting and stacking the wood.


Two of our chicken hens hatched chicks. They are adorable little mutts. So far, there are 8 - though one isn't looking so good.



Bernie has decided he's sneaky and stealthy and we can't force him back inside if we can't see him because he's hiding behind the grass.


Our broody turkey is still on her nest. We didn't mark when she started incubating, but it was just after tax day. Turkey eggs take 28 days to hatch, so we're getting close!


The lilacs bloomed and smelled fantastic.


And...here is your unsatisfying conclusion. The end.

Saturday Snow

We've got about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground and it's still falling.

It's lovely!

Indiana isn't very pretty in the winter - lots of empty brown corn fields. It looks a lot like a wasteland, so it's nice when the snow blankets the ground.

The chickens don't like it much, though. These two ladies are trying to determine if it's worth venturing 6 inches outside of the coop for the corn we threw just beyond the door.

They decided not.

The turkeys, however, have been out playing. They're staying pretty close to home, but at least they're outside.

When I venture outside, I make sure to wear my newly finished mittens:

Not really. These are fancy mittens and when I go outside it's to do dirty chores like fill up the birds' water or bring in firewood. But...I thought it was a nice transition.

Happy Snowy Saturday!

Bernie in the fall

Bernie has been venturing out to the field with us these past few evenings. When we go to check on the birds and walk Sugar, the cat follows right on our heels.

He wanders around the pasture, but is never far from us. The turkeys find him to be endlessly fascinating and they follow him everywhere.

This freaks Bernie out. He puts his ears back, squats real low to the ground and runs to the nearest person as fast as his little legs will carry him. As amusing as that is, I'd rather our turkeys show a little fear of carnivores (no matter how tiny and ill equipped to eat them). The turks have a curiosity that is adorable, but I imagine they would also follow a raccoon or a fox right into their hole for dinner.

Butterfly Blogging By Bill

Willful incompetence... Do you know it? Do you use it?

I'll admit that I do. Not seriously as mentioned in the link... (I can do anything. I rock like that. You do too.) ...just playfully with Bill for things he doesn't mind doing such as cleaning toilets or cooking dinner. In return, Bill claims willful incompetence with regard to using the washing machine and uploading pictures to the interweb.

This week, he spent a while in our pasture taking photos of butterflies and then whined a little about blogging them until I promised to do it for him.


What I don't think he realized, however, is that now I get to tell the story of his butterfly blogging any way I want.

Bill is kind of a girl. He's a total softy. Remember that bunny from the spring? He totally wanted to keep it to snuggle with. He also really likes flowers. One morning as we were carpooling and, of course, running late for work, he wandered off into a brushy area following spring wildflowers, completely obvious to the time that we didn't have.

I said, "Ahem..." (I probably didn't. It's more likely I swore at him.)
He said, "But, Baby...Flowers!" As if that was all the explanation needed.

Picture Ferdinand the Bull.


But he also takes pretty awesome photos, which I'm pleased to post. More here.


Bill's turkeys are also doing well. They've got free range of the whole pasture and are finding lots of good food to eat - most recently they've learned how to wrap the tall grass with the fuzzy tops around their beaks and strip the seed heads right off. Delish.