Farm Update

It's been a while since I've done a farm update. Here's what's going on in the Big Cedars outdoors.
The chickens have been on strike the past couple of months. The Buckeyes molted and looked very pathetic around November. Now they have the nicest silky feathers again AND they are all laying. The new ones just started this week. Their eggs are tiny right now, but it's nice to have fresh eggs again.

They even grew back feathers where the last two roosters wore them off with their amorous advances. The hens don't miss those two guys at all. The latest rooster has been getting busy but the red Buckeye's don't want anything to do with him. They know the score. I'm sure they've been accosted but I've only seen him on the yellow Buffs so far. He may not last long enough around the farm to win the Buckeye babes over.

 

I do like how he keeps an eye out for the hens. If he can just keep his hormones from raging so much and realize we do NOT want to hump his girls or infringe on his territory ... he might make it. I'm not holding my breath though.

The strawberry bed is just full of weeds and a few strawberry plants. At this point it's going to be difficult to weed without pulling up plants too. It sort of got away from us last summer. Hopefully, we'll be able to sort it out and get some berries this summer.

This is Gary's garden spot below. The weeds took it over as as well. The tiller will solve most of that problem when it gets closer to spring.

We did manage to get our main garden beds cleaned out, and I keep spreading rabbit droppings on them from time to time. This year, I hope to really concentrate on TOMATOES, potatoes and lettuces.
I've all but given up on the heirloom varieties. I like the IDEA of heirlooms but they just don't produce for us. We've tried three years now. I've had to buy tomatoes from my Grandma or the farmer's market to get enough to can. Maybe this will be our Year of the Tomato.

Walking out to the greenhouse the other day I came across this mess. It looked like bloody entrails for a minute. As I got closer and studied it a little more I finally figured out what it was.

Swiss chard from the garden.  Whew!

The handicap bunnies got separate rooms again because the white/gray one was chewing the heck out of the little black one. The black one is the three legged one. He sort of just waddles around the hutch. The other one isn't much better and would have likely been better off if it's flipper foot had been removed as well. They are pretty pathetic really. They are cute though and friendly.

We still have our stray cat, and I may take her to the vet this week to have her spayed if I can get her into the cat crate. I figure she'll bail as soon as I get her home, and we'll never see her again. Hopefully not. She's pretty sweet but her claws sure are sharp. Ask Grace about that. She keeps trying to pick her up.

Basically right now we are just waiting for spring to start gardening again. The greenhouse is full of animal feed right now. I haven't decided if I'm going to try to start plants from seeds or just buy them. I'm feeling pretty lazy at this particular moment and thinking buying them sounds pretty darn good.

We had talked about raising pigs again but our freezer is packed to the rim. We have enough friends that would buy them to butcher if we want to do it, and we finally have a couple of leads on where we can get some piglets. More to come on that front.

Farm on.