Winter is Waning

It's been a long time since my last post; just one example of how time slips away. This has been a long winter. We got our first snow before Christmas, which is unusual these days. Then it was a winter of deep freeze and extreme thaw. It's been a challenge in the barn yard.

This year we built an insulated box for the big water through and painted it black. The hope was it would hold enough solar energy to keep the water mostly thawed. It might have worked if we had any amount of the sunshine throughout January and February. We had weeks and weeks of endless gray days with no sign of the sun at all. So it was back to plan B, chopping ice out of the opening and filling with hot water. It works fine with only two animals... in future years we may need to look at other options.

We overwintered turkeys this year. A broad-breasted white, two royal palms, a bourbon red and eastern wild. The broad-breasted white, a congenial hen, lost all the feathers on her back and chest around early January...just when the mercury dipped below minus 10 Celsius and stayed there for weeks.

Miss Maple in her red sweater.

I found a couple sweaters at the second-hand store and adapted them for her to wear. Miss Maple looks stunning in red. The challenge was keeping the sweaters on her. The boys found it very attractive and we finally ended up moving her to the chicken coop because she was getting scratched by their constant attention.
She's only just now starting to show signs of growing her feathers again. We hope to hatch a few turkey eggs this spring and raise our own.

Here are a couple images of the toms; they are quite handsome when they're all puffed up:

Royal Palm



Bourbon Red

Last fall I built a cold frame and planted Mache; a hardy, cold-tolerant green. In January, during one of the mild spells I harvested some and took a couple pictures as well. It was wonderful to have a crisp, fresh green during the deepest part of winter. The cold frame spent a lot of time under snow, so I didn't take advantage of the greens as much as I wanted. I am excited about using to get a jump start on the spring planting season. I expect in a few more weeks I can start some spinach or chard in it.

Cold frame in January with Mache greens.
 

 I already have the seed catalogues out and I'm planning this year's garden. The garlic did well last year and is already in the ground. This year I'm going to try kale as my new crop. I really like the idea of having some cold-hardy greens to eat late into the fall and the early winter. I'm planning on experimenting with row covers and other season extenders.

We take possession of this year's pigs in a month. The meat chickens are already ordered and we're looking at potential mates for Dahlia the Dexter cow, who turned two in February and is ready for breeding.

Last year's pigs. Berkshires are extremely friendly and very tasty.

2014 is shaping up to be another busy season on the farm as we continue to move forward on the path towards self-sustainability.

No More Laughter in the Barnyard

It is with great sadness we announce the death of “Aflac the Laughing Duck”, our little Khaki Campbell. She died peacefully in the barn a little over a year after she started her life with us.

Duck was a survivor from the very beginning. She was part of a clutch of eggs given to us by a friend. We put the eggs in the incubator with chicken eggs and didn’t realize until later that the duck eggs required a longer incubation period. We expected the change in humidity towards the last days of their development would spell the end of the duck eggs, and for two it did. But one beautiful morning we came down stairs and heard the insistent peeps from one of the eggs and Duck was hatched

She was a gregarious creature who lived with the chickens but held herself somewhat apart.

Her most memorable attribute was her laugh. Duck had the innate ability to laugh, and always at just the right moment. A pun by Ian generated a hearty HAH HAH HAH from the bird. Any quip around the barnyard was rewarded by her acknowledging laugh, even from the other side of the yard. Neighbors walking their dogs past would also generate laughter. She found humor in every situation, but it was always timed perfectly – as though she was just waiting for the punch line. Everyone who visited commented on her wry sense of humor and her wit.

Duck also produced marvelous eggs. The shell was like white, translucent porcelain. Her eggs were larger than those of the chickens and the flavor was little deeper, a little richer – like duck herself. I used her eggs to make my first angel food cake and it was light and airy.

She was a fan of the rain and when puddles gathered in the yard she was in the middle of them splashing and playing. As a duckling we would place her in a large tote filled with water so she could learn to swim. As much as she enjoyed the water, she was always in hurry to return to her chicken friends.

Duck loved to walk through the grass shoveling her bill back and forth looking for tasty morsels. She lived a free-range life until this spring, when she and the chickens were fenced into to a spacious park area. But there was no confining duck. She found a way to always get back to where the action was and we’d find her sleeping in the flower bed, visiting the horse and cow, or just sitting in the front yard.

In recent days she completely moved out of the hen house and relocated to the barn with the young turkeys. She seemed to like the freedom and had more leeway to come and go as she pleased.

The barnyard will be a quieter and less jolly place without Duck’s gregarious presence, but we have been made richer by sharing her brief life.

Spring Rush

The farm is a beguiling mistress. She demands our full attention and lots of money. She rewards us with evenings like tonight where I've taken the camera out and photographed lady's slippers, apple blossoms, lilacs and more. Standing in the field and watching the wind move the grass in waves I was filled with a sense of calm and peace. It was a well needed respite as it feels like we have been running flat out for the last few months. Weeks have flown by as we prepared for new arrivals and cut and split next winter's firewood.

The star attractions this season are a quartet of Berkshire pigs and six turkeys.

Pig fence.

The pigs required a huge amount of infrastructure. The pen where we housed our first two pigs the first summer on the farm has since been turned into garden space and the barn is now used for the laying flock. This meant we needed to create a new paddock for them. We're challenged here because we're perched on a slab of bedrock; this makes it difficult to drive fence posts. Rob decided to build a tradition snake fence. These take a large number of rails and Rob spent weeks cutting and limbing trees around the property and bringing them to area where we want to run the pigs. At the end of the project we used almost 150 eight-foot rails to build the pen.

Eastern Wild Turkey Poult.

My project is six turkeys. I framed in part of the big barn and hung chicken wire to predator-proof their new quarters. Three weeks ago I brought home three Royal Palms, two Bourbon Reds and one Eastern wild turkeys. They are interesting additions and they're already starting to posture. Depending on what sexes we have and how the summer goes, we may try to keep two for breeding next year.

We are raising meat kings again this year. This will be our third summer raising them and we've started 30. We took advantage of having the extra penned area in the barn and moved them in with the turkeys. It has worked out really well. This batch is more active and is already foraging through the bedding. Another week or so and we'll move them out to pasture.

We have new neighbours and we bartered four tractor buckets full of manure for an old chest freezer they were throwing away. The freezer perfectly holds the pig, horse and cow feed and is rodent proof. There's even room for me to keep my brushes for the horse.

We lost one of meat kings this week and one of our layers. Chickens can be  hardy and resistant but when one takes it into its head to die, there's nothing you can do about it. They become the most fragile creature on the earth.

Spring is here and summer is at her heels. Tonight's stroll around the fields just reminds me of the beauty lurking just outside our door.

Lilacs in the big field.