Would you like to meet the puppies before they head off to their new homes? They are almost 8 weeks old and our time with them is coming to an end. Some have been named by their owners, some have been given nicknames by us, and some simply named after their colar colour. The puppy "Sam" aka Samson, is the one I chose for myself.
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We've had more babies here at the farm! Odette and Lacey, our French Angora rabbits, both gave birth to a litter each a day after Valentines Day. Odette's litter was that of nine black and pink little kits, while Lacey produced eight! Sadly, Lacey has prooved for the second time her horrible mothering skills. Noticing the cold and limp state of her babies, we quickly moved three of her strongest over to Odette's cage whom adopted them as her own. The next morning after I checked in on them, I found the remaining five kits all dead in Lacey's cage. Thus far, Odette has taken to the three babies from Lacey and is doing a good job of becoming their surrogate mother on top of her own. We are a little worried as that now gives her twelve little kits to nurse and raise. We've got our fingers crossed that all survive.
This is just a quick stop in the chicken coop as promised in my previous post. Things are still pretty dang busy around here but I think I may be actually catching up, so might be able to post a real blog entry soon. But then again, it took me a week just to finish drafting this entry---so maybe not! Meanwhile, the chicken coop.... The chicken coop measures about 22x6, a very odd size but it is squeezed into the corner of our woodshed and I didn't want to take up any more room than that. On the right is three roosts tiered in a "staircase" design so that the chickens on the higher roosts don't poop on the heads of the chickens below. On the left is the nesting boxes. The sloped roof is to discourage chickens from roosting and pooping on top of the boxes. Directly in front of the entrance is the large fiberglass window. And directly to the left of the window is the chicken's door to the run outside. There is no electricity in the shed, but we ran an extension cord from the house to hang a heating lamp in case of deep freezing temperatures in the winter. So far we've used it only at the beginning of winter when temperatures were beginning to drop overnight, but our egg count had become so high that we decided to shut down the light unless it got real cold. It hasn't been on since and our egg count is now at a more desireable level of approx. two a day. Sadly, whether related or not, we have lost a couple chickens over winter including most recently our Chantecler rooster. I found him dead in the coop last week. And, sadly, we also lost on the exact same day our most beautiful rooster, Damon. He was Farm Girl's favourite rooster and was a disappointment to loose, but he was also an Americauna which truthfully, I had no interest in reproducing green egg laying hens anyway. But he would have made a pretty show bird. Unlike the Chantecler rooster, Damon did not die from winter weather, instead he was attacked on a rare day that I let him out of his cage in the big barn. It was a beautiful sunny winter day with no snow to be seen, so let him and Buffy out of their cages to explore and free range. Buffy stayed close to the barn but Damon wandered off...I found him lying next to the driveway later in the day. We think Frank or Skeeter, the turkey, attacked and killed him.
This post might be a bit long as I haven't blogged anything newsworthy in awhile and I probably won't again for a long time. You see, I've been super busy and will continue to be super busy until mid-April. Farm Girl has gone off to college to become a real farmer. Here she is standing infront of the school. It's a great experience for her and she's learning a whole bunch of important information like knowing all the various types of weeds which should help her momma in battling those dang weeds in my driveway. She's met many kindred spirits and even has her first serious boyfriend (she'd kill me if she knew I mentioned this). And she's sharing a dorm with her BFF and having a blast. They have already started house hunting for next year. Quick quiz...how do you know your kid attends an agri school? All the students drive pick up trucks! And Git 'R Dun trucks, lol! Anyway, I am super proud and happy for her, but that does leave all the chores and farm work to moi. To top matters, both daughters went away for the weekend to an event hosted by the Junior Farmer's group they are part of, and not only left me chores (usually I get weekends off when Farm Girl comes home) but left these sweet little fella's in my care as well. And left the livestream in my charge as well. You'd think there was nothing to it, but between, cleaning the pen, feeding the pups, letting them out for social time, putting them all back one by one at the end of social time; clean the floor after social time where puppies have left poop, pee, and dirty little paw prints; clean said little dirty paws (all 10 sets), answer emails and phone calls regarding the pups, fix the livestream when our lousy internet connection fails a gazillion times a day---really keeps one a hopping. I can't wait until Breeder Girl (who I have now just officialy nicknamed that) comes home! Said Breeder Girl (aka my first born) with said Breeder Dogs..... But anyways this blog post is not about my whining and complaining about all the work I have to do, instead it's about our woodshed, which incidently we've been busting our butts off the last couple of days lugging logs from downed tree branches from around the property and bush. Enough complaining already! Alright, alright, well you see we ran out of wood. I thought we had plenty. Our wood shed had wood lining three walls and looked plenty enough to me, but I forgot we actually have two wood burning stoves in the house. One's a fireplace in the family room and the other a woodstove in the kitchen which helps to heat the hot water tank which heats the hydraunic heating system in our house, which helps keep the electricity bills down. We decided to be cheap and see what wood we could find around the property as it is such a wooded area. Indeed we did. And as a bonus they were all long gone dead and properly "aged" (is that the right term for letting freshly cut wood age?). Hubby was at work today so I tackled the job of cutting all those branches down to size to fit into our stoves. I figured he had the harder, more physical task of carrying the wood back to the house. Yes he carried it all---by wheelbarrow---up and down hills nonetheless. You see we don't have a tractor, ATV, or 4x4 of any kind. Heck, we don't even have a horse that can haul! So he had to bring it home the only way he could. With his own two hands and feet! Believe me he was sore. Anywhoo, this was what I had accomplished today. I was pretty pleased with myself and he was pretty happy with me as well---that's two rows of wood! And the wood was free!! And there was no harming of any trees in the process!! Yay for us! Anyhow, as I was stacking the wood I thought of my blog and figured the woodshed would be as good as any place to continue on my tour. So here you have it. The wood shed. What I'm about to show you is very, very, very hard for me. The inside of the woodshed. Why? Because it is so messy! I hate it! But it has become a drop off, junk depot for all things well, junky. But it is part of my new goals to be open and honest about life on our farm. And our junky woodshed is part of our farm. So here we go. The woodshed was, I think, suppose to be some type of garage but it is really weakly made and provides inadequate protection for your vehicle in sever weather so it got transformed into a woodshed by previous owners and now by ourselves. It is seated right next to the house at the back and is one of the first things you see when pulling up our "driveway" (it's not really a driveway as it is one big gravel pit overrun by weeds). The woodshed is also home to our henhouse. There is a chicken run that measures about 10x24 on the north side. I chose the woodshed for our henhouse for two reasons. Exhibit 1. A large fiberglass window to provide plenty of light. And Exhibit 2. Steps away from the backdoor entrance to the house for quick and easy egg collecting. However in hindsight, the barn would have been a better location as it is warmer, drier, lighted and has running water. Plus north facing windows provide little light. I head out to the barn every morning as it is, so it would have been easier all the way around to have housed them in the barn. I may or may not move them there in the future as Farm Girl is discussing buying more chickens---alot more, and I don't think the horse barn will be a good home for that many plus all of our other critters. But anyways, if you enter the door on the left you will enter the back entrance to the shed. The front entrance is a large garage door. Inside, the henhouse is immediately to your left. I think I've posted photos before of the inside of the coop but will do so again in my next post. To your right will be a pile of crap piled into my brooder as to not crowd the small walking area---but DON'T LOOK AT THAT! I'm so embarrassed! And straight ahead is where we store and chop the wood, which is obviously in a poor pitiful state right now. Right about now I'd be apologizing profusely for the sad state of the shed if you were actually visiting in person. This is the view looking back toward the rear of the shed. The garbage bins in the back are actually where I store the chicken feed and scratch. One day I would love to tackle this shed and make it neat and functionable, but for now it is at the bottom, far bottom, of my to do list. (How is it that a dog cage always seems to show up in my photos?) Anyway, there you have it, the woodshed.
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