String Bean, Sugar Pea, Phoebe… so how did we come up with those names?
Whoa…. we had to do a double take! Thought we had a new tom running around here but no… it was just Chance.
It’s fun day Friday so We’re going skating! After that, play ends and work starts… there’s so much to do! We got supplies to make the turkey run and while we were in town, we ended up picking up our pigs. Turkey run… preparing the pig pen… and, the rabbit is building her nest… so much going on, where do we start?
Nothing better after doing a lot of work than to play with cute goats!
We were mistaken on the number of days a rabbit’s gestation period is. We were expecting them on day 28 when it’s really day 31. So since we still have several days yet we freshened up the nesting box and added some straw.
Time for chores… it’s cold, it’s late, no time for dilly dally!
Got off to a late start and the day just went down hill from there. It was just one of those days where we didn’t get anything accomplished. On the brighter side, we have another turkey eggs so we talked about how you should store eggs before incubating and why.
Only several more days until our bunny is due so we decided we better get a nesting box put in her cage for her. We let our chickens out to free range today. Will they go back to the coop at the end of the day? Watch to find out…
I’m planning to start free ranging the chickens again so that way we can start planting the garden soon.
We started out the day with our usual chores. Got a batch of apple butter started and chicken canned. The turkeys keep following Miley around and she’s a little weirded out by it because she’s not sure of their intentions.
We got the beans picked and snapped, now we just need to find time to can them.
A lot of times I don’t follow recipes and will just randomly make something according to what we have on hand. Sometimes it turns out great, other times not. Tonight’s supper was one of those experiments.
At chore time we found the turkeys missing so we had to find them and put them back in the coop. Always something around here….
Ever have one of those days that goes on and on and actually over laps into the next day? This was one of those days for us. Started out around midnight finishing up night chores because of a run away turkey. Once the sun came up, it was the usual chores and then we made a trip to town to check out a car for Brooke. Then it was back home to grab a trailer to help Dylan move in a desk. By the time we got home from that, it was midnight.
Conversations with the turkeys, being captured by a cat squirrel, chores, freeing a stuck goat, a new nest of guinea eggs, beautiful weather, lots of produce from the garden, and a simple supper. It’s just another great day on the homestead.
One day over the weekend the kids were gone and it was just my husband and I home. So we had us a little date scooping poop, cleaning things up and doing some much needed fixing up to a few things. Now that everything is all switched up we have a whole new morning chore routine.
We also picked beans and the kids have been keeping busy with a few projects they came up with on their own. Who needs toys when you have sticks, paint, string and a bog box to play with?
When we started out with our first flock of chicks, we really didn’t have any plans on adding any other type of fowl to our flock. But then one day, when we stopped into the feed store to get some more chick feed, we saw that they had baby turkeys for sale. And well, one thing led to another and we ended up bring a few of them home. Assuming they’d do just fine living with the chickens, we put them in the coop with the chicks. They got along fine and we just figured they’d all coexist happily.
A few days later, I started doing a little research on raising turkeys. I know, I should have done that before we got them, but it didn’t happen. Lesson learned. So I came across an article that said that turkeys and chickens shouldn’t be raised together. I started doing more research on it and found the same info all over the internet. In fact, I found very little on raising them together successfully.
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This year, for some reason, turkeys have been hard to find. None of the feed stores in our town are carrying them, and stores in surrounding towns don’t have them either. We considered not getting any this year since the chicks we got a couple months ago are almost grown up and the thought of having to start over with a brooder and heat lamp in the house, when it’s warm outside isn’t very appealing. But after thinking about it, we decided that we might regret not getting any. Turkeys are the first animal we grew and butchered on our own. It’s been a tradition every year since we’ve been here to raise two turkeys for the holidays. While it’s not really necessary we do it, it’s something we enjoy. Summer just wouldn’t be the same around here without hearing the sounds of turkey chatter and gobbles while watching the turkeys graze and chase bugs as we sit outside in the evenings.
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