Day 6: Twelve Days of 2023

And this is my June 2023 recap. I was given boxes of squash and Digger Dog would steal and eat them

The Hollyhocks were amazing this year

The crazy amazing tomato garden

A little gopher snake. I've only seen a couple this year. I have seen a lot of the king snakes.

First tomato




 I had bought Bentley awhile back but didn't have pen space so he'd been living at my friends house. Since Gazelle and Chocolate and their kids had left the farm I had space to go pick him up and bring him home



He started out sharing a pen with three young boys from front to back, Jupiter, Apollo and Tiny Tim who isn't so tiny any more!

The spring pullets are growing up

And some older girls are laying

A nice basket of tomatoes

Around this time I started making sugar or face scrub



A canine of some sort (I do suspect a coyote but it could have been a stray dog) Dug under the back of my big chicken house and killed several young layers. I moved the survivors to a safer spot and temporarily patched the hole.

Day 4; Twelve Days of 2023

A recap of April 2023; All loaded up for the plant sale at the Globe-Miami Farmers Market, I had over 500 plants. I don't think I could fit any more in the van.

I started making goat milk lotion

Hatched more chicks

Had crazy cold weather with thick ice every where.



Longer days mean egg production is up

Digger Dog turned 1 year old.

The spinach crop was totally amazing

Storm had triplets, 2 girls and a boy




                                                
Here a chick, there a chick, everywhere are chick chicks!

Things were going great and Then I got waylaid by a scorpion sting

Storm seemed to have a touch of milk fever (not enough calcium intake so not enough in the blood stream)

Storm is a funny girl

With all the craziness that went on when Bambi had her kids, like my plumbing issues, friends had taken Bambi and her kids to foster them for awhile so I could get things taken care of. Now Bambi and her babies are home.

Day 2: Twelve Days of 2023

                                

If you missed yesterday's post I decided to recap this year by doing a post for each month of the year so this is Februrary 2023.   Above are Esmarelda's twins, Jupiter and Aries, doing well.

Christmas Evie was so cute!

                                           

Digger discovered his first tarantula. I have no idea why one was out in February

Started loads of tomato plants.

My indoor seed starting area in case you are curious.

                                

My Farmer Boy came to visit for a bit.

It was totally crazy weather.

And so of course Bambi decided to have her triplets

And then to top off everything else, I had a broken pipe underneath my bathroom floor. So the water to the house was shut off for about a week, while I had bottle babies and Farmer Boy to tend to.... Very crazy and stressful.

Farmer Friday

Who says dam raised kids aren’t friendly?  Mine are all very friendly although not as pushy as bottle babies. This is one of Midnight’s boys. 

Argh! Digger! Can’t let you out of my sight! Played in the chard bed again!

Well. It looks like Chocolate wasn’t pregnant after all. She came into heat this week and spent a couple of days keeping Bashful company. If I don’t see another heat cycle in a couple weeks then I’ll expect kids in December. 

Esmarelda what are you doing? Digging for China?  There was no hole there and now it’s a foot deep. 

Didn’t get rain the other day but got a rainbow 

Trying to turn this packing crate into a hay feeder. Besides being in the way the goats kept trying to eat the screws. 

I added some pallet wood to help stiffen the sides and some 2x6 legs

Does it pass inspection girls?

Probably the only time they’ve eaten out of it like this. Gazelle and Chocolate usually stand it it. 

And in the meantime Esmarelda broke the hay feeder in her pen. Fortunately it was a pretty easy fix. 

Poor Digger   Got a wasp or bee sting. Didn’t stop him from trying to chew on everything in sight. He was fine and almost no swelling in a couple hours. 

I was a bit concerned that maybe he tried to play with this little king snake but there weren’t any puncture wounds. 

Mmmm. Gazelle objected to Chocolate being on the other side of the fence with Bashful and beat up my new cattle panel. 

Ugh.  At least 5 tries to upload now….

Security Improvements

Just as I was starting chores this morning I hear a goat kid hollaring in distress. And find Midnight and Chocolate have hopped the fence again. One of Midnight’s boys was hollaring because he couldn’t find mom. 

Got them back in and worked on changing out the pintles for the gate so it won’t fall off every time I open it. 

Then things began to get complicated. It looked like Chocolate was coming into heat. She was even trying to ride the little bucklings.  So I slipped her into Bashful’s pen and yep she’s in heat. So likely December babies to come. But in this pic you can see what happened later. Gazelle and Chocolate began fighting through the fence. They bent up a brand new cattle panel. Mostly dented from Gazelle’s side. 

So I found a metal beam from an old shed we tore down and wired it right across where they were butting heads. That seemed to put a stop to it. 

Stopped to unload the car and clean up the driveway to get ready for hay delivery. I scored this cool packing crate yesterday. With some legs and some beefing up will make a great hay feeder It’s about 6.5’ long and about 2’ wide. 

But it’s longer than this little roof so started to add on. I got the T post set and another pallet put in place and was scrounging around for some long enough 2x4s to make the roof wider when Gazelle started pounding the fence so had to stop and fix that like I explained before. 

Puppies are like toddlers. When it gets too quiet you better go check. In this case Digger was just napping in his mud hole. 

I did work over here where they are hopping the fence. 

I found a long board to add in. I meant to cut some weed trees to put in the gaps but by then it was getting really hot.  It was 81°F at 5:00 am and by 10 it was miserable. 

I did manage to change out the biggest pad on my cooler. That by the way is a blue pad.  It was so clogged up with lime no air was getting through. Hopefully I’ll get the other 2 sides done tomorrow. But changing out just one side made a big difference in air flow in the house. 

Went to feed the bottle baby at noon and Digger decided he needed to cool off in the goats water. Of course I had to clean and refill buckets after that. 

And at milking time the storm rolled in. I got Posie milked ok and then Mocha and I got soaked   I didn’t even strip her out like I usually do. But that’s ok since she’s still nursing Latte. 

Then I put stuff in the shed and ran to the house sopping wet. Dried off and changed my shirt. Waited for the storm to pass and finished up milking. Fed Digger and the bottle baby. Trying to decide what to have for dinner. Something simple.  I’m too tired to think. Good night.