100 year old barn and cistern repairs

Our 100 year old barn has long been in need of repair.  The eaves troughs were falling off, the soffit and facia were rusted right through in some places, hanging crooked in most places and the roof leaked like the proverbial aluminum sieve.  This summer is all about barn repair!

The barn has a great history to go with it.  There was another barn in it's place when the house was originally built - a large "L- shaped" wooden barn.  Sometime around the turn of the century they were using a steam powered thresher and the barn full of hay caught fire.  It burned to the ground leaving only the foundation.  The metal barn was built in it's place - I guess the fear of fire had it's impact - no more wooden barn!  It doesn't look too bad from the front since the two sides that show the most were painted at some point in the past 10 years.  The other two sides look pretty bad...now that I've tackled painting the garage and the potting shed maybe someday I'll get to the barn too.

So back to repairs.  There was no way sane and "normal" people would climb around on the roof 50 feet in the air!  We hired some Mennonite men because they said they would!.  They were a pleasure to have around and we are really pleased with the work they did.  They fixed things that they noticed were wrong that we didn't even know about.  The sliding doors for instance have never hung straight or slid properly - we just assumed that that's the way it was going to be - they fixed them and they now close perfectly.  They also cleaned many years worth of raccoon poop out of the area where the soffit and fascia meet - gross.

Leonard on the roof - 50 feet from the ground!

The fact that they are Mennonite-of-the-type-that-doesn't-drive-cars meant we had to pick them up and drop them off after work.  It was an hour drive one way so it added up but we took turns driving and somehow it worked out.  The ride was usually pretty quiet on the way home as the men took the time to sleep in between their days work and the farm chores yet to come.

While they were working on the barn they nearly fell into an old cistern.  A cistern is a large holding tank that collects water off the roof of a building so it can be stored and used - like a rain barrel but much better. I had heard that there was one around that area so I was excited - after I made sure everyone was OK of course!   I asked a neighbour who is a member of the original family if he knew about the cistern and he said it had never been used in his memory.  I am about to change that!  

I crawled in to have a look around.  It was obviously dark and damp but it looked in reasonable repair except for a few large cracks.  I checked with a waterproofing friend of ours and he told me what I needed to do in order to get it ready for use.  With an electric pump we can pump the water right into the barn into a large-water-cube-in-a-cage-thing and not need to use the house well for the animals - a real boon in times of drought.  In the winter time: no more lugging buckets from the house cistern when the pipes in the barn freeze!  It will only mean a small change in our original plans for how to direct the water with the eaves troughs.  I'll write a detailed post on how we do it when we get it finished.

I'm looking forward to completing the whole project and having a dry barn.  We have lots of work to do inside but knowing that the everything will stay dry in a down pour will make the rest of the work required make more sense.

Don't ya think the sliding doors need to be painted RED??  me too...

Winter chores on the farm

Winter is my least favourite time of year to be outside - it's cold and icy and I am a wimp.

I could easily cocoon myself indoors when we lived in the city but all that changes when you live in the country and have animals.  I really can't complain at all because my two-kids-living-at-home are awesome at taking care of the basics when I am busy and have other things that need to get done - like washing dozen after dozen eggs the other day when I got a few days behind!

We have developed some routines that work for us that I want to share because although doing chores in sub-temperature weather is not on my list of fun-things-to-do there are ways to make it easier.

The first thing is having proper clothing.  Warm boots, hats, mittens and a super duper coat are the bare minimum.  Think in layers because even when it's Arctic-cold outside once you start working you will get warm and want to be able to take off a layer or two. Just being in the barn means the wind chill is cut down considerably. When you're are reasonably warm everything else is easier to deal with.

I am going to admit to something that will make us sound like the most lazy farmers you ever met.  We start chores between 11-12 noon in the winter.  Shocking isn't it??  Aren't farmers up with sun? Don't they crawl out of bed in the dark and milk cows??  Yes, THEY do but WE don't.  That's one reason that lazy farmers do not have dairy cows!  

The real reason is simple: Our egg layers are notorious for laying their eggs all over the barn.  We had to check many sites every morning to make sure we got them all.  That got a bit tiring and we ended up throwing out a lot of eggs if we weren't sure how long they had been sitting there.  So now we beat the chickens at their own game!  We don't let them out until late morning in the winter so that most of them lay their eggs where they are supposed to - in the nesting boxes.  At other times of the year the sun is up earlier and so are the chickens.  Did you know that chickens lay more eggs when the days are longer?   If you want them to lay in the winter you need to add automatic lights to the chicken coop to artificially extend daylight hours.  We thought we would try that this year and see how much of a difference it makes.  If you need eggs please let me know because it works really well and we are swamped!

One of the other issues when temperatures get down to minus 10 or so is that the newly laid eggs can freeze solid before you collect them.  This requires a few extra trips to the barn during the day.  Insulating the nesting boxes would probably help too but for the few weeks a year that it is an issue here we haven't bothered.

The ducks, sheep and donkey get let out at around 9 - but that's usually a quick visit to the barn to make sure all is well and open the doors.

Waiting till later in the morning usually has the benefit of it being a little warmer out when you do have to go out for chores.  A few other side benefits are knowing you can sleep in sometimes and we can go to church on Sunday mornings and come back to do chores after church without messing up the routine too much!

Winter chores differ from any other time of the year in a few ways.  Water - the bane of the barnyard has been a pain in the "roompa" this winter.  We have a water line to the barn and it's even heated but this year it's frozen and not working.  That means we are pumping water out of the cistern at the back door of the house to water animals and walking back and forth with multiple pails of water.  I am so thankful for that cistern!!!  It never freezes no matter what the weather - it's a simply ingenious old fashioned solution!  I am also grateful we don't have a barn full of cows because I don't think we could haul enough water to satisfy them.

Keeping the water from freezing in the animals dishes is the next conundrum. We've tried just about everything over the years.  Right now we've settled for heated dog dishes which is not a perfect solution but at minus 25 the water doesn't freeze and that's all that matters for a few weeks.  I've seen several really ingenious ideas.

 backyard chickens  Place a regular chicken waterer on top of the heated brick and voilà - no frozen waterers in the winter!

These are on my to-do list for next year!  I hope they work as well as people say they do because it would make life much easier to not have open water dishes.  Ducks like to make a complete disaster around a water dish.  They are messy critters!  In reality it's not their fault - they need to submerge their heads to clean their eyes and without water they are at risk for infection and disease.  The temperatures we've been having lately make this very challenging - not to mention slippery for the humans!

Some people have asked if we heat the barn in any way in the coldest months.  We don't.  Animals are very hardy and keeping them too warm and then exposing them to dramatic temperature changes is not healthy for them.  Having appropriate sized coops for the amount of birds you have will allow the chickens to keep each other warm.  They get quite cozy on the roosts at night!

I've seen lots of pictures of chickens roaming farms in the dead of winter.  Not ours - ours avoid snow at all costs.  If it snows they just find a quiet-out-of-the-way place in the barn to poop - I mean sit.  Chickens poop - quite a bit actually.  In the warmer weather you don't notice it so much because they are out running around the farm but in the winter there are little poo piles everywhere - when it's REALLY cold they freeze into little rocks.  (Wow - I bet you read this blog just to hear about chicken poo!)  Sigh*  There are worse things in life but cleaning up when everything is frozen is an effort in futility so if you want to see my CLEAN barn please don't come in the winter!  It gets messy - that's life!

We take advantage of every warm spell that comes our way.  As soon as we read that the weather is going to warm up we plan for a big-barn-clean-up. If the temperature rises enough the water pipes defrost so this is the time the feeders and waterers get scrubbed extra clean and the walk ways and pens get a extra tidy up. We move hay down from the hayloft to make things easier in the days to come.  We hit up the feed store and load up on the necessities and pack them into the storage room - which is easier to do when you aren't slipping and sliding and FREEZING.  You never know when the next warm spell is coming so it can't be wasted when it does.  The animals seem to enjoy those days too because we're in the barn longer and they get a little extra love.

The sheep and the donkey are actually quite easy to care for.  We use an old cooler to water them and we just drop in a pond de-icer/stock tank de-icer and their water stays frost free.  With their warm fleece they don't ever seem bothered by the cold.  Even little Hubert who is growing like a bad weed seems happy and content regardless of the temperature.

Overall doing winter chores isn't too bad.  If the weather is really miserable we get things done in record time.  Sometimes we leave the animals penned up when it's icy or blowing knowing they will be safer and more comfortable inside and also knowing we will not have to chase them around at night to get them back where they belong.

The days of hiding out inside during the winter might be gone but they've been replaced by something surprisingly better - an enjoyment of winter I haven't had for a long time.  Maybe I'm not such a wimp after all!

Questions & Answers about Chickens from Sharon

Sharon and I have been emailing each other the past few days and I asked her permission to share our conversation - she said yes :)

Hi, Anita in Canada! Sharon in Nevada here, again. I saw that beautiful picture on your blog and now I have a ton of questions... How did you get started with your laying hens? Did you start with chicks or full-grown hens? And then I've heard that we need at least one rooster if we want eggs... is that true? We used to have chickens when I was a child, but I have forgotten the answers to all of these questions, so I hope you don't mind me pestering you about them.

I love your enthusiasm Sharon! Oh what an adventure you have awaiting you with chickens! So much fun!

We got “18 weekers” the first time we got chickens – that means they are almost ready to lay. They cost more of course but if you calculate the feed required and babysitting of chicks you might find as we did that it was worth it to have some success right off the bat. They were laying eggs regularly after the first week or two. We got ours at the local feed store/coop and honestly unless you can order easily from a hatchery it’s the best way to go. Later on we did buy from people on kijiji/craigs list but we haven’t always bought healthy birds that way and you can risk your whole flock if they bring disease with them. Better safe than sorry until you get the hang of it.

You do NOT need a rooster to make eggs – only to make baby chicks. I didn’t know that either J If you think about the birds and the bees it makes sense. The kids and I watched Magic School bus in hopes of finding out the answer and we DIDN’T – hee hee - so someone had to explain it to me.  Roosters are handy for protection as well but they are unnecessary FOR EGG PRODUCTION and the crow all day long some days not just in the morning. I rather like the sound but the kids have been known to groan and roll over and go back to sleep with visions of shooting the rooster right out the bedroom window J

I think she means this one!

The photo you have on your blog page of the big bowl full of eggs looks like a little piece of heaven to me!

Even though we live on an acre here in Nevada, we are not allowed to have chickens because we are inside the "city" limits. The good news is, we are moving to the "country" soon, where we CAN have chickens, and are kind of excited about setting up a coop. Any hints you can give me? Do you turn them out to scratch? Or is your hen yard big enough that they don't care? If you do turn them out, how do you convince them to come back into the coop? Do they come when called? Or is there a food motivator? (My horse has a food motivator!) Where we'll be going there are coyotes and raccoons, both of which love chickens, but in the wrong sort of way, so I really do want them locked inside their coop at night where it will be safe and they can at least make it to Day Two.

Any hints you can give me would be greatly appreciated. We go through a lot of eggs at our house, and recently the grocery store topped $2 a DOZEN for large eggs. UNREAL! I know there are reciprocal costs involved in growing your own, but still, I am looking forward to it.

Thank you! I hope all is going well in the frozen north. We are finally getting a little bit of snow here (but it is LATE).

~ Sharon in Nevada

 

Our chickens are locked up tight in their coop for the night and let out later in the morning.  We wait till 10am or later in the winter so they lay their eggs in the nesting boxes or else they will lay them all over the farm!  We let ours free range during the day and they look after themselves really well.  They get into the kitty food sometimes – actually they race to the back door to see if there is any left and then fight over it J  Night time is easy – once they know where home is they will go back there every night at dusk.  When you first get them lock them in for a few days so they get the idea that THIS-IS-HOME.  Trying to get them to come in earlier than dusk is a bit of a challenge and shaking a feed bucket works after they learn that the sound means food.  They will learn quickly so having a pail of kitchen scraps and leaving them in the same place – preferable near the coop –will train them quite well.  Problem of course if you free range is they will follow you everywhere – to the mailbox, in the garden, for a walk down the road – unless you can distract them first and then sneak away.

We have coyotes and racoons here too. We have a donkey and some sheep as well and we think just the smell of the donkey has kept the coyotes away from the barn.  We have lost a few to foxes though and several to racoons too.  The key is making their indoor coop predator proof.  You can find lots of info online about how to do that.  We have a big-old-bank-barn so we made an old cow pen into a coop.  It works great and most of the walls and the floor are made of concrete – once they are in there – they are safe.

I can’t honestly say you are going to save money raising chickens – it will depend on the feed situation.  I am still working on a LT solution of growing some of the feed myself but it looks like it will be many years before I get the hang of that! One step at a time!

Eggs for $2.00 is a good deal J  I sell mine for $4.75 a dozen and that just covers the costs.  Of course once you eat a farm fresh free range egg you will never want the grocery store version again!  YUM!

Hi, again!  Thank you so much for writing me back right away.  Yes, it's true:  For the first time in probably six or seven years, I find that I am VERY excited about the future and looking forward to things to come, and I have you to thank for helping me realize that.  That actually makes me feel better about the current "space" that I'm in.

The $2 a dozen price is for store-bought eggs, large size (not XL), and that are most definitely not free range, and I totally understand that part about once you have a "home grown" you won't want to go back.  The same can be said for tomatoes.   I know that there is an expense to feeding them (the chickens, not the tomatoes), but I am also looking forward to my own fresh eggs.

 (I can't wait for fresh tomatoes!!)

Good news about the rooster.  I was not looking forward to the cock-a-doodle-doo's at the crack of dawn and beyond.  I DO remember the annoying crowing that (you're right) seemed to go on at all hours and not just at sun-up.  But then, we had a screwy rooster, and as I recall, he ended up in a pot of dumplings.  Not sure if the excessive crowing had anything to do with that, though, or not, but the end result was the same. Yum!  I LOVE dumplings!

http://www.backyardchickens.com/

Here is a link to a website I used to study-study-study, back in the day.  I guess I need to study some more.  My son, who's been asking to raise chickens since he was 7 years old (he's just turned 15) wants to help build the coop and chicken run, and there are several fun designs in this website.  You can go from beyond simple enclosures, to chicken tractors (a concept that struck me as hilarious), to creating your own chicken princess castle, to an entire western frontier of buildings.  In addition to the plans, most of the coop designs have many, many pictures of step-by-step construction, so you can actually see progressive photographs of how they were built.  I just pulled up the website after eons of not looking, and see that they've expanded to include chicken breeds and many more interesting bits of information.  Feel free to share with whomever.  Oh, and yes, you can use my question in your blog.  :-))  I didn't realize I HAD so many questions until I started writing them down.

The backyard chickens website is definitely the place to check out for more information on raising small flocks of chickens.  There are some very creative people sharing their ideas for chickens tractors and coops that will make you laugh!

Thank you again, Anita, for taking time to write to me.  You are always so refreshing to read, and you make me feel uplifted when you write.  You sound like a very happy person.  I will keep you posted as we progress.  It's still one day at a time, but the target timeframe is early this summer.

Oh, wow!  and oh-em-gee!  all at the same time!!

Thanks more than you know,

~ Sharon  :-))

 

You are MORE-THAN-WELCOME!  Hope that helps!  Congratulations on the upcoming move – I know how the excitement can be.  I am still amazed I live here! 

THERE'S-NO-PLACE-LIKE-HOME!

Bless you as you make your own adventure in country living!

If you liked this post please share it with your friends and leave me a comment.

A Day at the Farm: Barn chores

I had to write up some instructions last year for a my sister who was coming to look after the animals for a few days and I thought you might like to see what is required for a DAY-AT-SHALOM ENGEDI-FARM in the winter.

Cows:

You don't have to do anything - the neighbour will come and look after them - you are allowed to pet them if they will let you (good luck with that!)

Sheep and Donkey:  Maybe, Lamb-chops, Flanders and Mr. Sheepie

They need is fresh clean water. 1/2 bale of hay in the outdoor feeder and a 1/2 bale in the inside feeder. 

Rinse and fill water bucket in the morning - check it at night to be sure it's still full - if nearly empty the sheep can't reach the water.

They get 1 half can of "ewe food" at night - they have to share.

They can go outside in the cement paddock during the day.

They enter and exit through the gate on the west side of the barn.  If you have their "ewe food" (ie. Bait) ready they are usually not too difficult to get back into their pen.  Shut the door between their side and the chicken/duck side before you let them in or them will head straight for the chicken feeders and cause chaos! 

The chickens: 48 old lady names - call them whatever you want :) and 2 roosters

The biggest chicken pen - those chickens are allowed out every day.

Fill the feeders and waterers

Rake & stir the shavings on the floor - the deep litter method is working really well for us!

Collect eggs in the morning and refill the nesting boxes with fresh shavings.

We usually don't let them out until 10:30 (so we can sleep in!)  NO!  So they will lay their eggs in the nesting boxes - or else they are all over the barn.

Shut the door to the coop throughout the day.

Put them back to bed by dusk - if it's still light out you will have a much harder time rounding them up.  They WANT to go back to their coop when it's getting dark and if they have not had access to feed all day they are more than willing.

The Big Rooster: Solomon

Solomon and the other rooster Fred will fight to the death so don't let them out on the same day.

His pen is the second one on the left from the main door.

He just needs to have feed and water available.

The Chicken Couple: Fred & Ethel

Fred is the other rooster - Fred and Ethel get let out on opposite days of Solomon.  You will hear him crow and think - what was thatstrange noise :)

Their pen is closest to the main door on the left.

Food and water available - check for an egg!

The Muscovy's:  all white ducks Sir Winston, Sir Francis (a girl!) Lady Bella and Lady Gaga.

They are in the farthest pen from the door on the left side.

They are also on rotation with the other ducks because the boys don't get along

Feed and water available - check for eggs.

The Rouen's: Colorful ducks - Harrison & his wife, Pom-Pom-Head

They live in the pen to the right of the main door.  Same as the other ducks.

Check for eggs.

The Cats: Lilly and Chloe and a few other random wild cats with no names.

Cat food is in the green recycle bin in the farthest back room of the house. 

1 scoop morning and night split between the two bowls.

Water dish is outside under the bench close to the back door.

The Dog: Levi

Requires the most amount of work.

Mandatory snuggles and kisses.

His latest trick is taking off to the neighbours :)

Dog food is in the bag at the top of the basement stairs.

********************************

We don't work at cleaning too hard in the winter.  Big cleaning jobs are reserved for days when the weather in the winter is unseasonably warm or it waits till spring. 

To paraphrase a sign I saw once: 

Our chore list changes with the seasons and as new animals arrive on the farm.  We're looking forward to the changes that baby lambs and new ducklings and chicks will bring.

Ahhh spring...can't wait!

A Christmas story

In the stillness of a cold winter night being with the animals in the barn is one of my favorite places to be.  I can just imagine…

It was evening- we were waiting for Farmer Luke and Farmer Mom to come out to the barn and tuck us into our nice warm pens where fresh hay and grain awaited us each night.  My friends Lamb-chops and Flanders the sheep waited with their thick woolly coats covered in bits of hay from reaching up into the manger for the last of the hay in the outdoor feeder.  Mr. Sheepie waited while keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of Annabelle and Clementine as they rounded up their chicken friends so they could all run into the barn together when dinner was served in the chicken coop.  Sir Winston and Lady Bella waited while bobbing their heads to some internal beat of their own - ducks are a bit strange that way.

It was very quiet except for the soft clucking of the chickens when Annabelle spoke up and asked me to tell a story while we all waited. Donkeys have the tradition of being the barnyard storytellers so I thought back to the stories I had heard from my mother when I was just a colt.  My favorite story was one I had asked for many times - my mother had pretended to be tired of telling it to me but I could tell from the sound of her voice as she told it that it was her favorite too.

The sheep settled down in a pile a straw and the chickens and a few of the ducks gathered round finding places to roost on the beams above our heads.  My best friend Gertie sat right beside me clucking her encouragement as I took a deep hee-haw breath and began to tell the tale.

It was in a place very much like this barn and a very long time ago.  That barn was home to another family of animals - just like us.   My great-great-great-great grandmother (maybe a few more greats - my mom wasn't quite sure) was there one night when something so wonderful and so spectacular happened that she could never forget it.

It was a cold night and the other barnyard animals were talking excitedly about their day. The chickens always had lots to talk about - the big worm they had found in the apple orchard or finding the grain on the side of the road that had fallen off of the farmers cart on his way to market.  But it wasn't any of those things they were talking about that day.  It wasn't a usual day for the goats either of being let out to graze in the fields with the goat herders near by or being frightened by a bear in the distance that the goat herders had to chase away.

This was an extra-special-very-un-ordinary-day because some guests had arrived in the barn.  The animals were very curious about them.  One of the guests stood quietly near them munching some hay with a far-away look in her eyes. The others were in the sheep and donkey stall.  The animals were trying to decide who they could send to speak with her and finally decided to send my great grandma to have a donkey-to-donkey talk while they quietly crowded around to see what she would say. The cows bell jingled softly around her neck as she strained to hear what was being said.  The chickens quietly clucked to themselves - wondering what was happening.  The ducks just bobbed their heads making no sound at all which as very unusual for them.  Grandma joined the guest at the feeder and introduced herself.  I'm Grandma Maybe - what brings you to our barn this cold night?  The guest finished chewing her hay before answering - for it's impolite for donkeys to speak with their mouths full.  With the quietest hee-haw she whispered - I came with those people over there. The man kept saying - we need to get to Bethlehem. 

Grandma Maybe looked into the stall where she usually slept with her friends.  The light from a moonbeam streamed right into the pen so she could see quite well.  In the hay manger - right on top of their nightly ration of hay was a BABY!  It's parents were looking at him with big smiles on their faces.

What was a baby doing in there!! 

A few minutes later the barn got even busier!  All the shepherds came in!  They seemed excited and curious.  They looked at the baby with big smiles on their faces too. 

Weren't they supposed to be looking after the sheep?? 

One of the shepherds was a young boy who was always very friendly to all the animals.  He came over to scratch Grandma Maybe between the ears.  He seemed to be thinking really hard about something and then he said:

Grandma Maybe: we saw angels tonight.  They sang to us out in the fields!  One of them told us: “Don’t be afraid! I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.  The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!  And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”  ...and look - THERE HE IS - just like they told us!

The barn was very still - you could only hear the sound of the gentle wind outside as Maybe finished the story.  Lamb-chops the sheep was the first to speak  "That was a special night!  I wish I was there to see it myself."  The other animals nodded in agreement.

Then they all heard the sound of Farmer Luke and Farmer Mom coming towards the barn -  they wouldn't have to wait any longer for their evening meal.  The animals remained unusually quiet as they made their way into their suppers and then their beds - no loud quacking or clucking or hee-hawing or baaaaaing - everyone just went peacefully into their pens and thought and thought about the story Maybe had told them.

No more waiting...

“Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

Merry Christmas! 

Green eggs - no ham.

The Kawartha Lakes Co-operative Auction Market or just-plain Woodville for short is the not-so-close-by place to go if you're looking for livestock animals.   I've only been there once.  My daughter and I were overwhelmed with the sights and sounds of animals, cars and trucks backing up filled with cages, people and farm equipment. We had only been living at the farm a few weeks and at that point our livestock consisted of all of 6 chickens - if you don't count the barn cats and the city dog.  I was so intimidated by the auction process that we didn't even get a number.  I could only imagine ending up with a cow for scratching my nose at the wrong time.  We decided to just stand and watch and hopefully learn.  Like any other auction - things moved along really fast and I wasn't quite sure how much things sold for or if it was a good deal or not.  We took the wimpy-route and headed for an area of the property where you could buy chicks and ducklings without the auction process.  We just went to look...and walked away with 4 Muscovy ducklings.  Cute little balls of fluff that we didn't have a clue about.  We went back to the car with them in a cardboard box and then scrambled to figure out what to do with them on the way home.

They lived in a hamster cage in our very-back-room (that's the addition to the addition) until the smell necessitated their removal to a more permanent home in the barn.  These ducks have been a great asset to our farm.  They eat an incredible amount of bugs, they are very entertaining in their strange head-bobbing sort of way, and they have provided us with fresh eggs and recently baby ducklings.

Sometime early this spring we were thinking about getting some more chickens but somehow a trip to Woodville just wasn't making it into the schedule with all the other things to do.  Our neighbour Ray was here rototilling the garden when he mentioned he was headed for Woodville the next weekend.  I think going to Woodville is his Saturday morning tradition and one he rarely misses.   Well the two thoughts converged and I asked him if he would mind looking around for us to see if he could find a COUPLE of Ameraucana blue/green egg laying chickens for us.  Somehow he thought "a couple" was 30 chicks.  Mercy - what was I going to do with 30 more chickens?!!  At that point we already had 40 or more.  We were really in the chicken business now!

It takes 18-22 weeks before chicks get big enough to lay eggs so we waited and waited...I had just given up on ever seeing a blue/green egg when finally we had the Dr. Seuss moment I had been waiting for.  GREEN EGGS - no ham.

Most adults would play this cool -  we have increased our egg production.  NOT ME!!  Yippee we have green eggs!!  It was worth the wait just for the coolness factor.

Almost everyone who hears about these new-fangled-eggs (that are actually old-fangled if you think about it) asks HOW COME?  So here's your birds-and-bees moment for the day.  Chickens lay eggs according to the color of…….. their EARS.  Really. Betcha didn't even know chickens HAD ears (yeah - me neither) White eared chickens like leghorns lay white eggs.  Brown eared chickens like our red-sex links lay brown eggs and black chickens with green ears (I have not personally ever seen their green ears) lay green or blue eggs.  Just for the record the roosters only part in this is fertilizing the eggs so they can hatch into chicks - he doesn't influence the color of the eggs.

So what do green eggs taste like?  Well - like an egg.  Nutritionally all the eggs on our farm would have similar nutritional quality because they all eat the same bugs, green stuff and feed. The color of the shell is just an interesting side bar.

Most of the eggs currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion that Mother Earth News has reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project. The testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol

• 1/4 less saturated fat

• 2/3 more vitamin A

• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids

• 3 times more vitamin E

• 7 times more beta carotene

Mother Earth News also reports: We think these dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely the result of the different diets of birds that produce these two types of eggs. True free-range birds eat a chicken’s natural diet — all kinds of seeds, green plants, insects and worms, usually along with grain or laying mash. Factory farm birds never even see the outdoors, let alone get to forage for their natural diet. Instead they are fed the cheapest possible mixture of corn, soy and/or cottonseed meals, with all kinds of additives.

Happy Chickens and Ducks at Shalom Engedi Farm -  free ranged chicken eggs - now in three colors to choose from! (that's my commercial) 

There you have it.  Green eggs - no ham - and I like them Sam I am!!  Move over Dr. Seuss!

Great weather if you're a duck!

A few weeks ago on a Sunday morning we came into the barn to a lovely surprise...11 ducklings had hatched over night - the first sucess after three attempts of sitting on eggs that had all ended in - zip!  You know when the ducks give up on a nest because they roll the eggs all over the floor and break up their nest. It's been fun to observe the differences between these ducklings and the ones we bought at the Woodville auction last year.  Having moms to watch out for them and teach them is facsinating.  The moms make different noises to communicate with the ducklings and it doesn't really sound like quack quack!  The babies know exactly what they mean though and come running. 

Each day we let them ouside into the barnyard where they spend their time splashing in puddles and staying close to the mommas.   

The momma's co-parent the brood quacking loudly at any nearby chickens and grabbing them by the feathers and honking loudly if they get too curious.   The sheep and donkey had a good look yesterday and were trying hard to stomp the duckings - being the new kids on the block makes for a tough week!  All of them managed to get out of the way and get back to their pen safely but there were a few heart-stopping moments!

We found IT!

Well, I had no idea how quickly this was going to happen! We went to an open house last weekend and we found IT. The country property that we had been waiting for and dreaming about for so many years. I feel stunned after waiting and dreaming for so long.

It's a century home on 10 acres with a barn and some other out buildings surrounded by environmentally protected lands on two sides, a farmers field on one side and some nice neighbours on the other side. I've always wanted a house were we didn't need curtains on the windows and if I choose to do that I could - WITH NOBODY PEEKING IN!

There's a lot to think about with an older country property. Septic systems, wells, water flow rates, oil tanks, whether or not the basement fills with water in the spring, how close a proposed new highway will be…

I'm choosing to think about where the furniture will go, having a fire pit in the back, being able to hang my clean laundry on a clothesline-outside-in-the-fresh-spring-air, where to plant the apple trees and blueberry bushes, canning the fruits and vegetables from the gardens next fall and how many barn cats we will have roaming the "farm" that the girls will want to adopt and bring inside. NO - NO - NO!!

Now to complete all the paperwork, get all the inspections and watch God put the finishing details on the whole event.

Did I mention that Wal-Mart was 13 minutes away??

My long-awaited adventure of God-proportions continues...