heal

Darn these knees! The swelling wont go away. I have so much to do. I have 3 trays of  72 tomato plants, plus another tray with 16 plants. I have squash plants, more broccoli, and green peppers. I have more beans to plant... That is not counting my herb garden!
.
Heal knees... HEAL!

organic tomatoes

plant us

I have finished the romaine lettuce planting, It was planted in waves. We are eating delicious green crispy lettuce every day. It is fabulous. My duckies love it as well. I highly suggest you plant this type of lettuce with your cold crops. It doesn't do well in the heat of the summer, but what an awesome spring harvest, Best part is, we harvest it and eat it within 30 minutes. My labor of love has been fruitful thus far. I even have more romaine seeds germinating! What a giver those seeds are. I have a couple of bowls, filled with dirt and poof, salad. Easy to plant, even if you grow it in containers and even if you thumbs are not green. I promise.

I hobbled up the hill and pulled some garlic for tonight's dinner. Penne pasta and some salad.

baby garlic and romaine

in the garlic patch

garlic freshly pulled up

My poor Deer has an udder giving her trouble. Rusty and I got her flowing last night. She was so cute, licking me while I milked her. The milk looks white, so she should be ok. Today I went in and stripped all the milk on that side again. My goodness she is a good milk producer! Oprah, her kid, is definitely not having feeding problems. Every time I pick her up she does a golden yellow stinky baby turd. Not unlike a human newborn's poo. I then immediately put her down, and out comes the pee. A good sign that she is getting milk. Just like a human baby. My kids gave me plenty of experience for dealing Deer's kids. I am not going to say anything about my udders. Nope, not going there.

My duckling are getting so big! They spend their days now outside in a duck-shangra-la. Swimming pool, shade tent, water, clover and grasses, and fresh greens. They have been upgraded from chick food to flock grower food. Big duckies.

The President Day chicks hang out with the ducks when it is time to eat. But certainly birds of a feather really do flock together. Both flocks are not really interested in the other.

free roaming chickens

that is washington, the cockerel, with his head up

pekin and indian runner ducklings

storm, a runner duck

cloud, a runner duck

duck pretending to be a swan

Evidently, Tractor Supply got some chicks mixed up. I bought 4 Brahma straight run chicks. They grew up and, well, have a look...

2 brahma chicks

2 brahma chicks with some mixed chicks

2 brahmas, and 1 not a brahma

I am not brahma. I am a cornish rock.

So. yes, this chicken was bought with the other brahmas chicks. It is a cornish rock, a chicken bred to be a meat chicken. It will eventually die from it's sheer size. The mortality rate is high, even for their short projected life span. They eat and grow rapidly. This particular chicken can barely walk it is so big. So you are looking at an organic meal. There is one already in the freezer, it was killed by meany pants the Rhode Island Red Roo, or a hawk, but if it was a hawk, why was it left for dead? I have to come out of denial and put the blame where it belongs...

murderer!

If my knees don't heal, I will have to break it to Earl that he will have to be my riding pony. 

Earl

Although, I am not too sure he would want to be a pony or have anybody ride him. I can tell by his body language. :-)  He is such a good boy. I adore him. How about a donkey cart Earl? We can get matching hats.

Well, I guess you might want to take a look at the bunnies, now that I am showing everybody. Here they are with their Momma, Tahoe. They are sweet little puff-balls! It is almost time for them to move out of Mom's house. They are all eating bunny food. Good job Tahoe. I know motherhood is not easy. But we do our best.

That is the farm update. Stay tuned for more... and there is more coming! Just wait and see.

aromatherapy

late spring garlic and wildflowers

wild wonderful ~crow

peeing in the pool

Mother's Day Pool Party

pool party with peas

warm day, warm water

play time

time to dry off

and eat

and poo

~crow

circles

It has been a wild few days. Today I think was the wildest. I have hatched 11 chicks and 12 ducks from my incubator starting Sunday until today. It was an exciting and exhausting process. Only, because I had never hatched ducks before and got a little jumpy. I ended up hatching 4 ducks by hand, because my first one, who was doing a great job progressing, suddenly died in the egg. I know I am not God, but I certainly feel the pressure to assure the health and well being of my animals. So I become God-like. God-like in the way of love. If something goes wrong, I turn to myself and think about how I could have done better. I don't give myself a terribly hard time, but I don't take it lightly either. I try my best, and then let it go.

I had to let a few things go today. Like earlier, while out feeding everybody I found one of my brahma hens laying down, with her head buried under the doorway of the coop. She had been attacked. It did not look like she was attacked by a dog, fox, or coyote. We think it may have been a hawk. Perhaps the attack was warded off by Bella our brave dog. I am not sure, but there she was, on deaths door. I picked her up and brought her to a rabbit hutch. I gave her water and food and left her alone, thinking she may just be in shock. I went back to check on her, and right at that moment, she flapped her wings, then dropped dead. I said a little good-bye to her and thought that she should not just be tossed away. Brahmas have big breasts, and even at her young age, they were huge. I would ask Rusty to process her. He did, and she is now in my freezer. I talked to Sophia about it and she said she understood, but she wasn't sure she could eat her. I said, I am not sure I can either, but I am going to try. Sophia knows about how to make food with love. She always enjoyed making tuna fish sandwiches with me and when we were done adding pepper and mayo, we would add love. You may wonder how we add the love. It was quite easy and always makes us smile. We jusy hold our hands palms down over the tuna,smile and then say, "tuna with love!" Sophia and I talked about chicken with love, and how much love that chicken had in her already. *big breath*

A storm was coming in and I began securing everybody, getting the goats back in from pasture, when I went up to check on Sylvia, the beagle. She had just had pups three days ago. I was checking in on her in the whelping box and caught her eating a puppy. After my initial horror, I took her remaining two beagle pups from her and brought them to the house. It was to the core- horrifying and so gross. I could not save the pup, it was obviously dead. I almost threw up right there. I still can't shake it. I wont describe it, so you don't throw up on your keyboard hearing about it. So I put the pups in a basket and thought I would wait until my live-in on-call biologist made a suggesttion. Again, I had to explain death to Sophia. We talked about it more and we both agreed that this was part of farm life. Farm life and farm death.

So much life has begun here. We have babies everywhere. It is Spring. It is the time for birth and renewal. In this mode it is difficult to do a switch to death. However, here in the death, comes life again. I will try to eat my chicken. I will try not to think anything about dogs while I do.

Rusty came home and he feels like something was probably wrong with the puppy. It could have even died on it's own. We brought Sylvia down to the house, and reunited her with her pups. She was so happy to see them. I wonder if she though perhaps she ate them all, and was relieved to see them ok. The pups best chance at life is to nurse from their Mom, and hopefully she doesn't eat them. That would be horrible. But here I am again. God-like. Making life and death decisions. Or maybe, life and death was chosen by something else, something I have no business in messing with.

And then I look at these glorious little creatures, the ducks. They are so exotic to me. I told Rusty tonight that they look so wise. Like they have old souls. These are from the eggs that I received from Nicky, they are Indian Runners and some Pekins. If you want some quality fertile eggs see Nicky's Auctions. The last duckling came this afternoon. A black Indian Runner duckling was fashionably late. There was life beginning, so beautifully. All under the New Moon, the circle continues.

Sophia's Indian Runner Duckling

Pekin and Indian Runner Ducklings - The newest wet black duckling joins the flock

Why Ducks Do That: 40 Distinctive Waterfowl Behaviors Explained & Photographed

Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks: Breeds, Care, Health

The Little Duck (Pictureback(R))

The Duck Handbook (Barron's Pet Handbooks)

Keeping Ducks & Geese

Guide to Ducks and Geese

Choosing and Keeping Ducks and Geese: A Beginner's Guide to Identification, Care, and Husbandry of over 35 Species

Ducks: Tending a Small-Scale Flock for Pleasure and Profit (Hobby Farms)

Great Gallery of Ducks and Other Waterfowl

Flock of Pekin and Indian Runner Ducklings

New Healthy Chicks

Reds, Blacks, Banty, Browns

Very Wild,
Always Wonderful,
~crow