Tuesday, October 21, 2014

What Have We Been Up To?

And the farm animals take over the blog! Clearly, the humans have been too busy to blog lately, with their homeschooling and church and cleaning pens and stuff, so we thought we animals would share a few words on what we have been up to around here!


We finally got some rain around here, and the "goosies on the loosies" as that house mama calls us like rain better than any of the other animals! Why? To play in, of course! But also, because weeds mean that we eat fresh greens that the other animals don't reach. Mama says that means we are brats telling everyone else about it, but we are the guard geese after all, so we should get some perks!


House mama, also known as the feed lady, she tried to pull some weeds down by her garden recently. We told her this was unacceptable, as they were the salad bar we hadn't gotten to yet. Finally, we got her to leave the piles for a couple days so that we could munch a bit before she did more work.


She still has more to prep for our eating. We are done with the other piles, so she had best get busy!


Just because the geese roam all the time doesn't mean they are the only ones with good treats! Despite getting our own salad bar in our pen that Wyatt keeps stocked and growing for us, we still get baskets of sprouts!


It is like a party when the red baskets come out in the middle of the day!


We even share with the guineas! (Well, most of the time, anyway!)


Breakfast time is the best time in our pen! Okay, well, we think we get the best dinner, too! We have the house mama and our Bailey trained to bring us bottles twice a day, and then Daddy Powerstroke lets us have the feeder . This is our look that says, "We are cute!" We know you agree, and the Brahmas that share a fence with us in the grow out pen sing along with us.



The house mama is always excited to see melons doing well. What we like about melons, is that the chickens get lots of melon and then they are in better moods!  They complain less about us singing at night when they are in good moods, and I think I heard this kind of melon called a honeydew...


Just in case you were missing out on some of my cuteness, I am Freedom's Prayer!  I am pretty sure the world is here to cuddle me!


Did we mention we are masters as coexistence? The goats might say we complain about them singing, but we keep our rooster in line, and also have a pet snake in our pen. If you look closely, you will see his tail over by the old feeder we like to stand on.


This guy doesn't bother us hens, and our nesting boxes and new feeder are up off the ground. The desert comes with mice, so we let this guy wander around so the mice don't bother our nests, and in turn we nest up high and only try to sit on eggs up in the loft where Wyatt keeps our straw. The added bonus- the bigger our Wyatt gets, the funnier it is when he tries to get eggs from us up there! Then we all stand around in the door to our hen house and watch him... Did I mention bonus points for anyone who can get him stuck up there so he has to call for help?


Why yes, the chickens tried to take over! But guess what! We are just too cute to ignore!


My brother was being silly and trying to wrestle with our Dad, so I decided to play peekaboo from my favorite house. Dad also likes to pose. Don'e tell the house mama, but he leaves a pile of poop near where he poses on purpose. She says he wasn't well socialized before our Bailey brought him home, but Bailey says that means he will do just fine in our family of homeschool goofballs. Not sure what that means, but she always scratches our ears and brings us food. And, if we cry really loud, she will come out over and over to check on us!


Well, that is the world according to the bucks, the geese and the Big Pen. We dare the does and the others to outdo us!

Monday, October 6, 2014

Up-cycled Projects for Sustainable Farming

This dresser was yellow was it came to Arizona before our daughter was born. It had lived through my family, having been well constructed, though over the years it began to have troubles. We reassembled the drawers, reattached the bottoms, reattached the faces and back corners, over and over and over again. That is,  until this Spring, when I just couldn't get it to go back together again.

I thought hard about how to re-purpose it, rather than give up on something that seemed to still have life in it. I considered adding board for shelves, but realistically, I could see that causing a TON of dusting, without really adding much convenience. I considered the shelves and using the drawer faces like flip up doors, but when I got into the actual design on that idea, it really didn't work. Nothing would fit right.

I poured over Pinterest. That's what I tell the 4H-ers to do.

So it sat on the back porch, waiting for my crazy over attached to tradition self until I finally just realized- the greatest need around here was the organic and sustainability projects. So a plan was hatched- this dresser would be phase one- of the livestock salad bars.


Salad bard for livestock. you ask? Why yes. By creating planters where the sprouts continue to grow, proving more greenery to the chickens and goats, we hope to supplement their organic nutrition with things more naturally eaten in the wild. Besides, what we grow ourselves, when know where it comes from, and it is more economical for feeding organic.


So we took this old dresser, and the kids and I got to work.


The main frame of the dresser went to the doe pen. Sorry, it was getting a bit dark.


Wyatt took the first of the drawers with no base out to the Big Pen.


He picked a spot where the chickens keep digging hols for him to fill (two birds, so to speak.) Not far from the waters, though. We won't water it with chicken water, but we do want to make watering pretty easy!


They filled them mostly full with garden soil from my re-potting pile. They left a bit of room at the top, so the animals would not have enough leverage or grasp to pull the plants out from the root. Then came chicken wire.

I had originally thought to use hardware cloth to keep the from pulling too much, and had been following the progress of a few similar projects. It turns out, at least one person was having trouble with hens getting stuck walking on the hardware cloth and losing toes. Who! I hadn't even though of that! Glad for someone else's honesty and experience. Hope those hens are getting around okay!


This one is outside the doe barn. Once we catch the water harvesting system up, we plan to have one there, too, and stationed this so that there was just enough room by the roof, but against the wall, for a water harvesting barrel, and this could easily be watered from it. She added plenty of seeds that had been soaking for a couple days.


Then she got to watering them two to three times each day.


This is what is coming up. I have some more for her to reseed later tonight.


This is the chicken one in the Big Pen. Too bad I didn't get a photo of this one earlier, since they are REALLY digging on their sprouts! Wyatt will be adding more seeds, but just because they weren't as established as we had thought they would be when the ladies began eating them. They like to work together to get the best grasp on the sprouted grains while one stands on the wire, the other puts her head through to munch!


It is doing quite well, but we will continue to work with it!


Next up, after reseeding? The Bucks and the A Pen! The more natural the food is, the better!!!