Author: Kris Moulton

Well our flock is growing! One of our hens came down with a case of broodiness. Instead of trying to coax her out of it, I just let her sit on some eggs. I gave her 10 eggs to start but at one point I counted 17(!!!!) eggs under her. I candled them and they were all at different stages of growth so I only let her keep the biggest ones. And a few days ago we gained 4 fluffy little chicks!

We recently had a second hen become broody, too. She has a bunch of eggs under her and I need to candle them and make sure she is only sitting on those that are at the same developmental stage. 

Even with these broody girls not laying, we still have a lot of eggs to sell!

While our chicken flock is growing, our sheep are growing bigger every day!! One of them is getting a little mean, hopefully he doesn’t get too bad and we can let him fill out some more before we process him. We are still mulling over the kind of ram we would like to buy. The sheep we have are Targee cross, and we are thinking about going with a Rambouillet ram. {Though, personally I would love sheep that are not just white.) A wind storm took out our sheep tractor. It ended up being a fairly easy fix replacing one caster. While we were fixing the wheel, we took the time to patch up the holes the sheep could get through at the same time.

All good things must come to an end. While it was rough with the bugs, birds, and irrigation issues, we did get plenty of corn for our personal use. We ate A LOT of corn. We also canned a lot and froze some still on the ears to have this winter. We were able to sell some to people who didn’t mind needing to break the ends off. But we are very optimistic about next year. We have learned other organic methods of pest control, and are discussing new irrigation strategies. 

This winter we are finding ways to relax and enjoy our hobbies, potentially market them. We are hoping to start selling homemade baked goods and homemade hand soap. These are both things we enjoy doing. This will give us an opportunity to do our hobbies more often.

There are not really a lot of “small” things on a farm. But here we have some pretty teeny ones: Eggs!

When young hens start to lay eggs, they are small, and as the hen matures her eggs will get larger, like the ones you see at the grocery store. All of our young chickens are breeds that lay large to extra large eggs, so you can see they have a ways to go yet. We are averaging about 15 eggs a day, and only one or two of those are the large eggs of our older hens. This means their production is slowing down and they will be used in other ways for our family.

Another “small” thing we have this year is… corn! The very dry season led to our sweet corn not growing very well. It still has good ears on it! It is just much shorter than usual. The later rows we were able to get irrigation line to at a younger age, so it was able to grow taller.

Unfortunately, we seem to have an issue with one or multiple bugs on our ears. As soon as they are ripe enough to pick, the cobs are all eaten down by something, and we are not sure what it is. We are trying an organic pesticide on the remaining rows to see if we can at least get a little corn to eat this year.

Our “small” lambs are growing quickly. They have eaten their paddock grass down, and have moved to the secondary pasture. I refuse to use barbed wire, so we picked up a lot of free waste pallets from local businesses to build a fence they can’t crawl through.

We are using 20 of them to build a moveable sheep tractor as well. We want to be able to have them eat down the north 10 acres without building a whole fence system over there. Plus we will be able to move the tractor around the yard, or by the garage to minimize the need to mow.

The tractor is 5 pallets by 5 pallets. They are screwed together and have a 16 foot board screwed to the back of each tractor side for additional support. We have 10 inch casters on the bottom for better mobility. We also are using a tarp over one corner for some weather protection. Sheep are little escape artists, so we’ve strategically placed their feed and water bins to block the wheel gaps.

It is not a very large fence, we have to move it every 3-4 hours, but it works well for our 8 little sheep. This fall we will reduce our herd to only 2 or 3 ewes, and it will be sufficient for that as well. We will also be purchasing a ram in the not so distant future so we can have more baby sheep. Our goal is to have a little bit of milk production, some decent quality wool, and most importantly, meat for our family

The thing about living on a farm, is that all the normal stuff related to home ownership is still there. But so is the stuff related to a farm. You still have to mop the kitchen, but you also have to keep sheep in a clean pen. You still have leaky faucets, broken doors, and car repairs, but you also have tractors, pens, and equipment. Anybody who knows me will tell you that; it’s probably a good thing I’m kept busy. These things sure keep us busy.

The sheep are continuously growing, and almost fully situated. Kris has finished the paddock and coop. The sheep have shelter overnight, and a large space to graze over the day. They are certainly showing their pleasure, three gained as much as ten pounds in a week! This week we are going from giving milk replacer twice a day, to once a day. They are starting to eat mostly grass, sweet feed, and a mineral supplement. We’re planting about 2 acres of a warm season grass mix on the parts of the field I’m not using this year, that we can feed the sheep over winter.

They’re bigger, but still cute.

The chickens have become a non-entity in daily planning again. No more chicks, no special attention. Make sure they have food, and feed them our table scraps.

And find something to do with the eggs!

With the Advent of full on summer temperatures the corn in the field is starting to shoot up. But it has been, dry, dry, dry. Last year I developed a process for irrigation. A bunch of drip tape, and valves for zoning. The well we had put in a few years ago is only capable of about 10gpm. Which is not a lot at all for an irrigation system. The drip tape has emitters spaced at 12″, and each only puts out 0.17 gallons an hour. The 20 rows of corn are about into 3 zones, and each zone runs 45 minutes a day.

While the drip tape system works fantastic, set up and tear down can really be a pain. I thought I had a good system with a wire winder, rolling up the tape at the end of the year. However, I was only able to roll up a few rows, the rest was left straight and piled next to the field. The rolls ended up being the worst to lay back out, they didn’t unroll well, and the straight hose was a cinch to get lined back up.

Now the corn is getting water and growing fast, and we are READY for some sweet corn!

Now on to the less fun stuff. As I alluded to in the beginning, farm stuff breaks, too. This swather was bought last year to help make haying a faster process. It’s almost older than my dad, but it still runs great. So does my dad, mostly. However, the bat boards broke in the middle of running, not difficult to fix, but it will be time consuming! The gas 190XT, with the snap coupler hitch, that I loved so much leaked out its oil, and threw a bearing. The disc I used to rip up the field for the forage mix broke apart in the last pass, right at a weld the previous owner had already made.

Every hose we laid for watering/irrigation leaked somewhere. My truck developed a misfire, in-addition to an exhaust leak so common on these hemis!

In recap, some things broke, most things got better, and everything is keeping us busy and making the farm life that much more interesting.

Well after a bit of a hiatus during the last couple years, we are back to tell all! We built our own chicken coop and bought a cheap run online for, at the time, 12 chickens. As you can see, the run didn’t even survive one winter.

We also outgrew our coop! We went from 4 chickens to 12 chickens, and now we have 29 hens and 1 rooster! We took an old shed on the yard, cleaned it up, built a run in front, and turned that into our new chicken coop.

I also added in a chick pen. I will be able to use that in the coop for baby chicks (no more chicks in my bathtub!!!) It has a mesh cover to keep the older chickens out so they don’t pick on the babies.

The coop still has a little way to go but it is functional and aleady in use. We are looking to add some insulation to the roof to help against the brisk winter days. I’m also looking at adding in some roosts in addition to the rafters that will be easier for the smaller chickens to reach. In July I will add some meat birds to our dual-purpose flock so we can continue to let our current hens lay for another year or two. I also want to add some guineas as a protector for our flock.

Now I know I always said I didn’t want any animals since moving out to our acreage. But here I am fixing up our paddock to get some larger critters. We have 6 bottle lambs set to be picked up on Sunday!

I was lucky and we were able to reuse most of the posts we found. We only ended up buying a few posts and one cattle panel. The roof on the lean-to is still missing and we won’t be able to replace it for a while. Until then, the lambs will be with the chickens overnight, and hang out on grass during the day.

We are very excited to keep growing our farm! These sheep will provide us with wool and meat for our family.