Fun & Drama on the Farm

We got our baby chicks a week ago Friday (Fun).  They came a day late (Drama).  It was really cold that weekend and we didn't have the brooders warm enough, so we lost quite a few before we figured out the whole temperature thing (Drama).  The kids both love the chicks.  All Lu Lu says when we get her shoes on to go outside is "Chicks, chicks, chicks!" (Drama)  Johnny even loved one to death.  He picked it up and squished it when I wasn't looking...Ooops (Drama).

Johnny and Lu Lu in the chick pen

 

Johnny holding baby chicks

"Come on little guy!"

We finished building the pasture pen to put the pullet layers out in.  We were really excited to move them out (Fun).

Pullet pen that we moved the pullets into on Saturday.

We built this frame for the cooling tubs for when we butcher chickens.  This will be a huge help, since we were just using coolers before and I had to stop cutting heads and plucking half way through because the coolers were full.  I'd go in and bag.  By the time I was done bagging Josh would have started chopping heads and plucking since he was all caught up butchering.  Hopefully having enough space to cool all the chickens at once will streamline our process and make it go faster!  Yay! (Fun)

Cooling Tubs for butchering chickens

Row Cover over lettuce.

We planted one row of lettuce under this row cover (Fun).  Our 1-year-old tom kitty then destroyed it (Drama).  We had to "Take him hunting" and leave him there (Drama).  We were pleased to find out after he was gone that our other two cats didn't bother the row cover and barely eat any food.  I've barely had to feed the cats since he's been gone.:)  We did end up planting the second row of lettuce/radishes before we replaced the row cover (Fun).

Feed Storage

We bought garbage cans to store our broiler feed in for the summer (Fun).  They seem to work well.  Last summer we used bags and stored them in the coop.  That led to our rodent problem, so we're hoping to prevent that this year.

Laying pullets in their new home

We moved the laying pullets out to their new home on Saturday (Fun).  It's aways good to see animals out of their little confinement into the great outdoors.  They seem like little kids...Tentative at first, but then ready and excited to run and explore.  We had issues with them getting out through the fence (Drama).  The holes in the wire were too big, so we lined the outside of the pen with straw bales. 

Pullet pen

Johnny and Lu Lu in the wagon

Cutie Girl

Funny Girl

Johnny playing golf

Johnny and Lu Lu watching a train

Lu Lu learned how to drive Johnny's Mater 4-wheeler.  She does pretty well and she's so cute!  Looks like we'll have to get Johnny and new (bigger) one for his birthday (Fun).

Wednesday morning I went out to check on the pullet chicks and found 4 dead, we concluded by a weasel (Drama).  Talk about a ruff day!!!  Josh called at noon and asked how my day was going.  Then he asked if it would be better if he came home.  It definitely was.  We moved the pullets to one of the movable broiler pens and placed it right beside the chicken coop for safety and ease of weekend chores.

We got the potatoes planted last week too.  We had so much to do and so much drama with the chickens that we were going back and forth trying to decide if we should go to Josiah's First Communion.  We finally made the best decision...to go!  Josh is Josiah's God Father so we're really glad we went (Drama).

So there was our fun and drama from last week.  I'll have to have another post to tell of the good time we had at the Loegering's.  I was reading a book about farming and the author said that failure can be a good thing if we learn from it, since we usually don't learn from our successes.  I think we learned a lot from all our drama last week.  Josh said he just hopes it's not a foreshadowing of how the summer will go.

The weather is beautiful now and the chickens are doing great.  Our baby kitties eyes are open now.  So things are looking up.  Looks like we won't have near as much drama this week.:)

I've started doing weekly posts on our CSA blog.  Sometimes I don't post all of those "farm" pictures here, so if you're interested you can check it out at http://www.logreenacrescsa.blogspot.com/