Greening Up

Our gardens are looking pretty good, in spite of how cool our spring turned out to be this year. Our tomato plants that were planted in the hoop house are doing very well. That is a very good thing, since last year we hardly had any tomatoes that made it to maturity on the vines. Most of them had to be picked just before a killing frost and left to ripen in the upstairs of our house.

Above are our raspberry plants. The boys were complaining that they couldn't do any weeding in there because there are too many bees buzzing the plants! That is a very good thing, too.

We've had many occasions when there was rain in the forecast, but none came. This is what the clouds looked like on Friday afternoon. We thought for sure it would rain -- but there was only a brief period of showers.

From this photo you can tell the rain went north of us, and headed into Canada.

Today we actually had a good soaking rain. Since we've been skunked so many times the boys waited to get the animals into the barn, and the joke was on them. Everyone was soaked to the skin by the time they got back into the house. We are very thankful for every drop of rain.

We are in the beginning of our harvest of strawberries. They are so good! I'm not sure how we'll market them, but until then we are enjoying them ourselves.

I've been busy cleaning canning jars that weren't used last year for the harvest. We placed an ad in the local weekly newspaper for jars, and came up with quite a few. I didn't have time to do anything with the remaining jars, so for the past few days I've been cleaning and organizing them into boxes for water bath canning and pressure canning. It will be so nice to have them ready for me when it's time to begin.

Summer Days

It's amazing to me how our weather went from a very chilly spring to warm, sunny days. This weekend we had temperatures in the 80's, and our gardens are growing like crazy. The weeds are growing, too, and it's always a challenge to keep ahead of them.

On Saturday Jim, Jonathan and Peter headed to near Bismarck to attend the 7th annual Prairie Days, which is a weekend of fun, fellowship, and teaching of homesteading skills. A lot of our friends attend the event. This year Jonathan was asked to provide a workshop on survival skills, and then the three played bluegrass music during one of the shared meals.

Andrew, David and I stayed behind to take care of the home front. We were kept busy with chores ... Jonathan has a lot of chickens running around at various stages of development, so we kept busy keeping everybody happy.

There are broiler chickens and our egg layers in movable pens out in the field, and we made sure there was plenty of fresh water and food for them. The cow and horse are also located in this field.

Those bell waterers can be a challenge to maintain, since the filter can become clogged and then water doesn't refill the tray. We had to clean out a couple of them during our day of keeping watch over the chickens.

These are the chicks still growing in the chicken coop. I can't remember how old they are now, but they are certainly growing like the weeds in the gardens.

So, what do you do with old campaign signs? You create a raft!

Andrew designed and created a raft made out of four old barrels and scrap wood. I was so impressed with the job he did. He even kept a hole in the middle and added a ladder, so after jumping off the raft they can go under the raft and come up in the middle and climb back on.

Instead of anchoring the raft in the lake to be left there all summer they are using poles to push it out to the main part of the lake and then drop anchor and have some fun.

Yesterday I was talked into taking a spin on the raft with David and Andrew. I didn't swim, but enjoyed watching them having fun in the water. The lake isn't very deep, but we poled the raft to a spot where it was plenty deep for the boys. The weather was a bit warmer than when we took the above photo!

Once the boys were swimming we noticed that we were drifting more than we should have been -- turns out Andrew's knot didn't hold when tying the anchor rope to the raft. We were able to pole to where we noticed the rope floating in the water and retied it to the raft.

By then it was time to get back to shore for one more feeding of the chicks before their food was taken away for the night. It turned out to be quite a challenge to pole against the breeze to get back to shore.

Even our dog Samson got into the act of enjoying the water. We didn't allow him to go with us on the raft, so he decided to try to follow us on shore. Just as we were starting to pole back to shore, we noticed that Samson had decided to swim all the way across from one shore to the opposite one. Good thing he is a good swimmer, and made it home before we did. The guys had our camera down at Prairie Days, so I didn't get any photos of the day.

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PS: I don't know how to fix the problem of keeping my paragraphs where I want them to be. Whenever I use photos on a blog entry, it seems I am at the mercy of the Blogger program as to how the paragraphs and placement of the photos are arranged when I publish the post. It has been very frustrating to me. Does anyone else have this problem?

My Appleseed Project Weekend -- Chores

I thought I would give you an example of what it is like on the farm when I am left to do chores while everyone else leaves to attend an event. I don't know if it's because I'm unfamiliar with the inner workings of our farm (the boys don't always tell me about their misadventures or quirky animals) or if it's just that things happen. It sure makes life interesting!

Last weekend was a very busy one for me. Jim and the boys left by 6:00 a.m. to travel a couple of hours to where the Appleseed Project weekend would take place. I went back out to finish chores around 8:00, and then worked on some other projects around the house.

Around noon I checked on the broiler chicks located in the chicken barn. Those creatures sure can eat! Jonathan has boards blocking the chicks into one area of the barn, and when they saw me walk in they flocked to the other side of the gate. It was very hard not to step on them. I felt like I was constantly filling their feeding dishes.

This time I noticed the bell waterer had quit working, so the chicks weren't getting any water. I tried fiddling with the tube (there is a bucket of water that feeds the waterer), but nothing happened. I do not possess a mechanical mind and couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I walked up the hill and checked the internet.

From what I gathered, the filter on the waterer was most likely plugged, but it didn't tell me where the filter was located or how to access it! I decided to go back down and fill some small feeders Jonathan had left in the barn with water. That meant I had to go down every hour or so and refill the pans.

Later I went to check the egg layers located in movable pens a ways from the house and behind our raspberry bushes. In one pen I discovered a chicken close to death. The others had pecked her so badly that her intestines were out. By the time I got her out of the pen she was dead. I didn't have a clue why that had just happened.

Later in the day I knew the shoot would be over, so I called someone's cell phone and he gave the phone to Jonathan. He then was able to walk me through how to find and clean the filter on the waterer, and wonder of wonders -- it worked! I was so relieved, and I'm sure the chicks were as well.

I also discussed the dead chicken, and Jonathan asked me if that pen still had food in the feeder. I had thought so, but when I went back to check things I did notice the feeder was smaller than the other pens' feeders, and it was indeed short of feed. No wonder the chickens had found a victim to prey on.

I have a feeling our dog Samson decided so sneak over to the woods where I left the dead chicken, as he had a very guilty look on his face when I walked out of the house.

Jim had asked me to water the gardens; I tried, but couldn't figure out how to get the water to go to the sprinkler I wanted it to go to. I gave it up for the time being. This really made me wish I had paid closer attention to the times I watched the men work the sprinkler system.

In the evening I tucked everyone in for the night, and when I was down checking the cow and horse I heard a terrible ruckus. Three roosters were beating up on a fourth one. The night before one of the Buff Orpington roosters had been sitting on a pile of dirt in front of the house; his eyes were swollen shut and he hardly moved. In the morning he seemed better, but apparently the other roosters weren't finished with him yet. I grabbed a stick and smacked the attacking roosters and they finally left the injured one alone. He entered the barn, and I hoped he would have a chance to recover.

I also had to contend with our cat, Funny Face. She seems to have been pregnant forever, but I had a feeling she was in labor and wanted to deliver in the house. She has had her kittens outside in the past, and this time we wanted her to do that as well. Jim has an allergy to cats.

Funny Face followed me all over the farm and meowed constantly. I even walked over to the chicken tractors three times in a half hour, and she followed me every time! I don't know how she did it.

During evening chores I had to take the food away from the broiler chicks. We found out the hard way that they tend to eat themselves into problems and can have heart attacks from eating too much. So, they need to be without food for 12 hours each day. They weren't too happy with me when I took the feeders out for the night.

In the morning I was a welcome sight for the chicks, and it was quite a challenge to get the feeders back into their pen without setting them on somebody. They acted like I had starved them!

Another waterer in one of the egg layer's pen went out, and I was glad I had talked to Jonathan the night before so I knew what to do to fix it. I actually had to hold onto the top cover of the pen (there was a pretty stiff wind out there and I didn't want it flying off its hinges), climb in and repair the waterer, then get it hanging again on its nail. I was beginning to feel like Houdini!

At noon I went down to give the goats and large animals more hay. The guys have been letting the goats out to roam, but I thought that was a recipe for disaster with only me here so I kept them in the barnyard. They didn't like me for it, though. The cow is usually staked out for the day, but I wasn't going to tackle that or milking the goats.

Anyway, one of our yearling goats had gotten her head out of the fence and was stuck. I couldn't get her out, so I walked back up to the house and tried to think about what to do.

All of a sudden the stuck goat was screaming, and I ran down there to find the cow bashing her on her side. There was also a couple of other goats that were smashing into her as well. She was frantic. It's usually hard to tell any kind of emotion on a goat, but this time I could sure tell she was scared.

I filled the feeder so the other animals had something else do to than torment her, and they quit. I tried to get her head out of the fence, but she resisted anything I did.

I ran back up to the house and called a friend to come over and help. I got in the fence and she twisted the goat's head back while I pulled from behind, and the goat's head was pulled out. She was okay, but probably pretty sore from her ordeal.

At least the pigs were no trouble at all!

Funny Face did have her kittens that night, and the injured rooster disappeared.

I was also very thankful when Jim and the boys returned before evening chores on Sunday night.

Strange Weather

We'll see how we do Saturday night:

Saturday Night
Cloudy with chance of rain and slight chance of snow. Lows in the upper 30s. East winds 5 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation 30 percent.

We have our potatoes planted, and just a few things left to go into the ground. I sure hope it doesn't snow!

Oh No, Not Again!

After a very cool spring, our family has attempted to get all of our vegetable plants in the ground. Then we receive another forecast like this:


Tonight
Mostly cloudy with slight chance of rain showers and isolated thunderstorms in the evening...then partly cloudy after midnight. Patchy frost late in the night. Lows in the upper 30s. North winds 5 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation 20 percent.

Tuesday
Mostly sunny. Patchy frost in the morning. Highs in the lower 60s. North winds 5 to 15 mph.

Tuesday Night
Mostly clear. Lows in the upper 30s. Northwest winds 5 to 10 mph shifting to the southwest after midnight.

This forecast is for our nearest town; we live 15 miles away in a higher elevation, so who knows what we will receive as far as freezing temperatures. Our family was up at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday to get ready to leave for the Appleseed Project, and there was frost on the chicken barn roof.

Guess this is our year for keeping a sharp eye on the weather.

Appleseed Project Weekend

Here are some photos from North Dakota's first Appleseed Project weekend. Since I wasn't there (I was doing chores), I'll direct you to our son Jonathan's blog. He said he will be posting more tomorrow. (appleseedinfo.org)

I'm very glad they're home -- my weekend caring for the animals by myself was quite challenging!

Organization

It's been another day of getting organized ... I wonder if we'll ever be totally organized around here! Time is always a factor in putting things away like they should be.

Andrew just came in and announced he saw his first dragonfly. That must mean summer isn't far away. Yesterday we received about an inch of rain, so hopefully the grass will shoot up and the animals will be out on pasture. I need to get out and weed my herb garden but the soil is still pretty wet. Instead, Jonathan and I took time to figure out just what we have left for canned goods. Since we still live in our basement, we had to store my canned things all over the house. It was kind of like a treasure hunt, and we did find treasure.

Last year our tomatoes didn't do very well, so I wasn't able to can as many as I hoped. I thought I ran out of jars of them about two months ago, but during our hunt we discovered about three big boxes of jars. Wonderful! Now we can have the spaghetti and pizza sauce we really enjoy.

I was disappointed to find a couple of jars of lard that had lost their seal. Instead of trying to guess if the lard was okay I just threw them out. After I was done rendering lard last winter I had heard of a further step to canning it; after getting the lard in jars the rims should be wiped with vinegar to keep any grease from preventing a good seal. There was even one more step -- and that was to place the jars in a warm oven to help ensure a good seal. I need to find someone that knows at what temperature and for how long they need to be in the oven.

I pulled out a jar of herbs that were grown last year, and was reminded once again that herbs are for using and not just collecting. A friend once told me I would remember what various herbs are good for as I began using them, and I think it's time to get busy.

More on the Farm

It's been a week since I started this post, and the animals are getting bigger by the day. This week has been a time of catching up, yet I still feel far behind.



Here is a photo of our two pigs. We had asked for three, but apparently our neighbors didn't raise as many as they planned. They are cute little guys, very friendly and curious. One really enjoys having his back scratched and likes eating out of my hand. Their snouts sure feel funny when they root around.

Grayg (named for his gray coat) and Lena enjoy resting in the flower box by our basement door. I wonder how I will keep them out of there when I plant my flowers!

Peter made a fence for the goats in the woods, and here is the gate. We need to get everyone out on pasture, but the grass just isn't growing as quickly as we would like. Peter brings them back to the barn for the night and has them eating hay in there. I can already tell by the smell of the goat milk they are eating brush once again. Peter is milking once a day now, and usually brings in a gallon of milk. I've been making a lot of yogurt.

This week a friend of ours suddenly lost her water to the house. Jim and our guys went over there to see if they could figure out what had happened and ended up pulling the pump out of the well, which was about 250 feet down.

I never did get all of the stains out of these jeans!

Yesterday everyone had to rush out of the house at the sound of a helicopter flying overhead. We've seen quite a few, but none like this one. Makes me wonder what was going on.

At Last: Cabin #4

We received the call about 6:30 Friday night that Mr. Pedie was ready to pull the last cabin home. So, supper stayed on the table, and we left for the camp. As you can see by Peter's attire it was a very chilly evening, and the work was done with periodic episodes of sleet.

This was the first time I witnessed the payloader pulling a cabin from its original spot at camp, and it was quite interesting. This cabin was up on a hill, so Mr. Pedie had to pull it down the hill, across to where there had once been a cabin, and then back it down to the road where he could pull it straight up and out of the camp.

The road out of camp is quite narrow, so Jim had to direct the operation.

Every time we took out a cabin it behaved differently on the road, so once again the guys had to stop progress to cut down a tree that had caught on the roof of the structure.

Since it was Friday night and more people were driving around Lake Metigoshe, the decision was made that I would drive the station wagon a ways ahead in front of the procession; Peter was to sit on the hood and stop oncoming traffic. This was probably the only time in my life where I could legally drive down the middle of the road and stop traffic!

Andrew was photographing all of the events of the evening, with a little help from David.

As you can see, it was getting darker by the time we pulled the cabin out of the park. Mr. Pedie brought along a relative of his to drive the vehicle at the rear with flashing lights.

Now we are finally on our road. Jim spent a lot of time running in between the loader and pickup truck, so he was getting a much deserved rest.

On the homestretch -- just before getting stuck! The payloader bogged down in the field and reinforcements were needed, so the decision was made to unhook the payloader and get it out of the very wet area before it sunk any deeper. The work would continue in the morning.

By morning, the ruts made by the payloader were filled with water. We may have discovered a spring over in that area of the field!

Mr. Pedie's relative brought along his heavy duty pickup, and they hooked that up to the loader via a cable. It didn't take much to get the payloader going again, and the cabin was once again in motion.

Onward to the cabin's final resting place!

David, another of our very diligent workers!

Finally positioning the cabin near the other ones on the homestead.

I Hope They are Planting Those Potatoes Deep Enough ...

WIDESPREAD FREEZING TEMPS POSSIBLE FRI NIGHT. AN UNSEASONABLE COLD AIR MASS WILL MOVE ACROSS THE REGION FRIDAY NIGHT AS COLD CANADIAN HIGH PRESSURE DROPS OUT OF CANADA. AS THIS OCCURS, TEMPS ARE EXPECTED TO DROP INTO THE MID TO UPPER 20'S ACROSS WESTERN & CENTRAL NO. DAKOTA BY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING. THIS WILL RESULT IN SEVERAL HRS OF SUBFREEZING TEMPS FRI. NIGHT. TEMPS THIS COLD WILL LIKELY SEVERELY DAMAGE DELICATE VEGETATION.

I'm wondering if/when spring will actually arrive!

Here We Go Again

Every time I think about putting away our winter clothes we come up with a forecast like this:

Rest of Today
Numerous rain showers. Windy...cooler. Highs in the upper 40s. Northwest winds 25 to 35 mph. Chance of showers 60 percent.

Tonight
Mostly cloudy in the evening then clearing. Windy... colder. Lows in the upper 20s. Northwest winds 20 to 30 mph with gusts to around 50 mph decreasing to 10 to 15 mph with gusts to around 30 mph after midnight.

Catching Up

We are down to the wire now, as far as getting the last cabin to our homestead. Everything is ready -- except for our friend that uses his payloader to pull it over here. Hopefully tomorrow the predicted rain will hold off until we are able to bring the cabin over.

Last week was a bit on the crazy side.

One morning about 8:00 we received a phone call from the post office, telling us to come and get our bees. With all the cabin moving Jim had forgotten to ask me to keep an eye out for mail that would tell him when his bees were coming. We weren't totally ready, but everything went fine.

Jim had planned to switch out the queens that came with the bees for Russian queen bees, so he quickly called the man he purchased them from down in Louisiana. I guess Russian bees are more hardy, and do not have as much of a problem with mites. They arrived by express mail on Saturday.

The day after the bees arrived we had another 8:00 phone call from the post office, telling us to come and get our chicks! Jonathan plans to raise and sell broiler chickens, and ordered 150 chicks.




Jonathan had converted the chicken barn into a brooder house, so that meant the laying hens had to be booted out. That night we waited for the chickens to settle down in the big barn as well as a spot in the woods, and then hauled 25 at a time in the back of the pick up truck to their new homes in movable pens in the field. In spite of the move they continue doing well with laying eggs.

Then on Saturday we received a call from our neighbor, letting us know our piglets were ready to be picked up. We have two males this year, and they sure are cute! I don't think we have any photos of them yet. These piglets must have had more human contact than the ones we had in years past, as they are much more friendly.

The weather has not warmed up as quickly as we hoped, and unfortunately our tomato plants are begging us to plant them in the ground. They must be over a foot tall already. Jonathan planted as many as he could in our hoop house, but the rest have been carted in and out of the hoop house and the main floor of our house. We didn't want to place all of our eggs in one basket, since due to cold nights the barrel stove has to be fire up and checked twice during the night. We didn't want to risk losing all the plants if something happened to the stove or someone didn't wake up in time to keep the fire going.

We've also had our annual visit of wood ticks. Those nasty things are everywhere! I decided it wasn't worth leaving my laundry basket out on the grass while clothes were drying. I did one day, and ended up cleaning off all the ticks before I could place dry clothes in the basket. Poor Samson (our German Shepherd) was loaded with the things, so we resorted to using Frontline on him to help keep the ticks away. Tonight at supper I watched two of the boys pick off ticks through the whole meal.

Here are some photos of the last cabin to bring over to our property:



Jim, working on getting everything in place before jacking up the cabin.



I always enjoy watching Peter and Jonathan working together; they make quite a team.

Peter was taking rides as he tried jacking the cabin on his own.

I wonder which one this is??