Gigantor the Rooster

On By stefrobrtsIn chickensLeave a comment

I watch the ads on CL and see city chicken keepers desperately trying to give away their chickens who turned out to be roosters, and are now crowing and annoying all the neighbors. Yesterday I spotted an ad for this beautiful Buff Orpington rooster. I emailed with the guy and arranged for my hubby to pick him up after rehearsal. So about 11PM he came home with a dog crate full of rooster!


While in the dog crate we just heard quiet little ‘bok’ noises, but once let loose in the pen, he set right up to crowing and letting the whole neighborhood know he was there! It was great! I’m so happy to have a rooster, it feels like a real farm now. He’s not too loud, in fact I can barely hear him in the house, I doubt it’s loud enough to bother any of our neighbors, which are all far away.

I think he’s just the most beautiful chicken I’ve seen – just what a chicken should look like. Not that I don’t love ‘the girls’ too, with their interesting variety of colors. They all make one nice chicken family, and I enjoy sitting outside and watching them. Now if they’d just give me some eggs I’d really be happy!

4H Llama show

On By stefrobrtsIn 4H, farmLeave a comment

When I was a kid I wanted to live on a farm and be a 4H kid, but I lived in the city, and with my family – well, let’s just say that wasn’t going to happen in a million years. So I was delighted when I got to know my friend Martha and got to help out with her 4H llama club, and last year I became an official 4H Leader with her club. We have a couple new families in our club this year, and one doesn’t have llamas yet, and wanted the kids to try it out first and make sure they enjoyed it before they bought any (a very good idea). And that is how these two boys came to borrow my llamas Scoops (the grey one) and Patrone (the white one with a brown tail) for 4H.


I load up the llamas and bring them to club practice days so they can work with them, or they come to my house to practice. We teach them about how to show off your animal to the judge, prepare them for the questions the judge will ask, and then we set up obstacles and get the animals used to them – things like going over little jumps, walking through brush, walking over a tarp.

Saturday we had our first show. Both of the boys did great. They had to brush their llamas out and present them for judging, and did obstacle courses with them. All their work at practice showed, because a llama won’t work for you if he doesn’t trust you, and the boys got the llamas to behave better than I had expected, and go through most of the obstacles without any fuss. And look how clean Patrone was for the judge! That boy was persistent in brushing all the hay out of that llama!


By the end of the day they both had accumulated a slew of ribbons for their hard work, and they were a little more prepared for county fair, which is only a month away. I was really happy with how well they did, and how well they treat the llamas. I’m also really happy that I am at a point in my life where I have my own little farm and I can help other kids have that 4H experience I never had a chance to enjoy. It’s fun to teach them, and to watch them work hard, make friends with the other llama kids when the clubs get together, occasionally suffer indignities when their llamas try to humiliate them (I’ve seen llamas drive kids to tears at fair), and come out smiling at the end. I guess that’s a pretty fun way to build character!

The economics of hay

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I do not understand the economics of hay. I don’t know how many bales you get per acre, but I’ve seen plenty of hayed fields and know about how far apart those finished bales lay, and it’s not all that many. For all the work it takes, the specialized equipment that has to be maintained, and the hours spent driving them around that field making bales just when summer turns ridiculously hot, and then selling the bales for a few dollars a piece, it seems to me like there just cannot be that much money to be made in it.

It’s hay season again. I’m glad hay is still as cheap as it is. This winter we had to buy supplemental hay for our animals at $12-$15 a bale from the feed store. Luckily there was still grass to be found out in the pasture. I can see why so many people were trying to trade their horses for hay to feed their other horses this winter! If you had a big eater, you would have gone broke! Later we were able to get a few bales from a local field for $4 a bale, and that got us through the spring, though we still picked up a bale of the really good green stuff from the feed store for Mom and her lambs.

This is our first hay season looking out for animals of our own. Prior to this we only had a friend’s llamas staying on our pasture, and they went home in the winter. This year we adopted the sheep and goats, and Houdini the llama, and then bought Patrone the llama, and his friend Scoops has come to stay with us as well. So there’s three llamas, four sheep (since Mom had twins), and two pygmy goats. We put away 65 bales of hay for them to tide them over this winter. If it’s not enough we’ll hope we can buy more of the $4 hay when we need it, or they’ll be eating high on the hog with the feed store hay again! The llamas also get special grain with llama minerals in it, and the sheep and goats get a little grain to distract them from stealing the llamas food. All in all I guess it’s not too much to spend for the entertainment of having them around.

The chicken saga continues

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Our chickens are wanderers. They hopped right over the four foot wire fence around their pen and explored the orchard, the backyard, the back field, the neighbors yard, the pasture. Somehow they kept finding their way back to the coop at night. They were chased by cats and dogs, but nothing bad happened. I had to be careful not to let the dogs out without checking to make sure it was clear of chickens. A few days ago Chester got lucky and cornered a chicken and grabbed it’s wing and pulled out a bunch of feathers before we got it away from him. The chickens scattered and I thought for sure they were gone, but eventually they all came back.


So today we ended that nonsense by putting netting over the pen, stretching from the fence to the tree. It goes all the way around like a big circus tent. I guess we’ll see if it’s tight enough, there’s a hole around the tree, but I don’t think they’ll go for it. I guess we’ll find out.

So today they were trapped in the pen, and they don’t seem too put out. I caught them sunning themselves this afternoon.

What’s that bug?

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I am the kind of person that will be working along productively, then I see an interesting bug, stop to take a picture of it, and halt work for the day so I can go look it up on the net (and not disturb it in case it’s something beneficial). So today I spotted this guy and everything screeched to a halt! He’s about an inch long, maybe a little less, and was hanging out on a blue tarp I was getting ready to wad up and throw away.

The red on his wings was stunning, but they look too short to fly with. He didn’t try to fly, so I suspect he’s fresh out of the cocoon and his wings aren’t ready to go yet. I looked up on What’s That Bug in the moth section and found the Cinnabar Moth from the UK, and further reading indicated they have been introduced to the US to eat Tansy Ragwort. Well, more power to him! Just yesterday Dave picked a five gallon pail of tansy out of the pasture! Go little moth, go!

Freezer Jam

On By stefrobrtsIn foodLeave a comment


When I was a little girl, too little to help, my Grandma and her daughters (my mom and aunt) would make jelly every year. They would do boysenberry and blackberry and other kinds too, carefully can them in little glass jars, and put paraffin wax on top. I remember that when we needed more jelly we would go get a jar out of the cupboard and pry that wax off the top. Unfortunately my mom had a stroke when I was ten and I don’t think they ever made jelly again after that. Life got very complicated.

So making jelly seems like something you do when times are good. This year I successfully made jelly myself for the first time. Unfortunately Grandma is no longer around to help me figure out how, so I just followed the recipes off the net. I decided to go for freezer jam (I think I prefer chunky jam to jelly anyway), maybe someday I’ll learn to can. I tried it a couple years ago and it just didn’t turn out right. But this seems to have gone much better. I used the rhubarb from our garden to make rhubarb jam, and it tastes really good. Then I took advantage of all the sweet fresh strawberrys available this week and made strawberry freezer jam. Yum! I ended up with 4 cups of rhubarb and 7 cups of strawberry. I’ll do blackberry when those ripen, and we’ll never have to buy jelly again!

Shearing

On By stefrobrtsIn farm, spinningLeave a comment

On Thursday the shearing guy came over and did Al and Mama sheep. It was amazing. He rolled them over and did their bellies, and then he just worked his way around until the wool was off in one big sheet. The sheep just lay there and let him do it, but they’re very happy to leave when he’s done!

Before

After

We couldn’t catch Houdini the llama, but Friday we finally cornered him and got him haltered up. He came back and sheared Houdini, with me and my husband holding him down by the ears. Really, when they start getting contrary, you grab an ear and twist and they suddenly become more compliant (I would too). But it was important that he hold still to avoid getting hurt by the shears, and it was important he be sheared to avoid heatstroke this summer. So we twisted his ears and he survived it all just fine. Though he’s still holding a grudge. I can’t blame him, llamas look ridiculous when they’re sheared.


Now, what will I do with three big bags of wool?

Chickens!

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens2 Comments


One of Martha’s hens showed up with chicks back in February, so Martha generously gave us five of the young chickens to get our coop started. Unfortunately, within ten minutes of bringing them home we were down to four! The only one she was pretty sure was a hen, a nice little yellow chicken, scrambled out of the pen and out the door, across the yard with dogs chasing her, and through the fence into the neighbors field, where she was last seen running for the horizon at full speed.

That was Monday.

The outdoor pen


Here it is Sunday and the other four have been ‘cooped’ up while I talked to them and fed them goodies. They were starting to relax, so we built them a smaller pen within the orchard so they won’t wander too far, and today was their first day outside.