Wild Things Farm

Whit and Buckshot (the 2 horses on the farm) are sporting a "shimmer weave" fly mask.......these masks are supposed to blend in and reflect the horse's natural color instead of looking like a Halloween mask.  I didn't choose them for that reason, I chose them because they were $1.00 cheaper. 

Whitt posed for a Hollywood moment to let me take a picture of his mask. 

The flies still get around the lower edges of the mask but at least they aren't crawling around in their eyes!

Buckshot refused to have his picture made and I figured everyone knows what a horse's butt looks like!

Happy weekend!

About 15 years ago my oldest son joined 4H.  He wanted to have chickens for his project, so a chicken house was constructed and 30 chicks arrived; 25 girls and 5 boys.  The chickens roamed around the yard for the first several months but they poop wherever they get the urge, so a pen was constructed, one wing clipped, and the girls and boys were confined to their own corner. 

The chickens grew up, laid eggs, and were auctioned off at the end of the season to raise money for the future chick-chain projects. 

Last year I decided I would like to have chickens again.  With so many gardens to tend I though they might be a useful addition to the farm menagerie.  I bought 6 Red Star chicks last summer, built them a tractor that's way to heavy for me to move without the tractor, and they started laying big beautiful brown eggs in November. 

They do a wonderful job cleaning up a garden bed once a crop is finished.  The spring crops are starting to fade out and the chickens have been very busy eating lettuce and spinach to make way for more crops.  A more user-friendly portable pen was constructed a few months ago so the chicken mom can move her small flock around easier.

The contraption on the left is the first tractor which has their roost and nest boxes upstairs and open pen downstairs.  The pen on the right is just pvc pipe covered with chicken wire and a tarp so they have some shade.  They love to go for walks in the mornings.  Chickens have a surprisingly large vocabulary.  When I go to greet them in the mornings they say "wok, wok, wok" which I know in chicken is "walk, walk, walk" (they don't do "L's" too well).  When one lays an egg their joyful screams echo from the mountain behind the pen "Buck, buck, buck-et".  Right before they do the bucket scream though they sit and almost hum while they're actually laying the egg.  It sounds painful to me.  I think the bucket song is a song of happiness that the egg-laying thing is over for the day. The other day when I was working in the gardens near the pen I heard one of the chickens making a noise I'd never heard before; sort of a growling-chirping noise.  I looked up and one of the other hens was pecking her on the back.  There were 2 roosters with them for a while until they wore the feathers off the girls' backs so the roosters are "cock-a-doodle-gone".  Now I see why the feathers haven't grown back on that one hen. 

The biggest problem with a portable pen is you have to remember to move them ever so often and you have to remember to put them up at night.  One night I was getting ready to go to bed and something reminded me that the chickens were still out.  I found a flashlight, traipsed down to their pen, woke them up and took them back to their pen.  I actually think they were fussing at me.

In April, 21 chicks arrived on the farm.  There were 5 Cherry-Eggers, 5 Barred Rock, 5 Buff Orpington, and 6 Amerecauna.  All were chosen for their disposition and eggs.  I built a chicken house for them and recently got their chicken yard fenced in so they can run around and catch bugs.  They're really fun to watch.  It's kind of like watching a lava lamp or an aquarium; you have to make yourself get back to work!

Inside the coop they fight for the top roost pole at night.

I guess I'll have to extend the top pole the length of the house so everyone can have "pole position".

The Amerecaunas are kind of like calico cats.  They all look different but they've all got a thick neck and no comb on their heads. 

The CSA members are eagerly awaiting fresh eggs sometime in the middle of the summer.  The 3 Red Star chickens will eventually be integrated into the new flock, but for now they are my garden slaves.......

I've always had a fascination for moss.  I remember my grandmother had a root cellar that we always called the "dairy" that was a really scary concrete building dug back into the hill behind their house.  It was scary because I was a little girl and there were great humongous katydids all over the ceiling and saggy wooden shelves with all the canned vegetables and fruits that my nanny would preserve in the summer. 

Well, on the top of the dairy was my favorite place.  Moss would grow so well up there--I would collect all different kinds from the woods around the house then carry it up there and make different "rooms" in my imaginary house on the roof of the dairy.  I had to sneak up there though because she was afraid I would make ruts in the hillside climbing up there and cause it to wash out.  But I was always real careful (and sneaky). 

That fascination with moss has carried into my adulthood.   I've owned two books on moss, still don't know the names of any of them, but still love it.  When I found this plant at the nursery I was really excited.  It's called "Scotch Moss" and it's not really a moss at all, but a plant that looks like moss.  I don't have gutters on the house so I placed flat stones at the drip line to carry the water away from the house.  On the front of the house I saw the perfect scenario for a Scotch Moss garden. 

The Scotch Moss is blooming right now, with teeny tiny white blooms. 

The stones at the top of the picture (on the left side of the bed) are actually grinding stones (mortars) with grinding rocks (pestles) that were used by the Indians to grind up acorns, roots, berries, and whatever else they ground up to eat--they make a pretty cool border at the front entrance to the house. 

If you don't have a spot where you can grow moss in the shade then try Scotch Moss, or the other one which is a darker green color, called Irish Moss.

Scotch in the rocks----it's really cool!

After the extremely wet season we had last year, I was a little reluctant to install the drip tapes in the garden--seems like when they were installed last year is when the clouds wouldn't quit watering the gardens.  With a year-round creek, small pond, pump, and drip lines, this farm is better equipped for drought than deluge. 

The ground started drying out, new plants needed watering in, so one day last week was devoted to the drip tape project.  All the drip tape has served one life in a nursery before, so the tapes are all lengths and in all kinds of condition, but you can't really tell if it leaks or not until it's all hooked up to the water supply.  It's a pretty tedious, muddy, and frustrating job, to say the least.  I just keep thinking through the whole installation ordeal of how easy it is to turn the valve to water a garden and then go do something else while the plants are quietly being watered right at the soil--oh, and I have one of those handy-dandy fertilizer injectors so the plants can be fed manure tea while they are being watered!

Anyway, I dug through the big basket of "footballs and watermelons" to pick out what looked like good candidates for the tomato patch.  The project started out like this:

 The propane bottle is for a heat source to heat up the 3/4" plastic pipe (the "trunk line", so to speak), ever so slightly, so the fittings will slip in easier.  The big pruners are for cutting the 3/4" pipe, and the handy-dandy aluminun tool box has all the fittings and pieces and parts (well, most of them) to do the irrigation stuff. 

The tomato patch went fairly well.  All three beds got "drip taped" with no major leaks or problems.  Okay, we're on a roll, so I go to another garden, I call it the Pond Garden because it's next to the pond, and I installed tape on 2 beds of peppers and one bed of eggplant then turned on the water.

I thought to myself "It's supposed to be drip tape, not a sprinkler system".  After messing around with the leaks, getting really wet and sort of frustrated, I was able to turn it back into drip tape.

Now for the mulch of leaves--the plants will be set for the season!  Drip tape....it's a great way to water :)

 Yes, I said over the "rainbows".  Saturday was a very unsettled day around here as far as the weather was concerned.  The weather folks were predicting strong storms, lots of rain, thunder, lightning, hail....so we were all "on our toes" so to speak, and spent most of the afternoon battening down the hatches. 

The rain came, the wind blew, but we missed the bullet on that one, thank goodness.  I know that counties west of us were hit by tornadoes and strong storms, but we just got some rain and a little wind, and about 7:00 that evening the sky began to look a lot lighter so I went out to see what was going on, and I saw not one, but two rainbows!  That's the first time I've ever seen a double header, so I grabbed the camera to share the view.  It was much better in person, though :)

Last Saturday was Open Farm for new members of Wild Things' CSA.  Many of the new members, as well as returning members, enjoyed the sunshine and wandering around the farm.  Oliver the cat got in on the action....

Whitt the horse enjoyed a facial massage as well!

 The weather cooperated beautifully and everyone got to see the farm and meet their farmer.

Several members brought gifts........

And others preferred to check out the farm equipment

All in all it was a wonderful day of meeting, greeting, and fellowship at Wild Things.

Lots of farmers will be saying this over the next few weeks "Look at the cute little chicks"!  And are they cute....little balls of fluff that make lots of noise.

I've been waking up in the middle of the night worried about them being too hot or too cold, so I've been treking the 75 or so steps in the dark to the shop to check on them.  So far, so good, but they are so dependent on someone for EVERYTHING! 

Looks like a schmorgasbord (sp?) with all the different colors, and there are 4 different varieties, all brown eggers except for 5 Amerecaunas (sp?) (blue/green eggs). 

Gee, I needed a spell checker for this blog!  Back to the garden with me now.  All this beautiful weather is killing my back :)

Okay, so I went out to the greenhouse yesterday morning to check on all the "babies" and noticed a few nibbles on the Chinese cabbage plants with a telltale "slimy trail" in the flat, so here I went on slug patrol.

Every pot, bucket, board, bag of soil, flat, etc. was picked up and moved outside the greenhouse.  I did find the most slugs on the outside of a clay flower pot that was nested inside another clay flower pot, shoved up under the bench.  There were about 20 on that pot!

A stray board was a hidey-hole for a couple of slugs, and under a bucket was what a few more thought was a safe place. 

When I moved a bale of peat moss aside to check under there, I saw something I'd never seen before.......

Anybody know what it is (it's between 2-1/2 to 3 inches long)?  I gently tucked it back into the gravel just where I found it rather than serving it the same fate as the slugs----my killer chickens!  They LOVED the slugs.....

I did go back into the greenhouse with a shaker of diatomaceous earth and sprinkled it all over the plants and the ground---looks like a snowstorm in there now, but at least it will take care of the slugs.

I never really thought about just how hard winter is on "everyone", but since I've been a farmer, I've come to realize that  it's really hard on all the critters that live outside during the winter.  They all need extra attention this time of year; the cats, dogs, cows, chickens, horses; everything needs water, which is FROZEN this time of year.  That's a chore in itself.  For the chickens I keep two waterers; one in the shop to thaw out, and the other one to use for them to actually drink out of.   My dogs all have nice warm houses, and the cats sleep in the warm loft of the shop. 

What prompted this particular blog is that Buckshot, one of the horses on the farm, cut his foot today.  It's a pretty bad gash, and he was limping and kicking his foot.  I cleaned out a stall for him, he got doctored, and we put some nice clean sawdust in the stall for him,  and he immediately laid down when he was settled in.  I think he appreciated the dry, warm spot to be when his foot was hurt. 

His buddy Whitt is still in the pasture, with a full bale of hay, but he is hollering for his buddy every few minutes.  Horses sure are tribal.  It's funny how they fight when they are together but miss each other when separated--are they like us humans, kind of?

Winter is hard; it's a time of reflection and rest.  But, there are still chores to do and animals to care for.  Take care of any animals in your care.

I subscribe to the Old Farmer's Almanac newsletter and today's newsletter was on the subject of Groundhog Day.  The newsletter stated that this day traditionally marked the midpoint of harsh winter weather......yuk!  I was sure hoping we were over halfway by now.  Mr. Groundhog isn't going to see his shadow here today because we're just coming out from under several inches of snow, then enough frozen rain to make it nice and "almost" crunchy enough to walk on--that means it's really hard to get around the farm on foot  to feed critters.  It's a really good aerobic workout though!   I did snap a few really cool pictures of the water frozen on the trees though.

Even though the temps outside are in the teens and 20's at night and 30's during the day, the greenhouse gets a toasty 80 degrees during a sunny episode.  I may move a chair in there for some vitamin D during these short days.  I can tend the onion seedlings while I'm at it!  A couple of weeks ago I started onions, swiss chard and lettuce just "playing in the dirt".  Everybody seems to be doing fine even though they're not being babied at all.   As soon as the ground is suitable, these babies will be out under the hoops!  Meanwhile I go back to my quilting project......Happy Groundhog Day, y'all!

There have been lots of new words and phrases "coined" in the last decade, mostly due to the internet and cyberspace, twitter, facebook, etc., but also in the gardening and food communities.  "Locavore", "Evoo", "green", "googled", and so on. 

During the few mindless chores around the farm (mulching, weeding, driving fence posts) I have time to think about all sorts of things and so far I think I've created two words:  organical, meaning it's grown using organic methods, and "farmher", meaning a female farmer.  There are many occupations that are traditionally held by men and we tend to stereotype the person in the job without seeing them; mechanic, welder, carpenter, etc.  I know there are women in those jobs; I was one of those for years.  Salesmen would come into my office (Facility Manager) and they looked confused for a minute until they figured out that Terry was a woman and not a man. 

Anyway, back to "Farmher".  That's one occupation that we could spell differently to recognize  female farmers, and they are increasing in numbers, you know.  Living on a farm is a daily education in all things mechanical, animal, and vegetable, and farmhers are well suited to life on a farm. 

We love baby anythings, chicks, pigs, cows, puppies, kittens, and the nuturing side of us takes over when any kind of babies show up.

We tend to read directions before attempting assembly on tools.

We keep the "lefty-loosy, righty-tighty" in mind when dealing with nuts and bolts.

We can wear cute garden clothes if we want to, and get away with it!

We can till the soil, plant the veggies, harvest them, and, and, preserve them too!  Then we cook with them.  Who else do you know that has that much involvement in a meal? 

There are times when that extra muscle helps out, so whenever someone comes to visit........

Wow, everything around here FINALLY thawed out after 2 weeks of frigid temps.  I've been doing as many outside chores as can be done with the volumes of mud around the farm; the blackberries are are finally mulched--all I lack is getting the wire support fencing complete.  The weatherman is predicting "warm" weather for the next couple of weeks, and during my seed inventory I thought to myself, what the heck, I've got seeds left from last year, why not?

I found myself in the greenhouse this morning with my hands in the dirt AGAIN!  My nails were just beginning to look like a woman's hands again!  I potted up 7 flats of onion seed (the scallion-type), 1 flat of Mr. Stripey tomatoes, 1 flat of Roma tomatoes, and 5 flats of assorted letttuces, oh, and 2 flats of Swiss Chard.  I drug out the heat mat and a frost blanket because I know I'm going to need it, even in the greenhouse, which I don't heat.  If it's a failure, I still win--I enjoyed a little while in my sunny, 80 degree favorite wintertime place on the farm!

Maybe, just maybe, that will take care of the fever I have, whether it be cabin or spring--at least it's not the flu :)

Last year I saw a picture of a chicken tractor in Mother Earth News magazine and I thought that would be a great way to dispose of vegetable scraps, control bugs, and fertilize all at the same time.

Several weeks were spent building "the perfect tractor", although it’s too heavy for me to move around without John’s help (John Deere, that is).   In August I drove to Gainesboro (about 55 miles from here) to buy Red Star chickens because I had researched several breeds and these are gentle (they won’t step on you and hurt you like a cow or a horse will) and they are good layers, and they lay brown eggs, which is what I wanted. 

They were little tiny things but they were also getting feathers so they didn’t need a light to keep them warm.  I read up on them some more and this particular breed is supposed to start laying at 18 weeks.  I got out the calender and oh boy, fresh eggs for Thanksgiving!

One day after harvesting green beans, I pulled the chicken tractor into  the green bean bed  and it promptly sunk up to the axle in the soft ground.  Well, so much for taking the chickens to the plants, so I pulled the exhausted bean plants out of the ground and tossed them in to the chickens–they went crazy!  It’s fun watching them as I move the tractor around the yard; they get all excited about the “new territory” and if one of them catches, say a grasshopper, everybody chases the one with the bug until somebody wins and gets the bug.  I always cheer for the one who caught it in the first place, but I’ve told myself I’m not getting involved in the fights!   Back to the egg……

I’ve got about $100 in the tractor; $48 in feed, feeder, waterer, grit, etc.  Today I found an egg!  (note that it’s been almost 2 months since Thanksgiving)  It’s the most expensive egg I’ve ever bought, but it was as much fun as finding the prize egg on an Easter egg hunt:)

I think my chickens will get a permanent house, more chickens to play with, and they will take daily excursions in a more lightweight, sporty edition of the clunky tractor they now have.

Recently I was having a conversation with a friend about organic gardening, composting, sustainable; all the "buzzwords" of the gardening and cooking communities right now.  We both have attended numerous classes and workshops regarding organic methods and we both agree on the attributes of organic ways, but we also both chuckled about how "new" everyone treats these customs. 

I learned how to compost when I was about 6 (we'll just say that was while JFK was still alive!)  In the corner of my nanny's kitchen next to the garbage can was a pot where all the vegetable scraps went.  We couldn't put meat or cheese in there (and us kids didn't know why until later), but all the vegetable scraps went in there.  Every couple of days one of us kids was instructed to carry the pot up to "the apple tree towards the barn" and dump the scraps next to the tree on top of the pile.  Each garden season Nanny would take a wheelbarrow and a shovel and retrieve the compost that had happened over the year.  She didn't have a fancy compost bin, just a pile, but it worked.

Every fall we kids would rake the leaves in her front yard to make a huge mountain to jump and play in; we'd rake them back up and play in them until we were tired of it, then we would take a sheet, put all the leaves in it and drag the leaves "under the buckeye tree just beyond the white fence".  You couldn't walk in there because it was so deep with rotten leaves, but oh my goodness, that was the richest soil!  After I was grown with my own place I took several garbage bags of that home to put around my flowers!

She didn't use any poison on her plants; the chickens ran loose in the garden and I remember cows running in there too (she wasn't happy about that though).  That, to me, is perfect gardening and that's the way things are grown at Wild Things.......granny gardening style!

You might be wondering what in the world do goat cheese, chickens, great danes, and winter have in common?  Well, the goat cheese is something I've been wanting to try for quite some time but just haven't done.  Yesterday, a friend and I did our grocery shopping together (it makes it more fun to go with somebody) and we split a package of goat cheese.  Today I made the most awesome salad for lunch with spinach, a thin slice of onion, about 4 sliced up mushrooms, a small handful of walnuts, 1/2 apple sliced up, and about 2 TBS of goat cheese crumbled over the top.  I like honey mustard dressing, so that's what I used.  It was very tasty.  The cheese has a very strong flavor and is somewhat salty; I'm anxious to find a recipe to use the rest of my half package.

The chickens have to do with winter, as does the great dane.  I've got a light bulb on in their roost (upstairs part of the tractor pictured above) to keep them warm during these frigid days.  I've also had to swap out their waterers twice a day because they have been freezing pretty quickly.  Chickens drink a lot of water and take extra time during frigid temps! 

Today it reached 33 degrees; the first time it's been above freezing since New Year's Day.  I know other parts of the country get that cold every year, but we usually don't get that cold for that long.   The great dane is very old (his name is Buck) and he shivers and chatters his teeth (he does it in the summer too), so I feel sorry for him even though he has a nice warm doghouse.  I've been letting him stay in the house during this really cold weather, along with Reuben the Catahoula, Angus the Boxer, and Cooper, the bad-haired terrier (he's a shelter rescue).  We're all snug and cozy in the house waiting for warmer weather---oh, and waiting for eggs too!  Yep, that's why I got chickens :)