I did a quick post on bantam chickens at Community Cluckers. Check it out.

We're running a couple of weeks late, but we finally got some plants in the ground today. I borrowed a friend's tiller yesterday and tilled up our garden, so the soil was nice and fluffy today. Our soil is very sandy, so by the time I got done with the tiller the garden looked like a beach.

Here's Brandi, at the beach working in the garden.


A bird's eye view (don't be frightened by the fake owl). The structure behind Brandi is the barn.


This a bonus shot of the field behind our barn. You can't really tell from the photo, but it's looking pretty bushy and ready to be shredded with a tractor. Time to call our neighbor who does that stuff for us. One of these days we're going to fence it off and put some goats out there, and maybe a calf.


That's it! We've still got some more planting to do, and the kids have their own little special stuff they want to plant, so hopefully we'll have some more photos on the way.

For the first time ever at our little farm, we slaughtered animals (in this case, chickens) without the help of an expert. We did have a friend, Eva Marie, volunteer to help us, but she knew nothing about slaughtering animals, so this time around Brandi and I were the "experts."

I warned Eva (who I actually call "Ave Maria"), that we didn't have much of a clue as to what we were doing, but we were pretty certain we'd be able to figure it out. We've killed birds for meat exactly four times in the past, but it's always been under the tutelage of a bird killing guru. Not so this time.

On a lighter note, we actually had some eggs hatch today -- of all days, the day of the slaughter! -- so we were looking at the full circle of life, from "newborn" chicks to chickens that were about to fulfill their destiny.

One of the new ones.


Death row.


A chicken meeting its maker.


Brandi and Ave Maria watching a chicken die. (Brandi can't bring herself to watch, actually.)


A few processing photos.




A bonus shot of our broody duck hen. Her ducklings ought to hatch in about three weeks.

Evangeline is so beautiful it's almost ridiculous:


Things are going well enough around here. We're in the throes of winter, and we're burning through a fair amount of wood to heat our house.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that a "hen" we bought from a lady a few months ago actually grew up to be a rooster. I was agitated because extra roosters are pretty much worthless around a farm. You really only want one rooster for every dozen hens or so, and we already have a rooster! As it turns out, we now have three roosters (four if you count the bantam rooster). Hold on ... we actually have eight flippin' roosters because four of them are still not yet full grown chicks.

Once all of the chick roosters grow up, they're all dead. We'll kill them all (except for our original rooster) and use them for chicken soup. Killing and processing birds is officially no longer a big deal for us. It takes a bit of preparation, but it's definitely worth the time and effort.

Speaking of killing, there's this squirrel that's been eluding me for weeks now. I've seen the little rascal go into our chimney on more than one occasion, and by the time I get my bb gun from the house ... he's gone like Houdini. Squirrels are a big time pest around here. They eat the chicken feed we throw out; they chew on wires; and they get into all sorts of things like chimneys and crevices around the property. I can't stand those little fluffy-tailed rats. I'm glad there are no ordinances against killing squirrels in the country.

I had to go up on our roof today to work on our chimney. After I finished, I realized how beautiful our back yard is from such a bird's eye view. We've always appreciated the beauty of the landscape around our place, but seeing it all from such a high vantage point was pure, unfamiliar delight. I didn't have my camera with me so I whipped out my cell phone and snapped the following photo. Our property line extends back toward the tree line, and the hayfield on the right (which we're in love with) belongs to our neighbor. The field is unoccupied; he lives about half an hour away and shows up a few times a year to harvest the hay. When he's around working the field it's quite a thing to behold, believe it or not. Anyway, you can also see our barn on the left and our dog standing next to the barn. That white building is our shop.



Here's a bonus shot of Brandi working our winter garden. I love her Country Mama look with her boots and jeans. ;-)

I posted something new over at Community Cluckers. It's all about how we brought these gals into the world.

- We successfully hatched seven chicks that were "incubated" by our broody duck mama. Yes, our duck hatched chicken eggs. Brandi said Abigail is quite the chick mommy now. (More on this later.)

- On Halloween trick-or-treaters drive from house to house in our neighborhood, since it would take forever to walk. Guess they'll do anything for candy.

- Our remaining two duck hens (from the ones we hatched back in June) are getting used to flying around the property.

- Duck tastes like dark meat chicken. For real.

- I hope to heat the house this winter using nothing but wood. Last winter I think we heated the house with 80 percent wood, 10 percent gas, and 10 percent electric. Hopefully we can conquer that 20 percent this year. We'll see.

I've been gearing up for winter. I've been cutting firewood, collecting kindling, and thinking about getting our chimney cleaned. :-) Last year we felt winter like never before, but it was nice being so in-touch with the rhythms of nature. (Our wood-burning stove is worth its weight in gold!) I can't believe summer is long gone.

Here's a photo of Brandi learning how to gut a duck. That guy who's with her was our volunteer helper who was learning how to process ducks right along with us. He knew a wee bit more than we did, and that made him very helpful.



Here's a bonus photo of the truck someone in my church gave me. Yes, it was given to me. I'm very thankful.

Yesterday was a notable day on our little farm. With a little help from someone slightly more experienced than us, we slaughtered six ducks. Those ducks were all hatched, raised, and slaughtered on our homestead. That's quite a good feeling. And it was the first time we had processed any meat on our farm (we've previously processed our birds off-site). The last duck we processed -- a hen -- was all me, baby! I chased it down, killed it, skinned it, gutted it, hosed it, and then put it in the fridge. I think the whole process of slaughtering that one bird took me about half an hour. Hopefully I can post a few photos sometime.

I can see why some people just abandon their gardens once everything starts to grow up toward the end of the season. This was our rookie effort, and hopefully years from now we won't have so much grass and weed growth after the days of harvest.

I spent a good amount of time pulling out tomato cages (that part took the longest), digging out soaker hoses, and moving various objects out of the garden. Finally, I went in there with my mower and chopped it down. Hopefully next week I can get in there wit a garden tiller. Brandi is hoping to put in some tomatoes for the fall.

Here's before and after:

This weekend I hope to mow the garden down (it's a big bush right now!) and then till it with a friend's garden tiller. I anticipate it being a pretty big job, at least for me, since I've never used a tiller before. Plus, the garden isn't exactly small. Of course, by city standards the 40 x 20 garden is enormous, but by country standards it's probably just about below average in size. Regardless, it's a jungle right now, and I've got to take care of it! (And Brandi wants to plant tomatoes.)

I think the last time I reported on this blog, I indicated that we were thinking of getting four pullets. Well we got 'em. The gal I bought them from told me the breeds they were as she was handing them to me, but the only one that registered with me was Rhode Island Red. They all seem to be pretty normal birds, and they all ought to be laying within 1 to 3 months, tops. So that'll increase our daily egg count, which badly needs a boost.

Our hen count is now 11. Well, if you count our bantam (miniature) hens, it's 13, but of those 13, only 8 are currently laying. Realistically, our family probably needs about 20 laying hens; we'll get there one day. We also have one normal-size rooster and one bantam rooster.

Our baby ducks are getting big. We've got eight of them, and we'll end up eating probably five or six of them when it's all said and done. The others we'll keep around for eggs (in the spring time) and to hatch other ducks to repeat the process. It's a satisfying feeling to know that those eight baby ducks were conceived, hatched, and raised by their mother on our farm.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned the fact that I love mowing the lawn. Of course, it all has to do with my riding mower! Seriously, though, it's one of my favorite chores. I mow about 3/4 of an acre, and that's our "lawn" area (our neighbor mows the other portion of our property with his tractor; the bumpkins call it shredding). I've finally got the route and routine worked out for the part that I mow, and it takes about 1.5 hours. The first few times I did it last year it took me every bit of three hours, but that was because I was having to get used to a riding mower and I didn't have a good mowing route worked out. As I was riding the mower yesterday, I thought, Winter's coming. What a bummer, I won't get to mow anymore.

So the chores I completed over the weekend were mowing, collecting hay from our field, moving some chicken tractors (cages) around, and doing some general reshuffling in our barn. Not very glamorous, but definitely very satisfying.

Speaking of hay, we learned last year that hay can turn into a very valuable commodity in the winter time. There was a time last winter when we would have killed for some hay. Some friends of ours who keep larger animals had to end up buying some hay, and the hay dealers got to the point where they were rationing how much hay you could buy. So we learned that it's best to stock up on hay while you can.

Here are a few photos ...

Brandi holding our first melon a few weeks ago:


A couple of baby ducks, and the mother hen (top right):


All eight baby ducks:


Our Livestock Guardian Dog, licking his nose:

I think we're going to buy four pullets (young hens) today. They haven't started laying yet, which means hopefully they haven't picked up any bad egg-eating habits. Last time we bought some hens that were not from our flock they were already laying -- and already eating their eggs. So we ended up eating them instead.

Right now we have seven hens from our original flock, and they're all doing well. They're giving us about 3 or 4 eggs a day. But with our family, we seriously eat as many eggs as we can get. Eggs are like tomatoes to us: The more we get the more we eat.

We also have a bunch of chicks that are being incubated for us. If all goes well, we should have around 24 laying hens within six months. Wow!

I spent the evening yesterday mowing (always fun on a riding mower) and moving birds around. A few farm observations:

1. Keeping up with animals is a lot of work. Of course, we hope to expand what we've got, and that'll add more work, but it's always a joy. Right now we've got eight baby ducks, one mother duck hen and a drake. On the chicken side of things, our laying flock is holding steady at seven hens and a rooster. (We'll have about 24 more chickens once the new batch hatches. We have someone incubating them for us. Of those 24, roughly 12 will be laying hens and 12 will be roosters/stew meat.) We also have three bantam (miniature) chickens.

2. The garden is down to a tomato here and there. It produced well while it lasted and it was a good first try. What we'll probably do now is till the ground soon, and keep a bunch of our birds locked up in there to pull up roots and fertilize the place. We'll have to start working on our fall garden very soon.

3. Bouncer seems to enjoy his life as a farm dog. He doesn't ever seem overly anxious or barky (though he does like to bark). He spends most of the day these days in the relative cool of the barn. He's still very interested in chickens, but he hasn't killed any (thankfully).

4. We still have a big field we don't utilize. Our neighbor came over with his tractor a few days ago and shredded (mowed) it for us. Right now it serves well as a hay field, as the kids can go out there and collect tons of hay that we use for all sorts of things, but primarily chicken nest bedding. Hay always comes in handy, and we'll need a good supply of it during winter.

5. The birds pooped on me like crazy when I was moving them around yesterday. If you're going to have farm animals, you have to get used to excrement. :-(

6. There's nothing like a freshly mowed yard.

That's all for now!

- We lost a chicken to a neighbor's dog the other day. Grr!

- We're currently collecting eggs (and not eating them) to have someone incubate them for us. The gal who's going to do that for us is sort of a professional chicken farmer. We'll probably give her four dozen fertilized eggs, with the idea that half of them will hatch. We want to ultimately end up with around 12 to 14 laying hens. We'll eat the remaining roosters. :-)

- The garden is producing a good amount of tomatoes and peppers. We've also got squash, melons, and even a pumpkin.

- Our duck hen hatched 14 babies about two months ago. We lost three of them to various perils, and we gave away three of them, so we're down to eight. We'll keep about three of the eight and eat the rest.

- We've got plenty of grasshoppers on our property right now. John the Baptist would be chowing down big time.

Our broody hen's eggs are finally hatching! She's sitting on, I think, 13 or 14 of them, and they ought to all hatch by the morning. Here are the first two hatched chicks from a couple of hours ago:



This is a historic moment for our little farm; it's the first time we've been able to help reproduce life (aside from the vegetables that are currently growing, and they're growing alright).

We went on an excursion tonight to our neighbor's place about a mile down the road from us. He's a retired fellow with a nice three-acre homestead. He was kind enough to let us dig in his garden a bit and the kids pulled out probably five pounds of potatoes plus a few onions and a bunch of squash. When we got home Brandi boiled the potatoes and cooked up some onion and squash along with a banana pepper and bell pepper that we pulled out of our garden this morning. To that recipe we added some polish sausage from the grass-fed beef we've been buying. What a meal! We savored every bite.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the kids got to ride (and steer) a 1946 John Deere tractor while they were there. They loved it. I'll try and post some photos tomorrow or Monday.

- Our dog Bouncer got fixed today. He's a little puny right now, but I'm sure he'll perk up.

- Abigail saw a snake in our chicken coop. The way she described it, it must have been as big as an anaconda.

- We got a dozen more meat bird chicks last Saturday. They'll be ready to slaughter in early July.

- Our hens (one duck and one chicken) are still sitting on eggs. By mid-to-late next week we should be seeing some chickens hatch, and ducks should follow about two weeks after that.

- We're about to have birds coming out of our ears over here. If all of the eggs hatch, which is not outside the realm of possibility, that right there will be 26 birds. In that case, we'd have -- are you ready? -- 51 birds living on our farm. That's nuts! Yes, we're nuts. But ... out of those 51 we'll end up killing probably half of them by mid-to-late summer. Come early fall, we're going to have a lot of bird meat around here.

- We've enjoyed eating natural, grass-fed beef for the past couple of weeks. I don't think we'll ever go back to the other stuff.

We had a busy weekend. On Saturday morning Brandi and I went to some friends' house to use their equipment -- and expertise! -- to slaughter our five egg-eating hens. As we were gutting the chickens we actually recovered two fully formed eggs. Now those chickens are meat and they live inside our deep freezer; they've got a better life in there. ;-)

Brandi and I have recently decided to take the plunge into natural, grass-fed beef. We found a farmer who sells grass-fed beef and he lives only about 10 minutes or so from our place. He invited us out to his acreage for a tour, and we had quite a fun time out there bouncing around on their ATV while we shot the bull about cattle, grass maintenance, and field rotations. "We're not cattle raisers; we're grass farmers," the farmer said jokingly. "If you take care of your grass, the cattle will have no problems." Their operation was awesome, and just what you'd expect: a warm and friendly retired couple living on 50 or 60 acres and making a living off of raising and selling grass-fed beef. The whole atmosphere was very pioneering, very American. And it was nice to see exactly where the meat we're going to eat is coming from. We made our first purchase while we were out there.

Brandi and I finished the day off with a nice dinner at a quaint little Italian place in a quaint little town about 20 miles from Waco. We had a nice time.

Showing up for the slaughter:


Our hostess greets us with a knife:


The Country Mama hostess shows Brandi the gutting ropes:


Brandi and the gals doing the finishing touches:


Later that day, on the cattle tour:


Up close and personal:


"Scratch 'em behind their ears," the farmer said, and I gladly obliged:


Later at the Italian place, Brandi said, "Leave the gun; take the cannoli." At least that's what I wanted her to say:


Bonus shots of our broody duck hen and bantam hen. The duck is sitting on roughly 20 eggs, and the bantam is sitting on around 12 eggs:



Now for a couple of bonus photos that are not for the faint of heart. See below for a couple of photos of chickens about to meet their maker. Viewer discretion is advised:
Read the rest of this entry . . .