I am going to try and be a brief as possible but we all know I can be long winded.  This week we have had a goat with bot fly, we had a chicken get eaten by a fox, 25 new chicks and 5 new ducklings came in the mail, we are addressing some garden issues, and lastly we are harvesting from the garden.  It has been a very busy week. 

Hiccup the goat had a scab on his back, I am a picker so naturally I picked at it to see what it was.  I am very glad that I did, because when I squeezed the scab a small worm came out along with some puss and blood.  I contacted the vet and set pictures.  The vet sent me to Tractor Supply for an Antibiotic.  I cleaned the wound really well.  Some air did get in under the skin, so it sounded like crackling when you pushed on the skin surrounding the wound, but that only lasted about a day.  It has been two days and I am happy to announce that Hiccup seems to be doing great.  Below is a very bad picture, but this is the worm and stuff I was able to get out of the goat’s back. I crushed the worm before I took the picture, I`m sorry. 

The new chicks and ducklings are so cute and we are enjoying them like always.  With the egg shortage that is coming, I wanted to make sure that we had enough eggs to supply our family.  My husband and I also decided now that we are on the farm, we want to have a self sustaining breeding flock.  I did some research and I came across Delaware Chickens.  They are a heavy egg laying breed that has a good size for meat as well.  We ordered those, as well as, a random assortment of heavy brown egg layers.  We like them better than the Americanas.  The ducklings are for bug control.  I will keep you up to date on the breeding program. 

Cucumbers, cucumbers and more cucumbers.  We got the garden in the ground late so all we are getting at this point are cucumbers.  We weeds are so high someone asked me if we planted corn!  I am working every morning, pulling weeds, tying up tomato plants and laying down newspaper, cardboard boxes and feed bags for weed barrier.  I am determined to get these weeds under control.  Wish me luck. 

This is the after picture of the plants tied up and weeded.

This is the before picture of the tomato plants!

We have been at the  new farm for about a month.  We are learned many things and I am going to fill you in on my top three lessons learned.  1. Not all chickens are created equal.  2. Vultures are VERY protected and territorial.  3.  Dirt needs love too. 

I will start with the chickens.  We had this great idea, in order to keep track of how old our laying hens were and egg production we would order hens that lay a different color every year.  Last year was brown so this year we switched to blue.  If you follow my small blog you will know that we are very hands on with our chickens.  My son has taught a chicken to sit on his lap while he swings on the playground.  We have had chickens in our house, we have chickens follow us around the yard when we mow and we have never not been able to pick up a chicken.  This year we choose to raise chickens that laid blue eggs.  The breed we ordered is Americana. These birds are complete freaks.  Ever since they were chicks, when we go to feed them they throw themselves against the side of the cage.  With our first group of chickens we hand fed them for the first several weeks, way longer than I would like to admit.  When we put our hands in their cage, they came running.  They perched on your shoulder while you did chores and were always, and I mean always underfoot.  I have even had to kick one out of the kitchen when the door was left open.  They chickens produced eggs and were farm animals but they were also part of our family.  (I could go into a side bar about ore relationship with out food and then being able to eat them, but that is a hole different post.) The Americana birds that we have are not like that at all.  Even if we have scratch grain, fresh scraps from the garden or even chicken feed… they do not run towards us.  They do not even go in to roost at night.  Not the brightest chickens in the world.
A month after we got our Americanas in the mail we went to Tractor Supply and picked up some chicks that we were using for an educational presentation.  We had no idea what breed they were, they were just straight run whatever the store had.  Turned out that they are Rhode Island Reds and Black Astrop.  These chickens have a very different temperament than the Americanas.  They always go in to roost.  If I tap a feed bucket they come running and they are easy to put away or pick up.  I dislike the Americana breed so much I have already ordered chicks to replace them.  They have not even started laying and I am ready for them to be gone.  Which is a good mentality to have considering the fox is probably going to catch them since they refuse to go in at night.  Crazy chickens.

Okay that was long winded but I feel better, I just had to get it all out.  Second lesson oh these darn vultures.  In our area vultures are everywhere.  Yes I know they have a very important job to do.  I understand that, but what I don’t understand is why these birds are protected under the migratory bird act.  They don’t even migrate.  In fact, they choose the same nesting spot for their whole life.  Even though they are in great numbers and even though they do not migrate, these birds are still protected.  I have learned that not only are these wonderful birds protected but so are their nesting areas.  When we moved into the house, a vulture was nesting in the small barn on the property.  When we first went to see the property, there was two eggs in the nest.  We have had the magical pleasure of watching these eggs hatch, and grow into the most hideous creatures that only a mother could love.  While these chicks have been growing we have been slowly moving in our farm.  First we moved in the chickens, then the ducks and lastly the goats.  We have tried to be respectful of these fabulous creatures and have not moved anything into the barn.  The adult vultures have started to become more and more aggressive.  They first just sat on the top of the barn as a warning. Then they sat in front of the chicken coop all puffed up and growling at the chickens.  That progressed to them charging the coop and the goat fence.  Now they have climaxed into attacking the dogs, myself and my children.  We are glad that our son has the personality that he does… he just screams at them.  We have called local, State and National services and they have all said that Vultures are completely protected and there is nothing we can do about it.  We can not disturb the chicks and we can not injure the birds.  If we did, it would be 6 months in prison and a $15,000 fine per bird.  Needless to say, the darn birds are still in our barn.  We are hoping the chicks grow quickly and leave the nest.  Once the chicks are gone, we can reclaim our barn. 
Lastly, we have learned that our soil needs love.  At our previous property we knew our property was made up of fill dirt.  We did not try to plant a garden in the ground.  Our soil was all compost.  We occasionally had a rock, but for most part we grew our garden in compost.  We have had the garden plot at the new house tilled.  We have tilled each individual row, but this dirt has no nutrition in it.  No has given it the love that it needs.  There are a lot of rocks and hard red clay.  We have added compost around each individual plant, but we do not have enough to love the whole garden.  The grass in the isles of the garden is taller than the tomato plants.  We are realising that it is going to take years to build the soil up.  We are going to compost as much as we can and invest in the land.  It is sad that it has gone so long with no one giving it the attention that it deserves. 
The future will bring many more lessons, but these are just three of the lessons learned so far.  We hope that our lessons can help you in the future. 

I finally feel like I can make our amazing announcement!!  We have moved!  We really loved our little “about” an acre plot, but we were pushing the limits of what could be done in that much space.  We were able to raise a lot of our own food, but we are really interested in raising all of our food, and raising food for other families as well.  So finally with a lot of God’s Grace and a lot of hard work we now own 5 acres.   We are very blessed in that we did not have to move far, we are still close enough to Baltimore that I can go to the Orioles games whenever I want.  The benefit is that we now have enough land to pretty much do whatever we want… the pig is already on order!

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Moving a homestead, even a small one like ours, is not easy.  We have amazing friends that have helped us and are continuing to help us, because we are far from done.  So far we have moved most of the contents of our house, the ducks and the chickens.  In preparation for the move I planted my garden in pots.  So we have moved 760 veggie plants, 12 blueberry bushes and 6 raspberry plants.  The aquaponics system still has to be moved, as well as the rabbits.

Over all I think that the move is going very well.  We are all very tired and our days are very long.  The kids no longer ask to stay up late, they beg to go to bed early.  The animals seem to be adjusting well to their new environment and are being patient with us while we get the perfect pens built.  Right now our main focus is just trying to get everything here, once we do that, we will focus more on stacking firewood and building bigger chicken yards.

The garden is going in slowly but it is going in. A friend came over with a tractor and tilled a 100 x 75 foot garden.  By the deer fence should be up and all the plants should be planted.   I have never planted in the ground before, I know crazy, but I have only ever gardened in raised beds.  My raised beds were full of black gold, very little rocks and tons of worms.  The dirt here looks a lot like the dirt on a baseball field and we will have enough rocks to lay down some paths. Most people when they move they focus on the furniture, well we march the to beat of a different drum and we are moving all that garden soil.  We are digging out all my raised beds and dumping the soil in the new garden.  I am also moving my compost pile.  Good soil makes all the difference in the world and we worked really hard to create the soil, so we are taking it with us, it has more value to us than a flat screen T.V.    Also in moving the 760 pots, I found out that I did not label the plants very well.  I planted beefsteak, san marsanos, and cherry tomatoes… however in the end I think I will just end up with tomatoes.  I have no idea which ones are which.  I am hoping that I am a good enough gardener to be able to tell the watermelon from the cucumbers but even that might get interesting.  This year is just a test year, I would rather grow cucumelons than grow nothings at all.

The whole thing will be a work in progress.  We have many plans for the future and step by step and shovel by shovel we will get there.  My secret goal is to be selling CSA subscriptions in two years, we will see if it happens.  In the mean time, we will continue with the truck trips back and forth and the evenings in the garden.

Most of the United States is experiencing colder than normal temps.  For most people that just means dressing warmer and adding an extra blanket to the bed at night.  For farmers or homesteaders, it means getting creative to keep our animals comfortable.  I unfortunately live on a small plot of  land and I do not have a big barn to put everyone in.  My animals are outside in smaller houses and pens because that is all we have room for.

Bunny its cold outside!  We have a shed that we use for a Bunny Barn.  It is a small 12 x 12 shed that holds 8 rabbit cages.  In the past we have tried to heat the shed with an electric heater, but it cost a small fortune.  Over the summer we have spent some time and money insulating the shed.  My husband used rolls of insulation and linoleum, so the rabbits could not eat the fiberglass insulation.  We also moved the cages a little bit away from the wall to extra make sure that the insulation was not in the bunnies reach.  In the picture below you can see the back wall of the shed, just pretend it is nice and neat and there is not stuff piled on top of my food storage cabinet.

We also put ridged insulation on the door to try and keep in as much heat as possible.

Water is always the biggest challenge.  We remove all water bottles when the temperatures drop below freezing and put in water bowls. We have to transport our water from the house and we use empty milk jugs.  A great discovery we have this year is that if we place the gallons of water in the compost, they do not freeze.  I know there are some of you thinking this is just gross, don’t worry, the water stays clean and it allows us to give the rabbits non frozen water.  We are going to be building a larger scale compost water heater now that we know it works on a small scale.

Normally, all of our rabbits fit in the shed and we do not need to use outside hutches.  We had a great Fall, so we needed to use outside pens as grow out pens for some of our bunnies.  I put 7 young does in a large hutch and we also have a buck, that we just got back from another farm we sold him to.  The decided to get out of rabbits. He is from great breeding stock and we would like to add him back into our herd. He was kept outside at the other farm so we hoped this would not be a shock for him.  My other bucks are spoiled rotten and would be very upset outside.   I have added a lot more hay and straw to the outside hutches.  We give them areas where they can completely get out of the wind and did I mention we had A LOT more hay.  The rabbits move the hay around and make a very nice warm nest with it.  I also covered the hutches with large tarp dumpster bags.  This is to help keep any snow out of the hutch and to cut down on the wind.

We go out 2 -3 times per day and change out the water.   They seem to be doing Ok.  They are eating well and enjoying the extra hay.

These are the things that we are doing to protect our buns from the cold.  What do you do?

I know that this is not homesteading or home making related but it is something that is effecting my family greatly right now and I wanted to share it with you.  I am still struggling with my Lyme Disease.  Earlier in November the same bulls eye rash that I had on my leg a year and a half ago came back.  It was in almost the same spot and it looked just like it did before.  I am lucky enough to have a Lyme Disease Specialist and he started me on another round of antibiotics.  Today I took my last pill and to be completely honest with you I do not feel any better.  I wrote a journal of the last couple of weeks and I wanted to share it with you, just in case one of you is struggling with Lyme Disease and needed to know you were not alone.
Lyme Disease Journal
11/14/14 Friday
This is my second full day on the antibiotics.  The last two nights I have slept at least 8 hours and I wake up still wanting to sleep some more.  I have even wanted to take a nap in the afternoon.  On Wednesday I fell asleep on the couch at 730.   My body is obviously fighting something.  The other major thing that I have noticed is my hands feel stiff and weak.  I am not able to open lids, write for a long time or type.  I have also been dropping things when I am doing dishes or folding laundry.  My legs are also stiff and weaker and I notice it when I am walking up the stairs.  My headaches are mild, but present.  I am able to function and have been drinking close to a gallon of water.  I have not been taking any Tylenol.  The mark on my leg is still there, but not as bright. I have tried to take pictures but it is not bright enough to show up with my phone camera.  I can still see the halo and the skin is wrinkled or scar like in that area. 
11/18/14
The rash is completely gone.  Now my symptoms are starting to get much much worse.  Typing is painful.   My hands and joints hurt.  I have weakness all over and it is even hard for me to write.  It even hurts for someone to touch me.  The kids want to sit on my lap and it is just too painful.  I had a low grade fever last night of 99.9.  The medication has taken away my appetite and I really only eat when I have to take the medication.  My stomach does not feel that great, almost like a sea sickness.  Today I am going to take some Tylenol to try and help the pain, especially in my hands. 

11/23/14
The medication is really bothering my stomach.  I started eating two bowls of yogurt a day when I take my medication, as well as, taking an additional probiotic. This has really helped and I think I am going to continue to do this as long as I am on the medication.

11/27/14
Yesterday I baked pies all day for Thanksgiving,  I peeled, sliced, mixed and rolled out pies.  My hands are so sore!  I was able to take Tylenol to help me get through the day, but today was really bad.  The tylenol did not help at all.  I am very tired and have to sit down more than normal.  I am glad my family helped me cook some of the meal.
11/30/14
I crocheted my daughter slippers for her birthday.  My hands are so frustrating.  Crocheting hurts.  This project normally would have taken me a couple of hours took me 2 weeks.  I had to stop and start every couple of rows. 
12/2/14
My greatest challenge is still having no energy and my hands hurt.  Even typing has become something that is uncomfortable.  My right hand seems to be much worse than my left.  I wonder if that is because I use it so much more.  Secondly, I just have no motivation or energy.  I have to force my self to get up and get moving and I can fall asleep sitting at a table.  Today I took my last medication.  I was hoping that I would being feeling better, but honestly there are days it feels worse.