Hayfield Homestead News

It's always such a beautiful morning in our little hayfield.  Chcikens having their morning conversations, the horses meandering up the pasture to the water tank, and the beckoning of the cow for attention.  I love looking out my living room windows to see our beautiful animals and the precious views of looking over our hayfield and not seeing any other people.

Our chick project that began in early May has been a learning experience and an interesting trek.  Our original order was 36 meat birds, 12 Black Austrolorpe, and 13 White Rock.  When the order came in, they ended up sending us 39 meat birds, and doubled the order on the others.  So, hubby came home with 86 little birds.  At the time I was REALLY concerned about having so many little ones.  It proved to be a good thing that we got so many.  The first 3 days we lost 15 of the black ones, and 2 of the white ones, and none of the meat birds.  We've had foxes and coyotes galore around here.  We eliminated 1 fox and 1 coyote, but had another surprise this morning.  We moved our meat birds to an outside pen as they got too big for our brooder.  Bright and early we went out to feed and found something, presumably a cat of some sort, had gotten 3 of the meat birds.  I am very disappointed!  So, we have lost quite a few chicks.  The company we purchased these chicks through has said they will refund us for the majority of our loss since there is no reason we should have lost 17 of the layers, except the stress of shipping.  It's just been a huge learning experience.  I do believe we will get a rooster and let our hens just hatch their own!

We are also venturing into other livestock areas here at our homestead.  We are waiting on the delivery of our pregnant gilt.  She is due to pig in June.(I believe that is the right termonology!)  From all the research  that I have read and continue to read, they can have 8-12 little pigs - this is normal.  So, we could have 9-13 pigs to take care of in just over a month.  I remember going to a girlfriends house when I was a kid and loved playing with her family's pigs.  I was young enough that how many then had and how quick they had them didn't mean much.  Boy, do I wish I would have spent more time learning about the pigs instead of riding on them!  I guess we'll learn as we go!  I am rapidly learning so much with our quest to become food independent!

Our next venture is purchasing a milk cow.  Did you know how many different breeds there are?  Holstein, Brown Swiss, Jersey, Guernsey, Ayershire, Dexter, that's just to name the ones I can remember!  I have even read several articles that people are milking their Angus cattle.  Not sure if this is something I really want to try but I suppose cow milk is cow milk.  We had found several different dairy cows over the last few months but now that we are seriously ready to get one...we can't find any that aren't hundreds of miles away!  I guess we'll keep looking and in the mean time I will continue learning everything I can about dairy cows (and pigs!). 

We have turned our black Angus into our pasture and are gearing up to have her bred this fall.  We also hope to find another Black Angus to add the mix so we can have plenty of heifer to raise calves and put in our freezer!  Add in a few pigs a year and some chicken...we'll be all set for Winter. 

As for the gardens...very happy to say that all 3 are replanted!  Even with no rain lately, the new seeds and plants are growing and doing great!  The vine garden is missing a few of the things I really wanted, but the storm wiped them out and there weren't any left in the stores.  So we will be minus blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus.  We have replanted pumpkins, watermelon, cucumbers, squash and zucchini.  Not to mention I have 3 patches of Sunflowers that survived the storms!  The lower garden which includes the kids garden was almost a complete loss.  Many of the kids plants were wiped out, and all the beans(outside of a few scattered) were gone.  We've since replanted our beans - green, kidney and horticulture.  Most of them are coming up already even without rain!  The upper garden wasn't hurt too bad, but we did add 30 tomato plants, 12 green pepper, 4 jalapeno, and 4 cheyanne pepper plants, and 8 cabbage plants.  This added to 6 rows of corn, 6 rows of peas, beets, onions, radishes, and potatoes.  I hope it produces well so I will have LOTS to can/freeze this year.  There is such a feeling of accomplishment when you go to fix a meal and everything you make, you grew or raised yourself! 

The next few projects have been off and on projects for a while.  December 3rd, we bought 2 fillies that were needing serious groceries.  They were thin and looked rough.  These 2 young ladies will be a year old in June.  We have begun working with the girls to train them to lead and will slowly over then next year work them into being horses we can ride.  December 18th, we went to purchase a Mustang that I absolutely loved and was offered a deal to purchase the other 3 horses in the pasture to just a small amount more.  We ended up with a 15 yr old Mustang and 3 - 4yr old, Registered Quarter Horses.  The 4 big horses hadn't been messed with for a long time.  They were kind of wild and only 1 was broke to ride - the Mustang.  So, this Summer the plan is to break the 3 Quarters to ride and have some manners.  Then, trying to find a horse our son could ride, we headed off to another sale.  Earlier this year (February or March), we ended up bringing home another Mustang.  This one is 12 and was in the Extreme Mustang Makeover.  So, we have 2 Mustangs broke to ride, 3 4 yr old Quarters that need broke this Summer, and 2 fillies that will be broke to ride next Summer.  Needless to say, we will be spending lots of time on horse back in the coming years. 

Hubby bought a tractor last November.  It was one that needed work but was bought cheap.  I am very glad he's a fix-it type of person!  He has spent a little time each week working on it and finally brought it home this past weekend.  We now have a Ford 8600 as part of our homestead.  He did some work around here Sunday and found out that the PTO clutch was bad....the one thing he hadn't torn apart and fixed!  So, mowing hay is postponed until the parts come in to fix it...hopefully this week!  We will be mowing about 10 acres or so of hay. 

I suppose I should get moving along today.  Have to make a trip into town...yuck!  Picking up one of J's friends again to spend the night. Then it's home to work on house, gardens, animals, and getting meals prepared.  Oh the fun!  Wishing you a day of progress! ; )
~Sal