April Showers

The weather has been crazy everywhere! We have had an abnormally cold and wet spring here in Illinois, Everything is waterlogged and over saturated. We are hoping for a nice dry sunny week, as we are way behind on planting! Our plants are all up but when it's this chilly they just kind of sit there and grow very slowly. The chicken house needs moved desperately, It is sitting in a puddle. Egg production has dropped from the lack of sunshine and temps, although they do enjoy finding the worms coming up in the muddy areas.

There is good from all this rain however. No worries about drought, and everything is such a beautiful rich shade of green!

Our white plum tree is in full bloom.

I love the curves of tulip leaves.

A gourd birdhouse

I had a few extra gourds laying around from last years crop. Which failed might I add. But we did get a few gourds from our little patch, and so I decided to make a new birdhouse out of one of them. I really like the looks of the stained gourds but after scrubbing and scrubbing I just couldn't get the stains out of the gourd so I just painted it.

Before

And the after.
Still need to put a sealer on it and a hole to hang it.
hopefully there will be a new bird family making a nest in there soon!

Also painted this one up to. A little mushroom. You cannot see it in this picture, but I distressed the white with some distress ink. So it breaks all the white up a little and makes it look more like a fungus :0)

And since I stayed inside all day and bored out of my mind, I made my mom up a dozen eggs to stick in her fridge as a surprise lol. Hopefully this doesn't make her feel bad about eating them in the mourning. I did get a giggle out of my 2 year old nephew

Scenes around the farm this week

I've been a little behind on blogging so thought I would share some scenes around the farm this week. Blogging for me is a bit hard this time of the year since we are so busy with planting and building things and all sorts of stuff. So here are a few pictures of our week.

Got some more onion plants in

Finally started working on putting the walls on the new coop.This is a work when you have extra time project lol

Spring storm

Broody hen now has a baby to care for under her wing

New babies everywhere

Spring is so much fun on the farm. New babies being born everywhere!

This newborn Alpaca belongs to our neighbor Tamara Houseman of http://www.zengoaties.com/
She lives right next door, and I had to get a picture of this adorable little girl.You cannot tell from these photo's but she is so tiny! And soft too

The same day we welcomed 2 liters of cute little pot belly piglets. These little guys will double their weight in a few days. Nothing cuter than chubby little pot belly babies running around!

New baby chicks just in time for Easter

The barn is filled with baby lambs. They are so sweet

And baby goats. Here is a little baby that needed to be bottle fed. Sometimes the goat momma's aren't the best. Sheep on the other hand are such great mothers and never leave their babies side!

The deep litter system...Blah...

The weather has warmed and it was time to clean out the coop over the weekend. We did a lot of looking online and reading on The deep Litter System for chicken coops before winter. You don't completely clean out the coops all winter and just keep putting fresh bedding on. It worked great throughout the cold temps and kept the coop and the hens nice and toasty from the decomposing litter underneath. But I am really reconsidering doing this again. It was way to much work to clean it out in the spring, I think we hauled 5 trailers full of bedding! I like a nice freshly cleaned coop. In the summer our coop is spotless, so I don't know if this deep litter thing is for us. There is nothing better than walking into a nice clean coop with the scent of pine bedding!
Do you do a deep litter system in the winter? What are your thoughts, do you Like or dislike it?


The chickens love to scratch around in the old bedding.Pretty gross but fun to watch them

The sheep with their new baby lambs hung around all day with curiosity to what we were doing. They are so darn cute!

Freedom

Our new goat paddock is done! The girls have been staying in a stall, So I'm so happy they have a big ole pen to run and play in. It is being used as a goat/dog paddock for the time being. Last week Sammy And Bella got out of the pasture, They were missing all day. Sam came home Bella never did.Thankfully she was found and taken to Doggy Jail LOL. What a headache! So until we can get the electric fence fixed in the pasture they will be staying with the goats,
Elle May and Josie.

They all get along great, Bella has become pretty attached to them. She licks them and just loves them. We fixed up an old Hog shed, put a new roof on it,and Painted it.Perfect size for everyone.


Elle May being Goofy as always. She was just bred with my neighbors Nigerian Dwarf buck,So if all goes well we should have what they call mini Nubian babies this August!

They are so funny!They crack me up. Josie likes the camera

Sammy and Josie