Easier than last year

Planting is in full force with the big warm up we've had over the last several days.

First thing we really needed to get in were potatoes. If you check older posts you will find photos of last years potato planting. It was by far the hardest 3 days (Yes 3 days) Work Ive ever had!
4, 300 foot rows all trenched by hand.This year we were very fortunate and lucky to have our friend Jim Johansen (of Wesley acres produce) let us borrow his awesome antique potato planter. I was so happy when he offered it to us to use. With what took 3 days to do last year only took a mere 1 1/2 hour to do this year!! I could not believe it! I must have one. This thing trenched,buried,and Hilled the rows. And of course my mom and nephew wanted to try it. My nephew was actually better at it than the rest of us.

                                                  
Brad and my mom getting ready to plant

                                                                  
And now my nephews turn

         We are so lucky to have met such great generous people since we started doing the markets!
                         
A HUGE thank you to Jim Johansen!

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

Gone Broody

Finally one of the hens has gone broody! We have been waiting for this.Hopefully we will not be ordering chicks anymore and this girl will be hatching eggs for us. I found her in the barn in a dark corner on a huge pile of eggs.I'm guessing she is laying on 12+ They are spilling out from underneath her. She has been missing for some time now, I guess she wanted to run off and start a family! So I moved her and her eggs (forgot to count them) into the chick box and gave her a nice cozy spot to sit and hatch them out. I love watching her, She is so gentle with her eggs. If one spills out she will gently tuck it back under her.Don't get to close though! She is very protective of them and will puff her feathers up, make squawking noises and tries to go for your hand lol

I will candle them tomorrow to see if they are all fertile eggs.

Best Strawberry Rhubarb Pie ever!!

Yes! Almost time for Brad's famous Strawberry Rhubarb pie! There truly is nothing better.Good thing he only likes making the mini pies otherwise I would be in trouble lol. We sell these adorable little mini pies at the Trinity Market on Utica Ridge road in Bettendorf. This year we will only have a limited number of pies due to our busy schedule. unless you contact us and let us know you would like one made. You will be in heaven! They are the perfect deep dish size for yourself or to share. Our rhubarb is up and growing fast so It shouldn't be long!
Surprisingly Brad is an amazing pie maker. This recipe has been passed down from my family and from my Great Grandmother who owned a bake shop. Sadly I cannot bake so it has now been passed down from my Mom to Brad lol.

Oh on another note, Be sure to come and try our Buttermilk squares which are out of this world amazing! Also a family recipe and just plain sinful. They are dangerous to have extra's around here because I eat them all hahaha.

Goats a Silly creatures

I think out of all the animals here on the farm,The Goats would have to be the most entertaining animals. They are so Silly.The babies are fun to watch as they hop around almost as it they were dancing.



You could watch them for hours as long as you had some good obstacles for them to play on!

They Love making silly faces

And I have to give the little pot belly pigs some credit too. They are hilarious,They can't bend their bodies so when they play they will just run around and move in circles, It cracks me up! and They like to smile.

Egg production is up!

Yay for spring,Our egg production is up! The hens dropped off laying dramatically this winter as expected. We were only getting around 7-10 eggs a a day out of 100+ hens!
We were a bit worried, but now that the weather has warmed up egg production is up!
We are now getting around 3 dozen a day.
Hopefully we gather more than that this summer as we have around 75 young hens that aren't laying yet. And we just ordered some more chicks. Easter Eggers, We can't wait! We will have a very unique egg color variety this year.Super dark chocolate brown eggs mixed with regular brown,white,pink,blue,and green! It will make gathering the eggs even more exciting!

Spring is early

Ok so spring came a bit early for us this year.This is the earliest we have gotten anything in the ground. 

 Maybe It's because we have spring fever and couldn't wait to dig our hands into the dirt.
 The smell of the moist dirt was pure happiness.There is no better smell!  

It was so perfect yesterday so we decided to do a dirt test with the tiller. The dirt was perfect! Not to wet and nice and crumbly. So we thought what the heck might as well till up the whole garden while the ground was dry and the weather was nice. It took most of the day.My day was spent watching brad and sitting in the dirt. I was just soaking it up! Felt good to be so close to the earth,That's what I've been waiting for.So to my relief we have beets and carrots planted. Hopefully they are ready by market day this may! 


                 Checking everything over

                                 The last of the tilling.

             Loading the seeder with beet seeds

Seeding the ground.OK I know the rows are crooked lol. A lot of other growers are very careful to get perfectly straight rows. But that just doesn't matter to us I guess.All that matters to us is that those beets will be fresh and that no chemicals will have ever touched them.

 

                Next on the list to plant Is our lettuces and Kohlrabi.Hopefully It's a dry spring!