Hanging In There!

I went out one morning to do chores and heard a whole lot of peeping going on.  LOUD peeping.  I tracked it down to the chicken pen.  More precisely, to the wire between the chicken pen and front, and the peafowl pen in back.

A little peachick managed to get inbetween layers of chicken wire and crawl upwards – I presume in a misguided effort to get back out.

Lady, quit taking pictures and HELP ME!!!

Once I rescued the little guy (gal?) from its’ predicament and put it back in the pen with Mama Peahen, I was NOT welcome.  She was disturbed and pacing back and forth, and WILL YOU PLEASE LEAVE!?!

Hey, I can take a hint! I got my camera and myself out of there and left them in peace.

Friday’s Farm Fotos

It’s been a busy week on the farm, but I guess that’s pretty well normal!

The first group of keets has been reduced from 22 to 11. It doesn’t surprise me. The adults wander all over the farm, and don’t slow down just because babies with very short legs are trying to keep up. I’ve found keets peeping for their mama in the bottom pasture, the back pasture and the main pasture. I’ve found them in the back yard, the front yard, and by the driveway.

I don’t think these guineas will win any parenting awards. And there’s a second batch of keets now. This group had 18 keets, so if they lose half, guess we’ll end up with 20 more guineas. I think The Farmer is going to have to give up his “let’s see how many we can get” attitude and sell some.

We also have a few peachicks.  The hatch rate in the incubators isn’t too good.  We got 10 this year, but the first five died after we put them outside with some chicks. There are 4 outside now in a pen by themselves, and one in a brooder box that’s pretty sorry looking due to spraddled legs.

But the big news is…. TA DA! One of the peahens hatched out a couple of peachicks! This is the first time that’s happened. She had about half a dozen eggs under her. A few didn’t hatch, one was DOA, and two are running around after her now.

You can only see one of the peachicks here, but another is hiding underneath Mama Peahen.

We’ve had some pretty weather this week. Down by the pond we have not only blue dragonflies, but red ones.

All we need now is some white ones, and we could be quite patriotic!

There are also some pretty flowers nearby.

There are lots of flowers blooming.  We even have a blooming idiot.

Toby may be a bit crazy, and without any herding instinct, but he’s sure good company.  As for the flower, that’s Sedum ‘Matrona’ blooming. It’s a big favorite of the bees around here. It’s usually covered with little bumblebees and lots of other insects.

The Farmer has been busy on various projects. He put the new door on the bathroom last weekend. Here he’s using the old one for a new project.

Bet you can’t guess what it’s going to be!

And for the last picture in the Friday’s Farm Fotos group, here’s Redneck Samson, with his bit of grass hanging out of his mouth.

And that’s a glimpse of the past week here on the farm!

Friday’s Farm Fotos

Okay, so it’s a cute-sey way to spell “Photos”, but I happen to be a fan of alliteration. 🙂 At any rate, just thought I’d show you a few pictures I’ve taken lately around the farm and hadn’t got around to posting yet.

First, we have a picture of our cat, Spot FenceWalker. He thinks he’s a dog. He and one of our “real” dogs, Toby, follow us around where ever we go outside. This is nice until I’m trying to take pictures, and my subject objects to having a cat and dog close by! In this picture, Spot was following me one night when I went out to check on the chicks.

And here’s a picture of the chicks I was checking on.

That’s a little pile of peachicks on the left with a couple of the younger chicks, and the older chicks huddled up in another pile under the volunteer sunflower.

Sometimes I find chickens in unlikely places. I often look out a window to see them perched on the other critters.

The ewe with the horns is Valrhona, and the one with the Buff Orpington hen perched on her is Papaya.

Other pretty things we can see from our windows include Goldfinches enjoying snacking on seeds and bugs around these tall blue wildflowers. (Anyone know what those flowers are called?)

We can’t have a bunch of pictures without one of The Farmer doing what he loves best… playing Firebug. 🙂

We seem to accumulate boxes and feedbags, so they need to be burned every so often before the feed room in crammed full of them.

The Farmer’s faithful companion likes to trot softly and carry a BIG stick.

The minute one of us goes out the door, it doesn’t matter what Toby is doing, he rushes to grab as big a stick as he can find, cause after all, then we might play with him, right?

And on final reflection, we have a heron who visited our pond this morning. We happened to catch him there when The Farmer went out to work this morning, and knowing how I love pictures, he waited for me to grab my camera and take some before heading on down to the car and scaring the heron away. (Thanks Farmer!)

I’m not sure whether the heron was there to grab some breakfast or admire its’ reflection, but it was a nice surprise to see it..

And there you have it, my collection of “Friday’s Fotos”. Hope you enjoyed them!

What’s Happening on the Farm

We’ve been working on several different projects here on the farm. Here’s an update on what’s happening:

Bathroom remodeling. We’ve got geared back up with that. We’ve got the trim stained and a couple coats of polyacrylic on them. The Farmer put part of the trim up today, but discovered we need one more corner (some funny jigs & jags in there). So it didn’t get finished today but we’re making progress.

Orchard: The apple and pear trees are loaded down.  I’m going to have to decide what to do with all that fruit soon.

 Peafowl Eggs: I still have 3 incubators pretty well filled up. I’m disappointed with the hatch rate, and worse, the ones that did hatch didn’t fare too well when I put them outside. They seemed fine for a week or two, then all of a sudden, I found dead bodies, and now there is only 1 peachick left out with the chicken chicks, and two younger peachicks in a bird cage on the porch.

“School” – I’m working hard and just about ready to switch from learning to doing. Which is one of the things keeping me super busy these days.

Weather: Affecting everything is the weather. It’s hot. It’s humid. There are air quality warnings because of high ozone and high particulate levels. It’s summer in the south. Break out the super-sweet iced tea and endure.

Wool: I put an ad on an egroup list for selling fleece yesterday evening and wowsers! Within an hour I had 20 responses. I never expected so many responses so quickly. The emails are still coming in this morning. Last I looked I had over 35 people wanting wool. Guess in all my “spare” time I’ll be pulling out bags of wool and getting them mailed off.

So, my friends…. 

Newly Hatched Peachick

We had another peachick hatch over the weekend. Here it is fresh out of the shell…

Newly hatched peachicks stumble around in the incubators looking a lot like T-Rexes or some other dinosaur with a long neck.

I do wish another would hatch SOON though. The incessant peeping is driving me right round the bend. Yeah, yeah, I know I didn’t have far to go, but this little guy has LUNG POWER!

Makes it hard to get to sleep at night when he’s in full chorus all night long!

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