happy cluckers

About a month ago, a friend took me up on my plea for help in building some breeding pens for my chickens. We found a source of salvage wood that would cover most of the project needs and he collected and cut the wood to size … and then his father became ill. By this [...]

baby it’s windy out there!

It rained all night and the temperature edged up to about 50F, so the snow is pretty much extinct. There is some treacherous ice, however, just waiting for a single misstep. Because it’s so warm and wet, I wanted to give the barn a bit of a cleaning – preventative maintenance, something I really should [...]

scrub a dub dub

Whew – now that the baking and stitching and other busy-ness associated with the wonderful Marketplace Fair is behind me, I could finally spend a day tending to the neglected barn. I’ve been feeling so guilty about how wet and dirty the floor was, so I spent nearly four hours today mucking it out. I [...]

a whole lotta thanks going on

Running a small farm is a great way to keep in touch with Mother Nature. (Although the time still flies by at an alarming rate!) When we were treated to a snowstorm on Wednesday, my inital reaction was dismay. What a lot of extra effort a few inches of snow adds to everything! And I [...]

love hurts

My opaline guineas seem to have bonded already – the two blue-headed ones have paired up, leaving my “pretty” pink-headed one as the odd woman out. Poor girl. Hopefully love will find her in the guise of one of the younger keets (they are still confined to the chick pen). Anyway, this morning I heard [...]

we didn’t christen it with champagne

But the fence was open for use yesterday – which, coincidentally, was also my birthday. I felt a little guilty about opening the door for the animals without Tigger, Lauren and David present because they did all the really hard work – but neither did I want to delay the animals’ use of their new [...]

when the sun comes out ….

Today started off sunny – the first time in what feels like a very long time – and although I’d planned to spend the day baking, when Tigger called to say he was coming out with a small crew to work on the fence, I pitched in as well. But first, I baked – I [...]

catching up? oh, puh-leeze!

Last week saw me busy trying to organize the fence – determining the layout, measuring the perimeter, getting Tigger here with the cedar stakes, ordering the fencing … all with it raining day after day. The fencing arrived – or at least 2/3 of it did. They “forgot” the other roll, which will now be [...]