Moving rabbits and hutches.

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July. If you're in the USA I hope you enjoyed your Independence Day however you chose to celebrate it, and that your livestock, and the humans in your life weren't disturbed by the fireworks. For the most part we weathered the fireworks just fine, but last night it seems that Boris didn't make it back into the coop, and I wasn't able to find him this morning. Last night was a bad night to be out between the thunder storm, and the fireworks.

Otherwise this was a very good and productive weekend, though we also spent time getting to be sociable and relax which is important in the midst of stressful weeks.

Wait, it's Friday?

I seem to have gotten confused on days, and ended up not making a post yesterday! I apologize for my oversight. The new chickens that our friend was kind enough to de-acquisition to us have settled in for a couple weeks, and we're starting to get them used to being outside. I need to do a little more mowing and weeding before putting the electronetting up is going to be useful and successful, so right now they're only out when we are outside with them. The Critter really enjoys being outside with the flock, though they break way before him like he's a large ship with a really unfortunate bow wave! He hasn't yet trained these girls that he's safe enough to be around to be able to pet them.

Weeds and Boris.

The good news is Boris is doing very well, he's about fully healed at this point and only occasionally stumbles. The bad news is, he's the only chicken we have left. Between sickness, fatigue, etc, etc, we didn't get the electric fence up yet, and what was probably a fox again came and took all of our laying hens leaving Boris uninjured, but panicked. The Lady of the House found him panting and hiding in the shadow of the house, he's not well enough to fight a fox again, though the fact that the fox left him indicates that most likely it's the same fox that didn't want to tangle again, and left him alone. I feel really crappy about myself because I let the fact that I've been very tired lately get in the way of setting up the electronetting, and lost 4 hens because of it. The first one, happens. The other four are entirely because I didn't do my job. We're fortunate to be in a situation where we will be able to get more laying hens that are being de-acquisitioned from a friend's flock. Before we do so though, I'm getting that fence installed and running because I don't want to do this again. On the up side though, the world is turning green.

Growing and recovering.

One of the particularly unfair parts of parenting is something called sleep regression. It's when your kid (who never really slept well) stops wanting to sleep at all. The result of this is that I've been living in a fog for a few days. That has impeded us doing much of anything because between trying to get the kid to sleep, and day to day work nothing is getting done. That said! There are things happening. For one, the asparagus is doing very well. Most of the asparagus has come up and is doing well. To fill out the asparagus patch we've been advised to take the red berries they will sprout later and plant them to thicken the bed, which I look forward to doing. There is a lot that's going on though, especially with the weather as warm as it is, though we're still getting frosts at night not infrequently.

Experiments with water, and dances with porcupines.

Well, I had a plan for the post I was going to do for today so I may as well go with it for at least part of the post. I was going to talk about the brilliant idea I had for the seedlings. For the Lady of the House's birthday/Christmas present I got her a 55 gallon fish tank. One of the things that fish tanks need is water changes, even with a vibrant live plant community in the tank. The reason that fish tanks need water changes of course is that waste builds up in the water. Nitrates and other similar wastes that kill fish happen to be really good for plants. Right now using fish water to nourish plants is actually something of a fad that may end up being a good long term plan called Aquaponics. Given that we don't have the money, or space to do a big set up, using a couple glasses of water per day out of the fish tank to water the plants can't hurt. Well, it could, but I suspect it will be nothing but good for the plants so we'll see. We are doing this in the least scientific way possible, that is, without a control group. Either way, I expect it to work well.

Continuing rapid changes.

This weekend we had a really nice time with a fire pit and a lot of good friends visiting, and in the interests of that, we got the cleaning of the yard that was so desperately needed done! It also reminded me of just how much I like cooking over wood, despite how inefficient it is over an open fire. I shifted things around in the fire pit to make a shielded cooking area with a radiating fire box, but it's still much cooler as a cooking surface than if I had a purpose built cooking area. Probably not a project for this summer, though it very well may be given some of the other changes around the house.

The biggest change is we now have a housemate. I offered to use an alias for him, but he's fine with just being himself. Lucas is now going to be living with us, and he's going to be working at one of the local stone quarries. He's the gentleman that provided the tools and expertise on building the stone floor in the kitchen, and in addition to being handy, he's indicated he'd like to help out around the property. With that, we'll see what becomes possible with more help around the property on a regular basis!

Quick hit: Fast growing.

Yesterday was incredibly busy so I don't really have much of a post for today, and didn't get much done homesteading wise. We did go out with the Critter, and he got to look over a corn field that hasn't been plowed yet this year, and was fascinated. 

On the homestead Boris is doing a lot better. We're guessing he must have pulled  muscles or something of the like. He's limping, and struggling to stay upright as you can see from his posture. We're glad to see him recovering relatively rapidly given the degree of fight and injury he dealt with. We just keep making sure that he's in at night, and out during the day when it isn't raining.
Last but not least, the seedlings are doing very well. Perhaps a bit too well honestly on the tomato front. As you can see Below the tomato seedlings are shooting up fast, and some are almost in contact with the roof of the mini greenhouse they're in. When that happens the top will have to come off. The pepper seedlings are still very small, so we'll see. We may have to set up a second working area and transplant to larger pots soon. That's all for today, we'll be back Tuesday!

So many seedlings!

Our seedlings have come up! It's a really joyful thing to watch the first seedlings come up inside, and see them doing well. Right now most of what has been started inside is tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant. We started a good variety of various seeds this year and I'm looking forward to seeing how they come out, and being able to share a lot of seedlings. One of the main differences in our seedling starting right now is that we have the seedlings up on the baby clothing rack that used to be our seedling station. It works though!

An hour here and there.

I figured I'd start with Boris and his hens. He dragged himself all the way over to the garden and back to the ramp a couple times yesterday. He's still badly injured, but it doesn't look like he's going to die of his injuries. Even if this is how he lives the rest of his life, he's earned sticking around and us giving him care for the rest of that time instead of us butchering him for meat as we usually would for a non productive animal on our property.

Boris's stand.

This has been an eventful weekend, and at least some of what got done is what we were aiming to get done. One of our two seedling trays has been started, and I'm really happy about that. The reason I haven't gotten the second one started yet is because I don't have enough things that need started yet! I mean, I could start amaranth inside, and probably will start some in the second tray, but I realized we are basically out of tomato seeds after I failed to properly save tomato seeds last year. Yay for toddler sleep induced haze! 

That said, there are other things we got work done on, and things that happened that were a huge surprise.

Happy Spring! Time for cleaning and snow.

Happy Spring! As you probably know there's been some significant snow fall up here. It was quite a transition for us since it was warm and rainy on Saturday followed suddenly by snow on both Sunday and a Monday.

Mother Nature reminds us it is winter for some time still.

So one of the problems with talking about how mild the winter has been in late January is, there's a lot of winter yet. She heard us, and has delivered the missing winter. We'll see how long it stays, but She seems to be aimed to drop enough snow for us to remember right quick. On the up side, the Critter still loves every moment of snow.

Poultry petting as the grass shows.

Yes, this is a picture from this week. In fact, it's even less winter like today than it was when these photos were taken by the Lady of the House. Of course, there is prediction that there will be snow tomorrow, and Tuesday so we'll see how that actually goes. If we actually get snow that'll be fine, if not I expect the last of the snow on the front slope garden beds to be gone entirely by next week. Either way the poultry are enjoying the green, and chances to make their way around and eat anything they can find.

There are better uses of a day, and worse.

Today has turned out a bit frustrating, but not a total waste of time. It mostly just pointed out some of the differences in how we have come to see the world from others. We were schedule to get a stove delivered today. Now to us the driveway is totally doable. Especially with the extra sanding I did to prepare it for the delivery truck. To them, with this amount of sand, and getting through to the gravel beneath for much of it, it wasn't something they would even consider. They'll try again in a week, and if they can't deliver it then, I'll tie it to a hand cart, and haul it up myself. For all that I'm frustrated though, there are other things going on, and while I hate "wasting" time off from work, other things have been done, including rest my sore back.

A big change for turkeys.

Baba Yaga the black chicken who lived in the woods with the turkeys has finally decided it's time to go in with the chickens at night. That night the air was full of the calls of the turkeys trying to get her to re-appear. The turkeys stood on the roof of the chicken coop or the bar of the top of the run as long as they could before going to sleep. I didn't get video of most of their calls, but at the end of the video you can hear them quietly making their contact calls. You can watch the video below the cut.

Chickens out in the run

The orange caution netting is up over the top of the run, and the chickens are out of their coop. Not only are they very happy about it, the Critter is thrilled. Poultry watching seems to be one of his favorite pastimes. Being parents of a very active, very loud child, having something like poultry watching that's a guaranteed hit (temporarily) is a huge boon.

Welcome home Boris

Today we have a new rooster!  He will not be Mr. Bond Mk. III, he already has a name. In this case he is Boris, which oddly enough fits into James Bond just fine. So welcome Boris to the Hillside Homestead. As I mentioned a few days ago he is a Russian Orloff. While you can't see him perfectly since he's still a bit nervous and hiding behind the girls. That said you can see some of the things that make him ideal for our climate. For one thing, he's a big rooster which is good for many reasons. For a second he's well feathered, and has a small comb. Both the feathers, and the comb contribute to him surviving the winter healthy and happy.