Again, another month has flown by in what seems like just one long, deep breath.  I am guilty of wishing away the remains of winter and dreaming daily of the promise of green.  We are lucky in that we have enough exposure that the sun has melted away a good portion of the snow around our house and we've been seeing the beginnings of my *shhhhhh* spring flowers.

Although living in northern Vermont means you have to have quite a bit of patience and a BIG sense of humor.  Sure, the calendar says its spring but we're due to get another Nor'easter this weekend.  Whoever coined the phrase about March with it's lions and lambs surely didn't live in Vermont.  Not that this is much of a surprise, last year there was quite a storm up here on Mothers Day.  You just never know.

Things here on the homestead have been idling since the addition of our daughter.  But plans are always in the backs of our minds and soon enough we'll be jumping into action again.  We are beginning to recognize that although we have the best intentions, sometimes we jump a little too hard with our ideas.  So this year we plan on focusing on the motto: small but successful.  This translates into smaller gardens that we can rely on to AT LEAST provide us with the staples to make Isabel's baby food when she begins solids later this summer/fall.  We're still planning on raising chickens and pigs to feed our family but this year we're planning on three pigs instead of four and a few smaller batches of meat birds instead of one big lot of them that would all need to be processed at about the same time.

We're toying with the idea of stepping back from the dairy goats for now as well.  We'll see how milking goes this spring/summer, but at the present they are relatively expensive pets.

We have some plans for better broiler production.  Last year, we kept them with our laying hens and about half of them jumped the fence into the pigs' pasture, becoming supplemental protein.  This was a major disappointment so this year we're planning on making some inexpensive chicken tractors similar to Joel Salatin's (approximately 10'x12'x2') so we can keep them on the lower pasture where they will get plenty of grass yet still be safe from predators (both domestic and feral).

Speaking of which, we had a major loss last month.  Some unfamiliar dogs paid us a visit and much to our dismay they killed off half of our laying hens.  Then, thanks to the pile of dead chickens that we probably should have just processed and turned into dog food, we attracted a fox and some weasels.  We lost another two or three chickens and are now down to just over a dozen.  To top it all off we have at least one weasel living IN our barn.  We see it every time we go out to feed the goats and the chickens.  Needless to say, we have pulled out the .22 and are going to borrow a livetrap from my brother and sister-in-law.

So, that is where we're at.  I'm going to be pulling out the leftover seeds from last year so we can take stock and see what needs to be purchased for this year.  I'm hoping to get some of our seeds started this weekend. But, in an up coming post I am hoping to detail our plans for food production in a little bit more detail.  Thanks for sticking with me folks!

Saturday evening we heard some peeping from the hayloft and sure enough the eggs had hatched!!  We ended up with seven new chicks.  This spot in the hayloft had been the favorite spot for all the hens to lay their eggs so we got quite a variety from our broody Dominique.  You can only see one of the chicks in this picture here- they were just born when I took this picture and most were still hiding underneath the hen.

As soon as we saw them up there we grabbed our chick-sized water font (the rubber tub we had up there for the hen just wasn't going to cut it for obvious reasons) and barricaded them in so they couldn't fall out if they wandered.  But last night we moved them to the ground in front of our house with a small house and a fenced-in yard where they could wander, eat grass, and be safe with their "mama" hen.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to take some more pictures tonight when they're out and about because when we moved them last night they were either inside their shelter or huddled underneath the Dominique most of the time.

Hey folks.  So apparently I'm not the only one working on new additions to the family.  After the arrival of our friend's roosters there was, apparently, some hanky panky with our hens.  When we went away for a long weekend to Washington DC last month we had a Black Australorp brooding in one of our nesting boxes.  We were so excited!  After loosing so many chickens to those darned pigs we were looking forward to having some "freebies" to add to our flock.

Unfortunately, when we returned we found that one of the neighborhood kids had stopped in and put all our eggs in a bucket for us.  So we lost those and the hen hasn't shown any interest in brooding since.  I was very disappointed because those Australorps are some pretty and birds and they lay big eggs.  But, it just wasn't meant to be I guess.

Lucky for us, hiding up in the hayloft, one of the Dominiques has been sitting on a pile of eggs for a couple weeks now.  She is very diligent and I'm hoping we'll end up with some new babies in another week or two.  The timing probably could have been better as the days are getting shorter and the temperatures are getting a little lower, but if need be we can move them into a seperate area where we can have a heat lamp set up.  As it is they will have to be seperated from the rest of the flock until they are a lot more mobile.  I don't want to run the risk of the babies being attacked by the other chickens.

Exciting stuff!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we clipped our chickens' flight feathers a few weeks ago.  It was great for a few days; they stayed in their pasture.  After the initial few days of perfectly behaved chickens, just a few were found on our front yard but then as the days passed more and more would be found outside their fenced-in area.  They stuck to just our yard for quite a while, but lately they have been venturing further and further away again as they did before we clipped their wings.

I'm not sure what to do at this point.  With almost fifty chickens a movable "chicken tractor" seems like it would have to be too large and cumbersome to work.  It may be a combination of a few small holes in our fencing that need to be patched and the fact that they can jump up on our wooden gate to escape, both of these things need to be fixed in the next few weeks.  Hopefully that will remedy the problem because we suffered our first loss yesterday due to a wandering hen.  The poor thing was hit by a car when she walked all the way down the road to where our relatively quiet dirt road meets a paved road where people drive way too fast.  It was no suprise, it was just a matter of time really, but it's just so frustrating.

I just don't get it.  We have tons of grass, sun, shade, and plenty of dirt and pebbles in our driveway.  I don't understand what keeps calling these birds away from our yard.  I hope we can get them corralled again soon, I'd hate to lose anymore.

We recently inherited another ten chickens from our friend who moved a couple weeks ago.  Along with the Buckeye and Barred Rock laying hens were four Buckeye roosters.  As I helped Stu unload them from the back of his truck I was a little nervous; we're on pretty good terms with our neighbors and we'd really prefer to keep it that way.  I stood there at the fence after he left, watching the dynamics of the flock to be sure there wasn't going to be any huge fights, especially with the roosters.  They are still young enough that they haven't developed their spurs so they can't do as much damage.  Things settled down fairly quickly after some dueling here and there with some of the larger Australorp hens and the roosters.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to keep one or two of the roosters so we can replenish our flock, but we'll have to wait and see how noisey they are once they settle in.  It seems like they're doing their job, though, because for the past few days one of the Australorps has been happy to stay in one of the nesting boxes.

The goats are doing well.  Juniper's leg healed fantastically and she's gotten to where she doesn't have a limp and can run and jump just as well as the other two girls.  I feel a small sense of accomplishment with that.  Our attempts at milking Chutney were a bust.  Between her unwillingness to stand still and the small size of her teats due to being a first freshener made it infuriatingly difficult to get much milk.  We've been considering investing in a larger goat that would be easier for us both (especially Kyle since he has larger hands) to milk.  But we'll see how that goes.

The second swarm that stopped by one of our trees left last weekend.  Kyle had just finished building the top bar hive and we placed it under the swarm.  It was getting late in the day and we were both exhausted, so we thought we'd give them the night and the next morning to think about checking out the hive on their own before trying to drop them into the box.  The next morning we awoke and found that they had left.  Our own hive is doing well, though, we're ready to take a few frames out to harvest a bit of honey.  Kyle is hoping it will help with his allergies- the poor guy has been congested for weeks.

Finally, our garden.  I was so excited about the garden this year; I was so determined to make it a success.  Well, my friends, you know the saying about good intentions, right?  Unfortunately we've met some difficulty here as well.  We went down to the garden last week to find something had chewed the stalks of our tomato plants that had been doing so well.  They were lost.  Not only that, the black beans are being systematically attacked by something as well.  They were looking great a few weeks ago, but I checked them one day to find a patch of the bed had been demolished, then a few days later, more plants were gone.  I'm not sure what we'll be left with, but I'm not holding out much hope.

The few plants that appear to be doing amazingly well are our summer squash, carrots, beets, and potatoes.  Of course, its hard to say what is going on underneath the potato plants, but I can only hope they are doing well.  Hopefully we'll have enough to save for seed potatos for next year.  Seeing our difficulty with this garden for the second year in a row, we've decided to re-evaluate our garden plans.  Being such non-green-thumbs, why did we decide to take on such a large plot?  Well, because it is there and we were determined to make it work.  Under other circumstances, perhaps if we didn't have the goats, chickens, house renovations, full time jobs, and a multitude of other things, we could have pushed through and made our garden a success.  But, we're too new at this and it was just unrealistic for us.

So, next year we're going to do a smaller garden.  Smaller, but happier.  We're considering moving it up to be right next to the house, on our small, south-facing lawn.  There, not only would it be potentially safer from critters (because the dogs are up there more often), but it is closer to the spigot so we don't have to drag five hoses all the way down the hill and back to water it when necessary.  But my favorite reason for moving it is that we'd be able to see it easily from our picture window.  When things are ripe we'll know sooner so we can grab them and we'd be more apt to weed more often if we see it every day.  So we'll start small and once we get the hang of that, we'll add another bed or two, and so on until we get to where we want to be.

So thats the plan my friends.  Just because things aren't going well doesn't mean we throw in the towel, we take a step back and see what we're doing wrong and what we can do to improve.  We'll get there.  Rome wasn't built in a day, right?  It takes time.  We'll get there.

What the heck happened to the first half of July!?  We're in the final two weeks of this month and we're getting perilously close to August, the month of school supplies and talk of fall.  Thinking back to what we've done so far this summer, I'm a little sad to say that we've only been out in the kayaks a handful of times, hiked even less, and have yet to pull my bikes out of the work shop.  It always amazes me how quickly time flies, and yes, I'll agree that it gets faster with each year.

But, fall is a great time of year in Vermont.  At least until stick season when everything just looks too bare for comfort.  So there is still plenty of time to get out in those boats, and on the trails, and maybe even wear down some tires as well.  Winter seems to take its time getting here, it hangs on for sure, but real snow fall doesn't show its face usually until January.  Sure it'll be freezing and bitter, and I'll long for Spring to come, but this year we'll have our woodstove.  There's nothing quite like the dry heat that radiates from the belly of a cast iron and hearthstone beast, and I'll smile at its flickering glow each night.

But lets not get to ahead of ourselves, right?  After all, summer is barely a month old now and I'm certainly not showing it the door.  Over the weekend we harvested some lovely little beets and planted a new crop of peas, carrots, and salad greens.  The garden hadn't been touched in (dare I say it?) at least a month and a half and lets just say it didn't look like much of a garden.  My Mom came down to help give me a boost and we tackled it all amazingly enough, and not too soon either because the next day it rained.  The garden is looking lovely again.

The bees have been enoying their 'front porch', as Kyle calls it, lately with all this heat.  Most days when I come home from work there are a fair few out on the front of the hive, cooling off.  I need to get in there and check on the honey stores and the brood to be sure all is well.  Its just so hard to 'suit up' with the sweltering heat, hopefully now with the temperatures regulating again I'll be able to bring myself to get out there.

Things around the farm have been going well.  The absence of the pigs has been felt mostly during feeding time, when the familiar sounds of oinks, grunts, and squeels are decidedly absent.  Juniper's leg has been healing over the past few weeks in her splint.  I'm going to take it off this weekend and see how she does walking without it.  We may set up Ollie's old dog crate for her to stay in to keep the other girls from jostling her around too much during the first couple days.  And of course, the chickens are doing well, they come and go as they please and lately have been spending the early morning hanging out in front of our porch hoping for an early breakfast.  One was at the front door this morning, clucking at me through an open window.

Last night I took some down time in our hammock, with Juniper and Poppy on my lap, while Kyle brought the bigger girls down the rock face to the taller brush in our lower field.  There was something so calming about swaying under the canopies of three giant maple trees with two tiny ruminants chewing their cud, their eyes barely staying open.  Sometimes it dawns on me what my life has come to mean and I am humbled by it.

Sorry I've been a little sporatic in my blog posts lately, things have just been super hectic at home the past few weeks and my laptop has officially kicked the bucket.  Kyle and I had to finish up our guest room (YES, it really is finished!!) before my father and step-mom came up for the holiday weekend.  We also had to clean up the house (which ended up taking way more time than I really thought it would) and semi-finish the upstairs bathroom.  On top of all this we, of course, have been working on barn stuff.  Kyle made me a milking stand a week ago which I took out for a test run with Chutney a couple days. 

I was planning on starting the bottle-feeding this past weekend, my hope had been that I'd milk a little bit every day up until then just for us to get the hang of it before we really got serious.  But unfortunately, I haven't been feeling well and trudging out to the barn twice a day to fight with a goat and her teats wasn't high on my priority list.  So I'm hoping to give it another go soon because the kids are getting pretty skittish.

Our pigs are growing fast.  Bricktop is definitely still the biggest out of the four boys but the other three really aren't that far behind.  Kyle and I are pretty sure we'll be able to have them all processed before fall, which would be great.  They haven't eaten any other chickens, as far as I have been able to tell, and I hope that our barracade that we created around the dividing gate will continue to be successful.

Speaking of chickens, our second experience of the Cornish crosses is nearing its end.  Our fifty (or so) meat birds are amazing.  Last year when we raised these birds it was too late to put them outside because the weather had turned too cold.  This year they've had free range of the pasture and all the tall grasses.  We started only feeding them for a short time in the morning, forcing them to forage for the rest of the day.  I am always amazed about how healthy they seem compared to our first batch.  These birds are active.  The most common thing you hear about this kind of bird is that they have heart and leg problems, they really can only walk from the feed dish to the water dish, and the rest of the time they have to sit down because of their massive weight.  We experienced exactly this last year and it caused us to think we'd never raise these birds again.  But what a difference a diet can make.  I'll be posting some pictures when I get a chance.

I really do have a bunch to catch you up on- I really would love to show you some before and afters of our guest room and bathroom.  Oh, and we started our garden a few weeks ago, still have a lot to plant, but we've got a beginning at least.  May is due in a few weeks, she started making her udder a week ago.  So much has been going on I can barely remember it all!  Please bear with me, friends, life has really been getting in the way of my blogging but I hope to make a full comeback soon.

Thanks for stopping by!!
Melissa

I had read, before we ever got our pigs, that they could be a problem with our chicken population.  When our four boys arrived we noticed a bit of interest and a couple idle bites in a chicken's direction here and there.  But the laying hens are fast, so the pigs never got more than a couple feathers out of the encounter.  We decided that between the damage they were doing to the floor in the barn, the potential snacking that would be at the chickens' expense, and the lovely smell, it would just be best to keep them in their own shed, in a seperate fenced-in pasture.  This didn't solve all our problems, unfortunately.

First off, I have to say that the damage to the barn has halted completely, minus the one time they got out into the other pasture, went into the barn, and ate all the grain we had.  Second, the smell is nowhere near as bad.  They keep their shed very clean and, thanks to the amount of space they have to move around in, only on occasion do I get an offensive odor wafted in my direction when out by their pasture.

The only thing we haven't been able to halt is the snacking.  Yes, the snacking at our chickens' expense.  There is one spot under a gate where the chickens can squeeze under and if they aren't smart enough to figure out how to get back they are, eventually, picked off.  So far not a single laying hen has been the victim, I'm not sure they could even fit under the gate, it has always been one of our almost two month old chickens.

Two or three times we have come home to find a carpet of feathers in the pigs' pasture.  They were like crop circles, once one showed up out of the blue another one did, then another one.  Then last night our neighbor's daughter stopped by to bring us some food scraps (for the pigs of course) and a few muffins (for us, yippy!) and as we were admiring the new baby goats she asked me if the pigs had a toy.  I wasn't really sure what she meant but as we neared the gate I saw the tell-tale feathers next to their water trough.

It was a horrifying sight.  Two of them had legs hanging out the sides of their mouths as they gnawed through the bones.  The other two had something as well, I tried not to look long enough to identify the body part.  I apologized to the neighbor who was probably sorry that she stopped by on her way back home, although she seemed relatively unphased.

That night Kyle and I discussed the impending downsizing of our pig herd.  We are looking forward to sending Bricktop off to our local animal processer more and more as the days wear on.  He is large enough and he gets the majority of the food.  Hopefully once he is gone we'll be able to focus on the other three, so they will grow faster.  Honestly, this is a great experience but I'm just not sure we want to get pigs again.  There are plenty of people who raise pigs, and I'd rather buy pork from a local co-op than deal with these guys again.  Chickens are so much quieter, they don't eat as much, they don't tear up your land, and they taste delicious.  I love chicken.  But then I think of bacon...oh bacon...

Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Whoa nellie!  Am I the only who noticed the coutdown this morning?  We're down to just a week and a half or so until Chutney kids and I have to admit that over the past few days I go out to the barn wondering if I'll be greeted by a bunch of babies.  I've heard that goats are pretty much sticklers for being on time with this kind of stuff, but its just so close and I can't help myself!

The poor girl just keeps getting wider and wider.  I'm certain she's got at least two in there.  I just hope there aren't too many more than that.  Of course, if it is just two, I'm pretty sure they're going to be pretty big kids- and I worry about my little mama-goat.  I just want her to have a relatively easy delivery and healthy kids.

The closer we get to her due date the more I am thinking that I am not ready yet!  Ugh.  I still have to order our disbudding iron (there are way too many little children that come here for us to leave horns on playful goats) and get paperwork/registration stuff ready for new additions.  I have no idea where to even start.  We don't even have a herd name yet!!!  We still need to work that out as well as get a tattoo number/code so we can register the kids once they arrive.  I need a step-by-step manual or a Registering Kids for Dummies book.

On top of that we need to get a new set up for the chicks in the barn.  After moving them out there a couple weeks ago they've been thriving.  It's nice to see them outside in the grass and sunshine instead of shut away in a brooder somewhere in our workshop.  The only downside is that there are 70 of them, which produces a massive amount of chicken poop in one area.  Sure they go outside on occasion but most of the meat birds would rather just laze around in the barn.  As a result the straw is pretty well soiled and we've started seeing more flies in the barn.  Not the optimal conditions for newborn baby anythings!

So this weekend we'll be spending some time cleaning out the barn from tip to tail and hopefully construct some better solution for the meat birds so they don't have to walk up and down a ramp to get in and out of the barn.  I'm hoping for a temporary shelter out in the pasture as they'll only be with us for another few weeks.

So anyways.  Does anyone have any good suggestions for a herd name?

Yes!  Our spring chicks arrived on Friday!!  I took the day off in anticipation for their arrival and anxiously waited all day.  I kept myself busy making more flour tortillas (this time I subbed a couple cups of wheat flour for the white in the double batch that I made) and doing other chores around and outside the house.  It wasn't until late afternoon that a big box of three day old chicks showed up at the local post office.

Happily, Thursday night, Kyle and I got the extra large brooder ready to go and picked up a couple fifty pound bags of chick starter.  We cleaned up the water fonts and layed down an old sheet over the shavings to help prevent the chicks from eating it during their first day or so.  So, once we returned from picking them up, we got their fonts filled with slightly-sugared, warm water and went about dipping each chick's beak in the water. 

We didn't bother counting them- although I wish we had now, just so we know exactly how many we ended up with.  But it is alot of peeping chicks.  Looks like the layers are a combination of Red Stars, Buff Orpingtons, and Rhode Island Reds...just guessing by their coloring as we had no option to request certain breeds with this 'Hungry Man Special'.  I'm really looking forward to increasing our egg production and all three of those breeds would be a welcome addition to our farm.

Already, a mere three days later, they are noticably larger and have more feathers.  The broilers are the biggest, which is to be expected, and I'm hoping that in a couple weeks we'll be able to move them outside.  The layers will probably live in the brooder slightly longer, but pretty much as soon as everyone is feathered in they'll be sent outside to live.  The brooder we've got them in is plenty roomy enough for 75-80 chicks, it is nowhere near big enough for 75-80 adolescent birds!

Its nice to have new additions on the farm again, especially ones with such promise.  A few pennies per pound in grain (until the grass really starts growing) and we'll be set for chicken for the year and eggs for years to come.  I love it here.

But she's not going to be happy about it.

Yes, thats right, folks I'm headed away for a week on my yearly trip down to Texas/Mexico.  Business, not pleasure.  That means I'll be leaving the farm in my hubby's capable hands, the poor guy.  On the up side, I'll be missing out on a week of cool, rainy weather that is the norm for Vermont in early spring.  But I'll miss being home none the less.  I'm a homebody, not a traveler.

Anyways, so we ordered our chickens a couple nights ago.  We'll be getting fify meat birds and twenty-five pullets for eggs.  Six of the pullets we'll be selling to Kyle's brother, Sean, who has a lovely forested piece of land where the chickens will have a field day eating all their ticks and whatnot.  Fifty broilers is definitely a little more than we need for the year, but we've got some friends and family who will be taking some off our hands once they make the transition from the barn to the freezer.

So, hopefully shortly after I return from my trip we'll be getting our chickens and our bees (which I am picking up April 12th).  Until then we'll just keep plugging away with our seed starting and garden planning.

Well folks, as tonight is my last night home until Friday, I'm off to enjoy some quiet time with my husband and our 'family'.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to check in while I'm away.  Happy spring!!

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've been ready for Spring for over a month now.  We started some seeds, which are doing remakably well compared to previous attempts at seed-starting (don't get too excited, mostly just herbs, some hot peppers, and some tomatos to grow in the house).  The little snow we had was melting fast and I would say that half of our land was grass or spotty snow.  Just last week I saw the first of the spring flowers popping up through the ground.  I was getting excited for the girls who must be really looking forward to some nice fresh grass after all these months of hay and grain.

But, alas, we suffered a major set-back in this department yesterday when I awoke to a foot of wet snow on the ground and plenty more falling.  We donned our winter gear and headed out to see if we could get the snowblower going.  After ten minutes of frustration in the realization that the auger wouldn't be able to handle the heavy, wet snow, we gave in and I called in to work.

Though I wasn't exactly psyched to get such a significant snowfall, I have to admit, it was truly beautiful.  After giving up on the snowblower and its deafening noise as it choked through the snow back to its parking spot, we headed to the barn to feed everyone an early breakfast.  The sun hadn't yet come up and we enjoyed some quiet time before the world awoke. 

The girls happily munched away at their breakfast of grain and some nice second-cut hay that we found at Guys Farm and Yard over in Morrisville a few days ago.  The chickens scratched away at the ground, finding grain and bits of stuff we unearthed after cleaning out half of the old straw this past weekend.  The pigs, in their own shed, grunted and squeeked through their mix of grain and food scraps.

There is something just so pleasant about the sound of contently eating farm animals.  I think it is partially due to the frantic moments before everyone is fed, while everyone is demanding their breakfast, that we come to really appreciate the quiet afterwards.  We rush to feed the pigs before their squealing could bother the neighbors, and we quickly feed the goats before we're covered in hoof prints, then finally cast out grain for the chickens before they start trying to steal from the pigs and the goats.  Once its all said and done, and everyone has fresh, clean water, we can sit back and enjoy the peace.

Our life doesn't seem to lend itself to too many moments of peace.  There is always laundry to do, dishes to wash, dogs to exercise, animals to feed, pigs to move from the barn to their shed, water buckets to fill, eggs to collect, reading/studying to do, goats to check on, home renovations to tackle, not to mention our full-time jobs.  So, during these quiet moments before the sun comes up and the sense of urgency to get to work (in one sense or another)arises, we find a second to stand still, hold hands, and breathe deep.

Hehe.  Ok, that sounds a little gross, but it was the best I could come up with- and you have to admit its a pretty whitty title for a post on making chicken stock, don't you think?  Ok ok, enough self-appreciation, moving along.

I am just so excited about our chickens, I just can't even express how awesome they are.  While our laying hens are pretty sweet and have started generating their own income through eggs, I am quite certainly talking about our broilers.  Yep, those gigantic birds that we dispatched this past fall that have been taking up residence in our freezer.  Probably once every week or two we pull one of these ladies (or gentlemen, we're equal-opportunity eaters here) out to thaw.  A couple days later she (or he, see above) is ready for a little garlic/rosemary/butter rub before heading in to the oven (I usually do 500 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the particular bird).  Normally I'll just stick the bird on top of a bed of chopped carrots, onions, and celery in a baking dish.  Sometimes I'll put out a roasting pan if the chicken is big enough to warrant the extra cleaning.

Kyle and I are a little picky when it comes to our roast chicken.  Most of the time we'll only eat the breast meat and the tenders.  This may sound wasteful to some, but hey, remember my superly-awesome title for this little baby?  Thats right, we don't toss the rest, or feed it to the dogs even (sorry Shyla and Ollie).  Sometimes the chicken gets tossed into the fridge for a day or two because, lets be honest, who really wants to get finished with dinner just to start cooking again?  Sometimes I do it this way- after carving off the meat for dinner, toss it all into a stock pot- but only when I feel like super-homesteader-woman.

So the next day (or right off if I'm feeling like SHW as I said just now) I'll toss a couple chopped onions, a few ribs of celery, and a few carrots into a stock pot with some olive oil, garlic, and some thyme.  After they get softened up a bit I'll add the chicken as well as the veggies that are in the pan with it (skin, bones, fat and all).  Fill the pot up to cover everything and get that puppy boiling.  Once it starts boiling, lower the temp so it just sort of simmers and let it go until the bones are pretty much all seperated (in other words; if you pull out the bones you shouldn't see the perfect skeleton of a chicken, just a bunch of bones).

If it tastes like chicken stock, sweet; pour that sucker through a colander into another pot or a bowl to catch the stock.  Now this is where you can go a couple different routes.  What I normally do is pour about half a gallon of the stock into jars to save for later use.  Sometimes I'll can all the broth like this and deal with the meat seperately, this works if you want to make something out of the chicken meat like sandwiches, enchiladas, or just put it on salads.

Pick through the contents of the colander, pulling out as much meat as possible.  I usually shred it up a bit before putting it aside.  If I'm going to make soup, or chicken pot pie, I'll also go through the veggies for any that are still fairly solid after all that boiling.  (If I'm not making soup or pot pie, the veggies go with the bones into the compost.)

At this point you have the makings for whatever you want.  If you'd like chicken noodle soup, toss that meat, veggies, and broth back into the stock pot and get cooking!  Pot pie?  Then mix some flour into melted butter, add some stock, the chicken, veggies, salt and pepper if you'd like, and walla!  You have pot pie filling (if you add a bit of milk or cream at this point it is super delicious as well)!  Sometimes I'll make a bunch of this (depending on how much meat I can get off the chicken) so I can store a couple meals of it in our freezer.  Make your favorite pie crust (even better, make a double batch so you can freeze some of that for later, too!), cover the filling in a pie pan, and toss that sucker into the oven!

Man, I'm hungry...

Yeah I know.  We're solidly within the Winter months here in Northern Vermont.  We're looking at subzero temps again this weekend- at night at least.  I haven't been getting out to enjoy the snow enough so I've been wishing it away.  I just keep thinking about Spring plans and I'm ready to get started.

I can't even start our seeds until March (even that is a little optimistic).  Not that I've bought them yet (you know if I did they would be planted by now).  I've got my shopping cart at High Mowing Seeds saved so when I'm ready to order I can just click the checkout button and we're gold.  I've got a nice selection of everything from peas and beans, to onions, potatos, sweet and hot peppers, carrots and celery, spinach and salad greens to name a few.  The more I think about them the more I want to just click that 'checkout' button.

The other thing I'm itching to get going on is our poultry order.  We decided that we're going to get another lot of cornish x rock broilers this Spring so they'll be ready for slaughter early in Summer, then we'll probably get another bunch later in the Summer for slaughter in the Fall.

We're going to get another dozen egg layers, Silver Laced Wynadottes, I think.  I know, its just two of us and you're probably wondering what we're doing with almost a dozen eggs a day as it is.  Well, for your information, we've been selling around four dozen eggs a week, and I'm pretty sure we could sell more if we had enough to get rid of.  Not to mention that I've been looking forward to freezing some quiche's but haven't been able to because we're selling the main ingredient.  And I don't have enough eggs to eat for breakfast every day- only enough for the weekends.  This isn't much of a problem as I don't normally have time to eat before I leave for work (I typically take some fruit and cottage cheese for a later lunch at work) but I wouldn't mind having the option.

Also on the poultry order will be the turkeys.  We haven't decided yet how many we'll get, and we haven't settled on a breed, but they're in our radar.  I really want to go with the Royal Palm turkey but Kyle would rather have the standard Large White turkey...you know, the kind that won't even fit in your roasting pan with the cover on...yeah that one. 

My thing with the Royal Palm turkeys is that they're a heritage breed, not a commercial one, so they're better foragers and wouldn't require as much commercial feed.  Although, I guess they are a little smaller than most other heritage breed turkeys...so maybe we could compromise a little.  I just love those black and white markings.  Anywho. 

So the plan is to place our poultry order in March (or February and request a later ship date) so by the time these little guys and gals are feathered in a bit we'll be able to stick them outside as much as possible.  The sooner we can get them living outside and fending for themselves the better.  I do love a good grass-fed egg/chicken/turkey.

The last thing that is on the radar is our start into pork production.  We decided it was time we really start getting serious about this whole "self sufficient" thing.  So, we'll be buying a handful of piglets as soon as we can construct housing for them, and erect some sturdy fencing.  The plan is to keep them in a little grove near the house where they can dig up the ground all they want.  Once the little piggies are gone we're going to convert the space into a future buck pen so we can have our goat breeding done on site.  Unless we decide to get a breeding pair of pigs so we don't have to keep buying piglets year after year...which really would make more sense.  Either way- I'm going to insist on heritage breeds for the pigs, for sure.

So that is our plan for this spring.  Until then I'll just have to keep watching it snow...rushing out to the barn to collect eggs before they freeze, planning sledding parties, and drinking obscene quantities of hot chocolate, trying to make the best of it.  Because, lets be honest, as soon as the summer heat hits we'll be thinking back to these frigid days and long for the crisp, cool air once more.

Last Sunday, after our awesomely-fabulous trip to Lowes that only cost us the price of gas and a couple breakfast sandwiches, we stopped patting ourselves on the back and got to work on the guest bedroom.  My dear friend, Stefania, had been planning on coming up for New Years eve and I really wanted her to have a decent place to pass out after hours of fun.

Kyle got to work creating a new door frame for the closet door while I got to work cutting drywall for the closet.  Luckily, as we still had the old door frame in place I had my own entrance into the closet where I wouldn't be harrassing Kyle during his project.  As I worked my way around the little closet, drywalling, Kyle finished up the door frame and started wiring up the new and improved wall sconce we picked up earlier that morning.  No more bare bulbs for our lovely little closet-to-be, no sir.

It took some time to finish the drywall in the closet, with its little kneewall, outlet, switch, and light, there were alot of calculations to make to be sure everything fit correctly.  But we got it finished, and I think we can officially call it a closet now.  After a quick break for an early dinner and a couple glasses of wine (normally beer is our home-renovation requirement but you work with what you've got, right?) we headed back up to start on the rest of the walls.

On the section of ceiling above where the funky, narrow hallway used to be, we secured a piece of foamboard to help insulate.  I fastened it up with an unnecessary amount of drywall screws before moving on to attach a piece of sheetrock over it (also with a large quantity of drywall screws...this time it was necessary, though, as we were only going into plaster/lath so the more the merrier).

My arms seriously needed a break at this point.  Being just under 5'5" doesn't help reach those places way up high where drywall screws need to go.  So we headed downstairs to feed the impatient dogs before going out to the barn.  The girls were happy to see that their dinner was coming and they all ate happily as Kyle and I looked around for the eggs.  The chickens were getting wise to the fact that we're taking their eggs, and must not be appreciating it because we had to search extra-hard to find more than a few.  All in all we found a dozen eggs, all but four in these new hiding places.

It was a busy, arm-killing day, but were we done?  Heck no!  How do you think I could possible have a mirror for our bathroom and just leave it in its box?!  You know me better than that.  With a level, some screws, and some good eyeballing, it took literally five minutes to secure the new medicine cabinet over our sink.  And 'whoa nellie!' we had a mirror and more storage in our upstairs bathroom!  Not to mention the fact that I finally got a good look at myself and couldn't believe my husband could look at my bed-head without laughing his face off.  After all, the guys at Lowes don't care if I brush my hair on home-renovation day so why should I?

So, there you have it folks.  Over the course of two days we were able to get our washer and dryer hooked up, drywall up in the guest bedroom (all but two small sections), install a light in the closet and a medicine cabinet in our bathroom.  And I was finally able to get some clean clothes, not too soon, too, as we all know what Monday means.

Ok so let me just say right off that I really do love winter.  One of the things I love the most about Vermont is its changing seasons- its variety.  In the summer we can hike, bike, kayak, play frolf, and garden.  In the fall we have the foliage, more hiking, cidermaking, and more biking.  In the winter, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing (if you've got the coordination for it, which I most certainly do not), skiing/snowboarding, sledding, hot chocolate, and making snowmen!  And, of course, in the spring we've got mud season...thats all I have to say about that.  But honestly, over the past few days it has been just too cold.  We've been having sub-zero temperatures even during the day (with windchills around -20).

Luckily we bought our heated water bucket for the barn a few weeks ago so we didn't have to worry about the girls' water freezing all the time.  But our barn is just a little too big for two little goats and a dozen chickens to really keep warm.  Last night I plugged in a couple heat lamps to try to cut through the frigid air in the barn, which seemed to help a little.  Granted, the barn is incredibly comfortable compared to the air outside it- but the girls were still shivering, so I made some warm oatmeal with carrots and applecider and brought it out to the barn. 

May happily crunched away at the warm carrot slices (I couldn't get Chutney to even try it) and the chickens took over the oatmeal...it was too funny to see them all eating out of the same little bowl.  I wish I had brough my camera out.  I also had to give May a shot of Lutalyse to induce her heat in preparation for her "date" on Sunday.  Hopefully she'll be ready to go and we'll have some new additions to our farm around the end of April.  But it was convenient to have her occupied with her warm carrots while I had to stick a needle in her butt.

On another note, we officially had our first pipes freeze yesterday!  Yippy!  (That last exclamation laid heavily with sarcasm.)  Yep, thats right folks, who would have thought that our beautiful old house would lack sufficient insulation in some places?  Surely not I!  (Sarcasm again.)  Luckily the only pipes that froze were those going to the kitchen, the water in the rest of the house is still working, so I am exceedingly thankful for that.  So now we've got all our drawers and cabinets open/removed to expose the pipes behind them in hopes that they will thaw slowly enough that they won't burst.  Hopefully by the time I get home today we'll have running water back in the kitchen- Kyle's on it.

That lucky duck has the day off today.  The original plan was that he was going to run wiring and plumbing up to our upstairs bathroom so we could move our washer and dryer up there.  But he might be taking a good portion of the day to run new PTEX tubing to the kitchen to bypass our frozen, copper piping.  He is fairly sure the problem is that the current pipes run under the house where there isn't any insulation.  So his solution is to run this new tubing so it will go through our walls and floors where it will be a little warmer.  We'll see how it goes.  Personally, I'd rather have the washer and dryer upstairs than running water in my kitchen right now...a girl gets a little sick of not being able to use the dryer and the oven at the same time (more on that later).

Wow, well yesterday Kyle found six eggs in the barn!!  I was so excited yet a little jealous that I wasn't able to hit the mother-load myself!  That got our numbers up to a dozen exactly.  I wasn't expecting much today, as we've been averaging just a few a day.  I hit the grocery store as soon as I got out of work to pick up some stuff for next week's dinners.  I was walking through the dairy section and it felt so strange as I walked past the eggs- we almost always have to buy eggs whenever we go to the grocery store.  But no more.  We should have eggs coming out of our ears pretty soon.

I arrived home, hastily unloaded my car, let out the kids and threw on my muck boots.  It was amazingly mild outside for a rainy December day in Northern Vermont.  In fact, I walked to the barn with just a light long-sleeved shirt on, my jacket taking up residence on a chair in the dining room.  Much to my excitement, I was able to find another six eggs.  Only one was in a nesting box, one more was in the manger, and the other four were sandwiched between layers of straw on top of our nice stack of hay that we had tried to cover to keep them from laying there. 

So, with eighteen farm-fresh eggs in one carton, and eight store-bought eggs in another, we decided it was time to have 'breakfast for dinner'.  I started up some hollondaise sauce and a pot of water to make eggs benedict while I set the eight store-bought eggs in another pot to boil to make hard-boiled eggs for lunch tomorrow.  Dinner was delicious but not quite as filling as our eggs aren't exactly "jumbo" sized.  Kyle had to make himself two more eggs after we finished eating.  But, I guess this is the end of store-bought eggs for us!  Hooray for home-grown food!

This set up worked for a few weeks.  We would move the tractor about twice a week, just long enough for them to eat down the tall grass but not long enough for them to destroy it all together.  Its amazing how green some of those spots of grass were a week or two after we moved the chickens off of it.  In one spot there was a perfect rectangle of longer, darker grass where we kept the chickens for a full week.  But before we knew it there just wasn't enough room for them.  We would have loved to let the girls run free around our yard but our dogs would, most certainly, find them too irresistable.  We didn't want to risk it.  So we fenced in about an acre of land behind our old barn.  The land here was never used, it was always overgrown and covered in snails and other delicious bugs.  We ended up having to brush-hog it all down so the chickens could move around but they had plenty of grass and ant hills to enjoy as a result.

It seemed like every time I thought 'they must be done growing now' I would look at some pictures that were taken a week before and see a drastic difference.  Our girls had gone from fairly docile birds to massive, demanding chickens.  We love them, though.  Even Kyle, who never imagined himself as a person who would own chickens (or ANY farm animals for that matter) started really enjoying them.  They are good entertainment and the noises they make when they are eating or foraging just brings such a smile to our faces.  It is such a pleasing sound.

Our girls have just started laying eggs- so far only two (maybe three) chickens out of the twelve.  This time of year really isn't the typical high-production time for chickens, what with the lack of daylight, so we'll be lucky if we get many at all until spring.  But we look at our girls and think of how great it would be to get more.  Yeah.  More.  When we first started out we thought we would just want six or so.  But now we look at our twelve and imagine what it would be like to have double that.   Of course, in a couple years our current gals will start slowing down their egg production and we'll end up culling them all at some point so we'll need replacements standing in the wings.

I know it sounds crass.  But this is the way it is for homesteaders.  These chickens are not pets.  They are part of our lives, though.  We nurture them and they will, in turn, nurture us.  I'm not saying it will be easy.  In fact, it could very well be one of the most difficult things we'll ever do, but this is life.  In the spring we'll be ordering another round of chicks, some turkeys, and maybe some geese to add to our growing farm.  We'll never need all of the number of eggs we'll collect, but friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers are more than willing to buy them or trade for them.  So it seems this could be a good start for income from the farm.  So it begins.

For the past five days we've been consistently getting about one egg a day.  So we felt confident in saying that only one of our gals had started laying eggs.  Today Kyle called me at work, he stopped by the house during his lunch break to check on everyone (the dogs, cats, goats, and chickens).  He told me that he saw one chicken sitting over a freshly-laid egg in the usual spot where we find the eggs; on top of the platform that we made for the goats to play on- not the best place to lay a fragile egg.  Also, there was one chicken in one of the eight nest boxes- this was encouraging as we had yet to see any of the girls even think about checking them out.

When I got home from work I jogged to the house- pulling my hat down over my ears in response to the wind and snow that finally graced us.  I let the kids out (Ollie and Shyla), threw on my warmer, Carhartt barn jacket and my muck boots, and headed out to the barn to collect a couple eggs!  Yippy!  My excitement grew with every step- I would have run had I not worried about colliding with Ollie who is always adamant about trotting right in front of me.

As soon as I stepped inside the barn I could immediately tell a difference in the temperature since we covered the windier sides in plastic wrap.  In the past, even with the doors closed, we would have a breeze coming through the barn on the really windy days.  This past weekend we finally patched all the larger holes and the plastic wrap will take care of the multitude of smaller gaps and cracks.  The barn is nowhere near air-tight, which is just fine because you need some ventilation to keep it from getting really offensive in there.  But at least we can keep the girls a little more comfortable now.

So, I entered the barn to the sound of chickens clucking away and goats calling to me.  It was a little too early for dinner, not that they really knew that, so I went about my task.  First thing first, was to grab the exposed egg off the platform.  I looked, looked some more...but no egg.  What the heck?  I scanned the floor around the structure just in case, the goats demanding my attention, still nothing.  I moved over to the nest boxes and did a quick scan through those, looking for an egg.  No chicken sits in a nest box just for the heck of it....but no egg.

I trudged back to the house and called Kyle up at work to ask if he had decided to grab them before he left this afternoon- nope, they had to still be in the barn somewhere.  So I grabbed a flashlight (not that it is dark in the barn now that we have lights out there, but every little bit helps) and once again headed out into the damp and windy weather.

Ok, I got my game face on, this time I was on an honest-to-God egg hunt.  After giving the girls their dinner to keep them occupied while I went about my task, I checked around the platform again.  This time I dug through the dirtied hay a little more than I really wanted to sans-gloves, but this is the life of a homesteader; you get really dirty, and its never just dirt.  Nothing.  Back to the nest boxes.  I looked extra-carefully in each little cubby and 'hello!' there was a little brown egg, hiding in a nice little nest of hay.  Ok, cool, so we've found one of the two eggs we knew were laid today.  As I turned to do a general survey of the barn I saw a suspiciously flattened area of hay in the manger; it was definitely chicken-sized.

This past weekend we took a few small steps to try to prohibit the chickens from going into the manger.  We just bought some really nice second-cut hay (read: extra tasty and nutritious) that the goats were going crazy over and we didn't want to waste any by letting the chickens hang out on it.  But apparently our efforts were in vain- to a small degree.  Today, after the hay had been eaten down enough, some little chicky decided she wanted in, so in she went.  Luckily for all those involved, when a chicken goes to lay an egg it prevents her from defecating.  Its kind of like the esophagus/tracea set up we have in our necks; when one process is working, the other one is stopped- same for chickens and their egg-laying.  So, not only is our hay in fine condition, but we had another egg!

So, we had officially collected two eggs today, but nowhere could we find the one that Kyle had discovered earlier.  My only thought is that perhaps a goat crushed it and then the chickens found it and ate it- leaving no trace.  But now we can be sure that three out of our twelve hens are laying, three out of the four Dominiques.  I am really looking forward to the eggs from our Easter-Eggers, with their naturally-colored eggs, that will be a novelty.  I can't wait to see what we'll collect tomorrow!!  Nothing like hunting eggs and finding a few treasures to really brighten up your day.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!  We had a small gathering at our place with my mom, my brother and his wife.  It was potluck style so I only really had to worry about cooking the turkey and the hors d'oeuvres which was really nice.  We had a little fire on our stove the day before (never leave a plastic cutting board on a burner) so we got all our bad-luck out of the way ahead of time.

After some snacking and socializing we headed out to visit our girls (the chickens and the goats)- a day just isn't complete without a visit out to the barnyard.  We snapped some photos, gave the chickens some kitchen scraps and headed to the barn to show off the new platform that Kyle made for the goats to play on inside.  Well, there sitting on the top of the platform, in a huge nest of hay we left there for the goats to eat, was an egg!

Our first egg!  We were ecstatic!  We paraded it back to the house to place it in one of the many egg cartons that had been gifted to us from various friends and family members.  Granted, it is so small that it swims in one of the spaces, but it is ours- a healthy, grass-fed egg!  This is just the beginning!  We've got three eggs so far, our little Dominique will lay two eggs every three days or so.  Hopefully soon the other ladies will follow suit and start laying eggs as well.

Happy holidays!!!