After a long hiatus, more homesteading adventures!

I apologize for the lack of activity going on over here, its been a wee bit busy since the holidays and I am just finally getting back into the groove of things. I always find it difficult to get back on track after a holiday, the kids fight doing their school and practicing, I fight getting back to the everyday after so much interesting activity. But alas I think we have gotten back into routine-and with that comes some adventures to share with you!

We have had some new member join the homestead and sadly lost a few as well... Both of the older girls horses foaled two weeks ago! Ohh the excitement of getting up early to go see if there is a new baby in the barn lol! Sadly Julianna's filly was born in the snow and got its one leg caught in the new wind fence. Its mama is so protective she hides as far away as she can and then has her babies in really terrible places-two years ago she had one right by a pond and the baby drowned *GRRR* So this new little filly didn't get found for a few hours, and it later showed evidence of frozen legs...I WILL NOT go into how this looks as it will make you cry, so my poor dear hubby had to put it down lastnight. We have not told our girl yet-was waiting for daddy to be home too. Seriously dreading the task.

We have also had two more litters of baby rabbits, and we don't know what is going on, but both batches have been eaten by the mothers gahh!!!! We are having a very heartbreaking year on our farm this winter! Please pray for my children as they are learning a few of life's heartbreaks all at once.

On to some more positive news-I am getting almost three dozen eggs a day now lol!! My barred rocks have started laying-the first egg we found from them was sooo tiny! It was the size of a small gum ball lol! They lay much darker eggs than my buffs, they are very pretty! Only a few are laying I think, so it won't be long before we will be having more eggs than I can sell! The barred rocks were supposed to be butchered by now, but they are not quite big enough, the weather hasn't been cooperating and my hubby has been working like crazy!  He has next week off though so hopefully we will be taking care of at least all the big roosters.

I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but a neighbor had some square bales for sale, we bought 100 of them to put around our house as we are still awaiting insulation and skirting. Well he was only charging 1.00$ / bale which is incredible for good hay. So we ended up buying all 800 bales. Well my dad and hubby decided it would be great fun to haul all the bales with the team and sleigh, as they only live two miles up the road. So they did! In - 20/25 below lol! The following pictures were taken just as he was getting in with his last load for the day around 4 ish so the light is not great. The first load the took straight out to the field and fed to the cows. They can get on about 75 bales/ load. The kids and I made a few trips, and I drove the team a couple times while he hand bombed them off to the cows. It was lots of fun-if not a little cold! I of course didn't get picks of the kids and I *grrr*.

So I will leave you with that! I have a few more post coming up so stayed tuned-and enjoy the pics lol!

Three new additions to the homestead!

Technically they were born two weeks ago-however, they are sooo tiny and naked and their mothers will eat them if we disturb them at all, that we haven`t actually seen them until today!
Baby bunnies!!!
There are three, two black and one honey colored. They are sooo soft and sweet and cute and oh I am gushing lol! I LOVE baby bunnies!
The girls were delighted today when they went out to feed and water them, and to their surprise three little balls of fluff hopped around chasing each other! They came running to the house to tell me all about them! Then begged me to come see ( of course I was going to anyway!)
Seriously-there is no cuter baby than a baby bunny!
As soon as it warms up I will go take a picture of them! So stay tuned for major  cuteness!

In other homesteading news, we loaded 110 square bales into the horse trailer yesterday from a neighbor, to go around the bottom of our house-we are now officially hill billy`s... I had hoped they would get put up today, but dad and Les are hosting a group Christmas party from the city today, taking them sleigh riding and having a bonfire out in the back woods, roasting chestnuts over the open fire, and having hot dogs and hot chocolate!  Trouble is it is -25 and much colder with the wind chill! Sure hope everyone dressed warmly!
Guess my house will have to wait until tommorow!
Also wanted to tell you that my buff orpington`s are finally laying! I am now getting on average 16 eggs per day! Needless to say we have had scrambled eggs several times this week!
Well that about sums up what`s happening around here!
Better go put more wood on the fire! Hope you all are staying warm!
Blessings
Erin

More adventures in homesteading(Edited to add photos!)

We have finished our chicken coop and huge wonderful run-thanks to my hubby who worked on it during his holidays this year! We have moved our new chicks (who are already 6 weeks old!) out of the brooder and into the big coop. We set up a temporary divider both in the coop and outside in the run. They are so much happier now! And growing like crazy! Their feed bill is starting to hurt a bit! As I am buying purely organic feed for them and the grass has stopped growing in the run *gulp* Good thing they are worth it, and that we are selling most of them! All that is left is for me to paint everything and for Les to put the people door on properly to get into the run. This is where more adventures begin...

We have had a really bad wind storm the last couple of days (which is usually what happens right before the weather changes so am now bracing myself for some COLD and SNOW) Les had just put up a temporary door into the run out of a piece of old plywood. In the wind it had blown down and I had gone out twice to put it back up and try to brace it into place. I guess I was unsuccessful for when the kids went outside to get into the vehicle to head to AWANA both dogs were eating two of my chicks!!! GRRRR I was so mad at them! So I chased them with the van, honking my horn, I chased them all the way to mom's and she put them both on a leash for the rest of the day and night. Needless to say when Les got home from work that night he got right at fixing that door!

In other homesteading news, we have some new additions to the farm. A couple weeks ago Les brought home 8 rabbits from an auction sale he went to (thankfully it wasn't horses as he has a really bad habit of buying horses at these auctions when we can't afford them lol!) These rabbits are for meat. There are four males and four females, Les picked the best of the males and put him in with Benjamin's female Freckles-we should be getting babies in about two or three weeks!! Then he put the females in what was the chicks brooder and the males he put in the rebuilt moveable hutch that he put much stronger wire on, so the dogs don't get in this time!

And one other new animal is a horse the girls have named Cash (because of all the cash they are going to win barrel racing with him lol) We had been hoping and praying for a really good kids horse, we had gone to a couple of auctions that were advertising really well broke kids horses, but they were going out of our price range. All summer we had been hoping to get another horse because despite the fact that there are over 16 horses on this ranch, only three of them are broke for riding, and two are young and still spook easily and the other is my dads OLD ranch horse that he's had since I was born, and has a bad leg and doesn't listen lol! The girls started taking riding lessons at our wonderful neighbors house ( we just love her, and she also teaches cubbies at our church for awana) Her and her husband have a neighbor that wanted to sell this older really well broke horse. Les went to see him, was so impressed that he bought him on the spot! He got him really cheap as the guy lives in the city and was just boarding him out at this neighbors farm and didn't want to feed him over the winter. So praise the Lord we now have a bomb proof kids horse!

Well that is all for now, I will leave you with some pictures of the coop and rabbit hutches!
Blessings
Erin

The male rabbit hutch

Curious chickens, they always come running to me!

The big chickens run, and you can see the new wind fence in the background

The main coop, awaiting paint and a proper door to the little chicks run

See the plywood door!

Freckles and Floppy Ears! Our breeding hutch

This is a terrible pic, but this is our makeshift brooder, it was here when we moved ..
We had cleaned out the woodshed that day to make room for all the wood, so all the feed storage was sitting out! It too is awaiting paint!

Les set up a work table for me, so that when he is cutting with the chain saw, I can be cutting the pile of old rails from the old fences he and my dad to out.

We filled our woodshed about half full in about two hours, it sure helps to have so many extra hands!!

What is left of the wood Les drug home through the summer, some really nice big birch logs! He has them all bucked up now, just needs more time to finish splitting it all!

The other side of the run, if you really look you can see the split in the middle

The pile of old rails I get to chop up with the chop saw!

We also got started on the insulation for the floors...it is a really slow process!

Adventures in homesteading

This week has been an exasperating week here on the farm, in fact it has been a frustrating month all around lol!
To start with, we are currently living in my folks basement, due the severe mosquito problem in our little house. That in itself is frustrating!  However we are on the last leg of renovating our bedroom, we had to strip it right back to the studs-found out we had NO insulation in the walls or ceiling! ( No wonder we froze this winter!) So we are insulated now, we have the drywall up and I have the third coat of mud over the tape and nails and corners, just have the last sanding to do and then can start putting up the primer and paint! Hopefully by the end of this week we will be back in our own house!

So on to the newest drama! Yesterday I had sent Julianna out to feed the baby chicks, we share the responsibility as the waterer is to heavy for her to lift, so she feeds and I water! Well a minute or so after she is out the door I here shouting-I ran out the door and saw immediately what the problem was-we had a yearling heifer break through the fence and get into the yard the day before, we have another set of cows in the yard site pasture that haven't calved yet, so it wasn't a big deal that she was out. So mom and I just left her for the men to take care of this weekend when they got home as they move groups of cattle around on the lease and to different pastures every weekend and then they could fix the fence-note that mom and I are completely capable of fixing fence, it was just that they guys would be home in a day or two and it wasn't a big deal.
Well that morning when I came running I discovered that the horses,  that were also in the same pasture with the yearling heifers, broke through the fence and where getting into all my chicken feed in our woodshed (temporary housing for our feed!) They destroyed 6 bags of feed-half of which were organic feed that I had to order in and pay a lot more for than the cracked wheat and chick starter-but still I had to drive the hour to the nearest feed store and pay 65 bucks to replace the non organic feeds-and order in the organic feed! I was soooo angry with those horses!!!!!! We have also been storing our pop cans/water bottles/milk jugs in the shed temporarily and they had taken all those bags and shaken them everywhere-I found cans and bottles all over the yard site, and they even opened the sealed feed bags and shook them out everywhere. And to top it off I had just gotten the grass in the yard to start growing nicely I had spread some black dirt from the manure pile and spread it out to fill in all the holes as where our house is was once one of the horse pastures (ironic I know!)  And now there is a huge slimy muddy mess where their hooves dug up my nice yard GRRRR. I would show you some pictures but my camera battery is dead and the charger is in my dresser which happens to be on the back bottom of the pile in our living room buried!
Well that is just a few of the adventures going on here!
Hope you are having a wonderful long weekend!
Blessings
Erin