A Lot Of Catching Up To Do

The last post was about the tractor not running right. Well it turns out an algae build up in the fuel lines. I had no idea. The dealer suggested that I add a fuel additive with algaecide to prevent this in the future. Done.

We paid off most of our debts so Lisa suggested that I retire to work the homestead. So, my last day at my previous employment was September 3rd 2021.

We got a call a few weeks ago about some baby squirrels. The nest had fallen out of the tree during a thunderstorm. The people whos yard they fell into were doing all they could to rescue them but they didn’t have the time or knowledge to do it. There were 4 but they lost one right before we got there. They were very dehydrated and it took a couple days of regular feedings before that was fixed. They are now healthy and very feisty little squirrels. We moved them to an outside cage yesterday. Well all but one. Noah escaped and made his way back to the house where we saved him from one of the cats who chased him up the Bell pole. We will reunite him with his sisters today and then open the cage in about a week once they get used to being outside.

It’s been a very wet year so we’ve had a good year for muscadine and scuppernong grapes. I missed most of the muscadine harvest due to back problems but scuppernongs are still falling. I’ve got one gallon of muscadine wine and 2 gallons of scuppernong wine bubbling on the counter. I was able to make 10 pints of jelly with more to come.

I’ve started selectively laying down trees to open up more pasture and increase our firewood pile. Starting with pine and sweetgum trees. Once they are removed I will thin the oaks as needed. I hate cutting anything that produces food and animals love it when the acorns start to fall.

Olives heifer, Sassy, is nearly grown and we are hoping Olive will have another in the near future so we can have fresh milk again.

Violet gave us a little bull calf at the end of July. A good friend of Lisa’s runs a nonprofit Monkey rescue. She wants to add a petting zoo to help raise funds so we donated the little guy to the cause. We didn’t need another bull he will have a good home so it was a Win for all.

I have passed the General HAM radio test.  My computer/radio area is nearly organized and I have my antennas up. It’s time to refocus on studying for the Extra Class license.

With all the rain the garden wasn’t what it could have or should have been. A lot of green beans and some purple hull peas but everything else drowned or was choked out by the weeds.   

Its Been A While

I didn’t realize just how long it had been since I last wrote on here.

I ended up milking Olive once we got her mastitis cleared up. Over the last year she has had another bad case of mastitis. We thought we were going to lose her. She stopped eating and got lethargic. We called the on-call vet and he had us give her a heavy dose of antibiotics over a few days. That had her back to normal almost immediately but we still had to hit her with two treatments of “Today” to clear up the mastitis. Even then we thought she would lose her right front quarter. It was hard with a solid mass but with a lot of milking and working the udder she is 99% back to where she was. She is such a good milk cow. She is still giving us about a gallon of milk at each milking.

The winter and spring were relatively uneventful. Except for all the rain. I don’t know if it ever really stopped for more than a couple days. Maybe it was a good thing because we’ve had the best garden in years.

Made some changes this summer that were hard to do and then suffered some heartache. We sold Marla, her heifer calf and several others. Leaving us with Olive, Rosie, BobbyJo, and Violet(Rosies heifer), Mike. We also have two steers ready to go to the freezer, and one for next year. Rosie has a bad hip so she has been retired and is just a pet now. I don’t know if she could handle the bull or calving so she is just a pet for the rest of her life.

We traded five goats for a full grown KuneKune boar named Baccon. We didn’t need another boar but we did need to get rid of some goats. They had been causing me trouble jumping and pulling down fences. That and Waylon had some health issues and at the time I wasn’t certain that we wouldn’t lose him. So now we have three intact boars. Willie, the registered AGH; Waylon a year old red KuneKune; and Baccon is several years old and proven black and white KuneKune with wattles.

It’s been a rough summer. I’ll be glad to see a change in season. We’ve lost three dogs to old age or health issues. First was mom’s dog Bo. He was suffering from heart failure and had to be put down. Then we lost Brutus (BooBoo). I think it was his heart as well but don’t know for sure. He started acting off and had a heavy cough. We brought him inside for a few days and he seamed to improve a little. Then after letting him outside for a little while I found him dead under the front porch. The hardest loss was our Little Man Oliver. We’ve had him since he was only a few days old. He was blind and born with a cleft pallet. Lisa tube fed him for about four months until his mouth could be fixed. We almost lost him several times during that time. He was getting old but should have had several more years. Over the last couple of years He had developed severe allergies and none of the treatments were working anymore. He was miserable, losing most of his hair, skin infections, constant itching, etc,… His last day was a good one. We let him spend time outside, something he loved but hadn’t done in about two years. He had his favorite food and snacks, also something he had been denied because of a special diet trying to control his symptoms. He, BooBoo, and Bo are sleeping in the pet cemetery now, never to be forgotten.

Then, another gut punch… About a week ago BobbyJo wasn’t with the others when I went out to feed. The morning before she was pushing her way into the feed barn and getting in my way. This morning she was a no show. I figured she had a new calf and after feeding I went looking for them. Sadly I found her dead. Probably late the day before. No marks or signs of injury, nothing. I have no idea what killed her. She was not only our backup milk cow but my buddy. A BIG dog. She was Olives first calf here and while not bottle raised you wouldn’t know it because she was so friendly. She was always in my way looking for a hand out or an ear rub. I miss her every morning I go to feed.

On a positive note. Violet gave us a little heifer calf Wednesday (8/12/2020). I will most likely keep her if she is short like Violet and Rosie. I’ve named her Tulip.

Rosie’s New Calf 4-25-2019

Rosie our short legged Dexter surprised me Thursday morning. I was feeding and out of the corner of my eye I saw Lillie (Great Pyrenees) nose to nose with what I thought was one of the goats. When I turned to get a better look I saw it was a calf. My mind couldn’t process it at first. I didn’t think any of the cows were that far along but then Rosie looks pregnant all the time. I started walking around all the animals that had their heads in the feed troughs by now, looking for any sign of who the calf might belong to. Finding it was Rosie really shouldn’t have been such a surprise to me since she usually calves in May or early June. She was just a little early but I have been so busy lately that I just didn’t realize that it’s almost May. How time flies when your days and nights are full.

Butcher Day

I was finally able to get the “cow killer” out the the homestead. He stays extremely busy during hunting season with deer and hogs. The steer should have been butchered last spring but like so much else other things got in the way. I think he cost me a little heifer that I planned to keep for a breeder. She now has a bad hip and will go to the freezer next week if plans hold. He got too belligerent and pushy. Now he is on his way to being tasty steak.

We were going to butcher the heifer and the little bull but the steer was bigger than he expected so that will be on hold until next week. During our conversation he mentioned that he was looking for a bull to put over some Piney Woods cows he was planning to buy. I mentioned the bull we didn’t kill and told him he was only going to get slaughtered because I didn’t get any interest in him when I put him up for sale. He may buy him if the other sale goes through. Win, win for all. I don’t really have the freezer space and the money would cover or go a long way toward the processing fee for the steer.

Surprise!

Marla surprised us with a calf this morning. She and Olive have always delivered in late November to early January. Bobby Jo and Rosie gave us calves in the summer.

I don’t know if it’s a heifer or a bull yet. Marla wasn’t too happy with me getting close this morning. She stepped back and tried to bluff me by pawing the ground and throwing dirt all over. She is all show but I dodn’t want to agitate her anymore than necessary to get a picture.

Good thing all the critters love popcorn. We had a movie night at church last Friday and there were a lot of no-shows. We had a big bag of popcorn left over and the animals were glad to take care of it.

 

 

New Arrivals

We went on our bi-weekly feed run and came home with two baby gosling’s. Remember George the gander we raised from an egg in the incubator a while back, well we got him some company.

Rosie gave us another little heifer on the 25th. She sure does have cute calves. I have decided to keep last years heifer and may keep this one as well. Marla may have to move on to make room. I’ll cross that bridge later.

The weather finally decided to act like spring instead of winter so we got the garden planted.

A couple of weeks ago I had to fix some comb in the bee hives. I checked on them Sunday and all three hives are doing well. I placed some small hive beetle traps in each hive. I haven’t seen any of these pests this year but I don’t want to get messed up like I did last year when I lost all the hives partially to the beetles.

The deed is done

We sent our first steer to the butcher this morning along with a boar hog.

It took me longer than expected to find someone to do this so Porterhouse was becoming too pet like. If he would have been around much longer I don’t know if we would have been able to butcher him. Well one of we. If everything goes well with this butcher it will be a regular occurrence. I have too many pigs right now and two more steers that are either going to be sold or sent to the freezer. I know one is next years freezer steer but the other may be sold.

 

Over two weekends I worked to straighten the comb in the hives. It was a mess. Instead of following the guides down each bar the bees built at a 45 degree angle across the bars. I caused so much disruption that I haven’t been back into the hives. I wanted to give them a chance to get all the comb reattached. I use hair clips and string to hang the comb in line with the bars and that means they have about an inch or more to fill in.

I was pleasantly surprised to find both queens had stayed with the hive and both were full of larva and hatching baby bees. I was watching the bees come and go this morning and about half looked like they were carrying white saddlebags.

 

The garden is doing very well this year with all the rain. So are the weeds.These pictures were taken right before the last series of rains. Now the beans have grown up and over the fence. It is a green wall.

May 1st 2017 and spring is in full swing on the farm.

A couple of weeks ago, April 18th to be exact, Rosie gave us another healthy little heifer.

Here she is at two days old enjoying the morning.

We have five turkey hens sharing a nest. They each have a few eggs under them so I guess they are just sharing the nest site. This brush pile is relatively close to the house so they should be safe from predators. They usually nest out on the fringe of the property and we loose a couple each spring. The dogs just can’t be everywhere.

I got the garden planted and set a box trap with chicken feed to catch a few chickens that are determined to fly over the fence. Not only did I catch several chickens and clip their wings I also caught several members of our squirrel population. Here are two. 

Friday the corn started to break through to the sun. Buy Sunday evening the crows had eaten every single one. Each of those little pock marks was once the home to a new corn plant.

Notice the bare patch in the back. Crows…

I replanted about 2/3 of that spot in corn and the rest in sweet potatoes. If something gets the corn again I’ll just plant something else. Maybe okra. I didn’t have room for it this time.

The little garden is only about 40 x 40. I am adding 12 to 16 feet along the back but it won’t be usable until next year and it won’t be good then. I have some work to do building up the soil back there.

I received notice that my bees have been shipped so I will be re-hiving them in the next day or so. I have two of the top-bar hives cleaned up and ready for them. I’m debating on if I need to buy another package or two to fill the remaining hives or just hope to catch a swarm. Decisions, decisions.

 

 

Right on schedule

I’ve been watching Marla wondering if she would have her calf near the same time as last year. Well she was one day early. This little heifer was born on Saturday the 26th and last years little bull was born on the 27th.

This was Saturday afternoon. She was still wet and I didn’t know if she was a bull or heifer yet.

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By Sunday afternoon Marla had brought her up to the barn and I was able to check her out. Marla wasn’t very happy with me handling the calf. She growls, kicks dirt and tries to get in the way but she doesn’t fight me.

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Now we wait to see if Olive follows last year as well. If so she will give us another calf close to Dec 5th.

One last note. WE GOT RAIN!! It’s been 3 months since we have gotten any rain to speak of.  We are expecting more rain tonight. I have 5 sacks of grass seed that I’ve been waiting to spread.