We Can Farm!!!

     So the camera is STILL not working. ANNOYING!!!! I have no idea what it's malfunction is but it makes my blog not nearly as great as it could be. We've got to get this thing working again.  I've been wanting to get some pictures of Nemo on here.  Man, you all should see how efficient she is.  She has completely cleared the area between two of our barns of any green anything.  The only thing left is the woody dead vines that are trampled at her feet. That's what I'm talking about. So, I will soon be relocating her to another area for her to "work".  As soon as I move her I'm going to go into the area she just cleaned up and cut and chip what she left.  The area I'm talking about is between our pole barn that we house equipment and tools in, and the "junk" barn that we plan on taking down.  The "junk" barn is a waste of space and we are in major need of extra real estate around here. So the plan is to pull the barn down and salvage some wood from it for projects that are still to come and reclaim the land that the barn sits on.  Maybe we'll put up a hoop house there or something.
     I'm currently re reading a book that I read last winter called "YOU CAN FARM" by Joel Salatin.  It's pretty inspiring and insightful about the profitable life farming can lead to if done correctly and without all of the million dollar combines and other specialized equipment that sucks the profitability out of farming.  I'm feeling pumped up all over again about starting this farm and doing it full time for our livelihood. I can 't wait.

busy, busy, busy

Sorry to any and all of you who are actually out there reading our little blog from time to time.  I have not posted since the eighth, but it has been super hectic around here.  Lately it seems that I've had more nights that I had to work a littler later than usual and Becky has a had a lot of meetings and appointments of various kinds (FFA meetings, OB/GYN appointments and the like), and Becky's daughter Brenna just got out of the hospital. She had a fever and a headache on Wednesday and Thursday was no better and actually the fever was as high as 102.6 degrees Fahrenheit.  So Becky got Brenn into the pediatrician who looked her over and admitted her to the hospital. Dehydrated. So she got some fluids via IV and they took some chest X Ray's to rule out pneumonia.  Positive.  So she stayed in there Thursday night all day Friday and got out this morning.
    So with Becky tied up at the hospital with Brenna I was flying solo around here.  So Friday night Tate, Riley, Brodey and I went to watch our local high school team (Western Reserve) play. Kennedy decided she'd rather go spend the night with Grandma Lori (my mom). It was great going  to the game. My good friend Frank went also and it was the first game I'd been to in about five years.  The boys couldn't care less about the game, but they had fun running around socializing with all of their buddies.  Western won 44-13. Go Riders!!
    This morning I had to get all of the boys ready to go to soccer and run and get Kennedy's soccer jersey (which was in the van at the hospital with Becky) and get all of those kids to the soccer fields by 8:30. It was a lot and I'm very grateful that Becky is back home now.
     Tomorrow is Riley's birthday and he'll be nine. We're having family over for apple pie and ice cream. We better start cleaning now.

Nemo Update

Well, Nemo is warming up to us little by little.  She is quite skittish most of the time, but today we tricked her into letting Becky hook her up on the leash and we took her out to the edge of the barns and let her eat some vines and things and she loved it.  She did not want to leave but it was getting dark and getting colder by the minute. Fall, it seems, is well on its way here. I love fall. So, anyway we took her back to her barn with the chickens and she cried and chased us around until we finally went in for the night. We'll get her out for another walk tomorrow I think.  This weekend Becky and I are going to try to put up some sort of fence or figure a way to tie her out by the barns so that she can begin working on getting those blasted vines cleaned up.  Hopefully I'll have some pictures on here in the next post or so.  Our camera seems to be acting up too. Not sure what that is all about, but hopefully it will be back online soon. 
     Speaking of fall, another sign that fall is here is the arrival of hunting season. Yay! I went out and got my license and have been out hunting squirrels twice now.  I really enjoy the time in the woods (even when I can't seem to track down my quarry) because I love just getting out there away from it all and just relaxing. It really gives me time to unwind and reflect. I feel closer to God and just appreciate nature so much when I'm out there. Anyway, I got one little red squirrel the first time out, but I didn't have a whole lot of time because I needed to get back to the farm since Becky had a maternity massage scheduled at Christian Roberts that morning at ten.  The second time out we came home empty handed.  I say we because I took all three boys out with me.  Surprisingly, they were very well behaved and fairly quiet for two eight year olds and a five year old.  They loved it for the most part. I think it really makes them feel like men.  They were hunting. They got to carry pocket knives. ( not the five year old fyi) But Brodey did make sure to take his plastic butter knife with the beaver shaped handle just in case we were out in the bush and a giant stick of butter jumped us. He was prepared. But although the boys were quiet and well behaved for eight and five, they are still eight and five and they do not yet own the tools for being quiet for longer than fifteen seconds in a row. All in all it was a great day in the woods and we finished our day by wetting some lines at the reservoir for an hour or so before dark. It was a pretty manly day.

Our New Addition

We've got a little problem here.

THE PROBLEM

Actually it's a fairly large problem.  Our barn which is probably a hundred years old is just overrun with vines. Poison ivy and other mystery vines are eating it.  I certainly don't have the ambition to tackle such a task let alone the time to do it if I did have some burning desire to be up to my earholes in poison ivy.  Becky says her ex once attempted to clean up the monstrosity, but ended up being one big poison ivy rash. (I'm not laughing at him just with him :)  Anyway, I'm not much allergic to poison ivy, but still I'm not interested in all of that. Here is where several pieces of life come together. 

• We've got a barn that needs some attention
• We've always been interested and intrigued at the thought of having a goat or three
• Becky's new program means that she is also now the FFA advisor at school
• Becky met an FFA teacher named Anna at a conference she attended this summer
• Anna raises goats
• Goats love woody viney overhead type plants

This is where the light bulb comes on. "DING!"

THE SOLUTION

Meet Nemo. She's a  little special as you can see.  She's got a genetic deformity in that her one ear didn't develop properly, so to someone who is trying to build a whole herd of goats she may not be worth much but to a small farm just starting out like Red Rooster Ranch she's perfect.  She's probably not going to end up as much more than a pet, (we have a bad habit about that) but the idea is that Nemo will gladly do the work of cleaning up around our barn for us and love every minute of it.  We're going to put her to work around the hay barn and then after that I think she's going to clean up around the pole barn where I intend to put my chicken slaughtering operation next spring.  I'll keep you updated on how she's doing here as time progresses, but we are very excited to welcome her in.

Our broilers are doing very well and I'm encouraged that as of today we've only lost one bird out of the batch we started with.  We had one die at about three days old. Must have just been a weak one. Anyway, with this being the first year we've raised broilers I'm absolutely astounded at how fast they grow.  Don't get me wrong here, I'm not sure I love the fact that we've created a demand for such a freak show of a bird, but fast growing, double breasted chickens are what we (the consumers) have told the market that we want.  So, as I may have said before we are going to raise broilers in the healthiest way we can.  We are going to (as Joel Salatin says) let the chicken express his chickeness.  The results, we hope and Joel swears to, will be a better tasting, healthier, and more nutritional end product.  I can't wait. We are getting closer to the day when they will meet their maker so I guess I need to figure out who is going to process these for us this first year. Well until next time....