My great grandma came over with Gram and Pop the other night to see Micaiah and I got a few pictures of the birthday kiddos. Pictures like this one are a necessity. I mean think about it, you've got a picture of a woman and one of her grandkids that are literally almost one hundred years apart in age. Priceless. I know that Kennedy sure does love her "old grandma" as she likes to call grandma. We all love "old grandma", she's pretty special. Becky and baby are both doing pretty great here at home. We've been sleeping quite well for having a tiny little guy sleeping here now. He eats like a total pig. We are pretty sweet on him.
What else is going on around here? Well, I tried to put Sugar the Sheep and Nemo together in the same barn. The key word here is tried. Sugar was not having it. She's not that friendly. So now Sugar is back in the backyard and Nemo is still in here chicken yard home. I'm going to have to come up with another housing option for one of them for the winter. I'm not exactly sure what that is going to be yet. I could potentially put one of them out in the hay barn for the winter, but that is an awful long walk hauling water buckets in knee deep snow every day for just one animal. I have a little brainstorming to do on that one yet.
Our laying hens are doing quite well right now. Everyone looks happy and healthy. They should be starting to lay in about ten days or so. I can't wait. We've not been buying eggs from the grocery store often. Even the best ones you can buy at the grocery are garbage at best. You just can't beat farm fresh eggs for taste and nutrition. I read in one of my periodicals that eggs from pastured hens have something like half of the cholesterol and twice the Omega-3 fatty acids of conventionally produced eggs. Not to mention the added vitamins and minerals of pastured eggs. You just can't beat 'em.
We are looking for extra pumpkins leftover from fall decorating. We can't use pumpkins that have been carved, but if you have whole pumpkins that aren't rotting yet please don't throw them out. We'd like to use them for winter-time feed supplement for the hens. The pumpkins are a good source of beta-carotene for the girls and any free supplement you can provide is good. I'm also anxious to see how the color of the yolk is affected by the addition of the pumpkin to their diets. In winter, the color of the yolk loses some of it's bright yellow, almost orange, color because of the loss of beta-carotene in the diet that is provided by the grass consumed by pastured hens. Please keep your eyes and ears open for free pumpkins we can have. Please let us know if any are available.
Another thing I'm going to experiment with is planting a living fence. I recently read an article about growing hedges to use as fencing. So this morning I went for a drive around the block to a spot that I know has Osage Orange trees growing along the road and collected a pile of hedge apples. I'm going to follow the directions the article gives to save the seeds from the hedge apples, and plant some next spring. I'm not sure what my exact plans are yet with the whole hedge idea, but I'm interested in it none the less.
Old-timers used to use Osage Orange hedges to fence in livestock before the invention of barbed wire. It's thorny and you can grow it tight enough to keep animals contained. The article says that in four years you can produce a hedge that is "horse high, bull strong, and hog tight". Anyway, it sounded neat and so I'm going to play around a bit and see what happens. Also I know that Osage Orange is the most naturally rot-resistant wood in North America. Fence posts used to be made from Osage trees that were cut down, and it is said that Osage fence posts have been known to last in the ground for fifty years without rotting off.
The Buckeyes are getting ready to play which means I've got to go now.
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