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July 2008
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Monday, July 28th


Well a few of the duck eggs hatched last week. One proud hen was herding 6 little ducklings around.
Cute little buggers.
The chickens are growing nicely, we may have to up their feedings to 3 times a day to keep them growing the way I want them to.
We built another hutch for Toby. He should be ready to move out to the pasture petty soon.
Got some second crop baled up and a bunch cut this weekend. Weather has been cooperating for the most part.
I finally got our bulldozer delivered yesterday. It's a Caterpillar 22. Pretty old but it runs well. Now I can flatten out the high spots in the feedlots out back and level the driveway and plow snow this winter and.............

Been busy canning peas and beans. The raspberries came on strong this year and we've been taking care of those too.
The sweet corn is all eared out and it shouldn't be long till we can have some, I can hardly wait.
The goats are all doing well. Bev is not much of a milker and will be first on the list for culling. A shame really, she is a nice looking animal. We are getting a gallon and a half a day and I don't think she's even making the half part. Will be keeping an eye out for another deal on a milking goat.
sammyd on 07.28.08 @ 05:44 AM CST [link]

Thursday, July 10th


Been a while.
Our three goats are producing well. Been a challenge to keep them in pasture with all the changes I've been doing to the fencing lately. But they are being kept happy.
We are getting enough milk that we bought another bull calf to feed out. So now we have 2.
Tammy has made cottage cheese and ice cream with some excess milk as well. She wasn't impressed with the cottage cheese but I thought it was rather tasty. The ice cream was fairly decent but we will be trying different recipies.
The two calve are Jethro and Toby. Jethro is about 2 and a half months old and Toby is 3 weeks old.
We have banded Jethro and will be doing Toby this week.
Jethro is off the bottle and onto grain and graze, looks sharp. He has his own hutch that we move as we move his tether.
Toby is loose in the chicken/duck yard and isn't quite up to speed on his grain yet but working on it.
We have 3 duck hens that finally went broody and are sitting on their eggs. We hope to see little ducks this month.
Our chicks arrived June 12. We ordered 30 layers and 100 meat birds. So far we have lost 1 layer to piling when the temps dropped pretty low. The chicks are almost feathered out and we have started opening up sections of the yard for them.
We sold all the billy kids and didn't make a dime after the sales barn deducted the fee for the scrapies tags. We are looking into getting our own tags.
Our neighbor and our former landlord both offered small patches of land we could hay for free so I have been busy getting that made. The garage/barn is full and I have half a load on the wagon to stack somewhere yet.
I cut the oats but it takes a long time to dry and the weather has not been cooperating, I hope I can bale this weekend. The tractor has been operating quite well and the rest of the machinery too. The cheap old baler I bought this spring has been doing good. I like running it on the tractor instead of the big John Deere baler especially when I have a wagon on the back. The poor old WD has a time pulling all that weight and running a baler. The Massey baler is a little lighter and doesn't take quite as much power. Can't run as much hay through it though or it stops up.
We are in the process of getting a loan and talking to our former landlord about buying the area out back where the feedlots are. We went with a home equity loan and are hoping it's enough to do all we want. But we may have to settle for less. Whatever the outcome is it will give us a little more security with our feed situation.
The garden is doing great. Saw some tassels in the sweet corn yesterday. Peas are starting to pod, the beans are blossomed as are the potatoes and tomatoes. Tammy has been over at my folks picking strawberries and has all ready made a batch of jam. The raspberries are just about ready to pick...I think Chris has all ready been sampling them.
Overall we aren't doing too bad this year so far.
sammyd on 07.10.08 @ 04:27 AM CST [link]