This has been one of the busiest weeks of the summer for me. My youngest turned 4 today (Sunday), and it’s been a lot of running around and narrowly avoiding heat exhaustion every day. It was also a week of getting back into my work/school/life routine that I’ve been missing and dreading getting back to both at the same time.
Daily tasks: Check the sprinklers and gardens, feed the sheep and collect eggs
3x/week: Harvest and then scrub the animal waters – algae grows fast in the heat
1x/week: CSA
Monday:
Monday is one of the days where my husband, Duncan, and I work all day at his sisters horse farm. He starts at 9 with cleaning stalls, and once he comes home, I’m over switching horses into different turnout areas, and then feeding and prepping their Monday special mash. He comes and switches out with me at 3, when he cleans all the stalls again, feeds mash, and moves horses around again. He then heads over to another barn and cleans and feeds two other horses that we take care of. We swap off on who has our kids during these times, so getting much done is a touch of a challenge. It’s after 6 before we’re both back on the property.
Some of the things that I can do with a toddler following me around include weeding, and taking care of the poultry. We did both of these things together. I pulled the march sown snow peas out, they’d fallen over and had become unmanageable. William got to decide if we fed them to the sheep or the chickens and ducks, and he resolutely chose to feed them to the chickens/ducks. They were SO excited for the treat. We weeded some in the lettuce bed, so that we could put some more in before we need to turn it over for winter legumes next month! We follow a pretty simple crop rotation plan, so that we don’t use all the soils nutrients.
Once we had both parents in the same place, I moved out to the tomatoes. They’ve grown over a foot since we left for Yellowstone, and they need quite a bit of love. The weeds got out of control while we were gone. I worked on the weeds until I started to get eaten big time by the massive clouds of mosquitoes that seem to be an issue this year. Too many issues!!!
Tuesday
Today I got the email letting me know that my meat birds had shipped, at 4pm… I wasn’t sure if they would be here Wednesday like normal, or if we’d have to wait until Thursday. I scrubbed chicken waterers, and filled the duck pools. I have a CSA to pack this week, so I did my rounds to see what I was going to harvest this week, as well as just take in the overall status of my plants. I got my list together, and noticed that some of the radishes were finally looking like they were ready to harvest.
While harvesting some of our carrots, I noticed that the beets are being attacked by leaf miners, which means I need to put in the research on a better way to deal with them. Google brought me to a couple websites that recommend Lacewings as a good predator, second to a parasitoid wasp that can be found in Washington. I have decided to order a bunch of lacewings to start, because they are easier to find. Luckily the beets are all almost mature, so it shouldn’t affect my ability to harvest the root, but the greens are all getting thrown out.
I checked on the chickens progress while I collected eggs, and much to my surprise, they had finished most of the peas!!
Wednesday
Much to my surprise, I woke up to a phone call from the post office telling me that my chicks had arrived! I quickly ran and plugged in their heat plate, we don’t use heat lamps due to a near fire a few years ago, and off I went to the post office. I walked in and told the employee who called me up “I’m here to pick up a chirping box!” Everyone got a good laugh, and after checking my ID, he went to grab my box. The other employees who came up front asked me a few questions:
Is it true that they ship them with a gel?: Yes, It’s kind of like a thick jello, and it’s packed full of the nutrients to get them to me alive.
How many chickens do you have?: 25, I think! (Once I’d gotten home and counted it’s actually over 30 now, oops!).
How many did you order?: 10 this time.
They let me go on my way after that, but I enjoyed the fact that people were interested! It’s warm enough for the chicks to not need to start their lives in my house, which my husband hates, so they are in the barn next to the quail. The quail had a feeder that I needed, so I went on the hunt for one of the larger feeders, and found it rather quickly. I was getting things swapped out when I noted that all the quail roos were fighting due to there not being enough space for them all, one was even bleeding. I moved all the boys out of the cage, and into what will become the meat birds tractor once they are feathered out. The quail Roos will go to auction before I need the space.
I know it’s getting too close for comfort to winter planting, so I pulled out the seed box, territorial catalog, notebook, laptop, and a very large bag of gummy bears and sat outside in my chair to get the basics of our winter garden ACTUALLY written out and finished. I knew this was going to be a multi step process.
Thursday
While there isn’t a ton to write about, I am so proud of today. I pulled SO many weeds, and finished training my tomatoes (for this week). I weeded the tomatoes and the summer squash, and started to work on the beans. The beans however, decided to use the weeds as climbing posts, so while I can get a few out, there is so many more that are covered in beans! I should get my first harvest of beans this week.
Friday
CSA day! I love this day of the week. Today I got to pack so many new things. This CSA included Eggs, Beets, Pears, Zucchini, Yellow summer squash, Green onions, Kale, Swiss chard, Carrots, Chinese pink celery, Basil, Parsley, Savoy cabbage, and Green beans (filet type).
When I was picking the pears, I noticed a few that had been eaten in a rather strange way. I couldn’t figure out what pest it was. Later in the evening I was sitting in my truck after parking it, and I looked over at the tree and a finch was sitting on the branch just pecking at the fruits! That’s an issue for next year. I can’t do much about it now!
I also scrubbed the chicken and duck waters today. It was a wonderful day to have water spraying everywhere. Our egg production is up, and the girls that hatched in February are laying rather well, so I have added a layer supplement to their feed so that they can get the proper nutrients, since we feed an “all flock” so that I can keep the ducks and chickens all together.
I’ve started reading/listening to Braiding Sweetgrass, and I can’t wait to share everything I’ve learned from it!
Saturday
A few weeks ago we planted basil, and some of it didn’t take well. I still had a bunch leftover, so I filled in the holes with a bunch of Lettuce Leaf basil. It’s my favorite variety to look at, so it wasn’t too sad for me. The flowers are also starting to bloom, and the bees are loving it. I have had to start watching my step! I harvested some bee balm, calendula, bachelor buttons, and buckwheat flowers, and put together a cute little arrangement for my sister in law’s partner. She really enjoys flowers, and I’ve got so many!
The afternoon and evening was filled with a pool party for my youngest, who turns 4 on Sunday. For the first hour it was just my kids, and my husband was in the pool with them, so I got the planting schedule finished for the winter vegetables. I’m going to look at it again next week just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, but I think that the number of successions should keep us eating from the garden all winter.
Sunday
William is 4! I very happily woke him up at 1am (when he was born) with kisses, and then snuggled my little miracle child.
We had plans to go to the zoo with my family in the morning, but it kept getting pushed back, until we weren’t meeting until noon. This meant that I got to get some chores that were nagging at me, done. I sold a dozen eggs, and cleaned out the chicken coops. the small one is easy, and takes less than 30 minutes, but the big one is quite the job. I have to shovel out all of the shavings off the floor, and then pull the nest boxes out of the coop, dump them, and spray out the mats I line them with. I didn’t spray out the entire coop, because there were chickens very impatiently waiting for me to leave. I then had to lug the steel nest boxes back into the coop, and get all the old bedding onto the large compost pile. I soaked bedding pellets until they fluffed up into nice soft bedding, and dumped them onto the floor of the coop.
I didn’t use shavings for the floor this time, because I only had enough for the nest boxes, and the bedding pellets actually make for a good fluffy floor. I used the shavings in the nest boxes and put some of the eggs already laid that day back into the boxes to encourage laying in more than the 3 (of 10) favored ones.
I didn’t lock the coop fast enough, and Petal, my daughters sheep, busted through the small opening into the chicken yard. I had to call my husband, who then had to go through the main gate into the bird yard and chase her back through the small hole and into the pasture.
When we left for Yellowstone, I left a list for my SIL and friend that said:
**LOCK COOP WHEN INSIDE: Sheep will get in and it WILL be a Sh*tShow!**
Look at me not following my own advice.
I changed out of my now grubby clothes, and off we went to the zoo. William says his favorite animal was the seals, but they don’t have those, so I’m not sure if he means the Sea Lions or if he thought the Walruses were seals.
After a full afternoon of spoiling, we got home and he settled down to play with all his new toys. I scrubbed sheep and poultry waters before I fed the sheep their grain for the night, and collected eggs. I got 10 chicken eggs and 2 duck eggs after collecting at 10pm last night!
It’s now after 10pm, and I’m surprised I’ve been writing for so many hours. It flew by. Maybe I’ll start writing every day and adding on. We’ll see.
Preview of next week
Weeding, Harvesting, Reading, Animal care, Taking birds to auction, and building pt 1 of the compost heater!
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