Before I start, I’d like to apologize to my readers for being absent for so long. In the summer I contracted COVID 19, and soon after recovering found out I was pregnant with baby number two! It was a very difficult first trimester with severe nausea and food aversions. Juggling my symptoms along with raising a toddler and running our backyard farm made little time for me to sit down and concentrate on my blog! Now that I am firmly in the second trimester with our baby boy, and the craziness that is summer and fall is over on our little farm, I have finally been given a minute to catch up!

First, let’s talk about our wonderful flock of chickens! We bought chickens this past spring and now have a laying flock of 16 hens and 1 rooster. We lost one bird out of the original 18 to what I assume was some sort of predator, because one day she was just gone! However, the rest of the flock has blossomed. I get between 12 and 16 eggs per day. I often let them run during the day and have a few girls that get in the habit of laying outside somewhere instead of in their nesting boxes. We get some egg loss due to that. When I start noticing a significant difference I keep them in their enclosure for a few days to remind them where their nests are, and it seems to do the trick. I have had a fair amount of success by setting a sign in front of our house to sell the eggs we don’t eat. I’ve been making enough profit to pay for their feed from selling eggs for $3/dozen or $5/2 dozen. We also have had enough leftover to gift to our friends, family, and neighbors!

In October, the old run collapsed. This made it so we had to spend the next couple months with our flock out full time during the day until my husband had time to build a new one. It was well worth the wait. The new run is now built to stand for a long time! Along with rebuilding our run, we have prepped the inside of the coop for winter. We’ve dropped a heater in the water bucket and added heat lamps to roosting areas for night that are below freezing. I kept one heat lamp red because the birds prefer the dimmer light to sleep by at night. But the other heat lamp is the classic yellow light. Having this light on at night will trick our birds to lay through the the short days of the winter months.

During the summer months, we had a decent yield from our garden of berries, lettuce, broccoli, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, sweet corn, and basil. The vegetables we grew were able to sustain us for the summer with enough to share with our family. Our peach yield was so good I was able to can a batch of peach jam! It turned out delicious. I also started several okra plants from seeds. However, I failed in hardening them properly. As soon as they were exposed to the weather they shriveled and died. Getting COVID and soon there after getting pregnant, made late summer and fall harvest in the garden near impossible. So by the end of the season, my wonderful garden fell by the wayside. Hopefully we will have better luck next season!

As summer ended and the fall grasses began to sprout, our little pony Clarabelle took it upon herself to gorge as much new grass as she could. This of course caused her to get rather full around the barrel and eventually leaded up to her contracting laminitis. This is a disease where the tissues called laminae in a horses hoof begin to degrade. It causes separation of the hoof wall and rotation of the coffin bone in the hoof. It is very painful and if not caught in time, deadly. She can now no longer be on full grass. This event forced us to build a separate dry lot and to renovate the water and electric in the horse barn for Clarabelle. To say that she is not pleased with the new diet plan is an understatement.

As an eventful summer and fall come to an end, we as a family are looking forward slowing down and spending time together this holiday season. And I look forward to having more time for sharing our experiences with you all.

Until next time…

The Ag Wife