Yesterday we planted 7 more blueberry plants to bring us to a grand total of 21! We still have spaces for a few more to completely fill out the patch, but we’re cheering for these 21 to take off and produce copiously! Hooray for another item marked off the “Farm To Do” list!
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Blueberries! (and grapes)
I’ve added a new category of “Fruit” to the Journals. We’ve been cultivating some blueberry bushes and grape vines and we’ve finished cleaning up the blueberry plants for winter. Right now we have 13 blueberry bushes, all low bush varieties. We’re trying three varieties, Climax, Premiere and Tifblue and we have an odd row of other one-off plants and we’ll be adding some unknown varieties in that row as well. All the blueberries got newspaper for weed block and a nice cover of wood chips that have been composted with the offal from this summer’s chicken processing. This will help keep the vegetation down around the plants as well as help keep moisture in. We have seven more plants that we hope to get in the ground near the end of the month after the weather cools down a bit more. This year there were very few berries, but hopefully next year we’ll have enough blueberries to share! We also have two grape vines at the moment, one muscadine and one concord. They just got planted this spring, so we’ll see they fared the winter next in spring.
Honeybee update, Fall 2011
We did our big pre-winter inspection on Saturday and have good news and bad news. The “bad” news is that we won’t have any honey to extract this fall, but the good news is that all three hives seem to be in good shape for the upcoming winter! Hive two is getting re-queened in the spring; they are mean and have produced nothing for me and just generally need an upgrade. The other two hives seem strong and have good attitudes. Hopefully we’ll add one hive in the spring and re-queen #2 and have more of a harvest next year!
Oops, I forgot to write about the broilers!
Wow! I never got around to making a journal entry for our Spring 2011 broilers! We did one batch of broilers this year in the spring and processed near the beginning of June. It was a pretty successful batch and I think we finally got our ration to a reasonably repeatable formula. The broilers did very well and I went and looked up the numbers so we could share them! We were VERY pleased with the outcome of this batch. It was the first and last batch of 2011 since we’re focusing more of our time on the house construction, but this next spring we plan to be raising broilers at the farm, so on pickup day when you come by and sit on the porch and visit and we’ll have a little more room and more chairs. Enough with the formalities, here are the numbers:
# of chickens processed: 86
age of chickens: 8 weeks, 0.5 days
culls: 1
birds >= 5lb: 76 (86%)
birds < 4lb: 3 (3.5%)
average dressed bird weight: 5.93lb
median dressed bird weight: 6.0lb
lb of feed used: 2000lb
total weight of dressed birds: 505.49lb
THE BIGGIE ... feed conversion ratio: 3.96 lbs of feed to 1 lb of dressed bird!!!
Cows, Oct 2011
It has been quite some time since we’ve talked about the cows, but this spring we had two calves born at the farm and one born two days before he arrived. All three have turned out to be healthy and growing and we’ve begun the weaning process. Even though I’ve seen it done almost my entire life, we are new to the DOING of all of this. We used a process called “fenceline weaning” where we leave almost everything the same, the same field, same move schedule, same water and mineral facilities, still in close proximity to mama; the only difference is there is a fence between the calves and the cows so they can’t nurse. There was a little bit of complaining the first two days, but since then neither the cows nor the calves make any fuss! After a week of this type of move we moved the calves to the field next to the cows and they all are continuing to do great!
House Update, July
We’ve not moved on anything on the house in several weeks due to several things. The good news is that we now seem to be moving forward with the project! We have the initial part of the foundation completed, including all footings and the concrete for the porches and the garage floor have been poured. The bad news is that all of the piers have to be removed and placed differently. We’ve also been trying for several months to get electricity and that now seems like it’s moving forward as well. We have a meeting next week to talk about the specifics of the install and should also hear back from the floor truss folks next week as to the engineering of the floor system. Overall things now seem to be moving after a long pause and we’re getting excited again!
House update
Well, I’ve neglected blogging about our house since, until very recently, it was all in planning and concept and nothing concrete to show. That has now changed! Two weeks ago a bulldozer arrived and scraped the topsoil off of the house site and the crawlspace was dug out. Last week the footings were dug and poured and yesterday the block was laid. Well, not all of the block, but a most of it for sure. Today they are coming back to finish the few blocks that are left and will core fill the block that will be bearing horizontal forces (the block between the house and the porches).
We’re on our way for sure now!
Reunion Day
Today it’s been seven days, the vet prescribed quiet time, since Maggie got spayed. This evening we’ll be taking her back over to the farm to be reunited with her best friend who has been the definition of a “lost puppy” since she’s been gone. Merle is so pitiful and depressed and it’s just sad to watch him, but that ends TODAY! We’re also doing a full bee inspection this afternoon making sure things are in order and going well and adding honey supers in anticipation of harvesting some honey early this summer. It’s going to be a beautiful sunny mid 70’s day and we intend to take advantage of it!
Birth Announcement
We would like to announce the arrival of the newest member of Happily Ever After Farm, and her name is Speck! After looking miserable for over two weeks, Spot had a beautiful baby heifer early in the morning (before daylight) on April 7, 2011. She most certainly carries traits of her mother since she has a spot in her belt just like her mom’s, but on the other side. Yesterday afternoon she was bucking and running even though she still has really wobbly legs. Hooray for the miracle of birth!
Dog Challenges
It is a real challenge to relocate adult dogs! I now know just how much of an understatement that is. We’ve had Merle neutered and had him on restricted activity for a bit and then we tried to see if they would stay at the farm. No such luck. We got a call from a lady in Goodlettsville, two days and about 20 miles away who had found them and called. We were very grateful, but now both dogs are on a lead for a few weeks while we make sure they understand they are now at their new home. The cows have been easy, the dogs have been quite the handful.