Fall Harvest

Fall Harvest

After the craft fair, we still had a lot going on at the farm.

First...Rosie, had babies! She had them in the beginning of October/ if I am remembering correctly. Three girls and two boys. 

Unfortunately, one of the boys was deceased when we found the babies (I had a suspicion she was pregnant, but she didn't have them in July when I thought she was going to). Our guess is that the baby was flattened by Momma while she was having the others. The other male had a large gash on his side. We think Oscar may have rough housed him a little since he was male. Sam tried to liquid bandaid his wound, but he passed two days later. 

Three of the babies were this pretty red color. 

One of the girls and one of the boys was this spotted coloring. Dandelion went on to be a much lighter color with black spots. 

We had to give them their iron shots around two days old and luckily (or not) didn't have to castrate any piglets this time around. 

With the babies came some other farm changes. We built houses for the goats to move the males out front. This was in conjunction with upgrading the electric fencing from four strands to six and using a more efficient wire and a much, much stronger energizer.

Luke was great company while we worked, and Rylee and Will Will kept him quite entertained. 

The houses were made out of IPC totes from the brewery in Frankfort. Will Will and I sprayed the insides down with a water hose, scrubbed it a bit, and then had empty out the water we couldn't pour out by hand. We then filled the bottom with straw and added a roof. 

They worked amazingly well. Except the goats pooped in them, so now (February) they are 6-7 inches deep with poop. Free compost I suppose!

With the move, we sold one of the male baby goats, and kept Tristan (who we still haven't decided to sell or keep). We put up the electric netting to form a permanent paddock out front where we used to keep the pigs. I built a very simple door out of two t-posts and a wooden pallet. 

We also went ahead and bought a new male goat (we named Felix) to be the mate of Mollie. We figured we would stick with Encanto names for the adult male goats. 

Isn't he handsome! This picture also features Don checking out his new mate, Shiny (the turkey in the right pen). We let her out after a week or so to forage with Don. We will move them back into the rooster pen come spring when she starts laying so we don't have another coyote-killing-while-nesting episode. 

We also built automatic chicken feeders for both the rooster pen and the main chicken coop. 

They work amazingly and can hold 6 50lb bags of feed at a time. What hasn't been great is our mounting system (Sam is designing a new one). We wanted them off the ground so the rats couldn't eat the food, but the barrels kept falling off the stands we had them on. I was worried they would smoosh a chicken (or me while I was filling them up with feed). 

Notice the pumpkins in the picture above? After Halloween festivities, we hit up the local pumpkin patches for their leftover pumpkins. 

We thought they would only last us a couple of weeks, but they ended up lasting us about a month. I do think the pigs lost a bit of weight from the pastures wintering and the low calorie pumpkins, though. But it was nice to feed the pigs/goats/chickens/turkeys for free even if it was just a month.  

Before Halloween (I think), Mema came to visit the farm and meet the kiddos for the first time. 

And we got to visit Bowling Green for Ryan's birthday!

I made the kids costumes again this year, and the cousins wanted to do a Hocus Pocus theme. So Rylee is Mary Sanders, William is Billy, and Luke is the Boooook!

I think we trick-or-treated at least four times--which turned out to be exhausting. I never thought I'd get tired of it. And of course we got together with the cousins to carve pumpkins. 

(Rylee sitting on her tiny white pumpkin that she picked out at the pumpkin patch)

We saved as many seeds as we could in order to grow food for the animals next year since feed prices are getting so high. We bought some butternut squash to grow in the garden for them this upcoming year, and the kids even helped me plant a small wheat patch. 

While doing that, we found an old tractor tire that we moved to the front yard for them to play with. They played with it for maybe a week, haha. 

They were great cheerleaders while I was busy milking the goats in the mornings and, eventually, evenings. 

After re-arranging the animals for the winter, we started milking the goats up at the barn...which was actually a lot easier than at the pasture. Here's a taste of what I had to deal with every morning when I went out to milk and had tag-a-longs, haha. 

The craft fair and pumpkin gathering mindsets had us wondering what else we could do with our farm, so we harvested what we could. We spent the next couple of weeks bundling up honeysuckle to make "tree hay" to feed the goats and the pigs in the winter. We didn't get many, but they love it. 

We also harvested rose hips for tea. 

It's a bit labor intensive to get them off the plant...not to mention picking them with all the thorns on the wild rose bush (Rosa multiflora) is also very difficult. We clipped the branches off with the rose hips and picked them off later. 

Made apple sauce with the apples we got on WIC ($90 fresh fruits and veggies for a couple months). 

(the lids didn't seal properly, and they ended up molding. But we did manage to eat an entire jar before then, and it was the best applesauce I've ever made so far!!! 

Dried the apple peels to grind up for tea. 

Dried some of the apples (along with pears) for chips.

Canned a cushaw we got from Nene. 

Made Cushaw pie from said Cushaw. 

Planted and winterized some seed potatoes that grew out in our pantry and used the time to learn about root crops.     

We found a baby snake by the house that Will Will was very excited to hold (much to Auntie Chu, Auntie Tay, and Pippa's horror) in a jar while we transported it down the road. This was the second time we had caught this one. 

When we had leftover soup after one of the halloween parties, I learned how to can the soup for an easy go-to meal. It takes almost an hour on the pressure canner, but it worked very well! All the solids sink to the bottom of the jar, so it looks kind of funny. But it's very yummy! We canned taco soup. 

Once the leaves started falling, I was super motivated to rake the leaves and take them up to our garden to compost! That was until I learned how difficult and time consuming it is to actually bag the leaves. Raking is fast...bagging not so much. Anyone have any good methods? 

I think we took one load up to the garden before deciding to just let the kids play in the giant pile from the front yard oak trees. 

They definitely had a blast (and I might have had a little fun, too)!

Aaaaand, we got free ducks! The only thing it cost us was the gas to get to Lexington (so about the normal price of one duck). We ended up with three Rouen ducks (a meat breed)--two males and one female. The white one you see in the picture below is a Harlequin. We named her Rikki after Rikki-tikki-tavi (yes, I know it's a boy). Unfortunately, she didn't make it through the really cold weather we had this winter. She didn't go to the barn with the other ducks and ended up freezing under the water. Poor baby. She was definitely the kid's favorite. We spent many minutes up at the pond this fall feeding them peas, bread, and stale cereal. 

Sam and I took the kids hiking a little locally during one of his vacation weeks. 

They had a great time looking at all the different color leaves, and were very excited to find ones large enough to wear as hats. I think the walk tired them out, haha. 

Finally, enjoy these random cute pictures of the kids that I couldn't fit in anywhere else: 

Rylee learned how to draw people! She is such the little artist. She's always drawing, coloring, singing, and dancing! 

My little monkey boy! The oldest two have figured out how to swing from the trampoline bar. It kind of makes me want to put them in gymnastics. 

Rylee wanted to go for a walk in the front yard, and we ended up climbing this Osage Orange tree!

Can you tell his hair is getting super blond? (spoiler...wait for the next posts). 

Daddy and his littlest boy. 

Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,

Torey, Sam, Rylee, William & Luke

Do you or someone you know live near Harrodsburg, Kentucky? 
Do you want to eat farm-fresh eggs from happy, healthy hens? ($5.00/dozen)

Check out our shop!