Heavenly Eggs

Adena excels at presentation. Since we added the dark brown eggs from the Marans, she's come up with a new pattern.

Cold!

Water droplets freezing on my gloves and boots this morning! Putting a heat tape on the outdoor hydrant this winter has prevented many bucket trips from the bathtub!

De-scurring the shaggy goat

We read Daniel 8 this morning -- Coincidentally (Providentially?) poignant because the chore of the day was to cut back the scurs on Liaison, our Lamancha buck.

Verse 8 reads:

"Therefore the goat waxed exceeding great, and when he was at the strongest, his great horn was broken: and for it came up four that appeared toward the four winds of the heaven."

Liaison broke one scur off a few weeks back, but his other one (the "great horn") needed trimmed as it was curling back against his head.  With some wrestling on the milk stand and a hacksaw, we were able to cut off about an inch.  I'll let it heal up and trim it back some more.

Hopefully four new horns don't appear in its place as Daniel prophesied concerning the Greek empire. 

The joys of livestock!  Here's a before pic... I'll spare the after. 

You can see Liaison's Great Horn above his left eye

Hugelkultur!

After a pretty good garden last last year, I'm more than doubling it this year.  Eventually I want to put in a semi-sunken earthbag greenhouse.  If that's not eco-hippie enough for you, I'm starting a hugelkulture bed (ultimately for wild blackberry canes, but we'll see).  Read more about hugelkultur (or permaculture) here.

I'm starting with the oversized and rotten logs from the wood pile and have been adding leaves, dead cowpen daisies, the last of the old wood chip pile and manure.  The idea is to replicate the deep bed of the forest floor where the fungi and insects found in the rotting wood break it down to useable nutrients for the plants. Anyway, it gives me something to do with the chunks of firewood that are too rotten for use!

The initial pics are below -- I'll add more as I go.

Whoops!

When the pickles lose their saltiness, they are good for nothing than to be thrown to the chickens... or when the pickler forgets the salt, he hopes that chickens like gross pickles.

Stinking thief

When my 9-year-old found a chicken foot, we first suspected the dog - I was skeptical because the dogs typically don't sever the foot when they kill a bird, but leave the leg bone on.
When closing in the chickens that night, we found this guy dragging a young maran rooster by the neck.  He paid no mind to my presence, actually seemed to appreciate the light as he released the bird and started eating an egg.
A friend said I should have made a hat, but it would have had too many holes.

Fall(ish) crutching time

Did the crutching of my flock today. Clipped out the more dense mats of sand burrs, trimmed hooves and wormed. Ram is showing the turn off the seasons - just need to wait on receptive ewes!
Overall, they took the handling well. Was thinking of how often we fight at the discomfort caused when God takes the necessary, but sometimes painful steps of trimming up his sheep on a one-on-one basis.