Earlier this week I blocked a section of fence where the goats and sheep were regularly crossing to get at the hay bales. I had to come up with a solution using what materials we have on hand so tried weaving branches into the existing fence and give it a top rail. The goats came and gave it a thorough inspection and decided they didn’t like it very much so moved over to the next low section of the fence and jumped there. Here is a pic of the experimental section:
Normally weeknights are usually un-eventful being school nights for the kid and short evenings before heading into work the next day. Our monday night this week took a complete sideways slide. It was really icy with the new snow that had fallen the night before and was our first really yucky dump of 4-8 inches of snow depending on what area you are in. We had upwards of 8 inches by our farm. I was heading home after work and hit a nasty section of glare ice just south of the hwy 19 & 60 intersection south of Devon and the truck spun out on me and landed me in the ditch. Considering that it spun clockwise into the oncoming traffic, completed a 360 back into the south-bound lane and then continued into a 2nd spin narrowly missing a phone pole before stopping with me facing crossways in the ditch, I have no idea how I didn’t hit anything or have anybody else hit me during this as it was during rush hour traffic! Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s some pics of the animals today enjoying the warm, dry weather. Also some other pics from the past week and a bit. Milking Lisa our Nubian – SaanenxBoer cross goat is going well and we’ve built a milking stanchion which makes the job a snap. I don’t even have to catch her anymore, just show her the pail and call her to the barn and she comes running! Our pullets have now started to lay eggs which is great! Soon we’ll cull about 6-8 of our older chickens and put them in the freezer and then move all the chickens into their winter coop which I need to build still.
We were finally successful after a few fits ‘n false starts with moving the llama shed out from behind our house into the field where all the critters need it to sleep in. Maybe the goats will jump our middle fences less now!
Here are some pictures of the shed where it was sitting behind the house. 
Read the rest of this entry »
Well it’s been an insanely busy month, and we were called away for a family emergency for the first half of october. By the time we got back, the first snows had already fallen! Ack!, now we’re looking at finishing the fencing and moving the llama shed and doing a number of maintenance repairs to the shop and the lean-to in the colder weather. It was sleeting yesterday for awhile and too miserable to even think about going out to work in it, plus we were babysitting so just got stuff done in the house.
Today is another day though and we should get a good amount of work done. Poppy, one of our rabbit does had a litter on the wire on friday morning, we saved one kit of the 4, but by the time we got home from work/school at end of day, the baby was nowhere to be found in the nest and cage. Presumably this means Poppy ate the baby, or it spontaneously teleported somewhere. Sunny is due to kindle any time now and I hope it goes better!
Here’s some pics of the new critters, and it’s outside to get work done for the rest of the day!
Well today we picked up our 5 month old Nubian Lamancha cross dairy goat Aega. Sweet thing she is being coloured beige and white and has a sweet temperament. I got her home and took her to meet the others in our little flock. They were quite interested in her, though Moose the goat butted her a couple times when she got too noisy. They look like it may take a few days to get her used to them and vice versa before they will accept her into the flock.
So we left her in the field with them while I took Davin to his first Pony Club session where he learned some groundwork with the ponies and got to ride bareback for a bit with me leading the pony. He was scared up on the pony at first, and likely none too comfortable as he had gotten “the runs” just before we arrived there so he spent the first 20 minutes of class in the bathroom. Unfortunately he didn’t make it to the bathroom in time and got his underwear dirty so he had to do the class with just his jogging pants on. But he was a trooper and quickly forgot his crampy problem once started working with the ponies.
I was very impressed with how well he listened to the instructor and he followed the directions really well for his first time working with an animal his own size. He was of course at the end of the night really wanting to get back on and ride some more as one of the little girls his age there vaulted onto her horse from the ground right in front of him. She really impressed him with that power move and he wanted to immediately try it out, but the sun was going down and we had run out of time, so next week it is.
When we got home, it didn’t take us long to realise all hell had broken loose. In fact a complete disaster. Read the rest of this entry »
The first pics are small as I just grabbed them off my facebook album. I’ll have to download them off the blackberry in their full resolution later.
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Well this month has certainly gotten really interesting all of a sudden. The cause/catalyst would be my discovery of the local Edmonton Kijiji website. I have finally found the Flemish Giant doe rabbits plus their new litters I was looking for and got 2 of them along with a New Zealand buck to start my breeding stock out. So we acquired 17 rabbits all in one day. We were smart and also bought their hutches which made getting them home -so- much easier. The baby rabbits are at 5 weeks old now and are going to be weaned this week. We have just re-bred the does over the weekend so can expect new litters within about 32 days.
The very same day we got the rabbits being a mere week after we got the sheep, we also picked up 6 Red Sussex pullets that were about 13 or 14 weeks old so we can get eggs from them. Our truck was completely full up on that daytrip coming back and riding in it felt an awful lot like those old european farm wagons going to market you would hear stories about. Or at least I’ve heard stories about them…somewhere or other… Read the rest of this entry »
We started fencing parts of the dog’s enclosure this evening. We got the first part done except for building a gate which will happen this week. this part will be where the dog house will go, and once it’s done we’ll fence in the larger part of their enclosure so they can have an area to be off-leash without fear of them eating the other farm animals! Here are some pics of how we tensioned the fence wire using the hitch on my truck and materials we had lying around. It worked not too badly, but was likely not the safest way to do it even if it is the cheapest! Good thing Darren has made fences before since I’ve had zero experience doing it until today.
Last night’s storm tore a chunk of wall off our shop, much to our surprise:
And back to normal after Darren nailed the missing pieces back on:
