Buzzing Into Sping

One of our bees with her pouches full of pollen

We are starting our second season with the bees. We have two hives we bought last year. Hive #1 is in great shape. It was a new hive that was started from a package of bees by a gentleman in Missouri. It has a nice queen and is packed full of bees this spring. They are really nice to work with, as far as temperament goes. Hive #2 is a different story. It is a weaker hive with an older queen. It would be considered a "hot" hive, with bees that sting you for the fun of it. I might be exaggerating a little, but my husband can testify to the difficulty of working with this set of bees. Temperament comes from the queen, so I am hoping to re-queen that hive in May.

Hive #1 is doing so well that we are splitting it. We are expecting our a new queen any day. We have set up a third hive and will take our new queen and transfer two frames of baby bees from hive #1. In a few days she will start laying and establish a new colony of bees. This is our first time to try this but I am hoping that everything goes smoothly.

Other spring happenings:  The garden has been planted. We doubled our space from last year and I am really happy with the layout. I hope we have lots of extra produce to can and eat next winter. As many green beans as our family eats, I think we could save a ton of money. We are also getting some fruit trees this spring. I would like an apple tree and a plum tree (or two). I think that would be a great start for an orchard. We can always add trees down the road if we would like more variety (like peach, cherry, apricot...I am getting hungry just thinking about it!). I would love to add a raised bed and start some asparagus. We will have to see but I am afraid it might have to wait until next year. 

1 month left to kidding

Proverbs 27:27 "You will have plenty of goats' milk to feed you and your family and to nourish your servant girls."

We have one month left until out first kids are due.  I am starting to get really excited about the thought of new babies arriving.  We need to finish the outside runs for the kidding barn.  I also need to get the rest of the items in case I need to assist in any births.

The girls are starting to look large.  I hope that means we have more then one baby coming from each doe.  I am praying for mostly doelings!

New Kidding House

My wonderful, talented husband just finished our kidding house.  It currently has two stalls.  It is still missing the outside, fenced run but that will have to wait until after Rachel's wedding and basketball playoffs.  Our girls are due the first week in May so I think we have some time.

A tough winter.

This has been a terrible winter here in Oklahoma.  We have had record breaking snows in the last couple of weeks.  I have not left the house on my own in almost three weeks.  According to our local weather people, we should have some 70 degree days coming next week.  I can't wait!

This winter has been really tough on our animals. We have lost 3 calves and have one that is still iffy. He has been off his feet for several weeks but our vet is encouraging us to not give up on him yet.  We have also lost two chickens.  One was killed by an unknown animal (though I suspect a local cat may be to blame) and the other one died from the cold or a repository infection.  Naturally, this was our youngest daughter's favorite chicken.  We had many tears shed over all these losses.

I am now looking forward to spring and the renewing it will bring.  I am thinking about the garden we will plant and all the veggies I will can.  I am hopeful that we will have new babies arrive safely.  My husband is getting the new goat house ready.  We will have two stalls for mamas and babies.  Our oldest daughter is getting married in the spring.  It will be a new beginning for her as well.

My goal is now to put one foot in front of the other and move forward.  Hopefully we have learned some lessons this winter.  I look forward to a beautiful, fun, crazy year ahead of us.

It's official: Double D Farm

Just in time for breeding season...We are now officially known as Double D Farm.  I received our notification from International Dairy Goat Registry a few days ago.  Jim thought I was crazy last summer when I was trying to come up with a name for our homestead.  I was just thinking ahead, knowing that if we registered animals we would need a name.  I also received our tattoo letters.  All our goats will have DBF in their right ear.  I am so excited.




Pepper

 We took our three girls to be bred by a handsome buck named Pepper in December.  Two of our does should have kids, or freshen, the fist part of May.  Our third lady had to have a return visit with Pepper and will deliver the end of May.  I am glad that they are broken up a bit since I have no experience if anyone needs help delivering. 

Heather, Elizabeth and Jewel are all now registered as Nubian/Boer with the IDGR.  The man we bought them from said they were Alpine/Toggenburg but when I saw them I knew they had to be part Nubian....just look at those ears!  Since we didn't know for sure, the lady at the registry said she thought they looked part Boer (with their brown heads and solid white bodies).  I can see her point so I went with it.  Their kids will be registered as 75% Nubian, so they should sell fine.

I am hoping we have a couple of pretty doelings with correct udder formation come to us this spring.  I would like to sell one of our older girls with poor udders and see if we can breed that out of our herd.  We only have one doe with just two udders.  Our other does have multiple udders which is a fault.  They will be great family milkers and if that is all someone is looking for then that would be a great match.  I will have them all trained to the milking stand so I think they will sell quickly if we decide the do that.

My husband is in our garage, as I type, building a kidding house.  He thinks it will go together quickly.  I will post pictures and more details soon.

Pig Wrangling

Tuesday the time had come to take one of our pigs to the butcher. I must admit that I had no idea how hard it would be to get one pig in a trailer.  Maybe she knew more about her fate then I gave her credit for.  How convenient that my husband was at work and left the job of loading the pig to our older kids and me.

We entered the pig pen with few ideas on exactly how we would accomplish our goal.  Basically, we were going to just shoo her into the trailer, shut the door and pat each other on the back.  In hind sight, I now see the folly of that plan.  The reality was much different and much funnier, or so my husband thought. 

When we first entered the pig's arena they looked harmless, even friendly.  They thought they were going to be fed and left to fight over who would get the best bits, as usual.  We started by moving the feeder by the make-shift loading chute.  This chute was the outer fence and an old gate my bother-in-law had given us.  Parked at the end of the gate was our cattle trailer.  It looked like they would eat as we opened the gate and then we could gently encourage them toward the trailer.  If only that plan had worked!

We had three pigs; Becky Bacon, Penelope and Hammer the Ham.  Penelope, was by far, the largest of the three.  We zoned in on her as we moved closer to the unsuspecting pigs.  Unfortunately, instead of moving them toward the trailer they got spooked and ran to the other end of their rather sizable pen.  Now the fun began.  We spent the next 45 minutes getting the pigs close to the chute and then watching them run as we tried to get them in the trailer.  The pigs suddenly looked different to me.  They were no longer the cute little piggies that followed us around and snorted for food.  When I looked at them now all I saw was dumb, obstinante swine.

Finally, in desperation, I called for our seceret weapon...dog food.  Dog food is like "piggy crack", they will do anything for it.  I stared throwing some by Penelope, hoping to make a trail of dog food she would follow right into the trailer.  We made a path to the trailer and then when she felt the least little bit confined, she would bolt.  We went through three cups of dog food before we started feeling like maybe we could do this.

I must admit that I did picture myself having to call my husband and tell him we just couldn't do it.  Would he be mad, diappointed, not care?  I thought, "One more try, then if we fail I will call him."

Finally, we got Penelope in the chute.  She was facing backwards but I was hopeful that she would back inthe trailer on her own.  No, that was not to be.  We had to give her a little space to turn around but not so much she would push her way out.  Our youngest daughter had a broom to "encourage" her to move.  When she finally turned and saw I had dog food left, she hopped right in.  We closed the doors and collased in a pile of smelly, dirty pride. 

I am voting that my husband gets in on the fun next time a pig has to be loaded.

Chicken's to love or chicken's to eat?

That is the real question isn't it?  My youngest daughter would say we need to keep them to love.  My husband would say they are to eat.  I am somewhere in the middle.  I love our hens and the fresh eggs they give us.  The roosters (or "roos" as some people call them) are a pain.  I wish I could say something nice about them but they are mean.  They also fought with each other and hurt our hens.  We found hens missing feathers and bloody from their roo encounters.  Several weeks ago, I had had it with them.  I informed my husband we would be butchering the roos ASAP. 

Once I made the announcement I started hearing stories.  Stories of horror and gore.  What had I gotten myself (and the rest of my family) into?  I can now say it was not as bad as I thought it might be.  Here are some of the stories I heard and what our experiences were:

1. Blood squirting EVERYWHERE:  I can say that the way my husband put down our boys, there were no headless chickens flopping around.  In about 2 minutes it was all over and the roos didn't act like they felt a thing.  We did have to remove the heads once we were sure they were dead but that was very quick also.

2. The stench:  I think people have memories of being at Grandma's and smelling the hot, wet feathers.  I have to say, there wasn't a lot of odor when we plucked our fellas.  Part of the reason could be that it was fall.  It might be a smellier job in summer.  I also made sure we did almost everything outside.  I did not want a bad odor in my house that seemed to hang around for days.  What we did had to get over, was the feel of the feathers and how they stuck to our hands.  Yuck. 

3. Dealing with the insides:  My husband gutted the boys for me.  I had heard that we needed to be careful when cleaning the innards out as not to contaminate the meat.  My hubby made it look easy and did a great job.  We saved part of the innards but I am not sure what we will do with them.  (Maybe that can be a post in the future...how to cook with chicken guts.)

Overall, the job wasn't bad.  Next time, I will get a different breed of roosters that fattens up faster.  We got very little meat for the amount of food our roos ate through the summer.  We will also try skinning them so we can save the plucking step.  I think they will be cleaner when we are done if they are skinned.  We will also do all of the work outside next time.  This will help save my kitchen from most of the mess.

If you are thinking about getting some chickens to butcher my best advise is don't be afraid.  Go to YouTube and watch videos on "how to butcher chickens" and you will be able to move forward and feel prepared.

Becky Bacon finds a home

Seems we now have a pig.  Was I planning on getting a pig?  I think not but here she is none the less. 

Okay, so it was my idea...what's new?  I just started thinking that we needed to get the garden tilled but we don't own a tiller.  What better way to get your ground worked and fertilized at the same time then to get a pig?  Not that my husband was complaining.  He had been trying to talk me into getting a pig for a year.

We looked around on Craigslist and found someone not far from us with hogs.  We loaded our twins up in our big, white pickup truck and took them to help us pick out a pig.  When we got there it was over 100 degrees and I was wishing we had waited until the cool of the evening to go.  We looked at the many pens of little, squealing piglets and I made the grand declaration "We'll take the first one you can catch."  Our seller appreciated that approach and I appreciated not having to climb in the pen and help my husband actually pick up the pig.  After all, I was wearing my new "work" boots (these boots had never yet seen any real work and had only been used to dress up my jeans).  They grabbed a little girl, if you want to call 50 lbs. of wiggling, screaming fury "little".  She was mad and spent the whole time we carried her to the trailer trying to bite us and wrench herself free. 

I was now beginning to question my decision, especially when my husband started saying things like, "I sure hope she doesn't gore us."  Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating.  He did make me think when he started questioning if our fence would hold her and was I sure I wanted that smell so close to the house.  Yikes!  He could have brought that up BEFORE we bought the pig.  He eventually assured me that he would make sure everything was taken care of. 

I started throwing out names on the way home.  A vote was taken.  The winner was "Becky Bacon".  I liked the sound of it and it would also remind us that she was not a pet but an eventual food source.

Now the fun would begin.  We could not back our trailer to the pen so we would have to pick Becky up and carry her again.  I was just about to suggest that she could live in the trailer when my husband gathered our older kids to help him lift her.  My boots were saved again.  Someone (I will not mention names...but it possibly, could have been me) also had the bright idea that we needed to weigh her.  I ran in and grabbed the bathroom scale for my husband to stand on while he held the pig.  My husband is a 6 ft. Oklahoma farm boy but Becky almost got the best of him.  She wiggled, she screamed, she bit, yes, it was just like having toddlers again.  I was afraid for him but he handled her fine for the few minutes he had to stand there.

Finally, she could go into her pen.  We were all relieved to be able to shut the gate and watch her from a distance for awhile.  Our family scattered and went to get her food bowl and some hay for her to make a bed.  I walked back out to her pen in a couple of hours.  I was sweet talking her as I walked up but she suddenly charged at me.  It scared me until I remembered she couldn't get me.  I was beginning to think she held me personally responsible for her current situation.  It was almost like she knew I was the one who said, "Let's get a pig."

A few weeks have passed now.  Becky understands that when humans walk up it means it is time to eat and she sure loves to eat!  Our youngest daughter has got Becky to stand still for a quick pet.  She is still not "tame" but she is a lot of fun to watch.  Let's hope my bribing her with food has made her forgive and forget...mainly just forget!

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HGTV on a budget

I guess I am strange.  I have to live a house for awhile before I start changing paint and upgrading light fixtures.  Everyone else I know has painted, changed out carpet and started a major master bath remodel before the first moving box hits the door.

I have spent the last year thinking about what I want to fix-up but I have just now gotten motivated to do something.  Maybe that is because we have had major problems with this house.  (The septic, the foundation, water under the house, the a/c, plumbing, and on, and on, and on)  I was never so thankful for a home warranty in my life.  Now it feels like things are starting to be resolved.  I have been watching HGTV the last few weeks and have gotten motivated to start making some changes. 

My first project was removing the ugly wallpaper in the dining room.  It was just not my taste.  It was too busy and too country for me.  We picked out a baseboard rather then a true chair rail to use for two reasons: 1) it was cheaper 2) it was wider to match the space of the wallpaper we took down. The whole project cost about $40 and made a huge difference.  I just feel like it has a cleaner look and is more sophisticated now.

Maybe this speaks of the number of times we have moved in the last 20 years but I am always thinking, "If we had to sell this place quickly, what would help us sell?"  This led me to the next obvious project, upgrading our light fixtures.  Most the fixtures seem to be original to the house, which was built in 1995.  Polished brass was huge in the '90's but is a bit dated now.  I was looking to replace a couple of spotlight fixtures.  I found a style that would work and was looking at spending about $70.  My husband said, "What if we refinished them?  We would throw them out anyway."  What a brilliant man!  We bought a can of textured spray paint and tried it.  I think the fixtures look great and cost about $1 in paint.  Now they match the aged bronze in the kitchen.

I would really like to remodel our master bath but I think it will have to wait.  Our oldest daughter is getting married this spring so I think our money will be going in that direction for awhile.  For now, I will concentrate on smaller projects like retouching paint, replacing broken switch plates, and updating the light covers on the ceiling fans.  Maybe in a couple of years we can do some major work around here.  For now I feel very blessed to have a home and land so perfect for us.