farm – Page 2 – Peacock Orchard

Mini-Krater gardens first snow.

I’ve been intensely interested in how much snow our Kraters may collect. They’ve done pretty well with rainwater collection and I assumed they’d fill with blowing snow, but wasn’t sure. The results are in after our first snow.

Deepest Krater with pawpaw island. Had about a foot of snow all around.

Largest Krater in circumference. Snow only collected on one side.

Goji Krater, did the absolute best. For some reason this Krater is just in an ideal location. It always collects the most water, the plants here did the best and it collected the most snow. I’ll have to think and observe why this krater has done so well.

Just for fun here are a few more pics of our first snow collection and fun:

This is our newly renovated driveway drainage ditch. Filled about 3 feet with snow.

This is another driveway drainage earthwork and the path from the garage to the ditch filled pretty well with snow. Enough for the kids to enjoy fully!

As you can see from this pic the snow blows and sometimes we will have 0 snow on large amounts of the property as there is nothing to catch and keep it. We experimented with our earthworks, which work well, and also selective mowing of our incredible sweet clover sections. Selective, on contour mowing harvested a ton of snow. It was far from the house, and the kids were happy where they were, so I didn’t get pics of this. I’ll try to later on.

My kids are so adorable!

I convinced them to go to the barn to feed the pigs and they did this while I was busy doing chores.

Our akbash is such a weirdo. He doesn’t know what to do with the pigs. He just stood there wagging his tail and doing this high pitched whine that the pigs didn’t like at all.

Such cute little piggies! Getting friendlier every day.

Meanwhile, thanksgiving dinner keeps threatening me.

Critters and Bugs, Oh My!

It has been an enlightening year on the farm. I am not sure if we simply had more bugs than ever or if I’m just noticing them for the first time.

We have always had a plethora of spiders hanging around the house. We don’t disturb them and they don’t disturb us. We get some massive Cat eye spiders on our front porch. The kids love to look at them and feed them the occasional pest. One spider that I was aware we had around, but had never seen so many of, is the black widow. I have had to give the kids a few lectures on not picking up bugs, don’t stick your hands in dark places, come get us if you see a black spider, etc. They freak me out honestly. I don’t relish getting bit but I can’t imagine what I would do if one of the kids got bit. Lose my mind I imagine. So, while we tend to have a lassez faire attitude with most bugs, but particularly spiders, I’ve been killing these.

These spiders were all found in and around the kids outdoor play equipment. Really upsetting for me!

Now this next bug is a complete mystery. I found a few of them around last year and have no idea what they are. They look like massive ants to me. This one was easily an inch long. If you have any ideas please leave me a comment.

We tend to have waves of grasshoppers around the property. One year it felt like a plague had descended upon us. You couldn’t take a single step without the things hopping about. Not so terrible if they didn’t hop into your shoe. Oh so disgusting! We have chickens now though. I think it has helped with our grasshopper population. Now we have enough to amuse us but not so much that going outside is a nightmare. Our son really enjoys the grasshoppers.

Now some bugs make perfect poultry food. Whenever we see “puddles” we make sure to grab them to take the the birds. Slimy little slugs. I might need more ducks if we keep getting so many. The birds really love them though! Another thing they love are grubs. I dug quite a few out of the garden last year. The birds love to see us coming.

Now our bids are free range. They just don’t tend to range all that far. They get a bit farther out every year. Maybe someday I won’t have to get rid of insect pests myself.

“puddles”

grubs

We had a very special visitor this fall. He was found on our sons bulldozer. I think he had an injured leg. I took a few pictures and then removed him from the kid danger zone. I hope to see many more praying mantis in the future.

One bug that I detest are the red biting ants we have EVERYWHERE. They are terrible things and they kill so much land with their mounts.

Not all bugs that we have are unwanted. In fact, I raise meal worms for the birds.

Now we also have some interesting critters about. I found a salamander in the chicken run once. Unfortunately it was quite dead. We found a small little lizard in the berms. It is the first time any of us had seen this particular type of lizard. Since our son was not with us at the time I made sure to hold it just until he could see it. He loved it! We also save frogs every year. As the puddles dry up we go around fishing the tadpoles out and bringing them home to grow out. Then we release them back to the wild. Everyone enjoys the frogs!

Blue’s first tail display

Blue has grown a mighty fine train. This weekend was the first time I’ve seen him display it. I had to take the pictures from inside the house. I didn’t want to spook him off. Still, marvelous!

Oh, but the ladies were not impressed.

This is our front lawn. I had swept a bunch of cat food out onto it and the peas have been busy hunting it out.

Blue kept trying to threaten this rooster but the rooster was unimpressed. Blue needn’t waste his time. This rooster is very young still but I have a feeling we will be forced to eat him. He’s a bit….too friendly with people. I think he’ll get mean.

I’ve raised these peas since they were 6 weeks old. I’ve lost 2 but the remaining 3 are marvelous!

Here is a baby pic.