It has been a few months! Blogging has just been off of my radar for a while. I hope to remedy that and what better time to start than when I am starting to get spring fever? We shall see. I tend to stay more caught up with blogging when things are really busy around here, which it hasn't been recently.
That isn't to say that nothing has been going on or changing on Sunflower Hill.
The garden is closed down for the year, with the exception of some carrots still in the ground, but will be back up and going very soon! It is past time to start seedlings already!
The guineas free range full-time now. They bully the turkeys terribly so they had to be booted out of the turkey coop. They are still bullies when the turkeys are free ranging, but it helps the rest of the time. The guineas now sleep high up in a couple of trees that are located in a triangle between the turkey coop, chicken coop, and pig area. They are pretty safe there, especially guarded by the dogs all night. They also help protect the other birds. All are still accounted for and are healthy and LOUD! One thing is for sure... Nothing will enter our yard without the warning sirens going off.
The turkey population here at the homestead dropped by almost half right before Thanksgiving. A pair of black babies and a Bourbon hen found new homes. One turkey was sold for Thanksgiving dinner to a wonderful native american lady and her family who wanted to thank the spirit of the turkey before humanly processing it. Three others were processed here at the Homestead for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They were wonderful! We are blessed. We now have 6 turkeys. A Blue Slate trio (Yellow, Tallow, and Sari) and a Bourbon Red trio (Franklin, Tabby, and Terra). A new Bourbon tom, named Franklin, has joined the main flock. He is very curious (even by turkey standards), has to be in the middle of everything, and basically resembles a rambunctious teenage boy in every way. He is sweet and we are enjoying him. I am especially enjoying that I am not moving hoop tractors everyday anymore! I will soon forget how much work it was. I am already anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first turkey eggs of the year.
The tractors have been retired for the year but I expect to get them back out soon. Yes... despite being exhausted from working such long hours (tax season) and being sick lately, I have again been struck by chick fever! The incubator has been put back into action and is currently filled with two dozen Speckled Sussex chicken eggs. I have had roos of this breed in the past and loved them so I bought hatching eggs from a friend of mine. Unfortunately, the day after they were set the temperature here dropped and so did the incubator temperature without heat on in the house. It wasn't a huge drop. Just to 95F or so, and I don't think it was for very long but it was severe enough to have potentially killed the embryos. I am anxiously awaiting candling day!
The reason for the breed switch is because we no longer have most of our Buff Orpingtons. Our puppy, Luna, managed to take out all but 3 hens, including our head rooster, Jack. She is such a super sweet girl but she just couldn't manage to keep from playing with the chickens... to death. No harm appeared to be meant, but regardless, she was no longer able to be trusted with chickens. She was tied to a run line during the day and let loose at night to get her energy out for a while, but she soon learned how to free herself from the chain. She has since had to be rehomed. I really hate that, but living her life tied up was not fair to her and putting the lives of my birds in danger constantly wasn't fair to them. We sorely miss Luna, as well as Jack and his girls.
The other chickens are doing well, although not laying well at all. I think that some of them must be laying somewhere else but I have yet to find where. We are still way over our ratio of roos but I just don't know what to do with the 3 silkie roosters that we ended up with. The other rooster, Red, is one of the little ones I hatched out in the soup pot. He is so big, goofy, and sweet, that he has just managed to stick around so far. We shall see what happens later I guess. Hopefully the remaining hens will begin laying better soon.
Our pigs are no longer with us, but are rather, in my in-laws' deep freezers down the road along with a cow they had processed at the same time. One was processed right before Thanksgiving and the other two went to the butchers in early January. I had planned on processing them myself but my father in-law managed to convince me otherwise. The butcher shop is a very small family business and does a good job in a humane way. The pork is AMAZING! I never want to eat store bought pork again! I guess happy animals really do make much better finished products. I wasn't sure I could part with the pigs in the end and even though I was ready for a break, tears were shed when they left us. By me, at least. They didn't seem to care, being more interested in the feed and fresh eggs in the back of the trailer we used to haul them. It was made much easier by the sweet cutie baby pigs turning into giant monster pigs that tried to knock me over and bite my legs every time I got near them and were FOREVER ripping the hose off their waterer and flooding the pasture. I couldn't even get on their side of the fence most of the time without them running toward me full speed and threatening bodily harm. Especially when there was food involved. They fought with each other and anyone close to them was likely to get hurt. I know that most of the time they didn't mean to be mean, but those were some really big pigs and it wouldn't take much to hurt someone! I loved having pigs but pigs that size can be dangerous and I was not-so-secretly ready for them to go. I do look forward to having them again, though. We are already planning to get new babies in April, so we have them when the garden is in full production and canning is producing a lot of waste.
Here's to a brand new year! I hope it is as magical and blessed as the last! Things are not always sunshine and roses on a farmstead but it is an amazing life full of blessings, all the same. I'm looking forward to another beautiful year on Sunflower Hill!
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