It feels like spring is never going to arrive! I got so desperate yesterday that I started some seeds inside. Just about a dozen Peaches and Cream corn on the cob and some Kentucky pole beans. They've been planted all of 24 hours and I still check every hour to see if anything is popping up yet. I'm just a bit over eager, don't you think!?
We do have tons of eggs. I've got about ten dozen packed in the farm fridge waiting for a new home. The girls are cranking out an average of seven per day right now. I'm going to start keeping track of what they produce daily on a calendar on the fridge so I can better estimate how many we'll have, how often.
I thought one of our White Rock girls was going broody. She attacked my daughter and I both when we went to collect eggs so I decided to let her give it a try. Didn't last. She decided that mommy stuff wasn't much fun and I found her eggs ice cold that afternoon. Back to the incubator we go with eggs this spring!
In the meantime, I'm setting up the brooder today. I'll get the heat lamp on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday evening we bring home some chickens and turkeys! For sure we'll have some White Rocks and some Black Jersey Giants and some turkeys. The plan is to cross the Jersey Giants for size with the White Rocks for their faster growth in an attempt to get a healthier meat bird that reaches a good size sooner. The Cornish cross chickens you buy at the grocery stores are just horrible. I call them Frankenchickens. The poor things never reach adulthood if they're not slaughtered because they have horrible cardiac problems and frequently break legs from trying to support their own weight. It's just horrible what humans have done to them. So I'm hoping I can get a strain of chicken that's still a good oven roaster size without the genetic problems inherent with those grocery store mutants.
I'm doing all of this as I'm planning to go back to work tomorrow. The original plan had been that I'd just stay a farm wife and try to make a run of this. Of course when I give up on the job idea, one is offered to me. One that's too good to pass up. So for the next few weeks during the training process I'll be taking care of anything here at 5 in the morning, then walking dogs and making breakfast and coffee and then hustling off to work, after which I'll be running to town to take care of errands. Sounds like fun, right?!
My hope is that by buckling down like we have that I can use this extra money for fencing and a small building so I can bring in some Nigerian Dwarf goats. I've been looking at every breed out there and I think those are the ones I prefer. The pygmys are beyond adorable but they just don't have the incredible coloring that the Nigerians do. So eventually, maybe early summer, we'll have fencing and a building in place and can bring some of the little goats home. We have donkeys given away like crazy here so we'll get a couple of those that are pastured with goats already and known to be goat friendly. They'll keep the coyotes and our mountain lion friend at bay!
Keep watching later in the summer too because I'm thinking maybe it's then that we'll be getting our ducks and guineas. With work starting I can't do it all now like I planned but I'm thinking I can spread it out over the spring and summer so that by late fall everyone is settled into their new schedules nicely and things can - hopefully - run nice and smoothly through our first winter with a full farm!
Check back soon and don't forget to keep an eye on our website: http://threecrazyladiesfarm.webs.com/
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