Peeps

We got our chicks on Thursday - 50 Cornish X Rock, 15 Barred Rock pullets and 10 Buff Orpington pullets. Our homemade brooders are made from bales of straw and ripe hay arranged in a hexagonal pattern. We made two because the hybrid broilers grow so much faster than the purebreds. We hope to have them outside within two weeks.
Here are some gratuitous cute kid and peep pics.


For the record, I'm predicting (based on udder development) that Bunny will be our first ewe to lamb. My guess is April 10th. We'll see.

Spring Clip 2007

Today the ewes got haircuts and pedicures. I was disappointed with the quantity of wool we got. It's mostly going to the compost pile. Here are the ewes - notice they're getting as far from me as they can within the confines of the fence.

We had a sort of multicultural St. Patrick's Day dinner after finishing the shearing. Leg of Icelandic lamb (homegrown of course) and cabbage rolls and tall glasses of real milk. And in celebration of the finished job, I'm drinking a bottle of Canadian lager.

Sunny Sunday Afternoon

I spent mine productively. Jennifer and Katie went to a ballet in Akron with Katie's Brownie troop while the boys and I worked. I would have liked to post pictures but the camera as with the girls.

First, we got out our LP burner and tanks and our syrup making gear and cleaned it up. Then we put out 8 taps in maple trees on our farm. When I left for work at 11:15 this morning, the first sap was boiling merrily away.

Next, we built a cold frame in the garden. It's made out of straw bales and old windows. This morning the chickens were intent upon destroying the straw bale sides so Jennifer will have to move their fence today to keep them off of it.

I also made a good start cleaning out one of the barns. Still a long way to go there. I have plans to add a second 4-foot sliding door in the side of the sheep pen and built a series of sorting pens outside it. Also in the works is constructing a couple more mobile hoop houses fro pastured poultry - more on that later.

OEFFA Conference Highlights

Wow. I was hoping for a good OEFFA conference but it exceeded even my hopeful expectations. The keynoters on both days were excellent and I learned a lot at the workshops. One of the best things, though, was just being there with so many like-minded people. I met neighbors who are doing some really cool things and we've got some tentative plans in the works to start up a local OEFFA chapter in the Morrow-Crawford-Richland county area of Ohio. I've already decided that next year I want the whole family to go.

I'll leave you with a quote from Weston A. Price Foundation president, Sally Fallon:

Totalitarian governments have recognized that the one enemy to their system is the prosperous, independent, yeoman farmer spread out over the whole country thinking independently who doesn't need anything from his government. That's a big challenge to totalitarian governments - how to get rid of all these people. In Russia they starved them, in Ethiopia and Cambodia they shot them and in the U.S. and Europe they just pass health laws.

She went on to say that the single largest reason that America farmers have ceased to be independent and prosperous is the law requiring mandatory pasteurization of milk. She announced then that the WAPF is in the process of setting up a legal defense association modeled after the Home School Legal Defense Association. Farmers, herd-share owners and consumers will be able to join this organization and will be provided with free legal defense when the government regulators come trying to shut them down. Look for more information on that around July 4th.