Been here, done this.... http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1150349/#new
The weather is really surly across most of the Homesteading country. Wouldn't you like to get your hands on the Ground Hog today?
February is the shortest month of the year yet it seems like the longest month! I have gotten a couple of small seed orders in so am dreaming of warmer days.
Cajun ~ I will be interested in following your square foot gardens. I am building a fairly small lasagna bed in a spot near the house. I get lots of cardboard in freight at work and have a friend that saves newpaper for me. I am adding compost, leaves, organic manure, charcoal and hoping this will be the magic blend. Our soil is poor at best ~ we'll see.
I wintersowed a couple types of maters that are supposed to be better suited to my heat/humidity and started some herbs on Monday. I opened an envelope with five packs of herb seeds yesterday and thought I was in heaven with the fragrance. It smelled like... summer !!!
On the February homestead with dreams of springtime...
MIL and FIL no power and a level 2, but he has a generator . So he can still do his oxygen. His neighbor walked out and broke his leg ?
why he was outside we don't know ? then his wife came out to help him and she konked her head. FIL called 911 its all he could do. He can't go outside
we still have power, level 3 road condition and we have internet. but we have awful strong winds ! 30MPH the tree's are swaying
chickens are good. knock on wood.
Lucy pee'd and pooped and made TIm slip and swirl .
take care and be safe !!
if all else fails i can drive my tractor :)
All's well, dodged the bullet here. My sympathies to those who didn't.
The high is supposed to be 20 degrees here today -- and this is Arizona!
So much for Global Warming.
Hey, it was pretty cold down here this morning also. We're in the foothills on the south side of the Catalina's had ice in the water buckets. The mountains had some snow on the caps.
As nice a yesterday was, I was hoping for another one today but it didn't happen. At daylight it was 50*. Then it started dropping and got down to 33* with a stiff, cold wind. It was as cold as a day old corpse out there. Put me in a surley mood. Global warming, my hind end. I could slap Al Gore with a good heart and a smile on my face. And I will kill that groundhog myself!! But seriously, I should not complain. So many people are having an awful time of it right now with all that treacherous weather. It's dangerous and I pray for them. We don't have any snow or rain at the moment and we have power. We are warm and well fed and we are counting our blessings.
We took the new pup in the truck with us when we went to feed today. He was shaking at first and I wondered if he thought he was going to get dropped off again. He did really good. He is a smart little guy and picks up things pretty quick. He figured out Ben can't stomp him if he stays outside the hot wire. He also stays out of reach of the goats and has not bothered the chickens. Galloway is so patient with him.
Most of my family lives up there where all the bad weather is going on, I feel realy bad for them(but they could have moved), ok, not so much. They did'nt feel that bad when we were getting backed down here. But, I hope they enjoy it when the wind is gone, very good sleding weather!
Cajun, what can you tell me about dairy goats? Trying to get set up here and we just keep running into brick walls! Could use some advice if you have any to share.
good morning
well we have sun.
here are some pics of the country side with all the storm
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-40-most-amazing-pictures-of-the-blizzaster-of?s=mobile
this storm is just insane !
Good grief! I've never seen anything like it! Stay home!
taynors, those pix are awesome! Stay safe, all you midwesterners!
well we are puzzled today.
We have a chicken coop out in the feild. I had a chicken in it. She was a nasty chicken hen and was very vicious always attacking me. Soooo out she goes in the back coop.
wellllllll... today i noticed our dog kennel was backed up to the door of the coop ??? as if someone put it there to barracade the coop door . ? well our coop is 1/.4 mile down from the road . You can't see it from the road .
Also there is no chicken in there ??? she could have been under the snow dead ? we sifted around a bit but found nothing .
Mystery isn't it ?
Also we have two racoons in our carport. They were out in the daylight ! ? and they didn't scramble when they saw us ???? sooo we set our trap with some tuna. Sure hope we get one. THey may be sick so its best if we take matters in our hands and let God's creatures not suffer and spread more disease. IT was so strange ? they just didn't move ? just sat there looking at us , they hid in the corner of the carport, behind a wood box . so we shall sit and wait .
it hit 78 in my GH ! wow that was great feeling . sure wish i had some tropicals in there to make it feel festive.
Those were some crazy pics! I'm sure glad I'm down here! Makes our cold wind seem like a warm breeze off the ocean,in Hawaii. Thank God for global warming, right. Could have been 10' of snow! Lol! Good luck and stay warm.
Around here raccoons seen in daylight are assumed to be rabid - be careful! Your chicken coop mystery is intriguiging . Keep us posted.
this is the 4th sick coon. It was a couple too together.
I m thinking we may have an epedemic in our woods and surrronding woods that connect to our property ? 4 sick coons in 18 months ?
I found a sick coon in the street right next to my mail box , 12 months ago. ? 'ish.
poor thing. i had no gun , nothing . i couldn't even get to my mail . I called every authority i could call. no one cared ? !!
but i told them " look this is right next to 3 drop off for school kids and a sick coon with kids getting off a school bus can be
dangerous " well maybe they finely took notice . FIL said if it wasn't gone by 3 pm he would come and kill it with a shovel or the tractor.
poor thing was just soo ill.
i sure hope the coons like tuna fish and the trap works.
thanks pork we are being very careful. got to love country living LOL
You might try fish and wild life, or game wardens.
Cours if it's that cold there, might be they are just half froze, just like us.
Those pics are wild! Why on earth would they leave their vehicles with the door open? And the person who left the dog in the snow to get coffee should have been tied out their instead of the dog.
Nothing going on around here to report. Missed the snow and ice, and it got up in the 40's the last couple of days.
Trying to talk myself out of the bright idea to get animals.
And Hubby came home for a couple of days before heading back to Utah. Said he wasn't ever going back, but the money was too good to pass up.
Do you think you might be in the market for some goats by the end of summer? I should have some weaned kids by then if all goes well. The boys are going to help me bottle feed them and gentle them this summer so they should be very easy to handle.
Our weather was great today.
Cajun, maybe about fall kids. What kind do you have? I'm thinking of getting 2-3 goats this spring, already bred if possible. It all depends on how much ambition (mixed in with a whole lot of can-I do-this?) I can muster up in regards to putting the electric fence up.
I have literally been reading blogs all day. Found a couple of gals in Eastern KY. One is close to Pikesville.
And....drum roll, please....I ran across Dolly Freed's blog, of the 1970's Possum Living How To Live Well With No Job and With (Almost) No Money fame. Her book was reprinted a couple of years ago.
http://possumliving.net/blog/
Been raining here off and on for a few hours.
That's pretty cool, Robin... I looked for a copy a few years back, before it was reprinted... everyone wanted a small fortune for one.
I'd have chickens AND 2-3 goats if I had some fencing. As poor and unemployed as this area is, no one will work for money... not that I will have much for fencing and a coop. I think I am still able-enough do the daily stuff for them, although I'll hate it in winter.
I have pygmy goats. Buy your goats from an individual with an established herd if you can and not from a sale barn. There is so much sickness at the sale barn. Coccidiosis kills goats quick. Are you getting them for milk? How much milk you want and what quality of milk will determine what breed of goat you want. What will you do with the extra kids? Electric wire works great for goats. They hate it. Bottom strand has to be 4" from the ground. How high you make the fence depends on the size goats you have.
Thanks for the blog link. I'll check it out. Pikeville is the closest bigger town to us.
Darius, have you looked into the hoop house coops for chickens. Sue has them. I want one too. Just have to convince DH it is his idea. I also want to use the deep litter method of bedding. Chickens are not too hard in winter if you plan well in placing your coop and get them well setup before it gets cold. Mine don't get any supplemental heat and they don't have houses. Just tarps to keep them dry and keep the wind off. I feed them well and make sure their roosting poles are made of wood and big enough so they cannot wrap their feet around them. They have done very well. Keeping the water unfrozen is the biggest pain. I pour a gallon of hot water on top of their bucket and that has worked fine. I had hoped to have my new permanent coop made before winter but DH got sick and that consumed us for a year. Hope we can get back on track.
Sue, I sure hope you can get those coons. 2 coons can decimate your flock in just a few nights.
What's the difference in pygmy goats and dwarfs? I looked at Dwarf Nigerians last summer. Loved them (but not the price)!
I actually have most of the materials for a coop that houses 2-3 small goats on one side and chickens on the other. Don't have (and cannot seem to buy) help to get the holes dug for the poles.
I use the fiberglass posts that you drive in the ground by stepping on a plastic part near the bottom. I get them at TSC for less than $3 each. They work well for my goats because I have pygmies. Makes it really easy to move the fence too and I use it for the horses.
I am not totally sure and I am across the room from my bookshelf. I am having awful back spasms right now and having trouble moving. I think the dwarfs were bred down from bigger goats but pygmies are a breed unto themselves. I could be wrong about that.
I wanted the pygmies for several reasons. I only wanted enough milk for ourselves. 2 goats will give plenty for our needs. The pygmy's milk is higher in sugar so tastes closer to cows milk. It is also the highest in butterfat of all the goats milk and I want to make butter. Plus it takes much less to maintain a pygmy. They only eat a cup of goat ration a day and a flake of grass hay between them and stay mud fat. I can also have shorter fences and being smaller they are easier for me to handle by myself.
I was blessed in that I had my goats given to me at no charge. I got 3 but last week I traded the older doe for some hay. Around here right now you can get a nice pygmy doe for $50. That was the value I got in trade for mine.
Spent most of the morning folding old newspapers into pots for seedlings - got the newspapers from the SIL so the price was right (free but I had to make her coffee). Then a quick store run for needed staples - beer, sugar, trash bags, more beer - I buy sugar in the five lb. bag then put it into the two plastic four lb containers I have kept. I started to through out the empty bag, then realized that it was the kind of pot I was making with the newspapers, it went into the pile of pots instead.
Where are you planning to plant, since the neighboring yard/property sold?
Not even sure - but my seed is old - leftover from last year when the heart attack interrupted my plans so I will start it and what comes up will be planted or given away. Cannot let it go to waste. It is cold here now.
its snowing again here today... this is getting old
out in GH its 45 so i m organzing it and pruning stuff, repotting some things ect...
got to get ready to plant sees in there.
Dh is working on the other shelf.
not much else going on here
we are thinkin goats too , sure glad to know about the dwarf size. may look into that.
They are as entertaining as chickens and lots easier to milk. LOL
Been sitting on pins and needles for 2 days while Al was on the road. I was so afraid he'd have problems with all that snow in the midwest. The trip went fine till he hit Colorado and it wasn't the recent snow that was the problem. It was the near bizzaed conditions from Denver to Vale (Vail?). He arrived safe, but the town he is going to be staying in was experiencing a power outage. Power is now back on, and he and the roommate are moving into their apartment.
Darius, hope you are feeling better.
Cajun, I'll dmail you tomorrow.
Hope everyone is doing well.
So glad Al made is safely. That must be a really tiring ride. Was he alone?
What a surprise to find my post actually posted last night! Me and laptop weren't getting along last night.
It's normally a 23 hour trip, but there was a 50 mile stretch that took him 4 hours due to blowing snow. He was worn out when he got there, but he's got today to rest and semi-recuperate. And yes, he was alone most of the trip. The rest of time he had me in his ear. Thank Heavens for BlueTooth! LOL
Only 30 when I got up this morning, but it's bright and sunny and up to 47 today. WhooHoo! About time to go out and access the garden. Think I may even cover one of the tunnels today.
I picked up 7 eggs today but that's not too impressive when you consider I have 26 hens. I hope they get it in gear soon so I can sell eggs. I gave 2 dozen away at church tonight. I told them I am going to start selling them in Spring and I am trying to get them addicted now. LOL
I did get the one tunnel covered today, and then sat and sized up the garden, wondering where to start. It's looking pretty pathetic and overwhelming at the moment. It's too muddy to actually get in there right now, but it may not be as bad as it looks. I left the straw mulch in place on the rows last fall, and it's kind of blown around a bit...well, actually a lot. I'm not sure whether I should rake it back up onto the rows and off the paths, or totally remove it and put down fresh straw this year.