New breeding Stock

 We are getting new rabbit breeding stock this spring to add to our color and bloodlines.  This is a beautiful Mini Rex doe.  She will be a new brood doe and a great add of color.

This doe is sisters with the other.  They are bred and I'll post pics of their babies.

One whopper of an egg

 The egg on the right is an extra large White Leghorn egg.  The one on the left is a super jumbo egg that I collected yesterday.

I have a fairly big hand and this egg more than filled it.  It is as big as a goose egg.  I bet this 3 1/2 lb White Leghorn will be walking funny for a week.

No more rain, for now

It's finally drying out here in central WV.  We were getting rain every day and sometimes inches a day.  The garden turned into a weed infested swamp.  I'm going to try and salvage something and try to replant some that has a short growing season. 

The lawn is growing good; too good.  I threw an universal joint in my tractors mowing deck and that's going to let the yard get extremely high.  My whole summer has consisted of watching it rain and mowing grass.  Well we've had  5 out of 6 days dry and I'm enjoying it.  Time to get some things done.

Caught the chicken killer!

 This is the rascal that killed five of my young Rhode Island Red pullets.  He will kill no more. 

 A few pictures of our newest mini rex babies.

What I've Been Up To

I've been building my wife the master bedroom she has been wanting. She wanted a walk in closet but I got her to agree to a built-in 12 footer. That means 4 feet for me and 8 feet for her.

She wanted a lot of natural light and I got a steal on these 5x5 windows. This one is going to be at the head of our bed. With the window open at night it will almost be like sleeping outside.

These are the other two windows facing the morning sun. She wanted a bright room and she got it. These two windows are also 5x5 each. We have 3 5x5 windows in a 16x16 bedroom.

There on the right is the door to our new bedroom. We were going to use this room here for a walk-in closet but decided to make a small room and add another exit door.

This is the new window in the living room. We wanted more natural light; so when we built this on we added a 3 and a half ft by 8 and a half ft window. We love all the light that comes in now. We also have a great view of the front yard.

It takes a lot of time and money to build nowadays. I've had the time and then the money, but they've just never came together until this past year. We have paid as we went and when it's completely done we can sit down and enjoy it without the worry of paying for it.

I have realized one thing about myself in this whole process and that is I hate muddin' drywall. I don't have the patience to mud; let it dry: sand; and repeat until it's right. I wish I would have hired this one out.

My wife's hobby

It all started back in January 2011. We purchased a mini rex buck and doe. We are now the proud owners an even dozen. These are the latest additions. A beautiful mini rex doe.

Another mini rex doe.

This is one of our holland lop bucks. We currently have three.

Another picture of the first doe. I'll post more later. I really enjoy them as well.

Fall is here

We're trying to finish up too many projects this fall. We built a new addition this summer and it needs a little finishing work. The new wood shed is still a just a bunch of posts in the ground with two by six's screwed to them. The weather is cooling down and winter is just around the counter. I hope I didn't bite off more than I can chew.

Rain and wind, will it ever end

The rain just keeps on coming. I just hope we get some this summer. The ground is so saturated that it can't absorb any more so we have water setting in every low spot on the farm. What doesn't make a small pond runs off and erodes everything.

And we couldn't have rain around here without wind. It blew my bird feeder behind the house 30 feet over the hill. The birds had already cleaned it out though. They didn't know to go to the post where the bird feeder was or where the bird feeder is now. I had birds in both places looking for food.

Here comes the rain. These are the clouds that produced the first picture. It looks dark and ominous, but it was just extremely hard rain. I've caught myself chanting " rain, rain go away, come again another day". I'm so aggravated that I'm chanting a kids song. Yeah, I'm aggravated; no potatoes in the ground, I can't get my old sheds cleaned up, I need to do some brush cutting and so many other things. It's all piling up. If I'm at work it's sunny, if I'm home it's raining. I just can't win for losing.

First morels of the season

I only found six little ones, but that's a start. My father found six yesterday evening. I'm hoping that I'll find a bunch more. I love eating these tasty little gifts from God. They are so good rolled in flour and fried in butter until golden brown. I just wish I had more. I saw a glow coming through the window the other evening. This strange reddish tinted glow. So I took the camera out and snapped a couple of photos of it. I love sunsets as you can tell by my header pictures.

Tryin to get things done.

This is my rainwater tank, I've yet to install it. It will help out with the animal watering and watering the garden. It's a 1,000 gallon tank. It should help out if the summer gets dry. It shows no sign of being dry lately with all the rain, but just like every year it will turn dry about late June or July and I'll be hauling water again. Well maybe not this year.

I've been cleaning a few fence rows lately. These fences need repair before we can get some cattle, but before we can repair them we have to clean them out and they are a mess with all the multa-flora rose around here. I still need to clean up the pond bank and the road banks and many other places. I have a bunch of brush to cut and I want to cut it before it greens up good. Now I don't have to worry about snakes and bees. So I want to get it done now.

Random Pictures

A pretty iris.

Some yummy chicken.

Dylan after feeding the beagles; Lucas and Blue.

Lucas and his guinea pal. The guinea posed for the picture, but Lucas just kept eating.

Cleaning Up Two Old Sheds

I've been cleaning up these old sheds for a month now. I work on it every spare minute I get. It was and is a mess. My grandfather used to stack square bales of hay in them.

And over the years the posts have rotted and it has fallen over making an even bigger mess. I took the tin off of it a couple years ago before it fell over or I would have been a major mess now. I want it cleaned up by the middle of April; so I've got a lot of work to do.

I love poultry, but not the prices

There's nothing more exciting to me than going to the chicken house and finding eggs. It's like treasure hunting. I think that it may be the only thing that excites me as much now as it did when I was a kid. I just love checking all the nests and finding the prizes that the hens left me. They gave me five today and usually anywhere from five to seven a day and I only have seven hens.

Here are my egg makers. I caught this rooster in full crow. Everytime I open the door both roosters start crowing and don't stop until I shut the door. It's extremely loud in this small chicken house. I love those roosters anyway; they are so docile and well mannered. They are Blue Laced Red Wyandottes. They don't eat that much feed and they seem to lay very well. I would recommend them to anyone and they are great for kids. My youngest son is afraid of chickens because of a rowdy Rhode Island Red rooster a couple years back and he was afraid of these at first, but now he goes right in and gets the eggs right among the chickens. They really are great birds.

I am looking to purchase some goslings or geese and I cannot believe the price of goslings. In every magazine and pamplet I look at they are anywhere from $8.00 to $23.00 a piece. To me that's high way robbery. The $8.00 ones cost an arm and a leg to ship; so if the price don't get you the shipping and the "other fees" will.

Does anyone know of any hatcheries out there with reasonable prices and shipping on goslings? If you do I'd appreciate any information you can give me.

A few random pictures

The story behind the guinea/beagle

It all began when something ate my guineas; one by one until all I had left was one lonesome guinea. It just ran around here late last summer squawking around for a few weeks and then I started seeing it trying to follow our beagles around. Then I saw the beagles sunning themselves one day and the guinea really close by and a few days later the beagles were sunning themselves again and the guinea made herself a dirt bath really close to them and was sunning herself too. Then deer season came and we had to tie our beagles up to keep someone from shooting them. The guinea stayed close to Lucas's house all the time. She just left his house to eat and roost. Then I saw her in his doghouse one day and he was okay with it. Then a week or so later I was outside one night and checked on the dogs and there she was in the house all snug and warm against Lucas as it poured down the snow. Both of the beagles have come to accept their new weird friend/sister. When we bought some chicken three months ago she wouldn't go around them and she's just now warming up to them. At least they are birds like her and not beagles. I'm going to buy her some friends as soon as I can get a pen built with a top on it. That is the story of how the guinea/beagle began.

I've been busy

I've had a lot on my plate here lately. We cleaned up the tree in the front yard and have been cleaning on the yard for about a week. I've been redoing the strawberry beds or weed beds with strawberries in them; you can pick either one. I've been tearing down some old barn sheds that fell over last summer and they are a mess. They had some old furniture and a few other things in there that I had to dig out and get to the dump. I still have a lot of cleaning to do on it. I'll post some pictures of it later.

We cleaned off the garden yesterday evening and burnt all the weeds and such. I know you're thinking that should have been done last fall and it should have been. I got a little lazy last fall and didn't clean everything up for winter and now I'm paying for it. I have so much brush cutting to do along fences and road banks before everything greens up and I'm running out of time. The tree we trimmed in the front yard is already trying to leaf out. I down think I'll ever catch up on all the work around here; between my day job and everything else I haven't had very much time to do anything around here. At least spring is here and I'll get some good weather to get some stuff done. I hope I get a few breaks in between rain showers to get something done.

And before I forget I mowed some grass a couple days ago. I love to mow grass, but if gas continues to go up I'll be looking for a few goats or sheep to mow for me. Well that's a rant I won't get into.

A little wood and new chicks

This is what's left of the tree that was trimmed the other day. We've cleaned up just about all of the brush and hauled most of the wood to the big pile.

These are our newest additions to the farm. Ameraucana chicks. I only purchased 10 of them and straight run at that; so I hope I have at least half hens and half roosters. With my luck I have 10 roosters.

They are right at home in the stock tank/chick brooder. I have found these are great for brooding a small amount of chicks. No drafts, and safe and it holds in heat very well.

Tree Trimming

I wasn't home yesterday evening to get a picture of the tree before it was sheared. This is it with one fork trimmed.

This was the tree trimmer cutting down the big fork. It doesn't look that big but I had to cut on both sides of the log to cut it into blocks and I have a sixteen inch bar on my 290 Stihl.

That is the log on the ground with some of the brush that was cut off.

This is the end result. A topless tree. I'm hoping it will bush out and be a good shade tree once again. It started dying from the top down and I wanted it topped out because it was over the power and phone lines. Not to mention the propane tank and part of the house. This is one more thing I can mark off my to-do-list.

Stocking up for next winter

First of all I wanted to say that our hearts and prayers go out to Japan and everyone affected by the earthquake and tsunami.I guess if you look at the bright side of big wet snows and strong winds; this is what you get. I cut 8 loads of wood along our road that have been broke down by the big wet snow at the end of January and what the wind blew down a couple weeks back.

With what I cut last fall and what I've cut this winter I have more than enough to do me all next winter. I have some trees around the meadow that need cut and that will add another 15 to 20 loads to the total. I guess I'm rich, but just in wood.

A few big buck pictures, mostly

I wasn't posting when deer season was in and I wanted to show everyone our kill this year and four years ago. This is the big eight point I killed in Dec. 07. I wanted to show it so I didn't feel so bad about this years kill coming up.

My mother killed this one on the first day of buck season this past year. It is a nice buck; not as big as my 07 buck though :)

This is the monster I killed the first day this year. What it lacked in rack size it more than made up for with great tasting meat. This is the first year I could get the boys to eat deer meat and they loved it. The bad part was that I only had one package left. My oldest son told me next year I need to kill more deer.