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2013 Baby Chicks – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by Theresa Gould on May 8, 2013
in Animals, Business, Wordless Wednesday

Our wee farm is growing….again! We got some baby Freedom Rangers about four weeks ago and turkey poults two weeks ago…..

This is the first time we are raising meat birds other than turkeys. The Freedom Rangers will be meat for customers and our family. This may be the only batch we do this year. We’ll have to see how they taste and how they grow. They are a slower growing breed compared to the ever popular white broiler we find in the meat section of grocery stores.

We were gifted with a surprise package of Midget White turkeys. We had not ordered our turkeys and then we get a call from the Post Office saying we have some baby birds. After listening to messages we discovered the hatchery we bought from last year had a major system error and sent out last year’s orders by mistake! Since it was their error there was no charge. A blessing in disguise, I guess, since we had not yet decided what we were going to do about turkeys this year.

Our breeding pair of Midget White turkeys, which we kept from last year’s batch, are doing well. Brownie, the hen, has been laying an egg a day. A neighbor actually just dropped by and picked up 13 of her eggs to see if he could hatch them out in an incubator. He’ll be picking up another 7-10 next week. We’ll see how that goes. Brownie has actually been sitting on her eggs, as well as some chicken eggs, for the past three days. It’s the broodiest we’ve seen her so here’s to hoping she hatches out some baby chicks on her own. Now that would cause some excitement around our little farm!

Happy Wordless Wednesday! (or not so wordless )

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Milking and Making Butter- Wordless Wednesday

Posted by Theresa Gould on April 24, 2013
in All Natural Products, Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Wordless Wednesday

This is our second oldest daughter milking. She’s our chief milker at the moment until we train the next one in line to milk. I have helped with milking but I think my nervousness unsettled Eclipse because she seemed jittery and moved a lot. Then again maybe I’m being paranoid and she was just antsy in her new home since I haven’t milked since the first week. Eclipse does seem to do better for our daughter, whom the cow loves I might add! Over the weekend, Eclipse watched the children go from one end of the property, down the tree line to the other end and mooed in their direction after our daughter went over with her younger siblings. Then when our daughter came back across the field, Eclipse followed her again by walking the fence line to greet her – if that isn’t affection, I don’t know what is!

Since Eclipse has been on pasture her cream (and milk) has been slowly increasing. Today the girls got 6 cups of cream from two gallons of milk and made two pounds of butter! The photos below are not all of the same day. The milk bottles are actually some of our very first. The butter photos are from today. All they do is put the cream in a pint or quart sized jar and shake it until it forms butter. The girls like to shake it until it forms a ball, which eliminates the need to shape the butter by hand! Pretty smart, eh?

Click on the image to make it larger and brighter.

It’s a fun milking and making butter! My husband is very happy not to have to stop for milk after work!

Happy not-so-Wordless Wednesday!

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Herdshare Cow – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by Theresa Gould on April 10, 2013
in Animals, Community Issues, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats

Not so Wordless this week…ha!

Our family drinks and goes through a lot of milk in a week so we’ve been looking at the possibility of getting a herdshare cow (the kids will own a portion of her milk “shares” and we’ll sell “cow or milk shares”, which is where other people desiring raw milk will buy shares of her, that is if IL doesn’t change their raw milk laws). We have been researching dairy cows or rather our daughter has been, and even went to visit a Guernsey dairy farm in Wisconsin, nearly two hours away, in November. The economical benefits to owning our own cow would allow us to supply our family with milk for 8-10 months out of the year, plus all the other dairy products we enjoy – butter, yogurt, ice cream and cheese, as well as providing others with fresh milk too.

Then a couple of weeks ago while my mom was here we came across a Craigslist ad for a Guernsey for sale locally. It was a person we bought some of our bookcases from just after we moved into this house. The reasons we like this cow is she’s local so less travel time, less stress on the cow. The owner is raising the cow the way we want to, which is a huge factor to us wanting her. The cow was also affectionate to our daughter the first time she went in her pen, which resonated with us…so….we bought her!

Pictured at her old home.

Eclipse is a 5.5 year old Guernsey. She has given birth to three calves, the third one was born last year. Even though it’s been a year since her last birth she is still giving a couple of gallons of milk per day. We are really impressed, but we are newbies so it doesn’t take much to impress us She is being fed pasture, hay and fodder (sprouted grain). We *think* the fodder is what is helping her give milk for so long between calves. Either that or she’s just a faithful milker! Here’s to hoping she likes us as well as she did her former owner.

The children are hoping her first calf with us is a heifer (female) so they can buy back the herdshares and make Eclipse our family cow. If she has a bull calf, then he’ll be processed for beef and shared among all the shareholders. We hope to get Eclipse bred this spring or summer, Lord willing. First we have to figure out when she cycles, which can be hard to determine when there’s only one cow. Or so we’ve been told.

While I grew up surrounded by cows, I have very little experience taking care of them, especially a dairy cow. Growing up I watched them being milked and took their yummy milk from the cooler of our neighbors milk parlor, but not once did I take care of one or milk one. I took care of my pastor’s beef cow when he and his family went away a couple of times, that’s my extent of caring for a cow. Other than that my experience is limited to visits to neighbors farms in my hometown in Nova Scotia, having the cows lick my rubber boots and runny a muck through their pastures as a child.

We are excited but a little apprehensive, as cows require a set routine and it’s a whole new animal to acclimate to our farm. So do you have any experience with cows?

Stay tuned to more adventures of milking a cow, making butter and even fencing….from our fledgling little farm….

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Tidy Cats Pure Nature

Posted by Theresa Gould on February 18, 2013
in All Natural Products, Animals, Reviews

We are always on the look out for new products to try, especially products that are all natural (REALLY all natural and not just hiding ingredients under that label). When we heard about Tidy Cats Pure Nature kitty litter I knew it was something we had to try.

Tidy Cats Pure Nature is 99.9% natural. It’s ” made with corn cob by-product sourced from seed corn production, and cedar and pine recycled from construction, furniture, and window manufacturing whenever available.” We like that about this product, how it’s made out of recycled material.

All four of our cats liked the Tidy Cats Pure Nature. They seemed to stake it out and sniff around to check it out. It smells good, well as far as kitty litter goes, right? I am truly not sure what else to say about cat litter but it works and our cats like it so if they are happy, we are happy.

To end this review, there’s a cute video below that is a comical take on Michael Bolton as he runs away from a concert and runs into Tidy Cats’ fictional folk group Cedar, Pine and Corn, who help him “get back to nature”.

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Animal Control Visit….Again

Posted by Theresa Gould on January 31, 2013
in Animals

This occurred and was written yesterday.

I was right. Remember the other day I told you about our Animal Control visit, here and here? Animal Control was out again today. The officer was very nice and she said they get at least a call a week about us – or should I say the dog and the chickens. But because she knows there’s nothing going on she doesn’t come out. She’s the same one that came out last June and who drives by our house when she visits her horse at the barn she boards it at. This time she did have to come to check it out because someone reported the dog having duct tape on his paws???

He’s sad that Animal Control came again and decided to use his house so people would see that he does indeed fit in it! And look the children put more hay in his house when they moved it and some of it actually stayed in!

Here’s the real story. Last week Padfoot broke his plastic covered steel cable that we keep him tied on, so we let him go loose for a while. That was the same day he killed a chicken. When I went to tie him up after his naughtiness the steel was showing through where it broke, it was like steel wool and sharp. I cut my fingers on it trying to re-tie it and knew if we kept the cable like it was it would cut Padfoot too. So because I was needed in the house I sent my daughter out to cover the steel part with duct tape so he wouldn’t get cut. There was no duct tape on his paws. That’s the story I told her too.

He’s wondering when people will start minding their own business and just let us live life together without these cold interruptions.

Today she also took a photo of his paws – duct tape free mind you – and his house, as people driving by don’t think his house is big enough for him and she said it is. We are all clear there. Whew. She wanted proof to take back that she did indeed check things out. Hopefully she’ll put them in our file so they can refer back to it, especially in case any new Animal control officers come on board.

Thankfully Animal Control realizes we live on a busy road and also realize there’s nothing going on here that shouldn’t be, but still it’s a waste of their time and ours for them to have to keep checking us out when I am sure there are animals out there truly neglected, starving and being treated cruelly who need their time and help.

So how has your week been? Any interesting knocks on your door lately?

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Dear Neighbors

Posted by Theresa Gould on January 29, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

I think I have mentioned that we live on a busy rural road about four miles out of town, but the North side high school is basically in our backyard only a few fields over. I also believe I mentioned the fact that we have had Animal Control come out to visit us twice. Or maybe I neglected to share the last visit. The first visit was last June about our chickens. The last visit came due to an anonymous call to Animal Control saying our dog was neglected. Cough….eh-hem….there are eight children who live here and love Padfoot, how on earth could he possibly be neglected? Just because he’s tied by a roadside where everybody and their mother can see him?

The result of that visit ended in the Animal Control officer saying he could see our dog wasn’t neglected and that Padfoot was happy, but if we wanted to keep him outside… fix his house. We have a very old dog house for him that was given to us by our landlords and we are temporarily using it until Padfoot finishes growing. He knocked out the back wall by going through his house like a tunnel – silly dog! Robert finally braced it up against an old silo so the dog couldn’t do that anymore, so that worked.

The officer also told us to dig a hole and put a five gallon bucket of water in there so he had access to water 24/7. We had only been using his water dish which he frequently played with, emptied and tossed around. We knew that the bucket in the hole was not going to work as Padfoot is very strong. He is part Newfie and they are bred to be working, water rescue dogs. Think pulling people out of the water to save them from drowning and hypothermia. He can pull three of our older children on a cart! We were right, within a day he’d lifted that five gallon bucket, water and all, emptied it and was playing with that around the yard. We have a goofball of a dog!

Then one day a friend was over helping us see what needed to be done around the pasture and barn to make it horse-ready, as we are trying to bring Blaze our horse “home” to save on paying for board. She suggested using a bungee cord to hold the the bucket to the fence post to prevent him from spilling it or playing with the bucket. It worked!

The Animal Control officer never did come back within the ten days to make sure we complied to his requests, but perhaps he did a drive by to save on disturbing us. Thinking positive thoughts….

Icing on the cake was a few weeks ago a lady stopping by asking if she could adopt our dog because she never sees anyone outside with him.

Us: Cough…eh-hem…we are always outside, don’t you see people outside?

Her: Oh yes, but never with the dog.

Us: Well, every time someone goes out to feed or check on the chickens we stop and pet him. And he’s tied because our children would be devastated if he got run over by a car and our chickens need to be protected He’s killed two chickens this month when he’s been let loose to run . Now granted it may only be 5-10 minutes sometimes but over the course of day with all of us stopping and petting him, throwing his ball, rubbing his belly…that adds up to be a lot of time.

That conversation ended in the lady being close to tears because she felt so bad for suggesting adoption when we so clearly loved and truly did take care of our dog. I actually gave her a hug…my children couldn’t believe I hugged someone who wanted to take their dog away! Needless to say they were not feeling so solicitous.

The last straw was over the weekend a farmer, who has farmed for 40 years, stopped by to tell us to get our dog in the house. My husband thankfully was home to deal with this particular neighbor. My husband told him Padfoot was a Newfie. The farmer said, “I know what kind of dog he is….blah…blah…blah….” My husband also told the farmer that he cannot make the dog go in his dog house.

Do you dear readers know anything about Newfoundland dogs? As I said they are bred to work, to do water rescues, to go in cold water…this dog has three layers of water protective coat – meaning it is water resistant and does not penetrate his skin – and Newfies have extra padded paws too. Padfoot was born on a farm. He’s been outside since birth. The only time his previous owners brought him inside was to potty train him for his next home. Padfoot plays out in the rain, even when he has access to his dog house. He loves water and snow for that matter! My husband finds Padfoot sitting on top of his dog house ALL THE TIME. Padfoot sleeps out in the cold, even though he has access to his dog house. My husband went out the other morning and Padfoot had frost on head and raindrops frozen on the ends of his fur. Was he shivering? NO. Was he unhappy? NO. He was happy and jumping all over the place to greet his master, my husband, and get his tummy rubbed. That dog loves Robert more than all of us put together and has chosen him as his master. Good thing the feelings are mutual or it could be very annoying! lol!

When this farmer found out we could not have animals in our house, per our landlords request, he said, “Well at least put some hay on the ground in his dog house. You don’t want Animal Control coming around and ticketing you, do you?” Ah-ha! I think we know who’s called Animal Control….

We did what the farmer said to appease him. My husband said before we even put the hay in the house that Padfoot was going to have it strewn all over the yard….guess what Padfoot did within minutes of the hay being placed in his house? He threw it all over the place! Goof. Ball. Dog. But HAPPY.

Dear Neighbors,

We love our animals. We honestly do take care of them and if you were driving by every waking minute of the day you would be able to see that for yourself, rather than relying on random minutes when you are zipping by at 50 mph. So please stop meddling and find someone who is truly neglecting and abusing their animals to pick on for we think you have far too much time on your hands and need someone else to terrorize with your concerns. And by the way, we are getting very familiar with Animal Control. We hope they come to know us so well that they start to ignore anonymous calls about our animals and us, knowing our location puts us in a fish bowl for all to see or think they can see all but really don’t. You really know nothing at all about us or our animals. For if you did, you would see that our animals are very happy where they are and are joyful when they see us coming.

Oh the joys of living in the country…where no one minds their own business like they do in the suburbs!

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Farm Expansion

Posted by Theresa Gould on January 7, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

What does 4.5 acres plus 12.2 acres equal? Yes 16.7 acres but it also means farm expansion. When we initially moved in 16 months ago we rented the house and about 4.5 acres with it. This included the property containing the house and barn plus an extra pasture on the west side of the barn and two smaller fields on the east side of the barn/north side of the house.

Initially, our landlords (four sisters) were against us using the barn and having large animals. After raising our small flock of chickens and turkeys we realized that if we wanted to grow our farm we’d need additional space and appealed to them late summer/early fall to reconsider, especially since we were willing to purchase farm insurance.

The sisters agreed and we moved forward to rent the additional land. Now there’s a ton of work to do and plans for a farm expansion!

Our priorities are:

Clean and organize barn.
Build a couple of stalls.
Bring our horse Blaze home to save on board.
Have a small vegetable CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture).
Put up our low-cost greenhouse.
Fix our fence line.
Get a family cow.
Plant more pasture.
Buy our 2013 turkeys.

Other possibilities include:

Raising broilers (meat chickens).
Raise a couple of hogs. While we do not eat much pork, having a year supply of bacon sounds really good to us. Plus hogs are fun to observe.
Raise a beef cow or two for our family’s meat.

We have been busy marketing our farm. We got our egg license in December. Our eggs can be found at a local health food store and at a local monthly Green Market, but we have so much more marketing to do for our CSA and any other products we decide to raise. We do have over 60 people on our e-list and have 20 likes on Facebook. We are excited about the possibilities yet it’s with trepidation that we move forward. After all farming isn’t exactly a profession most people are getting into these days and is even considered career roadkill.

Let’s just say this is another huge step of faith on our part.

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Pet Movies & Diary of a Wimpy Kid Giveaway

Posted by Theresa Gould on December 14, 2012
in Animals, Contests, DVDs & CDs, Giveaways, Movies

Everybody’s favorite wimp, Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon), is back for three times the fun in the latest film based on the super-popular book series! When Greg’s dad (Steve Zahn) threatens to send him to military school if he doesn’t stay out of trouble, Greg finds all-new ways to land himself in the doghouse! For starters, Greg’s in over his head when he pretends to work at the swanky country club where Rowley’s family has a membership. Things don’t go much better on a father-son camping trip with the Wilderness Explorers, and then there’s the Heffley’s new dog, Sweetie, who fetches even more trouble for Greg in this hilarious family film!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days will be available for sale on Monday, December 18.

Most Mischievous Movie Pets

Sweetie is lovable but, at times, completely devious! In addition to Sweetie, here are some more of the most mischievous movie pets including everyone’s favorite lasagna lover, Garfield and canine icon, Marmaduke.

Beethoven

Most people don’t know that in real life, Beethoven’s real name is Chris. He was owned and trained by Karl Lewis Miller who also trained animals for Cujo, K-9, Babe, and many others infamous animal flicks.

Garfield

From 1982 to 1991, twelve primetime Garfield cartoon specials and one hour-long primetime documentary celebrating the character’s 10th anniversary were aired but the first film about the clever feline created in 1978, did not come out until 2004.

Marley, Marley & Me

Because the film covers 14 years in the life of Marley, 22 different Yellow Labradors played the part alongside Owen Wilson and Jennifer Anniston, who continuously try to maintain their marriage and family despite Marley’s opposing ambitions.

Marmaduke

Owen Wilson lent his voice to the oversized-but-loveable pooch who moves to a new neighborhood with his family, where he proceeds to – accidentally – wreak havoc.

Hooch, Turner and Hooch

Before he was a two-time Oscar winner and beloved film icon, Tom Hanks was a detective trying to solve crime, while guarding his star witness, a large and slobbery Dogue de Bordeaux named Hooch.

Beast, AKA Hercules, The Sandlot

Hercules, known to the neighborhood kids as “the beast,” is an English Mastiff with a penchant for hoarding lost baseballs. After five failed rescue attempts for one very special ball, it turns out all the kids had to do was ask the owner, and suffer the affectionate slobbering of a very big dog.

Sweetie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days

When Sweetie the Labradoodle first comes to the Heffley house, Greg wants to give him a legitimate name like ‘Ripjaw’ or ‘Shredder’ but Susan thinks them too violent and opts for something more her taste.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Review

We thought Diary of a Wimpy Kid was really funny. The facial expressions of the actors are hilarious. Of course parental guidance is strongly suggested as DOWK is usually full of rude humor. As much as we try to curb rude behavior at home it still comes out and movies with rude humor usually only encourage our kids to do it more, unfortunately. I don’t know about yours. I started watched DOWK with my husband but because of the laughter heard from our bedroom where we were watching it, most of children ended up on the bed with us about midway through! We did end up shooing them out before it ended either due to their noise (our Dell laptop has awful sound )

For more conservative readers, there are pool scenes with bikinis and some boy/girl conversation, just so you are forewarned.

The underlying story between Greg and his dad is sure to resonate among many families.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Giveaway

If you are a movie loving reader or just haven’t seen this movie we are giving away 2 copies of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days! Enter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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National Geographic Super Reader Kit

Posted by Theresa Gould on December 3, 2012
in Animals, Books, Education

We love books here at our house and it has been an educational goal to instill a love of reading and learning in our children. After all if they develop a love of books they can learn almost anything on their own simply by reading. We have a reading program we use in our homeschool that has been effective with our girls but not so much our boys so we’ve been supplementing their reading with other books they want to read.

A few of weeks ago when we received a package containing the National Geographic Super Reader Kit our children sat down right away to read the four books it contained! They love animals and learning more about them. We also have a couple of children who are weather watchers, like their daddy, and they liked the weather stories told in the Wacky But True book.

We didn’t agree with the evolutionary slant of some of the books, but thankfully our children know what we/they believe. That would be the only reason we would choose not to use or recommend it to other Christians. We’d at least give an advance warning of it containing evolution.

Here are a few of the children’s thoughts about the books in the National Geographic Super Reader Kit:

Castle Book

My 13 year old daughter said she learned stuff in the castle book that she didn’t know before. That’s huge as she is a voracious reader and has read many castle/medieval books.

Shark Book

An interesting book about sharks, which included Bethany’s shark attack was featured in the movie “Soul Surfer”. The children really liked this book.

Animal Stories Book

This book is about bad behavior in animals. One dog almost set the house on fire and died. Some of the bad behavior turned out to be good, like a naughty little orangutang who was kind of like Curious George and got into things, but actually saved a man’s life.

Wacky/Crazy But True…Book

The children thought this book was awesome. Full of fun, wacky/crazy but true facts and snippets about science, history, geography etc.

Overall our children really did enjoy the content of the books, we really didn’t use the extras because as I said they sat down right away to read the books and there was no need to give them motivators of stickers or book marks. Not to say it wasn’t cute or a great idea, our children just already love to read, but I can see how it may be motivating to those who are struggling with reading.

You may Find National Geographic online at:
kids.nationalgeographic.com/superreader
kids.nationalgeographic.com
Facebook.com/NatGeoBooks
Twitter.com/NGKidsBks

Thumbs up from us!

Three of you have the opportunity to win a kit of your own. Just fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received this product for free from the sponsor of the Moms MeetSM program, May Media Group LLC, who received it directly from the manufacturer, National Geographic. As a Moms MeetSM blogger, I agreed to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media Group LLC or the manufacturer of the product.

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Vamping Up Egg Production

Posted by Theresa Gould on December 3, 2012
in Animals, Business, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

Jr. vamping up egg production by helping collect eggs.

It’s been nearly six weeks since our hens started laying. I can’t tell you how much we have been enjoying our farm fresh egglicious treats! Our homemade waffles, pancakes and baked goods are so much more light and fluffy. It’s amazing. And the girls have been saying they notice a difference in how the eggs cook as well.

Our original flock of hens.

I was slightly ambitious and marketed our eggs right away and quickly sold out of them! Yeah, even before we had eggs to fulfill orders….but we have a waiting list in case anyone dwindles off! Incredible, eh? We even had someone stop by the other day and asked if we have eggs – that’s with no signage whatsoever except for the farm magnet on our van which only states our farm name and phone number…no products but I guess they can see chickens when they are out.

All my marketing efforts were simply via email and we have a paid listing on Eat Wild ($50/yr) and Local Harvest ($25 suggested donation/year), but only one egg customer came through Eat Wild and she’s on our waiting list. Gotta love free to low cost marketing.

So based on this experience we will be increasing our flock for 2013 and have already started. We have a broody hen setting on two eggs now. It’s kind of an experiment because we came across two fertilized eggs while candling them so I decided it won’t do any harm in letting a hen sit on them to see what happens.

Broody hen update: The hens are sitting on the eggs but they don’t seem to be sitting on them consistently so I think we will be looking to borrow or rent an egg incubator to hatch out a batch of fertilized eggs. It’s kind of disappointing not to have one devoted hen unless something went wrong with the eggs or something. We may try again…we’ll see.

Candling to those unfamiliar is simply putting a light under the egg and slowly turning the egg to see if you find a dark spot, otherwise known as the fertilized egg. Candling is also used to detect any defects or cracked eggs.

Our hens have laid up to 17 24 eggs a day, then we had that cold snap and their production trickled back down to several a day. Then we (or my hubby did with Peanut’s help) winterized our coops since we will be over-wintering 32 hens/roosters and two turkeys and today we are back up to 15 eggs in a day. So we should be able to supply our egg customers with eggs this weekend. Yay! I am so excited to finally see our hens start paying for their keep!

New flock of 100 red sex-links, not a heritage breed, unfortunately.

Please Note: this was written weeks ago and just kept getting pushed back. And last week we purchased a flock of 100 one year old hens, sooner than we thought we would buy more chickens, but when the opportunity came from an area family farm we know and trust and with people waiting for local eggs we just went ahead and did it. The “new” hens are giving us 60-70 eggs a day and I really need to get marketing them as a few leads fell through from our waiting list. I have a couple of leads to follow up on and we have an event on 12/15…but I won’t be taking two week old eggs there because our slogan is “Fresh. Local. Every Time.” and I don’t want to be accused of not having fresh eggs.

Turkey egg and yes, they are a brown speckled egg.

Brownie, our turkey hen, also started laying…but bah-humbug she’s not very maternal. Disappointing to say the least but we have a farmer friend who asked if one of our daughters would be interested in incubating turkey eggs for her and we’d split the hatch, which will be a very cool farm, homeschooling learning experience! Farmer C has heritage breed turkeys which is what we wanted to try next year so here’s to hoping it all works out and goes well. We might even try and incubate some of Brownie’s eggs as we do want to do Midget White Turkeys again. They are very yummy! We ate one for Thanksgiving dinner!

Tom and Brownie, our Midget White turkey breeding pair.

Tom, our turkey tom, is still strutting his stuff. Every day this is what our pair of turkeys looks like with Tom following Brownie around.

So we are really vamping up egg production around here!

Oh and we finally got our electric fencing, but have yet to get the solar panel up and running. Technically we aren’t suppose to use the fencing or the solar panel during the winter or with snow, but we haven’t had any heavy snow yet….so we are keeping it up until the snow flies at least.