A New Year's Update

Here at Long Creek Farm the new year is starting out with plenty of things to do. We are hoping that we can get some projects completed so we can have a successful year on our farm. So, let's see what's going on!

Weather

We are fully into winter here; daytime temperatures have been almost completely in the 40's with some 30's and the nights have mostly been teens and twenties. We have gotten snow twice in the last two weeks and are expecting more this week.

Goats

Our biggest problem we have been dealing with is containing our Nigerian buck now that our some of our does have kidded. That is a subject that will get a blog of its own, but basically, we have been trying everything to keep him in, and he has been constantly escaping. In the picture below he is tied to a tree as we try to figure something out.

The does that have kidded were hardly giving any milk when we tried to start milking them a couple weeks ago and two of them were quite a bit underweight. We still aren't exactly sure why but we have increased their grain and started to give them sweet feed as well, since our Tractor Supply just started carrying organic sweet feed.

We were finally able to get them in our new barn the week before Christmas, although it is still not completely set up. We ordered the supplies to build some stalls. So once that comes and we set the stalls up we will try to start milking again (and hopefully selling it if we get enough). We have the kids up for sale as bottle babies right now and they will be ready to go weaned in a few weeks.

Pigs

Honey's piglets are doing well with the exception of her runt which didn't make it. They will be ready to go to new homes towards the end of this month. Fudge has been causing problems by escaping to eat the chicken food, so we are going to get him moved into a pen away from Honey because we think having a chicken feeder full of grain on the other side of the fence is just too tempting him.

Fudge also needs his own pen since Honey and her piglets are needing more and more grain, and he doesn't.

Millie, our Idaho Pasture Pig, should also be having piglets sometime in March.

Chickens

Our chickens are hardly laying due to the shorter days of winter, and they also just molted. Quite a few of them just won't stay in their fence, we think because they used to be free ranging, so we are planning on rehoming the ones that won't stay in and getting some whitning true blue or green from the McMurray hatchery to replace them. Which will give us another project: building a brooder in the barn.

Ducks

Our 20 Khaki Campbell ducklings are now feathered and living outside without a heat lamp. The hens should start laying about in April. We are currently housing them in a rabbit tractor at night, but they are growing fast, and we will soon need to build a bigger house. We are also starting to try and hand feed them a little each day to get them a more comfortable around us, since they currently panic pretty much every time you move around them.

Rabbits

We haven't had a litter of bunnies in a long time, but we are hoping that we will once the days get longer as rabbits are affected by short days the same way chickens are.

Dogs

Two new pups have joined our pack! Meet Dakota, a German Shephard, and Zelie, a Papillon. They are mostly okay with our farm animals; except we have to keep them away from the rabbits.

We hear coyotes howling most nights very close to us, so we are hoping that once Dakota grows up her barking will deter them from trying to get our animals.

Gardening

We will probably start transplants of tomatoes and maybe some herbs in February. We have been saving our empty yogurt containers to start the tomatoes in. The containers are good because they allow the tomatoes to grow a bigger root system then the standard 4" pots. By starting them in a smaller pot, and then transplanting them into a bigger one, you can further increase the size of their root system by burying most of the stem.

We have also been thinking of turning our small shed into a greenhouse.

Some of our berries have leaves but otherwise our orchard is dormant. We recently purchased some trunk protecters to keep wild rabbits from chewing the trunks.