Spring Update III

Spring is by far the busiest time of year for us here at Long Creek Farm. We are not only trying to pasture all of our animals, but we are also trying to get a garden and an orchard going.

Pasturing the Animals

We are trying to pasture all of our animals for the first time this year, and, although we know it's worth it for the animals' health and happiness, it is a TON of work right now. So, we are trying to figure out how to make the process more efficient. But it hasn't been going well so far.

We tried to put Agnes (our Angus calf) in with the goats, and while the goats were fine with her, Martinello, our guard donkey, wanted nothing to do with her. He chased her around for a bit at first, but then it seemed like they'd be okay. So, we left them alone. A few hours later we came back, and Agnes was nowhere to be seen.

I think Martinello had been chasing her around until at some point she either panicked and ran through the electric fence or didn't see it as she was running away from him and ran right over it. We looked around for her for about four hours, and finally found her in the woods about 20 feet into the neighbor's yard.

We are also working on getting a movable shelter up for the goats, so we don't have to keep running them back to the barn. Which takes a lot of time since they don't exactly go where we want them to.

We recently had several bobcat attacks resulting in the loss of 14 of our ducks. So, we are having to close all the chickens and ducks up at night since the bobcat can jump the electric fence.

For now, we are rachet strapping a cattle panel and hardware cloth to the front of the coop at night. But it is not ideal, so we are working on getting a door and permanent hardware cloth on it.

The bobcat that we think was getting our ducks, attempting to get into the coop after we secured it. (Dates on our game camera aren't correct).

A bobcat (possibly the same one) that we think was getting our chickens last fall.

The adult rabbits are fine in the tractors we have for them, but Strawberry's bunnies wouldn't stop getting out, and they were eating the grass down faster than we could move them. So, we had to put wire around the edge of a bigger tractor. It has been working so far.

New Babies

Cocoa had her first kids about a week ago, two boys. We will start milking her in about a week, and I think she will be a good milker.

We are expecting Millie's first litter of piglets any day now, and hoping they will grow a lot faster than our Kunes!

Sweetie had eleven bunnies a few days ago, Clover had six last night, and Palm had seven. We are still waiting on Glory and Strawberry. As of now, we have 31 bunnies... Hope they sell well!

Our buck right now is red and blue (the actual color is more like yellow, but I think he is part red broken) so I have no idea what color our bunnies are going to be! Typically, I don't think blue gets mixed with the other colors when you cross them the way red does, but since it seems like he has red in him... we'll just have to wait and see.

The Garden

We are working on getting our garden set up and planted. We recently had our first radish harvest, and although it was small, it's still fun to be able to harvest your own food!

This year we will be trying to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, herbs, strawberries, yellow squash, okra, green beans, pumpkins, and a few potatoes.

We also have some cool weather crops that we are waiting to get to harvesting size including kale, spinach, and more radishes.

The Orchard

Many of our trees didn't make it through the winter, so we got a refund on them and bought replacements at Lowe's. We also got quite a few more berry plants and have been working on getting everything mulched.

We ordered a drip watering system, both for the garden and the orchard. So, hopefully it works well, and watering pretty much won't be something we have to worry about!

Hobbies

It's pretty hard to find time to do much other than take care of our farm in the spring, but depending on how much we have to do, we can still usually get to playing music.

Photography gets a lot more enjoyably when things are growing (and your fingers aren't freezing). So, we usually do quite a bit of that in the spring.

We have also done some baking recently with Einkorn flour. It's a non-hybridized type of wheat that's supposed to be much healthier than regular wheat. Check out our Einkorn Apple Muffin video if you are interested in trying out a recipe with it.

Thank you, Emma C., for the suggestion on writing about spring hobbies!