I love this weather! 
I’m beginning to find it very hard to stay inside doing paperwork vs. being outside to play with the puppies, goats, and horses.
Our spring garden has been started inside and has been doing well. I’m still debating between raised beds vs scooping dirt in the ground and putting mesh down to keep the gophers out. Our garden will be fairly large this year so I’m just not sure if we’ll be able to put in enough raised beds to suffice.
Our Rhode Island Red hens are laying quite a few eggs and I have to say, they’re beginning to grow on me. They’re now venturing to the front of the house in search of bugs, etc. The little white leghorns we purchased are also growing pretty well but they’re VERY fast on their feet. They’ll be inside for a couple more weeks at least (in the garage, not the house- yuck). Right now ’ debating on whether or not to order some meat chickens since we eat so much chicken. It cracks me up how I said “NO chickens” to “Maybe we should order 100 meat birds”. Lol. I think we’ll wait until next year to take on that project.
Our hay is growing quite nicely and I have been pretty successful at pulling the majority of the mustard out of the field. Everyone said it doesn’t hurt the animals when baled but it takes over EVERYTHING. We’re going to have a pretty diverse hay crop this year including: oat, wheat, rye, barley, vetch, bells beans, and dundale peas. I’m hoping all the different plants will keep the animals interested to not much wasted feed. We should have an overabundance of hay to get us through next year (hopefully). Still not sure if we’ll be selling much of it.
Our fence is finally going up! I’m SO excited! The front fence is nearly done and then 3 more sides left to go for just the parameter (another 900 feet I think?) We’re still planning out the cross-fencing, arena, gates, etc. So it may take a while. Not to mention- fencing is pretty pricey. My main goal is the parameter fencing first since all the animals are already fenced in for now. I’ll post some blog pics of the fence soon.
As if we needed any more animals, we adopted my sisters half-sized year old Basset Hound, Sally. She just wasn’t getting the attention she craved with my sister’s schedule. She’s eating up all of the attention she’s being given and loving being a “farm dog”. I feel guilty re-homing our foster dog “Tuff” and allowing Sally to take up residence but Tuff was a bit higher maintenance then your typical farm dog and was MUCH more athletic then any of the other dogs here making the balance off in a sense. Just didn’t fit in, in the end. So now that makes 2 wieners, Sally, and Buck (our ancient Kelpie/McNab). I officially feel like we have a dogpaloosa at the house but so far everyone (even Buck) plays and gets along with each other and all the farm animals.
Speaking of fencing, we moved the horses out into the front pasture (fenced with poly hot tape). I’m looking forward to moving the bucks over there for now and enlarging the horse pasture a bit. Always doing something! lol. Brie is also coming along well in her training. I need to start driving her again soon.
Lastly, we’re going to be starting on out soaps again this week. After I have some batches curing, we’ll be working on lotions, balms, and chapstick. YAY!
Show season is coming so check back for later posts and updates.
