Weather & Flowerbeds

Except for the freezing weather at the beginning of December, we’ve had a very mild winter unlike much of the U.S. It hasn’t even rained as much as usual.

Many mornings we wake to a bit of frost and ice in the pond, but that’s about it for our chilly days.

Even with the mild weather, I still haven’t found much time to get out & do winter maintenance on the flowerbeds. Darn it! And, my spring bulbs are already starting to poke through.

I did move a rotting log out of one of the flowerbeds and found a pile of slug eggs. Slugs have a job to do, but they eat way too many flowers, plants & veggies for me to be a fan of them.

Chicken Keeping

Unfortunately, we had a chicken get nabbed in broad daylight by a bobcat.

Our newest chicken.
He’s in quarantine for a couple weeks to make sure he doesn’t have any diseases that might spread to the rest of our flock.

Brad Pitt, our RIR rooster died this month. We’re not sure why. As luck would have it, though, a kid in town needed to get rid of his 10 month old cockerel. So, we took him & now have a new blood line for our RIR babies. I’m thinking the new guy’s name should be Brad Pitt 2.

We sold the last of our Blue Marans that hatched last spring.

One of the coops needed a little repair work.

Farm Kid2 helped Farmer John clean the coop with his 4-H chickens.

We rearranged many of the chickens, changing which coop they are in & sometimes which rooster they are with.

The ladies have been on such a weird laying pattern. Or really, it’s a lack of pattern. Some weeks they are laying well & some weeks not as well.

The ducks took a laying break for a few months, but now they’re back at it.

We put our first batch of eggs this year in the incubator. I’m only expecting about half of these to start developing, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Some of the eggs got quite cold & some are from chickens that just started laying. So, we will have to wait & see.

Growing Food

Farmer John’s trying out a new method of starting seeds – a heated germination pad.

The greenhouse is finally being built!!!

Farmer John brought home 3 275 gallon food grade totes. We will use them for our new aquaponics system. I can’t wait to try it!

Good Ol’ Country Living

This is my favorite photo from this month. It says so much about our family.

It’s been an uneventful, yet busy first month of the year. I’m excited to see which direction our chicken raising business goes & to try out all our new ways to grow food.

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A couple nights ago Farmer John told me to come outside & check out some slugs & that I might want my camera. He was right. It was awesome & weird & slimy. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what these slugs were up to. But, I guessed this was how they mate. I googled it and sure enough that’s what they’re doing. So put a stop to this right away if you’re not interested in having baby slugs in your garden.

From my google research, I have learned this is the normal way for them to get down to business. They dangle from a branch (or in this case a faucet) by their own mucus.

Wanna know what the things are protruding out of their head? It’s their penis’s. Yep. Slugs are hermaphrodites, having both male & female parts. They are swappin’ sperm. In the next day or so they will both lay fertile eggs.

When they are done, they reel their goods back inside, and drop to the ground.

Kinda cool, huh!?
Check this link out if you’re interested in continuing your science lesson.
And if you’re still interested, check out the word apophallation to find out what they do if they can’t untangle themselves.

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