• The better part of this week was spent on vacation. So, I don’t have many farm related notes.

•Where’d we go? you ask. To a very magical place. Disneyland. I went for a Star Wars themed run event. I ran a 5K, 10K, and half marathon. The rest of the time was spent enjoying all things Disney.

• Just to keep things real, though, the night before we left was spent in a less magical way. We spent the better part of the evening moving Oliver and Lois. The pig and goat actually cooperated quite nicely. The mud, however, did not. I was getting stuck just trying to walk through it. Our car got stuck in it. The mud was slippery and not easy to get out of. I really am so glad the animals weren’t being troublesome during this time.

• It’s been like this for awhile, but I found it amusing on the stressful day before leaving on vacation, that our tractor seat is covered in a feed sack. The seat is cracked and therefore holds water. When you sit on it your buns get wet. Farmer John’s solution was a feed sack. It works.

• It’s been raining since we got home.

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This week was a lot less eventful than last week. And, I’m so very glad. We just had to tend to all the everyday feedings and such.

•  It’s warming up, but the first half of the week involved walking oh so carefully in the icy conditions to feed all the critters.

• The rain has returned. A tad more than I would like.

• The ducks are still content playing in the puddles on the patio. And so, the patio continues to be covered in poop.

• A few of the chickens, including a white leghorn, are not looking their best in the muddy conditions.

• Not many, but, we are getting a few eggs during these winter months.

• Pictured top right is our Old English Game Bantam. I think he’s quite handsome. He’s meant to be a 4H show chicken, but since none of our kids are participating in 4H this year he just gets to be our pet without the stress of showing off.

• Oliver, the pot bellied pig, and his goat friend, Lois, are still with us. Every morning I feed them in their shelter, but Lois always comes back out to get an extra hand out from me.

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I’m trying something new this year – an update each week about what’s going on around our farm and garden. I’m aiming for just a quick rundown of the week’s happenings. Hopefully the coming weeks are not as eventful as this last week has been. It’s been a rough start to 2016 – which means it can only get better.

• It has snowed off and on since before Christmas. We don’t get many snow days around here, so it’s been fun. The kids have gone sledding many, many times.

• A couple days the cold temperatures and wet ground resulted in slippery driving conditions. That’s always exciting coming and going on our hill.

• Despite having moved Olaf to the garage to keep him warmer, he passed away New Years Day. Olaf was our pet and will be missed. I think I took it especially hard because I just watched my grandpa pass away the night before.

• The power went out New Years Day. No problems with it. It just added another jab in an already crummy day.

• We still have Oliver and Lois, so Sven is living in a chicken run for now. It’s absolutely not ideal. But, I watched Oliver attack Olaf and I don’t want the same thing to happen to Sven. Also, Sven is frightened of both Oliver and Lois – for good reason, they aren’t nice to him.

• We purchased quarter of a beef from a friend and is now put away nicely in our freezer just waiting for dinnertime.

• It took two trips due to a stubborn hog, but the pigs went to the butcher. Soon we will have pork in the freezer again.

• For some strange reason our dog, Remi, followed Farmer John when he left to take the pigs to the butcher. John noticed he was following him down the driveway and told Remi to go home. John assumed he did. Apparently, he did not. A couple hours later, at bed time, the dog was nowhere to be found. Because it snowed that day, John was able to track him. He tracked his steps 4 miles down the road. Then, they just stopped. We put up a sign & posted about it on Facebook. The next morning we got 2 leads and thankfully we got Remi back. He’s been a bit sluggish since then, though. I’m hoping he’s just wore out from the evening’s adventures.

• I ordered herb seeds. Woo hoo! And, a few flower seeds. I’m going to give sunflowers a whirl once again. I don’t know why. I certainly can’t get them to grow.

• I snapped a few photos of a Varied Thrush, which was exciting. They are so skittish and fly off the moment they get sight of me. I was/am quite thrilled this guy stuck around long enough (twice) for me to take his pic.

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2015 has officially ended. Let’s look back at how our farm and gardening endeavors played out this past year. We had a fairly steady year with good food being grown and plenty of animals to keep us busy.

CHICKENS

We dabble in a variety of things related to farming and gardening, but chickens will always be a main stay for us. That being said, this year we did take a slight step back. We didn’t incubate eggs, we didn’t attend any shows or swaps, and Farm Kid2 decided not to continue with poultry in 4H. But, that doesn’t mean we’re short on chickens.

We chose not to incubate eggs this year. We did, though, have 3 broody hens hatch small clutches. Click here to read about the first hatch and click here to read about the second.

The majority of our birds are Rhode Island Reds and Easter Eggers. But, we still have two golden polish hens that are nearly 4 years old. They lay a fairly small egg and are such a great looking bird.

Mo, our Easter Egger rooster, has been demoted. For a number of years he was our top rooster. However, some young, cocky boys have moved up and taken his spot in the pecking order.

Three of our handsome fellas.

We were given this Old English Game bantam. I think he’s beautiful. He’s meant to be a show bird, but at the moment nobody in our family is showing poultry.

This wasn’t an outstanding egg year. One day, though, Farm Girl decided to count how many eggs we had.

We raised 10 birds for meat. Usually we roast the whole chicken, but one night Farmer John made chicken strips. They were delicious!

Four white leghorns, one buff orpington, one barred rock and one black australorp were added to our laying flock this year.

DUCKS

The ducks have given us a bit of excitement by each hen hatching eggs this year. That’s a first for us.

Our two Welsh Harlequin ducks.

Sally, our male Muscovy. The left photos are from January and February of this year. The right was taken in September. His looks changed significantly.

Both ladies sat on eggs this year, which was a fun experience for us. To read about the first hatch click here. And click here to read about the second hatch.

I’ve enjoyed watching how the Welsh Harlequin/Muscovy cross ducklings change as they mature.

Unfortunately, we lost Sally and one of the Welsh Harlequins to predators in the fall.

GOATS

The goats are cute as can be doing goat type things. You can read more about them here.

PIGS

We’ve had two sets of hogs this year. The first round Farm Kid1 raised 2 and sold them to earn money for a computer.

The second round was to fill our freezer, as well as to sell. The pigs were a Hampshire/Berkshire cross.

OLIVER & LOIS

A couple weeks ago we acquired a pot bellied pig named Oliver, and his friend Lois, a pygmy goat. My hope was we could be their forever home and they would live happily ever after with Sven and Olaf. Unfortunately, things aren’t working out as well as I had hoped. So, we are in the process of finding them a new home.

FLOWER BEDS

There wasn’t a lot of action this year in our flower beds. But, the same ol’ trusty trees, shrubs and perennials put on a pretty show mainly in the spring and summer months.

The ducks, unfortunately, are not great for the plants. They step on them. They sleep on them. They poop on them.

The deer also make flower gardening a challenge. Apparently some of our plants are quite tasty.

The only new additions to our flower beds were 10 lavender ‘grosso’ plants. They’re in an area that I’ve struggled with for years. I finally decided lavender was the thing to spruce it up.

PONDS

We have two small ponds that I love. Our farm critters as well as wild critters love them, too.

GARDENING FOR FOOD

Another thing we didn’t spend as much time on as in years past, was the garden. It is incredibly time consuming keeping up with the weeds and by the end of summer it had gotten a bit out of hand. We did harvest some produce, though. We got onions, potatoes, a few eggplant and squash, cherry tomatoes & herbs.

We tried the three sisters method in one area of the garden. Corn, beans and squash all growing together. It worked kind of . Everything grew. But, we tend to have trouble with corn and it didn’t grow fast enough before the beans grew tall. The squash (pumpkins & gourds) grew well, though.

Many of our seeds didn’t germinate this year. I think the birds got to them. Darn it. I should have had a fabulous showing of tall sunflowers mixed with viney cucumbers growing underneath. What I got was one sunflower. One.

This was not a great year for tomatoes. We only picked a handful of big, juicy red ones. It was so hot this summer, I actually think we didn’t water them enough. We did, however, get renegade yellow cherry tomatoes. They reseeded from last year and were a pleasant surprise.

Fruit. My favorite items to pick from the garden is the fruit. Our grape vines are finally producing well, we got a couple apples, lots of plums and lots of raspberries.

NEW PATIO

Our only big project of the year was pouring a much needed back patio. We decided to do stamped concrete, which was a lot of work. But, I’m so happy to finally have a patio. The ducks, too, are quite happy with the patio. It is one of their favorite places to hang out and poop.

AQUAPONICS

This was our first full year experimenting with aquaponics. We have three grow beds, one fish tank and a sump tank.

A good sized pump cycles the water and aquarium heaters keep it warm. Depending on the time of year we keep the water between 70 and 80 degrees.

We have a fan for circulation in the greenhouse.

Grown in the garden beds were/are peppers, Mexican sour gherkins, tomatoes, eggplant, mixed greens and okra. This growing method works very well.

I also started nasturtiums right in the garden bed and overwintered geraniums that loved the greenhouse.

We grow tilapia in the fish tank part of the aquaponics system. The fish aren’t growing as quickly as we thought they would. But, at the beginning of December we did finally catch a couple fish and have them for dinner. I was hoping they’d be good, and they were.

Whew! There were no major plant or animal changes this year. But, just keeping up kept us plenty busy. It’s so much work living this way, but so rewarding. I can’t wait to see what 2016 will bring.

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