Just Kidding!

With impeccable timing, Christine McVie (the goat, not the person) had two kids last week while there was a foot of snow on the ground, after the surprise snowstorm. When Kenn trudged out to feed them he was greeted by a little buck and a little doe, and a very tired Christine. 

A much skinnier Christine McVie with her kids. The doeling is on the left and the buckling on the right. 

We must have just missed the birth, since they were still soaking wet. To make sure that they didn't freeze to death we had to a put a gallon jug full of hot water in their hut. Good thing Heather likes value wine. 

We immediately moved Lindsay Buckingham back to the dog run, since he doesn't like to waste any time. He is not too happy about it. Our other goat Stevie Nicks is enjoying her grandkids for now, but is also pregnant and looks like she is ready to pop any day. We are going to build a 2nd goat hut for her as its now a little crowded in the first one. 

Our own kid is growing like a weed and enjoyed the snow a little more than the goats did.

But not as much as Remington.

Goat Your Own Way

La-a-a-a-ndslide...

While out clearing some brush a while back, we quickly realized that the two of us could never keep up with it. We needed some help. After some craigslist searching and a long drive down to Graham, we got some help in the form of two Nigerian dwarf goats. I'm sure they had other names,  but we renamed them Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie.

Remington v. Stevie

The problem with buying goats, is that you immediately want more, so we impulsively bought two more, Ann and Nancy Wilson, who turned out to not be nearly as friendly. Anyway, the goats have been hard at work clearing the brush, and a truce has been established with Remington (After some gnarly headbutts). Remington now stands guard while the goats chow down, and only rarely tries to jump on them. Ruger is indifferent towards them.


As for the garden, its been a weird, cold summer. Other than in the 90 degree days April, we didn't really get hot weather until the end of July, and now its cold again. Needless to say, Most of the vegetables didn't care for this, and we haven't gotten anything like the massive amounts of vegetables we got last summer. We only got a few beans, carrots and cabbages. The beets and rutabagas were terrible, the corn is tiny, and the tomatoes aren't going to ripen. The only things that did well were the apples, cucumbers and pumpkins.

One of these is not actually a pumpkin

In other news, we've had a murder mystery on the farm. One by one, our ducks have gone missing, with no sign of foul (fowl?) play. The duck pen is buttoned up tight, and there are no indications of forced entry, but the murders continue. We saw a coyote in the yard about a week ago, but one of the local bobcats is the prime suspect due to skill required for such a crime. The net over the pen has been reinforced as a precautionary measure. More to come on this one.

In other bird killing news, we are now ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Gobble Gobble...

The Birds and the Trees

Lots going on at the Stinson Farm this spring. We got our orchard trees planted including apples, pears, peaches and plums. We had to bring in quite a bit of dirt to level out the orchard area, and thought it would be a good place to put some of our compost. Turns out that was a bad idea, since Remington decided to eat it, get fungal poisoning, have seizures and go to the emergency room (thanks for that vet bill, Remington...). We ended up fencing the affected area off to keep our genius dogs out of it. Anyway... it is going well now, and all of the trees are leafing out.

Now all we have to do is wait a few years...

We also planted a patch of blueberries. It may need to be fenced off as well, since Ruger is a known berry thief, and Remington seems to think it makes a great bathroom.

Blueberry patch/Dog bathroom

It's also the time of year for new chicks. We picked up a few chicks last month, including some silkies. Hopefully they will be good foster mothers this fall, since our current flock doesn't seem to have much in the way of maternal instincts (hence the incubator, see below). We also bought a couple goslings, which we haven't done before.

Their names are Christmas and Christmas 2, and they will be delicious.

Also, on the chick front, we were able to incubate some eggs from the hens we bought last spring, and have 5 more new chicks joining the flock. We had a few false starts with the incubator, since our first rooster wasn't interested in doing his job, and we had to call in a pinch hitter. Then we had a power outage and lost a batch of eggs mid-incubation. Third time was a charm and after three weeks, the chicks starting pipping through their shells. It took three days for all of them to hatch, and one needed some help, but all are now one week old and doing great.

In this case, the egg came first... or maybe it was the rooster

We're Stumped!

So much going on!  Kenn and I have been busy working on projects that we have been wanting to get done for some time now.  With our new, little homesteader on the way it's high time to get this stuff done!

This weekend was spent grinding stumps in order to clear some space for a few new farm items (and to keep rotting stumps and termites away from the house).  Grinding the stumps also created a secondary benefit: wood chips to keep weeds down around the garden beds.  I'm still working on shoveling and transporting wood chips to the garden, but with all of the necessary stumps ground down we are ready to level some land with the loader next weekend.

Since I'm sure I've got a touch of OCD, the project that excites me the most is building the tool shed next to the barn coop.  Having all the garden tools, mowers, and garden starts station organized into one place will be super convenient (and will keep me out of Kenn's messy shop).  Unfortunately, the tool shed isn't first on the list of projects to complete post-stump removal but at least the land is ready for leveling!

Site for future tool shed/garden starts station

The first project we are going to work on will be the orchard.  Each year we can and vacuum seal a lot of vegetables, so it will be nice to start getting some fruits stored away too.  With all the stumps in the orchard site pulverized, we  can work on leveling.  We had to order 26 yards of fill dirt to overcome a dip in the land where we plan on planting most of the fruit trees.  After leveling the orchard site next weekend we can finally get our trees on order and get them in the ground this spring.

Kenn working on grinding stumps in the soon-to-be orchard

In addition to creating spaces for the orchard and tool shed, Kenn was able to grind some stumps in an area we have set aside for a blueberry patch.  With so many projects on the horizon, we may not get to planting the berries this spring but at least after next weekend the land will be stump free and leveled.

Future blueberry patch site

Lastly, and this really has nothing to do with grinding stumps and leveling land for future food, I finally got some use out of the beeswax we pulled from our hive last fall.  Over Christmas my mom got me some candle-making supplies so I decided to make some candles with our beeswax.  After melting the wax, some sandalwood scent, and color cubes in a crock pot, I poured the wax into a few small jars (and the extra into a foil cupcake container) and added wicks.  We burned our first homemade candle last night!

Homemade cupcake candle

Winter Chores

What a busy fall and winter we have had!  With our german shepherd on knee surgery number two, work, the holidays, and getting ready for our little Savannah (yep, baby Stinson is a girl) to arrive, we haven't had much time to write about our sustainable living endeavors.  Those endeavors have not fallen to the back burner though, like our writing evidently has.

Labor intensive bonfire/soon to be orchard

 After a scorching summer many of our trees died and Kenn has been endlessly chainsawing to get them all down before the next wind storm.  Good news for us, this provides for a lot of firewood and an empty space for what will be an orchard in the spring.  Bad news for me, this equals a lot of property cleanup for a five month pregnant me.  Having a bonfire has never felt so labor intensive!

Kenn hauling rounders to the woodshed

Since Kenn won't let me chop wood in my pregnant state, I've been banished to the woodshed.  He chops, I stack.  We were able to sell all of our firewood out of the shed over the summer for some extra cash, which was great.  Procrastinating with refilling the shed over the summer wasn't as great of an idea.  We're trying to get caught up so we can keep our house cozy warm this winter.  Some good progress was made today!

"We're going to need a bigger boat"

Easy Comb Easy Go

We've had a few trade offs this fall.  All of our bees left us, but they did leave behind a twenty pound gift!  That's right, honey!  When we went to check on our bees a few weeks ago there weren't but a few left in the hive.  The queen was obviously gone and we think the bees either swarmed or were honey bound.  We'll have to start fresh again next year with a new package of bees. 

Since the bees won't be needing it during the winter, we decided to harvest all of the honey made throughout the summer.  To do that, we scraped each frame of wax and honey into a large strainer and let the honey drain into a bowl below.  We melted the leftover honeycomb in a crock pot and let the wax solidify on top of the excess honey.  The recovered honey went into the bowl with the rest and then the wax was re-melted into blocks for candle making.  After collecting all of the honey we could, we filtered it through some cheese cloth into mason jars.  Viola!  Since we won't need all of that honey for cooking and baking, we plan on making mead as soon as we find a good recipe.

We also butchered two of our turkeys, one for Christmas and one for whenever (Thanksgiving was already covered).  But because we can't drop below our bird quota, we picked up three new ducks.  They're Cayuga/Rouen cross-breeds, but we won't hold that against them.




Sadly, our cat Pazuzu decided she liked living with the neighbor better than us, so in order to stay at our mammal quota, we had to replace her too.  However, we decided to go with a different species. Yep, we are bringing a new, little homesteader to the farm.  Baby Stinson is due May 19th!

And no, the baby doesn't actually have talons.

And Summer Comes to a Close

It's been a very busy summer, hence the reason we haven't posted anything for a while.  I began a new job that requires me to be in Tacoma a few times a week in addition to our other jobs!  We have also been busy stalking land in Montana, hiking, camping, hanging out with our handsome little nephew, and of course taking care of the farm!  As summer comes to a close, all crops need to be canned or vacuum sealed.  It's a timely process but so worth it to get to enjoy the fruits (or rather mostly veggies) of our labor.  The garden, animals, corn field, tomato field, and all of our herbs did fantastically over the summer.  Most of our fruit trees are a tad too young to be producing fruit just yet but we did get quite the crop of apples from the one apple tree that our bear friend pushed over a few years ago.

As we move into fall, Kenn and I are trying out a few colder weather crops.  Hopefully we will be able to keep you updated more often on those throughout the fall and winter!  In the meantime, check out our summer's bounty (well, this is just a small portion of it).