A Handful of Goodness

These chilly nights are sneaking up on us!  For our little farm, this means harvesting the last of the Summer produce and planting the Fall gardens.  This was my first year growing sweet potatoes and they surprised me with how huge they are!

The regular potatoes are here as well - there are plenty to dig for dinner each night, and they'll be fine to stay underground until the weather gets pretty cold.

Reed's job each day is to do a lot of chicken tending.  He feeds them each morning and collects their eggs through the day.  We're starting to get quite the bounty of eggs as all of the hens are laying now!  The duck doesn't seem to be laying yet... not sure when that will start.

Of course I can't resist to add some photos of the youngins - I do love the nice hot Summer, but something about snuggling up in a sweater is a great feeling, too!  Here's ZB wearing the first sweater of the season...

I'll leave you with a shot of Reed goofing it up for the camera - he always like to be featured on the blog!  Happy Fall everyone!

From ZB to her adoring fans

I am so busy lately, and I apologize for not keeping up with the blog!!  Our homeschool co-op starts this week and I have taken on so much responsibility in it this year, I am feeling a little stressed.  I was already the membership coordinator, and then decided to also be the chair of our governing council.  Not a huge deal, but on top of that I am teaching 2 classes!  One is archery for 6-8 year olds and the other is a Hunger Games class (based on the book series) for teens.  Clay will be in the Hunger Games class, and unfortunately I won't be in a class with Reed this semester.  Of course, ZB will be having a great time in the nursery with her baby pals.
In my busy-ness, I was lucky to grab the camera in time to catch the after-dinner performance in the kitchen - or at least the tail end of it ... Enjoy!

Little Farm Girl

I'd say the little lady of the house is becoming quite the farm girl.  Does she even have a choice?  She opens up the garden gates herself to pick Daddy's peppers (and take bites out of some before she delivers them to his shop door).

Once the produce is delivered, she becomes the Chicken Whisperer.  The hens don't want me to hold them, and will sort of let Reed catch them.  They crouch right down very submissively for ZB, though!   They are her little pets, though.  Since our old dog is not playful in his old age, the chickens are about the best thing ZBs got to call a pet :)

This child never stops - silly and happy all day long!

Morning Chore Surprise!

ZB and I headed out this morning to do the outdoor parts of the morning chores.  I have started putting two areas of food out for the chickens.  The younger chickens are quickly catching up in size to the older ones, but still not hanging out all together.  So, while the big girls feast on their breakfast and don't let in the younger ones, I fill up a frisbee with some nibbles for the young ladies.  Here you can see an older hen eyeing the frisbee food, so it's not an entirely foolproof plan yet.

As we walked back to the house, ZB spied a little frog friend in her pool.  This girl has a talent for finding frogs, I think!  She has been known to run up to us all excited, with a patient little frog in her tiny grip.  This one was quick in the water, but ZB sure tried hard to catch it!

She even tried baiting it with her swiss chard snack...

She eventually gave up and toddled away to share her picture story with her brothers.

Harvest

It's so fun to walk out in the yard each day and find new things to harvest!  ZB knows right where to go to find new berries!  I think the ducks were following, hoping for a treat.  When I came out last night, I found ZB at the elderberry bushes.

There are certainly plenty to eat.  I really need to figure out how to use these things, actually!  This year will be our first harvest of them.

With a little help, ZB is happy to shove them directly into her mouth!

The chickens were waiting patiently nearby.  As soon as ZB leaves, they are happy to come have an elderberry snack, too...

The garden is growing in full force!  It's easy to get dinner from the garden each night... yum!

Tongiht, we had a stew of sausage, tomato, garlic and eggplant over a bed of quinoa.  All veggies from the garden of course!

We're also finding lots of interesting flowers.  This is B's first year growing his own tobacco, which was VERY slow to start, but is coming up nicely now, and has such sweet flowers on it...

Another plant that is flowering and nearly ready to harvest is the hops.  I'll be excited to brew some beer this Fall with our homegrown hops in them!

Other things growing around the house are these children!  Clay became intent tonight on learning how to front flip off a stump.  He's a much braver person than I am, for sure.  I only got the camera out in time to see some not-so-great action and he decided to call it a night :)

I am starting to be challenged to make enough food each day for this growing brood.  In fact, this is the actual crime scene I came inside to after I had my dinner...

Well, at least they saved 1 piece of pie for me.  And it was fresh baked Chocolate Chip Walnut Pie, so who could really blame them?

Another Video Post

Apologizing for my lameness lately!  I'm sure one of these days I'll plan ahead enough to take photos and get my bloggin on... but for now I just have a video of the cutie in the house!  ZB was kissing this little doll like crazy so I had to film it, but of course as soon as I turned the camera on, she stopped kissing it.  She's still a little lover with her cuddles and tooth brushing, though...

Chicken

Well, I'm either a chicken or just lazy. I'm going to go with the latter to save face. Our little flock of birds is getting smaller by the minute, I tell ya! We have 8 chickens and 2 ducks currently. Turns out one of our sexed chicks was not properly identified (it happens), and we happen to have a lovely rooster. He really is a pretty thing, and that why I feel like such a chicken for not loving the guy - but I really can't stand him

 I have bad associations with roosters from our days living in Colorado and taking care of a neighbor's flock. His rooster would routinely attack me (like, several times a day, I just got used to kicking the guy in the face). I've read the stories about roosters blinding children, because they go for the eyes, and they freak me out! (not to worry - this is only if your kid is between 1 and 2 years old - hey wait! that's us!). Our rooster isn't especially aggressive, but I'm just afraid he'll get there. Plus, his breed is not my fave. So, if he were to procreate (and yes, I witnessed his attempts at this, for the first time, tonight... yikes! those poor hens!), I wouldn't really want any of his off-spring.

I've done lots of you-tubing of chicken "harvesting" and actually feel pretty okay with doing it. But, alas, I really just don't feel like killing him myself! He's not particularly meaty, so it'd be a big deal (in my opinion) for maybe a few pounds of meat. I just want him gone more than I want to deal with him. So, yup, I'm probably a chicken.

Hey, anyone want a rooster??

http://asheville.craigslist.org/grd/3115198129.html