We have chickens

A friendly acquaintance needed to find their chickens a more rustic home, so we offered to take them since we were wanting to try chickens over ducks this year.  Pictures hopefully this weekend, my husband is working out the final roaming/run area for them.  Right now they are parked in our front yard and getting stirred up by a very silly little big girl.

Speaking of, I might call her Ram Tamer, since that is what she’s done.  Our rams now will stand still for petting due to her valiant and persistent efforts at feeding them by hand.  They are “right” kind of tame, not the kind of tame where you can get head butted (which usually is from roughhousing with lambs too often).

Secret raspberry garden

I am not a fan of the landscaping that came with this place, but some of it has unexpected summer joys attached.  Like this ever-bearing raspberry sport that survived and thrived in the shadow of the Himalayan menace that stalks our acreage.

 

Ever-bearing means it was domesticated.  It survived unlike the secret rhubarb from a couple years ago, which sadly got shaded out.  We failed it for the last time.  😦  But hey, RASPBERRIES THE BIRDS CAN’T FIND WOOOOOOOO.

First lambs of the season today

Two little white lambs out of the grey ewe I am always fretting about.  She only has one working udder (shearing accident took out the other one), but she’s previously nursed twins with no issues.

The lambs look pretty fresh, both are standing up and didn’t look weak or wobbly and seemed to know where the milky udder was, so I am going to give them a little time right now while I take some time to wake up myself.  She ignored all the fresh dry straw we put out in favor of the soggy grass (it was pouring rain all night long), which is just so typical for sheep.

Still waiting on the other three ewes, though.  Bucky, Shaft and the other ewes are being very protective.  Not so I couldn’t get to the new mother and lambs, but definitely not their usual (lack of) flocking behavior.  Icelandics tend to have poor flocking, but our experience has been they remember how when they think the flock needs protection.

It’s a pretty special day, hopefully the lambs continue to have a good start.

No lambs yet, the rain is terrible.

But on a brighter note, the grass is green enough that the sheep are eating less hay, so we probably are done with hay buying until the fall, unless we have a dry summer (not likely in our little microclimate).

Despite all their wool, the sheep are getting tired of the rain and are hiding out in the barn.

The ewes are also starting to roo, we may end up “shearing” them ourselves right after lambing instead of waiting on a shearer.  I put it in quotes because we’d be scraping the shedding top layer off the fresh new wool rather than taking both sets of fleece and leaving bare skin.  We weren’t expecting that we’d have to consider the skinning-knife approach to get their wool off, but it may be where we end up, at least for the spring fleeces.

Anyway I have to wash wool this weekend.  Then when it dries, I get to start the learning curve to combing fleece into roving.  Soaking in cold water first helps the fleece separate into locks, which is good to know.

I like wool, but I never really thought about how it gets off the sheep and into mittens and sweaters and wool diapers.  It’s interesting.

Post a Pic Tuesday: Random stuff

Collecting the metal in the barn. Funny what turns up.

Yeah, we need some grazing animals stat. That grass is too darn high.

The rhododendron, Washington’s state flower. So beautiful and so toxic…to sheep. So it’s all coming down this summer.

 

Just some random stuff from around the old place.  We have a busy summer ahead, from the looks.

Post a Pic Tuesday– Deer me, what are you looking at?

We keep deer and not unicorns in the garden of late.  This has been your post a pic Tuesday.

 

Duck Tales: Day Two

Well, our five ducklings made it through one night successfully.  They are a in bigger 4×4 brooding pen and there’s no straggler getting denied food or water.  They’ve all got good energy and nice down.  They are only a couple days old, though.  Most of the big changes start to happen around the one week mark.

We are initiating what I have to term the New Agrarian protocol with watering, as I’ve not seen anyone else on the internet follow such a process with new ducklings.  Other folks make their own waterers to prevent frequent fouling or swear up and down that their ducklings never hop in the water to play and poop in it.  Right now, for us, it’s easier to follow this system of 4x a day waterings with storebought waterer than to make something special to reduce watering frequency.  Thanks, random fellow agrarian on the internet!

Here’s their current brooding pen, it’s made from what used to be raised beds when we lived in suburbia and what will return to being raised beds when these little (mostly) gals grow out of it.

Brooding pen. Feeder on the left, obscured, and waterer on the right, also obscured. Such are the perils of cameraphoning your setup after the nighttime watering.

And here’s another blurry picture of the little flock.  Still learning how to use my fancy smrtfone.

And now it’s time to try to get myself to bed.  My own little girls are very circadian and keep long hours as the days lengthen and spring becomes summer.

Post a Pic Tuesday– Be Snow my Heart

We had random snow, it came and went in a single day.  Welcome to Cascadian microclimates.

Snow heart!

This has been a very brief Post A Pic Tuesday.

 

Post a Pic Tuesday– Rhubarb Surprise

Alas, I have no recipes handy, just the plant itself.

That there is some rhubarb.

The previous owners tried to take it down, but a big old rhizome remained above ground and despite twelve whole months alone in the cold and wet, there was enough life in the old rhubarb to come roaring back, as you can see.  Pretty cool!  Much cooler than when bamboo does that! (I hate bamboo in the yard, it is super uncool and bamboo shoots are just not delicious enough to make up for the rapid growth and headache, as those rhizomes can kick it for up to 18 months).

I have been tweeting around a bit, but otherwise the household’s been far too sick for me to find blogging time, or gardening time.  So the pace will slow on all that.  This is already a year of challenges.  But we get to meet them with RHUBARB!

I cannot take the credit though, it was my lovely husband who noticed the rhubarb had started coming in while taking our oldest sweet child around and about the place.  He was thrilled, I was thrilled and now here we are.

This has been post a pic Tuesday.

Post a Pic Tuesday– More gardening!

De-fenceless junipers.

We went out and started taking down a fence so the junipers on the other side of it could be mowed down with a mighty chainsaw.  The fairy stroller is one of the many party favors my toddler is known to get down with.

We also dug up enough to go ahead and set up the raised beds Real Soon Now.We’ll also have a tater patch next to some salmonberries.  Should be interesting!

Veggie Plot of the Future.

Sprinkler wuz here.  Toddler is here.

Yes, that is a sliver of my oldest child, as always pretty in pink.  The weather has been so great lately, we’ve all been going out more.  It bodes well for planting next month.