Just when I think I'll start blogging on a more regular schedule, life happens. After the busyness of the holidays settled down the family all came down with the crud...you know, stuffy noses, tummy issues, and wicked coughs. Fortunately, mama stayed healthy just tired from many nights of interrupted sleep.
While we wait for springs arrival we've been keeping busy with farm clean up. We've burned limbs, picked up trash, made piles of scrap metals to recycle, and we've had lots of free wood chips delivered to spread around the farm. We've laid some mulch in areas where it is really muddy, but our plan is to line our walkways with the chips to keep it from being muddy while we travel to and from the garden plots.
We started our onions and leeks the last of December and they are coming along quite nicely! We've never grown onions from seed before and we didn't have much luck last year with the leeks, but we've read a lot and learned that onions are one of the easiest seeds to grow. It keeps our cost down too if we can grow our own onions from seed verses ordering plants. Right now we have one variety started (Red Ruby), which will be a beautiful red onion.
In mid-December we got ourselves a new dog. Sky, our doberman, has been lonely since we lost our last two dogs. She is the most loving dog and just wants to nurture. She is great with the children and often follows them around and lays in the grass while they play. One of our farm cats had kittens and Sky took them from the mama when they were between three and four weeks old. We tried many times to give them back to mama kitty, but she just kept taking them. Sky hasn't had puppies herself for many years, but she started producing milk and took care of the kittens! My mom has a picture of it on her camera that I'll share, but just imagine four to six fluffy kittens snuggled up and nursing on our 75 lb dobie! Well, the kittens grew and we found homes for them. Sky was once again alone. One morning our oldest son found her cuddling with one of our meat birds. She was cuddling with a chicken folks! She was desperate! Over the years we've had terrible luck with dogs chasing and killing our chickens, so we've been leery about getting another dog. Ray was on Craigslist and he came across an ad for a free blue tick hound. We contacted the sellers and brought her home. Zoey isn't like any other dog we've ever had. Zoey has only three legs.. She was hit by a car a year ago and they couldn't save her left front leg. She was fostered and then adopted by a loving couple. Circumstances changed for them and now we have her. She loves the farm, has become great friends with Sky, and thinks her spot to sleep is right in front of the wood stove! Thankfully, at six years old, she is past the puppy stage. With her being more mature and only having three legs, she isn't interested in the chickens. If she ever does try to chase them, they have an advantage.
Until next time,
Tiff
Tiff
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