Wow, it has been a long time since we have posted a farm blog! The last was before Halloween. This edition of the blog is written by both of us - Debby for the first part, Kevin for the last part.
Halloween is an especially exciting day for one creature on our farm - that would be Birch. We traditionally plan for Halloween to be the date to move our resident buck in with the does. From what we have witnessed, he got busy with Belle, Daisy and Poppy (in that order) in the first week. After that he turned his attentions to finding all of the weak areas of the fencing in order to escape!
He's a stinker in more ways than one!
Vinca moved out to to the Bachelor Pad with Tamarack. She is not thrilled but seems to be getting used to it.
A good caption for the photo above would be "it's about time you showed up" as it was chore time and they were getting their goat kibble.
The pigs got into the escaping act too, leaving the confines of their piggy paddock several times before the fencing was reinforced. Sometimes this occurred at the same time as Birch was out which made things really interesting!
There have been some changes in the poultry department as well. Half the chicken flock and all of the turkeys went to the butcher. That was a tough call as we do enjoy the turkeys but they bully the chickens a bit and that can be a problem in very cold weather when I want to keep them indoors. A new rooster has been obtained and Rafael has exited. Here is Pancho and the flock getting some sun in the hay shed.
We had some snow a couple of weeks ago.
Now the snow is gone but the weather has gotten pretty cold. It was only 9 degrees at milking time this morning. Here the pigs soak up the sun in their bed of straw. Despite the cold they seem pretty comfortable.
The cold forced me to move the squash and pumpkins into the house from the garage.
I emptied out the Kakai pumpkins and cleaned, soaked (in salt water) and roasted their hull-less seeds. They are delicious but this process was a bit time consuming so I don't know that I will repeat it next year. I do think it would be a great family project to do with kids though.
November also means it's time for Kevin's favorite holiday: Deer Season, so now you have me for the 2021 deer season report. We had a small crew this year, just 7 hunters for opening weekend. The hunters were willing, but the deer were scarce.
I will put the dead deer picture at the end for those who are not interested in seeing the photo. We did have a first time hunter this year, Trenton. He wanted to see what all the fuss is about and he found out the evening of opening Saturday when he harvested his first deer, a yearling buck. A person's first deer is always exciting and it was fun to be able to experience it with him. Nick also harvested a yearling buck opening Saturday evening and I got a fork buck on opening Sunday. So opening weekend 3 deer, wonderful right? Well not so much. We did not see another deer, except for the tail of one when Dad and I were out walking until the last day of season when we pushed a doe and fawn past Dad, but by this time, since we were not seeing any deer we let them go for seed for next year. So all in all, we only saw 6 deer the entire season. We knew going in that there were not many deer around, but not this bad. Just think, 4 years ago we saw over 60 deer opening weekend. The thing is, we are not even seeing tracks in the snow. The day the picture from the stand was taken, I did a little walk and found only one set of deer tracks, but did find coyote tracks. Not sure if that was the reason we did not see much, or if our numbers are just down. Numbers statewide are down also, so it's not just us.
And that is our update for this time. Thank you for taking time to read it. Until next time, be well friends.