Exploring Tadpoles Turning Into Frogs

This week the children have been having a great time watching the creatures change in our pond. Today they captured all of the different phases going on and had them all in one bucket!

Here is a tadpole, (or polliwog depending on where you are)starting to grow it’s legs:




I read that they hatch out as a tadpole and remain in that form until the following season. Then they start growing legs in their transformation to frog, and the other frog characteristics come on gradually.

The tail is the last thing the tadpole looses on its journey to becoming a frog. I don’t remember ever seeing a frog with a tadpole tail, so I was amazed at this next picture myself! Here are a couple of the frog before it lost its tadpole tail:





And we all know what a frog looks like, but I had to put up a picture of one to make this post complete. Here is a finished frog with a tail-frog in the background:




And some day these little guys will be peaking out at us, daring us to try to catch them, like this frog:




God gives us all kinds of science lessons right in our own pond! This is what I call "home schooling through the summer"!

June Wild Flowers

This has been a beautiful spring and one of the things we always enjoy is the wild flowers that God graces our property with. Erica has taken a few pictures of the most abundant ones that I thought would be nice to show here. No matter what direction you may look here at Pure Water Hollow, you will probably be seeing wild roses, day lilies, or daisies.

We have daisies coming up all over the place. When we mow, we are careful to leave the best stands of daisies alone. Simon and Christina often pick these to use in a bouquet for their mother, who proudly displays them on the dining room table in a vase.






We also love to see the day lilies blooming. Aren’t they pretty?





Another wild flower that has been catching our attention is the wild roses. We have so many pretty blooms and they range in color from almost completely white to pure pink to purple and many shades in between. Here are some of them:






Erica made some rose collages with her new camera that I thought were really pretty:





And there you have some of the most common and abundant wild flowers of Pure Water Hollow during this late part of spring.

The prettiest flower of all was working the camera. Thanks for the pictures, Erica.



PS Since I don’t know when I might next do another entry of just nature photography, I thought I would include a picture of a "flying flower", a zebra swallowtail butterfly that Erica took:

Saving This Year's Kittens

Some time ago I wrote about two of our cats each having a litter of kittens. The best of the mama cats was then hit out on the road a day after her kittens were born. The other mama was not showing very many mothering instincts to her own kittens and now her litter had to be doubled! We had eight kittens and a mama cat that did not want to stay with them!

We got the replacement formula and the children started to bottle feed them, alternating between the bottle and the kittens nursing from the mama cat.

Sadly, two of the the eight died, but the other six seem to be doing well. Erica has now taken several pictures of them. They are cuter in person, but the pictures give you an idea of what we have been enjoying caring for.

Here was one litter soon after they were born:



We bottle fed them for several weeks:



They began to get into the cute, playful stage pretty soon:





Kittens do sleep often:



The kittens were not the only ones who enjoyed the replacement milk from the bottle. This is Creamsicle who was probably the daddy cat:




We were thankful that they did still have one mama cat that could nurse them some times, even though 8 was a bit too many for her:



We have been enjoying seeing these kittens get stronger. For a while we had them up at the barn in hopes that they would grow up to be good barn cats, but one night the mama cat moved them all back down to our house.

We did not have the heart to move them back up yet, and they are easier to play with on our porch!

3 comments
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clairebear on June 21, 2007 at 3:47 pm
I LOVE kittens!!! Oh how precious!
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LittleHouse on June 21, 2007 at 5:25 pm
The kittens are so cute! They seem really playful too!

Erica did a really good job taking the pictures! We Love all of you!

Love,

Mary & Laura
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sheryl on June 21, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Oh how cute! I am going to come and visit you all just so I can play with the kittens. lol

Homestead Happenings Month In Review: May 07

May has now come and gone.

May is the month when there is so much we always want to get done around the homestead with mowing and planting at the least. May is also the month when my job always comes to a smashing climax for the year which tends to take up most of my time and energy.

I haven’t had much time at work to blog this month, and I have found that I can not blog here at home on my Macintosh except for the comment feature. As a result, May of 2007 has seen fewer number of entries in this blog than any other month since I began this journaling journey 9 months ago.

Not that less has happened this month at Pure Water Hollow, just less words and pictures.

Now it is time for my Month In Review post, and I find myself to not be in very much of a reflective mood. As a matter of fact, I do not feel like writing much. These Month In Review posts of mine have tended to be rather lengthy in January, February, March, and April, but you are just going to get a condensed version for May.

(After writing it I see that it doesn’t look like it is very condensed. But believe me, had I written everything that has been running through my mind about our homestead happenings, then it would have been pages longer!)

Chickens:
333 eggs this month did not break April’s record of 352 eggs, but still a great month. We crossed over the 1000-egg mark for 2007 on May 5th, which was significant since we only had 947 eggs for all of 2006! We have more than doubled our layers over last year, so we should expect more eggs. Two of our hens are setting on nests that should begin hatching next week, and we are missing two other hens that are likely setting somewhere in secret.

We have made $45.00 in egg sales now since we began on April 20th. We took out of it the feed costs for April and May, which was about $21.00 for two 100 pound sacks of cracked corn. The remaining $24.00 we split between Erica, Matthew, Christina, and Simon, giving them each $6.00 for their efforts in raising the chickens. I know it is not much, but they were happy to share in the profits. (We use these times to show how at least 10 percent, in this case 60 cents, should be given back to the Lord, which they each did last Sunday.)

Pigs:

We are still waiting to get Porky processed. We spent $116.50 on pig feed in May for the 4 hogs, but we still have 2 100-pound sacks of feed that we have not yet used. That means they ate about $88.10 in purchased feed. There were many days in May that we did not have any spoiled milk to give them.

Goats:

Mathew got an addition started for the goat pasture, but it has stalled out waiting to be completed. In the mean time we keep buying feed for them: $57.50 in May. We also had Tiny Tim and Big Jim castrated today, making them both wethers. Our vet does it for only $10 a piece!

We could have traded Big Jim for a breeding buck, but we just are not yet ready to jump into having a buck lot and all the trouble that can go with that. Some day we will get a buck to breed with Mama Belle and Little Lulu and begin growing our herd, but lets get some pasture hills fenced in first!

We also got tetanus shots for all 5 of them and worm medicine for each of them, so our total cost was $52.50. We gave the shots and wormed them ourselves

Honeybees:

We put an additional hive body and super on our Genesis colony of honeybees on May 6th. They seem to be doing very well.

Trees and Berries:

We planted 20 dogwood trees across the road, 2 chestnut trees near the barn, and 7 pecan trees between the clearing and split rock. Matthew planted 18 trees along the east ridge all by himself, including 4 coffee trees, 7 chestnut trees, and 7 pecan trees.

11 of the 12 catalog cherry trees we planted last month are doing great. (One lost a battle with a lawn mower.) 3 of the 6 catalog blueberry plants we planted last month are still surviving. (The other three were apparently killed by Luna)

This time last year we had a bountiful cherry harvest, but this year not one cherry made it through the Easter freeze. Also no peach crop for us this year thanks to the freeze, but we do have one peach on a tree on the riverbank!

We have enjoyed many Strawberries beginning on April 19th and still continuing.

We have several plums growing in the plum trees and it looks like we may have many grapes on our vines later this summer.

The walnut trees have many walnuts forming on them this year! Last year we were disappointed in our walnut trees.

Raspberries and blackberries look like they will do well.

Weather:

Hot and dry. We are experiencing somewhat of a drought here. We had 2.4 inches of rain the first week of May and a half-inch on May 16th, but that has been all. We counted 7 days that reached 90 degrees or better, 9 days in the 80s, 13 days in the 70s, and only 2 days in the 60s. That sounds more like Florida weather to me!

Misc:

Please pray for my dad. He is in the hospital tonight and he has been battling cancer. Thanks.


1 comment
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sheryl on June 15, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hey,

Wow you all have been busy. I just got to read this post today. I really haven`t been on here that much. I was glad to hear about the egg production. I can`t wait until all my mine are laying. I only have 5 hens and two bantam hens laying right now but I got some that should start laying this fall. I hope anyway. Good luck. I am going to try and catch up on some more of your post and some others too.
-Sheryl

The Death Of A Camera ~ OR ~ A Nice Afternoon On Our River

Picture Perfect Stupidity

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon at Pure Water Hollow. It was near 90 degrees once again with a blue sky and a bright sun. It was warm, but in the shade the gentle breeze made it comfortable. Later on this summer we will probably wish we had air conditioning, but I am usually thankful for nature’s air conditioning during this time of the year. Even though the days are near 90 (we have already had several above 90) the nights are down in the 60s. This tends to create a sort of natural air conditioned feeling in the shaded crevices of our property well into the afternoon hours as well as in our mostly shade covered home. We open the widows during the night and then "trap" the cool air inside in the morning. So far it has stayed comfortable.

The chores were all completed and I was back from running some errands in town. The children have been looking forward to getting in our river to enjoy the refreshing, cool, running water and to also explore all the wonders that one can find in the edges of the river among the rocks and boulders. They were overjoyed when I announced that today would be a good afternoon to get wet in the river!

Our property goes down along the river for a piece and we have played and explored the riverbank many times. We discovered that it is exciting and fun to wade in the river and a section of our part of the river is at the shoals where it is at the shallowest. On a hot summer day it is refreshing to wade out into the cool water. Last year we found out that we can wade across the entire width to the other shore, even though the current is quite strong along the middle.

I wanted to let the children go down the river in inner tubes on this particular Saturday, which we had never done before. To be on the safe side I decided to tie a rope from one shore to the other across the river. This was so they would be able to catch it instead of continuing on down the river away from our home. I had a 300 feet length of tough, yellow, braided nylon rope and as the children splashed around at the edge of the river I began to wade out toward the middle.

The water was not as cold as I thought it would be, and there was no "shock" as I stepped deeper and deeper in. Even though it has not rained much for weeks, the river was still a foot or two higher than it is when it’s at it’s lowest. As I went nearer the middle the current got stronger and stronger until it was difficult to stand up at times. The water level quickly passed my knees to my waist and was almost chest deep at the deepest part. I was thankful that I had a hold of a rope tied to the shore a couple of times and just when I thought it might be too deep and too strong of current to continue, it began to get easier and less deep and strong. Going the second half of the distance was not difficult at all and I quickly found myself on the other side of the river. The 300 feet of rope was more than enough and we probably had 75 feet left over after I tied it to the other side. The return trip across back to our side of the river would be easy now with a rope to back me up.

As I returned back out into the river the water was again waist deep about a third of the way across. It was about at this point, with rushing water swirling all around me, that a sickening feeling overwhelmed me…

It was such a beautiful day, and this was our first day of the summer to play in the river. I had Erica charge up the batteries for her digital camera so we could get plenty of good pictures of the children enjoying the first day of the 2007 river-play season. I also wanted to get pictures of their first time floating down our river riding on inner tubes. The pictures would be classic!

Erica had wisely decided that she did not want to get her camera wet, and she knew she was going to be wading in the river as soon as she got down there. Being the responsible young lady she is, she had given the camera to me for safe keeping.

That sickening, overwhelming feeling stopped me dead in the water (literally, and it was waist deep water) when I realized that I still had Erica’s digital camera…in my pocket! Not only was the camera submerged in water at that moment, but it had also been under water for over 10 minutes as I fought against the current crossing the river!

How could Lisa (my wonderful wife) have allowed that to happen! Why did she let me go out into the river with Erica’s camera in my pocket?

I reached down into the water and pulled the dripping camera out of my pocket. I moved it to my damp shirt pocket so it would not get wet as I waded back across the river. (Wouldn’t want to ruin the camera on the way back to my side of the river, you know.)

The children enjoyed their inner-tube rides down the river and Lisa and I enjoyed watching them. Unfortunately, no one can enjoy the pictures of the afternoon….

I can not begin to express how terrible I felt about the camera. It was an expensive mistake that Erica made, entrusting her camera to her darling dad. It cost her loving father over $100 to buy her a new digital camera, with the express instructions to be careful of whom she lends it to!

She got her new camera yesterday, and she seems to be happy with it. She has forgiven me and she still loves me. I am a blessed man.


2 comments
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~Melissa on May 30, 2007 at 5:22 pm
You are blessed. Aren't we parents full of "ooops!". Glad you were able to enjoy the day despite the loss of the camera.

Warmly, Melissa
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SimpleFolk on May 30, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Oh, I'm sorry this happened to you! You know, your children are so blessed to have a father who spends time with them like you do. Those are beautiful memories in the making! I bet your daughter won't even remember the soggy camera. )

(You probably will for economic reasons, lol.)

Sounds like a lovely day anyway! You must have a beautiful property!

Amy

Mom Visits and Takes Pictures!

We were blessed at Pure Water Hollow Homestead to have a visit from my mom and step-dad on April 27the and 28th. I am glad that Mom had her digital camera with her and decided to take several pictures. There have been some additions to our homestead since their visit in October.

For one reason or another, we have not been taking many pictures around our homestead lately. Before they went back home I got Mom’s camera and transferred all of her pictures to our computer!

We have dragged our feet a bit getting them ready for the blog, but what follows are some of the pictures she took while visiting! I think visits to our home make for a neat scrap book entry of sorts, and this is a way to preserve our memories! (My brother’s family came down toward the beginning of April and you can see pictures of that visit in that post.)

They came bearing gifts, and this included new bicycles! Simon posed with his, ready for action:




Christina loves her bikes, too:




Here she is enjoying a ride on the beautiful day:




Of course, a big part of the visit was seeing our animals as we did the chores.

Here are the chickens:





And here are some of the pigs. This is Rufus and Porky:




And Rufus and Nellie:




And here is Tom observing them. The pigs are very friendly and came up to be petted:




Across the ravine from the pigs are our goats. Here is Little LuLu and Tiny Tim:




And Little Joe:




And Mama Belle:




Here are the three kids getting ready to eat their grain mix:




I like this picture of Matthew taking a bale of hay across to them:




Simon and Christiana love catching things from our pond, which is behind the barn. I thought Mom got some good pictures of it:




Doesn’t it look like a peaceful area?




After the feeding chores are over, we often take time to sit back and relax. Matthew looks tired in this picture, but I think he was just watching what was going on in front of the barn:




Here is one of Christina finding a place to sit down and take it easy. That is a roll of fence that the goats can not wait for us to get installed for them! If you look closely you can see the goat house across the ravine:




Before leaving the barn area, Matthew showed Tom how his four-wheeler works:






Tom decided to try it out on a drive back to the house instead of walking down from the barn. There they go:




But back at the house, there was more work to be done. Tom liked the looks of the mulch that the RECC has been giving to us. (The RECC has continued to deliver more loads of wood chips periodically throughout this past winter and spring)

We were glad to donate to their homestead as much mulch as Tom wanted to take in his truck:




Tom had an entire work-crew assembled. Matthew, Christina, and Simon all enjoyed helping:




Erica was around the whole time, but I noticed she did not make many of these pictures I got ready for the blog. Here she is with one of our favorite cats, Puff:




(Speaking of cats, let me show you a picture Erica took of the kittens that were born on April 21st. This was taken when they were 3 days old:




We had 4 more kittens born last week. I will likely post about the kittens in the future as we are trying to bottle feed them some of the time. The most experienced of the two mama cats, Cotton, was tragically killed on the road this week, leaving her 4 newborn kittens to be raised by the young mama,Icesickle. That makes a total of 8 kittens for a very young mama cat to take care of.)

Another person who did not make it in any of these pictures was the one who took all the pictures: my mother! Since I had access to all of the pictures from her camera we decided to take the liberty to use one of her that was not taken at Pure Water Hollow. Here she is, with Tom, at the ocean:




Thank you, Mom and Tom, for the wonderful visit. And thanks, Mom, for taking all of these pictures.

From all of us at Pure Water Hollow…

WE LOVE YOU!


1 comment
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Chas on May 10, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Your pictures were GREAT your mom did a wonderful job! I enjoyed seeing your animals and your home!

Have a great day!

Blessings,

Chas

HSB My Favorite Chicken Contest

The Front Porch of HSB is running a contest about favorite chickens.

I wrote about our favorite chicken in one of my early posts here last fall. I’m taking the easy way out today, by just referring you back to that entry about our rooster, Big Daddy Dahmer. After you read about our mysterious hero it will be clear why he has to go down as my favorite chicken.

He is still with us and doing great. He now has his flock laying record numbers of eggs. I told you all how they gave us 22 eggs last Monday. Well, they followed that with 16 or 17 eggs every day of that week for a new week’s record of 112 eggs! This week they have given us 17, 17 and 14 so they are still on a roll!

A big part of their success is due to my favorite rooster, Big Daddy Dahmer!

(PS: My post did not win. There were many good chicken posts!)

22 eggs!

The month of April ended with a tremendous effort on the part of the Pure Water Hollow hens! Never before has so much been given by so few, and we are indebted to them for their heroic performance.

Our 27 hens gave us 22 eggs yesterday, and that was with three of them still broody and setting. Most probably the setting hens did not lay so that leaves only 24 hens to produce the 22 eggs. This set the daily record for number of eggs laid, and I believe it will remain the mark for some time to come.

These hens are not necessarily bred for a high yield of eggs, and I had been figuring that they each average laying one egg every two days. Our flock consists of some game hens and a mixed breed that came from game hens and a barred rooster. They have great mothering abilities and foraging skills, but the egg production is just a bonus, so we are very pleased with how that is going now.

We sold some eggs last night to a neighbor and I sold another dozen eggs at work today. We are now sold out and I have orders for three more dozen as soon as we get them, so right now the demand is greater than the supply! That usually means a price increase in a capitalistic economy, but we are not planning on raising our prices yet. Perhaps we started the price too low at $1.50/dozen, but I think it is too early in our business to raise it now. Actually, I am amazed that so many people want to buy them. Pleasantly surprised may be the better way to put it.

I am curious to see how many eggs we get today. Since nearly all of the hens must have laid yesterday, I am not anticipating very many eggs today. We shall see. It is also fun for me to keep track of the egg records. Maybe that is a strange hobby, but I enjoy watching the numbers. We have 32 now for the first two days of this week, which is a 16 egg a day average. If they keep up a pace close to that they will break the single week record of 91 set the first week of April. Again, we shall see…

I am still planning to show some pictures in the near future that my mom took when they visited. I just have to get them uploaded, which can take some time. I keep finding so many other things to do.

Have a blessed May, everyone!

5 comments
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sheryl on May 1, 2007 at 10:18 am
Ok, now I am very interested in the egg selling adventure. I hope to get to the point where I can start selling eggs. Are you going to put a sign out to advertise them? Right now, I only have 5 laying hens and 2 bantam hens laying. I get about 7 eggs a day. I was planning on selling them at a $1.25 dz. or a $1dz, not sure. I know brown eggs sell about $1.75 in the store. I would also like to start selling pullets and roosters. That will be a long way down the road. I have about 4dz eggs in the incubator. Hopefully in less than 21 days they will be hatched out. I can`t wait to hear more about you selling them and how well you are doing. Good luck. sheryl

I was going to ask you, what all do you feed your hens.

~~Purewater's reply:

7 eggs a day from 7 hens sounds wonderful! You should be able to start selling some soon if you wish.

As for the sign, we are not doing that yet. I did make up some fliers to put up at our post office and a couple of the little country stores close to home, but we decided that we better wait to even do that. We don't want to advertise any more at all right now as long as all of our eggs are selling the way it is. All I have done was to put up a flier on the bulletin board at my work and folks are buying all the eggs I bring in.

We feed our chickens regular cracked corn in the mornings and then they free range for several hours each evening. They love to scratch up for themselves bugs and worms and they eat whatever plants and greens that appeal to them. (They do seem to like my wife's bleeding heart flowers, unfortunately.)
Edited by Purewater on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 at 1:20 PM
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Ashley on May 1, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I would be really suprised if it were physically possible for your hens to lay more than one egg a day….

When a hen goes broody, she would, in nature, continue to lay eggs until she had a good clutch of I don't know how many eggs, probably as many as would fit comfortably under her.

Of course, if you are taking the eggs out of under them each night, the broody hens might keep laying until her internal clock tells her to stop and set on her complete, invisible clutch.

Or, if you are letting them set on eggs . . . . a few of the hens might still be laying…. *shrugs*

Anyways, it's obvious I don't know the whole story, so take my words with a grain of salt. Sounds like you have some really superb laying hens, though. We get eggs around here (KS) for $1 a dz, and they go FAST! I was reading something the other day about commercial hatcheries feeding the chickens compounds to make the yolks different colors. The compounds did not sound like vitamins! Bleck!

The first thing I will get upon our return to the country is: chickens. Boy, I sure miss 'em!

Ashley

~~Purewater's reply:

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that we were getting more than one egg a day per hen. When I wrote about the 13 egg-a-day average or 16 egg-a-day average I was talking about the average for the entire flock of 26 or 27 layers, not just one hen. We had been averaging about 1 egg per hen every other day, but the average may be increasing to perhaps 3 eggs per hen every 5 days.

You are correct about the broody hens likely laying an egg a day to collect the clutch she wants. We have found that to be about 10 to 12 eggs, but after they get set, they will not lay anymore for up to a month while their instinct is telling them to hatch and raise their chicks.

We have been able to break them up off their nest by continually taking their eggs and throwing them off the nest. It takes about a week of doing this several times a day for them to realize that they no longer have any reason to set, and then they get back to the normal routine of laying.

Some of our hens have raised two clutches during one season and I think they may be capable of doing it three times if allowed to! This seems to be quite unusual from what I've read. I think it is due to their game hen background.

Thanks again for sharing, and good luck getting back to the country!
Edited by Purewater on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 at 3:03 PM
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Chas on May 1, 2007 at 9:03 pm
How Wonderful! We have 5 chickens now and are averaging about 3-4 eggs a day. I am very happy. I hope to get several more chickens and then work up to selling our eggs. I am happy for you. Your homestead seems to run so nicely. I love your end of the month reports too. Good work!!

Blessings,

Chas
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Meme on May 7, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Wow !! All those eggs and I thought my whopping "3" were alot..Oh course it is alot since I only have three hens…lol…. Before I had these Misses I would buy yard eggs when ever I could find them. They have such a richer taste, and to think some folks do not eat yard eggs…yummy !!!!! Hopefully when the heat sets in they do not stop laying, (on this end they do stop for the summer months)..Debbie

Meme on May 7, 2007 at 8:30 pm
By the way my dad used to mark the laid eggs that the hen would set on and check daily for those new fresh eggs.. I think that is why he would mark them…lol….Deb

Homestead Happenings Month In Review: April 07

April has gone by in a blur it seems, and it is difficult to believe it is already over! I’m glad I’ve recorded some things on my calendars or else I would be looking around here at the end of the month, wondering what happened during April.

Weather:
Looking back, I see that we had some significant weather in April here at Pure Water Hollow. April always gives Kentucky a wonderful variety of weather but the great "April Freeze of 07" was a bit unusual. The first three days of the month were beautiful with temps in the 70s and 80s and on Tuesday, April 3rd we even saw 88 degrees! That made the sudden fall in temperature even more pronounced as the next night got down to freezing! That was followed by 3 days of off and on snow flurries and was the start of 6 straight nights of below freezing temperatures!

It was certainly hard on our fruit trees, but I believe that God works everything out for good in His own way. Perhaps the freeze will have taken care of the brown rot problem we had on our peaches and plums last year? Maybe next year’s crop will be even more bountiful and without the brown rot? And I had not gotten around to doing any pruning this season, which now I am grateful. Our trees were probably able to withstand the freeze better since they had not been pruned recently?

The two weeks following the freeze saw us record almost 4 inches of rain amongst some otherwise beautiful days, but it was the 2.7 inches of rain that fell during the 36 hour period during the weekend of the 13th, 14th, and 15th that caused some flash flooding, damage to our pond dam up in the hollow, and the river to overflow its banks, almost uprooting the peach trees down there! We also had rain on the 19th, 24th, 26th, and the 28th. Altogether it looks like we had a total of 4.4 inches of rain and about .8 inches of snow for the month of April.

Our temperatures for the month were a mixed bag. We saw 16 days in the 70s and 80s, 8 days in the 50s and 60s and 6 days only in the 30s and 40s. I guess that is fairly typical of a Kentucky April.

Chickens:
We are excited about what the Lord is doing in this department. April has been another record-breaking month for Pure Water Hollow Homestead egg production of 330 eggs, (not counting today). That broke last month’s record of 283 eggs. If you divide 330 by the 29 days you find that we have averaged 11.3 eggs per day! The first week of April went down as the new record total for weekly output of 91 eggs, beating the previous weeks record of 85 eggs! (I gathered the eggs later today. This last day of April saw a record number of eggs for one day: 22 eggs all laid in the coop! That makes 352 for the month!)

We have 27 hens now, but we started the month with 28. On April 10th 2 hens did not come back to the coop. One of them did return later, but one never did. We think she probably went to setting on a nest in the woods, which would have been fine, if she could have stayed safe. Sadly, Matthew found a pile of feathers in a rock crevice up on the hill yesterday. We think it must be from the missing hen.

We never really planned on going into the egg selling business, but people are now buying fresh farm eggs from the Pure Water Farm! We have made $23.50 selling eggs in April. We only started marketing them just over a week ago and we have sold 9 1/2 dozen during these first 11 days. All I did was put one flier up on the bulletin board at work and mentioned it to a few people and God is doing the rest. I have made some fliers to put up at some local stores and the post office, but we have to wait to see if we have any extra eggs. So far we are selling all we have here at my work!

I decided that it would be best if we used new cartons so we ordered 200 for about $50. I got them from the same place that pcsmom got hers. (Thanks for the tip). We got our cartons in on April 18th and had my flier up by the 20th. These 200 should be more than enough for this season and I think we will have many left over for next year. Here is a picture of what they look like:






One reason they may be selling so well is that we only priced them for $1.50 a dozen. I didn’t want to go too high since there are people around here who still sell eggs for only $1 a dozen, but they don’t sell them in attractive, sterile, new cartons!

Our cost for keeping the chickens this month has been just one 100 pound bag of cracked corn for $10.10. The price of corn continues to rise here…

Pigs:
Our pigs are costing us a bit more to keep, but we are still enjoying them. They are such loveable creatures! I bought 400 pounds of corn feed meal at the start of the month for $36.50. We mix this with the free milk we get from the distributors in town. This lasted for over three weeks but I did have to buy another bag on the 26th for $9.10 and we have gone through it already. I also bought a 100 pound bag of hog feed for $12.25 from one feed store and another 100pound bag of hog chow for $14.10 from another feed store. The difference is the amount of protein in the feed. The more expensive one has 16% protein, I think, while the other has 12%. I get them just to try and give the pigs a more balanced diet. The grand total for feeding the 4 now rather big hogs comes to $71.95 for the month of April.

We added a new metal feed trough for them the beginning of this month. Now we have a large trough outside and a large one inside. This has helped by giving them more room and a better variety. This new feed trough is actually half of some type of cylindrical tank, like a water heater but larger. Matthew dug it up from the ravine so we have no money in it and it is working so good! The outside feeding area was greatly improved on April 3rd when we built up the ground in front of the trough using free slabs from a local saw mill. We stacked them and nailed them together and covered the platform with dirt so it would not be too hard on their feet. The pigs love it and it has helped them be able to eat out of the trough tremendously!

We still have Porky, although he looks like he is definitely ready to process. He turned 6 months old on April 4th. I really need to get on the ball and decide where to take him. There are a few butchers to choose from, but the one I want to find more about is one in a neighboring community run by some Mennonites. If they are in business for the general public it might be worth it to drive further for some quality service by people I can trust.

I see that I have also spent money on straw for the pigs. It just seems that they enjoy having straw for their beds so much that I hate to let them do without it. Maybe I am pampering them too much, but I have given them 6 bales of straw during April. This also helps with the mud some, and they seem to use the straw in their stalls to clean the mud off of them. They do seem cleaner and happier when they have straw to play with. But we have to weigh in the cost factor. Straw here sells for $4.75 a bale so I have used about $30 of straw just to make them comfortable this month.

I also wormed them this month, on April 10th, just to be on the safe side. I went back and forth on whether or not it would be a good thing if they did not show any signs of having worms, and I finally decided to do it just in case. I actually bought the worm medicine back in January for $4.95. It was called Atguard Worm medication. It was the kind you mix in the dry feed and was enough medicine to do all four pigs.

Goats:
Our 5 goats continue to do well. They have never escaped from our fence, so I am glad that we must have done something right. We desperately need to continue fencing however, and give them access to all the plants and thorns and trees that are out now. They have picked their lot pretty clean, and they love it when the children take them on walks with a leash where they can get to other plants. I think we will be able to cut back quite a bit on their feed after they have a bigger area to graze.

This month we have gone through 2 bags of 100 pound goat feed that cost a total of $27.50 and they have started on another 100 pound bag of sweet feed that I bought for $13. I also bought 10 bales of hay for $30 on April 19th and we have already used several of the bales.

The kudzu has not yet greened out, so we still do not know how well they will like it. I surely hope it will be one of their favorites!

Bees:
As far as we know, our Genesis Colony of honeybees is doing well.

We went ahead and invested in all the bee keeping equipment we think we will need in the foreseeable future and it was delivered on April 14th in two 45 pound boxes. I think it was like Christmas for Lisa, and she has enjoyed going through it all and assembling the hives and supers and frames. We got a complete hive, another hive body, two more supers, all the frames we need, all the foundation we could use, a beekeeping outfit with the gloves, helmet, overalls, an extra helmet and veil, a smoker, a feeder, a book. and other little things I am forgetting. We are planning very soon to add a hive body and super to the Genesis Colony.

Trees and Plants:
We were able to plant 6 blueberry bushes, 12 cherry bushes, 3 pecan trees, and 6 coffee trees this month. We have a number of other pecan, chestnut, coffee, and dogwood trees to still plant. We have those extra trees heeled in in our garden, so they must find a home soon. Our garden is still awaiting our tender loving care.


In surveying my calendars, I don’t see much else I should mention here concerning April, except for the company we have had. It is neat that we started the month with a visit from my brother and his family and we have ended the month with a visit from my mom and step-dad. (I am hoping to share pictures that Mom took in my next post.) It has been fun to visit with family and share with them how God has been blessing our homestead.

Overall, I think we have had a good April, even though it did go by rather quickly! We operate in continual thanksgiving unto our Lord for the goodness he bestows upon us.