Questions!

Thank you for sending me questions this week! I love it when you ask good questions about the farm. If your question isn't posted today it may be because I already answered the question, or I couldn't read what you wrote, or you didn't have a "?" at the end of your question.

Do you have any cats?

I've answered this question before. Yes, we have cats. We have a barn cat and three pet cats. Pets are animals that live in our house or in our yard. Midnight is the barn cat, she's not a pet. She has a job. Her job is to keep the mice out of the barn. I haven't seen one mouse in the barn for a very long time!

Sometimes Midnight wants to be on the patio by the house instead of the barn.
One of her favorite places to get warm is to sit under the plastic on the
big couch on the patio.
The plastic traps the heat, and it also keeps the water off the pillows.

Eliza is Heather's cat. She is a funny cat!
She likes to be where the people are.

Jasper is Heather's cat, too.
He's sick today.
Heather will take him to the veterinarian to see what's wrong.
I'll keep you updated so you know how he's doing.

Do you like to work at the farm?
Is it fun to work?

Those are good questions! Sometimes we think work is a bad thing. Do you think work and chores are horrible and bad?

I don't.

Sometimes work is hard, sometimes it isn't fun. It doesn't make sense that I like to work.

I like what happens when I work! I get stronger! I stay healthy! I'm outside! I'm happier when I work! I learn new things when I work!

Sitting on the couch watching TV isn't as much fun as doing some 'work' and moving around.

Some days I really, really don't want to get out of my warm, comfortable bed early in the morning. Some days I want to snuggle in the covers and stay warm instead of going out in the barn.

I have to remember that when I come in from the barn, and petting the cow and the goats, and playing with the little chicks, and fixing anything that's broken, and the chores are all done, I feel soooo much better! I feel stronger and smarter and happier.

This week we needed more feed for the animals.
My job was to fill all the barrels with the bags of feed that we unloaded from the truck.
That was a lot of work!
It was great!

How do you feel when you finally tackle that hard math problem, or figure out that difficult word that you've been working on? I bet you feel great!!!!

This week I felt great because I planted peas on
St. Patricks Day!
No peas have sprouted, but I felt so good about myself because I was out in the garden working.

Nothing feels as good as accomplishing something hard!

This hen is so excited that she finished her work of laying and egg today!

You can't see her very well, but you can hear her!

The Red Star chicks are growing!

They were born about 1 month ago.

The Light Brahmas were born about 2 weeks ago.

They are growing, too.

This is what the little chicks eat.

This is what the adult chickens eat.

Adult chickens have bigger beaks (mouths) than chicks do so they can eat bigger pieces food.

I hope you have a wonderful Spring Break! We're looking forward to River having her baby goats on April 1, no fooling! Ronnie, the turkey, is sitting on eggs. They should hatch out around April 5th. I love spring on the farm!

One more video for you!

Thanks again for your questions this week!

cow town mouse how out mouth born roar nothing early
Wonders Unit 5 Week 4

MissE and More Hay

MissE, our calf, will be going to her new home sometime in the next few weeks. Our neighbor has been visiting MissE since the day she was born! MG has been here almost every Saturday helping with chores and visiting with the animals.

Our neighbor is the sweetest girl! We love her, and so does MissE.

MissE is going to a great little farm. They will love her and take very good care of her. They are so excited to get a heifer (girl calf) from Echo!

I cleaned stalls this week, and we got more hay.
I had to move animals to different pastures.
Carson the horse, loves cows!
It looks like Chuck loves Carson, too.

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We ran out of hay this year.

We had 50 more bales of hay reserved, but the person who we buy hay from had 100 bales stolen right out of his barn! That was awful! That was hard for our hay grower to loose that much hay, and it was hard for us because the hay we thought we could bring in was gone.

Thankfully we have other places to buy hay. I thought you would like to see how a hay elevator works.



Using a hay elevator to move the hay is a lot faster than someone throwing bales down from the top of the truck like we did last fall.

The truck is carrying 250 bales of hay.

It took 3 men about an hour to unload and stack the hay in the hay barn.....

and put about 30 bales of hay in the big barn for Echo and the goats.

That's a lot of hay! Three strong men made fast work of getting it where it needed to go.

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After the hay is unloaded the men sweep all the extra hay off the truck. They don't want it flying off the truck while they are driving down the road. The chickens love to pick through the hay to find seeds.

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The chicks are growing! These chicks are about 1 month old. They have more feathers than they did last week. They are still cheeping like baby chicks.


These chicks are about 2 weeks old. They are so cute with their fluffy backs and pretty white feathers growing.

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I cleaned stalls this week, too.
Bryon cleaned the muck in front of the gate.
This is a lot of work.
The chickens will scratch it all down looking for seeds.
People will come take it away to put into their gardens.
Cow manure, goat manure, and stall shavings help the soil so that gardens grow really well.

This stall is clean and ready for.....

Ready for baby goats!!!!

River will have her baby goats right around April 1st, no fooling!


Have a great week, and remember....

New Chicks

Every year or so we get new chicks. They are sooooo cute!

They look like fluffy furballs for the first few days. They don't really have fur. They have tiny feathers called 'down' that keep them warm while they grow their real feathers.

Do you want to learn more about feathers? Click on this link and you can learn all the parts of a feather and why some chicken have fluffy feathers and some have regular feathers.

We all love the new chicks!

Even Scout loves to keep his eye on them to make sure they are safe.

The chicks are about 1 week old

I clean out their box every day and put clean newspaper down. They make a mess!

The yellow chicks are Light Brahmas. When they grow up they will look like the black and white chickens.

We have some 2 week old chicks, too! We can't put new chicks and 2 week old chicks together. The older chicks aren't nice to the younger chicks. Children and people can learn to be patient and kind with people younger than them, but chicks can't.

These chicks are Red Stars, Black Stars, and Turkens.

They look funny when they have some feathers and some down. The red chicks are Red Stars and will grow up to look like the red chicken in the photo with the Brahmas. The black chicks are Black Stars and they will be black with some red when they grow up.

Can you see the funny chicken that has no feathers on her neck? She is a Turken. She will never grow feathers on her neck.

We have a lot of chickens, but they aren't all for us. We'll keep 10 chickens and the neighbor will keep the other 17.

How many chicks am I raising?

These chicks aren't growing up with a mama hen so they need someplace to stay warm. Do you see the light in the photo? That's a heat lamp. Chicks snuggle under the heat lamp to stay warm. They also have lots of space to wander around so they don't get too hot under the lamp.

I also put a wooden board over the top so they stay warm at night.
The board also keeps them from jumping out of the tub.

The indoor chicks have a heater, too.
It's the yellow box in the middle.
It doesn't have a light, it's called a radiant heater.

I like the Brinsea heater better than the light. I think it does a better job keeping the chicks warm, and it seems safer than using a heat lamp. It also uses much less electricity than the lamp uses.

Did you know that chicks need vitamins, too?

We add this to their water for about 2 weeks.
It helps them stay healthy and grow properly.

Do you have questions about the chicks? I would love to answer them for you!

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Last week Xander and I planted some seeds. I was so surprised to see them sprout fast! It usually takes about 7-10 days for seeds to sprout into seedlings. Ours grew much faster!

Last week I told you I was going to put the trays under some lights. Light helps seeds sprout.

Seeds need something to grow in (we usually use soil), water, and light.

The big plants on the left side of the tray are all pumpkins and squash.
The smaller plants on the right side of the tray are flowers.

Row 1 & 2 Ornamental Gourd Mix
Row 3 Big Max Pumpkins
Row 4 & 5 Jack O' Lantern Pumpkins
Row 6 Mini Pumpkins
Row 7 Zucchini Squash
Row 8 Yellow Squash 

Row 13 & 14 Zinnia
Row 15 & 16 Broccoli
Row 17 Kale

Don't be like little chicks... choose to do something nice for someone younger than you!

Snow and Seeds

I hope you had a fun last week celebrating Dr. Seuss! He was a wonderful writer. One of my favorite stories is Scrambled Eggs Super.

I think some of our chickens look like some of the birds in Dr. Seuss' story! What do you think?

Sometimes it's hard to get good photos of the chickens who never seem to sit still unless they are sleeping!

It's also difficult to hold a chicken in one arm, and take a photo with my free hand!

I like chickens because they always seem happy! They like to cluck and scratch and look for seeds to eat.

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I thought spring was on it's way!
This is the mucky mess in the barnyard today.

It's snowy and mucky this morning. The animals are spending a lot of time inside the barn.

Most cows aren't treated as nicely as Echo.
Most cows have a shelter, but they don't have a warm stall inside a barn!

Even though it's snowing again today, I know that spring is on it's way. The chickens are laying a lot of eggs! That means we have we have more light every day.

The chickens start laying more eggs in the spring
because we have more daylight.
I collect about 1 dozen eggs every day.

I collect eggs every day during the spring and summer. Some winter days I collect none. 

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We get ready for spring by planting seeds inside. The little seeds grow into plants. They are big enough to plant in the garden right around Mother's Day.

We fill special trays with dirt.

Xander and his cousin want a lot of pumpkins this year!
They are both 4 years old.
He helped plant a lot of different kinds of pumpkin seeds.

What do you think Xander and his cousin are going to do with all the pumpkins that grow in the garden?

These are yellow squash seeds.
They look like pumpkin seeds.
Did you know that pumpkins are a type of squash?

These are flower seeds. 

These are flower seeds, too!

These are the seeds we planted.

Do you see the numbers we put on the rows?

We wrote the row number on the back of the packages so we would know
which row the seeds were planted in.

Then we put the lid on top of the tray.

This afternoon I'll set up my growing shelves with lights and put the seeds under lights. I'll show you how they are growing next week!

Planting a garden and raising animals takes patience and lots of work. It's fun to see how things grow!

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It's fun to have indoor animals, too. Eliza does some funny things! Do you have a pet that makes you laugh? How many pets do you have? We have four cats. Eliza, her brother Jasper, Stinky, and Midnight the barn cat.

Remember.....

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Wonders First Grade Unit 5 Week 1