Answering Questions

 Thanks so much for all your questions. It's getting easier to read your handwriting. You must be working hard on writing more clearly.

I think the same thing!
Boo Yah! for farms, and for good handwriting!

Yes, we cook the eggs that we gather on the farm.
Sometimes we eat them, and sometimes the dogs get to eat them.

I save the broken and frozen eggs for the dogs.

The dogs got eggs for breakfast today.

This is almost all the eggs I collected for the last two days.
Do you see the specked eggs in the middle of the bottom row?
Those are turkey eggs.

Good dogs! Mishka and JJ are learning how to wait until I call them to come into the barn.
They definitely deserve some yummy eggs for breakfast.

                                               

Grayci is almost 6 months old. She just started laying eggs.
We like turkey eggs, and chicken eggs, and duck eggs.
Thanks, Grayci!

We got those animals one at a time.

My friend sold me Echo. Echo has had a few calves. Sadie is the last calf she had. Now Sadie is going to have her own calf!

River was born April 9, 2016.

If you want to see more about River when she was born, you can look at this link.

There were so many more good questions! I'll answer more next week.

Have a great week!

Bedding and Friends

 Do you have sheets and blankets on a bed? I bet you do! 

Cows, sheep, and goats need something to sleep on, too. We call it bedding

We use wood chips and saw dust for animal bedding. I get BIG loads of wood chips from a place called Chip Drop online.

We just got a new pile. I've gone through 7 piles since you started school.
That's a lot of piles to move!

Sometimes we move them with the tractor.

We put lots and lots of chips around our two new apple trees this fall.

I use a wheelbarrow to move wood chips into the stalls.
I put sawdust on top of the wood chips to help the stall stay cleaner, and nicer for the cows and goats and sheep to sleep on.

Once the wood chips and sawdust are full of manure (cow poo)
I use a wheelbarrow to dig it out and put it in a pile.

We don't send the pile to the dump, even though it looks like a big, yucky mess. Lots of families come in the spring and load it into buckets, bags, trucks, and sometimes trailers.

What do you think they want all that manure for?

It's great for gardens and flower beds! Once it sits for a few months it turns into wonderful mulch for gardens. Last year we had 8 families that came to get all the manure. I have bigger piles behind the barn, too!

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Do you have a drinking fountain at school?
We have a downspout that leads right into a barrel.
The roof collects a lot of rain. It goes into the gutters, 
then down through the downspout.
Roof water is the cows favorite water!

https://youtu.be/CfW4RgIbDvQ

Sadie loves to get drinks from our 'farm water fountain' when the water is coming off the roof.

Here are a few photos of my animal friends. They are friends, too!

Which animals are sheep, and which animal is a goat?

Echo (the cow) loves River (the goat).
She licks her through the fence.

Thanks for all your questions! I'll be answering some of them next week. 

Have a great week!

The Chickens Help Clean the Fridge

 I cleaned the refrigerator last night. There were a lot of leftovers that no one in our family was going to eat.

I got a whole bucket full of leftovers!

One thing that's nice about living on a farm is that the animals will eat our leftovers.

The chickens and turkeys really liked the refrigerator leftovers for breakfast this morning. They liked it better than their regular chicken food.

Do you see that pile of leftovers?
Some of the pile is spaghetti noodles that we didn't want to reheat.
Chickens love spaghetti noodles!
I think it reminds them of worms.... yuck.

Do you see the two turkeys? One is dark and one is gray.
The dark one is Brownie, the gray one is Graycie.
They are both girls, and lay lots of eggs in the spring and summer.

Did you know you can eat turkey eggs? They taste just like chicken eggs, but they are bigger and have brown spots on them. I'll post some pictures of turkey eggs in the spring when they start laying again.

The chickens didn't really come into the house and help clean the fridge last night. They just ate all the leftovers breakfast. That's a help because we aren't throwing food in the trash.

Do you know who else eat leftovers?

River, our milk goat, helps with leftovers, too!
She loves eating banana peels.

All the animals like stale bread, old waffles, and leftover fruits and vegetables. We almost never throw away food. 

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We also have a barn cat. She's old, we can't remember when we got her. She's been here at least 12 years.

This is her favorite spot in the winter.

She has a little 'nest' on the blanket that covers the hose in the winter. We have the hose coiled up on a heated dog bed to keep it from freezing in the winter.

I cover the whole pile with an old car windshield cover that helps to keep the heat in.

Midnight sleeps inside the little hut where it's warm and cozy at night.

She loves living in the barn. Sometimes she comes to the back door of the house, but she never comes in. She likes her barn much better than the house.

Have a great week!

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas break, and a Happy New Year!

Your teacher told me that you would like to meet some of the animals on our little farm. Some of you met the animals when you came last fall to make apple cider. 

Do you remember any of these animals?

This is me and Sadie, our 2 year old cow!

Sadie loves getting cow hugs every morning. She loves to put her head on me so I'll rub her face and under her chin.

Sadie is a very pretty cow. 
She's also very gentle, which is why we love her.
Sadie will have her first calf (baby cow) in March. 
We're so excited!

                                                     

We also have a cow named Echo. Echo is Sadie's mom.

Echo is walking to the gate to meet me this morning.
Echo will have a calf in August.

Echo is Sadie's mom. Echo will be 8 years old in February. I milk her every morning. When Sadie has her calf, I'll milk Sadie, too!

I love looking at the mountains in the morning as I head out to the barn. They are beautiful! I love watching the seasons change on the mountains, too. In the winter they are covered with snow, in the spring I watch the snow melt and the trees turn green, and in the fall I look for the colorful trees on the side of the mountains.

We also have 3 sheep and a goat. And a lot of chickens, ducks, and turkeys. 

This is Pobrecito. That means "Poor Little One" in Spanish.
We gave him that name because he almost died a few times when he was a baby this spring.
He's doing much better right now, and his is a very gentle lamb.

This is Cocoa. He's the biggest ram (boy sheep) that we have.
He's also a very nice animal.
Sometimes new people frighten him, so he'll run away.

Cocoa has big horns, I don't know why he would be afraid of new people!

Sometimes Sadie is afraid of new people and runs away, too. I don't know why a big cow would be afraid of people who are so much smaller than she is.

I'll show you some of the chickens, ducks, and turkeys next week. And I'll take some photos of River, our milk goat.