Fhoto Friday ( heavy laden with photos), a little of this and that

This morning started off with making some steamed veggies for the poultry. This is not only good for their health, it also is a supplement to our feed bill and uses up culled veggies from the root cellar !  The zucchini have kept very well ( from a late Aug. 2010 harvest) but you can see that that they are beginning to yellow and soften. As per, making the best of what you have, we weekly check the root cellar, and cull anything that is beginning to breakdown. It is either used in one of our meals, it's dehydrated or fed to the animals.

 Now I was experimenting and while I didn't get pictures of the carrots themselves( sorry), these are carrots from our 2009 garden, yep it's been well over a year since they were harvested( Sept. 2009) from our garden. I've been experimenting with the best ways to store root crops and my findings are; they keep very well in totes filled with dirt. I tried straw last season, only to find that the carrots and beets began to mildew because our root cellar has high humidity and the straw absorbed the moisture, thus making the root crops mildew. The mildew was caught early enough that we suffered very little loss. I also topped some and stored them in ziploc bags( sealed) in the refrigerator, the shredded carrots( below) are examples of how well they kept. Now they were sprouting roots and new tops, but were still firm and very sweet.  I steamed the carrots, it seems the poultry appreciate them more if steamed, yes I know they are spoiled( rotten,LOL!)

Then it was off to get the small coop cleaned while we have a break in the weather. Cortney dons on Mike's respirator( you don't want to breath the dust, you can pick up Hanta Virus from mouse droppings and we certainly have mice*wink*)

                    The litter has been nicely stirred by the chickens for almost 8 months and has broken down and composted well.

 This was originally sawdust shavings and now is broken down nicely and ready to be added to the compost heap. I also added a thin layer to the raspberries as well as a bit in the green house beds( not to much though)

 This is now how it looks now( below) and how it looked 7-8 months ago. See what good composters the chickens are*wink*

 Our chickens are divided into two flocks at the moment( due to space) Everyone appears to be wintering well.

 This is our larger flock and with exception to the Black Austrolope rooster( who's decided to molt right NOW!), everyone, even our oldest( pet hen, who BTW is almost 9 yrs old) as well as our pet tom, "Snowball" who is almost 8 yrs old are looking very healthy.

 The 9 yr. old hen is the hen on the lowest roost,on the right hand side, doesn't she look good and you know what, she lays once or twice a week, still.

 Here is Snowball, he's looking good as well and his estimated weight is close to 50lbs !

Here are the turkeys, our Narraganset hens and tom, a Bourbon Red tom and a Bronze hen(Lucy and she is 5 yrs old and a wonderful mama) We're praying for better hatches this year. We're also actively looking for a Bourbon Red hen for our tom.

Now to the green house, it's probably 20+ degrees warmer in the greenhouse than outside. So this is when it's time to get all the prepping done, so planting of cold tolerant crops can take place early next month.

 You can see I've already applied some well composted manure and on top of that a light layering of the composted chicken house litter. The pots are covering some of my herbs, such as stevia, rosemary creeping thyme and root beer hyssop.

 The Rosemary is winter well, it is from seed that I started last Spring and I have hopes that it will take off as soon as the cold temps. head out.

 Shows the two composted manures added to the beds, soon to be worked into the soil.

 Potting benches are waiting to be used. I still have to sanitize all of my starter pots by washing in warm water with a little bleach added and letting them dry in the sunshine.

 This is Bee balm, saved for seed, it's still beautiful and the smell is out of this world( wish you could smell it)

Now the frosting, so to speak, a little gypsum and wood ash.  Before you know it we'll have pictures to share of our salad greens :o)

 Mike's been off work most of this week. The ground is frozen and the next job they have involves planting 6x6's. Praying it warms up enough to thaw it enough for their auger to bust through. Anyway we've enjoyed him being home and he's finished many odds and ends projects. One of those is to switch out the F-11 loader from one tractor to the other. I wasn't able to photo the transfer, as I was busy helping by driving one of the tractors. It was a blessing the switch went relatively smooth. The one tractor's motor is tired and needs to be overhauled but in the meantime we need use of the bucket, thus the reason for the transfer.

 All lined up and bolted onto the rear axle

 Now Mike has to manufacture a bracket to finish the mounting to the front frame work.

The tractor( yes we are a International Harvester; "Farmall" farm, because we can afford red and NOT green tractors, LOL!!!) in the background is the tractor in need of being rebuilt.  The transfer was successfully completed. :o) Now he can push the manure pile up to complete the composting, as well as make room for more fresh manure.

The hay is holding up well, we used approx. 2 ton thus far and the Button and Hoss seem to really enjoy it.

 Button knows I put their  mid morning hay( usually just loose hay swept down from the hay loft) out and she is waiting to be let out.

 Here is "Hoss", now 8 months old. He is still on the bottle, but is being weaned off at this time, with hopes of weaning being complete by mid to end of Feb. We are supplementing him with some calf manna( all natural)  While he's not a prime Angus specimen, he's crooked in the hindend, it doesn't matter to us.

 He's growing nicely and we can handle him, he is halter broke, and he is NOT a pet like Button. His time here is limited.

Button enjoying her mid morning snack, Hoss is busy licking on the mineral supplement  before Button finishes her hay, LOL!!!! 

All of these photos were taken today, before noon. Our weather is warmer, warm enough that we did NOT stoke the wood stove during the night, last night and when we got up at 5:30am this morning the inside temps was still 65F., down from 74F.  A bit of a temperature drop has occurred outside in the last few hours and our inside temps has dropped to 60F, so I started a small fire in the wood cook stove to warm the house back up a bit.

Now that Mike has the loader on and working, he has come in to share that it is to slick to push the manure pile up today. We need new tired for this tractor, we do have a better set to switch out to but new tires are out of the question right now as they cost approx. $900 each! Makes me wonder how the farmers afford tires for their HUGE tractors. Mike said the tires for those tractors run approx. $1,500 to $2,000+ each. and some have four tires on each axle< double gulp> LOL!!!  

Mike says he may be able to come up with chains, but is worried that this will do damage to our pastures, so.... we'll wait.

Blessings for your weekend :o)