Graduations, Visitors, a Road Trip with a Hitchhicker, A Second Graduation, Healing and Hatchlings!

It has been another busy week at The Old Five Notch Farm!

We were blessed to attend our nephew, Patrick's, High School Graduation this past Friday evening.  We are so proud of Pat for all his hard work and his accomplishments during his academic career at Saluda High School. He is looking forward to pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering starting this next Fall at Piedmont Technical School.  We love you Pat!

Late Friday afternoon as I was preparing to head to town to mail an Etsy order, run to the bank, and pick up graduation cards I went down to check on our Wild Mallard hen who had made a nest in the barn.  We have been watching her and the nest closely in hopes she actually hatches out some babies.  We have a huge predator problem here between the coyotes, fox, opossum, raccoon, owls and snakes the poor wild mallard don't have much of a chance of hatching our ducklings let alone surviving setting on the nest.

I popped in to check on her and this is what I found...

 NOT what I was expecting.  Well darn you rat snake you have to go!  You CANNOT eat our duck eggs.  I found a cat litter bucket in the barn and tried to use a hoe to pull the snake out from under the little claw foot tub we had in storage in the barn.  The hoe was too large to get under the tub so I had to make a trip to the house to get our snake stick....yes, we have a snake hook!

Once I retrieved the snake hook it wasn't difficult at all to pick the snake up and put her in the bucket to me relocated.  Now safe in the bucket, I can see she has eaten three eggs. Poor Fussy Duck only has six eggs now.

A snake in a bucket

 Now all filthy from climbing around the barn to capture the snake I headed to town to run errands.  I still managed to get to all the stops before they closed! We meant to take the snake off when we left out for Pat's graduation, but we forgot. She was safe in the bucket in the barn so we thought we would take her off the next day when we headed to Florence for our niece's graduation.

The next morning we headed out to Florence with our extra passenger/hitchhicker in the back seat.  We kept reminding each other that we need to release the snake somewhere....well....as we pulled into our family's subdivision there was a nice wooded area that was perfect to release the snake.  I don't think that rat snake will be coming back....unless someone else there captures her and takes her on another road trip!

We are so proud of our niece, Jill, and were so honored to be a part of her graduation from South Florence High School.  Jill plans to attend Francis Marion college in the Fall and we know she is going to do great things!  We love you Jillian!

 Yesterday we had yet another visitor on the farm.  Upon returning from helping out a friend we found this little lady lying in our driveway.

My Farmer Man is a hobby herpetologist so he loves finding these helpful snakes around the farm

Eastern King Snake

My Farmer Man checking her our to be sure she is healthy.

Say CHESSSSSSSE

When he picked her up to look her over he found she had a spectacle or also known as a brille still attached. This covering that snakes have over their eyes that is typically shed when they shed their skin, but hers was still attached.  If this is not removed it can cause blindness.  He attempted to remove the spectacle, but unfortunately is was a very old one probably from a previous shed and she had become blind in that eye.

She was still very alert and able to track us even with one eye and she was healthy so she must be adapting and eating.  We released her here on the farm because king snakes rarely eat eggs and we don't have any small chicks that she could eat.  She is a beneficial snake to have around!  She will eat any other snake including venomous snakes.

Speaking of healing and adapting....I am VERY pleased to say that my back is healing very nicely!  I was THRILLED to find a join specialist on line who had posted some massage techniques for sacroiliac joint pain.  I tried all three techniques his listed and two of them helped immensely. I want to share these SI Joint Massage Videos in hopes it will help someone else.

Always looking for natural ways to help heal my body, I continued to research and found this lady who also practiced yoga but was unable to do so because of an SI joint issue. She tells of going to a yoga conference and discussing her issues with a Master Yogi who suggested the lizard pose.  This is a very interesting pose to say the least and I was a bit intimidated by it so I kept reading her post.  At the bottom of her post she had an update.  The next page was her update and it stated that she had so much positive feedback from the original post that she added another stretch that she had been been given as another alternative for SI joint relief.  This post looked much more doable!  I tried the pose and INSTANTLY my pain diminished greatly!   I was so excited!  I have been in constant pain since November and this ONE stretch made an immediate improvement. You can find her story and the lizard pose here.  Her second post and the stretch that worked best for me can be found here.

I now stretch every morning and as needed throughout the day to relieve the tightness before it actually become pain.  I am able to sit, ride and even stand in one spot without pain!  This is awesome!

This had confirmed to me that we need to be our own advocate and research and learn as much as we can about how to care for our own bodies.  I have been interested in learning more about herbs and natural medicine for quite some time. I think because of the herbs and natural medicine that has helped me so much I am going to start researching and sharing what I find here on our farm blog!  I am hoping to highlight one herb each month and provide links and information so we can all learn how to care for ourselves.  I hope this is something that you will enjoy and learn along with me.

We were so blessed to have the opportunity to hatch out some babies for our friend Tabitha Standford from Standford's Funny Farm.  We have never hatched ducks or turkeys here at The Old Five Notch Farm so I was THRILLED when a dear friend needed some help and we were able to pitch in.  My sweet farmer man has hatch hundreds of ducks, but never turkeys or call ducks so we were both excited.

Saturday morning we woke to small peeping sounds in the incubator!

The very first turkey and duck hatched here at The Old Five Notch Farm!!  The little guy in the back is a Narragansett turkey and the little guy in the front is a Snowy Call Duck.

As of this morning we now have nine turkeys, five call ducks and three pekin ducks hatched out for Tabitha.  We are hoping a few more manage to hatch out.  Here are a few pictures of the new babies and if you are interested in purchasing some of these cuties head on over to Tabitha's Facebook Page and send her a message. I have a funny feeling we'll be adding call ducks to our flock some time soon....my farmer man was quite smitten with them!!

A brooder full! Guineas, Pekin Ducks, Call Ducks, and Turkeys <3

A little blurry turkey

A little Blurry Call Duck....these guys are FAST!

A cute little Pekin duckling....he was cool!

 With all the incubators full we even had some of our own hatching this morning!  Welcome to our seven new guineas These babies will also be up for sale in just a day or two.

A little less than 12 hr old Pearl Guinea Keet

A little 10 hr old Royal Purple Keet

Spring and Summer are always fun times here at The Farm!  I have a lot of pictures from around the farm, the animals and the gardens so look for a Friday Farm Foto post!