Friday Farm Fotos

"Chip" the Chocolate Guinea's Big Adventure and Springtime on the Farm...

We are so thrilled with our new addition "Chip" the Chocolate guinea!  We have introduced him into the flock and he is finding his place.  He is a very sweet bird and was raised with chickens so he feels more comfortable around the chickens than the guineas.  The guineas can be quite rough to newcomers so "Chip" is very careful when he is around them, but he is curious about these funny looking birds!

"Chip" had his first big adventure outside of the protection of the coop and the pen during supervised free range time. He followed the chickens out of the pen and walked around kinda wearily.  He found a sweet gum bush and checked out the surrounding area from the safety of the bush.
 

"Chip" venturing out from the safety of the sweet gum bush

"Chip" and one of the Golden Laced Wyandotte Hens....I think he feels safer close to the one of the chickens.

"Chip" a little braver now....as long as "Rudy" the rooster and his ladies are close by!

We know over time "Chip" will find his place among the guineas and become part of the flock.  We look forward to having little chocolate keets next Spring!

One of the things that we do, here at The Old Five Notch Farm, is clean out The Chick Inn II twice a year.  Earlier I posted about shoveling out all the pine shaving, cleaning the perches, even vacuuming out the cobwebs and all that dust before adding fresh pine shavings, hay, and fresh herbs.  I wanted to add a little something extra to the coop this year and we needed to address an egg eating issue that had just became of problem recently.

I researched some ideas on how to deter egg eating and found ideas like filling blown out eggs with mustard, putting golf balls in the nest boxes, removing eggs several times a day, giving them something to keep them busy like a cabbage in a hanging basket and even putting curtains up on the nest boxes!

We started off trying the mustard egg, putting a gold ball in the nest boxes, and collecting eggs several times a day and they all seemed to help.  I wanted to "spruce up the coop" so I decided to make some curtains and hopefully deter some egg eating too!  I got together with my sister and we went through her stash of fabric.  We found some great pieces of fabric and I was so happy to find the fabric I chose was actually floor to ceiling curtains my mother had made for her closet in her bedroom.  My mom would be thrilled that I was able to re purpose the curtains she made into really cute curtains for The Chick Inn II!  She loved our chickens and would come over just to take a chair out and sit with them.

My mom was quite the seamstress and my sister, Alice, received her sewing gene.  I managed to stitch up the seams and make a pocket for the curtain rod!

As I put the curtains up, one of our hens was busy laying her egg for the day.  She didn't mind all the noise at all!

Not something you will see very often!  Guineas usually pick a nest site on the floor or ground, but apparently this girl appreciated the spiffy new curtains, fresh hay and fresh herbs! Such a pretty Royal Purple guinea hen.

Since we have implemented all of these ideas the egg eating has diminished....not gone, but very much less egg eating!  We will be adding some extra protein to their diet as well to be sure they are receiving all the nutrients they need and aren't eating eggs out of a nutritional deficiency. 

One of the projects my farmer man has been working on for us is a three tired raised bed for herbs!

Setting the first layer of the raised herb garden

My hard working Farmer Man!  Leveling the ground for the first layer of the herb garden.

Setting the second layer of the raised herb garden. The back rests on the first layer and the front is supported by corner legs.

My Farmer Man checking the second layer to be sure it is level, plumb and square.  He's so wonderful at making beautiful things for the farm.

The four wheeler is down and in need of repairs so he used the truck to pull this heavy cart full of soil to the chicken pen and fill in some holes. Sometime you have to use what you have! It was quite dark by this time so we called it a night.

The next day he finished the top and last layer of the herb garden!  Now to fill it up with nursery mix!! Our Boykin Spaniel "Addie" was glad to supervise.

 We were blessed to have our nephew, Gideon, come and spend the night over the weekend! Since my Farmer Man was sick this weekend and I am out of commission due to back injuries, Gideon unloaded all the nursery mix filling the raised herb garden and giving me enough left over to fill containers and start seeds too.

All ready to be filled with herbs!

Hopefully this evening my Farmer Man and I will feel up to moving some pots filled with herbs from the back porch out to tiered herb garden to be planted. I have several herbs started in the greenhouse that will be added to the garden when they are large enough.  I can't wait to fill the garden and use the herbs for ourselves and our animals health.

I found this great article 7 Potent Healing Plants Worth Planting and I'm thrilled to be planting all of these herbs and many more! I am looking forward to learning how to use these herbs to enhance our health and make homemade, natural products for ourselves and others.

I hope you enjoyed a peek at our farm, the critters and the projects we are working on. I hope to start posting "Friday Farm Fotos" this Friday...no posts just photos!

Spring is in the air!

This farm update is a day late because there was just so much happening here on the farm over the weekend!  We have a lot to update on!!

We have been blessed with plentiful rain and beautiful warm, sunny days here at The Old Five Notch Farm.  With Spring it brings new life, new hope and joy!

We started out the 2015 hatching season with the hatching of guinea keets and Golden Laced Wyandottes this month.  It is so exciting to wake in the morning and hear the peeps of new life coming from the incubators!  Our first hatch of guineas went well.  We had set 38 eggs, 27 were fertile and we were able to hatch out 22 little keets!  The chicken hatch didn't do so well as we had a malfunction with that incubator.  We set 29 eggs, 22 were fertile and only 8 little chicks hatched.  Because of the malfunction of the incubator we had one little chick hatch with a rough navel and he did not make it.  It is always a sad time when we lose a member, but we try to focus on all of those that do make it and thrive.

One of our little guinea keets....a Pearl Grey color

A cute little Golden Laced Wyandotte chick

We were able rehome all of the keets and chickens to loving homes and we have reset the incubators for new hatches.  We have chicks due to hatch May 3rd and May 13th and keets due to hatch May 10th and May 20th.  It is a exciting time here on the farm!

We have another new addition to the farm.  We are pleased to introduce "Chip"!

  "Chip" is a chocolate guinea we received from Terri Burrows.  We are thrilled to add another color to our flock and hope to have little chocolate keets hatching later this hatching season. "Chip" was in quarantine for a week to be sure he was healthy and he is now in the nursery area of the The Chicken Inn II so he and the others can get used to each other before fully introducing him to the flock.  We did a short, supervised introduction and it went fairly well.  There will be some chasing and fussing once he is fully introduced while they all work out their pecking order, but we want to make the introduction as easy as possible on everyone.

Some of the Fall/Winter garden items are still producing and we are blessed to have fresh carrots, kale, spinach, and swiss chard fresh from the garden.

Some of the carrots we have grown from the Fall/Winter garden

Swiss chard from the Fall/Winter planting....still going strong!

We are in full swing in putting the Spring garden in too!  It is so rewarding to grow our own plants from seed in our greenhouse and transplant them out into our garden.

My Happy Place! You can see our fodder system....the five gallon buckets to the left and a future greenhouse under the blue tarp on the right.  I will be thrilled to have TWO greenhouses...one for growing and one for Wintering over fruit trees, ferns and such.

The Spring Garden is started at The Old Five Notch Farm!  All the plants are started right here on our farm.

Strawberries have been covered with bird netting...not only to keep birds out, but to keep squirrels out!  They like red, ripe strawberries too!

Almost ready!  We just have to keep the squirrels out of them so we get some.

The peas that were planted a couple of weeks ago are growing like crazy!  We should have blossoms this week! A loaded Mandarin orange tree on the left and a lemon tree in bloom on the right

Spring brings new growth and new life! It is so wonderful to have the rehabbed and released Canada geese and Mallard ducks on our pond, and this year we had a wonderful surprise!  We had a pair of Canada geese appear yesterday with five little goslings!  They are so adorable!

Mom (Prissy) and Dad (Hissy) bringing the babies to our pond for the first time!

Mom standing guard and Dad warning all the other geese to stay away

Mom, Dad and the babies taking advantage of the free food for all at The Old Five Notch Farm

Mom taking a break while the little ones explore....Dad is taking a swim.

Isn't He adorable?  He was only about 2 feet away from us.

Our newest little family!

Checking out the new surroundings...under the watchful eye of Mom and Dad.

Venturing to the edge of the pond

Mom and the five little goslings

Mom walking with the goslings and Dad taking a swim.

We are thrilled that Hissy and Prissy have a little family of their own.  Hissy and Prissy are a wild pair of geese who showed up here at The Old Five Notch Farm back in 2012 when we received our first rehabbed geese from Izzie's Pond.  They took the youngsters under their wings and taught them how to be geese, how to watch out for predators, and how to take care of each other.  Since then, Hissy and Prissy have helped foster two more seasons of geese.  It is so wonderful to see them have their own little family now!  They are very attentive, protective parents.  We are praying that everyone in this little family remain safe.  There are many predators out there and the likelihood that all five goslings make it is slim. We will do our best to keep everyone safe and we will be praying for our new little family and will keep you posted.

There are many more projects we are working on at The Old Five Notch Farm so there will more farm updates as we work on these various projects.  Just a few projects in the works....a raised, three tiered herb garden, sprucing up The Chick Inn II, Sauerkraut progress ,electricity for the greenhouse,  more hatching, and much more!  I am continuing to work on items for our Etsy store so be sure to pop over to The Old Five Notch Farm on Etsy to see our new additions and check back often....you never know just what you might find!

Making Sauerkraut!

One of the things I remember as a kid was huge crocks of pickles and sauerkraut in the basement of our family home in Columbiana, Ohio.  My sweet mother was very diligent on freezing, canning or preserving everything that we grew out of our garden or we're blessed with from friends and family.  She didn't let anything go to waste!

Coming up in a family with Slovak and Croatian roots sauerkraut was one of the foods we had often.  My Grandma Semer would make kielbasa and sauerkraut for New's Years and so it was a family tradition from then on out.

I remember the year my mother tried her hand at making sauerkraut.  She carefully followed the recipe...thinly slicing the cabbage and layering it into the crock salting each layer.  It looked wonderful!  She covered the crock with saran wrap and a heavy, old towel and left it to sit in the coolness of our basement to ferment.  She checked on it each day to be sure the cabbage was below the brine, but about two weeks into the fermentation process it was very apparent that something was very wrong.  When she removed the towel and saran wrap the most awful, putrid smell attacked our noses!  The sauerkraut was black and smelled rotten!  What in the world had happened?  My poor mother called some friends and explained the whole situation to them.  She learned that you had to use Kosher/Canning salt when you make sauerkraut, not table salt.  She was heartbroken. All that work and all that time spent making a huge crock full of now rotting cabbage.  She had to remove the cabbage once scoop at a time and take the crock outside to be washed...and washed...and washed and washed.  I didn't think that smell would ever leave the house.

I remember the story well so when I decided to make a small crock of sauerkraut myself I made sure I had Kosher salt.  My mom used to say...."Anyone can learn from their mistakes, but a smart person learns from the mistakes of others and doesn't repeat them." Thanks Mom, I learned!

We had just a few heads of cabbage from our Fall garden left over so I decided to try my hand again at making some sauerkraut.

We had purchased an antique kraut cutter on our honeymoon so I thought I'd see if the old thing still worked...it did!  I couldn't help but think at some point another woman used this cutter to make sauerkraut for her family. What was she like?  What was her life like? Who was she?  This is part of what I so love about old pieces!

I sliced up the cabbage and I ended up with just under six pounds.

Next step is to salt the cabbage and start the process of making a brine for the cabbage to ferment.

After the salt is all mixed in to the cabbage you layer it into a clean crock.

This crock is another piece that I have collected.  I found it online and purchased it from a lady from Ohio.  I was so excited to learn that this crock and one other that I purchased had a beautiful history and the seller was willing to share it with me.

"My family is the Lockharts.  They were from the Lin Camp area.  Grandma Susie Faye Hefner (Lockhart) passed in 1948.  Some of my family is at the Antioch cemetery, but not Grandma, I can't remember where she is buried.   Grandpa Claude came to Parkersburg in 1948 to build the flood wall.  A family produce market was established next to the Ohio river on land adjacent to the river in Ohio. The construction of the interstate caused the produce market to close.  You will find the main street off Route 50 "Lockhart Street".  My mother married Earnest Jones and moved to Little Hocking.  My father moved a vast majority of the family items to our far.  My father passed away in 1981 and I received ownership of the items and stored them for years....until know and I have decided to sell everything." -- Ernestine Fay Jones Bodyke

So, these crocks were used in the family produce store!  How wonderful is that?  Again, I wish these crocks could talk...I bet they would have a store to tell.

Once the layer in the salted cabbage you push it down to make the brine.  The salt helps extract some of the juice from the cabbage to make the brine.

If I had more cabbage, up to 15 pounds, I would have continued to salt, mix and layer the cabbage, but since I only had 6 pounds this part was done!

I used to have a ceramic plate that fit perfectly inside the crock to keep the cabbage submerged, but in moving I have lost it.  I am going to use a smaller plate and a brick in a ziplock bag to weigh it down until the crock weight that I ordered comes in.  I had seen the old wooden weights and had planned on purchasing one of those, but when I researched the weights I found these Ceramic Crock Weights that will hold the cabbage down wonderfully! I can't wait for it to come it.

I covered the crock securely with saran wrap and then draped it with a heavy towel.  I will be check it every other day to be sure all the cabbage is submerged and it is properly fermenting.

Here is a link to the recipe I used.  I have used this recipe in the past with great results!  If you you don't have the full 15 pounds of cabbage, don't worry!  Just adjust the amount according to what you do have.  It is a great way to preserve that cabbage that you don't know what to do with!

Bella Online Sauerkraut Recipe

Update!  The crock weights came in!  I was so excited when the UPS came I opened the box up while sitting out with the critters.

I'll be posting pictures as the fermentation process does its job!