New babies, new friends, new residents, new things growing, field trips and old friends.....

Well, we are pleased to announce two more guineas managed to hatch out of the clutch that "Broodie" was setting on!  One hatched 4 days later than the rest and one hatched 6 days later.  Since they were so small we kept them inside in a brooder for a few days until we were sure they would be ok with their "mom" and their older siblings.  "Broodie" is a scratcher....she has to scratch up the pine shavings to eat, to drink and just because!  The babies have all learned very quickly to stay out of "Mom's" way or you will get scratched and flung across the nursery.  She is good mom, but I really wish she was more careful!  We have five little guineas now tucked in with their foster mom.

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Big Oaks Rescue Farm in Greenwood, South Carolina and meet it's owner Mr. Joe Mann.  I was to meet Angel Durham from Izzie's Pond at Joe's to pick up a momma duck and twelve little ducklings that had been rescued and were to be released on our pond.  My dear friend Amanda Hatfield and her son Jacob came along for a field trip to the farm and to see the tour the greenhouses and topiaries in Greenwood.

We had a great time touring the greenhouse where Ann Barklow allowed us to walk around and look at the topiaries.  She was wonderful in answering Jacob's questions.  I managed to get one picture of Jacob while were in the greenhouses.  I highly suggest that you check out the South Carolina Festival of Flowers.  It is an awesome month of events and activities with one weekend being the grandest time.  Check out their website and see!

We then headed to The Big Oaks Rescue Farm. What a wonderful place!We had a great time wandering around the many acres of Joe's place getting close up and personal with all the rescued animals.  There is everything from peacocks, squirrels, pigs, donkeys, goats, sheep, and many, many horses among other animals at this rescue.  Many of these animals were starving, emaciated, and very sick when Joe and his staff of volunteers were called to rescue them.  It is sad to see so many animals and hear their stories, but it is also just as wonderful to know there is someone with such a huge heart that is willing to take them in and do whatever is necessary to give them a second chance. If you are an animal lover, like myself, take the short trip to Greenwood and The Big Oaks Rescue Farm.  You won't be disappointed!  If you can, please make a donation to the farm and help Joe help these beautiful creatures or adopt one or more of these animals and give them a wonderful forever home.

My friend Amanda with one of the sweetest donkeys!  He actually followed us around from pasture to pasture. It was really hard not to bring him home!

Angel did make the long trek to bring us the momma duck and ducklings.  She has the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with a very special cow.  This "little" guy was very lucky to have spent his very first months as a rescue at Izzie's Pond. Angel helped out their friend Joe by bottle raising "Baby Cow Cow" until he was off the bottle. As you can see, "Baby Cow Cow" has grown up!  It was so heart warming to see Angel find "Cow Cow" in the field and go right up to him and curl up beside him. Here's the happy reunion :0) Angel does such a wonderful job with hundreds of animals every year.  Izzie's Pond operates fully on donations.  If you can make a donation through Facebook, I know Angel and all the creatures she helps would greatly appreciate it.

We were thrilled to see our old friend Angel and meet such a wonderful man, Mr. Joe Mann. We headed home and brought the momma and the ducklings to The Old Five Notch Farm.  We had a pen all set up for them.  Scott has worked on the finishing the pen while we took the drive to get them.  Momma and the ducklings will spend a short time in the pen to allow the ducklings to feather out a bit and allow mom to get acclimated to her new home.  We hope that mom and all the ducklings will decide our pond and the endless supply of food are a good new home for them and will stick around.

Momma duck and her 12 ducklings...settling in :0) She can see the pond from the holding pen. 

 The raised bed garden are doing very well.  We are getting a few strawberries, and many of the plants are blooming and setting fruit.  We managed to put in four blueberry bushes and two butterfly bushes too.  I was so excited to see some little asparagus heads poking through the soil!

This week find us having a waiting list for guineas and chicks!  It is great that we have such a demand for our little babies.  We have set two incubators up.  One incubator has 41 guinea eggs and the other has 41 Golden Laced Wyandotte eggs.  The chicken eggs will hatch in just 21 days and the guinea eggs will hatch in 28 days. We have such a demand for guineas that we have decided to purchase another incubator!  We have an order for 20-40 guinea keets and we need another incubator full just for that order.  I am holding eggs this week in preparation for the arrival of the new incubator.  I can't wait!

 Two full and one on the way!

We will be working this weekend on cutting grass, weed eating, splitting firewood, working in the greenhouse, adding more sun shade cloth to the poultry pen, making a covered dusting pit in the poultry pen, and many more projects!  We will actually take a little down time and celebrate the holiday with our family and friends. Look for updates on the happenings of the farm and our farm critters.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day....but don't forget what and who we are celebrating.  Many families have lost their loved ones who were defending our freedom and many families will have their loved ones far away this holiday.  Hug a military professional today....I do every night ;0) I love my sailor man and I am so very proud of his service to our country.

A busy week on the farm! Vertical gardening, new babies, "Tater" update, painting rocks....

This week on the farm we have been busy adding trellises to the raised beds. My Farmer Man has installed cattle panels to the raised beds allowing us to grow more veggies vertically.  It is looking quite beautiful! We will add a fence around the gardens, mulch between the beds and add a beautiful pergola with a swing....all in due time. We were blessed with much needed rain Thursday and everything has taken off. It is growing very well and we'll continue to plant veggies so we will have a steady supply for our own use and maybe even some to sell at the Edgefield Farmer's Market.

This week we were also waiting patiently for our foster mom "Broodie" to hatch out some guinea eggs we set under her.  We were so excited when they started hatching and even more excited to find we have a new color to add to our guineas!  We believe it is either a Buff or a Buff Dundotte.

We were counting the babies as they hatched and checking on the eggs to see if anyone needed a little help hatching. 

As of Thursday morning there were seven hatched and one little one that needed some help....at least that was what I thought.  When I checked on them that evening...I only counted seven. Hmmm....maybe I just miscounted. No biggie!  Well Friday evening I checked "Broodie" again and....what! There were only three keets!  I was heart broken!  What could have happened? I called Scott and we talked about it...maybe a snake, maybe "Broodie" ate them?  We were so upset and concerned about the poor babies that were left.  I took them into the house into a brooder to be safe, leaving poor "Broodie" setting on the remaining eggs. 

Scott picked up some hardware cloth so we could rework the nursery area just in case it was a snake. While we were working on the nursery, Scott and I both agreed that the keets are so small that they very possibility could have gone through the chicken wire and into the coop with the big chickens and guineas.  Either way, we were doing what we could to prevent any further losses.We returned the three babies to their "momma" that evening and everyone was happy.

We were very pleased to find that another keet had hatched out the next morning and the other three babies were doing great!

The ups and downs of Farm Life!  This morning I went to check on everyone before church and found that one of the keets had died. Not sure if it died or if "Broodie" crushed it by mistake. We are back to three keets....but these three are doing well! We are still hoping that maybe a few more of the eggs will hatch.  We aren't sure when these are due to hatch since we pulled them from the guineas HUGE pile they had made.

 "Buffy" and his/her siblings, two royal purple keets.

"Broodie" and our little "Buffy" <3

Our Little "Tater". Unfortunately, "Taters" slipped tendons in her legs cannot be repaired. Had we gotten her within 24-48 hrs. of her hatch we would have had a much better chance of popping the tendons back into place.  She is growing quickly and her little elbows/knees have healed from the infection she had when we got her. She manages to get around fairly well "walking" on her elbows and flapping.  She has gotten quite efficient at it actually! 

 This is our little "Tater"....sitting happily on my foot and in my hand! Such a sweet little one.

We took her outside yesterday to get some sunshine and let her sit in the grass.  Every time we would put her down she would peck around just a few times and then start fussing. Cheep, Cheep, Cheep! She would come running/flapping right towards you and try to get up on your lap.  It turns out our little "Tater" doesn't like the grass or the dirt!  She would hush instantly when she was being held!  We brought a bath towel outside, she is kept on a soft towel in her "Tater House", and placed it on the grass.  Put "Tater" down on the towel...and viola!  Happy Chicken :0)  "Tater" will remain a house chicken where we can keep her on a softer surface and keep her elbow/knees from becoming infected, but we will continue to work on getting her used to the grass and dirt. She needs to be outside in the sunshine!  We are hoping to slowly introduce her to pine shavings....very small shavings and see if she can maneuver well on them. It will make for keeping her "Tater House" easier to keep clean....and save on washing towels too.  Here's our little "Tater" in her favorite spot in her "Tater House"....in front of her mirror, next to her lambie, and close or often under her feather mama.  So much personality in such a little chicken!  We love our little "Tater"! <3

I managed to take some time today and work on a project that I have been wanting to get done!  I saw these on Facebook and thought they were really cute. I am please with the way mine turned out :-) I still need to paint some yellow squash, zucchini, winter squash, cucumbers, spinach/swiss chard, onions, carrots, fennel, sweet potatoes....and more!

Well another week has buzzed by, and we are about to start another work week here on the farm.  We were blessed to be invited to some dear friend's home tonight to enjoy wonderful company, an awesome grilled steak dinner, and time to just relax. We are so very blessed!

I am really hoping to post the Friday Farm Updates on FRIDAY, but with all the happenings and work going on it maybe a Saturday or Sunday.  Thanks for checking in on our little farm and all our farm family.  Stay tuned for updates on the bees, the fruit orchard, new plants and gardens, loading the incubators back up with eggs and whatever else we get into!

The Old Five Notch Farm adds over 20,000 new residents!

We are so excited to have added TWO new hives to the farm!

We took a mini vacation/anniversary trip this past weekend to the beautiful mountains of North Georgia on the way to pick up the bees.  We stayed a few days at Forrest Hills Mountain Resort where we were married two years ago. Beautiful cabins in the mountains of Dahlonega, Georgia.

"Our" little gazebo where we said "I do" <3

 Ahhhhh! Relaxing, rejuvenating, and just fun!  A wonderful place to just get away.  You have to visit Gold City Corral while staying at Forrest Hills.  It was so relaxing to take an hour trail ride and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

 Saturday morning it was time to head Toccoa, Georgia to Mountain Sweet Honey to pick up our two nucs aka nucleus of bees and a nuc for our dear friends too. There are well over 10,000 bees in EACH of those boxes! A standard package of bees, just bees - no frames, weighs 3 pounds and contains over 10,000 bees.  A nuc or nucleus is a package of bees along with their queen who had been pulled from a larger hive where they have already drawn out the comb, started filling it with honey and pollen and the queen has started laying eggs to strengthen the hive.  The hives we received were on the second cycle....meaning the queen had laid eggs, they hatched, grew into adult worker bees, and another cycle of life had started again with newly hatched bees.  This make for a very strong hive and a good number of bees. We added a little extra tape to the boxes before we headed for home ;-)

 After we returned home we placed the nucs on top of their waiting new homes and allowed them to start exploring the new area.  After about an hour they were ready to be moved into their new home!

 Mr. Farmer Man donned the beekeeper uniform and set to moving our new residents into their new homes.

 Carefully looking for the queen....you don't want to squish the matriarch of the hive! They were surprisingly docile. Usually if the have brood, bee larvae and eggs, they become much more protective.

 We found her!  You can see her almost in the very center of the photo.  She is a little darker and her body is longer and the stripes aren't as pronounced. She is an Italian Queen! You can also see capped honey....honey that the bees have allowed the moisture to evaporate to just the right consistency before closing it up.  You can also see uncapped honey....just waiting to be evaporated.  Smart bees!

 After everyone is settled into the new hives they start coming and going out the entrance. Busy little Bees!

 We are looking forward to helping the farm with all these pollinators as well as hoping we will have honey to sell in the near future.

We will continue post update about our newest residents as they get busy making honey for us.  As of today, we have added a queen excluder and a super so they can start drawing out comb for honey stores.  They are busily working away collecting nectar and pollen and the queen is doing her job populating the hive.  There were newly laid eggs in the hive today. :0)

I can't thank Amanda Hatfield enough for her services while we were away.  She is a pet sitter and took on quite a job here at The Old Five Notch Farm for the weekend at the very last minute. She had plenty of regular residents to take care of as well as two sets of newly hatched babies!  She did an AWESOME job!  If you need a pet/home sitter, please consider allowing Amanda to take care of your furry family and your home while you are away.  You can find her on care.com. You have to create a free account, but it is well worth it! Amanda ...our friend, our saving grace! Thank you Amanda!!!