It's Almost Spring....almost! Garden plans,starting seeds, splitting firewood, new perches for the coop...

This past weekend we took a break from extra work around the farm and enjoyed the Valentine's Day Weekend.  I hope you spent the weekend with someone you love!

Here's a little from weekend before........

We are all excited about the beautiful weather we have been having here on the farm this weekend.

I have been working on the Spring/Summer garden plans!  I use an awesome FREE program to help us layout and maintain the garden beds and you can too.  Go to The Smart Gardener and join for free!  It is a really cool, easy program that not only allows you to lay out your garden, but choose the seeds/plants you would like to use, place them in the garden and it will even send you a to do list via email of what needs to be done that week.  It has all kinds of information from when to started seeds indoors, to when to plant outdoors, when to fertilize, when to water and even when to expect harvest.  They have a great series of videos available that walk you through the whole program.  I would highly recommend  this program!

The other item that I have found very helpful are a 12" x 12" - 3 ring binder and 4" x 6" photo inserts.  This binder has about a three inch spine so it allows you to insert and fill quite a few pages.  The standard seed packages slide right into the sleeves and make it very easy to sort, store, and view seeds.  I keep the binders in a cabinet where they can stay cool, dark and dry.

You may notice many of the seed packages are from "Mike the Gardener Enterprises". My sweet farmer man purchased a 3 year subscription to a Seed of the Month club for me!  It is like Christmas once a month when my packages of seeds arrive in the mail. I have had great success with Mike's seeds and I can't wait to try out some of the new varieties I recently received.  If you are interested in joining the club and receiving 8 packages of seeds in your first shipment and 4 packages of seeds each month after that click on this like to check out Mike the Gardener at Average Person Gardening! and get your own surprise each month...or surprise the gardener in your life with a cool gift!  Ahem...guys...Valentine Day is NEXT Saturday!! Hint..Hint!!

I'll be starting tomatoes, peppers, celery, and several other veggies this weekend.  Nothing like getting your hands dirty.  I wish we had the ability to send scents via the internet....you wouldn't believe the awesome fragrance coming from the greenhouse right now!

The fragrance of the this orange tree greets you when you walk into the greenhouse!  It is so lovely!

Our one and only navel orange <3

 While I worked away at the plans for the garden, Scott and our farm helper Craig, worked on a truck load and a trailer load of firewood. This is only one stack of four. We were so blessed with beautiful, seasoned, precut firewood! A huge thank you to our new friends The Tarpley's!! <3

My farmer man also reworked the perches in the The Chick Inn II.  With the addition of a few hens and a few guineas it was getting crowded in the coop and jockeying for a perch position in the evening was becoming a nightly event.  He extended the perches by adding two more rungs to each set.  This should make bedtime a little more peaceful.

 
 The critters all had a great weekend with plenty of free range time to get some extra exercise and sunshine. I hope you had a beautiful weekend where you are!  Thanks for checking in on us at The Old Five Notch Farm :-)

"Rudy" and a couple of his girls, relaxing and enjoying the sunshine

"Rudy" and one of his favorite girls, "Woobie"

"Oliver" has a new favorite place in the back yard! It's an Oliver on a Stump!

Timmy is Out of Quarantine....and He Meets the Girls!

After a full week of quarantine in a separate enclosure, "Timmy" has
been dewormed and has not shown any signs of illness so we opened his
enclosure and he walked out.

He headed straight for the rest of the flock, paying special attention to "Diva" and "Baby Girl".  Everyone was curious about this new member and came over, in turn, to check him out. The Girls didn't seem to care one way or the other, but "Timmy" was strutting and drumming up a storm trying to get their attention anyway.

Timmy strutting his stuff.....

Popcorn checking out the new dude, Timmy

Tiny Tim <3

Such a handsome boy!

Timmy trying to get Baby Girl's attention...she's more worried about taking a nap!

Poor Timmy trying his hardest to get the girls attention!

Well, it wasn't too long and Timmy did catch the eye of Baby Girl. She had tried to breed with Tommy and had even gone broody one time so we were hoping that she and Timmy would hit it off.

Apparently, Baby Girl was receptive to Timmy's advances because our little farm hand, Craig, came running up to the house calling me.  We walked back down to find....

Timmy standing on top of Baby Girl trying to figure out just how he was going to go about this. You see Baby Girl and Diva are just a bit larger than Timmy.  His girls in the past had been smaller than himself!  The little man figured it out...I will spare you any additional photos! Baby Girl was quite upset about the whole ordeal and came running to us. Poor girl didn't know what happened.

Craig comforting the confused Baby Girl

It was a good day!  A successful introduction of Timmy into the flock and everyone is getting along well. He is tucked in with the girls tonight in the turkey pen and I'm sure he will sleep much more peacefully than he had in the enclosure.  The enclosure was close enough that he could see and hear the girls so he had paced the fence a lot and called to them this past week. We are still concerned about his bad knee and have had some dear friends offer to help us design a brace for his week knee. Timmy may become the bionic turkey! Stay tuned for his progress and for all the happenings of the farm :-)

A New Addition to The Old Five Notch Farm!

We are excited to announce there is a new addition to The Old Five Notch Farm!!

We were contacted by a friend who knew of a Standard Bronze Tom who needed a new home.  The people who had him were not able to feed all the animals they had and were trying to find new homes for them.  Our dear friend, Alena and Jack, made the trip to rescue our new buddy!  We owe them a huge thank you for the wrangling, capture and transport of our new tom.They said he ate a huge amount when they finally got him in a cage. Poor guy was starving :-(

He arrived at The Old Five Notch Farm on Saturday.  He was scared and stressed, but when Scott pulled up in the yard he heard the girls and immediately started gobbling and getting really excited.  We had to cover his cage to keep him from hurting himself while we prepared his enclosure.

We were fortunate to have sweet neighbors, Daisy, and her son Craig, who allowed us to borrow a large dog kennel that we were able to move to our farm and prepare for our new addition.  So thankful for helpful neighbors!

God bless my sweet farmer man...he and Craig spent most of the day moving, setting back up and securing an enclosure for our new guy.  Late afternoon we were able to move our new guy into his enclosure.  We are keeping him in quarantine for a couple of weeks to be sure he is healthy and not carrying any diseases or illnesses.

Here's our new guy! His name is "Tiny Tim" <3 aka "Timmy". His named such because he is so little compared to our sweet "Tommy" AND he has a gimpy leg...just like Tiny Tim from The Christmas Carol <3

 Our "Timmy"is very scared, and not sure what to expect.  He is excited that he can see the girls and they have been "talking" back and forth.

We also have learned that "Timmy" has a leg injury.  We hope that it will improve with time, but when the previous owners were contacted they said he has walked with a limp since they got him in August :-(  It appears that he has torn ligaments in his knee.  We will give him a few days to settle in and then catch him and see if we can diagnose it further.  I'm not sure there is much we can do since it is an old injury, but we will be monitoring him and taking him to the vets if needed.

"Timmy" didn't waste anytime showing off for the girls!

He is wearing a path across the front of his enclosure walking back and forth trying to get to the girls.  We will wait the quarantine time out and then introduce him to the girls.  We hope that everyone will get along and the girls will show "Timmy" that people are ok and to be trusted.

Keep "Timmy" in thoughts and prayers as we help him learn people are ok and we work on his injured leg.