And We Are Back

Okay I know, it's been a year. I fell off of the blogging wagon. To be honest, I fell asleep at the reins, fell off and was run over but, I am back and ready to talk homesteading. This will be a quick catch up from our last adventures back in February. A lot has happened and changed in that time.

We were getting over a dozen eggs a day starting in the spring. We had so many we could not hope to eat them all so Dara started selling them at work. This was offsetting the feed cost for the most part, when Dara wasn't spending the egg money on snacks and coffee at work.

One of our chickens developed a limp and the other chickens started picking on her to the point that we had to separate her from the rest. Chickens can be real cloaca-holes. She was put up in her very own condo with her own food and water for about a week and half. She started walking fine again and was reintroduced to the flock with no further problems.

In other news, we have a duck that thinks she is a chicken and took over a nesting box in the chicken coop. Muscovy's are great mothers and when they go broody there is almost no stopping them from sitting eggs. The chickens didn't seem to mind and this was a good spot to get fresh duck eggs until I let her raise up some ducklings.

Here is the proud mama with her newly hatched ducklings. All total our two mature females raised up 18 ducks this year. They would have hatched more if I let them.We are down to 5 ducks now and a full freezer. More on that in the future.

Muscovy's love to play around in the water. When you have 20 + ducks on your property, you have to change this water everyday. The hardest part is making sure our border collie is no where around when I turn the hose on. He loves water in any form.

I put in a couple duck ponds around the yard. The only problem with a set up like this is changing the water every other day. If you have some elevated land and plumb the bottom of the pond with a drain hose, this would work very nice. I don't have any where to do that so I only dumped and filled this pond for a couple months. The baby ducks loved it.

I Know

I Am

Forgetting

Something...

So Many

Things Have

Happened

In The Last

12 Months...

Oh yeah, we got married in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. We needed witnesses so we each invited our only siblings to bear witness. It was a great day and beautiful scenery. We both love the gorge, so it was an easy decision to get married in the wilderness. We are standing next to a 100 ft cliff, you know, just in case she got cold feet. 

We got another puppy. His name is Darwin and we thought we were getting a catahoula cattle dog crossed with a shepherd. At least that's what the pound said he was. Turns out he is a great dane mix and is over 100 lbs at 13 months now. He is a gentle giant and we love him.

Higgs caught the bouquet and promptly ate part of it. I want to thank Aaron, Dara's brother and Sharon, my sister for being our witnesses and dog handlers. 

Something

Else

Happened

Recently...

Let's see

Ducks

Puppy

Marriage

What am I missing?...

Oh yeah, so we had a baby. His name is Oliver and he was born in September. I was lucky enough to deliver him, cut the cord and gave him his first bath. In fact, he never left our sight the whole time. We were not paranoid about something happening to him, well maybe a little, but it just felt like the right thing to do was to always be there for him. "They" say children change you and you can't know how much until you have one, "they" are right.

This is Oliver's second trip to the gorge, his first post uterus. The Ergobaby carrier is awesome. We are on top of natural bridge. Oliver did just fine being hiked all over the place.

We are looking forward to being the best parents we can be. Ours lives are changing more than just adding a baby. I am leaving my cubicle jungle to stay home and take care of Oliver. The thought of strangers raising our baby at a daycare didn't sit well with us. It will be hard with the drop in income, but I know we will pull through. He is totally worth it. 

More regular posts to come soon...