At Midnight

We had fresh bacon for breakfast.

 It is thicker than grocery store bacon, but not too thick.

  So pretty.


 It cooks up nice and tastes delicious. We had it with eggs and toast.

 There was enough left over for BLTs.

 The chicks got to come out of the inner enclosure. They had fun flapping around and pecking at everything. They went back in for the night.

 I got the chain harrow out to drag the pastures. This is the little one Lisa found at the Tartar Fence scratch and dent lot. We never did find out what was wrong with it but it was cheap down there.

 The chicks are out?

 It did a good job breaking up the poo.

 We put the shock tape in around the garden. It's still too wet to till. Luna stuck her nose on the tape and screeched. We felt bad and turned it off. We might just have it on at night for the wild rabbits.

 Solar operation.

  We had some Charlie steaks for dinner. I thought they looked nice. They tasted nice too.

 Paige.

Shemp Comes Home

Lisa went up to Halsey's to pick up Shemp yesterday. They got him done pretty fast. His weight on the hoof was 170 lbs. That makes him the biggest one we've taken in yet.

 That's him all packaged up and in the freezer. He belongs to Anne, she'll be here next week to pick him up. We have plenty of other meat in there so we promise not to eat any.

  Flemingsburg called yesterday when Lisa got back from Wolfe County to tell her that the bacon was ready a day early. She went up there today to pic it up. There is a lot of ham and bacon. It finished filling the small freezer.

 Lisa was cleaning out bunny cages today, the proceeds went in the garden. She wasn't making a shrine for it, the panels are to keep curious little dogs out.

 I pulled down the old shock tape this afternoon. We're going to use it around the garden to keep out curious little dogs. We're going to put some low in hopes of keeping out the wild rabbits.

 Martha was clucking at me when I first came out. She settled down after a while. She's the one standing with her ears back.

 Speedy pinned his ears at me for a while so I picked up a big branch and broke it into a llama stick. He relaxed eventually and posed for a picture.

 A bucolic afternoon.

 I went down first and unhooked all the insulators and laid the tape on the ground.

 On the way back up I pulled off all these tape insulators. After that I rolled up the old tape.

 Alley didn't notice me until I was most of the way back up the hill. She shrieked at me and bounced over.

 Bonnie came over to see what all the shrieking was about.

 Naturally Alley had to stick her head in the bucket and knock it over.

 Paige.

 You can't have too much Paige.

Pet Chicken

It's time for a chick and bunny update.

 Kate has four babies. Two solid black ones.

 Two spotted white and black ones.

 Kate is the proud mom.

 The other one, Fiona, has babies due next week.

 Jones likes green beans.

 One of the Rhode Island Reds.

 They look a little scruffy at this age.

 The barred rocks are getting a lot of feathers. They are all doing quite well.

 Lisa's pet chicken likes to eat the corn right out of the bin. She flies up on Lisa's shoulder and hops down to the corn bin. All the older hens are all laying again. We've had 100% egg production a couple of times this week. Good thing we have all the replacement hens!

 A couple of the Leghorns are getting stir crazy. They hop out when the lid comes off.

Shemp the Sheep

Today was Shemp's turn to go to Halsey's Meat Packers. He had an appointment or we might have called it off for the weather. It rained all day yesterday then it turned to snow over night. The ground is warm so it is just turning to muddy slush. Muddy slush is not the best conditions for moving livestock.

 Lisa got them in the catch pen before Andy and I came down in the truck. They are a lot more easy going and cooperative when it is just Lisa. They just follow her in. Her and the bucket of food, that is. Shemp's mother, Samantha, is in front with the horns.

 Shemp is the big black sheep.

  We put the sheep cage on the back of Andy's truck. They call it a "goat gopher" but it has only had sheep in it. Regular blog readers will recognize it, we use it a lot.

 We culled Shemp out from the rest of the herd so he was alone in the catch pen.

 We caught him behind the green panel and I tied his feet while Lisa leaned on the panel. Once he was tied we just dropped the panel and lifted him into the truck. He was pretty big, we guessed at around 150 lbs.

 It took a while to get the wet line off his legs. It was supposed to come untied when the tension was released but he laid down on the line and it was wet. Once we got him to stand back up his pulling on it released the tension. We didn't want to leave him hogged tied for the ride to Wolfe County. There was no reason for his final hour to be uncomfortable.

Seeding

We got some of the trees planted. We planted the two pear trees in the front yard and one of the sycamores in the turn around area down the hill. We haven't decided where to put the other two.

 We put one inside the fence and one outside.

 Mixing in the bunny poo for fertilizer.

 Filling in the hole.

 Paige was keeping an eye on us while we worked.

 Okay, she was sleeping.

 Some of the hens got in the back yard. They usually don't come in because they get chased by the dogs. Dogs that aren't sleeping.

 I opened the gate for them.

 Lisa herded them.

  They eventually made it back to the real world. Barnyard animals need to stay in the barnyard.

 We borrowed Nelson's seeder to seed the west pasture.

 I got the whole five acres done with 75 pounds of tall fescue. Hopefully today's rain didn't wash it all away.