A few weeks ago we were looking for a billy goat on craigslist. We wanted one so that next year we could hopefully be milking our goats and have more baby goats. We found one and my dad immediately called the guy who was selling it, even though he was at work. The guy said that we would be able to pick him up in about two weeks. Two weeks later we were going to pick up our new goat. My mom, McKinley, and I all went because my dad had work and Kennedy had gymnastics. 
Today I’m giving you a different type of update. Normally when I update you I tell you about the animals and the garden but there are other projects we have that I haven’t talked about on here.
I mentioned that My mom has decided to home school us in one of my previous posts. We needed an area to actually do the homeschooling though. We decided on our basement that was currently being used as a toy room. We are going to keep part of it a toy room, but honestly we never used it. The walls down there are a yellow color. My mom said that she couldn’t stand the color so now we are in the process of painting it a very light blue. As of this morning we are going to move our desks by the window. But as of yesterday we were going to put legs on a shelf that we took down. We had several Ideas before that, so I will let you know when we have actually done something. I’m still planning on posting an article on curriculum but it might be a little while.
Since my mom is going to be home schooling us she won’t have job so we are trying to find something we could use as a second source of income. We don’t really have any reasonable ideas but we are working on it.
Before we painted the basement we painted my youngest sister, McKinley’s room. She love pink and Minnie Mouse so we painted on wall of her room pink, and we added glitter to the paint. The other walls we left the same gray color they were before.
My little sister also has a chair in her room. We got it and one other one that is in my room for free because they didn’t sell at my grandmas auction. They both are from the 90’s one is orange and one is yellow. I am planning on reupholstering them but I have no idea how or what fabric I should use.
I think that’s all the things we are doing around my house so that’s all I’m writing today. I will have another post up on Thursday!
Hello again! This Thursday I’m going to give you another update. Surprisingly a lot has happened since I last updated you, a little over a week ago. This last week has been fairly hot, and the last few days have been smoky. Yesterday it rained quite a bit where I live. We have worked on the chicken (duck) tractor a little but not to much because of the heat. We are almost done with it though.
Last week I started with the garden so today I’ll start with the animals. There is a little bit of bad news regarding the chickens. Our last Rhode Island Red chicken has died. We aren’t exactly sure why it died but we think it might have gotten into the fly poisoning. On a much happier note one of the new chickens laid an egg. I was thinking that nothing really happened to the goats but then I remembered that they knocked down one of the walls on there shed. A few weeks ago they put a hole in it and one day while I was doing chores I saw the wall laying in the dirt. The kittens that were born earlier this year have taken to playing on our front porch. Some days I go out and read while they play. It’s pretty entertaining to watch them fight. Other then that nothing else has happened with the animals.
There isn’t much to say on the garden. We did end up getting a bunch of cucumbers this past week. This weekend my sister and my dad are making pickles. When they went to get the pickles some of them froze in the fridge, those ones are going to the chickens but they still had plenty to pickle. I am currently at our camper but when I get back I’m going to check the aronia berry bushes. I think they should be ripe. I just checked the apples yesterday and they aren’t quite ready yet.
I think I have told you everything that has went on the last week but I’ll have another post up on Monday.
In last Mondays I mentioned that the ducks got out of there pen AGAIN. Today I am going to elaborate. A few months ago me and my dad built a chicken (duck) tractor. It has a rectangle base made of PVC pipe, with 8 thinner PVC pipes arching to the top on each side. On the top we connected each PVC pipe with a connector in the shape of an x or a +. In the front we used some wood to make a frame for the door. The door is actually a sliding door also made of PVC pipe. Then we wrapped the whole thing in deer netting in way that would give some people a heart attack. We fastened the deer netting to the PVC pipe with zip ties.
After we thought we completed the chicken (duck) tractor we moved it off our driveway so we could drive on it. As we were moving it we realized quickly that it was getting torn on weeds and the deer netting wasn’t going to work. We didn’t want to get rid of the deer netting though so my dad just wrapped the bottom in steel mesh. Problem solved.
With our chicken (duck) tractor completed we caught the ducks with a net. This net was made of left over deer netting, a branch from our sumac trees, and some zip ties. I think we chased these ducks around for over an hour before we eventually caught them all. A day goes by and everything is going smoothly and then one of our ducks, Mia escaped. We checked the tractor and there didn’t look there were any holes. Then it turns out Mia had a nest she was sitting on so we figured she got out from pure determination.
The next weekend my parent had to both leave town. (this was actually the weekend my dad went to get the bees) Since my parents were gone my grandma stayed with us. This weekend happened to be rainy and windy, but we still decided to go to a few greenhouses. When we got back we saw ducks all over our backyard. I went to go look at the chicken tractor and it had moved a few feet. This led us to believe that the chicken tractor had blown in the air long enough for 10 ducks to run away. After my dad got back we moved the chicken tractor back to it’s original spot. Because we never wanted it to blow away again, we staked it down. So now it won’t tear and it won’t blow away. So now the ducks can’t get out.
It took us a few months to catch the ducks again. Long enough for three of the ducks to hatch more ducks. But after we did finally capture the ducks once again, we woke up to find that some had escaped. My dad inspected the chicken tractor and as he did so he witnessed one of the ducks break free. That is how we learned that they were getting out where the deer netting ended and the tarp began. To fix this problem we added chicken wire everywhere we put the deer netting since that wasn’t working. ( I know we should’ve noticed that when it tore on the weeds) Now we are in the process of adding a bunch of zip ties to secure the chicken wire, steel mesh, the tarp, and the PVC pipes. I hope that the ducks will not be able to get out of the improved chicken tractor and I will let you know if they do.
When you go to the store you see lots of meat from cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. You never see rabbit meat though, and rabbit is actually better for you than all of the other four. I know some people may think it’s weird or cruel, but in reality it’s just like eating stake and chicken wings. Except rabbit meat is better for you. Compared to, cow, pig, chicken, and turkey rabbit has the most protein and the least amount of fat. If I haven’t convinced you already rabbit also has several vitamins including E and B12. My family is considering raising meat rabbits next year which is why I decided to write this post. This is a really short post but I don’t need to say anything else. This was simply to inform you about rabbit meat.
Hello again, I have decided to start posting two times a week. So from now on I will be posting on Mondays and Thursdays. This Monday I am going to give you all an update.
I have been updating you on different animals and insects but today I will be talking about everything that has happened. I am going to start with the garden, if you have read some of our other posts you will know that we have six raised beds. In these beds we have planted, tomatoes, radishes, beans, cucumbers, and other things. Several of those things are growing well and almost ready for harvest. We have already picked most of the radishes and have also got some garlic that we planted next to the potato patch. Which leads me to the next thing, potatoes. I will ask my dad how he made the patch itself but we have six rows of potatoes. Each row is marked with stick that I wood burned the “potato” on. There are four potato plants growing and those four are doing well. I will update you again at harvest time to tell you what we got from our garden. We also have a small apple tree that has a bunch of apples on it. In past years we have had little apples on it but this year there are some bigger ones two.
Now I will move on to the animals. There isn’t much to say about them, the goats are doing well and so are the chickens. The ducklings are getting bigger and switching moms. We aren’t sure why but MC’s child has joined Splash and rarely visits his mother. All the ducks normally follow around Splash now but sometimes we will spot them with MC. In my post ( Click here to read) about ducks I mentioned the duck house and how all the ducks got out of it. We did catch them all again besides the two mothers of course, but they managed to get out again. My dad found a hole where the tarp and deer netting met and he fixed it. We still need to catch them again and we will soon but it is actually pretty difficult.
Now I will move onto some birds who haven’t escaped, the chickens. In my post ( Click here to read) about chickens I talked about some new ones we got. They were only a week or two old at that point. Now they are much older and nearing the stage when they will start laying eggs. I will tell you when they do start laying.
There is one other thing that is not about the animals or plants, this year my mom has decided to home school us. I will share about our curriculum later when we have everything figured out. That is all I had to share about today, and I will be posting another post on Thursday this week.
You’ve probably heard by now, bees are dying. We recently got bees at my house, if you would like to read more about that I have another post about them. There are over 20,000 species of bees, 4,000 of them are native to the United States. Today I’m going to talk about why they’re dying and why it’s important that they don’t. I also will address how you can help.
There are many reasons bees. One of them is fire. In some places we are intentionally burning areas of land to get rid of growing plants so we can plant new plants. This has many benefits but it can also destroy bee hives. Pesticides used on farmland also kill bees. Because of global warming bees are dying from high heat as well. There are many more things that kill bees, but I could only talk about a few.
The answer to this question is simple, they pollinate our food. As you most likely know the earth contains several intertwined ecosystems. When one part of an ecosystem is endangered or extinct it throws off the whole system. The same is true for bees. Bees are the main pollinators in the United States. If they go extinct our food will not grow as it would if there were still bees. If there were no bees more of earths population would go hungry.
The most obvious answer to this question is plants. Certain flowers are really good for bees, and can help them get the pollen and nectar they need to survive. Some of the best flowers for bees are bee balm, echinacea, black eyed susan, and even dandelions. I have a whole other post about how great dandelions are. One other really important thing you can do is learn more abut bees and what they need, and then share it with others. If you really want to protect the bees you can start your own garden. This will help because then you won’t be using pesticides that are used to grow vegetables form the grocery store.
Where I live there are a lot of dandelions. In the summer some people’s lawns look more yellow than green. My mom and I have arguments over if these yellow flowers are good or bad. Like my mom many people find these flowers annoying, and while they are a weed they’re actually really good for you and your lawn. Dandelions are very nutritious, and almost every part of the dandelion is edible. The only part you would want to avoid is the flower stem, This contains latex. They have a lot of vitamin K, vitamin A, and vitamin C. They also have folate, potassium, and calcium. There may be some side effects to eating dandelions so I strongly encourage you to do your own research. You may have too many dandelions to consume though and that’s fine, because these actually help your lawn in several ways. The roots spread out a lot which helps to prevent erosion and because they are perennials they don’t have to establish new root systems every year. They also release calcium into the soil for other plants to use. Calcium is essential for all plant but it really helps a lot of plants you would find in a garden. Then again there seeds spread fast and they will come back year after year, so you may not want them.
Ducks are in the family Anatidae along with geese and swans. There are several types of ducks the rarest being the Madagascan pochards. There are a lot of more common ducks too. We have one Khaki Cambell duck and a few Muscovy ducks, plus one that we aren’t sure of what type it is. One of our Muscovy ducks was sitting on a nest of eggs and 4 of them ended up hatching. 3 of the died right a way. We aren’t really sure why, but it might be because they hatched in a week where we were having exceptionally hot weather. One of them lived for about a week before dying unexpectedly too. One of our other ducks laid eggs under our deck and 9 of those eggs have hatched. We yet have another duck that is sitting on a nest.Her eggs have not hatched yet, but we think they will hatch within the next one to two weeks. Earlier this year me an my dad built a duck house out of PVC pipe and deer netting. When we first built it the deer netting was getting caught a then ripping because of weeds. So we wrapped steel mesh around the bottom of the house. We captured all the ducks and put them in the new duck house. One of the ducks escaped because she apparently had a nest and needed to get back to it. We let her stay out and then a week later my dad was gone getting bees. Since my dad and mom were gone my grandma came to stay with us. That week it was really windy, and while my grandma was watching us the duck house blew in the air. The duck house was fine, it only blew a few feet but all the ducks escaped. They are still out but soon we will get them back in the duck house now that it is staked down. That is all I’m going to write today but I will keep you updated if the other eggs hatch.
About six weeks ago my dad got two nucs. A nuc is generally four frames that are already established. We could have 
also got a package but then they would take about two weeks to draw out comb and even start producing honey. In a nuc all the bees are related to the queen where as in a package they are not. Anyway the hives are doing really well and today when we did a hive inspection we put the honey super on at least one of the hives. A honey super is a box that you set on the top of the other boxes that the bees will put honey in. They can’t become brood frames because the queen can’t get in these frames so therefore she cannot lay eggs. One of our hives, hive 1, is doing really well it has two boxes that are full of honey, pollen, and eggs. 
There are 15 frames in this hive and we didn’t need to feed them when we checked on them today. The other hive, hive 2, is bigger with 19 frames in it. They are doing pretty well two but the whole top box is still empty, except for a little bit of comb they have just started to draw out. I am not sure if this one has a honey super on it or not. earlier I mentioned feeding the bees. We use sugar syrup with a 1 to 1 ratio of water to sugar. Overall I think the hives are doing really well and I’m excited to continue with this project.
