Vaughnshire Farm

We haven’t posted any pictures lately of our growing leghorns.  They are getting so big!  We were just talking the other day about the differences in the different breeds of chickens we have and different characteristics they exhibit.  We found a chart a while back that details these differences — temperament, size, egg laying abilities, personality etc.  The chart said that the leghorn breed was flighty—We have found that to be true! 

This would be my nice mixing bowl in the yard……

One of the girls stops to pose for a picture.  I am not sure how many leghorns we have…somewhere around 90 birds as we have lost a few.  AND…we ended up with a rooster…two roosters actually out of the bunch.  These hens will have the job of supplying eggs to a couple of local restaurants in town.  They will be laying big white eggs…which, we have found, is what restaurants ask for. 

Our 12 year old loves taking pictures of the farm.  He captured this picture one full moon night of a bunch of his leghorns camping out on the hog panel fence. 

The next big project will be building some sort of egg mobile for these hens.  Right now they are in smaller chicken tractors and running around the compost/garden area. 

We have an appointment this week to go look at a few hoop houses and green houses from a nursery that is closing down.  They boys can’t wait for that field trip as they are thinking they might be able to make a grand chicken home out of these.

It happened again.  Another snake caught stealing our eggs…

…..only upon further examination, the boys figured out that the snake didn’t eat a chicken egg….but had in fact swallowed the golf ball that was in the chicken laying box.  Chicken eggs crack when squeezed….and golf balls don’t!

Since I married a man who likes non-poisonous snakes and in return has sympathetic boys, we couldn’t just let the snake die.  That was my idea.  They decided to squeeze the golf ball back out of the snake so it wouldn’t die.  One of the most disgusting, I-can’t-believe-I-was-suckered-into-taking-these-pictures moments of my life. 

It was dark outside, so the boys are holding flashlights while dad squeezes the golf ball up the snake. 

The boys said it was one of the coolest things they have ever seen.  The topic of conversation over supper was…yes…all the snake encounters they have had since moving to the farm. 

At this point, I am saying…”It is going to bite you…I know it is….”  I was assured that it wouldn’t bite—it had a large golf ball stuck in its throat. 

A close up shot. 

Finally, getting it out of its mouth.

A close up shot of the ball coming out of the snakes mouth.  So gross.

Loud accolades of “WOW…that was so Cool!” and examination of the slimy, stinky, swallowed golf ball. 

Wow…That was amazing.  Amazing for the guys that is…  And no, they didn’t kill the snake.  They took it across the road so it could find its way to the creek.  I was reminded that these are “good snakes” that eat the bad snakes.  Somehow knowing that is supposed to make me happy. 

I can always tell when there is something up in the barn yard when the boys come in the house with this certain “look” and rocket speed scrambling to find dad.  They don’t tell me because usually that type of news upsets me….and they know that from experience.  They just head for dad. 

One morning recently, our 7 year old runs in the house in a frantic bee line to get to daddy.  He had something important to tell him.  He and his big brother had been in the barn collecting eggs when they noticed that their prized hen named “Fluffy Feet” was not sitting on her nest and making a stink about something.  She is the broody hen that hatched out several chicks a while back.  Well, she is sitting on more eggs.  The boys picked her up to put her back on her nest and there to meet them was a very large black snake curled up in the chicken nesting box.  Yikes…This is why I don’t collect eggs or stay in the barn very long.

So after the 7 year old gets out all the exciting news to daddy, he and daddy go running off to the barn.  Daddy comes back to the house to show the rest of us the big snake he caught.  We could tell the snake had eaten 3 eggs, not only because the boys knew how many eggs were missing, but also because you could see them bulging out of the snake’s belly. 

…and no, he didn’t kill it! 

Update:  Fluffy Feet hatched out 6 new baby chicks this morning!  I guess we didn’t down size for long…

Update 2:  Fluffy Feet has 2 more baby chicks….  grand total is now 8 new chicks.

Contrary to popular belief around here at our house, CSA does not always stand for Confederate States of America!  It stands for Community Supported Agriculture in this instance!  We have so enjoyed our CSA groceries from our friends, the Lingo family, over at Beaverdam Creek Farm.

For the past few weeks, we have been enjoying a bountiful basket of fresh fruits grown off their farm — which has been a huge blessing this year being that we have been occupied with having a newborn.  This week we received corn, peas, tomatoes, green beans, okra, squash, peppers, herbs and flowers!  When Wednesday rolls around, we always look forward to our trip out to their farm to pick up our basket of CSA groceries!

If you are in the area, you should check them out.  They have wonderful pastured-raised chicken for sale as well.

One of our Bantam hens hatched out a baby chick not to long ago.  He is so ugly, we can’t believe he is real.  He isn’t liked much by the other farm yard animals.  When visitors come and happen to catch a glimpse of him, they assume he was in some sort of fight.  He wasn’t in a fight and he isn’t diseased, he was just made this way.  This is what happens when a turken rooster gets loose with your bantam hen.  Since he is disadvantaged, we decided to let him live on Vaughnshire for the time being. 

…for a young entrepreneur

It is a blessed sight to see a young man be about the business of men instead of being idle.  The problem with having boys pursuing the work of starting up businesses is that it ultimately affects me in ways that my flesh would rather not be affected by. 

This morning, I attempted to finish up my growing pile of laundry all the while working around a big box of chirping birds at my feet.  That’s the box of 104 new baby chicks that arrived early this morning!  That’s 104 more birds to add to the other menagerie of birds wandering around in the yard.  That’s a 104 more birds that weren’t my idea!

The boys had been in and out of the house finishing up the last minute details on the chicken brooder before the noisy birds could be taken out to the barn.  Inconvenience yes…but more than that is the picture I see out the back door…that of the ever increasing myriad of animals roaming the back yard, the bright orange construction fence they put up around one of the chicken pens, the pile of wood they insist is important building material, their Thanksgiving turkeys that shower poop all over the girl’s playhouse on a daily basis and … well, must I go on?  I go back into the house and shut the door and pretend I just came in from a stroll in my beautiful southern garden.  I am a very exact, like-every-book-strait-and-my-cans-in-the-pantry-alphabetized type of obsessive person.  I can’t figure out why God gave me that type of personality and then decided to bless me with 5 boys!  He knew I needed to grow up, learn the meaning of patience and self-sacrifice and have layers of selfishness knocked off; so He blessed me with children!

The point is that having boys pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors and learning how to be about the business of men is messy!  I have to reevaluate my expectations of a perfectly manicured lawn (HA!) and a reasonable amount of laundry and come to grips with the fact that these things just aren’t to be at this season in my life.  After all, things are messy in a construction zone.  It isn’t until after considerable time, effort, dust and hard work refining, building and creating that the construction zone, one day, turns into a beautiful work of art. 

A very excited 7 year old boy came flying in the house announcing that one of his “Super Buff” chickens finally laid an egg! These 2 “chicks” are important to him because they are the ones he nursed back to health 5 months ago. 

We had a surprise when we arrived home after being gone last weekend.  The hen that has been sitting on a nest of eggs hatched out two more chicks.  We were all shocked because of the time between the chicks hatching has been spread out well over a week (about 10 days actually).  We were giving up on the eggs hatching.  There are still a few more eggs, so we will just wait and see what happens this week. 

one of the new baby chicks

This week we have posted a lot of farm related material…that would be because it’s early spring (as of today) and there are a ton of things to do around a farm during “planting season”.  As one of my younger children recently lamented, “If only we had more children…we could have more help…” 

Today was a beyond gorgeous day.  I sat in a lawn chair out by the garden and gave directions on what I wanted done. We had cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, potatoes and onions to get in the ground.  By the days end, they had the garden planted with plants and had posted the poultry netting around the garden.   The garden would have been gone by morning if we didn’t do something quick because the chickens spotted the fresh young plants and started eating them. 

The boys also repaired the disconnected spring pipe.  Water was gushing out of the pipe into the creek (it is supposed to be connected to another pipe running into our spring tank).  The pipe was disconnected because of the amount of water and debris that rushed through the creek yesterday with all of our rain.  The boys cleared the debris and reconnected the pipe.  All is well. 

The cows and goats were also moved over into a different section of the pasture.  They enjoyed having fresh green grass as they had been grazing in another section for several weeks. 

So far the mother hen hatched out 3 chicks:  one died, two are doing great.  We aren’t sure why the other eggs have not hatched. 

This week, my husband and the boys also started taking out one of the driveways so we can run a fence across the front of the house.  They worked on clearing brush, filling in other parts of the land with fill dirt, leveling out other parts.  This is a huge project in the works. 

That’s all the farm updates.