link is back

besides being the hero in the legend of zelda video game our hog also bore that name. she is back and we had breakfast for dinner last night. pork sausage, eggs, biscuits and sausage gravy. it was excellent. pork sausage was our most missed pork item.

we simply go without when we don't have our own meat in the freezer. there are always other types to choose from. we had plenty of chicken and beef. but, this is when we feel the richest. until we eat our last chicken we can go to the freezer and have any type of meat we want. well, we don't have any lamb or turkey but we hope to remedy that someday soon.

it was a big day out driving all over to get stuff. we needed chicken feed and to pick up our hog. the butcher shop was near a fabric store. tabitha bought fabric for several dresses for her and kassi. we also got curtain fabric for the kids room. our little van was laden with over a thousand pounds of stuff. the kids had to crawl over bags of feed to get to their seats. we must seem like a comedy act to most folks.

we took deliver of twenty bales of hay yesterday. the last hay we got from him was a little below our cows picky standards. she wasted most of it. i spoke with mark, the hay guy, and said that this last batch wasn't near the quality of hay we got the first time. i apologized for being picky but that is why we went with him a second time because that first hay was so good. he said he'd riffle through the stack of hay and pick the best stuff that was immediately available. it worked! this delivery of hay is top notch, she loves it.

we just want to get her condition perfect. on that note, we have been researching cow supplements. we have decided to try fertrell's product line. we have some friends, once removed, that are dealers. they also sell organic soil amendments. we place a fairly large order and hope to receive those items soon.

i plan to build a mineral feeder for the cow like this one.

mine will be made out of the bottom of a 55 gallon plastic drum, cement, hardwood dividers and piece of rigid conveyor belt material that i have for the flap. these things sell for $150.00 mine will be free since i have all the stuff. it will be slightly smaller than their version but we only have one cow. i'll post a how-i-did-it entry when the time comes.

we also invested in one of those soil block makers.

we are planning on selling seedlings this spring and this should make a huge difference. we hope to optimize space in our green house and offer a better product. the reasons for employing this method are too compelling to ignore.

our pastured poultry offering is official. we have solicited to several outlets that we will be offering our pastured chicken this spring. several people have expressed interest i just hope that turns into customers, fingers-crossed. it is scary and exciting. we are trying a new hatchery this spring too. they only supply commercial birds and the smallest amount that they offer is 100 chicks. we are splitting that order with tabitha's father. coincidentally he-too will be selling pastured poultry. actually, he is helping differ our risk and has already managed to get commitments for a large portion of his birds. what a fun caper it will be..

i might have to take this link down as soon as tabitha wakes but here is our farm web site using blogger as the platform.
omelayfarm
it is still under development but mostly done. what ya think?

critical thought = latin

tabitha wants to learn latin from www.galorepark.co.uk in turn she will begin to teach it to the kids. of course, we'll continue on our attempt to expose them to spanish. galore park seems to have a very interesting teaching method and we are intrigued by it. being always on the lookout for excellent teaching tools for our quiver it is exciting to find something of this caliber.

tristan is so far ahead in his reading for his home school that next year we will augment his core reading queue even further than we already have. there is nothing that makes more proud then to find tristan sitting quietly in a corner reading unsolicited. when he is finished he'll rush in to where tabitha and i are and begin to update us on the story line. i love it.

i have been playing the uno card game with the kids nightly. there are fierce emotions regarding that everyone should win at least one game. and, we cannot stop until that criteria has been met. playing with four of us a set of games can last an inordinate amount of time. my remedy was to deal from the bottom of the deck after the match became grueling and tears were threatening to emerge in a noisy way. i thought i was being sly but kassi noticed my bottom dealing. last evenings game she started to plea "daddy give me the bottom cards." busted.. i guess i'd never make it as a vegas dealer.

toly has been on strict regime of starfall for several hours per day. computer time is at a premium lately. netflicks also took nightmare before christmas off their instant queue. it almost broke his little heart. he watched that movie at least once daily. we were forced to purchase it on dvd. it has been one of his happy places that he can retreat when the world starts to spin too fast. he really associates with jack the pumpkin king. the hero that is just a little naughty and usually doesn't realize why. but mostly jack has a good heart and wants to do the right thing. if he could only figure out what the right thing is?

rome is doing the cutest things lately. he is on the verge of talking. of course he
has several words but he is still encumbered by his inability to describe what he needs at every given moment. i guess i still have that problem. he knows when he is being cute and shows off.

our matriarch cat hermoine has had her kittens. they are very cute. all of them are spoken for. good farm cats are hard to come by but we should have some more in a few months.



tabitha has started to blog a little over at http://omelay.blogspot.com/. we also started an "omelay family farm" site to promote our pastured poultry to our local community. it is still under development final release to be announced.

tabitha did paint the cutest sign over the past few days. i went into the woods and cut a cedar for the posts to mount it on.



photos of kittens and sign are on the way. i'll just add them in this post later this evening (for those of you on the RSS check back tonight)

sorry about the delay but i finally succumbed to the stomach flu that has been making its way through the pile of omelays.

as requested (chicken feed recipe)

this is our layer recipe of 900 lbs

500 lbs pulverized corn
90 lbs alfalfa meal
95 lbs soybean meal
150 lbs whole oats
30 lbs calcium
30 lbs mg mag 53316 or 53019
5 lbs vitamin ADE

the girls

the chickens are really laying. we have been getting three dozen eggs every day for a few days. yesterday i forked out their coop. during the last cold spell they hardly left the warmth of the indoors. our chickens don't like the snow. things were getting very piled up and smelly. i have a compost bin just outside their door. it was almost a quarter full before i started. in the end, i managed to nearly fill it entirely. my compost bins are made from four freight pallets. and usually hold about a yard and a half of compost. so i moved about a yard of manure yesterday.


i had let it go for a little too long. theoretically it should get removed with fifty percent bedding. this would make for a reasonable mix ratio of manure to brown matter. this stuff was concentrated straight chicken droppings. it will take some extra work to get this to a usable product. chicken manure is high powered stuff anyway and should always be used with caution.


i will encourage this to compost until this coming fall. my plan is to use this in my experiment toward making some tierra pietra. i'll need a substantial amount of charcoal to make the quantity i'm interested in. we'll initiate cooking over a wood fired grill this coming spring. throughout the summer i'll collect the dowsed charcoal from our quelched cooking fires. my goal is to make two yards of tierra pietra and see how it performs.


the upper newly exposed garden and yard will appreciate amending with this rich soil. we hope to start permanent herb beds in that area. there will be some exciting changes around here this spring.


i also finished wiring the chicken coop. the storage half needed a light since we check the nest boxes after dark when we close them up for the night. eventually the chicken responsibilities will fall onto the kids. kids appreciate well lit environments after dark--especially my kids.


our first garden

tabitha and i are going to share some farm photos with a group of people this weekend. we have been poring through tons of old photos in an effort to exhibit something comprehensive. it has been very nostalgic and have been feeling very accomplished. the raw effort and will that we have regularly exhausted to attempt to carve out our little place is very apparent in retrospect.

seeing the changes in our little farmstead. it started with an old house that was nearly fallen in. the yard was a bramble of scrub trees, poison ivy, sumac, oak saplings and mimosas. our intended garden patch was an impossible patch of small trees and rock.


sunset

the pigs are gone

i'll never do that again. by the time we got to the slaughter house my friends were very frightened. i had to shove them out of the back of the trailer. they obviously smelled the death.

all the while alternating scratching their back and shoving them onto the scale i was thinking i should have done this myself. i could have killed them much more humanely then what they were experiencing during their last moments on this mortal coil.

a simple bucket of grain and a bullet to the head would have suited me much more than shoving them out of that trailer. i really liked my friends the pigs and will forever kill my own in the future. even if it takes a few bullets like phoenix did it certainly would be better than that.



they weighed two hundred and ninety and three ten we kept the smaller one since mike was splitting his with a friend. we'll get both livers and all the lard.

good bye patty and link. we will miss you and thank you for your gift. i hope we gave you a great life.