I spent three hours Saturday pulling weeds by hand, clearing 8-12″ wide circles around the new seedlings so there would be less competition for water. It was probably only about 1/3 of our massive garden. I pulled weeds until my hands wouldn’t grip anymore. Surprisingly, the numbness in my hands I usually experience from doing fine motor movement was gone. Pulling weeds _IS_ exercise! I pulled weeds around where a seed was planted but failed to germinate. We will come back today to put another seed or seedling in its…
Category: Homestead
Two Stinky Baby Pigs
Two baby piglets came home with my husband this weekend! They’re so stinking cute! (And I mean stinky!) Last week, Rocky came home with some new birds: five guinea chicks and a turkey chick! He put them under the heat lamp with the two surviving black copper maran chicks he picked up in April. And while I was there, I walked to the goat house to take a peek at the ducks. They’re getting so big, so fast! And they’re so black-and-white that they look like an old black…
Garden Update: Consider Yourself Planted (Mostly)!
So, early last month, we moved hundreds of seedlings outside to get some sun and then life happened and they all died, except for three tiny seedlings I managed to revive. It’s May 8 and all I wanted for Mother’s Day was to plant my garden. While the Ax Man napped, my husband, Rocky, and three year old son, Sting, got started in our ambitious 2600 square foot garden on Burton Farm. I forgot how much work it was to get a garden in the ground. Last year we were moving…
The Right Decision – A Country Farmhouse
Our Happy Place We searched for nearly a year for our new home, as we had quickly grown from a family of two to three, and then four in a matter of a few short years, and the townhouse just couldn’t hold us anymore. When we saw this house online, we fell in love, even though it was nearly twice as much as we wanted to spend. After talking about it in depth, my husband and I realized we could afford the payments, but we would have to make some…
Inaugural Post – Owning Burton Farm is Born
We Homestead. We Money. And now, we Blog. Welcome to the inaugural post by Owning Burton Farm at owningburtonfarm.com. These are the first of several posts that are going in the ground to support the fence for the garden. I said I didn’t want to put in a lot of effort on a garden if the goats and the dogs are running loose. I only play to win and that right there’s a losing game, I already know. Jenny, our one year-old dog has ripped out the last four small seedlings I’ve planted in my front door containers,…
A New Baby! A New Page!
A New Baby! A New Page! Ok, a few new babies. In fact, nearly an entirely new farmbly has been born in the two years since we posted. The most recent was a little billy goat born to Joy and Noel. Three months ago, Noel and Chrissy had a baby girl goat, who has not yet been named, either. Oh, dear. You haven’t met Chrissy and Joy yet. The new crew of Dominecker chickens have started laying eggs and Amigo, the baddest Red Rooster in town, guards them closely. We…
Wind Egg – June 3, 2014
June 3, 2014 These are yesterday’s gifts from our chickens. It looks like we have a “beginner” who has laid her first egg–that’s the first one we’ve seen that tiny! So cute! Hard to believe it’s from a chicken.
Our First Eggs and Our First Garden
May 22, 2014 Hybrid Garden is in the Ground! At long last, our seeds have met the ground! We started out with raised row beds, but because it was too labor intensive this late in the game, we switched to traditional tilled soil gardening. Clint graciously let me stand in the middle of the plot, hold the seeds, and bark out orders about what to plant where…He’s a good man. 🙂 Oh, did you want to water that garden? How are you going to water it??!? No rain in the forecast until…
Let Me Crow About This Chicken Coop!
We used a couple of skinny trees to support the chicken wire from drooping on the top. I know that looks like barbed wire at the top, but it’s some super-sexy (NEON!) zip tie sewing we did with scrap chicken wire to keep predators out of the run and the coop. There’s an overturned plastic pool-cover turtle shell (free castaway from a trash pile) pond for the duck and the old doghouse top for a little something familiar. That beachy blue paint is a mix of most of the leftover paint…
Chicken Coop Progress 4/19/2014
I worked all day on the coop on Saturday, but made very little progress. I tore it apart when I started the day only to realize I should heave left it alone. Now my plywood floor doesn’t cover the entire deck as originally planned. I did get out of cutting 3″ off of each joist though. The plywood I originally bought for the floor was too thin and had to be removed and I had to make a trip to Lowe’s to buy sturdier plywood for the sub-floor. The…