The "Barn"....if you will

Holistic Farm

I'm happy to report that our two caprine additions are getting along very well together. Yesterday when I went out to give the girls their morning feed and let the chickens out I found them both, dead asleep, completely cuddled up to each other. It felt good to know that they both have found comfort and companionship in each other so fast.

For the last 36 hours Shone Vida has been enjoying immensely cold weather and non-stop rain. We might even get snow soon, if it gets colder. In good faith of that fact, Justin and I spent a bit of last night and this morning shoring up the "barn". I piled fresh straw in a corner for the goats to cuddle up in at night, Justin put up some lumber in the barn opening to keep a bit more cold out, and we brought an armload of hay out for them to eat. From what I've read, I need to make sure that the girls have plenty of feed for the day and night. Firstly, because goats really don't like the rain and won't spend as much time eating the grass in the pasture. Secondly, I don't really want them eating the wet grass because right now there are more parasitic parasites on the grass. I keep the girls wormed, but prevention really is the best policy. Neither of them seem to be too distressed about this, spending much time in the barn eating their heads off. Charlotte, especially, is the most glutinous creature I've ever met.

Today marks the first day that I start my holistic approach to farm management. I recently purchased an amazing book by an Aussie, Pat Coleby, called Natural Goat Care.

Amazon was selling it for about $20 new. Coleby is an expert in the field of holistic livestock management. From my reading I've gathered that her approach to management is prevention of disease through proper nutrition. She suggests making a mineral lick for the goat using readily available minerals in their natural form. The cool thing is that animals have an amazing ability to seek out the vitamins and minerals they require, while we humans tend to ignore those signs. So now I have a few buckets out in the barn with different minerals in them. Now the goats can eat as much of a nutrient as they want whenever they need it, according to Coleby, because of that they will be much healthier. One of the items Coleby suggests having available ad lib is kelp meal because it provides a myriad of important vitamins and minerals in their most natural form. I'm pretty excited about this little experiment. Charlotte seemed to enjoy a few licks of the kelp meal already. Now I am interested to see if the chickens decide to take any of the vitamins. Hopefully Shone Vida will be enjoying a long time of healthy and happy animals.

The Goats Have Arrived!

The momentous day has finally come and now two goats call Shone Vida home. You have known about my first goat, Charlotte, for a while. Now going on 8 months old, she's growing up nicely and is still as friendly as ever. In my last post I said that we picked a little boy to be her companion, but after a week of trying to get a hold of my vet with no response back (the vet is known for this nonsense) Justin and I decided that a female would be better for us. She is a white Cashgora from my co-worker's herd and super cute.

Justin and I went to Samantha's house this morning to pick the little girl up. We simply loaded her up in the Ranger with the camper shell on and drove down to Green Acres. I wanted the two goats to arrive at Shone Vida together with the intention of everyone starting fresh. Things didn't quite go smoothly at first though: as soon as we loaded both goats in the back, the little Cashgora began furiously butting Charlotte out of pure fright. Needless to say, Charlotte spent the rest of the truck ride home on my lap. What can I say? I'm a sucker for that little goat.

Thankfully the two are getting along great now that they are safe in their new pen with food and water. Unfortunately they are both experiencing some growing pains. Both of them are in the pen crying loudly. I imagine it will take a few days before they completely settle into life here. I've been agonizing over this day for a while; feeling guilty about taking Charlotte from Green Acres and her beloved sister, and guilty about taking the baby Cashgora from her herd. But time to face facts: farming and sustainability are my passions and Charlotte is a huge part of making that happen. Charlotte is special because she is really the spark that started this journey for me.

Welcome to Shöne Vida!

Well it's been way too long since my last post. I've definitely been missing keeping up with the blog, but life was getting a little too full to keep up with this part. Here's a rundown: Heather and I raised 101 Freedom Ranger chickens. Due to 5 losses and our own softness we only harvested 90. Justin and I moved into a 1 bed/1 bath home on 5 acres in Auburn, not far away from Green Acres.

Because every good farm has a name Justin and I thought long and hard about what we would name our new homestead. We decided upon a name that melds our ancestry together(German and Portugese): Shöne Vida which means "beautiful life". The name seems to fit the place well.

Since moving in we have moved and fitted a metal shed to become a weather-proof chicken house and goat shed. That's right, I said GOAT SHED. I am very pleased to announce that my little goat Charlotte will be coming to the farm on November 16! While her arrival will be well received here, I am a little sad for her because her sister Rose will not be coming along. However, thanks to a good friend at work a Cashmere Angora X boy will be a new addition to the farm to keep Charlotte Company. So it looks like I'm going to have to learn how to sheer, spin, and knit all in the name of my dear Charlotte.

It's going to be a busy winter here at Shone Vida and I'm loving it!

The barn and Athena

It's been a long time...

So it's been way too long since my last post, which I'm not proud of but what can I do about it now? Let me just say that life on the farm has completely taken over my free time. Most farmers will tell you that May-July are some of the busiest times in their lives. There's lots of work to do in the garden. On top of garden work I've had the meat chicken enterprise going on, which demands a lot more management than I thought it would require.

The meat birds are going on their 6th week right now and are enormous! My 3 month old wyandotte pullets are half the size of these monsters. Basically all they do is eat and poop. At first we got away with moving the chicken tractor only once a day, but it quickly became apparent that we needed to move them more often in order to keep them on green pasture. In the beginning they didn't seem to show much interest in the grass and bugs available to them, choosing the easily available pellets instead. Now they seem to enjoy laying in the grass and pecking at whatever moves in from of them. These guys have another 3 weeks left before the big day when BBQ season officially begins on Green Acres.

Because we just couldn't get enough from our first chicken rearing experiment, Heather and I ordered 100 Freedom Ranger chicks from J.M. Hatchery back east. These guys will be much easier to manage although they will take nearly a month longer to mature than the Cornish X we have now. The Freedom Rangers are much better at being chickens, so we can trust them to range on the pasture without the chicken tractor.

On other poultry news, Justin and I scored a $100 12' x 12' shed off craigslist last week. Justin, bless his heart, tore the entire thing down and hauled it to the farm, where we will build a big enough poultry house for the meat birds. We were desperate for a new house for the chickens since the baby goats decided that the tractor was a really fun jungle gym to play on. The poor tractor is in shambles now and the babies have been banned to the barn until the house is built. Pretty soon Green Acres will have a full-fledged poultry operation going complete with chicken house and an exclusive chicken pasture where goats are not allowed!

The garden is finally to the stage between planting and harvest where we can sit back and watch things literally grow before our eyes. Weeding and mulching are the only things we need to worry about at this point. We've had relatively little loss to gophers this season, but I'm not kicking my heels up yet. We've got fruit growing on most tomato plants and some baby pumpkins started! Right now the only veggies we've enjoyed are radishes and zucchini.

Oh, and the county fair is coming up in August and I think I may enter a couple of my pullets for fun! Their beautiful silvery laced feathers are replacing the all black ones every day, so they may have a good chance of a win. Yay!

The Chicken Tractor

Well, the chicks are growing fast. So fast that we have separated them in flocks of 20 birds each in large plastic animal troughs. Those will be too small in a matter of days. I have never seen an animal grow so quickly, but that's what this breed is made to do.

I decided that it would be best to get the chicken tractor set up so we could potentially house all the chicks in it sooner than we thought. I enlisted Justin's help to build the thing since he is an absolute construction whiz and could make the process go much faster. Here's how we did it:

Materials

~10 - 10' long 1/2" PVC pipes

~2 - 4 way slip PVC joints

~6 - T PVC joints

~4 corner PVC joints

~1 roll chicken wire 48" x 50'

~1 - 10' x 12' weatherproof tarp

~ lots of zip ties!

Description

The point of the tractor is to provide a safe, large enclosure for the birds to range in the goat pasture. The tractor will provide protection from the heat and rain, since both are major enemies of this particular type of bird. We needed to make something large enough to provide space for the growing birds until they are large enough to range on their own. We also needed to take into consideration the weight of the whole tractor. Basically, Heather or I need to be able to move the tractor around the pasture on our own with ease, but it must be heavy enough to deter predators from lifting it to get under. The tractor had to have an easy way for us to access the food, water, and birds daily. Finally, it had to have a shape and strength that could withstand the goats' curiosity (we may have to put up hot wire around it if we can't keep them off it.

Process

I bought the materials from Home Depot for a total of $84, but Heather and I will split this cost. We will also be able to many uses out of this tractor for future flocks.

Justin and I measured out the correct lengths to cut the PVC. We had to take into consideration the length added by the PVC joints (usually about 1'') and subtract that from the lengths of pipe. We had to do this because the tarp was exactly the dimension of the tractor's top. Justin cut the PVC with a hack saw and we connected the pieces WITHOUT PVC glue (we decided this would be best for now in case we needed to take the tractor apart or make modifications.

Once the PVC skeleton was erected we realized that pipe did not have enough strength to hold its shape in the middle. We rectified this by using some steel wire strung across the width at the two middle ribs to stop the stretching. Next we laid and secured the chicken wire to the frame with zip-ties. Ours were very colorful. By the end we had neon blue, orange, and pink zip ties holding the chicken wire to the frame. Then we cut an opening between the middle ribs and attached a length of chicken wire over it to serve as the door. We wrapped a 2' length of PVC to the bottom of the door to serve at a weight. The door is secured closed with a piece of velcro webbing.

Lastly, we draped the tarp over the entire tractor. Then we used zip ties to connect one half of the tarp to the tractor frame. We will use bungee cords to attach the other half to the door-side of the tractor since we'll need to lift the tarp to get to the door.

The result was a 12' x 6' beautifully sturdy chicken tractor. The construction took us roughly 3 hours with the chicken wire taking the longest part of the whole thing. Having two people definitely made the process faster and much less frustrating. Now our chicks will have a wonderful shelter in which to enjoy the outdoors and peck around for bugs and seeds. I am very proud of our product!

This is the door-side of the complete tractor