Sugar Creek Farm

A few of you caught sight of Jimmy a few days ago, so I thought you might like to see a close-up. His “hat” is usually even fluffier than this, but I guess the winter weather is giving him bad hair days.

We’ve had bitter cold here this week, with lows at 12 below and highs at 4 above. But surprisingly that’s actually been good for egg production, I guess because the cold is driving the hens into the coop. From a low of 4 or 5 eggs per day a couple of months ago, I’m back up to 12 to 15 eggs a day. Still not where it should be for 45 hens, but it’s improving.

Though it’s been cold, the wind hasn’t blown and the sun is out so it doesn’t seem so bad. I can say that because I spend most of my day sitting at the computer, not outside working 40 feet in the air like Matt. I haul hot water out to the coop a couple times a day, and pick up eggs 3 times a day. Still I usually find a frozen egg ball or two.

The rest of the livestock seem to be faring well in the cold. They have shelter but they’re usually found standing around the bale feeder or lying on a mound of cornstalks in the sun. In one of those wish-I-had-my-camera moments, I saw our sow today carrying around the huge hunk of ice that started out as water in her pan. She carried it into her shed and dropped it with a big clunk. She’s goofy.

It’s supposed to warm back up to around 30 by the weekend. Downright tropical.

Fedco Seeds drops Seminis line, after Seminis is bought by Monsanto.

we did buy something besides the Christmas tree last Friday. We bought 3 calves as well. Here’s 2 of them:

Because we lost 3 calves earlier this year we had to buy 3 in order to make our goal of having 8 feeders for sale next fall, an increase of 2 over this year. That puts a big ouch in the cash flow. The white one is a Charolais-Angus cross. Never had a white calf before, so that’s fun. I think I’ll call him Whitey Ford.

My dad’s cousin had some late-bred cows and agreed to sell us 3 bull calves. They were freshly weaned when he brought them over, which is good because they’re presumably bringing some immunity with them. Calves are susceptible to “shipping fever” simply from the stress of being moved. You get it a lot when you buy bottle calves from the sale barn. So far no problems with these.

While Lyle and Tom were here delivering the new calves they helped Matt get our late-born calf, Spunky, away from his mother. So he’s now weaned as well and in with the rest of the calves. So we endured some bellowing over the weekend, but nothing nearly as bad as last year when they kept the neighbors awake.

The only shopping we do the day after Thanksgiving is for our Christmas tree. No matter the weather, which was really cold this year, we’re out there looking for a tree. Here’s the one we got this year. (Those bare dead branches at the top are from some tree behind it.)

I usually like our trees a little more “Charlie Brown-y” than this one. This tree is quite a bit more high-brow than we usually get. But it’s very pretty and one of these days I’ll post pictures of it decorated.

Apparently Rafe thought jumping on Matt’s back while he was sawing it down would be helpful.

One year when our Christmas budget was a little tight, we decided to cut down a cedar tree from my parents’ pasture. Our first mistake was walking around in the woods on opening day of deer season. We cut the top off a rather large tree. When we got it home and got it in the house we discovered that, laying on the floor, it took up the length of our dining room. About 14 feet. We had to trim it a bit 🙂 But that was one memorable Christmas tree.

In the wake of “Black Friday” I feel like ranting about materialism and excess. Instead I’ll simply share with you this quote gleaned from Worldchanging:

Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abudance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving Day. Time spent with Matt and the kids, my grandma, my parents, my brother and his family, and family friends. A Thanksgiving dinner that included chicken and sweet potatoes from our farm.

We also celebrated my birthday, which is coming up this week. It was one of the nicest birthdays I’ve had. Simple gifts – a cookbook, a couple of Christmas movies, some scrapbooking supplies. We took the kids to the 5:00 showing of “Chicken Little” at the Watts Theater – check out the pricing 🙂 – and then back to my parents’ house for cake and ice cream.

Simple. Lovely.

Olivia got in trouble Wednesday night and sent to her room. (And to be fair, the other 2 got in trouble and sent to their rooms as well.) A little while later she came out and handed this to me. Yes, the girl knows how to get herself out of trouble 🙂

I am thankful for all of you who read this little blog of mine, all of you who leave comments and all of you who don’t, and all of you who take the time out of your day to send me an email. Your encouragement touches me. Happy Thanksgiving!

makes one week. Ha, old joke, I know.

The cold weather has settled in for good it seems, and I’ve not been out and about the farm much to snap any new pictures. Not a lot to take pictures of, either. Everyone is hunkered down for the winter. After work I run out and gather eggs and get back into the warm house as quickly as possible. On really cold days I’m hauling warm water from the house out to the chicken coop and picking up eggs before they freeze, sometimes three times a day.

Out of almost 50 hens I’m getting only between 4 and 8 eggs a day. On Sunday we spent most of the day sprucing up the chicken coop, thinking this would entice the girls into laying inside the coop. We got the nest boxes cleaned out and rebedded, set up more feeders and an additional waterer. Got a light hung that will turn on/off on a timer. The walls of the coop don’t reach all the way to the roof, so we created a ceiling for the room by stretching tarp across the top. This will help keep the room warmer, as well as keep the hens from escaping when we want them to stay in. We also built new perches that will accomodate all 50 birds.

The best part is we did all of this without having to buy anything. One tarp was leftover from the broiler pen this summer, and we cut another piece of tarp out of a hay tarp that got ruined in a windstorm. The lumber for the perches was cut from some homesawn we’d never used.

Then on Monday night Matt was able to catch all but 8 hens and shut them in the coop. The plan was to shut them in all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning, have eggs coming out our ears, and let them out at noon today. But yesterday’s grand egg total? 8. So we’ll leave them in a little longer. They don’t seem to mind, anyway. It’s like a Hen Hilton in there.

So now we get busy with indoor chores. I’ll take my time and work at fall cleaning all winter. I never did finish washing the windows. We had such a warm fall and late frost that it took forever for the asian beetles and flies to disappear. So windows will wait until spring. I’ve been working on Christmas gifts. Poring over seed catalogs and making lists of things to grow next year. Working on the farm recordkeeping. I enjoy the change in activity this time of year, and about the time I get tired of it spring will be here and we’ll be back outside again.

It’s too cold to go out and snap many pictures today, so I thought I’d show a before and after of our old farmhouse. We aren’t sure exactly when it was built. One source says 1875. The carpenter that put the new basement under it for us thought it wasn’t quite that old, maybe around 1900. This farm was the first land claim made in Mitchell County in 1851. A log cabin sat somewhere on this site prior to this house being built.

This was the house when we moved in 8 years ago:

And this is the house after new siding and new porch this summer:

I love love love the new front porch. We didn’t get done in time to use it much this year but next year I’ll be out there in a porch swing, a book in one hand and a drink in the other, watching the kids play and the livestock graze, and waving at the neighbors as they drive by.

Closeup of the porch. Before there were 2 porches, one over each door. We extended the main porch so it wraps around the bay window to both doors. Matt painted the ceiling a turquoise-y robins egg blue.

Our new front entrance. We’ve got a lot of painting to do next summer.

The old front entrance looked like this.

Rafe had his little hayrake hooked up to his big pedal tractor this weekend. It cracked us all up. Love to see his imagination at work. I asked if he was raking hay but he said, “No, I’m raking snow! There’s snow all over the place!”

Matt had Veterans Day off work, and the kids had it off school, so I took the day off, too. We took an overnight trip to The Great Serengeti Indoor Waterpark at Owatonna, Minnesota. The girls have worked so hard this year helping us on the farm – and in the house – that we wanted to reward them with something fun. It was fun, highly recommended to any of you within driving distance of Owatonna.