More new arrivals

Yesterday morning we went out to check on the nine new Guineas and there were only 7! Uh Oh... so we spent the morning stapling metal grids to the bottom of the pen and shoring up all the holes we could find. This morning all 7 were still there so it seems to have worked.



Later in the day we received a special delivery! Our new jersey heifer joined our family and she is just as sweet as she can be. She's 13 months old and hasn't been around people much so she's very shy - we are trying to halter break her so that's why she has the halter and lead rope on right now. She's bred to a Charlais bull and is due to calve in September. That seems young to be bred but Jerseys mature at about 6 months and are one of the smallest breeds of cattle so they generally calve at a young age. Right now we are just trying to spend lots of time with her so that she gets comfortable with us and we can hand milk her when the time comes for her to calve. We plan on leaving the calf with her which should still leave us about a gallon of milk per day on one milking - we shall see!

Here are the chickens enjoying an organic apple snack for breakfast.

Here is the count so far:
1 Jersey (and calf soon to come)
3 Buff Orpington laying hens
7 guinea fowl
11 rabbits
4 kittens
1 Bassett Hound
2 children

All hail the conquering heroes

We went out after dark tonight and sure enough the snake was trying to get into the chicken pen again. After their humiliating defeat the night before, the boys were ready to redeem their honor. With one quick blow (Ok, it was actually about 30 mutilating, chopping blows) the snake was vanquished - never to eat our eggs again. We are back to omelettes in the morning baby! Did you know that snakes really stink? This was new information to me. I mean they have a STRONG nasty smell.

This was a nice end to a very long day. We spent the morning at the Austin Christian Homeschool Conference - overwhelming and fun. Then we drove for an hour and a half to Lockhart to look at a jersey yearling - beautiful heifer that will be calving in September - we are still debating the cost and trying to figure out who will take care of her while we are in Italy for three weeks.

THEN we drove to Burnet - another two hours - to get some guinea fowl. I had been planning on getting a few because they are supposed to keep snakes away and eat a lot of bugs but after last night's snake adventure I went ahead and bought nine. They are sort of small right now but I have a feeling they will be slurping down the snakes in no time.

And so the menagerie grows and the adventure continues.

The snake

Today - Friday
Since we now live in the country, Ella was able to fullfil a lifelong dream of hers and get some kittens. Found some free ones on Craigslist (where else?) and now we have four little bundles of fur running around. We saw a coyote a couple mornings ago in the top pasture right at the fence so we hope we still have four kittens for awhile.
Ian and John ran into town to get a TV tonight - it was a battle but John insisted on having a TV in the bedroom but NO cable. That will remain the only TV in the house for watching movies and Survivor (which we can buy on itunes and download with no commercials) Cool.
Anyhow after they left, Ella and I realized we hadn't gathered any eggs for a couple days so we decided to run out in the dark to the chicken coop and bring them in. I grabbed a flashlight and when I shined it in to the coop, I saw the chickens and noticed a very VERY long black tail hanging out of the coop. A GIANT snake was in with the chickens eating the eggs. They were very calm - I freaked out. I bolted back to the house and incoherently screamed something into the phone at John (Ian was laughing hysterically) about an anaconda sized snake (well... it SEEMED like it) who luckily was just driving down the road to the house. We snatched up some flashlights, a hoe and a shovel and headed out to kill the egg-sucking fiend. OK....so maybe he wasn't as big as I had remembered but he WAS 6 feet long, it was dark and really that's enough to justify my complete snake spaz out which I will never hear the end of.
So my well-armed manly men head into the chicken house and "trap" the snake in the coop. It immediately slithers right out and past the two shovel-bearing sissies who were, according to their story, waiting for the perfect moment to kill it. As they waited, it dissappeared through an opening at the bottom of the wall and, well fed on my eggs, slithered off into the night. Well... we know where it will be tomorrow night - anyone know the best snake killing tool?

Settling in

Lets see... to catch you up to the story, we moved in last Thursday but since only the kid's furniture had arrived, we slept in two full sized beds until (most) of the rest of the furniture came on Tuesday. We got the rabbits (all 11 of them) settled in to their new area on the side of the house and the chickens have made themselves at home in the chicken area and have kindly given us more eggs even through the stress of the move. Not much else going on besides boxes, boxes and more boxes. Ughhhhh. I'm never moving again. Honest.
For Father's Day John got himself a shiny new ZTR mower and realized that it still took him nearly two hours to mow our yard, side yard, guest house yard and chicken yard. Ian will now be taking over the mowing. I used the new mower to clear about a half acre on the other side of the rabbit fence for the vegetable garden and promply chopped the top off a (very well hidden) clean-out pipe for our drain field. Ahh well... nothing stays new for long on a farm I guess.
Watched the frogs jumping and turtles swimming in our tank (read "pond" for those not from rural areas) Barn swallows have made a mud nest front and back but they eat lots of insects so it's fine by me.

In the beginning...

Day 1
So how did this all begin? A friend gave me the book "Real Food" by Nina Planck, then she gave me a gallon of raw milk (which at the time I was pretty sure was practically lethal). I survived drinking my first gallon which was absolutely delicious and curious, I began to read. And read. And read. I read everything about raw milk, whole foods, organic growing, factory farming, etc. that I could get my hands on.
Then we watched the movie "Food Inc." It changed our lives. We decided as a family that we wanted to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. We wanted to opt out of the industrial agriculture system and change the way we ate and how we thought about food.
So, like new zealots, we bought organic, drank raw milk and frequented the farmer's market. We grew some of our own veggies and bought some beautiful laying hens. For our first experiment, we raised some broilers from chicks, processed and ate them. That's when we knew. We wanted to do this for real.
When the opportunity presented itself to move to Austin, we searched and found a beautiful 30 acre property in Taylor and the rest as they say is well... history in the making.
We have been in the house one week now and so much happens on a daily basis that I decided to create this blog so that friends and family could keep up with us now that we are "country folk". Enjoy.