Oh boy! Turkey eggs!

Thanks to Golden Boy, I found Wanda's nest of eggs.  Golden Boy was on the other side of the creek bed and when I called to him he started running to me.  Apparently he scared Wanda and she flew off.  I climbed up the hill to the area she flew from and lo and behold! there was a beautiful nest of turkey eggs.  Since the turkeys are notoriously lousy mothers when the poults are young, I removed most of the eggs from her nest so they can be incubated and raised either by people or by a chicken hen.  Then when the young turkeys are past that fragile stage we will let Turk and his crew have them to finish raising.  The only problem with that is the turkeys then think they are chickens and don't understand why the chickens don't think they are handsome when they put on their show for them.

We have one hen who has been thinking she wanted to be a mother so we gave some of the eggs to her and hopefully she will settle on them.  The others we will probably take to our friend Sherry (hairdresser, soap maker, goat foster mom) who has the incubator already turned on and ready for more eggs.

With some luck there will be pictures of little turkeys on the blog again in 5 or 6 weeks.

Oh yes, hopefully we will have pictures of baby bunnies by then too.

Our new pond

The goats and chickens now have a new pond.
This is the largest pond they have had so far.
It was the result of a toad strangling rainstorm we had last night. It won't last long.  Soon it will disappear back into the water table below.  In the meantime, the chickens like to play in it because it attracts lots of tasty bugs and as it dries up the mud is wonderful for digging.

Update

It has been ages since I've written anything but that isn't because nothing is happening...quite the opposite.

For instance, last Wednesday we had sustained winds here of 25-35 mph with gusts upwards to 65mph.  ALL DAY LONG!  Needless to say, repairs were needed after the wind subsided.  The window blew completely off the greenhouse.  Fortunately, we found it and the window itself was relatively undamaged except for one piece of redwood.  You gotta love the polycarbonate!  Survived last summer's baseball sized hail and now the wind.  The pitch of the greenhouse roof makes reinstalling the window a major challenge.  Therefor, we now have the window back on the greenhouse, but it is no longer functional.  There is still another window in the top and windows in each end so that shouldn't be a problem.

The front of the chicken house also had to be resecured an the roof on the barn had to be nailed down again.  I still haven't figured out how to repair the missing soffit from the front of the house.

It could have been worse.  Several people had windows blown out of cars, a couple of plate glass windows in storefronts downtown bit the dust (no injuries, fortunately), and at least 4 farmers will be totally replacing the roofs on their pole barns.  A couple of the roofs landed over 100 yards from the building they were previously attached to.  There was no tornado associated with the damages...just high winds.  They didn't even classify them as straight-line winds.  Several trees failed to understand the difference and crashed to the ground anyway.

We've also been planting, digging, moving dirt and enjoying the bounty of colors springtime has presented us. The rhubarb is looking good and I've dug horseradish and put it in the fridge.  I'm nearly done peeling and drying garlic for the year.  Phew!

I shall endeaver to be more judicious in my writing and not keep you waiting so long for the next update.

Spring Flowers in bloom

I think Spring is on the way!