New Year, An Update

First, can we welcome the two newest additions to the goat herd?  We picked them up Sunday.  Since moving to Arkansas, we have lost a lot of goats, some being our breeding does. This means less milk for us. 

This year we are using a candy name theme.  We just brought home two little girls from Hillside Hillbillies.  The goat above is Bit O' Honey and below we have Almond Joy.  They are still on the bottle but seem to be healthy and happy little girls.  

And on to other news...

We finally got the chicken pen reduced in size.  Yes, it is a small pen for that many chickens, but the plan is to allow them to free range.  They are shut in because we are training a few of them to the cage again since they were so accustomed to sleeping on the woodpiles.  

The area they were is now in the process of being cleaned up.  Small trees will be cut down, vines and bushes mowed, and sunlight let in to allow grasses and "weeds" to grow for animals to eat.  We also need to chop the firewood and stack it. 

Al and I have been working on building next winter's firewood supply.  This stack is two deep.  We pulled last year's wood in from the chicken yard and have been burning that when the weather gets really cold.   

The new drain Al installed in front of the shop is working far better than the old set up.  He still has some grading to do as well as put down more gravel, but it is nice to NOT have a huge pond in front of the shop every time it rains.

We were finally able to move the turkeys from their residence to a new location just down the hill, into the woods.  It was much easier than we thought since turkeys are not as difficult as chickens to round up.  This area (below) is where they were.  

 

Unfortunately, there was a lot of trash under the surface and the turkeys dug it up.  So we have some clean up to do now that they are moved. 

And here is where they are now!  Nice big space for them just a hop, skip, and a jump from the black Australorp pen.  

They are such a pretty group of turkeys.  We have five hens and three toms.  So, we will probably only process one more turkey until we can get them hatching out again in the spring. 

Below is our rooster, Bok Choy.  Yes...you heard that name right, it is sort of a play on words.  He is a great rooster!  I couldn't be more pleased.  And these girls are fabulous as they lay 75% of our eggs right now.  We have nine hens back here and approximately 20 other hens of various breeds in the other pen. 

Yesterday, Al and I were able to get a new round bale to the bucks.  This usually means cleaning up old bedding and hay first.  The old bedding is put into piles for compost to put in the garden later in the year.  I have to say, the new hay bale to the goats was perfect timing because...

...today we received so much rain, our wet weather creek is roaring.  You can actually hear it from the house.  As you can imagine, the amount of rain we got will literally keep our ground saturated for days as it drains down the hill.  

I know this update wasn't very exciting, but homestead life isn't always glamorous.  Or is it ever?