Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Here Chicky Chicky

We're having work done on the 4 wheel drive on the Dodge, so I had to go pick Scott up from work this morning. Five in the morning I had to be up to drive to Jerome and get him by 6:30. It was snowing still. It was coming down hard enough that I had to turn down the high beams. Once I got out to the highway it was almost done, and then nothing into Wendell and Jerome.

I had mentioned to Scott last week that I might like to get some meat chickens and a few new laying hens, and what was his opinion on it. He wanted to wait a week or so once we knew what the cost was going to be on the Dodge. I wanted to get them RIGHT NOW lol. I'm impulsive and think up all these ideas and then run them by my Scotty and he thinks them out, plans out the logistics, what it's going to need in the way of supplies, the best way to build what I need, and basically takes all my wild fragments of ideas, and makes them into reality. My whole property would look like hillbilly baling twine and broken boards nailed together if it weren't for Scott.

I knew we needed to get calf milk replacer on the way home. When we stopped at Valley Co-op Scott was asking the manager about his opinion on meat chickens. Pete is a great guy. He's the guy that we got the pigs we raised from last year.

Scott surprised me this morning when we went in the back with Pete to look at the chicks, and said, "Well what ones do you want?" I know he wanted to build a second coop for growing out meat birds and hatched chicks. We came home with 15 Creepy Meats (cornish crosses) and 6 assorted pullets. I love the name Creepy Meats, one of the blogs I read, the gal calls them that.

The calf is doing great. Got his milk replacer this morning. He's bucking and kicking now. He knows that people means a bottle. He saw his first snow last night. I did have to take his coat off. It didn't have a belly band and keeps riding up over his shoulders. He's past his first night or two, and the weather is supposed to warm up after yesterday and last night's snow. I still haven't decided on a name yet. I keep calling him Smutchz in my head, like, you have a little smutchz on your face.... lol.





The weather did what it's been doing all over the country and turned cold and snowy after beautiful days in the 60's and 70's. I thought I'd take the back way home through Shoshone last night after dropping Scott off at work. I wanted to drive in that last bit of snow fall. I love watching snow fall. We'd only been getting flurries with a small periods of large flakes through the day at work. I really began to think that decision was going to be really really bad as the snow got heavier, and visibility shrank. All of a sudden I was driving in a blizzard and the snow was starting to slush up, and then build up on the ground. We all slowed down and I just tried to stay in the tracks of the truck ahead of me. Not five minuets later we crested the hill going into Shoshone and the snow was gone. The roads were just wet with steam coming off them, there was barely any snow on the ground, but the snow plow was heading out of town to go clear what I'd just driven through. Here's some shots from the house looking at the clouds rolling in with the next batch of snow. 





Scott is teasing me that I've made him into a farmer. All he wanted to do was stay a biker, and now he's learning about wing feathers growing in at a few days old, dairy bulls are MEAN, chickens will eat and do like meat, pigs will rip a feed pan right out of your hands and then lay on their sides to lazy eat. All sorts of things he never would have been interested in, but he likes to see me smile. I love my husband for helping me make all this happen, and enjoying it along side me. 

2 comments:

  1. Glad that you've "convinced" your hubby to be a farmer :)

    Is that a Jersey bull calf? He's beautiful! I've always wanted a Jersey cow. Is he going to be a breeder or is he headed for the freezer?

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  2. Scott is enjoying every minute of doing the homesteading thing. Ok, maybe not every minute, like when
    Kato the rooster attacks him, or when he brings home 8 ton of hay and has to stack it all for me. He told me this morning he is having fun learning all this stuff along side me.

    The calf is a Jersey. He'll be a freezer steer. We started one last year what is over at the neighbors still. He'll go in the freezer this year. I'd love to have a Jersey cow to raise a steer or three for me, and give me a little milk on the side. Maybe in the next year or so. I hope you get yours too Carolyn.

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