It's been over 2 months and......

Things have been crazy busy around here the past couple of months. We have been dealing with a rather personal medical issue and then it just seemed like one thing after another and here we are.
The farm animals have been growing and life is just moving along.

Out of 15 turkeys we had 5 to live. I just could not imagine processing any of them after having such a hard time keeping them alive. We ended up sending one gobbler and 2 hens to my mother's and keeping 1 hen and 1 gobbler. However, we have decided to go ahead and process the one gobbler and take the remaining hen to my mother's. We are just not turkey people. One thing is they will not stay in confinement and we do not have fences high enough to keep them in. The other thing is they are a huge mess when they get on my porches. I know that sounds petty but it is what it is and I like clean porches when I rock in my rocking chair and overlook my little farm. :)
They are beautiful though!

Here's Phoebe. She is still our favorite farm animal and we love her!

Ramsey is doing his funniest move here. He is sniffing the air. Cracks me up everytime.

MaeBelle has been growing by leaps and bounds. She is still just as tame and loves us. Don't you love the hot pink halter?
And there's a snippet of one of our little pink pigs. They seem to be filling out overnight. They are still just sweet, sweet, and I can't imagine processing them but Lord willing, they are going to get nice and fat and we will be ready for them to leave. :)

Our chicken who had babies, have all grown up. Six out of the seven babies lived and 3 of them were roosters. Needless to say, we needed no more roosters around here. So 3 of the roosters were processed for our Thanksgiving dressing. They served our family well.

Here's the main man getting the water ready to plunge the chickens in to loosen their feathers.

This is our "make do" killing cone.

One thing that is taking up a big chunk of our time is our little local homeschool group started a boy's basketball team. We were looking for something more local for our son to participate in sports wise. We feel sports are very important for him. Learning to be part of a team and leadership skills are invaluable but we will still want to keep the integrity of our homeschool lifestyle. This has been a blessing.

The Scott County Flames
Our Peyton is #4. They aren't winning lots of games but they are having a great time. :)
Here's a snippet of our Christmas decorations.
Our Tree

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care......

This would be my all time favorite nativity scene. I love it!! It sits on top of my grandmother's original singer sewing machine. I need to put that thing to use.

The kids got together with some of our local homeschool friends and made gingerbread houses. It was a ton of fun and we all had a great time.

I am linking this post up to Barn Hop #40.

Very inspiring girl of mine......

My 19 almost 20 year old daughter writes some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring notes. This is her recent work that she has been working on for about 3 months. I would love for you to read it. I only wish I had her maturity and wisdom at her very tender age.

https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/notes/katherine-leanne-spencer/do-not-conform-be-transformed/10150332000308232

Castrating our little piggies....

I really debated long and hard over doing this post. I would much rather be doing a post on new window coverings or something but this is real life on the mini farm. We are what I am calling Google farmers. We have no real knowledge of this life but are winging it all with the help of lots of Google searches.
As many of you know, we are all into raising everything we eat. That includes animals. We have been raising pigs for the last two years. However, in the past we have always made a point to get females because we didn't want to mess with castration. This go round we could not find a single female feeder pig. What a dilemma!!! My honey, Mr. I wanna be a real farm man, decided I can do this. So we brought home two of the cutest little pink pigs that were MALE.

Well, today was the day. After, much research the boys dug in. The pictures aren't great because I didn't even go out there. My Lindsey took all of the pictures. She is a girly, girly, girl but will get all in the middle of anything the boys have going on. It's too funny.

First, they caught the little pigs and put them in the pet carrier to hold them while waiting. They then laid one little pig in an old wheel barrow and held him tight. They cleaned the sac with soap and water. Little pigs are dirty, dirty and we do not want infection.

They are proceeding to make the first very small slit in the testicular sac of one of our little piggies. My son has a very tight hold on our little man.

Here they have already cut the very small slit and are pushing the testical through the slit.

Here's the testical out of the sac. They are about to make a clean cut to seperate the testical. (I know TMI) UGHHH!

They did this on both sides of both pigs. After finishing with each pig, they cleaned the whole sac with iodine to ward off infection.

A few notable things about the whole process were, our pigs did not squeal much like we had seen in videos. My son even wore ear plugs just in case but they really weren't that bad. I don't know if it's because ours are more tame or what. Also, there is little to no bleeding and now the pigs are back in the pasture running around like usual. One is a little slower and stiffer but I am amazed at how well they are doing. Praise the Lord!! God is merciful!!

~~~O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting. 1 Chronicles 16:34 ~~~

The end of May already, here's what's been keeping us so busy

~~Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. 1 Corinthians 3:8-9~~

This is the biggest cause of our busyness. Our very large garden. It rained and rained and rained and we were about 2 weeks late even getting our garden planted. Now that it's in the ground, it quit raining. UGHhhhh So for now we are water sprinkling it. It's not coming up great but my tomatoes look really good.
We are doing a lot of this......

My girls are doing their fair share of weeding, as well. Lord willing, we will have a bounty for all of this work. Working in the garden and putting up the harvest is one of my favorite parts of homesteading. Oh and by the way, the outfits below are not something we would ever wear outside of the garden! We like modesty!!

Our newest advenuture is beekeeping. My husband and son took a beekeeping class a few weeks ago. My son is hoping this will be a little side business for himself. He is so excited about it and loves his bees already. He has been in his hives every other day so far.

Here are the girls working hard.

My boys in their bee suits.

Smoking out their bees so that they can release their queen.

Another major project at the Spencer Family Farm is raising 15 Bourbon Red Turkeys. We have had them about 3 weeks and let me tell you, it has not been easy. We did not realize that turkeys are not the smartest of animals. We got them as day olds and thought it would be like the many chickens that we have raised in the past. However, turkeys we soon found out will starve to death standing beside their feed. They have to be taught to eat. Which we did for over a week. It has been tough and we have lost 3 but they are all eating well now and it seems they are doing good.

We plan to keep 3 hens and 1 Tom for future breeding. We are giving 2 to my mom and will process the rest for the freezer. They are so cute but aren't growing as quick as chicks either.

Here's Mrs. Phoebe. We have moved her to the big pasture to free range too. She has lost so much weight since having a bigger area to run around in. We are so crazy about this little missy. She gets two eggs at the end of everyday and now she is in the habit of running when she sees me heading to the chicken house. Who would have known that a pot bellied pig would be so much fun?

The girls are busy laying in their new Hen Pals Nest Box. I have to say I love this thing and the girls do too. We are getting about 20 eggs a day.

They also love the big new area that we have fenced in for their free ranging.

I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day and remember those that have given their lives so that we could have freedom!!

Spring Around the House and Camping

Spring has sprung here on the homestead...... With it, has come some terrible storms and some of our family and friends have been effected. I encourage everyone to pray for those affected by the recent tornadoes.
~~ Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. James 5:16~~

Around the homestead, we are seeing everything start to bloom and green up. Here's a swarm of bees who were attempting to make one of my muscadine polls their home. The day after we took pics. of them, they left. I can't wait to have our own bees here on the mini farm.
Here's a beautiful purple Iris. They didn't bloom much last year but are beautiful this year. I hope to dig up some more from my mom's house and plant them.

This is our "new" to us camper. We camped about 20 mins. from our house because we were trying out this new pop up camper. We have always tent camped and even though we had air mattresses, our girls hated the tent. So this is a step up. A friend of mine was wanting to get rid of it for next to nothing. It has some things wrong with it but I am married to a "Mr. Fix It". So for us it's not a big deal. We love to camp. There's nothing like getting out to the woods and having no phone, TV, etc.

Setting up our outdoor table. This is our prep area for meals.

The love of my life walking his little dog. Snicker Snicker. This was supposed to be Katherine's dog but oh, how he loves Ronnie.

The girls had the occasional photo shoot and waded in the water. I love this one.

I loved watching the kids play cards for hours on end. There is some serious family bonding going on over a game of peanut butter and jelly or spit. Roosevelt State Park has a White Tail Deer Research Facility. The sign said not to stick your hand in but you can't keep the deer from sticking their heads out. Haha

We took a long hike to see the goslings swimming with their parents. It's interesting to know that Canadian Geese mate for life. We love cooking over an open fire on this little grill. Then we sit by the fire and eat smores.

The fishing was not great needless to say, but Peyton enjoyed the catching and releasing.

This is a miracle (smiling), considering this sweet girl doesn't really like camping. She took one for the team!

Our friendly visiting duck came by all through out the day to eat bread or peanuts. :)

We hope to have a couple of camping trips this summer in between all of the work of the garden.

Have a great Week!!!

Trixi

Finishing up the coop

Looky, looky, what came in the mail Friday...... Oh, is it not glorious.

It's a brand new, nice and shiny 6 hole nesting box system for my chicken coop. It was made by none other than the farm man from over at Life on a Southern Farm. I can not tell you how happy this little beauty has made me. I have wanted one ever since I first read about them. I love their blog and I love that they make these on their farm. The quality is amazing and I urge you to check them out!!

Oh, and the farm lady also makes soap. Look what she stuck in the box with my nesting box. It's her clean linen fragrance and it smells sooooo goooood. You can't really see it but the soap has a chicken on it. I don't think I will ever be able to use it, it's so pretty. Thank you so much.

Now down to the nitty gritty. Here is my hard working man putting the siding on my chicken coop. He did a great job.

My hard working little man helping to put siding on the new chicken coop. He is learning a lot with all of these farm projects. I just hope he still wants to do them on his own farm one day.:)

Here the girls and boys are checking out their new spread. They were not sure about all of this.

Here's that amazing nesting box in her permanent home. I hope our girls love this little gadget as much as I do.

This is the new roost area. Lord willing this will be enough room for all of my many chickens.

And the almost fisnished coop. I still need to put chicken wire on the front and then some white lattice. We don't have to worry about predators (other than my chicken eating dog, that's a whole other story) so we probably wont put a door on. I would like to add flower boxes to either side and a garden flag. It will be really pretty eventually.

This is what the two beauties did while all of this building was going on.

They got two of our cars sparkling clean inside and out. They haven't been this clean since probably last summer. They look so good. Thank you girls!!Well, I am off now to get us all packed up to head down to the Coast for a couple of days.

I am also going to link this post up to the barn hop, tomorrow. I am really loving all of the posts from the barn hop. It's fun to see what others are doing on their homesteads.