The other day I went outside to check on the propane tank to see if I needed to order more propane. When I opened the lid up out came a bird. And I also found a nest with a few little eggs in it. I finally saw what kind of bird it is. It's a little sparrow. It would be cool to see the baby birds in there after they hatch.
And the other day we found a pretty big black widow outside. I wonder how many husbands she already killed to get that big! hahaha
I have been wanting and talking about having a garden for a very very long time. I never did it because I was intimidated. I was also afraid that I would kill my plants and put all the money I invest in planting the garden down the drain. But this year, the hubby was nagging me. He kept nagging me and asking me when I would start a garden. He said I should just take the plunge and do it. Just to get him off my back, I told him I would do it this year. So guess what? Yes, I started a garden this Spring (March)!
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| I started the garden small with just a few things |
I wanted to start small and just start with a few varieties of plants. I started by buying a few of those plants in brown bags from Sams, which included grapes, potatoes, onions, strawberries, asparagus, sweet potatoes, and strawberries. I then followed the instructions on those bags and planted my garden. I started off with some success and everything seem to be growing just fine. The more time I spent on taking care of the plants the more I like this gardening business. I joked around with my youngest the other day that he's not my baby anymore because I got other babies now so he's been replaced. LOL Gardening is actually kind of addicting. I find myself thinking about my plants, and watching videos on how to garden and plant things, I google search how to plant and take care of plants all the time. I started the garden about a month and a half now at this point. Everything is growing and it's so exciting to watch and it's so rewarding!
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| I actually didn't know asparagus is perennial. It grows back every year and can produce up to 20 years. That's why they get a permanent spot in my garden! |
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| My potato plants are doing great! |
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| Onions are great too! |
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| Carrots are slowly but surely growing. I'm gradually adding more plants now that I'm a little more confident with gardening. |
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My sweet potatoes are growing slips and I'm just waiting for them to get bigger so I can plant them in soil. And one of the two grape plants I planted is doing good. The other one I'm not so sure. I think I trim it too much before planting it in the soil. |
Now I get why people enjoy gardening so much! The more I garden, the more confident I am doing it, and the more plants I'm adding to my garden. These pictures were taken a few weeks ago. Since then I have added tomatoes, and lettuce and more onions and potatoes to the garden. I'm learning A LOT and still have a lot more learning to do. I'm so glad I finally started the garden and the other day I actually thanked the hubby for nagging me to do it. He was actually right for once! LOL
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| I even started a compost pile. It's getting pretty full I think I might have to start a new box soon. |
Just like the garden, we have been wanting and talking about having bees for a very long time. We want the honey AND the AG exemption for our property. Property tax keeps going up every year and the government keeps trying to rob us! We have been gearing up for the bee stuff the past few weeks. So last weekend we had it all set up! Finally! It's so exciting!
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| We will start out with about 6 hives |
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| After the bee hives were set up Hubby also put up fencing around the bee hives to keep the cows from messing with our bees. In the process the hubby got stung many many times by the bees. Poor hubby! But he got it done! |
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| Look at our new "babees"! They're doing really great adapting to their new environment |
So we recently had two of our steers butchered so we have in our freezers full of all sorts of beef,
like a few hundred pounds of meat.
So obviously we were not planning on butchering another cow for a long while.
Well, but unfortunately we had to butcher our 7 year-old lowline angus, Nutella last week.
So this is what happened. A few weeks ago, our neighbor's young bull kept getting out of their property and coming to our property to attempt to get with our cows. I mean, multiple times within a week and at times multiples times a day kind of thing. I'm not sure what kind of breed he is but he's definitely a little bit bigger than our cows. At first we really didn't want him at our place because we didn't want our cows to get pregnant at that time and we also have 2 calves/heifers that we were afraid that the bull would try to mount and would definitely crush those calves. But then we were tired of dealing with the whole the bull escaping and running to our place and having to text our neighbor every time to come get his bull. So we told our neighbor that we would let the bull stay in our pasture for a little bit and let them breed. We put that bull and our two cows (Nutella, and Hazel) in the back pasture so we could keep him away from our calves. But then he kept jumping the fence to try to get to our calves as well. He just kept going back and forth between the front and back pastures between the cows and the calves. Luckily he didn't get to the calves.
When we first
agreed to let the bull stay at our pasture we didn't think he would hurt
our cows. I don't know if he's just really aggressive like that when
it comes to mounting a cow, or if he's just young and "inexperienced"
and didn't know what he was doing, if you know what I mean.
But on the second day that bull had been in our pasture our other neighbors texted me and said they saw Nutella was limping really bad. The bull hurt her trying to mount her. So we went back there to check on her and sure enough she was limping really bad. Needless to say, I texted my neighbor right away and told him what was happening and asked him to come and get his bull that day, which he did. But at that point the damage was already done. We were hoping to give her a few weeks to see if it got better, but it didn't. She lost a little bit of weight due to her decrease in mobility. So we finally took her to the animal hospital an hour away to go get checked out, with the intention that the vet might be able to do something to help.
The vet did take a look at her leg and confirmed that it was broken, unfortunately. He gave us a couple of options. 1. Put a cast on her leg. But where the break on her leg was, even with a cast it would come off easily, plus given that she was already 7 almost 8 there's no guarantee that the leg would heal. She would never be able to breed naturally probably, and her quality of life would be significantly reduced. 2. Give her pain medication but it would wear off in 24 hours. 3. Either sell her or butcher her, which he said, and we agreed would probably be the most economical option, and make the most sense.
After we left the
animal hospital we called our butcher right away to see if there's any
possible way they would have a spot available for us to drop off a cow
for butchering that same day or the next day. I was very surprised but
think it was a blessing that they told us we could drop Nutella off that
afternoon. Our butcher is usually 6 months to a year scheduled out so
it was a miracle that they could fit us in that day! We were not
prepared to say good-bye to Nutella that day but things just turned out
that way, unexpectedly.
