Post July 4th Update, homestead moving right along!!

Well a little behind on this months post! Spent the 4th of July weekend back on the farm as much as possible. Granted I did lose a day due to the following in order, bomb threat outside the airport pushed the flight back, in the time we were delayed bad weather snuck in between DC and Chicago meaning the plane had to take a route to the south, a route that the plane did not have enough gas for, so back to the gate for an hour to add more fuel. once we finally did take off the leg to Chicago was now three hours rather then 2, so ended up in Chicago 3.5 hours later, my plane to fargo actually landed in Fargo before I landed in Chicago. But we are not done yet, do to the holiday weekend, all three United flights to Fargo for Saturday where booked, so they transferred me to American to fly in to the Minn/St Paul early Saturday morning, so meant I slept at the USO in the airport. An hour before that flight was to take off it was also canceled, stranding me in Chicago until late that night when they could still only get me to the cities. At this point I went to Hertz and rented a car to drive the rest of the way! Of course Terri always said everything happens for a reason, as they had already left for the cites to pick me up, we decided I would just drive to the Airport there and they would pick me up, of course since they were already en-route it meant they had alot of time to kill before I got there. In that time they happened to find a 24 foot heavy duty car trailer for sale for about $2,000. While we did not necessarily need a car trailer a trailer was something we were looking for because on a farm, well you are always having to haul something!! So 6 hours or so after I left Chicago there was Terri and her brother Harry, picking me up at the airport, pulling a 24 foot trailer behind an Avalanche! Just over the span of that weekend I was home that trailer was already been used multiple times and later this week it will most likely be used for hauling hay.

As the last sentence led in to, one thing we wanted to do this year is start baling some of our own hay as the plan for next year is to start getting some animals in the early spring if they are available. Issue is, we do not want to have to pay for alot of feed. Since in the coming years we will have to cut and store alot of our winter hay anyway, we decided to keep our eyes out for used equipment so that we could possibly start this year. Of course just like many other things, this was an area where I did not know what I did not know. Soon enough I found out it was not just one attachment for the tractor that was a do it all but it was multiple attachments, one to cut, one to lay it down in a line, and then one to pick it up, compress it and wrap it up! Well this weekend we did find what is called a hay bind. For those who do not know (and I did not until this week!), a hay-bind, cuts the grass near the base and basically picks it up and deposits it in a 2-3 foot wide line behind the cutter. The one we found was about a 2 hour drive away but we decided to go take a look at it as they are not easy to find at a decent price and at $1200 this one did fit into our price range. About three hours later here we were, pulling a 12 foot wide hay-bind behind the avalanche back to the farm! Pulling it was not that back but it did take up most of the road and the shoulder. From talking to the guy we got it from were were actually returning it home, he bought it from someone in our area a few years ago! We did have a few issues with getting it running, the hoses were pretty far gone and we had to replace a belt on it as well but over all I would say we got a pretty good deal on it. Over the last few days Harry and my Mother in Law Rose have been using it and they figure they have about 100 small bales of hay cut now drying for bailing. We will borrow another brother in laws (Charlie's) baler for now as I continue to look for the baler. Harry and Terri are talking about starting that tomorrow if they weather is ok. This is NOT the one we bought but I forgot to get a picture of it so this one was just pulled off the internet but it is the same make and model I believe.

So this past Friday (after I left of course!) we got our second batch of poultry in, we ordered 15 guinea fowl, they shipped 16, one died in route, and we lost one yesterday (probably for the best as it had a defective claw) so currently have 14 of them. The Guinea fowl as almost pure insect eaters and have been shown to reduce the tick population in most cases so for us that was an easy choice. They are known to be excellent watch animals but you do have to keep them confined for the first couple months until they learn were home is or then tend to go and look for another one! They are flyers but we are not going to clip their wings as we want them to be able to actively forage and escape on their own. While we will have a coop for them they will pretty much be free range. Here is what they look like now, so tiny!

This is what they will look like! Yes I know, Ugly! LOL

Speaking of free ranging, that is how the chickens are more or less doing now, we do have a poultry net set up outside of their coop but they can still get through some of the gaps but it does give them a safe area to run to in order to get away from a curious bull dog! They do seem to be getting big fast! I figure we will cull the extra cockerels when I go back for Labor Day. Here is their progression. Most of them have been doing a good job of supplementing their own feed outside but there is a couple of them I can tell we will have to kick out of the coop who are just staying in there getting fat!!

The small amount of crops we planted are coming along, the pumpkins started flowering this week and the sunflowers are getting about waist high. The fodder beets are coming along pretty slowly. We got hit real hard by an infestation of pig weed that has really slowed alot down. For us it is an annoyance but for the organic farmer who is all around me, it has been much devastated his corn crop to the point that he is just going to till it all under to use as green manure for fertilizer. We ended up looking 5 fruit trees this year to winter kill. In the spring it looks like they were going to pull through but all of a sudden they just died off with the bark of the trees turning black. I was very lucky however that when I went to talk to the nursury where I purchased them https://www.bergesonnursery.com/ to pick their brains on what happened they replaced them for me with left over stock from this year. As it was winter kill, the trees were no longer guaranteed but they replaced them anyway. They are just good people to deal with and one of the main reason I will buy bare root trees with them rather then from anywhere else. So that was something else we did this weekend, replanted some trees. Our Carmine Cherry bushes have started to produce already! They were a little tart when I tried one last weekend but now they are the deeper red almost purple they are supposed to be and Terri said while they are a little tart still much sweeter! Looks like we will also have some apple production already this year with fruit setting on about 7 or 8 trees. Mostly the Red Baron and Red Duchess varieties and the Chestnut Crab apples. We even have one pear trying hard to produce a long fruit. That is very surprising since pears typically take 7 plus years to produce, we do not know if it will hold the fruit all year or not but still exciting.

As I said a busy month. On top of that the carpenters came buy and put on the new garage door this week on the Quonset (think top half of a lowered barn).

The bee hive is doing exceptionally well considering the rough start, they have already filled the first box and most of the second one with comb, so we added too much over the weekend. They way they are going kind of has be at a quandary, I know you should not pull honey off the first year, but if they keep up this pace I may have to. They main nectar flow from the beans, beets and sunflowers have not even started yet this is what they have done off the initial spring bloom. Here is a picture of what their second box looks like (we have a removable panel):