Christmas Haul Part III - Compost bucket

Is it sad that I got really excited about this under the sink compost bucket? Some would say yes, but I don't care. Our compost bucket was an old milk carton, which works great, but this bucket is so pretty! And the best part about it is that it stays clean. It came with biodegradable corn starch liners, when the bucket is full, we grab the bag and throw it in the compost bin.  There are tons of compost buckets out there, but this is where ours came from, click here. 

~marisa

Christmas Haul Part II- Have You Herd?

Another gift we got for Christmas is the game Have You Herd. It is a fun little dice game that was created in Warsaw Poland in 1943 and was originally named The Little Animal Farm. It was invented by a professor who lost his job when the Nazis shut down Warsaw University and therefore lost his job. He needed an income and came up with this game, it quickly became popular as it helped children and adults survive the hard evenings of the occupation. Only a few of the original copies of the game survived, but it has been brought back for us to enjoy.

Through rolling dice, multiplying your herd, and trading, you want to end up with a complete herd (at least 1 of each; rabbit, sheep, pig, cow, and horse) It suggests players be at least 8 or older, but Maya (7) completely understands the rules of the game, and Mason (5) is able to play with a little bit of help.

 Make sure you give the baby some Cheerios so she doesn't eat the game pieces. 

~marisa

Christmas Haul Part 1

One of the nice things about having a backyard farming blog is that people know what Marisa and I are passionate about. Since many of our friends and family know what we enjoy, they are nice enough to give us Christmas gifts that we can use as we try to become more self sufficient. We made a haul this year and wanted to show you some of the nice gifts we received.

Marisa's brother Cameron gave us this beautiful bag of wildflower seeds from Applewood Seed Company. You might ask yourself, "What is so special about wildflower seeds." Well these seeds are special for two reasons. First, they are specially formulated to attract native bees and honey bees and give them the pollen and the nectar that they need to make honey. In addition, they will grow well at our elevation and temperate zone.

We are really excited about these seeds as we have been told that in our area, there isn't a lot of natural flowers for our bees to forage from. We hope that by planting some of these seeds, and starting some fruit trees and a garden, we will be able to provide better for our bees.

Did you get anything for your homestead this Christmas? Tell us what you gave or received in the comment section.

The cutest coop EVER.

This is the cutest coop ever. And I mean EVER. I want this coop. I want to copy. Is that bad? 

To view all the images of The Fancy Farm Girl's coop, click here.

~marisa

The dark side of backyard farming

Backyard farming is fun and fulfilling. But there is a dark side. I have posted a few of my full fledged disasters. But these episodes are rare. More often the dark side is the day-to-day problems. For example, I was so excited about my new flock of different varieties of layers. However, I went out this morning to find two of them dead - a Black Australorp and a Delaware. What a disappointment! Another Black Australorp is limping. So the first job was quarantining the injured chicken from the rest so they wouldn’t pick it to death. Next was an informal autopsy of the dead layers to find the cause of death – picking up the limp, soiled, dead bodies and pulling back the feathers to look for body trauma – likely since the third one was limping.  Yup, both had been killed. But it wasn’t traumatic - some minor scratches. There was a small hole under the wall of the coop - too big for a coon. It could possibly be a possum. But possums usually take a head or another part of the chicken or the whole chicken. Maybe the possum was chased away by these very flighty new layers before it could do more damage.  Another possibility was that the layers were picked to death by the old layers that we have. I have had this happen before. I can’t be sure of the cause so I composted the dead layers, filed in the hole under the wall and harvested our three old layers. They were eating their eggs anyhow so it was their time to go. It amounted to an hour and half of unexpected and unpleasant work, washing my blood splattered Levis and shirt, and five, possibly six less layers than I had yesterday. Oh well, that is the dark side of backyard farming. I thank Heavenly Father for the “opposition in all things” to help me appreciate the good.

 Dale with a Buff Orpington and an Araucana 

Christmas Giveaway Winner

Using the random number generator on my IPOD touch we came up with a winner for the recent book giveaway. David is the winner. He posted:

I have traveled through many eras of gardening. I started with my mothers's way of row crop planting with lots of weed pulling, hoeing, and watering. I progressed through that to row crop with mulching, then on to double dug beds with mulching and composting. Some time about two decades ago I stumbled across a young lady who was had just ended life a few years before named Ruth Stout. She claimed you didn't have to work hard at gardening but just pile up the mulch very deep and plant. Lasagna gardening and layer gardening all stems from Ruth's methods. Some would say that her garden looked like piles of weeds in the backyard but the produce she grew in those mulch piles would rival any modern day method. My style is a little modified and has a little more work involved but I never lost the pile it high mulch method. The two books that influenced me the most are called "How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back and Gardening Without Work." Have a great garden planning day.

Congratulations to David. Thanks to everyone else for posting. I have a lot of books that I want to read now. We will add a book list to our site soon based on all of your recommendations.

David,in order to get your book, please email us your address at backyardfarmingblog@gmail.com and we will mail you your new cookbook.

Christmas Nativity 2010

It is our family tradition to video our nativity each year. My camera skills leave something to be desired, but it is tough when you are director and videographer at the same time. We hope you have a Merry Christmas!

When watched within the blog, the right side is cut off, to view the full image click here.