Farmers Day in Richlands, NC

We just got back from Richlands annual Farmers Day. Jr had a lot of fun on the bouncy toys. Ate some ice cream and looked at all the fun stuff they had there. We got to see the old time tractors and Jr won some neat things at the games area. This something that we are going to do again next year.

Looks like rain

Not much happening on the farm today. We have pretty much just keeping everything in check. We are only getting between 3 to 5 eggs a day. The other girls I guess are not ready.
Jr. started school 2 weeks ago, he is doing good. Kindergarten seems to be a learning process for all of us. My wife and I have been out of the elementary school environment for a while, but we are catching on. I can't believe that he has homework and everything. Funny story, the first week he was sent home with about 5 pages of homework that needed to be finished, didn't realize that they sent the homework home on Monday and had to be sent back on Friday. Needless to say, we felt stupid.

Our two new additions

Our two new additions are a Nubian goat doe and her son. He is suppose to have Boer in him, but I just don't see it yet. We got them yesterday at a small little place that had about 6 goats. They are skiddish, so I will have to work with them to bring them around. The doe is supposedly pregnant, I don't see that either, but the wife does. I guess we will see around December, January time frame.

The Wells Family Farm is really coming together now, getting the goats has been a God-send. We will be able to raise these two goats and the offspring to set up a really good meat production. Now we need to find a buck for the doe, almost forgot, the doe is Barbara and the son is called Tom. These names come from the British show "The Good Life", they were the main characters of the show that showed us about self-sufficiency. It was a show in the 70's that came to the United States titled "Good Neighbors". I am sure that a lot of people have seen this show due to the impact of the self sufficient crowd out there. But it has inspired the wife and me awhile ago but just this last few months we had the courage to finally start it.

We got our 1st egg from our third batch of hens. It looks like the leghorn had her first egg. It is kind of small but that is okay, 2 or 3 of hers for baking will work out great. Our area of the county is in a water boil advisory, the contractors working on putting in new water lines hit an old water line. This really caught us off guard due to not having any water containers on standby. I will have to research this, my question would be, how long would water be able to stay fresh in container for drinking purposes?

Baby Birds have flown the nest

Well our baby birds have flown the nest. It is amazing how fast they grew and were able to fly. I just happen to be out feeding the rabbits and the last baby bird took off from our storage bin. Kind of scared me at first, then he took off into the brambles behind our shed. Haven't seen them since, but luckily they all seemed to fly away on their own accord.
Our new chickens are doing great, my 5 year old son has named them, Greg, Sam, Anthony, Jeff, Murray, and baby. The first five are from my son's favorite TV show "The Wiggles", The last one is just a name he picked out. We don't have the heart to tell him right now that they are girl chickens. But they are all doing great, they hang out together and the other chickens seem to be accepting them.
Friday I am going to go to Havelock to pick up 3 Californian does to get our rabbits going for the fall. Hopefully we will be supplementing our food with rabbit meat. I am going to cross the does with the New Zealand buck that we have and hope for the best.

Doubled our flock

We just picked up 6 more chickens from a nice family down in Hampstead. They are doing great with the chickens we already have. They have already found their pecking order. As you can see from the picture they have found the food dispencer. I had a fun time with the family rounding these chickens up at their house. The 2 kids were great at picking them up. The white one is a leghorn and the other 5 are Americuna's. They are still a little young for laying eggs, but we can wait.

The other picture is of the rain barrel finally hooked up to the gutter system. I used a flexible gutter downspout that they have now at the hardware store. I just had to find a longer section of downspout to get it to the barrel. Once the barrel is full, I just take off the extender and collapse the flexible pipe and it fits right into the existing downspout. Now hopefully it will rain to see if it works.

Rain Barrels

We have been pretty busy the last few days, sorry for the lack of posts. I have been working on some rain barrels. Now we just need to get them situated in places that receive the most rain. We have had one that has worked for us, but we put in a place that really doesn't get that much rain and is not located in a convenient place. I am going to put one next to out little shed and put up some gutters up and put one at the corner of our house at the other rain gutter. Here are some pictures.

The barrel has 2 brass spigots, the top one for the overflow. I put 9 holes into the top in case of anything trying to get into the barrel, the screening would have some support. The screening is just to keep out debris and mosquitoes.

Baby Birds

Well we have pictures of the three newborn baby birds. The fourth has not hatched out yet. I have not actually seen them yet, the wife took the pictures, Momma bird has always been in the nest. In other news.

We now are getting four eggs a day. 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. This is great, hopefully they will keep this up. We are still planning on getting 2 more chickens.

2 more Hens

Yesterday we picked up 2 more hens. They are brown and a little smaller than our other two hens. They are fitting in real good and hopefully when they settled they will produce some eggs. The wife still wants to get 4 more hens, I am hoping that we can fit them into our chicken coop. The first four do not like to go into the coop at night, of course not having any roosts inside was probably the reason. They were just put in, so I will see tonight if they stay in the coop. We have also been researching goats. We are looking into milk production so the choices are Nubian's or Dwarf Nigerians. I personally like the Dwarf's for their small stature and quantity/quality of milk production. But the Nubian's are good milkers and can be used for meat. The wife and I will have to make a decision about this in the near future.

Well today not much happening on the farm. Chickens and rabbits are doing great. Our one hen is laying an egg a day. Hopefully soon our other hen will begin laying so we can have 2 eggs a day. This weekend we are hoping to pick up some more hens from a farm just outside of town. Fresh eggs are so much better than store bought. Will definitely have to start making up some recipe's for eggs. So if any one has a good recipe's with eggs, please leave a comment and thank you.

New Zealand Rabbits

Well we have had our rabbits for a while and they are doing great. They are getting bigger and eating up a storm of food. We are looking for some other New Zealands or Californians to breed. They make a wonderful meat rabbit, and I don't think they partically taste like chicken. Rabbit poo also makes the best fertilizer for you plants and vegatables. We have used some the last two years and the plants grow crazy. It is amazing with the leaves, vegatable scraps, shredded paper, and poo do for your plants. The worms go crazy and put out a great composted material. And since the compost is just on the other side of the chicken pen, when I turn the piles, the chickens get a few treats.

Bio-degradable Bags

Well after surfing the net for a while, I have found out that bio-degradable bags are not what they seem to be. It seems that they need oxygen to degrade and in the landfill that is taken out of the equation since dirt is covered over them. This then lends me to believe that the enviromentalist have messed up again. Does any one remember the paper bag issue? The paper bag could be used for arts and crafts, book protectors, recyclable, and decomposed in a compost pile like nothing else could. We are definately coming full circle I believe, the question is, can the people of the world be made to believe that paper is the best answer? Paper is recyclable.

We have chickens

Well today the wife and son went and got the chickens. The person we received them from didn't even charge us. She just wanted them all to go together. 2 roosters and 2 hens was all we got, but they are already eating and drinking the water. Above is a picture of the chickens and then we got our first egg. Talk about a surprise. Our 2 little NZ rabbits are doing fine, they are eating up a storm. The wife is already talking about goats but I think we will wait a little while until our new friends get settled in to our home.

Well we got two New Zealand rabbits today, they are still young but they are doing well. Tomorrow we pick up 2 roosters and 2 hens. We have the chicken coop ready to go and all the food, feeder and waterer set up. We will take some pictures for all to see.

Starting Out

Welcome to the first post of the Wells Family Farm. We have been working on our property for some time to bring in some chickens, rabbits and hopefully goats and pigs. We have only a half acre so we have to plan our space carefully. We have a small raise bed that has some tomatoes, squash and cucumbers right now, but hopefully for the winter time we will be able to grow more with a greenhouse. We live in North Carolina, so right now it is already hot at least 92 degrees F. So keep coming back and looking at this blog and hopefully you will learn what we learn (or try not to laugh to much).