It’s spring and I am so excited! I love spring! I really do. There has been much happening at Fair Weathers Ranch. Gardening season is in full swing. Poppies are starting to bloom and chicks have been hatching. That sure does sound like spring to me.

Tulips in the garden.

The Garden

Garden Area #1 is growing up very nicely. The garlic I planted last fall has proven to be a success. After researching how and when to harvest garlic, I planted for a decent harvest for this year. I also planted some carrot seeds a few weeks back and have onions growing. I have tiny Asparagus shoots coming up from the 12  crowns I planted a few months ago.

I planted a few seeds of German chamomile last year. I let all the flowers go to seed instead of harvesting any. I think just about every seed from that plant is a seedling now. I think I will have a good amount of chamomile this year if I can keep my chickens from eating it all. They love that stuff.

Tomato Seedlings

I have my seeds started indoors. So far I have tomato, broccoli, cabbage, artichoke, tamatilo,  bell pepper and cayenne pepper seedlings growing very nicely. My goal for this fall season is to have lettuce mix growing throughout the winter. I am sick of paying for lettuce. It’s one of the easiest things to grow and I don’t want to pay for it anymore.

Onions and garlic in the snow.

The weather has been changing back and forth. One day we will have sunny summer weather next it will be snowing. Thankfully,there are lots of plants that are not affected by it.

Strawberry plant blooming.

The Farm Critters

"I'm a chicken too!"

My two “baby” LaMancha’s are growing up so fast. They are technically yearlings but we still call them babies. They seem to be taking advantage of my daughter more and more. Their size and the stubbornness is making them hard for her to handle. So I have decided to start working with them to get them ready for showing. Not sure if we will be able to show them this year but I still need to get started on that. They are both very sweet but they ARE goats.  I am probably going to sell my little Kinder. As much as we love her we have too many goats and she is not really producing much milk anymore. With three LaMancha does in milk I will never be out of milk. Unless they are all pregnant at the same time which I hope to work it out so that never happens. I am still getting around two quarts a day from Bo Peep.

The horses are enjoying the little bit of grass to graze they have right now. Our grass season is very short because of the dry climate we have. It would be nice if we could graze them year round but then that would be we would have rain all the time and I really like our sunny California weather .

I recently decided to let the ducks free range. I found out recently that free range duck eggs are more nutritious than chicken eggs. I am not exactly sure why but I think it has to do with the what the ducks forage. The reason I hadn’t let them free range before was because I was worried that they would fly off or roam the neighborhood. After remembering why I chose the Ancona duck, I remembered one of their good traits was that they stay close to home. They seem to be staying on our property and have no interest in flying.

The chickens are chickens and they are everywhere. They follow me everywhere and the poo everywhere. Since we don’t have fencing in our backyard to keep them off the porch there is always little chicken poos all over the place. They wait for me to come outside and feed them some goodies. They look through the french doors to see if I am coming. It’s quite comical but I could do without the little packages they leave for me by the door. We hope to get some kind of fencing up this summer.

Hatching chicken eggs.

To my surprise we successfully hatched out nine chicken eggs. We had gotten such a rough start with the temperature in the beginning I thought for sure we were not going to have any success. The first six chicks hatched looked great and are doing fine. For some reason the last three chicks that hatched all had some kind of defect. I think it has to do with how long it took them to hatch or maybe they already had problems and that’s why it took them so long. I don’t know. Anyway, we had to put down the last chick that hatched because it was in bad shape.  The second to last hatched chick might not make it as well. It’s having a lot of problems with it’s legs. Oh, I guess that’s the way of the farm. I have lost chicks before and it’s always sad.

Mixed breed chicks.

The Healthy Living Journey

Over the past few weeks I have changed my diet a lot. I am dealing with some tooth decay issues that I am trying to resolve naturally. I am currently reading the book, Cure Tooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel. His book follows the research done by West A. Price and other dentists who believed that it is possible to heal tooth decay with nutrition. I am just about finished with the book and it’s fascinating. I have already noticed a difference in my teeth since following the diet recommended in the book. I removed grains and sweets (including most sweet fruits) from my diet. I also added or increased highly nutritious foods like liver, heart, raw milk, duck eggs and butter. The nightly pain I was dealing with before changing my diet is gone. I am so excited! I will keep you updated.

It was a real test for me this past weekend to see how committed I am to healing my teeth through nutrition. I went on a weekend women’s retreat with the ladies at my church. As you can imagine, there were all kinds of sweets and breads. I was able to eat the meats and vegetables so it’s not like I was starving but I should have brought my own snack foods. There were times it was very difficult to resist the food temptations. However, I did resist.

That’s about all I have to share today. There is lots more happenings I could share but I will have to do some other time. How are things going at your homestead? Are you enjoying spring?