Agriculture

My New Greenhouse… Coronavirus Day 36

Some days I have great ideas… and other days I have ideas that make you scratch your head wondering where on earth I came up with this. Today’s project might be one of those… WHAT?!?! moments. So between the gardening and landscaping this year… I’ve really gotten into plants. I bought a lot of the flowers that I’ve used for landscaping, but the vegetables for the garden are a different story. I really wanted to grow my own plants. After garden planting #1 went awry, I decided to try the little miniature greenhouses. You know the little starter kits you buy at Home Depot (<– I used that one… not an affiliate link, just a link to what I used) or Lowes and I even found them at Dollar General.

Those starter kits are addicting. So I accidentally took over my kitchen table. Whoops. That was when I went on the hunt to see how much it would cost to make a greenhouse. There are kits you can buy but this was a DIY Greenhouse that we decided upon. This round anyway :).

My New Greenhouse

First things first… you need to decide how big it is going to be. Where you are going to put it. And buy the materials. Since I already had the trailer on from taking scrap to the scrapyard, it was the perfect time to get the materials. We decided on a 12×16. So here’s the material list: (more…)

Starting Vegetables from Seed… Coronavirus Day 35

I got a little excited back at the end of March trying to get plants in the ground. In case you wondered… none of them germinated. None of them came up. I decided to give up… although Grandma told me to give it just a little more time. But I don’t have high hopes. So I decided to go the route of starting them indoors and then transplanting them. What do I have to lose at this point? I still have time to try this method and if it doesn’t work, try planting directly in the garden again. I guess that’s one good thing about starting early.

I still haven’t given up hope on finding potato starts, but I’m not finding them either. Fingers crossed I find some… but…

Back to the day at hand…

Starting Vegetables from Seed.

  • You’ll need a good potting mix. Typically I try to use from our soil pile, but I actually bought seed starting potting mix. 
  • Seed trays that include an outer tray, inner tray, and the clear plastic dome.
  • Seeds (of course)
  • Water.
  • Optional: Seedling markers.
  • Optional: Seed Dibber or pencil. Helps measure how deep to plant the seeds.

First things first, you’ll want to put the soil into the individual trays. (more…)

Expecting a “New One” – Coronavirus Day 32

For the record, It’s NOT me. Now back to regularly scheduled programming. haha.

Since we’ve been home on this self-quarantine type whatever you want to call it, we’ve been doing a lot of riding. This has been our form of social distancing. But it has also been our form of not going mad in the house. Before this week, I’m pretty sure we’ve only missed riding a handful of times in the last month. That’s not bad, right? So why have we missed so much this last month? Well, because we started questioning if Aloha (the horse) was pregnant. 

We’ve had a lot of times in the past few years we thought she was bred. Always turned out she wasn’t. We’ve only had her checked by a vet for pregnancy one time. That was the only time we really thought, fingers crossed, she might be. She wasn’t. She was open (not in foal). 

Now one thing about this mare (female horse) is that she is kind of short and chunky anyway. That’s just her build. Big-boned as some might call it. (more…)

Bottle Calves – Coronavirus Day 28 & 29

 We now have bottle calves. How on earth this happened I’m still scratching my head to figure out… but… Let me paint you a picture…

Last night just after normal chore time, I got a text message from both my parents saying my dad needed help and how fast could I get there. Real fast. Abug and I threw our shoes on and out the door we went. Good thing we just live down the road. She was in play clothes so she went into my parent’s house with my mom (too cold for how she was dressed) and I went out to see what was going on. I had been there about an hour before and a cow was laying funny on the hillside. Turns out, momma was pregnant and trying to calve. 

She got the calf out all right, especially for a first-time momma, but then she ran off. The baby needed a little assistance. So dad and I grabbed some towels and off to the field we went to try and dry the baby off. It wasn’t cold out, but it was cool and just coming out of mommy, the calf was cold. Momma cow wouldn’t come near. I think part of it was because we were there but she was a first-time momma and sometimes they don’t have those instincts they’re supposed to. (more…)

Time to Play on the Horse Walker (again)… Coronavirus Day 19

When I was a kid, my parents bought this horse walker. What is a horse walker? It is exactly what it says, a horse walker. There have been times we had horses get hurt and we had to slowly bring them back (think physical therapy for people, but for horses). You can put them on the walker and it helps build back muscles. Say you have multiple horses and you need to warm them up or cool them down, you place them on the walker. Say it is winter and you want them to get outside and stretch their legs, hello horse walker.

It’s a machine that helps the horse walk around in a controlled manner.

When I was a kid, one of the arms had a swing put on it for me to ride on. The horses learned how to stop the machine and as a kid, I loved to ride the thing… it was my job to keep the horses walking. (more…)

Planted the Garden Today… Coronavirus Day 17

So here’s the thing… The thing is… The thing… Okay okay, the thing is… I might have planted my garden too soon. I might have gotten so dang excited I couldn’t stand myself and jumped the gun.

I live in Zone 6B. That is temperatures -5-0˚F on the cold side. A couple of years ago we got colder than that… but typically this is pretty accurate for SW Missouri.

My Grandma and my dad told me that my Great Grandpa said we needed to have our potatoes planted in the ground by St. Patrick’s Day (March 17). That didn’t happen since I didn’t start my garden digging until March 21st. Because of the country lockdown, I haven’t been many places. Lowes and a local farm store. The farm store was the only place that had potato starts. I didn’t get mine in time. I guess because everyone is home with nothing to do… everyone is starting a garden. Sigh!

But I did a little research to see if there is anything I should have planted. Turns out as long as you have daytime temps of 56˚F or more you can plant corn, celery, peppers, tomatoes, watermelons, squash, and beans. That’s what the internet tells us. These plants tend to like cooler weather… except maybe the watermelon and the corn… I’m not sure I agree with the internet on those.

I looked at the back of the package. We’re at March 30th so I figured that’s close enough to April. A lot of the packages said April so I went for it. (more…)

Starting the Garden… Coronavirus Day 8 & 9

A year ago I really wanted to start a garden. It just wasn’t in the cards. We were trying to finish up our house and there was no time for a garden. Gardens are actually a lot of work. I had one a few years ago that was a small raised bed. I tended it every day. They are work. 

But then this year… coronavirus hit and BAM, we all had time on our hands. haha. Back in January, we had a fire that burned up my little tiller. It wasn’t really the size to start a big garden anyway, but it was what I had… but the fire consumed it as well as that original raised bed I had. haha. Ironic… kind of.

I started probing hubby trying to question if we could get a tiller, etc. Why? Because I want to start a garden. Why? Why not? Why? Why not? Okay, you get the picture.

So hubby went on the hunt to find me a tiller. He finally landed on the Powermate 18 in. 196cc Gas 4-Cycle Rear-Tine Tiller. It’s a workhorse (pronounced haus). (more…)

And just like that… Coronavirus day 6

It has been an interesting last few days… to say the least. Life is never boring on a farm, that’s for sure. While we’re supposed to be self quarantining, you can’t quite do that exactly when you live on a farm. Anyway, you can’t stay indoors because there are animals that rely on you. 

My parents live the next place over and then my grandma is the place after that. So I have a couple hundred acres to keep me occupied in this self-containment time.

It seems like these days there is a bad rap on people who are farmers. They are horrid people who don’t take care of squat. Well, I have pictures and stories to prove that’s just not so. Today is a prime example.

My uncle lives with my grandma. Moved in after he and his ex-wife went through their divorce. (more…)

We got a Filly!

Guys! WE GOT A FILLY!

I just mentioned the other day that all we ever seem to get are stud colts… but we got a filly! WE. GOT. A. FILLY!! It’s pretty darn exciting! For the last 5 years (at least) all we ever seem to get are stud colts. I swear, our stud likes boys. Wait, that sounds weird. Should I explain? Maybe I better!!!

Okay, so as we know from Biology, the male produces the gender of the baby. So… when friends of mine have nothing but girls, I always tease the dad that he just always wanted to be surrounded by pretty girls. Clear as mud? Okay! Anyway… moving on…

One thing I need to point out… The mare who has thrown fillies in the past, you’re looking at her. This mare right here. So far, Blondie and Sis (although we sold her last year) have never thrown fillies since we’ve owned them. They’ve always thrown stud colts. This mare though, she’s thrown 3 fillies now. A sorrel, a dun, and now a Bay. (more…)

Our Newest Edition

Blondie sprouted! haha!

Blondie is our momma mare. In fact, she’s the momma of our my Bucky! This year, we had it calculated when she was to foal, but she had other plans I guess. Two weeks after we thought she’d sprout, she finally did!

One thing I did realize in all of this waiting… this little colt’s (yes I said colt, more on that in a minute) granddaddy stayed in his momma 13 months. I’m not kidding. Now if you know anything about horses, they carry for 11 months. Way back in the 90’s when granddaddy was born, we hauled our mare Lena down to Texas to get bred. We knew the date we brought her home. We know the date they bred her. All those dates were accounted for and when her due date came and passed, by like 2 months, I kid you not, we figured she just didn’t conceive.

Now my dad had been sick and in the hospital. He was released the day before Munchkin was born. My mom got up at 6 am to go out and do chores so that my dad wouldn’t worry about the animals. She went out to find this little heap of what she thought was a big pile of poop. In fact, it turned out to be Munchkin. So, when Blondie came and passed her due date, I giggled remembering Munchkin. Wondering if those were genetic traits and she’d have to carry for 13 months as well. You never know… (more…)