Old Homesteader Well

So it's been nearly a month since we had any rain. Coupled with weeks of temps often hitting the triple digit mark, this drought has really thrown a wrench in the works. The pastures are fried, and the creek that we pump our water out is dry. Even the swimming hole that isn't supposed to go dry is parched. So what to do, what to do. Well, there's an old homesteader well at the back corner of our pasture. I've avoided using it in the past, as a crazy old hermit who owns 4 acres in the middle of our property claimed that it was his side, even though when I bought the property I was told the creek was the boundary, and the well's on my side of the creek. In fact, my fenceline is like 10 ft behind the well.So the hermit guy died a couple of months back, I've never seen a survey to prove otherwise, and my animals need water. So I'm going off what I was told when I bought the property and this evening I went and checked the well out. Here it is (I'm standing in the dry creek bed).

So here's the well. There was water around 8 ft down. The well is really neat. I've never looked at it up close (it used to be covered with quite the pile of brush), but it's made out of river rock and mortar the entire way down. The family that homesteaded the holler really worked hard on this well. I couldn't see the bottom, when I pump water out, I'll measure how deep it is.

I'm Back & Tasty Meat Birds

Wow. It's been a while. I was off on military duties for a while and have been catching up since I got back. I'll write about it sometime.

I'm currently canning 12 qts of tomatoes, nightime's the time to do it because today was really hot. As in record breaking hot. We broke the 100 degree mark for the first time this year. Ft. Smith, in the river valley south of the mountains, hit 107 today. And that's not even factoring in the oppressive humidity!


The weather's been so hot, even our cast iron meat birds, the Freedom Rangers, haven't been able to cope, and we've lost a few to the heat. Carla noticed today that it's too hot for them to get up and get to the waterer, and we've got them parked in the forest. Luckily, I'll take the last half of the flock to the processor on Thursday morning. We took just under 50 birds last monday to be cut up, and we've got around 50 more left that will be left whole as roasters. We're really impressed with the birds. Minus the current heat wave, we had 1 bird out of a hundred die, and the little hen had always been sickly & a runt. At 11 weeks, the average wt. was around 4.75 lbs, and the meat was still tender even cooked on the grill as you can see by the deliciousness below!T
Tomorrow, I'll put more waterers in with the chickens, and I'm filling one up with some loose ice we have. Hopefully it'll be enough. We're definitely not used to this heat up in the mountains.

Bourbon Reds, Goat Milk, and a Toddler

Young Bourbon Red Turkeys
Feeding turkeys raw goats milk. Simmey made sure to point out that "Turkeys drink milk". Then of course, Simmey had to splash in it.

Goat Update

So this evening, I hiked up to where I'd seen the goats yesterday with a can of feed (alfalfa & sweet mix). The goats have quite the swanky digs up in the pasture, having hollowed out a living space under a spreading grove of locust saplings.

I got the goats to eat out of my hand. Nice to know that they haven't gone feral yet!

Goats Spotted!!!

So a couple of weeks ago, we turned the goats loose in the hillside pasture. A couple of days later, we were puzzled - despite walking through the pasture hollering and shaking the feed can - no goats. Hmm. An inspection of the fence showed a couple of strands out on one side of the fence. After a week of searching, well, still no goats. We were convinced that the goats had gotten out, and in our wild holler, well we figured we'd never see them again.

This morning though, as I was walking the pasture checking for any stray t-posts or strands of wire before I brush-hogged, I walked by a very munched upon thistle. Stopping dead in my tracks, I suppressed a beam of goat filled hope - nothing eats thistles around here, but I refused to get my hopes up - the goats were gone, I knew it.

Then yesterday, a neighbor was checking one of his game cameras on my property. He'd driven his four-wheeler up to the top bench of the pasture, and when he came back from checking his camera in the woods, there were 3 goats gathered around the vehicle!

Then this morning, as I was brush-hogging - goats! First under a cedar tree, then on another pass though the pasture, the herd was eyeballin' me from a grove of locust trees. At one point, the goats bounded off, and they are in excellent condition - well filled out, shiny coats gleaming in the sun.

You can see the goats just under and to the left of the cedar tree
You can see the crest of the top bench of the hillside pasture

When I got back to the house, I told Carla and she was ecstatic. It's good to know we still have the goats. Woot.

Early Blight?

Some of my Marglobe tomatoes have started to show what I think is early blight. You can see the stem in the picture is black, and I'm taking that as an early blight symptom. I had 4 tomatoes like this, and I cut them all off below the infected stem. It was a little hard, b/c the plants were beautiful. I don't want the disease spreading, so I had to be ruthless. arglobe tomatoes

Dinosaur Egg?!

I'm pretty sure that a dinosaur had started laying eggs down in the nesting boxes in the pasture. As you can see below, there was a chicken-sized egg without a shell among the rest of the eggs. You can get an idea in the pic below of how leathery the egg is; I'm fairly certain it's a dwarf T. Rex or possibly one of those spitting lizards off of Jurassic Park. Chickens are pretty much diminutive dinosaurs with feathers, so understand why a dinosaur would want to hang out. But as tasty as the hens are to all the other forest critters, I just can't figure out why the T. Rex hasn't eaten any of the chickens. Maybe a Pterodactyl?