My Harley is Home!

Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 16 March 2023...

Hey Y'all!

Happy Thursday from Air2Ground Farms! The top pic is a Happy Thursday pic of Shelley and I in front of the garden with the electric net. It's been a busy morning already! The animals are all doing very well. The bottom two pics are the beef chickens. If you look closely, they are getting feathers on their wings, even getting some flight feathers. One more layer chick hatched yesterday bringing our total to 18 chicks. We plan to clean out the incubators today and get the next batch of eggs started. Holly, the orphan dairy calf, isn't being great about taking a bottle. She drank about half of a gallon yesterday evening and this morning. She really wants to get at Betty but we aren't going to let her. So, she may end up weaning herself before we would have but she will be ok. The ducks and chickens have been laying more eggs lately as the daylight hours increase. We were surprised this morning when Cousin Jeff showed up with my Harley in tow. He has been working tirelessly to get it running again after I shelled the motor almost two years ago. It's awesome to have it home. Thanks Jeff! Our water is so rich in minerals here in the Ozarks that our hot water heater element is already burned out. The heater gave us a fault code saying the lower element is bad so we drained the heater this morning to investigate. Sure enough, as we took it out it became painfully obvious that the element was completely scaled over. As I got it all of the way out, I saw it actually burned in two. We took out the other element also to check it and although not as bad, it is scaled over also. So, we'll be making a trip to Springfield today to get two new elements so we can have hot water.

We moved the hogs to their new paddock yesterday afternoon. They were much less reluctant to move this time. The final thing we moved was their hut and they all followed the hut into the new paddock. You can check out the YouTube video of the last time we moved them, if you haven't seen it, to visualize the process. Shelley led them into the load-out pen where we moved their feeders. They dutifully followed her and were happy to find their feed troughs. The 2nd and 3rd pics are the hogs exploring the load-out pen. We built the pen with a single opening and a v-shape funnel. That allows me to sort the hogs into one side or the other as they enter the pen to eat. We just let them come and go right now until Sunday afternoon. For their Sunday afternoon feeding, we will make them enter the pen single-file and I will sort them to one side or the other as they enter. The ones that are going to the processor Monday will go to the side with the gate and ramp. We will back the livestock trailer up to the gate area and then put their feed into the trailer. Normally, a couple are hesitant but they all end up getting into the trailer. We typically have one that requires a bit more persuasion from the red hog panels. We'll video the process so that you can have a look. Until then, the hogs are happy to be in their new paddock!

Local Farm Report for 15 March 2023:

Harvest:

39 Chicken eggs

1 Duck egg (Stupid crows!)

0 Goose eggs

5 1/2 Gallons of milk

Sales:

1 1/2 Gallons of milk

Farm additions:

1 Layer chick

Cheers! Psycho & Shelley