| Hope everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving holiday if you celebrate it! This blog post is a bit smaller than last month. Not nearly as much going on right now and our household went through a bout of illness early in the month so some projects got put on hold for a bit. We’re all better now though! | Table of Contents: Livestock News Garden Report Woodland Adventures Science & Folklore Journal Craft Corner Thank You! |
Livestock News
With pastures locked down, the animals are getting fed hay now so that consumes our evenings a little bit. We kept the ewe lambs in with the ewes and ram lambs in with the rams to make it easier for a couple weeks. Once we had to start feeding alfalfa, though, things had to change some. The ewe lambs went into their own sacrifice area, and, eventually 4 of the ram lambs went to the auction on the 25th. Was hoping selling them close to a holiday would get better prices, but only managed $1.90/lb! After fees, we made $567.63 on 4 lambs that weighed a combined weight of 330lbs. Was good to get them out of our hair in any case! Next season auction will happen much sooner in the year if it’s needed!
Lambing season starts next month! Day 147 falls on December 29th. I foresee a lot of barn cleaning next month. Next blog post may just have a few lamb photos in it! We have 21 ewes lambing: 10 Registered St Croix, 2 Registered Katahdin, & 9 Recorded Katahdin. If you go to Our Animals section, you can see photos of our sheep flock.
Chickens have slowed way down on the egg production, which is typical for this time of year. The youngsters are coming online, however, and keeping us in eggs for the winter (provided they lay in the nest boxes LOL) along with a few breeds of adult hens that will lay almost year round.
Garden Report
We needed to get to planting the garlic, though much later than I would have liked. The raised beds were still producing into late October! Everything was pulled out (except the beets) and tossed into either compost piles or to the chickens. Dumped out the potato bags and look what we found! We roasted them and ate them for several dinners!
Composted manure was added to the old raised beds and garlic was planted on the 24th. Varieties planted include: Elephant, Persian Star Hardneck, Nootka Rose Softneck, and Inchelium Red Softneck. On the 27th straw mulch was added to protect from the freezing temps that started that night.
Don’t forget! The winter is the perfect time to start planting trees and shrubs. I’ve compiled a list of Best Days, from the Old Farmer’s Almanac, in a blog post to help you out:
Nov/Dec 2024 Planting Guide – Zone 7/8
November and December are pretty quiet in the gardens. There’s still a few things that can be planted though. Date guidelines are a combination of the Old Farmer’s Almanac and a couple websites. Hope it helps! Amy
Woodland Adventures
We went on a visit to the woods on the 16th. As we approached the creek, I noticed something was off. The creek was full but it wasn’t moving like usual. As I stood there and listened, I could hear it moving downstream so I knew something was blocking it between where we stood and where I could hear it. Shane went blasting through the brush along the creek and confirmed my suspicions. We had a beaver dam! It’s been years and years since the beaver had made their home in our little creek and we were thrilled! They just started the dam and we can only hope they get it big and secure before it floods down there. Flooding could happen at any second this time of year! We moved our trail-cam to try to get a good view of them building the dam too. The beaver tried to take our trail-cam on the 26-28th when the tree it was tied on seemed irresistible to it!
We saw Haunter on trail-cam again, this time with a noticable limp. Possibly been fighting, hard to say. At least he’s still down there. LOTS of deer on trailcam and the coyote pair made a quick appearance one day too.
On our walk, the 16th, we saw lots of cool mushrooms:
Science & Folklore Journal
WINTER SOLSTICE
Winter Solstice, also called Yule, is the time when nights are the longest in the Northern Hemisphere. It was celebrated by many ancient cultures to entice the sun to return. Here on the ranch, it will usher in the beginning of lambing season soon after. This is a time to plan for the next season and enjoy family. The time from Samhain to Yule is probably the quietest on the ranch for us. Other than daily chores, cutting firewood now and then, preparing the barn for lambing season, and woods walks, more time is spent indoors. We may be curled up with a blanket watching movies or reading, sometimes playing games, or just plain doing household chores/cooking. It’s time to look through those seed catalogs, outline some plans and dream of what could be!
Craft Corner
Shane’s been busy making Christmas gifts this month in his woodshop so not many picture spoilers. This image is a tray he made his daughter for her birthday earlier in November. We’ll check back in next month’s blog post for more!
Thank You!
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Sabina says she’ll see you all again January 1st
for the December Homestead Happenings!
(There could be baby lamb photos in this one!)
Hollow Hills Ranch 