The beautiful bride!

Ok - obviously I've been neglectful in my blogging. I have excuses I promise! :) September and October have become akin to the April I had this year, which was busy let me tell you. I was on the interview trail during April, so much so that I was only "home" 17 days out of the whole month. Yowza!

September was chock full of meetings, fields days, Mom's birthday (the big 6-0), more meetings, beef harvesting (butchering), the Lost Rivers grazing Academy in beautiful Salmon, Idaho and the wedding of an amazing lady to an amazing guy! I was home for half of the weekends in September. Again, yowza!

Turkey number 1 of 3:56 lbs of meat overall.

October has been a bit more laid back than September - I'll be home three out of four weekends. Ha! Meetings, coaching team members from Idaho's state 4H livestock judging team, again with more meetings, a full week of new employee orientation in Moscow on the University of Idaho's campus, poultry harvesting, and my first evaluation as a UI Extension Educator are all on the docket for October. By this time yowza might not cover it. :)

However, my freezer is full, my pantry is going to be full once I get all the produce I picked up in the Yakima Valley canned-up, I've gotten to visit with my equally as busy brother and sister-in-law and parents. My girls (goats) are bred and in 4.5 months the babies will arrive, milk will flow, cheese and yogurt will be made and the bottle feeding of day-old calves will begin. My other girls (dogs) are very happy I'm home (and so am I!) that they want to cuddle all the time. I get a temporary roommate in December (I'm hosting a local ag student teacher).

I am very thankful for the opportunities I've had to re-establish relationships with friends and family, as well as begin new friendships with people in the area. As busy, and a yowza, as my life gets, I enjoy it. But I need a nap! ;)

Chickens...Clucking Brilliant!

If you've been keeping up with my blog you know I've had wretched luck with chickens this year! So I decided to bite the bullet and buy one of those per-fabricated coops online. The Chicken Saloon received my business and shipped "The Corral" in a timely manner. Everything arrived intact and all the parts were there. Yippee! The FedEx guy brings me wonderful things. :)


This is supposed to house 3-4 full-sized chickens. I always like the animals to have plenty of room so I've got only two chicks in there. Later on I might add one more hen, probably a banty. I like it for the nest boxes and it looks like a little barn. Cute! Those are some happy little hen chicks. I'm looking forward to seeing those beautiful Silver Laced Wyandottes and their yummy eggs, hopefully in the spring! :)

We've also ad some bad luck concerning dogs. Yotee got away from me the other day and went to chase cars. He was hit by one which didn't slow down or stop to see if he was still alive. I was not happy about that! What if it was their dog? Wouldn't they want someone to do that for them? Anyways, Yotee came out of it with only a tibial fracture and will be in a rigid splint for roughly 8 weeks. He just had his wrappings changed and is now sporting a hot pink right, rear leg! He is ashamed. This is a picture a few days after it happened. That's the new guy, Kooper, in the background. Yotee's a bit crabby at the moment, but they play and have fun when they can. Kooper is currently upstairs barking at himself in the mirror...see what I'm working with? :)

We had our first hard frost last night, which is one whole month PAST the average frost dates for this area. I have to say I've enjoyed it immensely, but alas, winter is definitely on its way. *sigh* I decided to clean-up my little garden since there won't be anymore growing weather. I had a pleasant surprise at the amount of food I was able to get. I'm already planning on what I want to do next year. *teehee* What you see here are parsley, chives, rosemary, pumpkins, and tomatoes. Pretty good haul for being a bad year and learning how to garden in a whole new climate! Kinda proud. :)

And look at all food for my goaties! Glorious because they really, really like their forages! They're not really sure how they feel about the pumpkin plants yet, but I'm confident it wall get eaten! They love green things to eat! :)

I was able to mulch my strawberries before the frost. Thanks to purchasing a "bale" of cedar chips for the chickens, I ended up with a ton of extra and put it to good use!


I did way better with the pumpkin growing than I thought I would and now will have some for decoration at home and work. I'm hoping they ripen up though I have no idea if that will happen. Anyone out there know?
                                
                                                  Happy Fall Ya'll! :)

The Ups and Downs...

So we've had an interesting time lately here at the Muddy Manicure. Depression relapse, tibial fractures, disappearing chickens and house training new puppies have reared their ugly head recently!

I suffer from clinical depression and recently had a relapse that lasted the latter part of the summer. This caused me to spend a lot of time traveling between Montana and Washington to visit family. I also suffer from seasonal affects disorder and "clicked" into fall and started to feel sooo much better! :) I was feeling some of the warning signs but hadn't realized how far the depression had progressed. During this time I came to the conclusion that I will never beat the depression; I'll just have to pay closer attention.

Once I surfaced from the relapse, dad and Scott came over for a guided antelope hunt. They teamed up with Toby Werk from Blue Heaven Montana and Scott filled his tag immediately. It was a good hunt and everyone had a good time!

As a result of the hunt, my dad misplaced his really expensive binoculars. He requested me to head out to the gut pile to see if they were left out there. So I headed out yesterday and took my pups with me. Yotee came with me to scout out the gut pile and instead of behaving he took off the 1/4 mile to the highway and got hit. He ended up with a tibial fracture and I thank goodness that Dr. Schmidt in Chinook was able to take him on. He came home today and is a bit more mobile than I thought he'd be, but it's obvious that he hurts pretty bad.


For those of you who have been keeping up on the chicken escapades I have news. The goose (who thinks it's a goat) is the only bird left from the original group. I purchased an order of 5 silver laced wyandottes from Cackle Hatchery. They arrived happy and healthy and were doing great until my mom's wiener dog ate one. Then the next trip home two more chicks drowned in the water bucket.

So I am now down to two chicks and I caved and bought a pre-fabricated chicken coop from Chicken Saloon. It cost me a pretty penny but I'm hoping it will preserve the chicks I have left. It's called the "Corral" and it turned out pretty cute. I gave myself a blister putting it together but it was way easy to put together by myself and came in good condition!
 
I ended up with a new puppy when Lil Guy was run over. Sad day! I miss him! I now have Kooper who was one of Karen's puppies that she wasn't able to keep. He's a pretty good little doggie but he's no Lil Guy! :) I'm luck y that he was pretty much house trained but having been in a crate most of his life, I'm finding that I'm having to teach him how to be a dog. It's an interesting experience for sure!

Well that's all folks! Enjoy the dregs of summer! :)

Making a home in the mud...

So once again I beg your forgiveness - the rain has made my desire to write null and void. However, we had 65F and sunny today so here I am with some writing ambition. :) I know the title of this blog entry is interesting to say the least but all the rain has resulted in standing water, massive flooding and mud, mud every where!

I have done some updates around the Muddy Manicure. I planted the window box with lettuce, spinach, broccoli, tomato plants and my one surviving eggplant. I mainly keep the window shut because it's still quite cool here at night - around 40F, sometimes lower. The cold frame concept really works well up here in the harsh climate of North central Montana.

My strawberry bed is thriving!

The big one's are the geese.

I have also watched my Homesteaders Flock grow. My chicks now have feathers and so do the turkey's. The duck and two geese are still peach-fuzzy; who knows when they'll get some feathers. I took them "swimming" every day while they were in the house. I had to teach them but they got the hang of it and love to swim. While dad and brother were out over Memorial Day weekend they helped me move them outside into the coop. I will be adding on the "run" part on later when the birds get big enough.

Today I picked up my newest addition to the Muddy Manicure - two baby Nigerian Dwarf doelings. I haven't named them yet and would welcome name suggestions. They currently weigh around 19 pounds and the breed standard says does grow only to be about 30-40 pounds. Currently, the two babies are out in the chicken coop since there is a heat light out there but I'm hoping shortly the nights will warm up enough to keep them outside. I plan to do some intensive grazing with the girls around the outbuildings when they're older.

Sorry it's sideways - I'm lame ;)

              
 The girls were born on March 7th and their breed is a recognized dairy breed so if I do decide I want a dairy goat one day - BOOM! already got two! :) I'm thinking that the girsl would also be useful for my 4H kids in case any of them want to show something at the fair but can't afford it. Other than that they're just going to be spoiled goat pets! :)

Sorry it's sideways again!

Spring is making itself known around the Muddy Manicure and the Hi-Line. My container gardens are doing really well. My bathtub has Walla Walla sweet onions, yellow onions, shallots and Scarlet Nantes carrots in it. They are doing awesome! The pig feeder planter is chock-full of yellow onions and they have been loving the rain and cool weather. Too bad I'm not! :)  They've rocketed from a dried up set to beautiful green, alive baby onions! Gotta love it! I need to get a bunch of other stuff planted but some of them I'm going to have to buy like the squash. I'm going to get peas and corn planted this weekend. The weather and package planting information should be just about right. Here's to hoping it doesn't rain like the dickens this weekend!

I'll leave you with a parting photo that brings a smile to my face and thoughts of spring followed by summer to mind. The lilac bush closest to my house has begun to bloom! :D

Playin' in the dirt is the way to spend the day!

Well I decided to take a break from packing, house hunting and just generally preparing for my move to play in the dirt a bit; specifically the garden.

These are some pics from my fun time in the dirt.....

So in this picture there is a lot going on. So from left to right there are some radishes, which aren't my favorite but mom likes to eat them.  We planted a lot of radishes and with all the rain we've had they are splitting so the ducks, chickens and turkeys are getting to eat them, which they like...a lot! There is also a lot of snow peas, the kind where you eat the pod and are my favorite. They are yummy for a stir-fry! This is about the last heavy haul and I'm thinking of freezing the rest of the harvest for stir-fry mixes in the middle of the winter. In the center of the pic is a few stalks of mint, which is beautiful smelling and mom is brewing some lovely iced tea from it as we speak...uh type. :) Also in the center are two scallions from our stock that are growing quite well. Behind the mint is our lettuce haul. It's the kind you cut and it grows back...it's nice and sweet too. Then the pretty colored mix is half spinach (yummy) and then oak leaf lettuce which you cut and then it grows back. I'm working on using more greens in my diet. I have horrible eating habits so I'm trying to fix that! :)

This is a nice bowl of strawberries from mom's strawberry patch, which my brother claims as his own. Sooo he gets to eat this bowl all to himself. We've been having some issues with something eating our strawberries. I think it's slugs or mice but who knows. We're going to but out some Seven and dust them to see if that fixes our problem. :)  

God  has been working wonders in my life lately and I'm very thankful to have the opportunity to play in the dirt with my mom today! Well that's all for me today. Hope you all have a great day! :) 

Silent Sundays - A Homemade Strawberry Planter

So I thought I'd take Sundays and use photographs to highlight something I am doing or working on. Here is this week's Silent Sunday topic - a strawberry planter.

I took an old, rusted-out single hog feeder and had Scott cut slots to slide the license plates into. We had all the plates laying around from our plethora of vehicles and bent the plates inside the pockets so there are no welds on them. It took little more than an hour to complete the construction, and another hour to fill and plant it. I have two day-neutral varieties (TriStar and Seascape), as well as three ever-bearing varieties (Quinault, Sequoia and Hecker). Looking forward to those yummy berries! :)