Failure can be Success

Another harvest season has come and gone on our little farm. We were not as successful as we would have liked but none the less I think I can say that this year's failures have been a success. How can that be? We learned a hundred ways NOT to do things and learned a million things we need and can do to be even more successful next year in terms of "out puts" received after all the hard work, time and money put into our "hippie land."

A quick summary of the end results this year:

- All our chickens were eaten by a badger (which we never were able to trap) in one night due to owner failure to close the chickens in the coop just one night. (Many other of our neighbors chickens got eaten as well and they had locked their chickens in yet the badger ripped through the chicken wire and wood!)

- Both of our black cats named Pretty Girls passed away. It feels strange not having any animals on our farm right now, but it is also a relief that I don't have to go outside in the cold to feed this winter.

-Two of the Three beehives left due to the extreme heat. The one hive that remained produced an abundance of delicious honey! Our wonderful friends taught us how to extract the honey with the use of their awesome honey extractor which is pictured below. We ended up with 3 gallons of honey from just 7 of the 9 frames in 1 box. We left on whole box and 2 frames from the box we took from to let the honey bees have good food for the winter.

-We yielded a descent garden this year. It would have been even better if we could have had the irrigation up and running properly before the end of June. What we have done on the farm, as far as set up, has been done with man power and very little to no money. Thus it has been slow go and we have figure out inexpensive ways to be "self sufficient." With this being said I have to give us a big thumbs up for what we have accomplished in the past two years.

Our greatest success overall this year with Heavenly Fathers blessing has been the spiritual growth and love of our family, including the wonderful birth of baby Lincoln. Another strong healthy boy. Could my smile be any bigger? Ultimatly we are trying to raise good, strong, healthy boys through growing nutrient rich foods and working together to maintain and grow our farm. What a great learning ground we have. :o)

A Badger?!

So a couple weeks ago we lost all remaining 6 chickens to a wild animal in one night. I had heard the rooster at 6 a.m. just long enough for me to think "O, he is up early" and went back to sleep. It was eerie going outside to no chickens. I walked up to the coop and sure enough there were feathers all around. I followed the feather trail to a hole in the dirt mound by our empty pond. At first I thought it must have been the raccoons. Then we heard the the neighbors up behind us had lost animals to a fox. But I was surprised to receive a phone call this morning from our neighbor saying he lost all his chickens this morning to a huge badger and that the badger started to chase him! So until we get this badger caught my kids will be staying inside the house.