Ducks first outing.

So, today we went to TSC and got some step in posts so we could build a small enclosure in the back yard for the ducks to get some outside exercise time.

We made a pit stop on the way there at the farmers market. It was opening day. Too bad we forgot and didn't get there until noon!! While there we talked to one of the local apiaries about bees. He invited us to the bee group that meets once a month. I was also invited to take master gardening classes. (How cool is that!!) We picked up some local strawberries (ours aren't all the way ripe yet), some asparagus, and some local steaks! So, for dinner tonight we're going to have steak on the grill, asparagus, and baked potatoes. Then I'm going to make a strawberry shortcake for dessert! :-D (I'll try to remember to get a picture to share later.)

So, we get to TSC, Bug wanted more ducks. They didn't have any thank goodness or we would have walked out with who knows how many more!! She did try to talk me into bantams tho. I told her that I wanted full sized chickens, not midgets. Besides, we had our hands full with the ducks! She wants a couple more ducks, and a few chickens, so, I'm not sure what we're going to do right now. I know that we are only making the enclosure about 8x24, and I will probably have to do a 4x8 raised coop. I also plan on putting a couple dog houses in there for the ducks. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do it yet, but I'm going to do it! LOL I will probably put the nest boxes on the outside of the enclosure so I don't have to walk in to get the eggs, but I will have to leave the inside with the ability to open so I can clean it, as well as vents on all 4 sides. I know I want Sweet PDZ in the coop under the roosts so I'm not having to scoop the poop out so much, and it will keep the smell down as well.

Anyways!! We get home and put up the enclosure, which is nothing more than some step in t-posts and some old plastic "fencing" that we had. We had originally bought it to wrap around our cucumber teepees last year, but we took it off because it didn't seem to work.

But... I guess I've really went on long enough... and I'll show the pictures of the ducks now. ;-)

When they first got out in the pen.

It was like they didn't want anything to do with the light! They stayed in the shade for a bit.

This is Phineas. You can see where his/her feathers are coming in. I really hope either Phineas or Ferb are males and everyone else is a female!

Finally in the sunlight!

Found the water!

They all wanted to try the water.

Ferbs turn in the water.

Nibbling grass.

OH YES!! I forgot. 

Monkey took a video with his cell phone!

****** Linked up at Prairie Homestead

Getting bigger!!

So, I was sitting with the ducks again today, I seem do that frequently. I've noticed that they seem to be just growing so quickly! Babies of all species tend to do that tho, grow quickly. It just seems like you don't notice until you look back at old pictures. So, here's some new pictures of the ducklings.

This one was taken on 04April

And today 09April! 

Far cry from the wee little things they were on the 31March, eh?? I just can't believe how QUICKLY they are growing! We're going to have to start building their enclosure as soon as we get our check! A friend of ours from our church gardening group has a fantastic set up that I think we're going to copy. They took 2x4s in 8' and 12' sections and built 2 8x12' enclosures. They separate their ducks and chickens, but I think we're just going to do one large 8x24' enclosure and put a short stock tank in for the ducks with a "deck" for them. This would mean that I wouldn't have to water as much, and that I can use the water from the stock tank in the garden instead of just dumping it in the yard like I would with a kiddie pool. This of course means that we're going to have to find one that is big enough for the ducks, but not too deep in case the chickens decide they want to try and have a swim. I found a couple of more shallow stock tanks online at Tractor Supply, lets hope that they have them here at the store or can order them for me!

On another note! We had a frost Friday night. Bug was spending the night with a friend, or so I thought. I got a weather advisory alert on my phone and was busy, so didn't see what it was. About 10, I got a call that Bug wanted to come home. I went to pick her up, she said that she didn't feel well and wanted to come home. I bring her home, put some medicine in her, came out to check on a few things in the dining room, back to check on her, and she was fast asleep in my bed! I then laid down to see what the weather alert was. I laid there for a second trying to remember where all the extra sheets were so I could at least cover my tomatoes that I had just planted a few days before that. I got up, got the sheets, covered my tomatoes, and brought in my peppers and eggplants that I hadn't gotten a chance to plant yet, and went to bed. Or so I thought!! I wake up in the morning, the dogs are bouncing all over the place as if they are saying "MOM!! It's breakfast time! MOM!! Lets go mom!!" I stretch, put on my slippers because it's chilly, and walk out to let the dogs out to potty and feed them. As soon as I walk into the dining room I notice that there are no sheets outside. Then it dawned on me... I had fallen asleep and DREAMED I covered all my plants!! *heavy sigh*

I lost all of the volunteer white heirloom cucumbers, all my eggplant, save 1, my 2 peppers, and 3 of my tomatoes. It's okay tho, I had 3 of the volunteers from last year, but I'm pretty disappointed that I lost all my white cucumbers, even tho I hadn't planned on having them. I restarted the eggplant and peppers, and I hope that they pop up soon. I'm just glad that we have a fairly long growing season. It's been a CRAZY spring I say!

I also planted pumpkins, watermelon, more cucumbers, yellow and green bush beans, radish, and even tho I know it's WAY too late, garlic. I mostly put the garlic in to try and keep the squash vine borers at bay. They completely decimated our pumpkins last year. Monkey was crushed! He was really hoping that he would get  to eat some home grown pumpkins in his pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. Hopefully this year that won't be a problem. I checked all the plants again today and gave them a nice drink, and I noticed that the radishes are already starting to pop up! Hooray! I'm so excited! I LOVE radish, and I think that once my husband has a home grown radish, he will love them too.

I hope that you all had a great Easter! We had a great day at church, and then basically had a lazy day at home.

Linking up to Homestead Barn Hop!

Growing our Homestead

So, yesterday we needed more compost for the garden. Apparently ours is not done yet, so we cannot use it. I have used some in the growing of our newer tomato seedlings, and it seems to be doing quite well, but I CONSTANTLY have to pick pill bugs out of it, and lost a few seedlings to their tiny little mouths. Some say that they will only eat decaying matter, but, I know that there were no slugs or anything else in those pots, but I DID see lots and lots of pill bugs, so I'm pretty sure that's the culprit! Anyways! I finally got the whole family rounded up so we could go. They were having Chick Days at Tractor Supply, so the kids wanted to see the baby chicks and ducklings. Bug decided that she wanted ducklings. I kept telling her no, that we didn't have a place to put them, inside OR outside, so she turned on the waterworks. Of COURSE DH caves and tells her that she can have a couple ducklings.

So, meet Phineas and Ferb. DS used to be OBSESSED with this cartoon, so DH named them after the cartoon.

We also got the last 3 beds in that we will be planting in this year, tho that might be a lie because hubs and I were talking about putting in 2 more 4x4 beds, one between the blueberry bushes for Rhubarb and asparagus, and one in front of the corn  for herbs. We've still got a little bit of cleaning up to do, but here is Ivy Hill for the 2012 growing season.

Last year we planted a 4x8 bed with strawberries. I let them get away from me last year, which is something I won't repeat this year. But, being 01April and having as many strawberries about to ripen as we do, I'll take it!

This is one that got out of the bed last year. I've got to figure out how to get it back IN the bed! Something I should have probably done before the growing season started, but the strawberry looks GREAT!

Last year, we got a few of the Burpees white cucumber. DH must have missed one last year because this year, we have them again! Once we get the cucumber bed ready, I will transplant them to where they will be this year.

Our grapes are back in full force! Doc (brindle), Dusty (red/fawn) and Lilly (white) are making their debut here at Ivy Hill! We just put these grapes in last year. DH insisted that these grapes be planted on the fence line because our neighbor had done something similar and he liked the idea of not having to build an arbor for them.

Our pear tree is doing quite well!! Last year it only had 1 pear. This year I think we will have quite a few more! When I told DH that there were "quite a few" and counted about 11, he said "That's not quite a few! That's not even a dozen!" when I reminded him that we had only put the tree in less than 3 years ago, and some people don't get fruit at all for the first 5 years, he decided that it was quite a few.

It rained all weekend so far, so I haven't been able to work in the garden much. I believe I will be hitting full force on Monday. A lot of the seeds that we started way back in January, didn't make it, but some did, and that makes me happy. I restarted quite a few, and THEY have made it for the most part. Next year, we're going to start everything with a grow light, so we won't have as much issues with being so leggy. We are still learning, so, I think we're doing okay for just starting. :-) Monkey got several potatoes to sprout, so we are going to plant those in used dog food bags for our potato harvest. A couple of the celery seedlings made it as well! Can't wait to put it all in the garden!

We got lettuce!! Too bad I don't remember which one this is. I planted both butter lettuce and mesclun and forgot to label them. DUH! In the very back of the picture is another potato, and a rouge tomato!

The apples and blueberries have JUST started to bud, each with a couple of leaves. The mulberry is just starting to put some green on, and the raspberries have just poked their heads thru the ground as well. Things are starting to really come together here in the last week or so. I can't wait to start updating more when things are really going. Won't be too much longer! :-)

Spring Has Sprung!!

We've been pretty busy here at Ivy Hill trying to get things done! I planted those daffodils a few weeks ago, not expecting them to bloom this year, but apparently they decided that they wanted to make an appearance! We have plans to put a brick border around the beds around the porch. We also put more flowers around our crepe myrtle tree, and cleaned out around the mailbox and planted flowers there too. The mailman got a surprise when one of those flowers sprouted a little yellow daffodil as well! :-)

This picture of our pear tree was taken a couple of days ago. There are several more blooms on it now! Last year in April we had tornadoes and every single bloom, save 1, was blown off the tree! It was doing really well until the hurricane came and then we had to pull the 1 immature pear so it didn't fly off and go thru a window or anything. We're hoping that this year we have some pears to harvest! It's still a pretty young tree, so I'm pretty surprised that we are getting anything.

I did finally get the strawberry bed cleaned out! This was taken the other day as well, before I had gotten it completely cleaned out. This year, I'm not going to let them go hog wild like I did last year! Sheesh! What a mess that bed was! There are quite a few more flowers now and some of them already have the beginnings of strawberries on them!

Last year DH thought it would be a good idea to put our grapes on the fence because one of our other neighbors had done it that way. I TRIED to get him to just put up some lines for a small vineyard, but, he wouldn't cough up the dough for it. I guess it's just practice for our farm anyways, but now that I think about it... it's going to be difficult to keep the dogs off of the immature grapes! I noticed that this winter they chewed some of the vines that were on the inside of the fence. This same vine now has a few very small leaves. It's quite exciting!

We had gone to Tractor Supply and there were these ADORABLE little grey Easter Eggers! If DH would have had his way, we would have brought some home. I told him that we didn't have the set up for it right now and that if he would just be patient, then we could get a coop and get some chickens. We've decided that we're going to get some for DDs birthday. Since they will be her pets, they will all have names, and we will only use them for eggs. DH does want to get some rabbits for meat. I guess we will have to see how that goes. I'm not real keen on the idea because, while I love the taste of rabbit, they are just SO adorable!

This is DS holding one of our friends Easter Egger chicks. That little chick just attached itself to him and when anybody tried to pick it up it would cheep up a storm and as soon as you put it down, it would snuggle back into his lap and quiet right back down.

Elsewhere, we are watching our new tomatoes grow by the day! Most of them have their first set of true leaves now. Almost all of the other seeds didn't make it. We've got more that we planted. I'm seriously going to invest in the light for next year!! This is ridiculous! We put almost 2 months into those seedlings and they were just so leggy!!

Anyways, until the next time! I hope that everyone is able to get their hands in the dirt soon!