Hello Again! Read what we have been up to....

Good day to everyone out there!  It has been a long time since I've written anything for our blog so we need to bring you to where we currently are in our lives.  The last time you heard from us, we were living on our sailboat "Living the Dream" and had plans to travel the world.  SO much has happened since then!!  Read on....

Last time I posted, we were traveling around the country to visit with family before Mark went to Abu Dhabi for a fantastic opportunity.  He flew over and I followed him a month later.  We had our home (sailboat) moved from the slip in Baltimore onto the hard for storage while we were away.

We met sooooooo many wonderful people during the 2 1/2 years that we were in Abu Dhabi and are still in contact with many of them even though we are no longer there.  The decision to come back to the states was a tough one, but we came back because my grandmother and parents were not doing very well.  I am thankful that we came back when we did as I was able to spend quality time with my grandmother before she went to heaven and then with my parents, as they also have gone on to a much better place where I will see them again.

When we moved back to the states and got somewhat settled, we decided to start a small farm on our property.  We bought a tractor, cleared a large area for a garden and purchased some chickens and ducks. The learning curve has been amazing!

Mark grew up having a garden in his back yard every year so we decided to try to have one large enough that would allow us to be able to sell our crops at the local farmers market, but cooler weather, powdered mildew, poor soil (that we purchased a specially mixed fertilizer to fix) and pests (both bugs and the 4 legged kind) have made it impossible to harvest enough to bring to market for sale thus far.

Although neither of us really knew anything about raising chickens or ducks, we made the leap and have learned something new on a continual basis.  Mark has been wonderful about coming up with ideas for the coops and has build five different buildings so far.

We started our flock with Wyandotte chickens and have grown to having a large variety of chickens (ten different ones).  My "Girls" as I call them, know my voice and will come when I shake the bag of meal worms, which are their favorite treat.  They put themselves to bed at night and I just need to go into the coop and count to ensure that they are all there.  We have lost some to predators, old age, a couple to sickness and even one to someones careless driving on our road.  Overall, I love the "Girls" and enjoy raising them even though it is tough when you loose one.  We gather the eggs daily and have been able to find people interested in purchasing them so far.

Although we only purchased supposed females, we ended up with a rooster our second year into raising chickens.  His name is Buddy and he is a Buff Orpington.  He can be a bit aggressive when people are around "His" girls (with the exception of myself), but he saved the flock at least four times last year from a predator so I guess I can overlook his behavior somewhat.  He even got into a fight with something and lost one of his spurs completely down at where it connects to his leg bone and I had to learn about how to take care of a gaping wound.  He make it through healthy so I guess I did a good job in nursing him.

This year we have added enough baby girls to double the flock.  We also added five new varieties because I wanted to try out some new ones that are cold hardy and a couple for their reputation as being good brooders (mothers).  The brooders are soon cute as they have feathered legs and feet.  I will add pictures of them soon.  We also added one additional rooster named Blue as he is a Blue Orpington and I am hoping that the two get along and keep to their own flocks happy.

Our ducks started our with a straight run (you don't know what sex they are until they mature) of Pekin.  They are called "Babies" and come to me when I call them also.  They also put themselves to bed at night usually but sometimes need a little help in that department.  Most of the time all we need to say to them is "It's time to go in Babies, go in, go in..." and they usually run to the coop.  We have a pond where they stay until it gets too cold for them and then they get moved up close to our house for the winter.

We had two male and four female Pekin until this year.  We purchased some additional Pekin and had some issues with the first batch we purchased.  They had some sort of genetic problem as all except one had their feet turned in.  As you cannot return them and they were suffering because they couldn't walk, we had to put them down which was very hard because they were so young.  We purchased a couple more and ended up with one male and one female.  We have decided that we will substitute the new male with our non-dominant male and add the female into the flock for a total of seven Pekin.

We also tried a straight run of six Khaki Campbell this year and ended up with one female and five males.  We had originally decided to keep the dominant male and female, but a raccoon or raccoons broke into the duck pen and of course caught our female Khaki Campbell.  Now we will raise the males until fall and put them into the freezer for a great duck dinner.  Maybe we will try again next year to add Khaki Campbell to the flock.

Well this kind of brings you up to date on our farm adventures as far as our animals go.  I will write another post on our other farm adventures and our life in general and what has been going on since our adventure in Abu Dhabi.