Chickens and Friends

I have noticed something I have never thought about before. It could sound weird, but I think the Windmill Farm chickens have particular "chicken friends" they like to hang out with during the

day.

This will be the 3rd season that our resident pheasant is here with us. He roams free all over the place but as soon as I let out the 20+ chickens, he seems to like cruising around with my pretty Buff Orphington chickens.

Last year in March, Frank read about how helpful owls were in ridding fields of moles and gophers. So he made a bunch of the owl boxes and put them up around the first of April. We were able to entice one owl to stay the summer but the owls start nesting around January and we had missed their season in 2011. A few nights ago, I saw 2 owls fly into one of the owl boxes in the back and yesterday evening I saw one standing on top of the box on the west side of our property. I believe this year we will have lots of barn owls combing our fields. How exciting, gophers look out!

Here is another photo of Frank's progress with his 1947 tractor. Few more parts on it.

RESOLUTIONS

My New Year's Resolutions were my usual ones, be healthy, loose weight, exercise AND keep my blog current. So far, I have failed in all of them. It is almost the end of January and my last blog was in November. What have we been doing?

Just like everyone else, the holidays came quickly and after spending lots of great times with family and friends; decorating, eating, making gifts, shopping; we put all our decorations away the day after New Years and with positive thoughts for 2012 started thinking about our farming year at Windmill Farm.

A friend of mine mentioned to me that my blogs were too much talk. That was interesting so I went out and read lots of other farming blogs and she may be right. I can't help myself because I like to talk about what we are doing, but for a while, I am going to try and "talk"/write less and show pictures more. Frank has been restoring his 1947 Ford Tractor from the frame up. He does such great work repainting every part he puts back on it. I will post more pictures as it progresses.

Our fields have been disked, trees pruned, dormant sprayed the fruit trees; composted all the chipped branches and leaves and planted some early onions. This week we have been pruning roses and hydrangeas during this great weather. I took a rose pruning class at the beginning of January through my garden club that I belong to and learned a few good pointers. Hopefully in the spring I can have a beautiful bouquet of flowers like I did last year.

I received all of my seed catalogs and have them in my office. Next month I will be ordering the seeds to start planting in mid March. I hope my last year's CSA members will be interested in joining again this and we may be adding a few more membership spots in 2012. Will keep you posted.

Thank you for visiting the Windmill Farm blog. Until next time.