CrabGrassAcres

Hope it dries out for you.

Fertilizer shouldn't have stopped the seeds from sprouting. You would have had sickly looking seedling, but you would have had something come up. I'm really leaning towards old seed that rotted. Occasionally when I had old beans that didn't sprout I carefully brushed dirt away and found a mushy substance where the seed had been. Very easy to miss it.

Doesn't take a very big insect to eat a large seed over a period of several days.

Sat there long enough for the insects to eat it. I've had that happen with both corn and beans. Usually the seed was too old.

Look for organic Pima cotton cloth, produced in the states and grown in the states. If you knit or crochet you can get organic wool produced in the states. Even better if you can spin it yourself.

I have 18 goats. Anybody wanna come play "catch the goat and make it stay where it should be?"

Mine are still in the pen with a gosling who was stepped on by a goat and suffered a broken ankle. Didn't think the gosling would walk again but it is getting around, just not well enough to be out with the crowd. It has adapted by walking on the side of its foot, poor thing.

I picked up some well trimmed roasts at a local meat market for the same price as hamburger, but without all the fat. I put it thru the food processor to grind into hamburger then freeze it. I don't like buying hamburger since the grinding process introduces bacteria and you need to cook or freeze immediately after grinding.

Rats will roll eggs down holes so you won't see fragments. Also, when something gets the eggs and leaves fragments, my ducks will eat the shells pretty fast.

Yeah. Especially when it hits 115* in the shade.

You forgot the scorpions, rattlers, wild hogs, sand burrs and chupacapras.

What are you feeding them? Is there any chance something is getting in and eating eggs?

Well mama runner duck has decided babies aren't her thing any more. Runners are such shatter brains anyhow. The kids knocked the hardware cloth off the outside of the duckling pen and they made a mad dash for the pond and mama with them. Mama had a bath then went on the lam, leaving babies on the pond to play. I herded ducklings back into the pen with the spray from the garden hose and fixed the hardware cloth back. That was yesterday. Today I made the duckling pen secure against chickens that were eating the ducklings out of house and home and secured the hardware cloth against kids that like to stand on fences. The babies are 2-3 times as big as when they hatched but not feathered out by any means. They also STINK. Rather have that smell outside away from the house than in the kitchen or even on the back deck where it draws flies. Babies aren't happy. They want to go play on the pond. They wouldn't survive long out there though.

Find someone with a tractor that has an auger on it.

TOO CLOSE! So glad you and the home are safe!

Mt Rider, the secretary is who I thought you meant. I can see her but couldn't remember her name except Miss _____ so I googled it, Miss Jane.

Got most of them and sang the theme songs too! LOL Didn't get all the commercials.

I don't buy freeze dried meat or anything else freeze dried for that matter. However, I pressure can my meat. I don't like keeping much in the freezer because it could be lost if the power goes off.

Amber, about how many calories in your qt? I figured a qt of canned seasoned beans is about 750. Daughter has one qt a day plus 3 pts of rich goat milk plus a pt of juice and a bowl of fruit. She weighs 90# and is not active, yet she barely maintains her weight on it. I can't get any more down her though.

I figure on mostly dry foods in LTS. One pound of any dry food is approximately 1500 calories. (It varies a little depending on how much fat is in the food vs how much fiber, but is a good working average.) I started out by making a big order from Walton Feed on their pool truck. I had to make it a large order so they would drop it at my location. This gave us several yrs worth of basic calories at one whack. This is not our entire calorie intake for that period, just a base. Then I canned up a lot of meat I raised. Since then, I've been rotating the meat and adding to it sporadically. I also dried some veggies and bought more dry fruit and veggies. Later I was able to get another, smaller order of grains and beans to replace what we had used. I buy sugar locally and try to get more than we will use between trips. I garden when I can (I've been ill a lot and right now plan to move as soon as this place sells), I raise dairy goats (milking 6 right now and bottle feeding 8 doelings), so that provides a good share of daily calories. I also have a good size flock of free range chickens and ducks for eggs and about 50 pet geese. (I should think of geese as meat on the hoof, but I call them my lawn mowers since they keep the grass short enough I don't have to mow.) My hens hatch chicks constantly, though I give many of them away so I don't have to bother raising them, I still get enough roosters for meat. I've been promised two piglets to raise, waiting on delivery. They should be ready to butcher about the time I've used up the lard and most of the meat from the last two. I know most people these days don't have farms, but if possible, it is a good thing to have some chickens or ducks or quail for eggs and some rabbits for meat as well as the largest garden you can manage. Just remember that a garden won't produce without a good bit of work so don't make it too big to start.

Sorry Mt Rider. I've already macheted a copperhead this yr, down right next to the barn steps. I wanna move soooooooooooo bad.

I'm still bringing 4 goslings in every night and they are getting BIG. They are still in down and no mama to snuggle with and the snakes can get in that pen. Snakes will try to swallow a bird head first and if the rest of the bird is too big the snake just kills it and leaves it. The goslings are still in a tote at night, but I'm going to have to set up a jumbo crate soon. Ducklings will NOT cooperate for a good photo and my camera doesn't take good distance shots. Having a time keeping those buggers in their pen and off the pond. I want them bigger before they spend so much time with the mayhem crowd out there.

I'll try, but my old camera doesn't do well unless I'm close and if they see me they run back to mama.

LOL, the frying pan was the only thing I have that is shallow enough for baby runners to climb in and out of. So I filled it with water and put it in the pen for them. It sure is funny to see the pan sitting there with 10 ducklings paddling around in it.

One of my runner hens just hatched 10 cuties! They are in a nice pen with mom. Water in a frying pan for now and feed in a shallow dish. They are enjoying the water but really WANTED to get thru the fence to the pond. I prefer they not join the crowd in the yard just yet.