This is the continuing saga of Jack and Diane, amateur farmers. We left our home in Thailand in early June of 2011 and we are working hard at settling in on our farm of 25 acres in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. It is truly beautiful here so we have to be careful not to spend too much time enjoying the view, oh hell, what am I saying? We don't spend enough time enjoying the view. This farm work is hard and there are so many projects that we barely have enough time in the day to do our chores and work on our projects before it is time to put all of the animals up for the night and get inside for some dinner - which usually gets eaten very late around here, but we're working on that. Anyway it really is beautiful here. We are nestled between stunning Bull Shoals Lake and the White river, each about a mile in either direction. The land is not flat and it is not fertile. The easiest crop to grow would be rocks but we are making our way and have already put in 6 large raised garden beds (I mentioned the rocks - I almost ruined a brand new tiller trying to till the first bed and gave up on that) and the late tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and beans that we planted are doing well. We have a South facing property with a 4 acre pasture to the West and about an acre to the East. The West pasture is where we put the garden. The next big project for the garden will be a greenhouse with a block wall for heat retention - I'll take pictures and show you how I did it, when I do it. The picture here is of me with a black snake that I had to kill - it had one of our baby geese halfway down its' throat!
Our menagerie is growing seemingly by the day. We ordered 50 Rhode Island Red chicks while we were still in Thailand and they arrived a week after we did. Stupid me. We were anything but prepared for chickens or anything else. Our little farm has a barn but it was in such sad shape and so full of the garbage of years and years of being a catch all that I didn't know whether to tear it down and build a new one or try and salvage it. I salvaged it and I am glad I did. All of the junk is gone now and thanks to the help of my 82 year old father, my 31 year old son, and my brothers in law Steve and Ed, we got one of the barn stalls converted to a chicken house just as the chicks outgrew the brooder.
So we are off to a good start. We have lots of animals, all babies and all fun. In the order of arrival I will break it down for you: 50 chickens, 7 Cayuga ducks, 5 Khaki Campbell ducks, 3 Toulouse geese (we lost one goose to a 6' black snake and one duck to our own carelessness, so this is what we have left), 2 lovely kittens, 1 Blue Heeler puppy named Delores (Dolly), 2 Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs named Bernadette and Roxanne (these will be our breeders so we felt reasonably safe naming them), 1 New Zealand White rabbit Winnie the Wabbit, after our lovely sister and sister in-law Linda who wants to take care of the rabbits when she visits, "Tell me about the rabbits again, George" (we're working really hard to find more - the county fairs start this week!), and our latest addition is a lovely little German Shorthair Pointer named Daphne.
This is a good start, I guess. More to come but I had to get this blog started - I promised. Peace and Love!
