Of course you can’t tell in the photo that the wind is blowing but you can see some of the rain drops that are falling.  I took the photo when it has stopped raining for just a bit.  Most of the rain is really gone through and we’re left with the wind portion of the tropical storm.

The garden has really gotten a nice watering yesterday and overnight.  This will definitely give my seeds that I planted this past weekend a nice boost :-)  I am working on planning what I will be planting in the remainder of my garden…  I still need to plant more lettuce and more turnips… those are things that we love to eat during the winter months and, they are veggies that also grow very well during our mild winters here on the Gulf Coast.

Well, I need to run and get going for the day.  Hope you have a good one!

The schools are all closed here tomorrow since it’s going to be rainy, windy (tropical storm force winds) and just overall nasty weather.  The news is saying that there will be a good deal of flooding in the low lying areas due to the amount of rain that we’re going to get from this storm…  But where I’m located, we’ve never had any problem with flooding thank goodness.

Well, SAM has been with me almost 100% of the day today.  He doesn’t like to be alone… I don’t know if that is because he lost his owner and is afraid he’ll loose me too or what.  But he has to go where I go… including to the school to take DD and to pick her up LOL.  He’s such a good boy buy I just don’t know how we’re going to be able to keep him with our outside dogs, our one inside Maltese and the one inside kitty.  He’s just not socialized toward other animals, especially any that are smaller than he is.  So, for now, we’re just keeping them all separated and locked up in separate rooms.  I’m kinda thinking about getting him a extra large crate so that when we do let the kitty out of lockup or the Maltese out of DD’s bedroom, we will not have to worry about him attacking them.  I know it’s just nature and he’s a hunter type dog.

After we left the vet, we headed over to the pet supply store for a chain type leash that he cannot chew in 2.  And, it seems to be working because he can’t get loose now thank goodness.  I’m back home and getting ready to take my shower and get ready to go to the office to work.  I smell like D-O-G….

On the tropical storm… IDA is downgraded to a tropical storm with 70 mile per hour winds and the track has moved just a little to the west making the impact point seem to be the Mississippi/Alabama state line.   We’re getting a little rain now but not really much as far as wind goes.  I’m sure that will pick up a little later.  But, with IDA running dead into a cold front, the storm is fizzling out.  It looks like we’ll just get a couple of inches of rain and that will be it.  There will be some localized flooding in low lying areas along the coastline.  But, nothing to worry about.

Hope that you’re having a good Monday!

Here’s another picture that the human daughter took of me - she is really sweet and I am getting so attached to her:

She feeds me really good treats!

And this is the projected path:

Ida has been upgraded to a Cat 2 for now, but the forecast shows that it should degrade down to a Cat 1 before making landfall.

DH woke up this morning and took SAM for a walk… and SAM was happy to got outside so he could do “his business”.   So a big question was answered — YES! he is house trained, thank you GOD!

And he is definitely a “bird dog” because the cocketeil flapped his wings and SAM made a beeline to the bird cages.  So now, the cocketeil and the white dove have had to find another room as accomodations for their cages out of SAM’s sight.  We also put Toby, the Maltese puppy, in DD’s room.  I can just imagine this huge lab and this tiny white dog meeting up… Toby probably wouldn’t make it out alive.  And Beau Kitty the cat is now locked up inside the laundry room for his own protection too. 

SAM has had a “go of it” at the fence with the neighbor dogs so I don’t think he was kept with other dogs much at his owner’s home.  He is not socialized…. Now the big question is how are we going to locate his owner?  I think I will take him to the vet tomorrow to see if he has one of those identification chips.  We’ll also be on the lookout in the newspaper to see if someone is missing a chocolate lab.  It’s going to break DH and DD’s heart to have to give him back but if I were his owner, I would be worried sick about him.  That’s what I keep telling them (especially DD) so she will understand how his owner must feel without SAM this morning.

I will try to take a couple of pics of him a little later and post on the blog.  For now, I need to go and feed/water and collect eggs.  I also want to plant another one of the raised beds that DH prepared for me yesterday. Then it will be off to the office to work again.  Hope that you have a great day.

Saturday morning and afternoon we had a great time outside in the garden!  It just felt so good to get out and dig in the dirt, ya know what I mean?  There’s just something about getting back to the Earth and enjoying the great outdoors with the plants (veggies in my situation) and animals (cows and chickens for me!). 

Kitty and Davison (our Black Angus “puppy” cows) are getting so fat!  And they are so spoiled too.   I would have never imagined in a million years that I would begin to love cows!  But I’m really attached to them and I’m glad that we’re going to keep them through the winter and into the Spring.  To the casual passer-by they are just two black cows or steers.  But we can see how they are both so unique and different in everything they do and how they act.  Kitty has a “moo” that sounds like an elk call.  Davison has a very deep “moo” that will rattle the windows LOL  The shapes of their faces and necks are different, the “tuffs” on the top of their heads are different…. we can just see how beautiful they are and how individual each of them are.

Now the chickens, we’ll they are just so entertaining!  I had a little fun with them today.  Most of the hens had already gone into the next boxes to leave their “presents” for me (eggs) and I thought I would give another peek just to make sure one of them didn’t slip back in to lay another egg.  Well, I interrupted “Miss Priss” (her nickname for today).  She is one of the Rhode Island Reds.  She gave me a look like “Hello, can’t you tell I’m busy in here?”  Take a look:

So I quickly excused myself and went back to the garden to work a little more.  I decided I would go back later (which I did) and this time she was ready for me… head first waiting for me to open the nest box door…

For some reason she was just taking her own dear sweet time laying her egg today….   Now Buffy, she wanted to play Peek-A-Boo…

And she caught me in this pic:

DH worked on flipping the compost bins which is a big job considering they are 3×3x4′ tall and… there are 4 bins!  We really needed to flip them so that we could get some air mixed up and fluff them some AND, we also needed more room because we’re running out!  I was able to use a couple of wheelbarrow loads from the compost bins.  Some of the material on the very bottom was close to being finished - so that is what we used to supplement several of the raised beds that I was going to plant in today.

Later this morning (after I’ve had a little sleep), I’ll be going out to do some planting in those beds that DH prepared for me.  I am so excited that we are making our own compost from the leaves that fall out of our trees, from our kitchen scraps, from our steers’ manure, from our chickens’ manure, and from the lawn clippings that we obtain from our yard.  It’s had to tell in the picture above, but this stuff is rich and black. 

DH asked me what are we going to do with all of this compost.  That was an easy question to answer…. I told him that we’d be using it in the new raised beds we are going to build for the Spring planting LOL  Between that and supplementing the raised beds we already have, I’m sure that I’ll find a home for all of this compost.

Now a quick explanation of what I was blogging about with the peas and the tomato cages…. I planted “Alaska” which is a shelling pea.  The vines are supposed to grow to be 2 1/2 feet high.  So I planted the seeds around the base of the tomato cage and I’m using the tomato cage as a mini trellis.  And, around the tomato cages I planted some lettuce and some chard in the empty space.  Here’s a pic:

OK, time for me to end this post and get some sleep…. now for the reason that I haven’t been to sleep all night.  Well, around 2 PM I headed up to the office to meet another volunteer who is working on “the project”.  Well, we have so much work to do up there and we stayed until very late and until we were very tired - until 3 AM.  As we locked up and were headed to our vehicles, I saw a dog in the parking lot.  At first it scared me because you never know if stray dogs are mean or nice.  Well, the office is right next to a 5 lane highway…. I told the other volunteer that I was afraid that the puppy would get hit by a car.  Well, when I said “puppy”, he stopped, turned around and looked at me and wagged his tail.

That was it… I couldn’t leave him.  He came over to me wagging his tail and was the sweetest thing ever!  He was a full-grown chocolate lab.  No collar or tag.  I took him inside the office and locked him up in the bathroom while I ran to WalMart and purchased treats, a water bowl, a food bowl, a collar and a leash.  Oh, and I found him a huge rawride bone to chew on.  When I came back to the office, I got the collar on him, loaded him up in my vehicle and took him home.   So this morning, he is in the living room, relaxing and occasionally looking over at me and wagging his tail almost like he is saying “thank you” for saving me.  I woke DD and DH up and they are both in love with him already.  He’s just the sweetest dog.  He even knows how to sit for a treat and he minds pretty good too.

He’s definitely someone’s pet because he teeth are pretty and clean, he’s been trained a little, and even his toenails are clipped (meaning he’s a dog that also lives inside the home).  Let’s hope that he’s “trained” too or I’m going to wake up in a couple of hours to a mess by the front door LOL

Can you believe we are already into November and NOW we’re going to possibly have a storm?  Crazy I tell you LOL

We’ve been very blessed this year and it has been a VERY quiet hurricane and tropical storm season.  I guess that is why I’m so surprised about this one.  Just something to keep an eye on over the next couple of days.  I’ll keep you updated!

First though, we have to finish up in the garden area this morning.  DH has just left to go to the feed store to purchase more calf feed for the boys, Kitty & Davison.  We are trying something new - we feed them 1/2 of their daily feed in the morning and the other 1/2 in the late evening.  Inbetween they eat all the hay that they want.  This new schedule is working better for them…. hmmm, how do I know?  Well, you can tell alot about an animal by its poo.  When we feed the entire amount of feed for the day all at one time, it’s just too much for their stomaches I think.  By splitting their feeding schedule between the morning and late evening, they seem to do better.

This morning I’ll be planting at least 2 more raised beds with some carrots and some beets.  Last year the carrots were so sweet!  The difference between the carrots we grew in the garden and those I last purchased from the store… well, let’s just say “no comparison!”.

I want to do something with the SWC that I grew tomatoes in this past summer but I’m just not sure what would really be a good veggie to grow in them for the fall/winter.  EG seems to be having very good results with broccoli so I might try something like that… maybe some broccoli raab since I haven’t had very good luck with broccoli. 

You’ll get to see some updated pics of the garden this evening… I plan on taking some pics if I can find my camera today LOL.  I want to show you how I will be using the tomato cages as a trellis to grow the Alaska Peas on.  Plus, I am using the space around the outside of the tomato cages for my lettuce and chard.

Something else I planted yesterday was some of the garlic that I purchased a while back.  I know… a little late getting it into the ground LOL   I was hoping to get it planted about 2 months ago but the lack of time interferred with the garden.

It’s time to start thinking about some of the goals that I would like to set for 2010.  Can you believe it’s already November?    One goal that I have for 2010 is to acquire 2 rabbits for our little farmette/homestead. 

I already have the perfect spot for them (pre-planned of course).  I don’t plan on having the rabbits for meat initially.   It’s their manure that will benefit us the most.  Rabbit manure can be used straight in the garden without having to worry about it burning the plants,  So it’s a great way to improve the soil in raised beds as well as supplement feed the plants.

Another way that the rabbits will be beneficial — worms…. I plan on growing worms under the rabbit pen.  And guess who will get some of the worms?  The chickens!  The worms will be an additional source of protein for my chickens.   So there are 2 immediate benefits to having the rabbits here on our little farmette — manure for the garden as well as a place for me to grow worms for my chickens.  Of course there’s always the benefit of having rabbits to pet, hold and love :-)   When I was young I had rabbits for pets.  Rabbits make great pets because they are nice and quiet LOL  Plus, they are a great way to quickly dispose of garden scraps and green vegetable scraps - they turn this into a great manure that is mild and can be immediately used in the garden.

A 2nd goal for 2010 that I’ve really been thinking alot about is a chicken tractor.  Patti uses her chickens to prepare her raised beds for planting.  How?  Well, they consume the spent veggie plants, scratch and eat bugs in the raised beds, and till up the soil all while leaving poo to supplement the soil.  What I would like to do is build a chicken tractor that can also function as a rabbit tractor too.  We have plenty of grass and land and I could also use the “tractor” to graze the rabbits.

Just some ideas to think about for next year.  Well, I need to get outside and get busy!  I will check back in later this evening with some pics!  Have a great Saturday!!

Today the girls layed 8 eggs!  I think that they are finally getting finished with their fall molting and things are leveling off.  I had gotten down to only getting 4 eggs per day for a couple of weeks.  That was still plenty enough eggs for our family.    Two important things today with the chickens - first of all, I found out which Easter Egger (Ameraucana) was laying those extra long eggs.  It’s Buffy!  Her eggs are about 1 1/2 times as long as a regular large egg.  One was so long that when I put it in an egg carton, the carton didn’t want to close!  So far none of them have been double yolks - the yolks are just huge.  The 2nd important thing, this afternoon I went to check for more eggs and one of the Rhode Island Reds was in the nest.  I caught her at just the perfect time to see her stand up and lay an egg!  That’s the first time I’ve actually seen one of my chickens laying an egg.

I was able to get some work in the garden accomplished today.  I planted the entire bed at the end of the chicken run with peas and some onions.  I also planted the bed on the west side of the chicken run with peas.  This fall/winter we have so much vertical space in the garden (from the beds and trellises we built this past summer).  All of this vertical space will be used for peas and I’m hoping it will be a good growing season.  Hopefully, we’ll have a freezer full of peas to last us over the summer months as well as plenty of fresh peas to eat for meals over the winter.

Today 2 more raised beds (2′x4′) were double-dug, fresh compost added as well as some more peat and vermiculite.   These beds will be planted with beets and carrots tomorrow.  Last year the carrots grew so well and I had wished that I had planted more.  So this year I’m planting lots of them.  Hope they do as well this year as they did last year.

What are your plans for this weekend?  Will you be working in your garden?