It's Spring ~So Much To Do !

The most difficult thing about our new home is deciding how to spend our precious time when there are so many things to do, to see, and to enjoy right here on 'Laughing Dove Farm'. Should I take a walk in the woods with our dogs ? ( Picture above was taken on a path in our woods.) Should I work on my spinning, weaving, gardens, scrapbooking, writing, or maybe my husband and I should go camping. But hey, fishing season is almost here and the boat needs to be readied ... I have a few good books tucked away to read, some quilt squares cut out and ready to sew. I know, I'll sit on the back deck and watch the birds, the deer, my sheep and maybe catch a nap in the sun.

 Why do we call our new home 'Laughing Dove Farm' ? We love doves ! We've kept white doves for over 2 decades now and left doves in our dovecote at Cedar Pond for the new family to enjoy , but also brought 3 pairs of doves with us here to our new home. Our doves are the offspring of the many generations of doves from Cedar Pond. Plus, there are wild doves all around us and anyone who listens to doves can hear the distinctive laughing- like sounds they make. ( Picture above is of wild doves perched in trees here at our new home.)

 The chicks I ordered from a hatchery arrived in the mail last week. I bought some chicks that should grow up to lay blue eggs and am very excited about my future laying flock , but not as excited as our youngest grandson is about them. I spend a lot of time tending my new chicks, and also tending the mature laying flock of 8 we brought with us from Cedar Pond.

 I had my sheep sheared the first weekend in March while there was still snow and ice everywhere. My new sheep shearer is a tiny woman who also is a mom of 2 little ones and has a flock of sheep of her own.

 

 Here are my naked sheep, most of them ewes who were still expecting lambs when I took this picture. Within days after the 16 ewes ( female sheep) were sheared they began having their lambs. Every night during this time of the year, no matter how cold and miserable it is outside, I do regular check ups in the barn to see how the ladies are faring, if any new lambs have been born, and tend to what they need at this stage of their pregnancy. Mostly they need deep bedding, and a lot of drinking water, plus a safe place to have their lambs undisturbed by the other sheep or predators.

One of the joys of new lambs is sharing them with grandchildren. Here is a picture of two of our granddaughters ~sisters holding sister lambs.

 We still have snow in our woods, in the fields, and in the surrounding hills, but it is spring and all you need to be reminded of the season is look out onto my fields and see little lambs running, jumping, and playing !

 We have 19 new lambs. All lambs were born alive and healthy, and their mamas are healthy too. That is such a blessing to not be taken for granted when I consider how many sheep I have now (way too many !). My flock doubled with lambing season.

 Have I mentioned we have a lot of wild turkeys here too ? We've counted at least 40. They roost in our woods at night. During the day they range from our woods to the neighbors' on either side of us. They're pretty predictable, we can almost set our clocks by their trek back into the woods at night. Until I moved here and began to observe wild turkeys from our living room windows every day, I did not realize how far and how high wild turkeys can fly, and also how smart they are. ( Picture is of wild turkeys in our field.)

Wild turkeys between our sheep pen and our bee yard. They wander into our hay barn and all around the sheep pens and pasture too.

The hills across the gravel road from our house are still wearing winter snow, but the sunshine and warm rains are melting the snow quickly and next week we're supposed to have warmer , drier weather. I kind of like the rain and the snow and am not concerned about it sticking around longer than it is supposed to. The hot weather will be here soon and by September I know I'll be wishing for the rain and snow again.

" There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven ~ " Ecclesiastes 3:1

Blue-Bottle Herb Garden

 The dovecote my husband built me for my herb garden makes me happy . I especially love the detailing in the roof ridge that mirrors the roof ridges he put into our larger dovecote , the goat house, and also the grape & kiwi arbors.

 I keep only 2 doves in my herb garden, my Blue Bottle Herb Garden. You can see how we decided on the name...

 ...there are blue bottles everywhere in this garden.

 These blue bottles are holding the prongs of upside down tomato cages together to form supports for my comfrey . Comfrey loves to get big and floppy , and does so very quickly, often taking over this shady corner of my herb garden if left unattended too long. I use a lot of comfrey for my livestock, poultry, and also make poultices out of it for my feet which have a tendency to get very dry and crack & bleed. Comfrey poultices are great for this. ( I will do another post on this later.)

 Our dog Hawk keeps me company as I weed the garden.

 This old bike holds an old milk crate stuffed with blue bottles and flowers. It is leaning up against a picture window we had to replace after a big earthquake here a few years ago caused the window to split & crack. I like the window in this garden and it helps  keep the woods on the other side of the garden fence at bay.

 Fennel has a lovely licorice scent and thrives in my garden. The fennel has seeded itself in other parts of the herb garden too. It is like growing feathers ! You can see some of the sage and Lady's Mantle growing at the foot of the fennel.

 Lovage also thrives here. I have metal cages and stakes around and through the lovage to keep it from bending and breaking. I love this herb. It tastes like celery, the leaves are yummy chopped up and used in salads, eggs, soups. Anything celery adds flavor to would benefit from lovage. It has a little stronger celery taste, so not too much is needed. The stems grow up to 6 feet in my garden and are hollow so if you strip them of leaves ( or not ) you can use the stems as straws in any drink you might garnish with celery such as tomato juice, delicious!

 My rosemary grows quickly in this garden, and thrives all year, even in the coldest winters. Since my older rosemary plants are now unruly bushes I decided to start 2 new rosemary bushes and encourage them to be more orderly and well-behaved. I placed a large tomato cage upside down over rosemary planted in a large pot. The blue bottle holds the prongs of the cage together. I like the touch of blue it adds.

My blue bird bath sits in the thyme portion of the garden, along with a sun-dial ( not shown here). There are several varieties of thyme in this garden and when they bloom it looks like the bird-bath is perched on a beautiful carpet of color. Our honeybees love the thyme garden especially. My Blue Bottle Garden is a source of herbs my husband and I use for cooking . Some of the herbs are especially beneficial to our health. The garden is also a place of delight on sunny days to soak up the sights, sounds, and scents of Cedar Pond . God is so good and we are truly blessed !

I am joining the Thursday Farm Blog-Hop*. Please check out all the blogs offering useful and inspirational information regarding all things farm,gardening, crops, food preservation keeping poultry & livestock...decorating too. You don't need to have a farm to appreciate all you can learn as you visit these blogs !*

Gardening Around The Dovecote

 This flower container is along the picket fence leading to our dovecote. The pansies surprised me by coming up again this year along with the pink phlox behind them. The phlox won't bloom until mid-summer, but they'll be more than 2 feet tall and fill the air with their sweet scent.

 This is the view from the other side of our front porch. The front porch wraps around two sides of our home. The grape arbor has 2 seats under it and provides a very cool shady spot to sit in on hot summer days. At the end of the fence, upper left of the photo, is the dovecote my husband built me.

 I have 2 chickens in the dovecote too. They clean up the dropped seed and keep things interesting.

 I just finished cleaning up the flower beds around the doves. This year I set aside a week on my calendar to catch up on spring cleaning in the garden. The past few years have been hit & miss and our gardens have suffered. My husband has worked so hard to make the flower beds and herb garden for me and I want him to know I do appreciate his hard work. Tending the gardens is the best way to show that.

 I love the way this bird bath seems to emulate the scallops of the Lady's Mantle growing around its base. Lady's Mantle is named after the Virgin Mary. Dew and raindrops in the leaves look like pearls, and on very misty mornings each leaf looks like it has jewels all around it. The drops often reflect eye-piercing rainbow colors when rays of sunshine hit them.

 Hostas & blue Lithodora.

The weather is so beautiful, especially now that it has warmed up. There are new blossoms and baby birds everywhere. Hummingbirds & butterflies too. Spring has finally arrived around here !

Doves & Scrolls For the Garden (Arbor For Kiwi)

My husband added this detail to many special buildings he built for me.This is part of the roof support of my dovecote.(below)

 If you look at the roof ridge in this pen in my herb garden you can see the same dove detail. It is presently housing our granddaughter's rooster Roseville, but I will be putting doves in it soon.You can see the close-up here.

 The new arbors for kiwi and grapes surround the dovecote and my husband has worked to craft them so they reflect the other garden structures he has built. We are not finished yet, so many little details to add, plus the landscaping and the upkeep of the gardens.

 The decking under the wood lawn furniture is not on yet. We will be using the gray plastic decking that looks like wood, but will last as many years as we hope to live here, and then some. You can see the new kiwis my husband planted and is training to climb the arbor. The kiwi vines will cover the arbor in a year or two, provide shade in the summer, and fruit to eat.

 

A Whole Lot Of Brooding Going On Around Here

There is a whole lot of brooding going on around here.Inside the dove cote in front of the house...

...doves are sitting on eggs. They've gone "broody", which "describes a hen's condition in the period during which she is intent on incubating her eggs and is often reluctant to move off the nest until they are hatched." 'CHICKENS' by Derek Hall

On the floor of the dove-cote there is some brooding going on too. See the stump in the top right part of the picture? Look closely...

...yes, there! Sitting oh so quietly and calmly, is a bantam frizzled cochin. She won't leave the eggs she is sitting on, rarely leaving to eat or drink. If I try to move her she seems catatonic, but if I take her too far away from the clutch of eggs she is sitting on she squawks and flaps fiercely in her attempt to be back on her eggs.

The other 2 bantam cochins, her sister and the rooster, leave her to the eggs. They know better than to disturb her. Smart chickens!

My midget white turkey hens are also sitting on eggs. They simply scratched a bowl shaped area of shavings out and laid their eggs. They won't move off their eggs either. I can walk around them, add feed & water to their pen, but they steadfastly sit,almost as if they are deaf and blind to anything but what is under them.Like the chickens and doves, they seem to be focused inward, oblivious to everything but the tending of their eggs.

In the bantam pen in the back of our home the story is the same. bantam hens striving with each other to sit on a clutch of eggs. Often the hens will steal eggs from each other by rolling them away from a nest mate and under their own feathered breasts.

These 4 ( FOUR! ) hens have decided to share the nest box. They sit together, day after day, keeping the eggs warm, turning them, and often gently, oh so gently, slyly sliding an egg out from under a nest mate, to warm it under their own breast.

Either way, the eggs are being incubated, and when hatched, will be tended faithfully. I will remove 3 of the hens just before hatching because I have had hens fight so fiercely over the chicks that the chicks end up being unintended victims as they try to get under the wings of their fighting mothers.

Meanwhile, back in the dove-cote, look what just hatched!

5 new bantam white cochin chicks, tended by a devoted mother.All this brooding going on around here is going to make for a lot more drama and entertainment on Cedar Pond! 

I hope any brooding around your home is productive, leading to righteous fruit and a happy home, and not hen fights! Remember, when hens fight, little chicks get hurt, and big chicks do too! "Let all be harmonious , sympathetic,brotherly, kindhearted,and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil, insult for insult; but giving a blessing instead;....And who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed." I Peter3: 8,9,13