4/11/2026
Hello everyone,
Spring is here early this year though I feel like we didn’t really have a winter. Last year’s pictures at this time of year shows the greenery not nearly as grown as it is now. It’s been wonderful to take the goats on walks to get fresh greens so early especially for our pregnant girls who are due this month. As I write this Fiona is due today but looks like she will be a little late. I have felt her kid or kids pushing against her side as they move and that has been really exciting. Four of our six girls are bred. Saber is due on the 19th and Willow and Hava are due on the 22nd. I look forward to seeing what our buck Tovia produces. We plan to bottle feed the kids as I’ve seen the difference bottle fed kids are compared to non-bottle-fed kids. They bond to you and become very loving. It will be a lot more work though but my hope is it will be a selling point too. Most of the kids born this year we will sell though I am hoping for a doeling from Fiona because Fiona is my best milk producer.
March had some fun moments. The March Artisan Show happened and I had several of my beaded art on display including my horse tapestry that got framed just in time to show it. I had several new earring, necklace and bracelet designs. One earring design was particularly popular. I had about ten or so and all but one sold. That was great to see.
I was asked to be the treasurer of the Salmon River Art Guild back in January so the last couple months I’ve been getting trained and the show gave me some great experience taking in money for art that sold and then making checks out to the artists. We have some very talented and generous people in the art guild. It has been a joy participating with them. I am the only bead artist with the rest of the artists doing painting, sewing and woodworking.
March was the month to get the chickens ready for breeding. We had two too many roosters so we advertised them on craigslist and had an offer we couldn’t pass up. A couple here in White Bird, Idaho asked that if we could throw in three hens, they would offer $60 total. I didn’t really want to sell my laying hens just yet but I couldn’t pass that up so the two roosters went along with three almost one year old hens. So, now we have four roosters, Buff Orpington cross that was given to us, two Rhode Island Reds and one Ameraucana. To go with these four roosters are eighty-six hens. We separated the Ameraucana rooster with the seven Ameraucana hens so we could make sure the chicks hatched would be pure. These are the chickens that lay a green to aqua colored egg. The rest of our chickens could be Rhode Island Red or crosses of Buff Orpington or Black Australorp. We were given eighteen Silver Appleyard duck eggs to hatch out in our incubator so we added twenty-four chicken eggs a week later. Duck eggs take a week longer than chicken eggs to hatch so hopefully they will all hatch at the same time.
The Khaki Campbell ducks are all grown up. We moved them to the new duck house but we chose to find a new home for our Muscovy ducks. I was concerned that the two breeds wouldn’t mix well so made the choice when I saw a craigslist post of people not too far from us in search of Muscovy ducks. Our Muscovy ducks went to a good home from the sounds of it. The couple said they had about thirty hens and four drakes. They were impressed with how large our drake Donald was. Hopefully they settled in well. We did keep our Pekin hen and she seems to be fitting in with the Khaki’s very well. She has started laying again and even two of the five Khaki’s have started to lay. The Khaki eggs are much smaller though so I’m somewhat disappointed by how small they are. They are a smaller duck and are supposed to continue to lay even through the winter. I have found they are also very flighty ducks. I’m not quite satisfied with them but we’ll give them this year as a trial period. Researching the Silver Appleyard duck may prove to be more what we are looking for. They are a bigger duck, not as flighty and lay larger eggs. They don’t lay as many as the Khaki’s though but the size is important to me and likely my customers. I hope the eggs that were given to us have a good hatch rate so that we can see how we like these ducks. Our Pekin duck lays jumbo sized eggs but only lays during the spring and summer. She has a nice temperament and would recommend Pekin ducks as a good source of duck eggs.
I have started several garden and flower plants indoors. My peppers this year look excellent. I also have tomatoes started and during April I will start my other garden plants like squash, cucumbers and melons. We are always several weeks late at our elevation compared to everyone near the Salmon River so I won’t plant outdoors until after June. I just can’t trust that late frost we always get mid-June.
I hope this finds everyone well. Next month I’ll share our new kid pictures.
Many Blessings,
Joey