Living on a busy hobby farm provides countless beautiful opportunities for great photos. Springtime is especially busy for us this year with all of the new babies surrounding us: pigs, turkeys, rabbits, and chicks. There’s no doubt that spring brings all kinds of new life, whether it be new animals, the buds on the trees, new garden beds being built, rhubarb popping up out of the ground…it’s beautiful. And it’s the time of year I long for the most after a long winter.

And because the primary focus of my blog is not so much on my everyday personal life but as a resource for those who want to learn and share about homestead life, I find it lacking opportunities to share these photos that I love so much. So I’m going to try to be better at doing some photo updates on a regular basis.

Here are some recent farm photos:

One of our Red Shoulder Yokohama hens went broody and so we let her sit on a mixture of eggs. We may have ended up with a pure Yokohama chick (pictured in the middle of the three), which would be a pleasant surprise. But since we have 7 (or so? can’t keep track) roosters, you never know….

At the end of April, we acquired 3 Duroc feeder pigs from my dear friend Anna and her husband-to-be. After discussing the idea of raising pigs over the past year, we dove head-first into the world of pig farming. It took just a couple of days for the little guys to realize that we are the food people, and they love us! We love to scratch them behind their ears and on their backs while they eat. They’ve grown especially fond of hard boiled eggs, and with the chickens producing nearly 2 dozen a day and the ducks cranking out 6-8 per day as well, we have been able to make them a regular part of their diet. I’ve discovered a wonderful resource in the Pastured Pigs Facebook group.

I love that the ducks are laying after a long winter break. My favorite eggs are those from our Cayugas, which are nearly black to begin with, gradually turning light gray over the course of the season. The darkest ones are those that they first lay for the year and it’s like a treasure hunt waiting for them!

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I’m a huge advocate of hugelkultur gardening (for more on what hugelkultur is, see my Hugelkultur How-To Start-to-Finish post). Last year I experimented with just 3 hugelkutur raised garden beds. The results were spectacular, and so I have expanded significantly this year. I have 7 beds completely done and 3 more underway. In addition, I’ve built a keyhole-style hugelkultur bed for my tomatoes- more on that later. I’m very excited to see what’s to come this gardening season!

Our meat rabbit program continues to grow. We always have around 25-30 rabbit kits at any given time; 3 breeder does and 2 bucks. This guy here is a chocolate buck that I decided to keep last minute out of a litter we were dispatching. He had been a fast grower, healthy, great conformation- all the things I was looking for. I knew I wanted to keep another buck as I didn’t like depending on just the one. So here’s “Travis” as my 4-year old named him. He’s a sweetheart. He loves attention, riding the cage door all the way down when I open it, and pushing on the water jug when I fill his water. Such personality!

Our turkey poults are almost one month old now. I bought 8 of them, expecting a couple to die. But they all made it and we’re getting ready to move them out of the basement and into their coop outside. This is my first time raising turkeys and I’m in awe of how different they are from baby chicks. Not skittish or afraid at all. They like to roost on the edge of their brooder box and often get out and venture about the basement. When I go to put them back in their box, they come right up to me. Love their little noises and even how they slightly resemble vultures at the moment.

 That’s it for today! Thanks for letting me share with you. I hope all is well for you, wherever you are 🙂