Our Farm this last year

Our very high energy filled, high jumping, extremely smart and can get out of almost anywhere dog, Sherlock. He's part Whippet and part Australian Shepherd. So he has the speed of one and the brains from the other.

 Our first year trying to grow watermelons in our greenhouse. 

It worked but not as well as we had hoped. Maybe this coming spring we can try again.

The greenhouse over flowing with tomato plants, peppers, basil, and nasturtiums!

We tried 5 types of peppers and surprisingly the cayenne peppers grew the best.

The beans had a hard time during the spring and early summer but the ended up taking over the entire planter!

Our strawberries grew like weeds and we got strawberries even through September!

I think we had almost to many cucumbers. We had about 16 vines and they went crazy. I think the whole family had their fill of Greek salad. 

Last year I finally saved up enough money to buy 18 ducks. They arrived late in March on a rather cold and stormy day.
We had a pin in the "Duck Mansion" all ready for them. We counted them and found we had one extra! I bought them sexed so I didn't end up with more males then I needed. I ordered 11 Khaki Campbell ducks (those are the brown ones) and 7 Welsh Harlequins (2 drakes and 5 ducks). After we counted them we found out that there was an extra one. Later that one turned out to be a female!  

That day we lost power twice and had to put them in the house where they could stay a bit warmer.   Late that night we lost power again and my dad and I ran out to load them up and bring them into the house again.  It was an adventurous first day to say the least. But after that everything settled down a bit.

This is them at 3 or 4 weeks old. So big already!

And then.....

What happened? 

They all grew up! They are about 5 or 6 months old here.

Dad and Matt did a great job building the pond. I don't know how they would have survived with out a place to swim.

This one is a bit odd. I don't have a name for her but she has a little "egg" shaped bump on her head.

When we drain the pond they love the little creek it makes as it goes out to the back woods. Lots of little goodies to find.

Meet one of my two Welsh Harlequin drakes: Carwyn
I thought I'd named all my Welsh Harlequins Welsh names or at least something from the English Isles.
My other WH drake has more reddish brown on his chest and his name is Gwalchgwyn

 The Khakis don't have any names because try as I might I can't tell them apart.

This is Lucy. I don't know when we first notice that her bill was twisting but it was when they were about a month old. She is a lot braver then the rest, though smaller. Lucy can't eat pellets since she can't move her top bill. Yet she seems to be enjoying life.

This is Margret. The other Welsh Harlequin ducks that I have named so far are Gwyna or Gwyneth, and Juliet.

Our Rhode Island Red Rooster. Contrary to what most people say about roosters and Rhodies in particular, I have yet to have a mean rooster. We got two white roosters this year and gave one away, then we found out that we also had two Rhodie roosters and a Buff Orpington rooster. So we kept one Rhodie and the Buff. They all seem to get along very well.

Our white rooster is one of the sweetest of the three roosters on the farm. 

Our one almost solid white hen. We still don't know what she is, but she knows how to get out of almost any area we put her in.

One of our Silver Lace Wyandottes 

This is Cloe our only Easter Araucana. She lays almost olive green eggs.

I hope to post more pictures of Providence Family Farms soon! So stay tuned!