Back Porch Farm

06/29/2019

Yesterday’s high of 89 was enough to make one of our hives “beard”. Bearding is the bee equivalent of sitting around on the front porch bitching about the heat.

06/27/2019

Thomas has just left for a new Farm in Las Vegas. Bye bye Thomas and good luck! I think I just heard Henry heave a sigh of relief. All hail King Henry! He’s back on his throne.

06/27/2019

The last of our farm babies arrived yesterday... 2 pigeon squabs from our wild pigeon pair. Squabs are some of the most helpless of nature's newborns, barely able to hold up their heads for more than a second or two. I am actually not completely sure if both of them are alive! I only got one fleeting glimpse before one of the parents settled back over top of them.

And it looks like Joanna Bird Turkey is done at 3 poults. I will remove the remaining 10 eggs this weekend so she can focus on getting her three babies out to explore. I'm surprised only 3 of 13 eggs hatched. But after her predator attack a few months previous, resulting in a badly wounded vent, I imagine she wasn't too excited about doin' the wild thang with Thomas. (Ouch!)

06/22/2019

Isla got up at 5:30 this morning for animal chores - an unusual occurrence!

06/22/2019

The burbling acequia was swift and cool last evening after animal chores.

06/19/2019

Our new hives are looking good! They have drawn out enough comb for us to give them a honey box to work on. SWEEET! 😀

06/16/2019

Our caprine nuggets are coming around, our relationship fueled by liberal applications of dried cranberries and fresh grapes. I was actually greeted enthusiastically at the barn door this morning when I let the wee ones free. My heart is singing with joy! ❤️

06/14/2019

Princess Leia is finally letting us rub and scratch her back. Luke prefers contact across his sister’s body. Han still seems to find touch unpleasant. But all 3 are at their most receptive when on top of their play house where Leia and Luke even tried to eat the hat off my head!

06/13/2019

Our new goaties are almost untouchable and it is breaking my heart! The doeling (Princess Leia) is the bravest and we have snuck in a few pets to her hind end when she lets us get that close. She and her twin brother (Luke Skywalker) have graced us with a few finger nibbles, but their cousin (Han Solo, of course) won't even go that far. We are spending hours on end sitting quietly in their pen, talking sweetly to them. This morning we resorted to crawling around on our hands and knees to be more goat like. Isla has gone as far as shoving her face into the hay in their manager! Lol! Forward progress is agonizingly slow. 😔 (Yes, their names have changed but I think these names will stick.)

06/12/2019

Not only did we return from our raft trip to pick up the goaties, but also to discover our pigeons are sitting on a new clutch (yay!) and that one peep went missing - our white frizzled Cochin (boo).

06/11/2019

Bringing home the goaties!!!

06/11/2019

A few choice pics from our 3 day river trip on the Wild and Scenic Rio Chama in Northern NM. Three 14’ rafts, 6 personal crafts (inflatable kayaks, a SUP, and a sit on top), 8 parents, 5 kiddos aged 7-11yrs, sunburn, hundreds of mosquitoes bites, all terrain bocce tournaments, swimming, hiking, rapids, gentle stretches, oh, and one fractured coccyx bone. OUCH! (Not mine thank god). All in all a great trip! 😍

06/05/2019

Isla and I just finished broadcasting native grass seeds in the areas I dug up sage brush. PERFECT morning for it, in a gentle spring drizzle! Now for the final shopping and packing to leave on our 4 day rafting trip tomorrow!! The Rio Chama is at the highest flow I will have ever seen it. It'll be a fast, smooth run. SWEEEET!

06/05/2019

Sweet Mikey, our neighbor's sorrel gelding, and one of two chicken mamas, Tiger Lily, with 4 of her 5 peeps. The lacey white one is apparently a frizzled cochin. Due to a language barrier, we ended up with 2 frizzled cochins and a mystery bantam. NOT what we wanted. Lol. The two mamas hatched only 2 chicks and the remaining 7 were bought at the feed store and successfully adopted.

06/02/2019

After a huge, and much needed break from the farm (and subsequently Facebook), we have decided to reboot our farm. Welcome to Back Porch Farm 2.0! Less animals, no farm business to run, less stress, more fun! Our poultry flock that dropped to a low of 11 chickens and 2 turkeys, has grown back to 20 chickens (one a rooster) and 4 turkeys, plus 9 chicks split between two mama hens. One of our turkey hens is sitting on a clutch of 13 eggs due to hatch starting June 22nd. Our wild rock pigeons, Amelia Noseheart and Charles Lindbird, are working on their second try at a clutch after the first clutch was crushed by a chicken. Our neighbor has been keeping his horse on our land for a few months to our great joy! Mikey has happily become part of the farm family. AND, the best news of all, we are bringing home three 9 week old goat kids in about 9 days! Two are castrated wethers, and one a doeling. Their mothers and grandmothers were actually born on our farm!! But with the Farm 2.0 version, NO breeding, NO milking, NO kidding! Just a lot of goatie love and fun! Stay tuned for photos (if I can embrace this FB thing again!)....

02/09/2018

How exciting! I made it into the Taos News again, and it wasn't even on the police blotter. http://www.taosnews.com/stories/taoseos-talk-tips-for-raising-backyard-chickens,46095

I first became aware that many people in Taos raise chickens when my new neighbors broughttheir birds over from their previous house. They built the chicken pen up against our shared fence, which …

12/22/2017

The last 2 weeks have been such a farm whirlwind I have not even wanted to post. It would appear the universe is taking my request to downsized very seriously! After 3 1/2 years of trying, I am in the process of getting my wish.

Two Monday’s ago a lovely farm couple from the Pueblo came to meet my herd. After 1 1/2 hrs with the goaties, they decided they would take Luna and her doelings Andromeda and Cassiopeia. That was huge for me, but not nearly as huge as their next statement - that they would take them now, IN THEIR PRIUS! 20 minutes later, after a traumatizing session of heavy weight goat wrestling, my 3 most favorite goats were driving down the road away to their new farm and I had a wad of cash in my hand. My wee milk maiden sobbed for 45 mins and I almost threw up from emotions and disbelief. (We visited them that weekend and their new farm and owners are absolutely perfect!)

A few nights later my good friend showed up after dark and we loaded 16 of my hens into 3 dog crates and loaded them into her car. She too will be a wonderful new mother to my hens. So we are down to 24 chickens and 3 turkeys.

And this afternoon we wrestled mama Willow and her doelings Coco and Jasmine into a big crate in the back of the truck, and delivered them to the same farm. We are SO grateful that this farm family was willing to take all six of them together!

The next step is harvesting.... 2 roosters, and the 2 remaining goats. We’ll save that unpleasant task for after xmas. Wow. It is really happening. I am about to be goat-free. I want to sob and rejoice all at once!

12/15/2017

An adventurous dog mushing friend had the opportunity to interview Frankie and her family and wrote this article!!

Half Nigerian dwarf and half pygmy goat, Frankie has quite the life, enjoying locations other goats may only dream about.

12/07/2017

Sweet LGDs ❤️

12/04/2017

11/26/2017

Wow! After a delightful 4 month vacation from Facebook, I am carefully tiptoeing back into the scene. This back from vacation post is to express the gratitude I feel at this time of year for my family, my farm, my friends, and my greater community. Holiday blessings to all! I'll be back with more soon…❤️

07/30/2017

Heh heh heh

There's a Greenprints for that. Happy Friday gardeners - whatever zone you're in!

07/23/2017

About 6 weeks ago we imported 7 massive bullfrog tadpoles from a lake we camped by, to our backyard pond. They were 6 to 7 inches long! One or two had developing hind legs. The rest of them just little appendage k***s. This weekend our first tadpole became an air breather! And the rest are soon to follow. You can see in this photograph frog up out of the pond with a 1 inch residual tail. To the right is a large tadpole with front and rear legs but still water breathing. To the left is another tadpole even further behind on the developmental timeline with only small hind legs. It is so much fun to watch these monsters progress through their life cycle!

07/09/2017

Our little turkey poult, Phryne, has completely disappeared.... no pile of feathers, no body, no sign at all. She was the coolest bird, especially for a turkey poult who notoriously want nothing to do with humans. I could call her in Turkey speak and she would run to me! She followed me around like a puppy. I miss her so much! And now we are down to only her sibling Dot for this year's clutch. 😢

06/26/2017

Found a clutch of grasshopper powered turkey eggs. Second egg run of the season. Go Liberty!!

06/26/2017

I watched the two avian families today (turkey and chicken) with great admiration. The moms have taught the wee ones how to successfully hunt some massive 3" grasshoppers! Incredible to watch these tiny fluff balls stabbing, grabbing and shaking repeatedly. The families were so full of grasshoppers they needed multiple naps throughout the day. So grateful for my hopper hunters!!!! We would be overrun without them!! ❤️

06/26/2017

Hagrid watching the sunset from his favorite spot!

06/23/2017

Catching some yummy breakfast trout at Morphy Lake. Thanks to our new farm sitting family we can actually leave town on occasion!!

06/23/2017

Liberty and family are on pest patrol, and doing a stellar job of it! They are reeking serious havoc on our grasshopper population. Go turkeys!!!!

06/23/2017

Looks like we are just meant to be goat farmers. Our rehoming arrangement has fizzled.... for the third summer running. But honestly, I am not tremendously disappointed. The farm is out of its spring stress mode of babies and planting and into its summer maintenance mode of weeding, harvesting, grazing rotation, pest control, etc. Not only are we not bottle feeding kids this year (yay!), but we are not even milking! We'll night ween kids in mid July and then add milking to the list of chores. With milking comes doing things with that milk.... cheese, kefir, yogurt, cajeta, soap, lotion bars....but I will have had a good long break by then. And now I get to love up the babies and watch them grow. All is good. ❤️