Mystery of the midnight dinner guest

We have a real life mystery folks. It all started a few days ago when the lid of one of our feed bins kept winding up on the floor of the supply shed.  The first time it happened I assumed I must have forgotten to put it back. After it happened again I suspected our farm cat, simply because he takes refuge in the shed when it rains. The lid is not easy to remove, you have to lift up on one side to remove it. I put about a two pound rock on top of it, that took care of the problem for a day or two. Then I found the rock on the ground and the lid tossed to the side, man whatever this is it is definitely persistent. So this time I put a large cinder block on top of the bin. A couple days later sure enough the block was on the ground and our midnight dinner guest helped himself to another meal. This time I noticed something

Teeth marks! And pretty big ones at that. We decided to put a small radio in there to scare them away, along with those rascally crows, argh! 

     Maybe we can borrow a trail camera from someone and get a look at this midnight marauder. Thanks for reading and God bless

A Day in the Life of a Micro Farmer

I thought I might share with you a typical day for me. My day begins at 3:30 Am. I wake up and get ready to face the day, I eat two eggs and pork sausage, both of which came right here from the farm. At 4:08 I go outside to check on the animals and to move the layer tractor, which is a 8 foot by 8 foot pen with no floor so they can eat grass and bugs all the while protected from predators. They get moved to a fresh salad bar twice a day.

After I move the tractor it's off to work I go. I return to the farm at approximately 2:05 pm and I immediately begin my afternoon chores, my little helper in tow

I go to the storage shed and measure out the feed for all the animals. The layers get fed once a day and the broilers are fed free choice, which means they have access to feed via a feeder. The broilers are fed free choice so that they can grow as quickly as possible. If the layer flock is fed free choice they will be lazy layers. At 2:15 I make my way to the layer tractor as I pass by the main garden I notice something in the squash row

Little squashes, if squashes is really a word, this is a female bloom you can tell because of the baby squash it is attached to. These squash plants have both male and female blooms but only the female bloom produces squash. As I pass the main garden and come to our expansion garden I notice the sunflowers are growing like crazy.

A other thing I noticed' as you can see is the grass growing in this garden, I've got to get at it with a hoe. There is a story behind this grass; a few weeks ago I over seeded rye and fescue in the pasture which is uphill from the expansion garden. Shortly after we scattered the seed it came a big rain and washed all the grass seed you know where.

At 2:30 I finish feeding and watering the layers and moving them to fresh grass, and collecting 13 eggs, and move on to the second batch of birds. the next tractor is filled with a Rhode Island Red rooster and the RIR hens. They are for breeding purposes, all the eggs we collect from them are incubated.

At 2:40 I make my way to the third and final tractor that houses our broilers, nine of them to be exact. They get fresh water and get their feeder topped off, and moved to a fresh salad bar. At 2:50 pm I'm finished with the chores. I finished off the day by watching my nephew play baseball.