Summer Highlights

Summers here seem to always fly by before I know it. And somehow with the long daylight hours and everything that needs to be done before winter returns, I just don't get time to keep up with blog posts. But winter is rolling in once again, the daylight hours are getting short, and once again I have some free minutes before falling asleep to write. 

So, a brief recap of some of some highlights that have happened over the past months. One of the fun things was our Mrs. Quack laid a bunch of eggs but then decided she didn't care about sitting for more than one day. And one of our hens, Ember, looked at the abandoned duck eggs and decided they needed a mother. So she sat on them till they hatched and raised 15 ducklings though I think she might have always wondered why her slightly weird chicks never behaved quite right. 

There's a whole list of videos covering everything from them hatching (in two different batches actually) to growing and even their mama chicken going for a swim with them if you want to watch them move around. Check out the Swedish Ducks in Wyoming playlist if that sounds fun to you. They were pretty adorable when they were little though they do grow fast!

As always, I loved watching the weather and seasons move and change around us here in our little mountain spot. From stunning rainbows and thunderstorms seen from our yard, to hikes with families and friends in the mountains among stunning autumn leaves.

The garden has been amazingly productive. Especially after a very poor year last year, getting a good harvest of many crops was really nice! 

I think, though I did not strictly weigh everything this year like I had a few years back, the total production topped that year. With over 600 pounds of produce yielded out of our 600 square feet of garden space. With excellent harvests of garlic, onions, herbs, carrots, beets, potatoes, and lots of smaller things. But for a rather harsh mountain climate with no expected first and last frost dates, I think that is pretty amazing!

Once again, there are many videos covering more details of the growing and harvesting of as much of these things as I had time to film in the Gardening playlist. 

Another fun thing to observe was the batch of actual chickens that our Icelandic hen Blackie decided to hatch out. 9 out of 10 eggs were a success and all the chicks were just adorable and multi colored. Watching them grow was quite the pleasure. You can find their whole journey as she cared for them from sitting, to hatching, to teaching them to be good chickens in this Broody Chicken Chronicle list of videos. 

They grew into 3 handsome roosters (one of whom is now hanging out with his own flock on another homestead in Montana) and 6 more pretty ladies who joined our laying flock. 

The ladies also produced us well over 100 dozen eggs in the past year which is pretty amazing for this little chicken breed.

Over the summer we also raised another batch of hatchery spare heritage breed rooster chicks as a meat flock for the year. A few weeks ago the property returned to being much more peaceful and quiet when they all went to freezer camp. Providing wonderful nutritious food for us through the next year. Very glad to have one of my least favorite jobs for the year done. But we are thankful for high quality meat that I know how it was raised, handled, and what it ate. The property is a whole lot quieter with 150ish pounds of meat in the freezer and a whole lot less roosters crowing and harassing the hens. We probably should have done this at least one week earlier for the sake of the hens on the place, but didn't have time so it's done now. I know these roosters all had a good life running around freely, chasing bugs, etc. with a bad few minutes and I am thankful for their lives.

In between freezes, we had a very hot summer which is not my favorite kind of weather for sure. But the flowers and butterflies didn't seem to mind. 

The kitties are looking pretty full grown and enjoy hanging out with each other or snuggling with Burley. 

Clay and I made the time a few afternoons and evenings through the year to go foraging for various wild berries. And harvested quite a few currents, service berries, and choke cherries. Foraging for wild foods is something we really enjoy doing together. You can see more of that in the Wild Foods Foraging playlist too. :) 

I love how at least parts of the property are really starting to bloom as some of the things we have planted get established.

We added many tens of thousands more livestock to our place with a bee hive this spring! I grew up helping my father with his bees and I have long wanted to be able to keep my own again some day. The single colony we started with gave us a strong second colony as well mid summer, so we are going into winter with two well insulated horizontal Layen's style hives full of bees and their stores. So far they all seem to be thriving and we hope one or both will make it through to next year.

 

Their work is so lovely! Above is some of the multi colored pollen cells the built and filled. And below are two big frames nearly full of honey. They even produced enough to allow us to share in some of their sweet stores. See more of my learning journey with natural bee keeping in the Wyoming mountains Here.

Now fall seems to have pretty much passed and two days ago, winter rolled in. It's snowing off and on as I write this. I would love to hear some of the highlights of your summer or new projects you tried recently!