Beautiful week in eastern Oklahoma. Weather was warm and March ended as the hottest March on record. We are not sure how this will translate into summer weather, though it is not a good sign. Last year Oklahoma had the hottest July on record, for any state. The good news is that this week we were officially declared to be out of the drought.
We are finally making progress. An expensive week but at least we are on our way. Wood was purchased for the Hen house as well as the Turkey shelter. The Turkey shelter is on the fast-track as the birds need to be ordered by mid-April so that they are old enough (big enough?) for Thanksgiving. We have adjusted our order from 15 Turkeys to 10 Turkeys for the first year. We are still planning on getting Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys this year, but if the turkeys are successful, we will be looking at other breeds rather than the Broad Breasted Bronze. We want our turkeys to be all natural (the only difference with the Broad Breasted turkeys are that they need to be artificially inseminated as they have been breed for size).
We have the turkey shelter almost completed, just need to get the right fabric for the sides and we will be done. Next weekend we hope to get all of the chick supplies and then we can place our order the following week.
Debbie has started the family garden by getting the containers ready for container vegetables. Donald scraped Danielle's front yard this past week with the 5103 so that we can start planting vegetables there. That garden will not be a "planned" garden, we will just plant what we can get when we can get it. It will be for family consumption and not really a part of BHF.
Donald and David took the L118, mower, and trimmer down to town and mowed that property for the first time this year. If we keep getting the rain, that property will have to be mowed at least every two weeks.
After they mowed the property in town they went on down to the pasture and mowed the test garden. The test garden is still way to wet to try to till, in fact, more water came to the surface after each pass of the L118. We are expecting storms Monday night but hope that the rain fall will be light and allow us to start tilling next Saturday. Donald will be in Arizona this week so he will not be here to till anyway. It will be a push to get anything done on the test garden next weekend as Donald will travel to Alabama the following week (on the road for 4 of the next 5 weeks, which means he will have to do his paperwork on Saturdays, if he can find the time). In addition, he has a Seminary Lite class at OCU (Oklahoma City University) on Saturday, April 21st and an all-day seminar (homework assignment for his Beginning Farmers and Ranchers class) on composting on April 28th, so he only has the next two Saturdays to get anything done. It will be up to David to follow-through on a number of projects.
Once the turkey shelter and hen house are complete, we will provide a complete materials list (including cost) for those of you that would like to build your own. We will even tell you what mistakes we made (can't say "if any" because we already made at least one whopper) as well as any other things we may have learned.
Until next week ...
The Baker Family at Baker Heritage Farms
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