Freeze On The Farm

Today, we are preparing for our first freeze on the farm for this season. It will be 29° Fahrenheit tonight, Monday, November 30, 2020. We have newly planted flowers, herbs, and vegetables that we need to protect and our new greenhouse does not yet have all of the plastic on it because not all of it has arrived in shipping from wherever David ordered it. We do have most of our outdoor team working on it.

Freeze On The Farm 11/30/2020-12/06/2020

Monday, November 30, 2020

Nacho and his team are putting up wooden railings all around the property, wherever there are stairs. The railings have a place inside the wood to hold on to.

It was 40° Fahrenheit when I got up this morning. It was cold when I went out to take care of the chickens. They seemed to fare okay in the chilly air. The baby rabbits are doing good as well. Tomorrow, we get our first freeze on the farm for the season! It is supposed to be in the 20s so I am not sure how well they will do. I read in my chicken books that you should leave the chickens as they are and not try to heat them as it could cause a fire. It rarely gets cold in Texas and they do have shelter.

This morning, we hired a legally blind man to do some part time work for us. He is the son of one of our employee's. He will be folding seed package inserts (something new) for us. That way all packets of seeds will have our Germination Growing Tips information. Just a few weeks ago, we started to place this in every pack of seeds. That means that a lot of our seed packets still do not have this in it. Some of our current workers were folding this paper but we are so busy. Marco will help us a lot by freeing up some of the others' time.

So our good friend, Nacho and his helper are putting better railings up across the property. We have had railings but not like these.

I have been paying company bills, doing laundry, and getting the house back in order, as well as getting caught up on computer work today. Right now, I am in our retail store so that Karen can go to lunch. It is noisy out here due to construction.

Tonight is the full beaver moon according to my calendar. I noticed the moon looked pretty full last night. I just looked it up and the beaver moon is the first full moon in the month of November. It is the time to set animal traps before everything freezes so you get the furs you need. This really doesn't mean anything for most people now. When I was a little girl, my grandfather set traps to capture animals. He would take the fur from the animals and sell or trade it for other things he needed. He was a real outdoors man who hunted, fished, and gardened so he always had things going on outside.

I hope our guys get everything covered up tonight so it all doesn't die due to our first freeze on the farm for the winter season. Hopefully, they leave the well water dripping so the pipes don't burst as well.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Happy December! Sure enough, just like Alexa said, there was a freeze on the farm last night! When I got up this morning, it was down to 29° Fahrenheit. Everything was frozen. I sure hope my new flowers that David refused to cover did not die. Here some of them are with ice on them.

Our fall flowers that went in the garden just last week, have ice on them. They are supposed to be resistant to the cold. We will see...

These red flowers are iced up pretty good. It will be a high of 60° today so we will soon see if they survived.

Nacho and Ryan are hanging Christmas lights all around the compound. Rigo and Phil are in my living room trying to figure out our Christmas tree. The problem is the lights. What plugs into what to get all of the lights on. That is the question. I have tried to help but we need Bethany, who put it up last year. She quit back in May to be a dental assistant. Bethany, we need you!

I have been looking for the store Christmas tree. It was inside the tree bag under the main tree. I took it over to Karen. Now we just have to find the store decorations. This is difficult...

Unfortunately, the store Christmas tree has a leg missing so it won't stand up. I am sure it got lost somewhere in the move from San Antonio to the farm. I will have to look around. So far, I cannot find any decorations for the store either.

Everyone is working on lights and blow ups for outside the store now.

The chickens made it through the cold. I can hear the rooster going off even now and it is almost 11am; the guineas are also making noise. Everyone seemed fine this morning when I went out to feed them.

The guys finally got all of the parts of the tree lit up, but never could find the final plug to light the top. They plugged the top of the tree into an extension cord to light it up.

Nacho and Ryan put up lights on some of the buildings and then put our Merry Christmas blowups by the road. We have three Santas and two nativity scenes now.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Good morning! The temperature dropped only to 48° this morning and I don't see anything that was affected by yesterday's frost. I think we are good to go since we did not have another freeze on the farm.

My tree remains naked except for lights. I am at work.

Today, our chickens turn 31 weeks old! It is so hard to believe they have been with us for that long. I got 15 eggs today. Five of them are blue. Most of the time, the blue eggs are the biggest, but once in a while we get some sky blue eggs that are smaller.

It should drop to 39° tonight so I think the chickens will be okay. At least there will not be another freeze on the farm.

This evening, I found some of the store Christmas decorations. We are still missing one of the three legs from the store Christmas tree. I wonder if it is truly lost or if it was just haphazardly stuck in a different box.

Thursday, December 3, 2020

This morning, the temperature got down to 39° Fahrenheit so there wasn't another freeze on the farm. Today, all day, it seemed much colder. There is a chilly wind blowing even though it is sunny with blue skies.

I haven't had a chance to get anything done in the house today since I have been hard at work in the store all day long. No, we have not had any customers but I have been shipping seeds out all day.

It is now 4:45pm and time to close down the store and go collect eggs again. It is 58° so it never really warmed up much with the chilly wind.

At 6pm, we sprayed the chickens where they have been pecked again with that purple stuff so they won't get pecked again. This is our fourth time to do it. It was dark already so we had to turn on the coop light that Jeremy put in last summer. This is the first time we have had to use the light. More chickens are being pecked. I have read that it is to establish dominance. It is just plain mean. We used gloves this time, but still ended up with purple on our hands. Not sure how that happened!

Friday, December 4, 2020

There was not another freeze on the farm early this morning but it is cold. It got down to 38° Fahrenheit and it will stay chilly again today. Us Texans are not used to this crazy cold weather lasting long. The chickens are fine, except they are pecking each other again. I just don't understand it unless it is because they are all in the nesting area sleeping at night. This morning, David decided that they have to be let out before it gets light out to see if that helps.

Maybe this weekend I will get a chance to decorate for Christmas. So far, the tree stands with nothing on it in our living room.

Saturday, December 5, 2020

I woke up to a low of temperature of 35° Fahrenheit. The chickens have been fine in the cold. This morning, I went shopping at Walmart for groceries and some Christmas decorations. Then I came home and cleaned and got ready to decorate the house for Christmas.

I also did a ton of laundry all day long. In the afternoon, I put some turkey soup together with the bone broth and leftover turkey from Thanksgiving that I had in the freezer.

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Once again, we came close to having a freeze on the farm this morning. The low was 35° Fahrenheit again. I did a lot of laundry and cleaning up today. Then I went through all of the Christmas bins. I cannot find a lot of my stuff...but I finally got some decorations on the tree in our living room.

I also put up some lighted reindeer at the store. Those were a pain to put together. Then I tried to put up some lighted spiral Christmas trees. I bought two packs. One of the packs is missing the tree stands so I have to return it to Walmart next time I go to Devine. I hope they still have some left so I can just exchange the box.

After I collected the eggs, Matt helped me spray some of the chickens again because they are still being pecked. Even though we wore gloves, we got some purple on our hands.

So no more freeze on the farm for this week and they say it will get up in the 70s starting tomorrow.

Return from Freeze On The Farm to Farm And Business Life

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