three is a magic number

my dad had this cool metal sign made for our driveway. it features the original 'three' dogs from this photo.

it took awhile before i could even think about getting another puppy. but, i knew when i was ready we would adopt another coonhound like slick. in december, we heard of a litter of coonhound puppies that were born in a pennsylvania shelter. we decided to adopt one and fox just picked her up today. we are still working on a name. any suggestions?

up to date

so here is a succinct version of what transpired on three dog farm since last year...

in april, we got mail order chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery:

it always freaks people out that the chicks come in the mail. but, it is really okay. right before a chick hatches, it sucks the entire yolk in through its umbilicus and then doesn't eat or drink for at least 48hrs after it hatches. so, they are packed as soon as they hatch and are shipped overnight. the red blob in the left side of the box is a small sponge soaked with a vaccination against a particular strain of salmonella that infects poultry. that's lolly's nose on the right.

a few turkey hens hatched poults and we raised them for thanksgiving. here are three of them at a month old:



fox excavated a ton of trash and metal (see pile in foreground) from the site of the demolished barn so that we could have a garden. this was the part of the property that was in the worst shape when we bought it and i never imagined we would have a garden there in our first year:



but we ended up having a rather large garden and with all the manure and topsoil we added back things really grew well:


we had a lot of large pumpkins which i ended up feeding to the chickens and they went crazy for them:

in may we added three nigerian dwarf goats to help eat all the weeds and brush:




in august, we got parsnip. she was four months old and newly weaned from her mama when we got her. more on her later...

in september, much sooner than i had ever dreamed possible, i got my starter flock of icelandic sheep:

a long hard silence

I know it has been a very long time but I am finally back. Shortly after my last post, which featured Slick, he passed away suddenly. He had hemangiosarcoma, a cancer that is known as the silent killer in dogs. And it was just that. At 11 years old, Slick had been in tip top health. He spent his last morning doing chores with me and laying in the sun. In the evening after dinner he came stumbling into my room and jumped up onto my lap and collapsed. I new instantly he was dying. I held him in the back seat of the car while fox drove us to Tufts. By the time we got there his abdomen was full of blood and the diagnosis was made pretty quickly. We decided to put him to sleep right then. He was a such good dog and had a good life up until then. We did not want to send him to surgery to stop the bleeding of a tumor that would only kill him a few weeks later. I'm so thankful that we were with him when he died.

I couldn't bare to blog about it or even look at the pictures on my last entry. So, this is why I fell of the blogging wagon. Once I was ready, life had just gotten so hectic that it was hard to get in the habit of posting again.

But fear not, Three Dog Farm has prospered in my time away and there are many many things to report. I will do my best to bring you all up to speed and to keep you apprised of my farming revolution.

So, this entry is for Slick Fox, coonhound extraordinaire.