Awesome Bug Find!

Praying Mantis are always cool to find lurking in the garden. I remember as a kid Mantis's and Stick Insects were always a rare and wonderful treat to observe and watch in their interesting, gangly way. Obviously the excitement hasn't wore off now that I'm an adult, as I was out in the yard in my nightgown photographing this guy. The neighbors must have been thinking "Oh  boy, we've got a live one here!" As I ran outside in my slippers, now soaked with morning dew, camera in tote, hair in much of the same state that it was when I woke up, focusing on what must have looked like a very close shot of the house siding....well...all for your reading pleasure! Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Enjoy!

Wild Wednesday, Eastern Milksnake Babies

I was out in the yard gardening the other day when this little beauty slithered by. We've identified Milk Snakes in the yard before, but what alarmed me about this one was that it coiled and started shaking its tail. I wondered if it was a baby rattle snake, with an underdeveloped rattle. We caught it and brought it to the Howell Nature Center to have them identify it once and for all. It was in fact a Milk Snake, which are also known to shake their tails when threatened. They are born from eggs which hatch in the fall. We've found quite a few babies, so, someone must have laid a clutch of eggs.

Planting Garlic

 Zach and I planted garlic last night. Like a tulip bulb, we plant in fall so the garlic clove winters over, then sprouts in the early spring. We will harvest the bulbs late next summer/fall, and enjoy garlic greens in the spring.

I'm trying some Elephant Garlic here.

I went to our local nursery to buy garlic bulbs to plant, but they didn't have any. One of the nursery employees told me to just buy organic garlic from the farmers market. So that's what I did. 

 I broke up the head into individual cloves.

 Some of them were already sprouting.

The nursery man told me that a good friend to garlic is Phosphate, a naturally occurring substance that helps root development. Gonna give a it a try as I've never had great success with my garlic cloves forming full heads.  

The garlic patch is nested in with our hardy Mums that we adopted when we bought the place. 

Goat Fencing

Hi guys! I feel like I haven't blogged in ages, but we have been SO busy with the new place. We've been unpacking, we moved the barn and it's up, we've been also moving my brother, Zach's been forging (black-smithing) like crazy, and we've been trying to get the goat fence up.

The girls were there to help. Ceddie snoozing in the background. He recently injured his ACL so he's been taking it easy, poor boy.

Snoozing...

 Our field right now has a lot of Golden Rod and it glows amber when the sun hits it.

It was a dewy morning and the grass was damp with reflective drops. This spiderweb was laced with tiny beads.

 The sun finally came over the barn and sent everything glistening.

 The grass is better "around the corner" I guess.

And You never have one without the other.

And the fence goes on....

For Love of Linoleum

Check out my latest Community Chickens Post, For Love of Linoleum.

Flip Camera Giveaway and Photo Contest!

Thanks to Community Chickens and Purina Mills I'm giving away this awesome Flip Video Camera! To enter, sign up for the Purina 60 Day See The Difference Challenge.

As you start to see improvements in your animals send me a photo and a short testimony and I will pick one lucky winner!
I will be posting photos and stories on the Community Chickens Blog and the Iron Oak Farm Blog, so keep checking back to see your fabulous animals on the web!
Send entries to jenniferannmurphy@yahoo.com. Contest ends October 31st, 2011. See additional information in the right column of the blog.

Facebook "Like" Winner!

Congratulations to John Nelson, the winner of the Facebook "Like" Goal Giveaway! John will receive one of Zach's hand forged bottle openers! Thanks to everyone who liked us, I hope you all enjoy the page.

Also, don't forget October is only a month away, and we're still running the Pumpkin Growing contest. The entry form is at the very bottom of the blog. Scroll, scroll, scroll on down and enter your pumpkin. To be honest, we haven't had much feedback for the contest, so even if you don't think your pumpkin is large this year, enter anyway, you might win out of default. 

Keep checking back, we're scheming up some sort of September giveaway!