It's Almost Time!

This cold, drizzly morning.

Ya'll it won't be long until we have eggs!  I can hardly wait!  This journey has definitely been a lesson in patience.  We have had days were we thought, "It would save us a a lot of money and time if we just put all these chickens in the freezer." They go through a lot of feed even though they are pastured.  It's winter so there aren't near as many bugs or as much plant life. 

But, it's almost time.  They should be laying in the next month and spring is just around the corner.  Fresh pastured eggs just in time for farmer's market season.  We are so excited!  Once we get all the details ironed out, I'll post your options for purchasing eggs. 

It's also almost time for our next poultry order.  We plan to start our meat birds as soon as we can get our plucker together. 

In other news....


Our son Henry used his own money to purchase rabbits. He is now the proud owner of a 7 week old lionhead buck and a 4 week old doe.  Don't worry, these are not for eating. :)  They are way too cute and fluffy.  He is considering his options.  He has some research to do but he is thinking of using them for fiber (spinning wool) or breeding for show.  Either way we are proud of this little entrepreneur.  His big brother, Nelson, has made a deal with him to tend to their water every day to earn one of the kits from their first litter. 

Isn't he cute!!

 

Last of all, we have plans for two new cows at the farm!  A pair from a friend.  We are super excited to have them here because they will be forever friends.... not for the freezer!  It's a momma and her little heifer so we plan to breed them to get our meat.  These boys of ours eat a lot!  We our halving Mr. T with another family and are already second guessing that decision because we can see now that the meat is not going to last us long enough for us to have another ready to butcher.  (It was a good financial decision though for our first time raising a cow!) Just since November we've eaten a pig and a deer... I think we have a couple packages of breakfast sausage and one package of burger left.  Yikes!  But... that is one of many reasons we decided to farm.  To feed our family!  

We're Home!

So the past 10 months we have not had internet so I have not been able to keep things up to date here.  Now, we finally have internet... why?  Because we have FINALLY moved to our new home ON THE FARM!  To say we are happy or excited is an understatement! 

We moved in last Friday/Saturday and by moved in, I mean we stacked all our belongings in the garage.  We are slowly unpacking and it feels like the boxes are multiplying.  I may just quit and put a garage sale sign by the road....

In addition to the big move, we have had some chicken excitement here.  We bought a new to us Joel Salatin-style egg-mobile plus 120 little chicks to put in it.  They are hanging out in their brooder for a while longer before moving in the egg-mobile. We are looking forward to having pastured eggs for our family and customers in a few more months and possibly pastured poultry. 

 

We also have an angus/charlois cross that we are raising for our family to have grass-fed beef.  He has turned out to be a sweet little bull... I have to keep reminding myself that he is food!  Here he is with one of his future little sale-barn friends after they snuck out of their paddock and found their way to the back yard.  Sneaky! 

About 7 weeks more....

We have about 7 more weeks until the house is ready! We can't wait to actually live at the farm so we can really get busy with all our dream/goals/plans. We have three calves, 5 chickens, and a small garden for now but will be adding more of all that and hopefully pigs and goats too. This is just a brief update...we are still here and will have more to share later but for now, find us on Facebook or Instagram for more pics of what has been going on!

Slow Progress

Hi friends! It's been a slow process, at least to is, but we are getting closer to getting the farm going. We have finally sold our home in town (we close in 9 days!) and have started the process of having our home built on the land. We hope to break ground in about 6 weeks. We are just waiting for all the paperwork to go through!

We are staying in a rental in the mean time and have stopped tending chickens for now. We have a garden started here... Onions, carrots, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts planted so far. Our plan is to be in our house by the fall and start gardening there, finish mending fences and planning our pasture, then at some point start pigs in the woods and maybe get a cow. We'll start over with chickens and hopefully a great pyr puppy Spring 2015.

So that is our plan so far! I will start posting progress pics when I have some to show!

Happy Farming Y'all!

Home Sweet Home

The chickens are at their new home.... finally at the farm!  The coop was moved yesterday along with the kids swingset/fort.  For the next couple of days they will stay locked up in the coop just so they get use to knowing where home is. 

For the last few weeks they have not been cooped up at all.  They have pretty much roamed the neighborhood all day then go back to the coop on their own (which was always left open) to roost for the night. I don't think they'll be as safe at the land so we're keeping them locked up for now.  After a few days, we'll see how they do being let out in the morning and put up at night.  Hopefully that will work fine.  We will be driving over in the morning and evening to water them, collect eggs, and at the evening trip, feed them in the coop and lock them up.  Eventually, we will make the coop mobile and have a mobile electric fence so they can be moved around the pasture.  For now, the coop is just plopped in the middle of a field.  The ground was so soft we almost got stuck and couldn't get it all nice and straight and exactly where we wanted it.  The chickens don't seem to mind.. they even gave us 4 eggs this morning.

We have made a little more progress on our home sweet home, too.  We have called a realtor who is suppose to come out Saturday to talk to us about listing.  We've also been researching house plans and talking to our builder about options.  Hopefully our house won't be on the market long so we can get on with moving to the farm with the chickens!

Work Day Fun Day

Tomorrow we will be spending the day working on the farm in preparation for us spending a couple days camping, cooking out, and playing.  We have a lot of clean up to do where the trailer house was (it was recently hauled off) as well as mowing and possibly starting on our chicken tractor.  Thanks to a generous neighbor we have some used tin to go provide shelter for the chickens.  We can't wait to get them out of our backyard.  It's too crowded right now.  I am looking forward to the fun day after we are done working... we'll set up our baseball diamond for some play, maybe work on the chicken tractor, do some daydreaming about our future on the farm, camping, cooking, relaxing.... love love love! 

What are you dreams and goals for the future? 

Picnic Time!

We recently had a picnic table built for the farm.  There's just something about eating fried chicken and drinkin' lemonade outside at a picnic table!  We plan to get 2 or 3 more built so we can line them up and have lots of cookouts and picnics with family and friends. 

Speaking of fried chicken... We also just got a few more chickens making a total of 15 hens!  11 of them are layers but they have slacked off on the laying since we moved them in together.  Hopefully they'll pick back up soon.  Today we only got 3 eggs!  Before we put them together they were all laying every day!  The other 4 are the ones we hatched and they should start laying in September.  Mr. Farmer is getting ready to build a temporary enclosure at the farm for them because it's just too much to have in town.  We'll probably keep our original 5 here until we get a more permanent set up out at the farm. 

We are a few steps closer to putting the house on the market, too.  Flooring in the kitchen is the current project.  :)