The winter is our down time without a garden to tend full time and rain and cold weather most days. We try to use this time to work on projects waiting on our to do list and one of these is to work on the big garden. We broke ground on it three years ago and removed untold tons of rocks, leaving behind mostly red clay, unsuitable to grow much other than crabgrass and weeds. Over the last few years, we have been slowly improving the soil with compost and other organic materials.

Last year, the garden got off to a good start but with the addition of all this fertile organic material, it also gave a boost to the weeds, which ended up outgrowing much of our vegetables. So the goal for this year is to cardboard the entire garden as a weed barrier and then add several inches of compost and organic material on top. To plant, we will cut holes in the cardboard for transplants and hopefully starve out most of the weed growth. Over the next couple years, the cardboard will decompose and eventually be tilled in.

I didn't quite realize just how big the garden was until I found myself breaking down box after box for days and only managing to cover half of it! Thank goodness I had some help from family in town for the holidays. Probably not how they intended to spend their holiday vacation but that's what happens when you take your vacation at your sister's farm.

 I have found a source for appliance boxes in town, which dramatically speeds up the process, but they only seem to put the boxes out on Wednesdays when I'm at work! It does make one feel kind of creepy to be cruising store dumpsters and digging out boxes, but a girls got to do what a girls got to do!

One bonus is that I found a patch of carrots growing in the garden that had been starved out by weeds but made a comeback when the weeds were all bushhogged this fall. The pigs were thrilled for such an odd January treat.

Ahh October, my favorite time of the year! I love the colors changing, the warm days and cool nights, when you can finally break out that favorite sweater. The animals seem to be enjoying the cooler weather as well and have more of a pep in their step. The last cut of hay is done and the winter garden is doing fairly well. I just hope I get peas before the first frost.

We got the hives ready for winter last weekend and found that we had lost two more and one was weak and needed to be combined with another to make it through winter. We are back down to five hives and just can't seem to make forward progress growing our numbers. I dread the impact of winter on the remaining hives. We got a meager harvest of about 10 frames of honey or around 35 pounds. Most beekeepers harvest after the spring nectar flow and again if the fall nectar flow is very productive. We harvest just prior to closing for winter to ensure we don't take too much and to protect against lean summers.

This is the time of year were things finally slow down a bit and we can shift our attention to the long list of projects we have been wanting to get started on, which have taken a backseat to the daily chores and immediate must dos. We are looking at fencing our next pasture and possibly getting a few calves in the spring so we can offer grass fed, grass finished beef that people have been asking for.  

We hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather!

Last weekend Nick and I processed our first turkeys for the freezer. Of the six we started with, we only managed to get two fully grown to harvest. Four others were picked off by different predators over the last few months. We were excited that at least two made it. They ended up going in the freezer at 21 and 26 pounds. We will cook the smaller one before Thanksgiving just to make sure we did everything right, since you sure don't want to invite twenty people over for Thanksgiving only to have an inedible turkey. We are pretty confident we did everything right, but you can never be too safe. For the first time in many years of hosting Thanksgiving, we will have homegrown ham and turkey.

A few weeks ago we had our inspection to get our farm based retail meat license and now have a large freezer full of retail cuts ready to sell! This batch of sausage is especially nice and lean!

This weekend, D and I went to a friend's house to pick pears while Nick got a rare morning off to go fishing with a buddy. It was a perfect day for it, sunny and 65 degrees. We came home with 6 five gallon buckets full of giant Kieffer pears and the canning marathon began. So far I have made a case of spiced pear butter and vanilla diced pears and only got through one bucket. The pigs and chickens were pleased to have the cores and skins and will likely benefit from plenty of whole pears once the canning fatigue sets in tomorrow. I put the spiced pear butter recipe up on our recipe page if anyone is interested.

We recently took our first vacation as a family to Ohio and Michigan so we could see family and friends, ride rollercoasters and take a much needed break from life. Between us both working full time jobs with an hour plus commute each way, the baby, and trying to run a farm, we were getting burned out. Don't get me wrong, we love our life, it just gets to be overwhelming at times, with the endless to do lists.

We had a wonderful time, but since this was the first time we left the farm for any length of time, we dreaded what we would come home to. Our niece took on the huge job of farm and dog sitting for us and she managed to keep everyone fed, alive, and mostly contained. She had been giving us updates daily and we knew we were coming home to down fences and that the big tom turkey had been harassing her and tried to make her his girlfriend.

What we found when we got home was even worse then we feared. We had three age groups of piglets mixed together, no electric fences working, huge holes in the woven wire fences and the pigs had destroyed the electric bird netting. It took Nick two days to get the fences mended and hot and the pigs in the right pastures. Now I know why farmers never go on vacation!

Since my last blog, things have been moving right along on the farm front. We have weaned and sold half of the most recent litter of piglets. We had a fella coming to pick up five of them and we had tried to trick them into the foaling stall so we didn’t have to chase them all over the nursery pasture. We almost had them in and I closed the gate behind them. Upon realizing they were trapped, they all went berserk and charged the gate, which Nick (who’s a strong guy mind you) was holding closed. The combined strength of ten little piglets is astounding! They pushed that gate and manage to lift it off the ground and squeeze under, despite our best effort to hold them back. Plan A was an epic fail. We tried again but they had caught on to our little game and were having nothing of it. An hour later, a kind gentleman and his young son showed up to get the five piglets and we had to sheepishly inform him that our plan failed and we were going to have to run them down. It had just rained and so those already fast and squirmy boogers were now also slippery with mud. An hour of piglet chasing later, we finally sent him on his way with an apology, five slightly traumatized piglets, and a muddy son.
 
We harvested several of the older hogs for the half and whole hogs we sold over the last few months. We kept a half for ourselves and I have to say, pasture raised Berkshire pork is something wonderful! We are also in the process of applying for a farm-based retail meat license and have scheduled an appointment to have our first hog processed and packaged under USDA inspection so we can start selling by the cut. Because let’s face it, as much as most people like bacon and chops, they rarely have the space for a 100-200 pounds of them.  We’ll keep everyone updated on this for those interested in getting their hands on some juicy natural pork!
 
Our garden has been producing fairly well and we have already harvested our spinach, lettuce, rashes, beets, peas, kale, cucumbers, peppers and the tomatoes are starting to come in. Unfortunately, due to the baby, working full time, and all the other farm tasks, the large garden has been completely taken over by weeds. The only plants making a stand against them are the enormous squash plants that came up first and a few puny stalks of corn. Oh well, there’s always next year. D came with me on several wild blackberry picking trips and we managed to pick 4 gallons of blackberries for the freezer that is destined to become blackberry merlot jam on a raining day. Any extra or overripe produce is enjoyed by the animals. Interestingly, pigs love, love, love raw kale! Who would have thought?
 
One last note; our farm logo has been finalized and we are ready to roll it out. So here it is!

This post is a little late but happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there! This year was my first true mother's day. Prior years were celebrated as a fur babies momma, which some don't count but when that's what you have, that's what you celebrate! To cap off the day, our sow Natasha delivered 11 piglets. One didn't make it due to a birth defect but as of today, we have 10 happy rolley-polley piglets. Natasha is a great mother and has adapted well to her larger litter.

D and I had a little mother-daughter overalls photo shoot before chore time. She is a good sport about spending a lot of time outdoors helping with farm chores from the comfort of her stroller. Although she calls the shots and when she is over it, everybody better be ready to be done too!

In other news, we have now found a local source of 100% non-GMO feed for all of our animals through Taylor Family Farms and are so glad to be able to make the switch over to all non-GMO feeds and still stay within budget. Click on their name to check out their website.

We have moved the guineas and some of the chicks out on pasture with the portable coop and portable electric fencing. We placed it in one of the pig pastures and the pigs found it very interesting until we plugged the fence in and they got a snout full of shock. After that, they decided chewing on the fence was not such a good idea and so far have left it alone.

I can't wait until we can move the last batch of chicks out of the bathtub and the 6 turkeys out of the hobby room and onto pasture as well. I'm getting tired of the house smelling like poultry. We will have to plan better next year!

I'll be the first to admit that at times I put the cart before the horse when making decisions about getting animals. I tend to get swept away by the idea of them and of course how cute the babies are. That is what lead us to the most recent situation of too much poultry and not enough room.

Last year, I got a dozen chicks of unknown breed (turns out they were Barred Rocks) from Tractor Supply because I was tired of waiting for the breed I really wanted to become available. What do you know, the next week the Co-Op had the Buff Orpingtons I had been searching for, so I got a dozen of them too. At the time, we had two empty bathtubs that were easily converted into brooders. This year, one of those is now the baby's tub.

So this spring I decided we needed a dozen more Barred Rock pullets since last year's so called straight run turned out to be 11 cockerels and one hen. I also wanted to get another rooster since both of our two Barred Rock roosters turned mean and went into the stew pot, so I ordered a dozen straight run of Buff Orpingtons. Then I though about how nice it would be to raise our own turkey for Thanksgiving and wanted turkeys too. The Co-Op offered three breeds and rather than just pick one since I didn't know which was best, I chose to order two of each, seems logical right? Then I found out they also offered guineas so I ordered some of them too.

The Barred Rock pullets came in three weeks ago and then two weeks ago the 10 guineas. We put the dozen pullets in the available bathtub but had nowhere for the guineas to go. Luckily the baby's highchair arrived in the mail in a perfect size box, so I cut one of the sides out and put the guineas in that.

The new arrivals put us in high gear to get the mobile coop finished especially because there was no way to know when the other dozen chickens or six turkeys would arrive. This project took longer than expected due to Nick coming down with a nasty cold that pretty much sidelined him for a week and a half.

The other thing that put a little fire under us was the fact that the guineas were starting to escape their box and are a booger to catch. It's amazing how fast those little guys are and boy do they crap everywhere!

This weekend, the turkeys arrived, which really put us under the wire to finally get the coop done and transfer both the chicks and guineas out there. Because they will be on pasture and we have a lot of hawks, we want the guineas to bond to the chicks and vice versa,since guineas are very good at sounding panic alarms when predators are around. Below are some picture of the mobile coop, the chicks and keets are separated by wire until they get used to each other and then we will let them mingle. Or rather, until they figure out how to hop over to the other side.

Nick played around some with the design of the new coop and made some improvements over our other coop. The first was to reduce the number of nesting boxes and increase the number of perches to cut down on the amount of poop in the boxes and keep the eggs cleaner. I also painted the inside of the boxes a dark red because I have been told that chicken will only go into dark places to lay eggs. We also kept the nest boxes lower because chickens and guineas like to perch as high up as they can.

So the next project will be getting a turkey roost and enclosure ready for when they outgrow the bathtub, which will be sooner then we know it. But first, we need to finishing fencing another pasture because Natasha is due to have her next litter in the next couple weeks. Oh yeah, and there are still another dozen chicks coming. It seems as if we are always rushing to complete animal housing of some sort. Maybe next spring I will learn my lesson and not order too many animals. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Last weekend I got the rare opportunity to meet Joel Salatin, go on a farm tour of one of his former farm manager's farm and attend a viewing of the documentary Polyfaces. The farm tour was held at Marmilu Farms in Jackson TN, a farm which follows the Salatin model of raising livestock. During the tour, we got to see his eggmobiles, mob grazing salad bar beef, a pasture broiler tractor, and a set up for hogs.

For those of you who are not familiar with Joel Salatin, he has written many  farming books focusing on ways to heal the land by using pasture raised animals in a symbiotic system. He has a farm in Virginia called Polyface Farm. We aspire to adopt many parts of his model on our farm.

 He is also on the forefront of the food freedom political fight, trying to change regulations which would allow consumers the freedom to make their own choices about the way their food is raised and handled, rather than our current heavily government regulated food system, controlled by huge food companies, who have the financial backing to control much of the politicians who are making these laws. Changes in these regulations would allow smaller farmers and producers the ability to provide safe, fresh food directly to consumers, who know the difference between the quality of humanely raised pastured meat and the heavily medicated animals that come from concentration camp style factory farms. Okay, I'll get off the soapbox now.

Following the farm tour, I went to a viewing of the documentary Polyfaces, which was made over several years on Joel's farm in Virginia and shows his model in action. If you click on the link, you can view the film online or order a copy of it on DVD.

It was a great day of learning for me and well worth the trip to Jackson.