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State of the Farm – Spring
Spring is one of my favorite times on the farm. It’s always full of changes, new life, anticipation, and hope. This year is shaping up to be a big one on the farm. It’s set to be a season with lots of beginnings and endings.
Let’s knock out the endings first.
-We are selling off most of our goat herd this spring. We have a handful of purebred Nigerian Dwarves still available, but I anticipate us being down to only three goats soon. We are transitioning away from the goat market to a different one (one of those beginnings, I mentioned).
-On a sadder note, our sweet gelding lost his battle with heart failure yesterday. Our boy will be missed. He was forever begging for treats from anyone and everyone, and was exactly the horse we needed and loved.
That does leave us without a rideable horse for kids over 100 pounds for the time being. Please keep this in mind when you are booking an event with us. We will still be able to accomodate pony rides for kids under 100 pounds with Princess Sparkles (and soon, Marshmallow!).
Ready for the beginnings? Yeah, me too.
-For the first time ever, we will be offering lamb shares in the fall. We’ve raised meat sheep before, but only for our family. It’s mild in flavor, tasty, and an incredibly healthy option. This year begins sharing lamb with the public, and I’m super excited about it! Availability is quite limited this year, so message me to be put on the waitlist.
These lambs will be grassfed on rotating pastures, making them healthy and happy while also enriching the soil. We are adding some Katadhin ewes and a Katadhin/Dorper ram from Oakvale Farms to our sheep flock. They will produce excellent meat lambs, and fantastic breeding stock for other homesteaders interested in adding hair sheep to their farms.
If you aren’t familiar with meat shares, the way it works is that you can buy a whole or half of a market-sized lamb, we deliver the sheep to a processor, and you pick up the meat from them, then straight to your freezer. It’s a great way to buy in bulk from local farms.
We charge $8.75 per pound, and then you pay the processing fees to the processor. It usually ends up being about $10-12 per pound. The total amount of meat from a Katadhin lamb varies, but is usually somewhere in the realm of 55-80 pounds.
We will also be offering meat chickens again this year, after a break last year to have a baby right at the begin of meat chicken season. They will be $5 a pound, so approximately $25 for a whole chicken.
This is not just any whole chicken, but the best chicken you’ve ever had. Our chickens are raised on rotating pastures, scratching for bugs, and living their best lives. We feed locally milled chicken feed, and they will be processed right here on the farm. Meat chickens will be on-farm pickup, though we also offer delivery within the surrounding area with a per-mile delivery fee. They will be available starting in early May, so jump on the waitlist now.
Another cool development is that we will be adding a store to our farm website, so you should be able to order products (like our meat chickens) right from the comfort of your home. Bear with me as we struggle through the initial hiccups I’m sure will happen! 😉
-Lastly, we will be adding a Livestock Guardian Dog to the farm. A female Maremma puppy, who will need a couple years of training before she is effective at her job, but who should help with the predation we’ve been experiencing the last few years. She is unnamed, as of yet, but will certainly be making an appearance in our photos. LGDs may end up being serious, somber dogs, but they sure start off as cuddly, round, ridiculous puppies like every other.
I’m ecstatic and hopeful about the direction the farm is going. We look forward to partnering with the community to bring more healthy, local food options to the table.
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Schedule An Event
Fall and (somewhat) cooler weather are on the way! Now would be a great time to plan ahead and get on the schedule for a farm event to enjoy that brief period of absolutely beautiful Florida fall, surrounded by farm animals. Have a kiddo who loves horses or can’t get over the cuteness of little goats? Throw them a birthday party they’ll never forget!
We offer birthday party hosting, starting at $200 for 2 hours or $300 for 3 hours.
That includes a covered event area in our barn to open presents, have cake, etc., petting/feeding access to goats, sheep, pigs, horses, donkeys, rabbits, chickens, ducks, and turkeys, and your choice of 2 activities (pony rides, hay rides, pony grooming/brushing, or pony painting), or 3 activities if you opt for 3 hours. We have a couple folding tables in the barn, and 15 folding chairs, but you are welcome to bring more, as well as any decorations you might want to put up beforehand. The barn is not air conditioned, but we do have a cross breeze and fans to help mitigate that middle-of-summer scorching heat.
We also offer field trips for school or homeschool co-ops, work socials, baby showers, or whatever else puts you in the mood to love on some friendly farm animals.
Let me know if you have any questions or would like to get on the schedule.
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Animal Profiles – Da Pigs
I never thought I’d love pigs. They are nice enough, I guess, and supposed to be as smart as dogs, but I didn’t think they would end up being a farm animal that brought me much joy.
I was wrong.
Pigs are an unexpected delight. They can be absolutely maddening when they shove through the bottom of fences, or trip me repeatedly as I’m carrying a bucket of food through the lot of them. They can also be ridiculously loud, especially at night when my neighbors are asleep, as we go out do a final bed check. The only animal that competes with them on the noise front is Sylphrena, the jenny donkey.
However, they have such hilarious personalities, you can’t help but fall in love with them. They will always always get up to greet you at the gate. They pile together in an adorable dog pile of pigs. One thing I never knew about pigs is that they love belly rubs. Even our big boar will lay down and roll over to show us his belly for a good scratch.
At the moment, we have 6 pigs, called Kune Kunes. They are a mini pig breed, and do better on pasture than most others. Though they grow slower than a typical market hog, they are friendlier, don’t root as much, and don’t get as big.
Our sow is Molly Julia (Weasley) and our boar is Arthur Weasley. We also have their first set of piglets. Of those, we are planning to keep a female we call Lady Trotters. The biggest piglet is Porkchop, and the others are unnamed (they often get called Bacon, Schnitzel, and the like). The unnamed ones look very similar, so we mix them up. The piglets were all born on the farm, mere days after our son Luke. You ought to hear them all chatting at each other throughout the day. Sometimes they sound like teenagers arguing with their parents, but they still all end up in a big pig pile at the end of the day.
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Animal Profiles: Chickens
Our chickens don’t have names, for the most part. Not only do have we quite a few of them, but a lot of them are virtually identical. Our rooster is Elmer Junior. Elmer Elevator (his dad) was our first rooster, until he became aggressive. He was perfectly well-behaved until the day I was gathering eggs a rogue hen had laid in a corner of the yard, and he kneecapped me from behind. I had bruises and scrapes on both legs from his spurs. At first, I was willing to give him another chance, but when he started attacking my 6 year old his fate was sealed. He made for a lovely rooster noodle soup.
I do have a funny story about Elmer Senior, from one of his first encounters with Mark. Mark had squatted down, and picked up 4 hens. He was petting and talking to them, when Elmer came strutting towards him, ready to show this interloper who was boss. I was watching from another part of the pasture, and Mark had not yet noticed Elmer coming up on him. In case you don’t know him, my husband is not a small man, but this was apparently news to Elmer. At this point, Mark stood up, cradling the hens in his arms. Elmer immediately and radically changed both his direction and his de- meanor. If a rooster could talk, he went from “Who does this guy think he is? Those are MY girls!” to “Oh wait a second, those are your girls (turns around) I was actually walking this way.”
Speaking of, the majority of our hens are called random “old lady names” like Blanche, Edith, Mabel, Beatrice, etc. Whatever name pops into my head when I’m calling them. It works well, since I already mix up everyone else’s names, human and animal alike.
I bought my first flock of 4 chickens years ago, when my daughter was still a baby, and we lived in the suburbs.
Technically, I wasn’t allowed to have chickens, but the neighbor that lived behind me was in a different town (Lynn Haven), where they were allowed. She always joked that if Animal Control came knocking, to say that they were her chickens, and had just flown over the fence. I love tolerant, laid-back neighbors! Over time, I added more chickens, and a handful of ducks. If I remember correctly, we had 6 chickens and 3 ducks in our little backyard flock.
When Hurricane Michael was forecast to hit us, and my house was placed under mandatory evacuation, I packed up all the animals to shelter in a safer place inland. That included the chickens and ducks, who were in two large dog crates. They rode out the storm in their crates, in my mom’s office bathroom. I sometimes joke that my chickens saved my grandma from the storm. Typically, we would have evacuated to her house for a hurricane, as we had done many times before. This time though, with all the chickens, rabbits, cats, dogs, turtles, and other critters in tow, it didn’t feel right to subject her to harboring the whole menagerie. Plans got switched around, and she ended up joining us, my parents, and my aunt and uncle at Mom’s office. Praise God she did, because her home was basically destroyed by Michael, while the office was spared major damage, unlike every other building around it. We were saved, because of the chickens forcing a change in venue. 😉
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Animal Profiles: The Sheep
Sister Dorothy was our first sheep. She is a black & white Florida Cracker/Jacob sheep cross. Dorothy is particularly attached to Mark, and has been from day one. We even have photos of him carrying her on his shoulders, like a biblical shepherd. She is a doll, and extremely friendly to everyone. Especially if they come bearing treats.
Sweet Dorothy has also been patient with our fumbling attempts to learn how to shear wool. Like many other farming skills we’ve had to learn from Youtube videos, it is much more difficult than it looks! Even so, she always looks much more comfortable afterwards. It has also been fun making and using wool dryer balls grown and harvested right here on the farm. I haven’t quite gotten the knack of making them as tight as the ones you can buy from a store yet, but we will get there one day.
The story behind her name probably won’t matter to anyone else, but it is meaningful to me. Her black white markings are similar to those of my late Border Collie, Our Companion Diocese (Diocese, or D-Dog, for short). Since she looked so much like my boy (who was, predictably, sheep obsessed), we decided to give her a “church” name too. We joke that she looks like she is wearing a nun’s habit, so Sister Dorothy she became. Our second sheep was Katadhin ram named Saint Peter, but his story will come another day.
Daffodil, on the other hand, is a purebred Babydoll sheep. She’s white, and thoroughly fluffy. She even has wool on her face, which makes for super tricky, nerve-wracking work for these novice shearers. That’s why her face is pretty overgrown in this photo, since we have to take it so slow, and only shear when she is in a particularly cooperative mood. Daffy, as we often call her, is a bit more skittish than Dorothy, but still loves to hang out with people. She and Dorothy make good companions, and graze together most of the day. The goats occasionally bully the sheep, and push them around, so it is nice for them to have a buddy in each other. The two ewes also frequently end up playing with Clover who, whether because of her good nature or smaller size, doesn’t seem to pick on them.
Daffodil is one of our least food-motivated animals. Don’t get me wrong, she loves animal crackers too, but won’t blindly follow them. That can make her a little more difficult to catch. She has to be convinced, not just let about by her nose. Little Daffodil is such a cutie.
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Animal Profiles: The Kids
Basil’s first set of kids was born this past spring, and they are both beautiful. One is Sage, a buckling from Rosemary, and the other is Clover, a doeling from Tansy.
Sage shares his mother’s beautiful and unique cream & white color. It’s breathtakingly lovely. While he was a wild little goof when he was tiny, Sage has settled down significantly as he has hit his teenage stage. He is one of loudest goats, but oddly, tends to fade into the background in a group. If you are ever here handing out cookies, don’t overlook him. I suspect he is going to be a stunner when he grows up.
For now, he lives with Basil, and occasionally Fig, in the boy goat herd, but is still thoroughly attached to his mama. Their pens are right next to each other, and they will still sometimes lie next to the chain link by each other. Sage was just getting a little too interested in the girls to stay in the same pen, if you know what I mean. 😉 We normally run mixed herds of girls and boys, but for now, we have to keep the boys away from little Clover.
Speaking of Clover, it is time to discuss one of the mascots of the farm! Clover is the spitting image of Basil, but is thoroughly feminine in body type. Her life started off a little rough. While Clover’s birth was uncomplicated, she had a stillborn twin buckling that wasn’t born until 2 full days after her, a complication that is quite rare. We didn’t even know Tansy had another kid in there, as she’d shown all signs of being done.
Whether simple bad luck, or from in-utero exposure to her twin, Clover got sick when she was less than a week old. We had to bring her inside every night for an antibiotic shot, and give her some extra nutrient supplements by mouth in a bottle. On top of that, Tansy, who had started off a good mom, made an instant 180 when the buckling was born, and was no longer interested in her surviving kid. We had to put Tansy on the stanchion (a milking stand), and hold her still so Clover could nurse. Mark and I vacillated over whether we should make her a full time bottle baby. While bottle babies are a lot of fun, they don’t tend to be as healthy or mannerly as doe-raised kids.
After a harrowing week or two of injections, stanchion feedings, and other such happenings, Clover’s fever went away for good. It took time, but Tansy started taking on her mom role again too, and we were able to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
One might think that all the injections, temp taking, and such would have driven Clover to fear us, but it was quite the opposite. Clover *adores* people. She is one of the most laid back, sociable animals on the farm. She’s never met a stranger, whether they have cookies or not. She is universally loved by everyone who meets her, and has quickly become one of our most popular animals. Even the pizza delivery folks know us as the people with the friendly goats.
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Animal Profiles: The Gentlemen Goats
Fig was our first male goat, as a bottle baby utterly terrified of people. He would do whatever it took to get away from me, even when he desperately wanted the bottle. He was born out in a large pasture full of goats, and hadn’t had much contact with humans when he was caught and put in the back of my van. You would never know that now! Fig is one of our most sociable, friendly goats. He will even walk away from food to get loved on by someone, which can be difficult when we put food out as a distraction. It is quite difficult to get new photos of him. They all end up being extreme closeups.
While Fig was originally to be the founding stud of our farm, we discovered that he is not a purebred Nigerian Dwarf. You know those fainting goats that everyone loves to watch on YouTube? Yeah, he faints when he gets surprised enough. We wethered (neutered) him, and now his only job is being a social dude with our visitors, a job he excels at.
After Fig ended up being a bust as a billy goat, we brought home Basil. He is one stinky guy sometimes, but he is incredibly handsome, so we put up with the smell. Did you know that a buck will pee on their beard to attract the ladies? Yep, boys are gross. Another fun fact, when goats lift their upper lip like in that photo of Young Basil, they are using a special organ to transfer pheromones in the air into a special organ on the roof of their mouth. It’s called a flehmen response, and a lot of animals do it, including horses and cats.
Basil is the ringleader when it comes to making trouble. If there is a weakness in the fence, he will find it every time, and lead all the other goats willing to follow him on a merry adventure. He’s friendly enough, but would generally rather go on walkabout, or hang with his girls, rather than seek out people. He does enjoy scratches, but we don’t give him scratches on the face, for the aforementioned beard reasons.
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The Barn Build & Thanksgiving
As homesteaders, we are always up to our ears in projects and to-do lists. The three biggest challenges on our farm are fencing, drainage/flooding, and shelter.One of those projects is entering the final phases, and I could not be more thrilled. It took two years to build the barn. Years of paperwork, planning, lots of dirt, a false start and having to go back to the drawing board mere days before construction began, etc. The barn finally went up this spring, and has been an awesome addition to the farm, mostly to give humans and animals a place to dry their feet during the five month monsoon season we had this year. However, the barn was still only a shell with a couple of small rooms.
This past month, my husband started putting up plywood in the tack room, and then tackled the biggest remaining barn project – stalls. The original plan had been to install modular stalls, but, as you may have noticed, the price of building materials has skyrocketed, and it just didn’t make sense. Instead, my not-a-handyman husband drew up a plan, got some lumber, and recruited his uncle and brother to put together four of our eventual eight stalls. They came out beautifully!
While I underestimated how many bags of shavings I would need (oops), the mini horses have been happily going in at night to eat. This gives us the ability to feed animals separately, give them their species-appropriate supplements (you would not believe how much the donkeys love stealing pig food!), rest the pasture a little bit (since fencing issues severely limit our rotation, for now), work on some manners in a confined space (looking at you, Lightsong), among other things.
What an amazing blessing. We have so much to give thanks for on this Thanksgiving. Today, we took a break from working on projects to cook up a turkey and leg of lamb (the ram was farm-grown right here), and visit with kin. Our kiddos had a blast playing with their cousins, and we got to catch up with folks that we certainly don’t get to see every day. Even the horses got extra carrots tonight.
I hope your Thanksgiving was similarly blessed.
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Animal Profiles: Journey
Journey Before Destination is our BLM Mustang, from the Three Fingers HMA in Oregon that was decimated by wildfires a few years ago. I bought her from a BLM auction on the internet, sight unseen. She was a “boring” bay color, so few were interested in her, but there was a note on her page that she was “calm and friendly”. In her video, she didn’t spook or gallop around the inside of the pen like most of the horses, but trotted around a bit, and then started nosing around for grass. Her color has become quite pretty as she has gotten older too, even if it is a common bay.
Despite being our tallest horse by a good bit, she is still a filly, not yet full grown. I was expecting a Mustang pony, and was surprised with a Mustang horse instead. It is clear that God worked that out on purpose, since her favorite person is my husband, who loves her right back. I wouldn’t generally recommend a wild Mustang as someone’s first horse, but it seems to work for them.
Journey is inquisitive and observant. While she has a long way to go to become comfortable with human handling and normal husbandry stuff, much less saddle training (hopefully starting this winter!), she is not the slightest bit worried about following people around the pasture. Journey also seems to have a special affinity for neurodivergent kids, something we’ve noticed on several occasions, as she will allow them to pet her face in ways that she stills shies away from with most others. She’s an incredibly cool horse, and we are so blessed to have her in our lives.
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Animal Profiles: Glory
Weight of Glory is our chestnut Quarter Pony gelding. He is a well-rounded horse, and is capable of everything from dressage to cross country to carrying around a beginner that has never sat on a horse before. In my experience, many horses are content to graze the day away, but Glory actually gets grouchy when he isn’t in regular work of some kind. I suspect he likes the mental challenge.
Don’t get me wrong though, Glory also loves to graze the day away, and is a big fan of cookies, cupcakes, curly fries, and whatever other junk food he can get. He wants to be involved with everything, as contractors that have worked here can attest.
