-
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.
You May Also Like
Chicks Coming Soon!
-
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. 😉
You May Also Like
Chicks Coming Soon!