Babies, Boars, Best Friends and Butts

Babies
March brought a handful of new babies to the farm including a baby of our own. Colton Michael joined the family on March 8th and his big brother is in love. Colton was out in the barn with us for chores within a few days.

Belle & Cinderella

Right around the time of Colton's birth we also had several cows freshen and below are some pictures of them. Belle was a twin and Cinderella is the daughter of a cow we raised named Connie. Last Summer we purchased a small group of cows from a farmer and while they were nice cows we realized when they got home that these animals were extremely small in comparison to our primarily holstein crossed cows. We started calling the smallest one in the group 'Mini Horse' because she looked so tiny next to our cows, and the calf below is from Mini Horse, so to follow in her mother's footsteps, we named her 'Pretty Pony.'

 

Pretty Pony

 Boar

Julian & Olivia

Another addition to the farm is a boar that has taken up residence with our two Tamworth females, Olivia and Francine. The boar has been named Julian and despite several days of trying to avoid the wrath of the big girls, he seems to be settling in nicely. When Julian was initially introduced to Francine and Olivia they were not exactly welcoming and after a lot of nipping at him, Julian bolted out of the pen and hid at the other end of the barn. After a few days in an isolated pen the girls were re-introduced to Julian on his own turf and they are getting along nicely...maybe in a few months we will have some piglets to tell you about.

Best Friends

Me and my entourage

Every day when I walk to the heifer barn, as I reach the end of our driveway and cross the road almost my entire flock of hens comes running to greet me. I would like to think it's because the love me, but I think it is more likely because I generally bring them some kitchen scraps in my little red egg bucket and they look forward to those treats. It's not just me though, Anyone approaching
the 100' radius around their coop seems to be greeted by these friendly girls.

Butts
Just look at the picture...

Heifers all huddled around the bale feeder

 No complaints on this weather for getting fieldwork done!

Winter update

So 2011 ended and here we are in 2012 and I haven't posted on the blog in 6 long months! A lot has happened, we hosted Sundaes at The Farm in August and had more than 600 people visit our farm one dreary Sunday. We finished the Caroline Farmer's Market at the end of October after a good season, too good sometimes as we sold out of beef and most of our pork by August and made our customers wait several weeks for a fresh supply. The beef quickly vanished and we were concerned we would be buying beef for ourselves all winter long (more on that later.) We had a busy calving season with about 30 calves born in November and December, and thus our milk production is climbing and some of the bills are getting caught up on, as long as I can keep Ben from starting any more projects than what he already has started.

Right now Ben has a friend building us a commodity shed to store a tractor trailer load of grain straight from a farmer, rather than buying the small loads of pre-mixed grain from the mill. This strategy saves money in the long run if we can perfect our system of storing, grinding and mixing the grain. We have had some problems in the past few months with cow health as a direct result of imbalanced nutrition, but we are trying to get that ironed out and move forward.

In the past year we have moved away from raising calves in small groups to now raising them in large groups of unweaned, weaned and breeding age heifers. This change has resulted in some modifications to the layout of our old barn and the calves seem to love the freedom of a big open space in the barn vs. the smaller spaces they had before, and it seems to have reduced our workload quite drastically.We are also hoping this change improves air quality and thus reduces pneumonia problems, but with the drastic swings in temps we have had this winter, pneumonia has still been a major issue.

We have 4 feeder pigs currently living in the barn and 2 other pigs that are about ready to be bred as we try for the first time to raise our own piglets. One more addition to our family will happen in another couple months, as I am pregnant with our second boy, due the first week in March. This will definitely mean a smaller garden this year and maybe some changes in our direct marketing plans. Ben has been grateful that I am due in the Winter again so as not to interrupt the busy haying season.

Since my belly is sticking out quite far and I can't reach the bottom of the freezers, my Mom helped clean out and arrange our freezers this morning prior to the arrival of a new batch of beef. We still have plenty of pork on hand and some leftover beef suet, large bones, heart and liver, but now we have a brand new supply of beautiful beef. Below is a listing of what I currently have available, email for a price list or to set up an appointment to pick something up. We have several butcher dates set for the Spring so if you are interested in a 1/4 or half please contact me soon so I can designate those spots.

Pork available: chops, steaks, smoked or uncured ham steaks, smoked or uncured hams, loin roast, shoulder roast, country ribs, spare ribs, smoked or uncured bacon, cottage bacon, hot or sweet(small quantity) sausage

Beef available: ground, stew meat, cube steak, chuck roast, rolled rump roast, spare ribs, minute steak, skirt steak, NY strip steak, delmonico steaks, fillets or 2-3lb tenderloin, boneless sirloin steak, london broil, suet, heart, tongue (just one), liver, soup bones and large meaty bones

Eggs are also available

Please remember that our products are organically raised, but not certified organic. They are fed organically, but our butcher is not a certified organic butcher and any cured/processed products are not done organically (we are looking into this for some of our Spring butchering).