Mother’s Day weekend

At least one day out of the weekend was sunny and clear.  The breezes yesterday moved just enough to keep the black flies mostly at bay (except for John, who seems to be a blackfly magnet).  We always have a list of farm work that needs doing longer than what we ever have time for, [...]

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November fun

I have been feeling as though we are living through a second mud season this year.  We have had so much rain and so many warm days and nights, doing chores means doing battle!  It’s about this time of year that John usually gets to cleaning out the paddocks, but a whole host of things [...]

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Animal dance

Having cleared our land and built our house means that we did not have any already existing structures for our animals.  We don’t have a brick and mortar barn, just the greenhouses, and our perimeter fencing is made up of t-posts and 52″ cattle panels (16′ long galvanized grids).  So technically everything is movable, ready [...]

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She’s back!

Rhubarb the goat, that is.  She had gone to live on a friend’s farm in Jefferson, a few towns over, early in the spring before she freshened.  She had two beautiful kids. one a buck and the other a doe.  Our friends have a young family and really enjoyed having her, but made the decision [...]

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Animal update

We have had a lot of inquiries about how some of the animals are coming along, especially Banjo the bottle goat.  He is now over a month old and doing very well.  He is down to two bottles/day, but he is eating up a storm at the hay feeder.  I kept offering him that late [...]

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Piggies and the bottle boy

Well, Banjo-Bela bottle goat has been transitioned to the great outdoors.  He is kind of an odd duck out there with the other goats as his mother doesn’t acknowledge him, but he is getting into the swing of things and plays with the other kids.  The only thing that I don’t like is that he [...]

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Snow day

Yesterday was our first snow day of the school year.  It was a great call as once the snow started it really came down.  And then of course it was followed by torrential, windswept rains.  Totally yucky by the end of the day. I had finally picked up our smoked pork last Friday and we [...]

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Butchers and a Local Thanksgiving harvest

Wow, it’s Sunday and it’s still sunny and warm. I am reveling in being at home for the day and  am recuperating from the back to back trips to butchers:  Friday night a trip to the butcher in Albion to pick up the fresh pork cuts from our pigs, and a 200+ mile round-trip yesterday [...]

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Snow and pork

Snowy morning yesterday.  Day for loading up the piggles.  Usually we have them getting acquainted with the trailer for two or three days before the big day, but John was having some trouble with the wiring… so it was dark before the trailer gate was closed, but we could hear them happily sucking up the [...]

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Piggies In, Chickens Out

I love it when we find balance on the farm.  Our daily life is very routine-oriented and when anything changes that routine, it takes me almost a week to fine-tune how my chore times look.  Maybe I am slow to adapt, I don’t know! As our farm goes, we try not to have too many [...]

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