Pickles!

What fun making our first batch of canned goods from our own garden!  Nate's cucumbers are growing like crazy!  We eat them every night on our salad, but we wanted to preserve some of them since there are so many!!  Pickles it is!  They've been prepared with salt, vinegar, dill and garlic, canned and given a water bath for 15 minutes....now we just have to let them sit for a month then they are ready to eat!!

Homestead Scriptures

We have wanted to give each area of our farm a scripture verse.  We finally sat down and thought of some of them. 

We want to use our farm to be a light for Christ!  We have a vision for the future of our farm...right now we're learning everything as a family, but as we grow and become a business people will be visiting our property to purchase nourishing foods for their families.  When they come to get their chickens, eggs and other grass fed goods we want not only for them to sense God's goodness, but to taste it!  Our plan is to have a massive garden where they can come and pick what they please and take it home for free!  

We are reading and learning about saving seed...that will be something we will offer to teach others when they visit the farm.  The hope is that others will save seeds from the produce they take and plant their own garden!  Megan painted the first scripture verse today!

Everything is growing so fast now that its hot and we have long, sunny days.  We also have been blessed 3 times with coolers full of fish from our neighbor...after fileting the fish we cooked the meatless bodies to make a fish stock, but instead of using it for soups we diluted it with more water and poured it on the garden!  No doubt, that has helped everything grow!

 What a miracle to watch all this come from tiny seeds!  We are so blessed!

Broody Hen

Happy 1st day of Summer everyone!!  Today we had the most pleasant surprise...we have a laying hen that decided a few weeks ago to go broody.  We separated her from the others so she wouldn't be bothered.  Plus, we wanted to keep us (Gracyn really) from grabbing the incubating eggs during our daily egg run...we learned the hard way actually when momma cracked an egg on the frying pan for breakfast one morning and found a baby growing :(

Well this afternoon as we were doing our watering rounds for all the animals Ben spotted a fluffy little chick peeping out from under the hen!!

Isn't it cute??!!  This just makes me so happy that my kids get to experience this!! There are 4 more eggs so we will be sure to post about them if they hatch as well.  What an exciting first day to summer!!  Hope everyone else had a blessed day!

Our First Harvest!

What a fun, exciting day yesterday was for us here on our farm...we plucked our first cucumber off its vine!!  The cucumbers are one of Nate's boxes to take care of.  He has been faithfully watering and weeding them.  Actually everything is blooming and growing...in the next few weeks we should have tomaotes, squash, beans, lettuce and more cucumbers!!

We had a fun weekend with daddy picking peaches at a local orchard...came home and made jam, fruit leathers, pies, and froze a bunch for smoothies!

And we spoiled daddy on father's day with 4 pies!!  Cherry, apple, peach and peanut butter!

Fish & Chicken Fry!

Our neighbor, Mr. Mike, gave us a cooler full of fish today!  It was time for Ben and Christian to learn how to fillet some fish!  Thanks to Grampa, momma knows how to do it so she took the afternoon to teach the boys...they did great!  Thanks to their hard work, we all enjoyed a nice fish fry for dinner!

We decided to throw in a chicken for dinner as well...our butchering turned into quite the science experiment...CAUTION...this next picture might disturb some of you, but we thought it was really cool!! The chicken was actually one of our egg layers, and when we opened her up to clean her out we found the egg factory!!  It was an entire tube system, just like the intestines, but with egg yolks growing!  The one on the left was complete except the shell was soft.  We learned a lot today!

Barred Rock Chickens

Our barred rock chicks turned 2 months old yesterday, and on that day we heard a first crow! It was hilarious!...kind of a half crow, is this what I'm supposed to do, kind of sound.  Today, as we were doing our rounds, feeding the animals, another cock-a-doodle-do!  Not sure if it's the same rooster trying to make himself heard or if it's a different guy...nonetheless, it's cute!

Has anyone considered getting their own backyard chickens?!  They are inexpensive, keep bugs under control, fertilize your lawn and give you eggs!  And they're super pets...our kids love their chickens!  

Their growth in 8 weeks is amazing...

APRIL 8th

MAY 8th

 

JUNE 8th

Upstate Farm Tour

The CFSA (Carolina Farm Stewardship Association) had its 6th annual upstate farm tour this past weekend.  As we were researching different aspects about farming in south carolina we found cfsa online.  It was exciting to see other people doing the same thing we desire to do...raising food in a natural way.  We visited several different farms, and they all had their chickens free ranging alongside thier turkeys and goats.  We made some great contacts as well for our own up and coming farm business.  On Saturday we forgot the camera so there aren't any pictures to show...Our first stop was a compost farm where we learned about vermiculture (using worms in your compost).  Our next stop was to Bethel Trails farm...a farm 10 minutes away from home!  They are a  great homeschooling family following the same farming methods that we are using!! And they sit on the board of cfsa.  Our last stop for the first day was to a vegetable and herb farm., Red Fern Farm.  We gained valuable information on how to garden with no pesticides, how to transplant without sending your plants into shock and how to properly dry herbs.  Very exciting for me since I have a love for herbs!

Sunday after church we hit 3 more farms in the area.  The first, Patient Wait Farm, specialized in heritage breed turkeys.  All heritage breeds are endangered.  One breed they had was the Jersey Buff.  The husband and wife team raise them from birth and sell many for Thanksgiving dinners but preserve most to further the breed.  We spoke with the owner about getting us some of those to raise to help preserve the heritage breed (and a few for some yummy Thanksgiving turkey!)

Next stop was to Split Creek Farm, a dairy goat farm.  There were over 700 goats!!  It was a beautiful sight...they were all scattered in different groups, mostly divided by age, spread out all over the pastures.  They specialize in raw goat milk and goat milk products....cheese, soap, and delicious fudge!  They also sell their purebred goats....we loved the nubians and will be adding some of them to our own farm soon!

Our last stop was special!  One of the first things we were sure to find when we moved here was a source of raw milk until we get our family cow.  We found Milky Way Farm, and his farm was part of the tour!  So we went to meet L.D. Peeler and his Jersey cows that we get our milk from!  He has over 90 hiefers!  We toured the barn where all the milking is done, got to meet some of the ladies who give us milk and then even got a few gallons to take home.  It was a great field trip and so fun to meet L.D.

Our goal is to have Kornerstone Farms be part of the Upstate Farm Tour in a few years.