Kornertone Eggs at Stomping Grounds Coffee House in Greer & a new buck named Charlie!

This is exciting…

Our eggs from our free ranging hens are in a storefront!!  This is Stomping Grounds Coffee House; a quaint coffee shop located in Greer, SC.  We were approached by JP and Chad, co-owners of Suburban ShareCrop in Greenville, back in March about offering our eggs in this coffee shop.  JP is a barista there, and Lisa, the owner of Stomping Grounds, gave him the green light when he presented her the concept of a mini market in the coffee shop to help make local produce more available to the public.  The idea has been a hit!  Our goat milk soaps are there as well!!  Next time you're in the Greer area, stop in Stomping Grounds for a fresh cup o' joe and some local produce and eggs!!

Ben is our nightly egg collector…

He gathers, counts, washes, dries, weighs, grades, packages, dates and labels all our eggs!  Whew!!  That's quite a job for a 10 year old, but Ben does it with excellence.  He takes his work around here very seriously!  I took him along for our first delivery to Stomping Grounds so he could present the eggs to the owner.  I also wanted him to be the one to experience selling them so he could see the fruit of all his labor.  It was awesome, and he did great.  I am once again so thankful for all the learning experiences farming is providing our family.  Also, we are investing in 25 more laying hens so we can provide other storefronts with our farm fresh eggs!  And for anyone interested, we will always have them available at the Woodruff Farmer's Market every Thursday 3-7pm right here in Woodruff!

This is Jerry, our neighbor and friend.  He is a goat lover!  And I must say, he is very kindhearted…he is also the one who gave us our first buck, Pongo.  His beautiful doe gave birth to twins back in March.  He generously offered us the buckling!  

One thing we have learned when purchasing goats…always look at the momma's milk sack and teats!  Well looky here!….all I can say is, I would be thrilled to milk an animal like this!!  She is loaded and this is her first freshening!  I'm sure that all sounds silly to most of you reading this, but for someone who milks goats every day, and relies on their milk for several things, this is super exciting!!  Seeing this doe and knowing this is the milkline of the buck we've just been given is fantastic!

Isn't he handsome?!?  Jerry had named him Charlie so we are keeping that name.  He is an Alpine crossed with a Nubian, which are both great breeds for milk volume, and Nubians are my personal favorite!  He will make some pretty babies!!

Here he is being greeted by our girls before he's even in the pen.  We are keeping Charlie in with the does for now because our 2 bucks are much older and bigger, and they have horns.  Males like to dominate each other and we don't want to risk him getting hurt so we will wait a while.

Now we have 2 bucks from excellent milklines, our other being a Saanen/Nubian mix whose mamma gives a gallon a day!  Wow!  Now to find some does from superb milklines….

Meet Moses & Miriam!!

Our Alpine, Mary, gave birth on Sunday, February 16th, to two kids!  One billy and one doe!  Moses, the billy, looks just like mama, and Miriam, the doe, looks just like papa who happens to be Jack, our first billy born on our farm the same day of last year!!  Isn't that neat?!

We have been in need of a container for hay for our goats so Nate and Christian got busy with some free pallets!  They simpy attached 2 pallets on opposite sides to a base pallet with L brackets, then nailed on 4 pieces of a disassembled pallet to the other parallel sides.  Nate added a top with 2 hinges to keep the goats out of their hay becuase they love to lay in it!!

 Nate then sawed off every other pallet board to allow bigger head space for the goats.

There you have it!  A little planning and a few tools, and lots of free pallets equal a great addition to our farmstead :)  Great job boys!!

More animals also means a need for more shelters…yet another way to use free pallets!  Ben and dad have started the shelter, and I will be sure to post pictures of the finished product soon!

Farm Happenings

We have added to our goat herd…actually I should say we have replaced a buck.  In the summer we were blessed to receive 7 female purebred Alpines.  Alpines are a larger goat, and the 3 bucks we have are a smaller breed.  The one we have replaced was a purebred dwarf Nigerian and the other two are our babies, born in February, that have dwarf Nigerian in them.  The females have been in heat for the past month…Pongo (the one now gone) even broke through the fencing to get to them so he could "do his duty"…ahem.  Well, after allowing all 3 bucks a chance to do their thing with the girls in heat we quickly realized after observing (yes, this is something you have to do when you own animals :) ) that none of them could mount the girls properly because the girls are all too big!  Our neighbor, Mr. Jerry, who is a goat owner himself, suggested we get an Alpine buck to mate all the gals.  He actually personally knows the owner of Split Creek Goat Farm.  So after a phone call, we were on our way to pick up this handsome guy!!

 He wasted no time in becoming familiar with his new gals!

He's handsome, isn't he?!  We will put the females in with him when we notice they are in heat.  We are going to try and spread the mating out so we have a good supply of milk too.  The addition of baby bucks to sell will be a good supply of income to our farm since we now have purebred females and a pure buck.  Of course we will need to purchase another Alpine buck to mate any females that come from him.

Graycie and Ellie's sunflowers have gone to seed!  We have left them on the stems to dry, and now that they are wilting we are going to do a couple different things with them.

We cut all the heads off.  We're going to keep several to continue to dry them and save the seed for next year.  This year we only planted a handful in a box, but we have decided to plant them along the entire fenceline next year…it will be beautiful!!  Can't wait!

We are going to feed some to the hens as well!  Off Ellie goes!

We don't let anyting go to waste here!  We pulled the stalks up and are giving them all to the goats!

 They loved it!  I bet the stalks tasted sweet like the seeds!

This was actually really fun!…we rubbed the sunflower heads and let the seeds fall out everywhere.  The hens were appreciative, as you can see!

I didn't even notice Ellie dipping hers in the waterer until I posted this picture…ha!!

A bit time consuming, but a fun learning experience :)

Big brother Ben telling Ellie how to do it…she did her best ;)

Now that the kids have shared a treat with the hens it's time to collect eggs!  Seeing so many hens in the pictures you would think we are getting a lot of eggs every day, but all the reddish hens, our cinnamon queens, are still considered pullets.  They are not mature enough to lay eggs yet.  We should start getting eggs from them in February.  We have 35 laying hens total right now so when they do start giving eggs we will be getting quite a few!!  And they will be for sale :)

We checked our 2 bee hives today.  One colony has loaded up with honey…15 frames were full!  And it tastes sooo good!  The weaker colony only had 7 frames of honey stored.  We will be feeding them both over the winter with sugar water.  Everything we have read has said to do so.  Neither hive had a queen though!  No brood!  Not sure how we lost both queens AGAIN, but both colonies successfully replaced their leader last time, I'm sure they can do it again.  We will be seeking advice on what to do about this dilema since it's winter and it could possibly take a greater toll on the colonies not having a queen to be laying brood.  Here you can see all the honey capped off, stored for winter.

So thankful for all we have here on our farmstead, and we LOVE sharing all we are up to with everyone :)

Fridays on the Farm

We have started our fall seeds. The summer garden is done and we've actually got our 3 female goats in the garden space to clear it all out!  We're going to try and grow peas, more beans, spaghetti squash, turnips, spinach, cabbage and a lettuce mix.

Our farm is growing again!  Meet our 7 French Alpine purebred goats...all females!  Aren't they pretty?!  4 of them are over a year old, and 3 are babies.  You can see in this picture who the Alpha is...she wouldn't let any of them near us until she checked everything out...good momma.

They all came from the same homestead...a veterinarian who kept them for milk, but has decided he's too old to carry the workload anymore.  They warmed up to us fairly quickly and are so gentle!  I'm glad they are hornless.

We separated our 3 goats because they have horns, and that could get messy when they're trying to prove who's in charge.  You can see Mocha up on her shelter...she has been there all day, I think, to prove she's in charge.  I hope they can all get along, and eventually we will have them all in one pen.

 Making acquaintances.

More animals, of course, means more labor for us, but we don't mind!  We are SO BLESSED to have all that we have...the work that comes with it is a joy!  Nate was busy building another feeder to put the hay in...he has become quite the carpenter!  Pajamas and an axe...classic Christian!

More time spent milking for Caitlin and me...but that's one of the benefits of having milking goats!  We were going to let the goats get used to their new home and give them a few days before we milked them, but 2 of them looked engorged to me.  They were having a hard time walking because they were so full!  So we decided to at least relieve that for them.  (As a nursing mom 7 times myself I know just how uncomfortable that is!!)

This first goat (we still have to name them all!) didn't even have to be held down.  She was so cooperative...I think she was thankful we were getting all that milk out!

 Cait LOVES living on a farm!

 3 full cups from one goat!!  Got the same from the next we milked, and we still have to milk our Mocha!!  The milk is flowin'!

Our beagle had puppies 3 weeks ago...6 of them.  2 girls and 4 boys and they are all adorable!  I will take better pictures soon!  They will be for sale in October if you're local and want one!