Farming Around

We are still harvesting plenty of tomatoes here at the farm!  Have you ever wondered why farmers have rabbits?  Not only for their meat, but for their droppings…we ammended our garden soil this year with a couple trailor fulls of rabbit droppings and this is the result!…large amounts of tomatoes! And everything else is producing just as well!

Ellie is just smitten with her kitten!  Our cats have no lack of love and attention, that's for sure!

There is always a need for more laying hens when you own a farm that sells its eggs.  One big step we have taken towards being a more sustainable, self-sufficient farm is incubating our hen's eggs.  It has enabled us to step away from the need of a hatchery.  We currently have 11 chickens growing that we hatched from our incubator!  A few are visibly roosters, but they are needed as well to continue our ability to hatch eggs :)

We have 3 more piggies growing in our woods!  We have a couple different breeds this time, one being the heritage breed Tamworth. They originiated in England, and are a lean pig producing leaner pork!  We have researched and have learned that they do take longer to grow, but they truly forrage and have no need for grain supplements which we are excited about.  Again, another step towards being sustainable and self-sufficient!  We are also investing in a mamma Tamworth that is pregnant with her 2nd litter.  We visited the farm she lives on, and she is being raised the same way we raise ours…out in the woods forraging.  Can't wait to make her part of the family! 

Our turkeys are plumping up.  Their have grown in their beautiful feathers, and the males have already started puffing themselves up to show off around the females!  Can't wait to hear the first "gobble, gobble"!

Jason purchased a tractor for our farm!!  We have several projects it will be used for, but our oldest son, Nathan, has already put it to use a few times.  We move the hens around our property so they have new places to scratch and we usually have to push/pull these "hens on wheels" to their new place…not anymore!  Great job Nate!

Homemade Baby Formula? Yes!

Breast is definitely best…but sometimes, as in Maddie's case, not enough.  She is my eighth baby and this is the first time I have had a lack of breast milk.  It started her first few weeks of life…I noticed scant diapers, no bowl movements, she seemed weary all the time.  Even the coloring on her face didn't seem right.  She was getting thinner, it seemed, every time I changed her diaper.  At 3 weeks of age I finally listened to my mothering instincts and took her to our family doctor.  I was right: she weighed 6.1 and at birth she was 7.13.  That's almost a 2 pound loss!!  At 3 weeks old babies should be back to their birth weight, plus some!  I sought counsel from friends and a la leche leader.  Some said I could have retained placenta, which is a hormonal issue not allowing milk to come in; too much stress; and as you can see in this picture Maddie has a bit of a tongue tie which some said could be the cause of less milk production (baby not sucking well decreases milk supply).  Enter: Nourishing Traditions baby formula recipe to supplement.  Great cookbook with a wealth of nutrition information…I highly recommend it.  There is even a website, www.westonaprice.org with loads of more nutrition information and sources for raw milk.

You can search Amazon for all the ingredients, but I personally found it easiest to order the ingredients as a "kit" from Radiant Life.  They give you enough of each ingredient (minus the raw milk, cream & whey) to last 1 month, 3 months or 6 months, whichever you choose to buy.  To me this made more sense.  For example, the lactose you run out of quickly, but in the 3 month kit you get 6 bags of it. Made more sense to me so I wasn't scurrying for an ingredient I ran out of. 

The process of making the formula seems very intimidating at first, but once you do it a few times it really is no big deal…it has become a part of my every day.  (It is recommended in the book that you make a fresh batch daily)  Thankfully here in SC raw milk is legal so I have easy access to it.  If you don't where you live there is a meat-based formula recipe on the website here.  I will eventually try this one as well since we have a freezer shelf full of chicken livers and homemade bone broth.  The only step you need to think ahead on is the whey.  Be sure to strain some out before your baby will need the formula.  I do a quart at a time and store the whey in the fridge.

You can find the full recipe and instructions for the raw milk formula here.  In the pot I have half the water, the gelatin, lactose, coconut oil and cream warming up.  I decided to freeze our cream for storage purposes, and its easiest to melt it in the pot instead of putting it frozen in the blender. 

Once that's all melted and mixed add it to the blender with the rest of the water, milk, whey, and remaining ingredients.  Blend for 3 seconds and you're done.

I store Maddie's in a half gallon glass jar (recommended) in the fridge, and each time I pull it out I give it a good shake to incorporate all the oils again.  You can find the recipe for this nourishing baby's formula here.  Hope this is helpful to someone out there…I'm very thankful I already had the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and knew about this, but I know there are those who aren't aware of it.

Maddison is one content baby now, getting plenty of nourishment!  Thankfully, she is still nursing, but this addition has helped her tremendously.

Snow Day!!

 We woke this morning to a couple inches of beautiful snow!

 Time for some fun!!

 Jason took the kids down to the creek to sled down the hill

We have added to our flock of hens with guineas!  6 of them for now, and that may be it…they are extremely loud!  That is one of the reasons we got them.  They alert the rest of the flock of predators…well, anything that they think may be a threat…they squak at cars that drive by and they squak at us when we go to collect eggs or clean the egg mobile!!  They will also provide us with eggs that are extremely rich in omega 3's due to the high volume of insects they eat, which is the other reason we added them to our farm…to help control the bugs, ticks especially.  They will free roam with the hens, but I'm looking forward to keeping them in the garden this Spring & Summer.  They don't scratch like chickens do, and they are always on the hunt for bugs so they will really help out in that area!  They are an interesting looking bird…we serve a creative Maker!!

 Handsome fellow, isn't he?  He's our cinnamon king!

Our piggies are fattening up very quickly.  Their feed intake has increased 150lbs every 2 weeks for the last month!  And they are always rooting.

This is our 2 year old Alpine beauty, Esther.  All the goat's thick coats grew in back in November, and they are bushy and beautiful!

 Ruthie was enjoying licking the snow off the fence!

Even on fun snow days there is still work to be done and animals to be fed.

All the waterers had an inch thick of ice covering the top that had to be broken to allow the animals to drink.

All our cinnamon queen and barred rock hens have started laying and we are getting an average of 2 dozen eggs a day!  Live nearby and want to feed your family fresh eggs from free roaming hens?  Contact us on our Facebook page to get more information!

 I love this big helper!!

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 :)