I know I’ve said this before, but Holy cow does time fly! I cant believe it’s been months since I was on here last. Let’s get right to it, shall we? There’s a lot to tell you!
In February or so we sent the last two pigs to freezer camp. We had a polar vortex coming and honestly it was just more humane to butcher them then as opposed to trying to keep them warm during that bitterly cold weather. Now our freezers are full with pork and chicken, and we decided to wait a year before we get more pigs like that.
Kidding season came in like a whirlwind on our farm. We ended up with ten healthy, lively kids. We lost some which was super sad, but unfortunately that happens. Hopefully next year will be better. In the meantime, we’ll milk, make cheese, butter, and all things dairy.
This year we decided to try our hand at growing sweet corn. By that I dont mean just a couple plants, more like a couple of acres. We got off to a rough start as the tractor decided to die right as it was time to plant the first acre. That acre ended up being planted by hand. Shortly after, we took it to the shop to get fixed so that the other two acres would be planted by tractor instead.
Our barn is coming along, same as the house, however we’re at standstill with the price of lumber sky high. As much as we would love to make progress on both structures, it makes more sense to wait until prices come down some. Hopefully that happens soon.
Well I think that about covers it for now. Theres so much more thats gone on, but I’ll save that for another post.
Once again it’s been entirely too long since I’ve sat down to do this. So much has gone on, I’m really not sure where to start. Well, let’s get to it.
Fall has come and gone, and winter is officially here now. We have gotten so much done around the farm and yet there still seems to be so much to do. Now that the holidays are over, we can start focusing on the long list of things that need to be completed around here.
All of the meat birds have made their way to freezer camp. I’m not sure if I want to raise this breed again. They taste great and are incredibly healthy, but they’re kind of a pain to process. We’ll see what happens come springtime, I may change my mind. I did keep a few hens and a rooster and I may breed my own chicks to raise next time. They are dual purpose so we’ll see how they do.
We wrapped up breeding season with most dairy goat breeds in November. With that being said, most of our girls seem to be successfully bred. We have had a couple of mishaps however. Dorothy, one our Nigerian Dwarf goats had what we believe was a false pregnancy. Initially we thought she was having a miscarriage, but there was never a baby. The plus side of that was that we were able to milk her. Holy cow was it delicious! She didn’t produce very much milk, just enough to get the kids hooked on it. We’ve since dried her off since she really wasn’t producing much at all. After giving her some time to heal up, she’s been bred to Bill and is now due the week of Easter. Hopefully this time around is more successful.
The pigs finally reached the 300+/- mark which means that the majority of them went to freezer camp right before winter. They’ve been finishing out their days in our garden area, rooting it up and fertilizing it. We realized that it was time not only because of their size, but once Hammy decided to get out of BOTH fences and head down the road to the neighbor’s. Luckily she wasn’t aggressive but with how big she was, it wasn’t exactly easy to get her moving in the direction we wanted her to go. After about an hour, and the help of our neighbors, we finally got her back in the pen with the others. She gave quite a good return in meat for Derby with meat so dark that it almost looked like beef. She lived a great life, and served her purpose well, even if she did escape every chance she could.
Hammy in the chicken run
Barn construction started earlier in the fall as well. It’s not quite finished yet but we did manage to get a kidding stall built for my two goats that delivered at the end of November. Once the last of the pigs make their way to freezer camp, we should be able to work on the barn more.
The stall
Nice and cozy
The walls of the barn
Most of the walls are up
On that note, Waldo Fuzzybritches and Holly made their debut. They are so incredibly cute! If you’ve never seen baby goats jumping around, head over to YouTube and look up some videos. You’ll thank me later 🤣. The plus side of having baby goats, is that mom’s make milk! We are getting about 3 pints a day right now, but once we wean the babies, we should get considerably more.
Waldo
Holly
More than likely we’ll keep Waldo, but as a pet. He’ll get castrated and hang out around the farm being the spoiled little brat that he is. He’s such a funny little critter and absolutely loves attention. We don’t need anymore bucks, which is why he’ll just be a pet.
Holly on the other hand, well we’re not sure if we will keep her yet or not. She’s part meat goat and we’ve been considering keeping her and breeding her to produce offspring for meat purposes as opposed to milk. We still have time to decide so we’ll see.
When we started milking Holly’s mom Sandy, it was a total nightmare. She kicked with both feet and fought almost nonstop. I came close to giving up multiple times, but I was reminded by my goat mentor and good friend that she’ll get better. Now she’s at the point where she runs to the milkstand, and has actually gotten out of her pen and met me at the stand, bellowing like a cow. I just have to make sure that I finish milking before she’s done eating her grain or she tries to head out.
Fresh delicious milk
All in all, things are good around here. I plan to try to take time to do this more often, so hopefully I can accomplish that goal haha! Now that we are getting milk, we’ll be talking about cheese and other fun things that can be made with milk.
It’s a beautiful September day here on the farm. The temperature is perfect, it’s not too hot, but not cold either. Fall is definitely in the air!
With fall comes the processing of animals that we’ve raised this year. The first ones we’ll butcher are the cornish cross chickens. Their sole purpose in life is for meat. They are easy to butcher at 8 weeks old. Any longer than that and they start having health problems. We’ve actually had some die of heart attacks in the past.
We had some cute helpers
This year we managed to raise our chickens on grass. They get feed too, but they haven’t had any of the health problems that we’ve faced in the past with keeping them penned up. They all look healthy and happy running around eating bugs and grass.
Chicks chilling in the grass
Our thought process is that we want them to only have one bad day in their whole existence with us, and that is their last day. Thats not to say that they will suffer, it’s quite the opposite. Their demise is swift and painless. They don’t even know it’s coming. I think the worst part for them was that they didn’t get any breakfast as we wanted their system to be free of food for butchering. Don’t worry, they had a big dinner.
Our setup for the day
The boys brought them over to a temporary pen so that the Rudd Rangers, our other meat birds, could go ahead and eat. It was closer to where we were setup too.
This year we bought a plucker. That thing was a gamechanger! In the past, I have mostly plucked the birds, and every time the kids all promised to help. Well they would get thru one and decide they didn’t like it so much. So I would be stuck plucking all those birds, and as much as I don’t mind it, it takes a while to do. This sweet machine takes care of plucking in 15 seconds! I can’t tell you how giddy I was watching it work!
I won’t go into very much detail about the day as some don’t like to hear about it. However I will state that it was a smooth process and everybody did great helping. We even managed to recruit help from one of the kids down the way. All in all we ended up with 134 lbs of chicken to hopefully get us thru the winter. We still have 29 Rudd rangers to process in the next couple of weeks too. I think with all of them our family and our extended family should eat pretty good this winter
In other news, the pigs are weighing in around 200 lbs. They’re getting so big, but luckily they’re still pretty friendly. Our garden is mostly finished for the year so once the goats clean up what they can, the pigs will have their turn rooting and turning it over.
On the goat front, our little bottle babies only have two weeks left until they are completely weaned. They are just the sweetest little things too. The rest of the goats are doing great too. Breeding season is officially here and the bucks are making sure to let us know! They stink to high heavens, and are making all kinds of ridiculous noises trying to woo the girls.
Oh I almost forgot, we’re finally getting green and blue eggs and boy are they pretty! We’re still having to hunt for some of them because I am overdue in clipping wings. We’ve got some plans for expansion on our chicken run soon so hopefully that will deter the desire to escape as much.
These are fresh from the coop and their hiding places
All in all, everything seems to be ok for the most part around here. Hopefully all is well in your neck of the woods too.
Well it happened again… I looked out the window and there were new goats out there. Weird, I wonder how they got there? Haha, that’s not really how it happened, but I did get new goats. I’m sure that really doesn’t surprise anyone. They are the last ones that we are getting….this year.
Now for introductions, we picked up Jelly Bean and Sandy from the same farm that had George. Jelly Bean has been bred to George and is actually due on Farmdaddy’s birthday. Sandy was bred to a meat goat that they had and is supposedly due in November. Shes a bit thin and honestly doesn’t seem pregnant to me at all. Time will tell though since some goats are really good at hiding babies.
Sandy and Jelly Bean
We also picked up a beautiful Buck named Bill. He’s glorious and handsome, but is in rut so he stinks to high heavens and is a bit of a jerk. I can’t wait to see what his babies look like.
Bill
Our meat birds have been moved outside and are thriving. We have electric fence around them and move them across the grass every few days or so. We will start butchering the Cornish cross the first week of September and the Rudd rangers towards the end of the month. Our plucker showed up a couple of weeks back and I can’t wait to try it out. Farmdaddy is ok with killing and doesn’t mind butchering, but he would rather pull his own hair out than pluck a chicken. With 50 birds to pluck, I’m sure it will be a game changer!
Meat birds enjoying grass
Plucker
We were curious about how big the pigs are, so I found a formula online to get an idea. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but it gave us a rough estimate. If the formula is correct, the bigger ones are weighing in around 150 and the smaller ones are about 100 or so.
Progress on the house is moving along nicely! Walls are going up and it’s nice to be able to visualize the rooms and walk thru them. I can’t wait for it to be finished, but I know that’s going to take time. Here’s hoping the weather stays nice for awhile longer.
The walls are up in the front room
The youngest girl found this little guy and decided to rescue him from certain death (the chickens). She released him into the garden after taking some pictures.
Speaking of garden, we have quite the tomato crop going. The weeds have mostly taken over elsewhere, and the deer raided the corn. We have some different things that we’re going to try next year to try to keep the weeds down and critters out.
One of the biggest tomatoes we have so far
Last but not least, one of our silkie hens hatched out some babies. They are the cutest little things and it’s pretty neat watching mama hen teach them everything.
Time sure does fly on the farm especially when you’re busy! I cant believe July is almost over with already! Pretty soon it will be fall!
I need to to be honest here….I have a goat problem…as in I keep buying more and more 🤣 I don’t have as many as a lot of folks I know, but more than I was initially planning on getting. At this point I have 8 does/babies and 3 bucks. I’m happy with what I have and I have a plan for them all. At this point I don’t have any plans to buy anymore….but I also said that 5 goats ago 🤣.
The goats enjoying clover in our yard
The girls and I went to pick up the most recent bucks and they had two little bottle babies there that they were looking to get rid of too. In my defense, I went unsupervised and I had the girls with me too. I had no chance to say no, not that I wanted to, but if I tried to that is. When we picked them up they were 9 and 11 days old. It was a bit of a learning curve initially as we weren’t set up to bottle feed anything other than human infants. They’re now doing incredible and are just the sweetest little things!
Wednesday and Ellie Mae
As for my new bucks, we now have added George, a 2 year old Nigerian/Nubian mix and Fred a full Nubian to the herd. Fred is only 4 months old so I’m going to wait a bit before I let him have his way with some of the girls. I’m hoping between the three boys that we’ll get some good looking babies!
George and Fred
Bacon is doing great again! She’s been put back in with the other pigs and transitioned back pretty smoothly. We found out on a feed run that they gave us the wrong type when we ordered grower/finisher feed. They gave us a soy bean protein meal maintenance type feed. It’s higher in protein but might explain why they weren’t gaining quite like we expected. Since switching their feed to the right one, they seem to have almost doubled in size overnight! In case you didn’t know, pigs are hilarious to watch. They run around and clearly have a great time when you spray them with water.
Bacon likes to hang out in the water trough, luckily it’s not the one they drink from
The oldest hatched out guinea keets! We ended up getting some pretty neat looking birds! We got some pearl pied and lavender pied as well as regular pearls. Most have been sold off, but a couple have been kept to add to our flock.
Our meat birds came in too. They’re not quite big enough to go out on pasture just yet, but hopefully will be this next week. They grow super fast and are ravenous! Hopefully adding in bugs and fresh green grass will help keep them happy and healthy.
Some of the chicken nuggets
There so much more going on around here, but I’ll have to get to that later. For now, I need to lay this sleeping baby down and go move pigs.
It’s been 48 hours since we noticed that one of the pigs, Amy’s pig Bacon to be exact, was not acting herself. In fact, she was downright well, down. She was just laying in her house, only coming out to drink and go to the bathroom and then back to her house. It was very clear she wasn’t feeling well.
The next morning after the vet came, I went out to see her grunting and nosing around in her food bowl. She still wasn’t 100% but it was clear that she was on the mend. By the afternoon she was acting more like herself, running around, rooting, and hopping up and down when we would talk to her. She’s such a strange little pig and I’m glad shes doing better.
The following morning while checking pigs and spraying water in their wallow spot, I noticed Hammy (Brad’s pig) was now hanging out in the house. Normally when water is sprayed, she’s the first one in it grunting and acting silly. Today she didn’pt even open her eyes to watch. Instantly I got concerned because the vet said it could spread. Respiratory stuff can wreak havoc on animals fast and hard so I wanted to nip it in the bud pretty quickly.
Once again I called the vet, but this time just to double check the dosage with antibiotics we had on hand. We also discussed and decided that it would be best to just go ahead and dose all of them and to continue keeping Bacon separate in the hope that she gains some weight.
It didn’t take long for the oldest and me to realize that we could NOT medicate these pigs without help. Papi’s pig likes to bite…and hard! Luckily it’s only after feet right now and we wear only boots in the pig pen, so there’s a bit of deterrent there, but when one starts screaming they all charge angrily and it gets to biting. We had to leave the farm to get other stuff done, so we left medicating to the guys. Between dad, Papi, and the oldest boy they managed to get them all medicated with minimal issues. I wish I could’ve been there to witness it, I’m sure there was some comedic relief, but alas I missed it.
This morning all are doing well, eating, drinking and doing pig things. They got some greens from the garden and thoroughly enjoyed them. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we are out of the woods. I guess time will tell.
One of the things that I try to always do when interacting with our animals is to just sit and watch them. I usually try to take about 10 minutes or so per pen. Sometimes they act so ridiculous, I tend to get immense comedic relief. It makes it feel worth it with all of the hard work that we do.
One of my favorite pens to hang out around and watch is the pig pen. At this point, they get what we call pig zoomies. Especially when we’re spraying water in their wallow spot. They run around snorting, acting a fool running in and out of the water spraying and it is hilarious to watch! I have laughed to the point of tears watching them frolic!
One of my other reasons for sitting and watching critters is to make sure that they all are acting normal. Up until yesterday, they all were…
Last night at feeding time, dad was doing the nightly check on pigs. While doing so, he noticed that Bacon wasn’t acting normal. She is typically the leader of pig zoomies, is super vocal and loves to hop around in excitement when we are around. This night she was laying in their house just watching. He called me over to take a look and we both decided that we’d keep an eye on her and check again first thing in the morning. I was honestly hoping that she was just bedding down early as they tend to calm down quite a bit right before nightfall.
Pigs at the last check of the night
Morning comes around and on inspection we see that she’s not better. I decided to call the vet and have her come out. We did this for a couple of reasons…if it’s contagious, I want to keep it from spreading, if we can help her get better, then we obviously will do what we can. Meanwhile we continued doing chores while checking in on her periodically.
Early afternoon rolls around and the vet showed up. Her schedule was booked but she managed to squeeze us in which I thought was pretty cool. Anyways, we head to the pig pen where I find Bacon still laying in her house with obviously labored breathing. She scared me at first by not responding to anything I was doing. Normally she would’ve popped right up and grunted at us. The vet grabbed her by her front legs and pulled her a little bit. At this point she started to show some life.
By this point, the other pigs started noticing us messing with her and they were NOT happy with us. Meanwhile the vet did her assessment and came to the conclusion that she had a viral respiratory illness. We gave her a pretty potent antibiotic and anti inflammatory to hopefully help her out. We also decided that it would be best to separate her from the other pigs as they can get quite mean and we want her to rest, eat, and get better. At this point we play the waiting game….the vet seems to think she’ll be ok, but only time will tell.
School is officially out for the summer (Yay!!) Not that much has changed around here other than not doing schoolwork. Oh and it’s been getting hot, miserably hot. Unfortunately for us, our pool liner broke last year and they are as rare as hens teeth right now thanks to covid 19. Here’s hoping that one pops up soon as these kids are begging to go swimming.
Dorothy and Rose have settled right in around here. The first spot we chose to put them was great. When it rained, there was a river running right thru their pen. Well not really a river, but a lot of water. So we decided to move them over by the chicken coop. We can see them clearly now from the kitchen window which is nice because we couldn’t see them at all before unless we went out there.
The girls and I loaded up the babies in Dad’s truck along with a couple of dog kennels and hit the highway to go pick up Sophia, Blanche and the feeder pigs. The trip went surprisingly well with two babies and a truck bed full of animals haha. We got home and got all of them settle in to their new homes. We ended up going back to the same farm that we got the baby goats a few days later to pick up Two more…Mimi and Belle. Mimi is a Nubian and super sweet! Belle is a Nigerian dwarf and a little skittish, but I’m sure she’ll come around.
We had a couple of hiccups with our electric fence for the pigs, but it’s all worked out now. Apparently we bought the one for bigger pigs, which they will be soon, but as for now they were able to squeeze through. Luckily they didn’t go very far and we were able to get them back in the pen pretty easily. We switched out the pig fence for the chicken one, at least until they get bigger. So far so good, they haven’t managed to escape anymore. I was pleased to see them get right to rooting the area too. They’ll stay there for a few days before being moved around.
Speaking of pigs…the spot that they are in was completely covered in trees, honeysuckle and brush up until a week ago. We worked hard to clear it out so piggies could live there first. It’s shaded and it’s an area that we wanted cleared out any way. Some of the smaller trees were cut down and Farmdaddy took a scythe to the bushes and honeysuckle. I’m not sure if you’ve ever used one of those…they are both horrible and amazing! They cut stuff down so quick but boy is it a workout.
After we cleared it, I forgot to get a before pic
While walking thru the garden a couple of days back, I heard a noise in the bushes at the edge of the woods and looked over to see Mama cat was bringing her babies to the food bowl. We knew she had had her babies but nobody had seen them. She stopped coming around as much and only showed up to eat and would quickly disappear. It was pretty exciting to see 3 little heads pop up when I called out to them. Hopefully they warm up to us some and stick around. The chickens have been pretty good mousers, but I’m sure cats are better.
Eating with daddy
All in all, life has been good around here, hopefully all is well in your neck of the woods too.
Do you ever have intentions of getting around to doing something but it keeps getting put off again and again? That’s unfortunately what I did with the chicken coop. I’ve had straw for a while now, sitting in front of the coop door to help give me incentive to get it done. Or maybe deep down I was hoping one of the kids would do it for me 🤣. I’d have better luck getting struck by lightning!
Anyhow, this morning, I walked into the coop and there it was…that god awful smell that happens when it’s rained too much, mud has been traipsed in, and there’s just too much poop. I dont think words can describe just how bad it was. Now my birds are well taken care of, I usually clean the coop every couple of weeks or so. I’ve only skipped a month on cleaning, but I added fresh straw on top and some deodorizer. That’s actually how some folks deal with their coop. It’s called the deep litter method, and let me tell you, it’s not for me!
So I waited a couple of hours and finally got around to doing it. Both babies were down for a nap, and I asked the girls to listen for them, and I dug in. It didn’t take long for nosy Lola to show up and start messing around. I kept telling her that she didn’t want any part of this, but she insisted. She even brought friends along like it was a party. Betty White didn’t stick around long, Lola’s sister Lola, and Torchy all came digging around like there were treats hidden.
Eventually the others got bored or overwhelmed by the smell and hightailed it out of there. Lola stuck around though to the very end.
Lola inspecting the empty coop
I decided to put more deodorizer down before adding fresh straw. I’ve used different bedding before such as pine shavings, but I like straw the best. The birds seem to like it as well.
The finished product
Lola of course had to inspect the nesting boxes
Now that that’s done, I will definitely be making sure to keep the coop clean from now on, that is for sure. Especially with us coming into the warmer months.
Wow it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I didn’t mean to let time get away from me like that. To say we’ve been busy is such an understatement. I’ll guess I’ll just get right to it!
Ok so, our good buddy from Missouri came up a couple of weeks back and stayed the weekend with us. Luckily for us, he brought his tractor that has a loader on it! With that in mind, the guys quickly came up with a game plan of things to get completed while he was here. One of those projects was digging out the stump to an old diseased Elm tree. The other was to dig out the rest of the crawlspace area where the addition on our house is going to be. As with a lot of things in life, it didn’t take long for us to remember that things don’t always go according to plan…
Initially everything started out according to the plan. It shouldn’t take long to get the stump out, right?… Yeah…apparently this one had other ideas in mind. They dug, and dug, and dug some more. Before long, it had been several hours, and the stump was hanging on tight. No matter what they did, it just wasn’t enough. They finally had to call it and move on to the next task.
Digging out the crawlspace ended up being more successful, thankfully. They were able to get quite a bit done there so that was nice.
Now on to other parts of the homestead. The garden is doing incredible! Everything that has been planted has sprouted! He’s trying a new to us method with potatoes this year where he covered the plants with straw to start out and once again when the plants are getting established. If you want more info look into the “Ruth Stout methid”.So far it’s working out perfectly! Theres still a few things that need to be planted such as cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, and a few other things. These last few things will most likely go in the ground sometime over the next few days.
The geese are getting bigger by the day! We added an area off of the chicken coop for them and the boys built them a doghouse to live in. They did a great job, and the geese seem to love it! I put straw in it for comfort purposes and to hopefully make it easier to clean out. We upgraded their pool as well. Every morning they run straight to it! It is hilarious watching their “synchronized swimming” as they dive and zoom around under water.
The little chicks have been incorporated into the flock way smoother than I anticipated. They still freak out and run around like everything is going to kill them though. I know they’ll calm down with time. I can’t wait for them to start laying eggs! Some are supposed to be blue and some green and I’m excited to see the variations. I think blue and green eggs are just so pretty!
We have some new additions coming soon! I wasn’t going to share until they were here, but those that know me, know that I’m terrible at keeping secrets 🤣. This next weekend, we have 2 Nigerian dwarf goats coming to join our farm. They are a year old and will eventually be used for milking. Nigerian dwarf goats have the highest butterfat content in their milk which is great for making cheese and supposedly has the sweetest milk. My plan is to obviously have the milk to drink, but to also have butter, make lotion, soaps, etc. It’ll be next year sometime before that takes place though. I have wanted dairy goats for years, and I’m so stoked for this opportunity with them!
We don’t have names yet…
Coming up in the early part of June we have a couple of more additions coming! Since before moving here, we have wanted to raise and butcher our own pork. With all of the craziness going on in the world right now and excessive shopping of meat at stores, now more than ever this has become a priority. About a month ago I found some Tamworth/ Hereford/ Mangalitsa cross pigs. In case you didn’t know, there are different types of pigs based on what you want from them. Some breeds are better for bacon, and some are for lard. With our pigs, they are notoriously known as bacon pigs. We’ll raise them up to about 250 pounds and butcher them. In the meantime, we plan to train them to an electric fence and use them to help clear out the woods.
Bacon seeds
Egg sales have been great here lately. It seems most of our neighbors down the way are coming to us for eggs now. I may or may not have slipped a turkey egg or two in when they get them. Guinea eggs have been stacking up though, well they were. Once I advertised them on face space, I had a bunch of people wanting to buy them for hatching. I guess guineas are a hot commodity these days. I’ve even had people asking about Guinea keets (babies) and if I had any available. That of course got me thinking that maybe we should throw some Guinea eggs in the incubator and see what happens!
One of the unexpected results of selling eggs to neighbors is that while conversating about things we make and do, requests for other stuff have come up. For instance, we now have folks buying fresh baked bread, eggs and homemade bacon as a “breakfast special” of sorts. It’s been a huge hit! I didn’t anticipate that we would be doing more than providing eggs for those in our community but I have to say, it’s a great feeling when they come back saying “man that was good!” and buy more.
Fresh homemade bread
All in all, things are going well around here. There’s so much I want to share, but this is long enough. If you’ve made it this far, thanks a million, we appreciate you!
Turtle Rock Farm 