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Turkeys, Turkeys and More Turkeys – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on July 24, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Home, Wordless Wednesday

Last week one of our customers on our farm Facebook page shared this video:

I was laughing a hearty laugh by the end because we technically started with a flock of 30 laying hens….Well, we actually started with a 27 year old horse, but he was not onsite until THIS year. Then we got our dog, our turkeys, rabbits, ducks, cats, a cow…..and there we have it a complete farm!

Since we lost 70% of our Narragansett turkeys, I went on a hunt for more locally. I found nine poults, plus five eggs, which we are hatching out. An Amazon gift card helped pay for an incubator. You know you are farm-crazed when your spare money and gift cards are spent on farm stuff! We also have some Midget White eggs in the incubator too. Our hen, Brownie, is also sitting on three. I want to see if she can hatch some herself since she’s so broody.

Here are our 6 week old Narragansetts, probably closer to 8 weeks now, we purchased from a local farm who hatches out their own eggs, quite successfully I might add:

The first two…

The last two…

Then we got 2-3 week old Narragansett poults a week and a half ago from a little farm that also hatches out their own eggs:

This next photo is of Junior holding one of the 2-3 week old poults:

Our Bourbon Red turkeys have finally started laying. I believe we have a 2-3 eggs to add to the incubator, making that a total of 13-14. We’ll see how many hatch.

Never thought I’d become a heritage breed turkey farmer, but here I am with 25 turkeys, plus the additional 13-14. Turkeys, turkeys, and more turkeys! They sure will be tasty this winter!

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100 Baby Chicks: Cornish Rock and Freedom Rangers

Posted by html404 on July 18, 2013
in All Natural Products, Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Fun Stuff, Home

Another big day here at the Gould farm. 100 baby chicks arrived…all ALIVE at that. That’s impressive. We were expecting the worst to be honest, especially when the Postal worker mentioned they were not doing very well when we received the call. These cuties are just a day old and made their journey in the 90 degree temperatures we’ve been experiencing here in Chicagoland.

We purchased 50 more Freedom Rangers, which did really well growth wise, except for that last day, and of course our first batch’s journey was not quite so successful. Here’s to hoping and praying we don’t lose a single one! Freedom Ranger broilers take 12 weeks to mature, so are a little slower growing than their counterparts, the White Cornish Rock.

The White Cornish Rock are what you would find in the grocery store. These will take about 8 weeks to mature and be ready to be processed. You will never taste a better chicken until you’ve tried free range, pastured chicken. I don’t want our family to go back to store bought chicken after tasting our first batch of Freedom Rangers. We’ve tasted friend’s pastured chicken and that is pretty much what got us turned on to raising our own.

Our children delight in the arrival of new little fur babies.

Here’s to truly all natural, farm fresh poultry! Cannot wait to have a freezer full of these…yummy!

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Summer on the Farm – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on July 10, 2013
in All Natural Products, Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Gardening, Home, Organic, Wordless Wednesday

We are having an extremely busy summer. So busy that I am taken aback that we are nearly half way through July! Summer has always been my favorite season, though I enjoy the others. My birthday is during the summer and my mom always made birthday time FUN! From sleepovers to camp outs to a day on the lake, I always had a blast. Summer on the farm is fun too or not so fun in some instances, as we’ve had a couple of disasters (our sized disasters that is, as we realize there are much worse disasters happening). We lost 17 of our 29 broilers on the way to processing due to them overheating – expensive. Our new batch of turkeys were shipped over the 4th of July and we lost over half of them. Now I am struggling to find a local source for turkeys to save on the stress of having them shipped.

On the brighter side, our egg business is growing. We have been selling out of eggs for the past 3 weeks. So we started to increase our flock again. We purchased 6 month old Rhode Island crosses, much like our Red Sex Links. Not a heritage breed like our original flock but very good producers. We also purchased 13 Silkies. They have poofy hair and feet. Our youngest daughter asked for the baby chicks, who are not so little, so she’s been taking care of them. The mamas are very broody so we are hoping to hatch out some more eggs! Here’s to hoping for the best.

Due to the shipping fiasco with our turkeys, we purchased a breeding trio of Bourbon Red turkeys. This is a heritage breed and may be a little bigger than our Midget White turkeys. We now have five “pet” turkeys. Our neighbor hatched two of our Midget White eggs and we would have had an additional two turkeys, but during a mating session the Tom smothered them beneath Brownie, our hen. Lots of death around our farm lately. One of my children’s words not mine. But I quite agree.

Animals are not the only thing that has been keeping us busy. Berry picking has too. We found some mulberry bushes (more like trees to be honest) at the back of our property and we’ve been picking those pretty regularly.

Then we have been visiting area berry farms to pick strawberries and raspberries. Next on the list is blueberries! Next year we are planning on planting more berries here on the farm, as most of our plants did not produce much due to us moving them from the townhouse to the farm in the spring.

We have also been working hard to get all our fall planting done or most of it, as we will be planting more greens in a month’s time. We bought some transplants from friends’ farms to make up for our spring greenhouse disaster, which will hopefully help us have some veggies in late July/early August. The pepper plants are from one friend’s farm in Wisconsin. They were a little stressed since we did not get them planted right away. Our little ones even help in the garden.

We enjoy growing our own organic meat and vegetables, but it certainly is not without its challenges and hard work!

How’s your summer going?

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Wood Pallet Herb Garden – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on July 3, 2013
in DIY Projects, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Gardening, Home, Organic, Wordless Wednesday

Wood Pallet Herb Garden – Wordless Wednesday

If you click on the photo it’s not so blurry. I don’t know why the editing program does that to photos!

This post was inspired by http://www.repeatcrafterme.com/2013/05/wooden-pallet-herb-garden.html?showComment=1372278599739&m=1 but I did not originally hear about it from her. I can’t even remember where I learned of this unique way to recycle pallet and plant a wood pallet herb garden. All I remember is seeing the idea and liking it. Then when we got our bags of soil, still on a wood pallet, I told the family I wanted to keep the wood pallet for an herb garden.

This was very easy to do. I just took a small roll of landscaping fabric and stapled it to the bottom of the wood pallet. Then my husband and I filled it up with about 2.5 bags of organic soil mix (sorry cannot remember the size of the bags right now), added some perlite and then planted our herbs.

We planted from left to right: rosemary, chives, curly leaf parsley, oregano and basil in the last two rows. These plants all came from a friend’s farm. She specializes in transplants, has a greenhouse; and since we never got our herbs planted from seed we got these from her. I’ll have to let you know how well the plants grow in this wood pallet herb garden, as this is the first time we’ve tried growing something this way.

We still have fennel, more parsley and oregano to plant, as well as all our fall planting…amidst everything else – one monthly market, a weekly market and possibly a corporate market for just five weeks this summer. Oy!

So much to do and so little time….We cannot wait to cook with our own herbs and share them with our CSA members (Consumer Supported Agriculture) and customers! Here’s to hoping the plants yield enough for all.

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Greenhouse Disaster – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on May 1, 2013
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Gardening, Seasonal Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

This is what I call our greenhouse disaster. We had storms go through a couple of weeks ago and destroy our cheap greenhouse. I know even the large, well-made greenhouses on larger farms often get completely blown over in bad storms, but still it’s very disappointing to say the least because we also lost many of our transplants.

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Milking and Making Butter- Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on April 24, 2013
in All Natural Products, Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Wordless Wednesday

This is our second oldest daughter milking. She’s our chief milker at the moment until we train the next one in line to milk. I have helped with milking but I think my nervousness unsettled Eclipse because she seemed jittery and moved a lot. Then again maybe I’m being paranoid and she was just antsy in her new home since I haven’t milked since the first week. Eclipse does seem to do better for our daughter, whom the cow loves I might add! Over the weekend, Eclipse watched the children go from one end of the property, down the tree line to the other end and mooed in their direction after our daughter went over with her younger siblings. Then when our daughter came back across the field, Eclipse followed her again by walking the fence line to greet her – if that isn’t affection, I don’t know what is!

Since Eclipse has been on pasture her cream (and milk) has been slowly increasing. Today the girls got 6 cups of cream from two gallons of milk and made two pounds of butter! The photos below are not all of the same day. The milk bottles are actually some of our very first. The butter photos are from today. All they do is put the cream in a pint or quart sized jar and shake it until it forms butter. The girls like to shake it until it forms a ball, which eliminates the need to shape the butter by hand! Pretty smart, eh?

Click on the image to make it larger and brighter.

It’s a fun milking and making butter! My husband is very happy not to have to stop for milk after work!

Happy not-so-Wordless Wednesday!

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Herdshare Cow – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on April 10, 2013
in Animals, Community Issues, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats

Not so Wordless this week…ha!

Our family drinks and goes through a lot of milk in a week so we’ve been looking at the possibility of getting a herdshare cow (the kids will own a portion of her milk “shares” and we’ll sell “cow or milk shares”, which is where other people desiring raw milk will buy shares of her, that is if IL doesn’t change their raw milk laws). We have been researching dairy cows or rather our daughter has been, and even went to visit a Guernsey dairy farm in Wisconsin, nearly two hours away, in November. The economical benefits to owning our own cow would allow us to supply our family with milk for 8-10 months out of the year, plus all the other dairy products we enjoy – butter, yogurt, ice cream and cheese, as well as providing others with fresh milk too.

Then a couple of weeks ago while my mom was here we came across a Craigslist ad for a Guernsey for sale locally. It was a person we bought some of our bookcases from just after we moved into this house. The reasons we like this cow is she’s local so less travel time, less stress on the cow. The owner is raising the cow the way we want to, which is a huge factor to us wanting her. The cow was also affectionate to our daughter the first time she went in her pen, which resonated with us…so….we bought her!

Pictured at her old home.

Eclipse is a 5.5 year old Guernsey. She has given birth to three calves, the third one was born last year. Even though it’s been a year since her last birth she is still giving a couple of gallons of milk per day. We are really impressed, but we are newbies so it doesn’t take much to impress us She is being fed pasture, hay and fodder (sprouted grain). We *think* the fodder is what is helping her give milk for so long between calves. Either that or she’s just a faithful milker! Here’s to hoping she likes us as well as she did her former owner.

The children are hoping her first calf with us is a heifer (female) so they can buy back the herdshares and make Eclipse our family cow. If she has a bull calf, then he’ll be processed for beef and shared among all the shareholders. We hope to get Eclipse bred this spring or summer, Lord willing. First we have to figure out when she cycles, which can be hard to determine when there’s only one cow. Or so we’ve been told.

While I grew up surrounded by cows, I have very little experience taking care of them, especially a dairy cow. Growing up I watched them being milked and took their yummy milk from the cooler of our neighbors milk parlor, but not once did I take care of one or milk one. I took care of my pastor’s beef cow when he and his family went away a couple of times, that’s my extent of caring for a cow. Other than that my experience is limited to visits to neighbors farms in my hometown in Nova Scotia, having the cows lick my rubber boots and runny a muck through their pastures as a child.

We are excited but a little apprehensive, as cows require a set routine and it’s a whole new animal to acclimate to our farm. So do you have any experience with cows?

Stay tuned to more adventures of milking a cow, making butter and even fencing….from our fledgling little farm….

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Goat Milk Soap – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on March 13, 2013
in Crafts, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Handmade Items, Wordless Wednesday

Ta-da….Goat Milk Soap curing for 4 weeks. We are going to melt it down again and put it in molds tomorrow to sell at two events this weekend!

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Dear Neighbors

Posted by html404 on January 29, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

I think I have mentioned that we live on a busy rural road about four miles out of town, but the North side high school is basically in our backyard only a few fields over. I also believe I mentioned the fact that we have had Animal Control come out to visit us twice. Or maybe I neglected to share the last visit. The first visit was last June about our chickens. The last visit came due to an anonymous call to Animal Control saying our dog was neglected. Cough….eh-hem….there are eight children who live here and love Padfoot, how on earth could he possibly be neglected? Just because he’s tied by a roadside where everybody and their mother can see him?

The result of that visit ended in the Animal Control officer saying he could see our dog wasn’t neglected and that Padfoot was happy, but if we wanted to keep him outside… fix his house. We have a very old dog house for him that was given to us by our landlords and we are temporarily using it until Padfoot finishes growing. He knocked out the back wall by going through his house like a tunnel – silly dog! Robert finally braced it up against an old silo so the dog couldn’t do that anymore, so that worked.

The officer also told us to dig a hole and put a five gallon bucket of water in there so he had access to water 24/7. We had only been using his water dish which he frequently played with, emptied and tossed around. We knew that the bucket in the hole was not going to work as Padfoot is very strong. He is part Newfie and they are bred to be working, water rescue dogs. Think pulling people out of the water to save them from drowning and hypothermia. He can pull three of our older children on a cart! We were right, within a day he’d lifted that five gallon bucket, water and all, emptied it and was playing with that around the yard. We have a goofball of a dog!

Then one day a friend was over helping us see what needed to be done around the pasture and barn to make it horse-ready, as we are trying to bring Blaze our horse “home” to save on paying for board. She suggested using a bungee cord to hold the the bucket to the fence post to prevent him from spilling it or playing with the bucket. It worked!

The Animal Control officer never did come back within the ten days to make sure we complied to his requests, but perhaps he did a drive by to save on disturbing us. Thinking positive thoughts….

Icing on the cake was a few weeks ago a lady stopping by asking if she could adopt our dog because she never sees anyone outside with him.

Us: Cough…eh-hem…we are always outside, don’t you see people outside?

Her: Oh yes, but never with the dog.

Us: Well, every time someone goes out to feed or check on the chickens we stop and pet him. And he’s tied because our children would be devastated if he got run over by a car and our chickens need to be protected He’s killed two chickens this month when he’s been let loose to run :(. Now granted it may only be 5-10 minutes sometimes but over the course of day with all of us stopping and petting him, throwing his ball, rubbing his belly…that adds up to be a lot of time.

That conversation ended in the lady being close to tears because she felt so bad for suggesting adoption when we so clearly loved and truly did take care of our dog. I actually gave her a hug…my children couldn’t believe I hugged someone who wanted to take their dog away! Needless to say they were not feeling so solicitous.

The last straw was over the weekend a farmer, who has farmed for 40 years, stopped by to tell us to get our dog in the house. My husband thankfully was home to deal with this particular neighbor. My husband told him Padfoot was a Newfie. The farmer said, “I know what kind of dog he is….blah…blah…blah….” My husband also told the farmer that he cannot make the dog go in his dog house.

Do you dear readers know anything about Newfoundland dogs? As I said they are bred to work, to do water rescues, to go in cold water…this dog has three layers of water protective coat – meaning it is water resistant and does not penetrate his skin – and Newfies have extra padded paws too. Padfoot was born on a farm. He’s been outside since birth. The only time his previous owners brought him inside was to potty train him for his next home. Padfoot plays out in the rain, even when he has access to his dog house. He loves water and snow for that matter! My husband finds Padfoot sitting on top of his dog house ALL THE TIME. Padfoot sleeps out in the cold, even though he has access to his dog house. My husband went out the other morning and Padfoot had frost on head and raindrops frozen on the ends of his fur. Was he shivering? NO. Was he unhappy? NO. He was happy and jumping all over the place to greet his master, my husband, and get his tummy rubbed. That dog loves Robert more than all of us put together and has chosen him as his master. Good thing the feelings are mutual or it could be very annoying! lol!

When this farmer found out we could not have animals in our house, per our landlords request, he said, “Well at least put some hay on the ground in his dog house. You don’t want Animal Control coming around and ticketing you, do you?” Ah-ha! I think we know who’s called Animal Control….

We did what the farmer said to appease him. My husband said before we even put the hay in the house that Padfoot was going to have it strewn all over the yard….guess what Padfoot did within minutes of the hay being placed in his house? He threw it all over the place! Goof. Ball. Dog. But HAPPY.

Dear Neighbors,

We love our animals. We honestly do take care of them and if you were driving by every waking minute of the day you would be able to see that for yourself, rather than relying on random minutes when you are zipping by at 50 mph. So please stop meddling and find someone who is truly neglecting and abusing their animals to pick on for we think you have far too much time on your hands and need someone else to terrorize with your concerns. And by the way, we are getting very familiar with Animal Control. We hope they come to know us so well that they start to ignore anonymous calls about our animals and us, knowing our location puts us in a fish bowl for all to see or think they can see all but really don’t. You really know nothing at all about us or our animals. For if you did, you would see that our animals are very happy where they are and are joyful when they see us coming.

Oh the joys of living in the country…where no one minds their own business like they do in the suburbs!

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Farm Expansion

Posted by html404 on January 7, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

What does 4.5 acres plus 12.2 acres equal? Yes 16.7 acres but it also means farm expansion. When we initially moved in 16 months ago we rented the house and about 4.5 acres with it. This included the property containing the house and barn plus an extra pasture on the west side of the barn and two smaller fields on the east side of the barn/north side of the house.

Initially, our landlords (four sisters) were against us using the barn and having large animals. After raising our small flock of chickens and turkeys we realized that if we wanted to grow our farm we’d need additional space and appealed to them late summer/early fall to reconsider, especially since we were willing to purchase farm insurance.

The sisters agreed and we moved forward to rent the additional land. Now there’s a ton of work to do and plans for a farm expansion!

Our priorities are:

Clean and organize barn.
Build a couple of stalls.
Bring our horse Blaze home to save on board.
Have a small vegetable CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture).
Put up our low-cost greenhouse.
Fix our fence line.
Get a family cow.
Plant more pasture.
Buy our 2013 turkeys.

Other possibilities include:

Raising broilers (meat chickens).
Raise a couple of hogs. While we do not eat much pork, having a year supply of bacon sounds really good to us. Plus hogs are fun to observe.
Raise a beef cow or two for our family’s meat.

We have been busy marketing our farm. We got our egg license in December. Our eggs can be found at a local health food store and at a local monthly Green Market, but we have so much more marketing to do for our CSA and any other products we decide to raise. We do have over 60 people on our e-list and have 20 likes on Facebook. We are excited about the possibilities yet it’s with trepidation that we move forward. After all farming isn’t exactly a profession most people are getting into these days and is even considered career roadkill.

Let’s just say this is another huge step of faith on our part.