The garden keeps giving

As the long summer days settle in, the garden has been more productive than ever. We are getting a steady crop of bell peppers, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, banana peppers, and jalapeno peppers. Every time we walk past the beds, something new seems ready to pick.

Darrell checks the garden daily and has been putting in long hours gathering the harvest. The baskets fill up faster than we expect, and there is always another round coming behind it.

Mom and Nichel have been busy in the kitchen canning most of what comes in. This time of year we eat a lot of fresh vegetables, but even with that, the surplus adds up quickly. Whatever we do not eat or can gets cut up and frozen so we can enjoy it later in the year.

The garden just keeps producing, and we are grateful for the steady flow of fresh food. It is hard work, but it is the kind of work that pays you back in the best possible way.

We’ve added sheep to the farm

This morning, we drove an hour away to pick up four sheep to start our flock. They are Dorper / Khatadin mixes. We have three rams and one ewe. We’ll process the rams for meat and will eventually purchase more ewes for breeding.

We’re working on training them to the electric fence now and getting them acclimated to our farm.

Country style nightlights

I’m sure the neighbors think we’re crazy by this point…

It’s still a bit chilly at night so we have the heat lamps in the chicken tractors while they’re out in the front pasture. At night, the white tarps glow from the lights and remind me of Chinese Lanterns. Delicious, yummy, chicken flavored Chinese lanterns.

Nothing goes to waste on a farm

One of the things we take pride in when slaughtering animals is that we use as much of the animal as we can. It’s one of the ways that we honor its sacrifice to our family. This is just one such example. Most people don’t have much use for the chicken feet but we take the time to dehydrate them. This preserves the feet for weeks (even months) and makes for fantastic, healthy dog treats.

Pet me, please

It’s pretty crazy how some animals develop a personality all of their own. This pig (Periwinkle, I think) acts just like a dog. She wags her little tail and loves being petted. In these photos, she hopped up on top of her feeder to get closer so that I could scratch her head. 

Friendly pig

Meanwhile, while her sister (Petunia) is nice and is friendly, there is a huge difference between the two. Periwinkle is more friendly and awesome in general.

Introducing, Mr. Piggles

We took the plunge and purchased our first pig today. He’s a Yorkshire boar. He’ll remain un-cut and will be used to breed the other pigs (the ones that we don’t have yet, lol). 

He’s small at this point, but it won’t be long before he’s big and strong. 

Even with the ride home and the change of scenery, he was still friendly towards the girls and was very curious overall. Kaylee decided that one of the weeds around the pig pen certainly tasted better than the food he had, so she should feed it to him. He didn’t seem to mind.

Mr. Piggles, our new pig.

It’s processing time

chickens eating

It’s time to process another batch of our pasture-raised Cornish Cross chickens. This batch looks great and will provide nutrient packed meals for our family as well as our customers’ families. They’re moved to a new batch of fresh grass each day where they get to eat bugs, forage on clover and other grasses, and enjoy premium non-GMO feed. They live a fantastic life here on the farm and it shows in the results.