Farm News
Finally all the wool and fiber is skirted, washed, and ready for the mill. Americas Natural Fiberworks will be doing our processing for our first ever mill spun yarn. We can't wait for July to come when we will hopefully be getting oodles of yarn in return! Tell all your knitting and crocheting friends to keep a lookout for us at the Sidney Farmers Market later this summer!
And we'll leave you with this adorable lamb picture of the week....
Spot successfully had her first set of twin ram lambs in the wee hours of February 25th. All are doing well and the lambs are already starting to get bouncy!
Jet
wanted to wish everyone a Happy Holiday! We love that goofy grin and the chops.
In Other news...Max is making it quite difficult to work on the new larger chicken coop...needy puppy.
Wow. I can't believe our last post was way back in July. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the summer or the fall for that matter. Time really does fly these days. Here's a few pics from the rest of the summer.
Spraying organic fertilizer on a few fields.
Hundreds more loaves of bread baked.
Successfully finished our first season as a CSA with beautiful shares.
Made the first braids of our soft neck garlic.
Pulled out the old grain cleaner and cleaned all our combined Rye (about 130 bushels) with the help of Pierre Peters and Brooke Soucie.
Canned many more jams and salsa to hold us through winter.
Sheared the goats (as you can see the newbies - Jet, and Jeena- have grown a lot since their arrival in June).
Acquired some new critters on the farm: ~16 chickens and 5 ducks.
Said goodbye to one of our Rams - Zipper - as he heads of to be bred on a farm in Michigan,
Successfully planted our next crop of garlic...with 3 new varieties.
and welcomed the hatching of two little ducklings courtesy of our broody silky hen.
We were also able to combine all our corn and beans, plant our wheat, and plant half of the Rye cover crop seed. Unfortunately the rain has kept us off the fields and unable to plant the rest.
Please think about visiting us on December 2nd 2017 at Brukner Nature Center for their annual Craft Fair. There will be plenty of nature inspired homemade goods of all kinds . And we hope to also be set up at the Santa's Market Craft Fair at the Fort Loramie High School December 3rd. Here's a few pics of the types of Items we will have. (bird and bat houses, homemade soap, wool ball garland, wool acorn ornaments, homemade cranberry hot pepper jam and gingery cranberry chutney)
The Great Garlic Harvest of 2017 has finished. We ended up with approximately 285 heads of hardneck garlic (Music, White German, and Chinese Purple), and 272 heads of softneck garlic (Nootka Rose). ~82 Seed heads have been put aside as we hope to keep growing the size of our garlic patch! Let the drying commence.
We picked up our newest goat kids last week, from Gun Plains Pygoras. Nan and family were nice enough to meet us in Fort Wayne for the pick up. They are settling in well and starting to warm up to us a bit, though they are definitely not as friendly as Fred and George were. Meet Jet and Jeena.
And look at the beautiful pollinator habitat strip that we put in last year to buffer us from our neighbors. It is beautiful and the bees and other pollinators are all over the yellow flowers and clover.
Fred and George are happily down in their new home tonight with this amazing family. I guarantee they will be the most spoiled goats ever, and so loved by Amanda, David, and the three kids! We hope we are always so lucky with our animal placements!
