It's a Farm Update - 04.12.24
Life Lately We are in the busy season – a farmer always stays busy but when springtime hits everything is thrown into overdrive. If you follow along on social media and watch our stories, you know we’ve had a few setbacks this past week. From busted tires to busted waterlines, we almost feel like we’re treading the water left by said busted waterline. Thankfully those days are outnumbered by the good days and we can try to laugh at it and count it all joy. The boys and I spent a few days last week planting seeds around yard. From wildflowers to other types of flowers and vegetables. We’re ready for warm to come and stay for the season! We still have a few bigger projects to wrap up on the house garden side of things, and then we’ll be able to plant the rest of what we have planned to get in the ground this year. What do you have in store for planting this season? The Meat Chickens We’ll start out this animal update with the long-awaited meat chickens aka meat birds. They went on pasture on Monday and will live their best lives in the on green grasses with fresh air for the next month. When will ERF pasture raised chicken FINALLY be back in stock? We’re shooting for the third week in May so mark your calendars! It’s wild to think that May will be here before we know it… it seems like ages ago we sold out of our pastured chicken and like the time would never come. We’re ready too! The Cow& Sheep Crew The gang sure is loving the green grasses and great pasture they’re getting now. We have worked hard on fencing around the farm the past year and a half, and have finally gotten to a point where our paddocks are easier to lay out which makes it easier on us in the long run. We aim for 2-3 days tops per paddock. This allows the grass time to bounce back for when they’ll be back around to that paddock. They eat too low; it has a harder time recovering. To help break the parasite cycles, they don’t go back to a paddock before it’s had a month’s rest. With the new fencing we’ve put in place, we’ve been able to break bigger areas up into smaller paddocks that allow even longer rest than that before they’re back in an area they’ve already been in. Locust Fort, our ram, has a few more weeks in with the girls before he gets taken out to allow us a certain window for lambing. The weaned ewes will go back in the rotation with everyone else to learn the new system. The Pigs The 2024 batch of pigs are in and they are coming along great. Our main goal when we get a new group of piglets in is getting them use to us. This makes it easier to move them or call them in if some were to get out for some reason (been there). They have been enjoying Clora’s milk (they get any we don’t keep and the skim milk from making butter, as well as any whey from making cheese) and they are ready now to start the rotations through their paddocks. Our goal is to get them moved next week. We’ve got a great selection of pork in stock now but we’re running low and won’t be back in stock until the fall so don’t miss out! Honeybees It’s officially swarm season and that means we’re on the lookout for swarms of bees around the pastures. We caught the first one of the year last week. It was an easy catch, thankfully they had landed on a low branch right next to one of our hive areas. We were able to get them in a box and settled in in no time. With the temps warming up even more in the next week, we anticipate more to show up. More bees means more honey for you this fall!
