Today, Jamie and the kids went to pick up our new sheep, a CVM/Romeldale ewe named Francis. She settled in quickly with our little herd (2 other sheep and a goat) and we hope that she has a nice long life with us on the farm producing lovely wool and healthy lambs. We are having [...]
We have three Silver Fox rabbits (two does and a buck) that we bred twice this past year, producing a total of 32 kits. We butchered all but one of the kits (one was a gift to our neighbor), froze the meat, and tanned to pelts.
I tanned the pelts using the instructions found in this [...]
Even in the middle of winter, our geese and ducks still spend time in the pond every day. We help them maintain an opening and this is what they do:
Mike and I got our first chickens in the summer of 2002. We maintained a flock of between six and eight hens at our old house and loved having fresh eggs. We let them free range and they kept the bug population way down as well as giving us lovely eggs.
Our flock currently stands at [...]
Yes you could. Honestly, it is not that bad. On our farm Jamie does the majority of the butchering with Mike providing back-up. For the poultry, she uses a sharp knife and cuts their throats to bleed them cleanly out before removing their heads and plucking or skinning and gutting. For the rabbits Mike stuns [...]
We don’t get up any earlier than we would otherwise. The great thing about animals, and especially ones that primarily free range, is that they are adaptable. They come and go as they please (we do close the chicken coop at night, but leave an upper window open, if it is not too cold, so [...]
It takes about 20 minutes/day in the winter and maybe twice that in the summer to care for the animals. During cold weather, all animals must be fed but water is less of an issue (except for the freezing of the ponds). We also only carry our breeding stock and maybe beef calves [...]
Last spring we bought a Romney-Hampton cross wether. Our intention was to let him graze on our pasture all season and then bring him to the butcher in early winter, after having taken care of processing our beef, pork, and poultry. We picked a dark colored lamb because we also knew that we wanted to [...]
The last month of the farm has been one of our busiest. We managed to butcher all of our remaining turkeys prior to Thanksgiving, 8 chickens, 2 ducks, and fifteen rabbits. The only meat animal (aside from the two calves) left on the farm is our black sheep. He goes to the butcher on Sunday. [...]
What a busy few weeks it has been around here.
Several weeks ago we picked up our beef and pork from the butchers. We took the pigs to Salem Prime Cuts in Salem, CT and the steer to Maurice’s in Canterbury, CT. They were both great. Finding out the hanging weights is the best part. It [...]