Winter at the Farm!

 A heavy 18 inches of snow before Christmas put us right into winter in Northern Michigan. The steers and goats don't seem to mind the cold or the snow but the chickens are not too happy to be "cooped" up all day.

Chickens are locked up tight for the winter. We let them run around the farm until the snow was too much. Chicken feet don't do well in the cold snow.

Just as beautiful in the winter as it is in the spring, summer and fall.
 

Fall at the Farm!

Could not ask for a more perfect fall day. The farm is surrounded by brilliant fall colors. The garden is mostly tilled and ready. Canning is done. Seeds are drying out for next spring planting.

Dexter update

Our dexters have been fattening up nicely. We are planning on having one processed in November or December. We're planning to get one up to about 800 lbs live weight by then with the hope for 350 to 400 lbs of beef.

There is still plenty of green pasture grass to feed on and we are supplementing with hay and grains.

Meet Lucy

Lucy the Great Dane

Meet Lucy, one of the newest additions to the farm this year.
Lucy is 1year old and was in need of a new "forever" home. She came to live with us this summer and has fit in perfectly.
She did have to learn a few things, like we don't chase the chickens and it's not wise to put your nose next to the cat's face.

Tomatoes are just about ready. Still need to ripen and are a little smaller than usual.

We will can most of the tomatoes to last through the winter.

August Turkey Update

Turkey ready for butchering

A total of 13 Turkey went to the butcher. We lost one early on and one was born blind and had trouble gaining weight.

We fed the turkey a high protein diet and it paid off with little loss and healthy/heavy turkey.

15 turkey were very messy and required weekly changing of the sawdust in the pen. We are considering raising 6 at a time next year.

Broiler and Turkey update

Broiler Chickens at 5 weeks old.

Turkeys at 5 weeks old.

The Meat chickens and turkeys are now at 5 weeks old. We will start to make plans to have the broilers butchered at about 8 or 9 weeks and the turkeys in November.

We had one blind turkey that was having trouble putting on weight and only made it through 4 weeks. The remaining turkeys are looking healthy. They are beginning to make a lot of noise and flapping wings every so often. The fence on the turkey pen is about 6 foot high and so far has been keeping them in.

Garden Starting to Take Shape

Potatos, beans

Corn, lettuces, tomatoes, peas, onions

The garden is starting to take shape. It has been extremely dry lately and the garden was showing it. We are are on a daily watering schedule to keep things growing.

Planted more sweet corn this week along with more peas to fill in.

Some of the leaf lettuce is ready to harvest leaves

Horses

The newest editions to the farm.

We have 2 new additions to the farm. Our neighbors brought their horses over to stay with us for the summer. We have plenty of room for them to run and graze. They spent the first couple of days getting acquainted with the dexter cows and the goats.

Chicken Coop

2 month old egg layers not invited to the roost yet so they have been
spending the night  in the laying nests.

Egg layers roosting and ready to be locked up for the night

Chicken Coop with Concrete lower walls.


We were fortunate to have a chicken coop already built on the farm. We were again visited by coyotes last night. The chickens were locked up tight. The coyotes seem to be looking for an easy meal and are easy to scare off.

Garden Planted

Our main garden area with the electric fence.

 We've got the garden about 80% planted as of today. So far onions, peas, 3 kinds of lettuce, spinach, carrots, corn and potatoes. All of these, with the exception of the carrots,  should be able to handle a light frost so we were able to get them planted first.

The potatoes popped early and are probably the easiest to grow. We bought seed potatoes at the farm supply and cut them into 1/4's before planting. Last year I collected the potato bugs daily and fed them to the chickens.

Our garden (or gardens) are about 10 times as large as last year. We acquired a tiller to use which cut the work down considerably. We also have a large pile of seasoned cow manure left over from the previous owner that we  will till into the soil in the fall. Our farm was originally a cow farm. Needless to say, the fields are a rich soil and perfect for a vegetable garden.

This picture shows all 3 main gardens. Corn is planted to the left and
potatoes to the far left garden.

 We started our tomato, green peppers, acorn squash and cooking pumkin plants inside in our sunroom back in early April. They should be ready to transplant into the garden in a week or two after the danger of frost has passed. Next year, I will start the tomatoes and green peppers inside in early March.

We installed an electric fence around the cow pasture this spring and I extended it around part of the garden to keep any small animals (and the chickens) out of the garden. So far, it has worked with the chickens who will tear up the ground in no time at all if let be.

If all goes as planned, God willing, we will have plenty of fresh garden produce by mid summer and early fall
to feed our family and can for winter. Any extra may go to the farmers market along with our extra eggs.

Sitting with Rudy enjoying the evening after a hard days work in the garden.

Egg Layers

We started off with 12 egg layers in the summer of 2011 (1 rooster and 11 hens). This year we added 12 more. We should have plenty of eggs by mid summer. We bought our chicks from the local Farm store. They are supposed to be pullets but, just like last year, it looks like there will be a couple roosters that will be going to the butcher.

With the 11 hens, we average about 7 eggs a day. I read that if you keep a light on in the coop in the winter months to extend the daylight hours, they will keep laying all winter. It worked.

We let the chickens run free range during the daylight hours. They work their way back to the coop by night and we lock them up tight. I do believe they put on about 2 miles a day making rounds around the farm, occasionally going back to the coop to eat, lay an egg and water. We also leave water outside the coop for them on hot days.

Turkeys and Meat Chickens

Broiler Chicks

The Broiler Chicks and Turkeys arrived a week ago via US Mail. We ordered them from Townline Poultry in Zeeland, MI and they ship when they are a day old.

We learned our lessons last fall with our first batch of broiler chicks. Make sure to feed them broiler starter and after 10 days, feed them 12 hours on and 12 off. They grow fast, so be prepared to butcher them at 8 weeks. We opt to have another local farm take care of that for us at $3.00 a chicken.

The hatchery sends a few extra chicks with the batch in case any are dead when your shipment arrives. We didn't lose any till about day three, but still have 52 chicks after one week. Do some research on checking for pasty butt. Chances are that one or two will need this taken care of.

The Turkeys started off a little slower than the broiler chicks for the first couple of days. We use a higher protein feed (26%) turkey starter. They also make a medicated starter that is higher protein, but we are going without the medication. We did use chick saver the 1st couple of days for both the broilers and turkeys. Buy it at your local feed store and add it to the water. This helps give them a good start and adds electrolytes. We will add it to the water for all of our chicks, chickens and turkeys on extremely hot days. It's not expensive (about $1.99 for a 3 pack).


We had everything ready before the chicks and turkeys arrived. Then all we had to do was fill the water and put them into the pens. We dunk their beaks into the water as we place each chick into the pen to let them know where the water is.



Dexters

 We purchased our first freezer beef from a local farm that supplies us with hay and feed. We were able to buy two Dexter Steers in the fall of 2011. Both were about four months old and already eating hay and grain.

These pictures were taken in May and I would guess them to be about 400 lbs each.

Starting A Blog

In 2011, we moved to our farm in Northern Michigan  and started a whole new lifestyle of "farming". When researching how to get started on everything from raising egg layers to growing tomatoes, some of the best information we found was from folks who posted their experiences online. I still research every time we start a new project (like last week when we added Turkeys to the farm). So we decided to post our experiences in a blog to help other new farmers minimize making some of the mistakes we made. If nothing else, it will be a humorous account of what a family, with no prior experience in farming, went through when getting started. We certainly will welcome any feedback, suggestions, advice, scolding or questions.