Meet the Bacon(s)

After having a huge surplus of milk and wondering what to do with it, we started asking around what other people do.  It seems most people either 1. give it away or 2. raise hogs.  We opted for number 2.  Since we are already paying for the goat feed and hay, it would be a waste of money to just give the milk away.  We opted to get two American Guinea Hogs.  We got a female and a castrated male (don't want to have to worry about additional piglets).
   We spent Labor Day weekend getting their electric fence set up.  Until now they had been in their pen, but not with electric fencing.  This will not allow them to dig under the fence when they are rooting.  We made them a house out of straw bales and some free corrugated roofing we got from where else but craigslist.

  These hogs will eat just about anything.  To raise them healthy and frugally we are trying to feed them as much veggie scraps (I am even soliciting scraps from Family Z), cooked eggs (raw eggs are bad for hogs) and goats milk.  We did buy a bag of hog feed just in case one day we are running low on natural food.
  We have yet to name them... any thoughts?  I think it should be a food related name like Bacon or Backstrap... or something random like Petunia...

Friday Farm Update

Big news here at Victory Garden Farm!  We found a wonderful family who wants to buy 2 gallons of milk each week.  Our fridge has been busting at its seams with milk.   If you remember, it got to the point I was taking milk baths and feeding it to the chickens because we had so much milk.  Such a waste!  It is illegal to sell raw milk in Maryland for human consumption.  So why am I so excited to tell everyone that I have a buyer?  Because this family has a wildlife animal rescue and needs the milk for the abandoned animals.  Completely legal sale.  They have everything from baby deer to alpacas. 

We get about 3 gallons of milk a week from Mocha so after giving them 2 gallons we have a gallon for our personal use. Hubby and I really dont need much more than that, so this arrangement is perfect! Mocha has her own savings account now. All the money that we receive from the rescue center goes towards buying fence panels for the goat pen. So Mocha is really earning her larger pen. I can't tell you how much this helps! We are incredibly blessed to have hooked up with this rescue center. Its a win-win for everyone

Goat Fun

Anyone who owns goats will tell you how fun they are.  Each goat has a unique personality.  Latte, the mama goat is constantly looking over the fence watching or calling for us.  If she thinks we are outside she is looking for us.  Mocha, the black one, is the first to come running to see if we have any graham crackers for her.  They are her absolute favorite treat.  Java, the baby boy is happy to run and jump and beg for attention, as long as his mama is near.  They are all incredibly curious and friendly, which is one of the many reasons I love having goats!

We got Turkeys!

Hubby calls chickens a "gateway" animal, meaning once you have them you will most likely add more animals.  When the chicks were little we had a brooder set up for them (a safe cage with a heat lamp).  Now they are huge and in the chicken coop, the brooder is sitting empty.  On Sat, we were in town running errands, and someone made us an offer to buy the rest of their turkey poults.  Knowing we had everything we would need already set up at the house we jumped on the deal.  We now have 8 Spanish Black turkey poults in the brooder.

  Most commercial turkeys are non reproducing.  The have been bred for certain benefits that are not found naturally.   The hens need to be artificially inseminated to continue the breed.   If you want a huge turkey and don't mind buying new poults each year then its not a big deal.  However if you want a female and a male to produce their own offsprings you need to have a heritage breed.  Black Spanish are just that.  They are capable of reproducing on their own which is what we are looking for.  I figure we should be guaranteed a pair out of the 8 we brought home.  The others can be butchered in the fall for our freezer.  They are so little!  They wont get nearly as fat as the commercial breeds, but that is ok with us. 

Back in the Dairy Business

 Guess what???  Last week we were blessed to add goats back onto the farm.  Hubby and I always said that goats and chickens are our non-negotiables, meaning no matter what we would try to have them.  We had found an awesome family who was selling their herd.  We bought a doe and her buckling from them.  Another family had a milking doe for sale.  Our herd now consists of two beautiful ladies, and one tiny baby boy.  The mamas are milked every morning and evening.  When we first brought them home, they were so unsure of everything.  Now we have a routine.  In the mornings we let Mocha, the mama who didn't come with a baby out first.  She walks to the milk stand and jumps right up on it.  Once she is done, we open the door for her to return to the pen.  After that is Latte's turn.  Both Latte and her son, Java, come right out and hop up too.  This morning Mocha wasn't moving fast enough for Latte so Latte pushed her off the milk stand.  It was pretty comical.  Goats need to be milked at least once a day, preferably twice.  We milk around 5:15am and 6:00pm.  Typically milkings should be about 12 hours apart.  Milking is a huge commitment.  We can't decide to sleep in, or to not milk because it would mean that the poor goats are in pain.  Without kids (goat kids that is) nursing from their mamas, the udders remain full.  If they are not milked by a human (or a machine) they will be incredibly full and uncomfortable.  The goat mama would then realize that there is no point in producing milk and would dry up.  As long as the goat is milked daily she will continue producing milk whether or not she has a kid around.  Java (the buckling) nurses from only one side of Latte, so we milk from the other.  Between the two does we get almost a gallon of milk a day.  I will be trying  my hand at cheese, soap and anything else I can to use up the milk.  I made ice cream last week and yum oh yum! 

  These goats are so entertaining and I could sit for hours watching and playing with them.  I would think everyone would want a goat (just maybe not a milk goat).  I am sure the goats will dominate some posts here.  How can they not when they are so stinking cute?

Garden Love

I believe that gardens can almost have personalities.  They are picky like children.  One year they like one veggie, and they might hate it the next.  Our first year gardening we were giving away squash and zucchini.  Last year we had a surplus of peppers.  This year is too early to tell, but so far our garden loves lettuce (and weeds).  We have been harvesting lettuce for salads, along with spinach.  I made a pizza using spinach, basil and asparagus from our garden.  The asparagus is so fun because one day its not there, and the next day its a foot tall.
  I am always amazed at things we can produce ourselves.  With some dirt, some seeds and a whole lotta love, we can produce food to eat.  Just knowing that the food on the table is because of me gives me so much pleasure.  I always tend to over order seeds, and someday I hope to have a system down for ordering and planting.  But I would rather order too many seeds for my garden than none.  This week we planted pumpkin, zucchini, gourds, squash, cucumbers, peas, tomatoes and probably more I forgot about.  Our garden is not just in garden beds, but in containers on the deck, and anywhere I can squeeze them in.  I planted chamomile to hopefully make tea later, and rosemary for my favorite rosemary chicken.  I planted the requisite basil and parsley. We have oregano, rhubarb, lemon balm and asparagus returning from previous years.  I love my garden!  Someday I hope to produce all the veggies we need for an entire year, but for now I am still figuring out what exactly my garden likes.  How about you?

Barnheart Book Review

During my recent trip to the bookstore, I picked up a used copy of the book BarnHeart by Jenna Woginrich. I had read Jenna's previous book Made From Scratch, loved it so I snatched this one up as well. The book is an easy read and chronicles Jenna's journey to a new state (Vermont) where she rents a cabin and starts a small farm. While at times the book seems extremely romanticized, it does cover many of the hardships of small scale farming. Jenna came up with the term Barn Heart and uses it multiple times in the book. Her definition of Barn Heart is a condition of the heart where you long to have a farm (of any sort) and can't stop thinking/dreaming/planning for it. I think this is an extremely useful term and I completely "get it". I have had Barn Heart since I was young. Before buying our house, I had a really bad case of it, bad enough to turn down prospective gorgeous houses because we wouldn't be able to have chickens on the property. Its what led us to finally buying property in the country. I get it, I really do. One thing that annoyed me about the book, was how easy things seemed to fall into place for Jenna. I am sure that's not really the case. A memoir is supposed to highlight and skim the authors life, so I don't blame Jenna. Its hard to read a chapter where she mentions wanting sheep and in the next chapter she is given sheep by a friend (granted it was a fair trade for fiddle lessons). In real life, things take a lot longer, at least for me. There has to be saving up of money, planning fences, and so much planning. One thing I did like is that Jenna really seemed to do her research before jumping in. She knew someday she wanted sheep and a border collie. So before she even had a sheep dog or sheep, she started going to shepherding trials. She took classes and got mentors. I appreciate that she didn't just take on a new breed of farm animal without the proper research. Jenna is not the type of farmer who has chickens and a compost pile because its cool, trendy or the thing to do. This is her life. She gardens and eats from the garden. She raised a turkey for Thanksgiving (even though she was a vegetarian, she discusses changing her stance on vegetarianism if the animals are raised in the right way). Her farm is her livelihood and passion. If it fails, so does she. When she needed a truck, she didn't go buy a shiny new F250. She got a used cheap truck that fits her perfectly. While the book is a bit romanticized it really lets you see Jenna's heart. I enjoyed following her on her journey. The book makes you want to buy a fiddle and a sheep dog and curl up in front of a wood stove and play to your hearts content. I would recommend it to anyone who might have Barn Heart themselves. I am glad that I found an inexpensive used copy for myself. If there is any interest, we could do a giveaway of the book so that the winner can have their own copy. Thoughts?

I'm dreaming of...chicks!

Happy Tuesday! I can't believe how fast time is flying. At the end of the month I will be back in Maryland and back in my house. Sgt G (my husband) and I were talking about our goals, and our farming goals came up. We realize that we don't want to jump back in with all the animals we had before, at least not while we try and work on things together. We did decide that we wanted chickens. We ordered 25 chicks that will be delivered in April. They are an assortment of egg layers and I can't wait to hear little peeps again! We still have all our chicken equipment, which is one of our reasons for starting right away with chickens. There will not be a huge start up cost other than the chicks and feed. When we left the house, we sold all of our fencing, gates, and goat equipment. I would love to have goats asap, but realize financially they will have to wait. I am hoping that as soon as I get back, we can get a garden started for the year too. We are catching up on mortgage payments, and paying 1.5 payments until we are caught up so the budget will be super tight. My goal is to grow as much as possible to try and cut the grocery budget down. The chicks will not start laying until they are about 5-6 months old so we wont have eggs right away. Hopefully we will find other frugal ways to increase the homestead and save money in the long run. I am so excited to be getting chicks. Sgt G and I had fun picking out what breeds we wanted. Here's a picture from one of my favorites from last year...

New "About Me" Page

I just added an "about me" page. I thought I would post it here too in case you don't notice it there. This is what I said: I always think "about me" pages are a little excessive, since this whole blog is about me. That said, I will share a little bit more details about my personal life that are non farm related. I grew up in sunny Santa Cruz, California. I always felt out of place. Santa Cruz is a surf, beach town. It is perfectly acceptable to wear flip flops year round (in the rain, they dry out pretty quick so no rain boots for us!). Growing up I didn't like the beach. Instead I favored camping. I obsessed over the Donner Party (I could tell you every person who perished in that tragic event). When my sisters were reading GooseBumps, I was reading Laura Ingalls Wilder. While they watched Pinky and the Brain, I watched Little House on the Prairie. My best friend and I would pretend we lived in the "olden days". Our bikes were horses and had names, and would take us on grand adventures. On cleaning days, when my mom would put all the dining room chairs outside on the patio, we would line them up to make a train. We would pretend we were fancy ladies going to visit some relative. Or a mail order bride going to meet her new family. One of my favorite movies was Sarah Plain and Tall. I wish I could say that was just a stage that I grew out of. Instead the desire to live on a farm, or in the olden days just grew. I went to college in Santa Barbara, California. Santa Barbara is a very posh town that many celebrities call home. While I loved its charm, I hated the attitude of having to live up to a certain standard. My friends would make fun of me when I said that someday I would own a milk cow. I was the one laughing last year when I was trudging out in the snow to milk our goats. After college I moved to Texas (I had this extremely romantic notion of cowboys, line dancing and manners). Texas did not disappoint. Today it remains one of my favorite states, but for different reasons. It was while I was living in Austin that I started going out with my future husband. Fast forward a bit, we got married and he got called to deploy to Iraq. For the first year and a half of our marriage he was half way around the world. I worked a desk job at a local bank, made friends and dreamed of having livestock. I always thought we couldn't have chickens or goats since he was in the military. Fast forward even further and we got transferred to Maryland. We fell in love with the area and bought a house. Maryland has a huge agriculture community, which we both loved. It also has a large fiber community, which feeds into my fiber addiction. I fell even more in love with knitting (I learned in junior high) and delved into spinning on a spinning wheel. One of the many things I enjoy about Maryland is the fact that it has seasons. Santa Cruz and Texas didn't, at least not in the same way. Santa Cruz, is pretty much always 60-70. Sure it has cold days and hot days, but on an average you can get by with jeans, flip flops and a sweater. Texas was always hot. Always. Maryland gets snow in winter, cherry blossoms in spring, fireflies in the summer, and gorgeous fall foliage. The weather is always changing and I appreciate each season for what it is. Winter is just long enough that you don't get too sick of it. And by the end of summer you are wishing it was winter again just so you can get out of the sweltering heat. As much as I love Maryland, last summer my husband and I separated. I moved all my belongings back to the West Coast and have been staying with my parents. This coming March, I will be reversing that drive to go back to Maryland and try to reconcile things with my husband. I don't want to get into too many details about our relationship, but I am extremely hopeful that we can fix what went wrong before. As I type, I am in my childhood bedroom, full of half packed moving boxes. I am eager to get back to Maryland and my husband, but sad to be leaving my family. I hope to once again get farm animals in Maryland and continue what we started a couple years ago. I will continue to blog our successes, attempts and failures. I am so thankful to everyone who reads this blog and hope you are able to get something out of it. I love comments and will try to answer as much and as often as possible. That's my life story in a nutshell.

A day off

Working the farm is not a 9-5 job. You cant punch the timecard at 5 and leave it be until the next day. If an animal needs something at 2am, up we go. We are constantly checking on our animals and thinking about them. Mama Bunny still isnt officially a mama yet. We can see the wee babes moving in her tummy, but they refuse to enter the world. We are checking in with the mama to be every hour. We are always checking on the chicks, who yesterday moved out into the little red coop. The meat chicks are in a seperate coop but the 51 layers are in the red coop. Chicks require constant attention. They are always needing fresh water and food. We check on the big chickens in the big coop. We check for eggs. If we are not checking for "something" we are working on improving another. Yesterday while I was at work, Hubby put up fencing all around the garden. He is amazing, and such a hard worker. Not only did he get the garden fenced in, he used our goat fencing and nailed up a fence along the lane. To this fence we will attach the existing chain link, until we can afford to buy more real fencing. If I mention something, before I can blink Hubby has it done. Sometimes I take this for granted. So today, now that all the "checks" are done, the rabbit cages are moved, and the chicken brooder is cleaned, we are taking the "day" off. And by day I mean 3 hours. Ladies and Gentlemen, Hubby and I are going to the movies! Yes, this is a rare occasion. We hate how expensive it is to go to the movies. Luckily for us, I discovered two movie passes we were given two years ago. We will take our own snacks and drinks, and todays outing wont cost us anything (except the gas to get there). Todays date is much needed and will be much enjoyed. Hubby has a rough week coming up and I am hoping this will lighten the load. Off to the movies we go!

Winter on the Farm

Its winter here at the farm. We have been busy getting everything ready for the snow, and just in time too. For the winter we have grouped all the animals (except the dogs) close together by the barn. The goats (now we have 3 nannies and a billy) have free range of the barn and pen. Right on the outside of their pen is the duck pen. This is caged on all sides, top and bottom. Come spring they will have a proper run, but for the winter this will do. The chickens still have their coop, located next to the ducks. We tried letting the ducks sleep in the coop, but they didnt like it much. Yesterday hubby and I built a rabbit run at the back covered side of the barn. We hope to inherit 5 more rabbits this week and needed a place larger than just the hutch. Ill post pictures when we get them. We have huge plans for the spring but for now with the ground frozen they will stay just plans... Inside the house we have had our pipes freeze multiple times which forces us to keep the heaters on. I am not terribly happy about this, as we were trying to be frugal and only heat what we need. lesson learned. Maybe it is more frugal to turn the heaters on, then to have to pay for a plumber to come fix broken pipes... The tree is up, the rooms decorated and we are ready to settle down for winter. Hubby and I found a bunch of puzzles we liked and are looking forward to spending time in the (warm) house working on them. Happy Winter to all!

The Farm Count

Heres the farm count as of today- Dogs- 3 Cats- 2 Rabbits- 2 Finches- 4 Hens- 4 Roosters- 2 Goats- 2 Turtle- 1 Fish- too many

Victory Garden Farm

Hubby and I were so fortunate to buy our "farm" in July. At that time, the "farm" was a house, 5 acres, and 4 outbuildings, otherwise known as slave quarters. After living there for two months, we have transformed the house to our HOME. One of the outbuildings is a playhouse for the kids who will pass through this farm. Another outbuilding Hubby is in the process of making his workshop. Yet another outbuilding (was not safe and insurance said we had to take it down) is half torn down, half standing. The wood will become our chicken coop for our future meat chickens. And the fourth, biggest outbuilding will become the small barn. The backyard makeover will forever be in progress. Hubby has already cleared over 30 trees, ensuring we have firewood for next winter. This place, our HOME, we will call Victory Garden Farm. During World War II, American citizens were urged to grow victory gardens in their backyards so that the food from farms could be sent to the soldiers. Citizens pitched in to help out for the greater good. That is what we aim to do. We will plant a large garden in the back, grow our own meat and try to be as self sufficient as possible. We have become too dependent on fast food and getting things from others. I want to understand the whole process of what we are taking in. We feed the chickens, which fertilizes the soil for the garden, where we will plant seed and grow food, and the scraps will be given to back to the chickens to turn into fertilizer yet again. Its an amazing circle and I want to witness it all. By no means are we expecting this to be all fun and games. I understand that there will be death and heartache. But there will also be births and growth. There will be hardwork and payoffs. I am looking forward to eating the veggies from the garden next year. Right now the garden is not even plowed. What little of a garden that survived the move is in containers by the future barn. With hubby being in the army, and moving from Texas to Maryland, its nice to finally have a place of our own. A place thats ours. A place to belong. Home. We look forward to sharing our journey with you. So please, come along as we build our farm.