Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Bees!! Yahoo!!

As most of you know things have not been going smoothly around here, pool collapses pouring 50,000 gallons of water into greenhouse and across property (the pigs loved it!), the beds out front are now succumbing to the beginning of the critters building their stores for winter, and yields have been down due to my learning curves and the weather and taking on too much, but what do most farmers do…we bounce! So we are bouncing and not only are we about to dive into hydroponics to solve part of the issue, but we are getting some help around here in the yield category…yes the real workers are coming…two bee hives arrive on Saturday!! What a tremendous blessing they will be increasing yields hopefully beyond any tinkering with the soil that I could do would accomplish. We also are investing in more equipment to make the animal end of the farm run more efficiently with more automatic water fountains and more feeders. Even the cows are going to get a new automatic water fountain so that I don’t have to clean out their trough and they get nice fresh water with each sip. To bring my spirits up around here I walk the fields (that are doing well) like the corn, the green beans coming up and all the winter squash including sweet dumplings, butternut and carnival and the huge first two plants of rhubarb! I also tinker in the kitchen and tonight there is goats milk yogurt warming in the oven (i have a bread proofing setting of 100 degrees) and with some luck I will have luscious warm yogurt to add to my granola in the morning along with some fresh canned peaches (we did 30 quarts). Yes I know it sounds crazy after all that hard work, but it puts a smile on my face and a warm feeling in my belly!!




See ya all soon!

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Whistling Turkeys


It was so nice this week to be able to leave the windows open and sit at my lap top listening to the turkeys whistle!! They are such neat animals.  Michael built them a great new coop and after going into it they did not stop talking about it for hours.  Our first batch of Cornish chickens will be ready soon and the summer turkeys soon after that so I guess we are in full swing.  We did do 10 for ourselves a few weeks back to check the numbers again on using the organic feed and test flavor of course....our favorite duty around here, and it was fabulous!!  No mushy chicken for us.  Free of worries; I know exactly what is going in them, and it is so delicious!! The coop is so nice that Mike built I think we will be able to extend the season a little more than I thought providing more poultry for our freezer and yours!  Remember this year we are only doing batches through the Fall and we only have a limited amount of Thanksgiving turkeys available this year...we needed to get our feet wet and start slow.  Any questions just drop us a line at moonstruckfarms@verizon.net.  Moonstruck signing out!!