Striving to organically and sustainably grow food for my family and to be a good steward of my littl
I love tending to beautiful things, I have been focusing on this more lately, taking a moment to appreciate the beautiful and filling up my life with these things wether it’s friendships or clean kitchens or pretty rows of flowers, it sometimes means taking ugly things and making them lovely.
Sven gets 2-4 hours of grass per day and 1-2 flakes of hay per day, he is an easy keeper and gets too fat if he eats too much of our good grass. Which is why he is often in his paddock where there is no grass.
Lambing is done for the year with Jane and her triplets finishing off strong, Jane had 3 big healthy babies. 4 of my ewes had lambs for a total of 7 lambs - 2 ram lambs, and 5 ewe lambs. They have all moved out of the barn and onto the pasture to graze in portable electric fencing for a summer of rotational grazing.
Icelandic sheep. Such a neat breed, their wool is multi layered with thick dense soft fibers under longer outer fleece. Fae is pure Icelandic and her ewe lamb is 1/2 Icelandic, 1/2 Shetland. I have acquired a small mixed flock of mostly older heritage breeds so I can see which ones do best on my land and the way I shepherd and care for them.
Mama Dot and her ewe lamb, I’m thankful I got rid of all my flighty sheep, I am more focused on a calm demeanor in my flock, which makes them so much easier to handle and all the babies are much more friendly. This ewe lamb is 1/2 Shetland, 1/4 Gotland, 1/4 East Friesian.
From grass to cow, from cow to bucket by hand, from bucket to cream separator, from separator to fridge, from fridge to mixer, from mixer to shaping by hand, from shaping to paddling, from paddling to fridge, from fridge to freezer, in summer & winter we enjoy treasured summer butter.
The wool that my sheep grew eating grass in summer pasture, the wool that I sheared in hours of sweaty work, the wool that I aired out and picked over again and again, the wool that I packaged up and sent to the mill so someone with spinning skill could turn it into a useful product for me. Now I’ll knit and knit and knit, and what I make will be treasured because I literally watched this fiber grow in the care of my hands.
The 2024 farm production year is getting real with the addition of three pigs, we raise lots of meat every second year and just hold things steady on the in-between year. Plans for this year include raising pork, chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, milk, eggs, and hopefully a few geese if I can find some. The garden is a constant but takes a back seat to my priority which is raising and caring for high quality protein.
I want to raise the best food I can, I want it to live a thriving happy and natural life, as close to its instinct as possible. I want it to be cared for and content, I want all its days to be good; all except for one moment when it dies to nourish me and my family, I want to thank it for its joyful existence, and thank it for it’s life. I want to live as close as I can to this cycle, and not push it away. If we are what we eat let’s start to consider the joyful (or not) life of the animal, not just how it’s packaged.
These little lambs are bright white, I have never had such bright white sheep before, they are also very peaceful which isn’t something I usually associate with sheep. It’s neat to see the obvious differences within the different breeds of sheep I have now. These lambs are half Shetland, 1/4 East Friesian & 1/4 Gotland.
January. The garden month-by-month. I’m already seeing signs of the imminent return to growth and production, it’s about time to prune the fruit trees, and start the milk jug seeds. The garden looks cozy and tidy and restful, but I know there is plenty going on underground, we imagine it is sleeping but the soil microbes are an active world unto themselves.
December. The garden month-by-month. All things garden related are restful at this point, but it’s also the time of year that I start getting restless to get back out there. We are still harvesting a few carrots, but for the most part it’s mulched with straw and waiting like I am.
Dot had twins this morning, a boy and a girl, they are tall lanky lambs and look like they walk on stilts. Dot is giving me the, “I got this” look. She is a proud mama.
I’ll call this picture nourishment; it’s a beautiful thing. I’m thankful I can raise my own food, and that Poppy nourishes her little one so well, nature works well in the animal kingdom, and in the garden, I’m constantly blessed and amazed by it all.
One week and one day old. I’m not keeping any lambs this year, they either get sold, or butchered at 8-10 months. My daughter has started to call this one Bambi. Oh dear.
January 23rd carrot harvest. My root cellar is the garden rows, after a hard freeze some have cracks but they still taste great.
Poppy is a natural mother to her little lamb and keeps her perfectly content. Poppy’s mother is the best mother ewe I have and I’m happy to see Poppy has continued the trend; whether it’s genes, or learned behavior, or instinct, Poppy’s got it.
Poppy has a little lamb. It’s a ewe lamb and, it’s adorable, hopefully Poppy will raise it to be as friendly and trusting of humans as she is. Welcome lambing season! I have missed you as we didn’t breed our ewes last year. Poppy’s lamb had to be repositioned, I’m so thankful for the complicated sheep I started with- as horrendous and heart wrenching as it was I can see so much value in the skills I now have because of it. Experience, and dare I say failure, hold great value.
Winter rest, a time to long for the never-ending days of summer of hands in the warm soil and bare toes in the grass, the longing is a memory and seems so long ago, yet I know mere months ago I was sweltering in the sun trying to remember just how cold winter feels.
November and December had a fresh spring like smell, warm rains and the sunny feel of spring & nature agreed… until last night when it froze and snowed and reminded us that we do indeed get all four seasons and winter has just arrived.
Cows in the barnyard. Buttercup and baby moo-moo hang around together all the time, cows are such social creatures, where one goes another soon follows along. We are looking forward to a baby calf in March, I’m hopeful that Buttercup will be able to mother it this time. She is so matriarchal.
I’ve been trying to put words to my new years heart; there has been much healing this last year, and miracles… things I thought may never come to be, yet deeply hoped for. I’m in a unique, thankful and peaceful place, I’m reveling in it and not ready to jump into new things just yet. I love new years, they remind me of where the year began.
I embrace the outdoors in the indoors, and bring food grown in the ground inside my kitchen daily, it’s becoming so sterile to walk through the produce isle in the store and see all the plastic wrapped fanatically and fantastically clean produce, it tastes void, maybe it’s missing the flavor of earth.
In the dark of winter there is nothing more satisfying than bringing out some butter from the freezer that was made in the summer, when the grass was green and we dripped sweat as we hand milked the warm cow, how small a sacrifice that seems now.
October. The garden month-by-month. I’m adding more rows of wood-chips, and harvesting carrots, beets and leeks as I need them. I can see the garden slowly rolling into winter rest with each passing day, frost, and increasingly colder temperatures means more life giving energy stored underground till next spring. I’m thankful for all the food and I’m thankful for the rest.
The squash jungle harvest. Abundant and beautiful. I am becoming much more aware of seasonal eating and the small ways my diet would need to change if I only ate what I grew. It’s easy to say that I can’t grow carbs here unless I start to grow grains, but the huge potato and squash harvest this year makes me realize I would just need to eat differently and that the earth would easily provide.
September. The garden month-by-month. It’s the season of tomatoes, grapes, and flowers. The late summer planting of lettuce is feeding us salad once again and it’s more delicious for its seasonality as summer is simply too hot for lettuce. We wait on the ripening of pumpkins and the crisp apple harvest once the frost creeps in.
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Cebu getting in the middle of things as usual and being adorable as usual. #jerseycow #farmanimals #animals #cutecow #goodcow #sillycebu #jerseyheifer #mistymorning #barnchores #farmchores #farmhouse #farmstead #favoritethings #goodlife #happy #funny
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