April Farm Tours! Plus Cover Crop Grazing, Sugar the Goat, Farm Visitors & Lots More Eggs!
The most exciting news on the farm this week is that at long last, we’re going to be doing some general farm tours open to the public and we’re starting with every Saturday in April.
These pictures are from our last major event at the farm, a composting seminar last February.
The walking tours will be from 1 to 3 pm on April 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th. They’ll be rain or shine, but we will reschedule if there is severe weather. We’ll cover our practices for each of our livestock enterprises, plus touch on our composting and vermicomposting program, as well as discussing our wildlife hedgerows and habitat restoration, soil building strategies and more.
Check out the Tours & Classes page of our website for all the details and links to sign up via our online storefront. I made each tour an item in the online storefront.
Last week, one of my Spice Girl bottle kids (she is the kid of Cinnamon and the triplet I have also been supplementing is the kid of Nutmeg) went off to her new home with Anna Timmerman, who many of you know in her capacity as an LSU Ag Agent for Orleans Parish.
Anna inherited a goat from a friend who passed away recently and we knew that goat would need a goat friend (dogs, chickens and ducks are not enough — goats need at least one of their own species!). Anna named her inherited goat Honey and so Sugar seemed like a perfect name for this little daughter of Cinnamon.
Since we suspect Sugar has some kind of tongue-tie, she is smaller than her twin and most of her peers. I am hoping she isn’t permanently stunted and I didn’t really see a future for her in our program — I didn’t want to breed her.
But Anna can baby her and spoil her and make sure she is thriving and I am really happy about that!
Sugar rarely makes much noise, but she certainly yelled a lot in the first few minutes of the drive. Luckily she settled down fairly quickly and was very chill for the rest of the drive and arriving in Anna’s yard. Since then she seems to be taking everything in stride and Anna reports she is doing great!
The cattle have been making quick rotations around the farm as there is more and more spring forage growing, but we don’t want them to stay too long and eat it down too low.
Currently, they’re in the field our house is in and there’s really few things better than looking out the windows and seeing them grazing or lounging around, fat and happy.
The cattle also cycled through the two fields where we planted purple top turnips and daikon radishes as cover crops (and for deer food).
They ate the tops, ripped a bunch out of the ground and nibbled on them, but didn’t really devour the roots like the pigs or chickens would.
We also pulled some to eat ourselves and offered some to the goats, who haven’t started making their rotations yet since they still have little kids in the herd who could easily get lost in large fields.
The goats went after the tops first, too, but eventually ate most of the roots, as well.
Meanwhile the chickens are starting to make their spring rotations, again, too.
We are scheming about some new coop designs after years of using these mobile coops built in top of old trailers, possibly trading a big skid version for the wheels.
And they have finally really ramped up their spring egg production! This week, we are adding back a few wholesale accounts that have been patiently waiting without our eggs for months. In another week or so, if all works out with wholesale demand, I will likely be able to drop the price of retail eggs back down a bit, by a dollar or so.
The last picture here is of a lone bantam hen perched on a fence post. I still chuckle every time I see her running around, what a survivor! Occasionally people dump their chickens, usually roosters, at our farm. A couple years ago, there was a night time drop off of a few hens and roosters.
One hen hatched a clutch of eggs, of which this all black bantam was the only one to reach adulthood. Later another hen hatched a large clutch of eggs and we ended up selling her and her chicks to a homesteader for their backyard flock.
Eventually all the stray roosters disappeared, but this tiny hen remains. A lot of times she hangs out with the huge muscovy ducks and I occasionally see her creeping around the outside of the fence of the other chicken flocks.
Gestating beauties! Our sows are due to start farrowing in about 3.5 weeks, based on my best guesses and breeding observations.
But just in case they actually did get bred right when we first put the boar in with them, we will move them over to the farrowing barn in the next week or so.
I didn’t get any pictures of the other pigs this week, but their harvest dates are approaching on March 18th and April 2nd. So after they’re gone, we’ll temporarily, before the piglets are born, have the fewest pigs we’ve had on the farm in many, many years.
We’re constantly trying to right size each operation where we have plenty of inventory but not too much back stock. It’s been a journey, for sure!
Last but not least, we’ve had several farm visitors in the last few weeks and the goat kids are always the biggest hit, especially if you can catch them and pick them up!
I’m also working on taking pictures of all the doe kids born in November that we’ll have for sale and should have that up on our website in the next week or so.