Activity Update "Take Two"

Good Afternoon,

    We continue to grow and develop our farm and enjoy the direction Anchored Farms is going.  Since our last blog entry, we've had four nannies give birth to multiple kids.  Coconut, Pumpkin, and Snowflake gave birth to triplets, and Peach gave birth to twins.  Unfortunately, Snowflake's kids did not survive.  We don't know why, but we believe she experienced a significant complication, since she gave birth three weeks early.  The remaining eight kids have survived and are doing well.  This year's birthing cycle produced five doelings and three billies.  As for milk production, we have a lot of goat milk and we recently invested in a automatic pulsating milker.  Chris was able to get it set up, just a couple of days ago, and he, and the rest of us, are loving the fact that we no longer have to milk by hand.  We did sell the remaining three billies, from last year's birthing cycle through the El Dorado Springs Livestock Auction, and we had a positive experience through that process.  Pictures will be forthcoming.
    Starlight, our rabbit doe, gave birth to seven kits and six of them have survived.  We believe one of the kits suffered a broken back, probably from his mom stepping on him, because he had no use of his hind legs.  He was put down to end his suffering.  These baby rabbits are actually old enough to butcher, since they are pushing 10 1/2 weeks old as of this post.  We look to carryout this process in the near future.
    We also purchased 17 additional Guinea keets, 13 of which have survived and are actually developing feathers now.  They have a few more weeks before they can be released to run with our seven adult Guineas.  It is interesting, that we tend to lose one or two of the small animals after birth, and this appears to be normal, based on our discussion with others in the agriculture business.  It would be nice to figure out how to prevent the loss, but sometimes it's not possible, so we keep pushing forward.
    On the hog production side of the house, we purchased a boar and two gilts in an effort to start producing piglets.  The boar should become "capable" in August.  Our plan is to breed them in September, for December farrowing.  All three are 100% Red Wattle.  We bought our boar from Marilyn Judd, and our gilts from a family in Elkton, MO. We have a barrow as well, the boar's brother, which will be processed for the freezer in the next few weeks.  The boars were born on 2 January 2018 and the gilts were born in December 2017.
    Our garden is coming along, and Chris has done a lot of work to get our plants to producing vegetables.  We enjoy the produce on a regular basis.  We also discovered that we have multiple Mulberry trees growing around the property, and we've enjoyed that fruit.  Our blackberries are coming in strong as well.

    Well, I believe that's about it, and brings us to our current activities.  If you would like additional information or have questions about our animals, please leave a comment.  If there is something you'd like to purchase, we can have that discussions as well.

Activity Update

This past summer and fall have been busy and rewarding.  We processed five hogs in early summer, sold two of them and butchered the other three, which now take up space in two freezers.  We love our home-raised pork.  We still have three of our Nigerian Dwarf bucklings, which are ready for rehoming immediately.  3 of the 6 bucklings that were born in April have been sold (one as a wether).  We purchased 5 additional feeder pigs in July, and all five have been sold, and will be processed in mid-December.  We are getting ready for winter, as we've had to light up the "dragon", our outside wood-burning furnace, to keep the house warm.  Alisa & Chris, and the rest of the household, welcomed a precious baby girl into the family on 14 November, Eloise Linda Beach, is named after her Great Great Grandma Eloise Bass and her Grandma Linda Beach.
So that's the update, pictures will follow in a little bit.

First Produce Storage Experiment

After years of moving all over the place we finally have the space and rights (a lot of times we were renting) to dig a garden! This is our first real garden, we’ve had plants in pots before but nothing in the ground and nothing this big. 

For part of our garden this year we did 50+ tomato plants of various kinds.  Given that we use them for salsa, sandwiches, salads and had plans for canning our own spaghetti sauce, Romas accounted for nearly half of the planted crop, with Cherokee, Yellow Pears, and others filling out the rest.

We planted them in a three straight lines, ~2 feet apart with 4" wire mesh to provide stability.  (We learned this is wayyy too close as they grew so thickly we couldn’t reach the middle row!) Marigolds were also spaced around the tomatoes to provide natural bug protection.

Unfortunately our plan to mulch the garden with straw didn’t work out. Somehow everyone we talked to was out of straw for the season! We decided to go ahead with planting anyway and see what we could get from our first year. 

The next problem was pretty soon after planting we left town for a couple weeks for a family reunion and a wedding. :) it was great family time, but our young garden definitely suffered from lack of attention.

When we returned from our trips, the weeds were about 4' tall!!! Nearly all the small garden plants (lettuces, kale, spinach, cabbage, beets, carrots, bush beans, peppers, etc) were choked out. However, despite our lack of weeding, the tomatoes thrived.  They are a bit spindly, and had to be tied to the mesh later since we weren't there to guide them through the fencing, but they are giving a good enough yield that we are enjoying garden fresh tomatoes regularly!

As more and more tomatoes ripen, and half our numbers are gone for another family trip, we decided to put off the adventure of learning to can until next year (or at least later in the fall when everyone is home) and try freezing the tomatoes for now.

If this smaller experiment works out, we're planning to grow a lot more tomatoes in 2018, and hopefully fill our food storage needs for the year with some to share!

I would like to try growing tomatoes on what we've dubbed the 'squash arch' next year to hopefully provide better support, and make harvesting much easier. It’s worked like a dream for the squash this year, keeping it off the ground so it’s all nicely shaped and away from the bugs! If we do so, the current arch (10' long) will have to expand at least 10 fold!

Despite the empirical evidence that we still have a good amount of learning to do with growing tomatoes, we now have some in the freezer with more on the way! We still have a lot to learn but already our plans for next year's garden are falling into place.

~The Process ~

Grow the tomatoes!   Provide plenty of support, sun, water, and bug protection.

Roma tomatoes slated for tonight's processing

Rinse the tomatoes, and then boil for 1 minute

Give them an ice bath

Skin and quarter / segment them

Since we don't have a vacuum sealer, we just used freezer bags and sucked the air out.  We ended up sucking some of the juice out - garden fresh tomato juice is quite tasty!

And just because I didn't think you can ever get too many goat pictures, here is Buttercup letting one of the teenage chickens rest on her back.

New Life Arrives

On Saturday, 1 July, Anchored Farms welcomed five keets.  The guinea hen brooding in their coop, had five eggs hatch.  As of last night, 3 July, two additional keets hatched so we are up to seven.  Here's a video taken the morning after the first five hatched.

Daily Pics

Pic 1: Five hens and a rooster our for a morning stroll.
Pic 2: A hen with two of her four chicks out and about. We released them from their pen today.

Activity Update

A lot has happened since the last entry. We took two hogs to Lockwood Packing Company for processing this past Monday, 19 June. Both of those are up for sale, and if they are not sold, we'll keep the meat for the family. Two additional hogs have been sold to Ken Stewart, owner of Ken's Cafe in Arcola, MO. These two hogs will be taken to Lockwood on Wednesday. The fifth and final hog is scheduled to be butchered on 24 July in Golden City.

We sold Hero, one of the kid billies and look to sell the remaining five soon. As mentioned previously, the female kids will be kept to expand our herd, which is why we have two breeding billies. They will be used to prevent inbreeding.

We have one brooding hen, which had four chicks hatch this past week. There are still approximately 10 eggs that she continues to sit on, so we'll see if any more hatch in the coming days.

We have two guinea hens brooding as well. One has about 20 eggs in her clutch and this nest is in the coop.  The second guinea has a nest with about 12 eggs along the trail to the back pasture.

Pic 1: Five Red Waddle Hogs in their containment area.
Pic 2: Hero soon after his birth.
Pic 3: All of our billies, the two larger billies are our breeding stock.
Pic 4: Three of our hogs, watering themselves.

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First Anchored Farms Hatching!

Several weeks ago, one of our chicken hens and one of our guinea hens started to brood on their clutches of eggs.  They've been faithfully sitting on their nests and today, we went out to the chicken coop and a chick had hatched and fallen out of the brood box!

Needless to say, we were quite excited, but only touched the chick long enough to put it back with it's mama. Normal brood time is 21 days, and we are hoping to have several more chicks in the next day or so.

Pic: The chick is between the hen's body and wing.