We are busy preparing for fall and winter on the farm. The Ewings recently moved onto the farm property and having many hands available has allowed us to make light work of some projects.

We have taken out the summer garden and are using the remnants for seed storage. We have one more run of meat chickens and then our first round of turkeys to process. Also, on schedule for October is building our first hoop house, planting garlic and other winter hardy plants, and getting a few breeding rabbits as well.

SO much has been going on at the farm! The garden has been producing nicely, the chickens are coming along and the weather is HOT!

Of course, life isn’t good without surprises. Last week when I got home from work, my wife was walking out to the field to check on the chickens. And what does she find instead? A calf! Apparently our youngest cow had been bred back in November of last year when she got out of our field and spent the week with our neighbor’s bull.

Without further ado, I give you…Baby Coco!

Things on the farm are shifting into high gear this spring. We have 75 meat chickens that are bulking up and adding real feathers. They are a little over three weeks old and just got moved into the great outdoors. We are using a model similar to Joel Salatin’s chicken tractor, so that the birds are safe but have daily access to pasture land.

We just put in over 100 tomato and pepper seedlings this weekend and have planned out the space for cucumbers, beans, squashes, melons, pumpkins, more carrots, potatoes and corn. While out surveying the garden and watering in the plants, several of us ran into our friendly Speckled King Snake that likes to guard the entrance. We are happy he is there to chase off all the venomous snakes and he may have us cured of our snake fright before this season is over!

We have chicken! It’s been busy since my last update. The weekend before we went on vacation last month, we all got together on Saturday to process our very first chickens. I think we were all a little anxious starting off, but quickly got into the groove of things as the day progressed. Thankfully, several friends came to help watch the kids, prepare meals and help suppress any other chaos that was going on that day. Also, a good friend of ours that had processed chickens in her childhood days came to lend us a hand and show us any tips she could remember.

Nine hours and fifty chickens later, we were done! It was tiring and there are some things that we will do better next time around, but I can’t complain one bit. I’m so thankful for good like minded friends to help and support us as we figure this stuff out for the first time.

If you have any questions about our process or want any more details about how we raised and processed our chickens, please email me at jeff@beeyoutiful.com and I’ll be happy to help in any way that I can.

CHICKENS:

I’m so excited, we are one week away from processing our chicks! Actually there is some excitement and there is some anxiety as well. We’ve decided to attempt the processing ourselves so we’ve been reading blog posts and watching YouTube videos for the last week, trying to learn about every aspect of prepping these birds for the freezer.

One of the biggest helps so far is a video by Joel Salatin. While not the best camera angle on whats going on, there is a decent breakdown of the stages, time-frames and so-on that one will only learn from actual experience. Ready or not, we’re giving this a try either later this week or early next week, so wish us luck! I’ll be sure to document as we go and update everyone next time.DAIRY COW:

We have three dairy cows right now. Sarah and Calfeine are Jerseys and Beasley is a Holstein. We were blessed to get milk from Sarah for the last 11 months – her milk production went down enough lately that we have dried her up until she calves again. We are planning to sire her and Beasley in the next month which should give us some late spring/early summer calves! On another note, the grass has pretty much stopped growing around here so the challenge to make it through the winter without buying extra hay has begun! I’ll keep you all updated as we should have some “Mommas-to-be” cows soon!