New Arrivals

Last week our farm’s livestock population went from a mere 41 to 6041. Our new tenants are small, cute and furry. If your not careful, they may sting. Yes, we got bees. We bought them from a beekeeper in Lynnville IA.

Look at all the packages.


Installing

Placing the queen cage



We bought carnillion honeybee and I would highly recommend them if you are interested in bees.

Hogs and chicks on the farm

We are way behind in posting so here is our effort on trying to catch up. Near the end of the week last week we bought our hogs for the year. They are approximately 45-70 lbs and we have five of them. We will finish them out naturally and have them butchered in the fall. By today's standards they will be ready for butcher long before then but we use them to help clean up the farm in the fall. They make great tillers and fertilizer applicators on a garden.

We also incubated about 40 eggs from our laying hens and it just so happens that 31 of those incubated eggs hatched starting the day we brought the hogs home. This is a new experience for us and was rather interesting. D-3 did most of the work with this project and said they would hatch in approximately 21 days after starting incubation. He was exactly correct, 21 days after incubation started they did hatch.

Next up with be about our trip to Illinois for Liberty Day.

WINDY!!!

It's been a while for an update from us so I thought I would put something down about the wind we had in north central Iowa last night. We've been away from blogging due to the trip we took last weekend to attend Liberty Day in Illinois. We will tell more about our trip soon.

About 03:15 this morning I was awakened by field debris (dirt and such) hitting my bedroom window. As I was lying there praying and thinking that this is the worst wind that I can remember from a southerly direction since we have lived on our farm, I noticed a flash to the west of us and then the power went out. We are known for wind in our area but the "tough" wind is usually from the northwest.

Well since the power was out I thought I should get up and call in the outage. After making the call I was allowed much time to spend with my Lord in quiet. Sometimes I think He wakes me up on purpose to spend time and still my soul.

The Lord spared us from any major damage to the house and buildings beyond what already needs attention. To Him belongs all the glory.

Starting Seeds

Yesterday we started some of our garden plants indoors and we had some willing helpers.

One of our gardening goals this year is to raise some heirloom variety seeds so that we can keep the seeds ourselves instead of buying them every year. When I looked at a regular gardening catalog, it was confusing as to which seeds are hybrids and which are not. Hybrid seeds can not be saved and planted again so I wanted to stay away from them. Instead I decided to order vegetable seeds that I knew would be easier to obtain and harvest the seeds from such as tomatoes, green beans, peppers, sweet corn and peas. We placed our order with Seed Savers. They have many interesting plants that I've never heard of before and it will be fun to try these new (old) varieties.

I was a little hesitant about placing my order before I completely understood about cross-pollination and how it may affect the plants but I went ahead and ordered anyway. When we received the seeds I was very happy to see a section on each envelope with instructions on how and where to plant the seeds so as to avoid cross-pollination. It also included instructions on how to save the seeds. A book we would recommend about this subject is Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth.

The next post should be about honeybees. E has a goal of starting a hive this year and has been busy researching. He'll post his findings soon.

Farm Visitor

Here is a visitor that showed up at our farm recently.

Heritage Turkeys

Up until the 1920s all turkeys produced in the United States were heritage turkeys. Many breeders began selectively breeding for a much bigger faster growing bird. The result of this was the Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey. This turkey was able to grow in half the time that it took the unimproved (heritage) turkeys to grow. In the 1950s turkey breeders began breeding for a turkey that had white feathers and would grow in confinement well. In the 1960s they had created the Giant White turkey. The Giant White grows so fast that its own legs cannot support them. Their natural instincts such as the ability to forage, run and fly have been bred out of them. They also have a low disease resistance, and are many times fed antibiotics to keep them from getting sick and to increase feed efficiency. When these birds are processed many of them are injected with a solution of butter water and seasonings to increase the flavor and plumpness of the bird.

Heritage turkeys are described has having much more dark meat than store bought turkeys, this comes from being raised on pasture where they get plenty of exercise and sunlight. Heritage Turkeys are excellent grazers and do very well on pasture. Many people that eat heritage turkeys say that the meat has a superior taste; this comes from eating grass and insects. Heritage Turkey meat is naturally moist and tastes like turkey is supposed to taste.

In order for a turkey to be a heritage turkey it needs to have three important traits.
These traits are:
Slow growth rate. While Giant White turkeys can finish growing in 13-15 weeks it takes Heritage turkeys 28-30 weeks to reach market weight. Most who have tried heritage turkey say the wait is well worth it.
Long lifespan. Heritage turkeys can be expected to live 5-7 years. Because of their slow growth rate keeps them from developing leg problems that are common with the commercially bred Giant White turkeys
Natural reproduction. Heritage turkeys can reproduce naturally, but the Giant White turkeys usually require artificial insemination to reproduce.


This year we will be raising three different breeds of Heritage Turkeys for sale for the 2009 winter holiday season. The breeds we will raise are the Unimproved Bronze, Midget White and Bourbon Reds. We will raise these turkeys on grass their whole lives with some limited protein feed. Our turkeys will not be given any antibiotics or hormones.

Current farm residents

We have recently been planning for our garden this coming year. Some goals we have for this year are to educate ourselves on saving seeds and to grow potatoes for the first time. For this post though we would like to give you a rundown of the current residents of our farm.



1 Jersey dairy cow

1 Jersey dairy heifer

1 beef (stock) cow

1 beef bred heifer

1 beef steer (club calf for 4-H)

28 Barred Rock laying hens

1 Barred Rock rooster

2 dogs

5 cats

1 mule named Pearl



This is the livestock that we will be telling you more about in the future. We also hope to include pictures.

Introduction

We will begin our blog with an introduction to our family. We are a homeschooling family of seven. We have four sons and one daughter. We live in northern Iowa where we have 45 acres. Most of the acreage is currently pasture land. We enjoy doing things together as a family such as going to fairs, playing paintball, going to historical reenactments, working in the garden and visiting with friends and family. The most important thing about us is that we have a saviour in Jesus Christ and try to live each day to glorify Him.

New Family Blog

Here is our new effort at family blogging. We'll see what happens