Our Lambs Have a New Home!

Another HOT rainless day here on the farm. Today however, this 2015 lambs got their new home. They are not too far away with a nice family who are very excited to have some sheep on their property. Mom and I really liked our chats and meeting them, I'm sure they are going to a great home!

So Rain's baby boy and Nina's white ewe lamb are off to their new home. Best of luck and hope to hear updates about life in their new pasture : )

With their departure, we've welcomed some new little ones this week. Mom was VERY excited to get a few pet ducks for the property again, so we found someone with Indian Runners, and just got them this week. We've got four runners and a girl and boy Rouen. We're undecided about where they'll be (we're still having trouble with the snapper turtles out in the pond), but looking forward to having happy ducks in mud in just a few months. 

Charlie is beside herself with interest. She "talks" to them and crawls over to watch them through the window. They're in a very messy tote at the moment, so we'll take nice pictures soon! Ducks do make a mess quickly..

We also had a visitor, Rachel, stop over this past week. Her sister came as well, and wanted to do a little fishing. It was a nice, warm day, and the perfect way to get outside and do something fun on the property. There was canoeing, shrieks, and some slimy catfish. Not a bad afternoon. Thanks for making us all relax and enjoy the day. 

Egg-scellent News!

This past week Donnie & I found an awesome, new (crazy) chicken lady. Don't get me wrong, I accept the fact I am also a crazy chicken lady, just try owning a few chickens and not becoming one!. This one though, she had a whole assortment of fun new chicken breeds. Some rare, some that lay beautiful eggs, and some are just plain fun.

So we traveled up to civilization (Mt. Laurel, NJ) and met her. She showed me her fabulous breeding program and her unbelievable cabinet incubator.. which I've since added to my dream list. 

While there I got a nice little collection of fertile eggs to hatch. We also had to purchase a new incubator seeing as the old one was ancient and faulty. The new one circulates air for a nice even temp and has an egg turner. It also holds over 30 eggs Quite the chicken upgrade on the farm.

We're adding the following breeds to our chicken coop. Crested cream legbar (blue eggs), Araucana (blue eggs), Tolbunt Polish (fabulous bird), and some silkies, since we lost our last one over the winter. 

So egg clients, prepare yourselves for BEAUTIFUL light blue and green eggs this fall! We are ecstatic to see how well we hatch these babies in 21 days. Three weeks until new baby chick pictures!

Until then, check out Tolbunt Polish on the google. 

May flowers, bring fruit

April showers bring may flowers, and with those flowers come delicious fruits. We've got strawberries turning red, blackberries with big beautiful flowers and fruits just showing, tons of raspberries, and a bush overflowing with blueberries!

Our extra big blackberry plants

One of our nice ripe strawberries

Beautiful raspberry vines growing wild 

Other then the flowering fruit plants around the property, the gardens are doing exceptional for this early! We've had some very hot, sunny days. The nights are warmer, and our plants are really beautiful. 

I got a few pictures to show off how proud we are of these plants :)

Potatoes in an old, cleaned up hot tub 

Mom's rows of kale, spinach, peas, beans, and cauliflower. 

Enormous Caulifower

Wild, green garlic that we are very patiently waiting to be ready to enjoy!

A tomato plant popped in as well. Seems this soil really just had great seeds in it from last year. We've got escarole, tomatoes, and lettuce that are popping up in surprise places. No complaints here! We love the edible surprises. 

A few more weeks and we'll have all sorts of snacks to pick. For now we'll enjoy the strawberries and leafy greens. Gotta love backyard snacks : )

A Mid May Wedding

What a beautiful May we've had. We had quite a bit of April rain, but we could sure use some May rain too! Our yard looks wonderful though. It was perfect for a mid-May wedding. This past Saturday, Jen (the big sis) got married on the farm! It was lovely, and beautiful and just the perfect afternoon.

We had a large tent in the front horse field for all of the guests. A field that previously, looked a bit rough. But, Mom put LOTS of time, energy, and a bit of money to clean it up and get the best grass growing. Here it is before the tent:

There are a whole plethora of beautiful pictures out there, but I found a few that showed off how wonderful things were on the farm: 

Pre wedding, under the tent as we set up and decorated

Look at those beautiful flowers!

And of course, our BEAUTIFUL bride, her FABULOUS husband! It was a very memorable and lovely day. I think it was an amazing day, on a perfectly landscaped farm. Great job to everyone involved!

 Love you seester <3

Thank you Gretchen for some of these beautiful pictures from the big day!

Spring Cleaning

This beautiful weather had us outside all weekend dong our own version of spring cleaning. Don't get me wrong, our windows could be cleaned, floors mopped, and furniture moved around, but it was NOT stay inside weather. So we took to the gardens. With fifteen acres, it's hard to keep everything maintained and well landscaped (sorry dad!). Thinking back on what this property was ELEVEN years ago when we moved in though, I think we've made some great progress! This summers projects include putting in a small patio off the side door, push back some of the overgrown shrubbery back by the pool, and working on our fabulous gardens.

Our cleaned up herb garden (april)

Mom added some new apple trees to the back yard along with our budding blackberry bushes, raspberries, and blueberries. We also spent some time moving the rock garden to prepare for the new patio. We pulled up some vinca vine, it had about 5 years to grow freely, so it's a disaster. We got rid of the rest of the leaves to see what was growing under there, and found all our herbs coming back beautifully! Also some clematis, columbine, and other wonderful flowers popping up.
Donnie had tilled my garden for me, so I planted a few seeds and some of mom's started tomato plants. Mom planted lots of plants of her own, tomatoes, kale, brussels.

In the fall Mom planted and properly covered some garlic. It worked perfectly! We have some beautiful garlic growing here. Soon we'll be pulling it up to have fresh garlic for the first time!

With all of our planting, tilling, and cleaning up, Charlie watched and kept us on our toes. We found which leaves she liked best (the dead ones) and how entertaining it can be to just observe the chickens. Overall, she was a big help. And, we've got our first strawberry out there in April!

My little strawberry

Winter break

We had a wonderful winter here on the farm. We had some bumps and bruises along the way, but overall absolutely wonderful. There was quite a bit of snow, a tiny addition to the farm, a loss, and quite a bit of animal fun, as always. 

Here are a few pictures of our farm in the snow...

In the animal world, we collected some new chickens and sold a few roosters. Last fall I got a couple frizzles, goofiest little things, and found out 2 were roos, bringing our rooster total to 5! Needless to say we're now down to two. Everyone has found happy new farms to live on/terrorize. Here was one of our own boys, Raptor.

 The human aspect of the farm gained two newbies. In January, Donnie and I got married! So he's the much larger addition to the farm life. Back in November, we welcomed our teeny tiny addition, Charlotte Jones, to the farm.  

She has been the best part about winter on the farm. All the cold days were not so bad when you have a little peanut to snuggle. And her grandmom is ecstatic to have her around!

In November we also had a big loss. Uncle john, who had been living with us for almost a year, passed away. It was a tough time, but we all know he is in a better place, with his wife Ann.

Mom and I were so lucky to be able to spend a little bit more time with him in his last year. 

 Pictures of Unk, out enjoying the warm weather of last fall. He really enjoyed watching all the animals.

More updates to come, including little lambs!

Stay tuned.

Happy (early) Fall!

Leaves are changing, nights are cooler, and we are beginning our preparations for another Jersey winter. I realize it's been about three month since our last update, basically our whole summer, so let me show you how our summer went..


 My sweet little chickens have finally grown up into hens and surprise roosters! To the left is our silly polish, Morty, giving me a completely necessary 8 pm crow. And to the right is some of our odd shaped eggs we've collected. The first few weeks of laying gives all sorts of eggs.

Over the summer we had some changes in the horse line up. Donnie's big sweet American Cream Draft got re-homed to a small time farmer. He'll be used for exactly what he excels at, light driving and a whole lot of standing around. 

After he left we found out about one of the horses I used to ride as a teenager. He wasn't able to stay at his current farm and a few things just fell into place, so we took him in. 

Here's our current boys, from left to right, Beau, Lance (new one), and Phantom. Mom's little pony Lance (yes I know, same name, very confusing!) went to a farm that will be using him more often. Keeping him busy with kids and lessons will be a nice change of pace for that pony. 

 We survived the fourth of July fireworks somehow.. To the left is Luna hiding under Donnie's legs when all the noise started. We had fireworks all summer really. Hopefully this past weekend was the last. It really gets all he dogs worked up!
To the right is our dog friend Bear. He was one of the pups brought up from the South years ago. He got adopted to family friends Jen& Joe, and as you can see is the happiest puppy in the world now! He and his parents came for a nice patio lunch one afternoon.

We had beautiful blooming flowers, just like every other year. 

And, beautifully blooming trees, which Christian politely posed under for me.

This summer brought lots of rain. Which, as you can see, was no problem for our visiting geese and all their goslings. 

Our most recent addition to the farm is three little cochin bantams. They came from a lovely family right down he road. They're about 2 weeks old now and adorable! Two of them have begun to have frizzle feathers.. They are the goofiest collection of babies. And, from the picture below you can see Luna obviously loves them!

Later on we'll post a few more pictures of chickens, produce, and just miscellaneous farm things.

Sorry to be so absent, hope everyone had a wonderful summer and is enjoying the cooling weather! 

The 2014 Lambs

Well, just like every year, we had beautiful baby lambs. Fluffy and all white this year.  There were two ewes and a little rambunctious ram (check previous posts for tons of just born pictures). 

These weren't especially bad, but just like every other lambing season, they figured their way out of the gates and fences to explore all on their own. We had lambs in the front yard for parties, lambs by the chicken coops as I fed, and lambs eating things lambs should not eat (boy was that messy!). Overall, it was lovely to have new life on the farm, yet wonderful to see them go to their new home. This year all three were picked up by a nice woman who does a travelling petting zoo. She enjoys the small, docile breed and wanted to add a few ones to her flock. We are very happy to have them going together, and after weeks of chatting with their new owner and confident they went to a great home! 

We learned some
new tricks with these guys and got to bottle feed one ewe to keep her healthy. It was an exciting year. We'll miss you little ones!