Hello!

I know many of you love to hear about farm adventures and because I was basically MIA via email updates this summer, I decided to put together a collage of various things that happened this summer here on the farm. So read/skim to your heart’s content. 😎

Wet June

Remember all the rain this early summer?

Wow. Here’s what we fondly refer to as a “wet Willie”. 🤣

Here’s a view of the farmland next to our pastures…enough water that the kids went kayaking! 😲

June brought a trip to Alaska for a few days to pick up our 16 year old who had “road tripped” up there with some family. We got to see some very non-Minnesotan scenery! And of course I took along some of our snack sticks to save having to buy expensive airport food. 😉

We got back just as the guys were out helping my sister/brother in law with baling. That one ended up being a long night for them….I think there must have been at least 80 bales that needed to be moved up to the yard to be ready for the guy coming the next morning at 6:30am to wrap them for (for winter feeding).

Where is the sly fox?

Ah yes, the fox. 🙄 In the months after our vermin hunting dog passed away (Sally died in March) and before Willie took up vigilance, we had a fox come in regularly, taking out a number of chickens. Our best layers, naturally. 🙄 Here Oliver is on his homemade go-kart, moving the live traps to an area that will hopefully get the fox.

He actually never did catch it…but Willie decided about that time to earn his keep and started patrolling the area where the fox would come into the yard and we haven’t had any more chicken losses since the end of June. 🎉🎉

The end of June brought my brother’s wedding. Here we are unnaturally dressed up. 🤣

Strangely enough, after we got back from the 2 days of the wedding, we never saw the fox again. He and Willie must have duked it out when we were gone. 🤣

And we can’t have stories of our life without a weird picture of Meatball included. 😅

Chickens, chickens and some cattle

The end of June also brought our little meat chickens. We usually get 50 or so every year for our own eating. This year, we planned to go in with my sister (who got a couple hundred) and hire a guy to do the processing, so we got 110.

It’s amazing how little space they take up when they are teeny tiny in size. 🤣

We took the old chicken truck out of retirement and kept them in there, away from cats, dogs and any returning foxes.

(To some of your who’ve been with us for awhile, remember my old chicken truck blog? Wow…that was a long time ago…. 😲)

And look who loves baby animals. 😘

Getting bigger!

A couple weeks into their growth, we moved them to an enclosed yard so they could run around outside.

Here’s the 9 year old who was in charge of feeding them everyday.

The plan to hire a guy to do several hundred birds bit the dust when a swift change in weather temperature, plus being rained on, caused many of my sister’s birds not to make it to adulthood. 😣

We also tried an alternative feed (featuring mostly barley) and they grew a little slower than I planned so they wouldn’t have been ready when the appointment was set with the processing guy anyway.

So, that means we butchered our own chickens.

The “working with raw meat” part of this is not really my favorite, but the part where we get together with my sister’s family, along with another family, to butcher chickens and then to have a picnic, is the most fun thing ever! 🥰

Several times a summer, my sister’s family have their cattle butchered here on our farm (since the pastures where they live are closer to us than them). Once you get past the part where an animal dies (😥) it’s a beautiful thing to know that the animal suffers so little at the end. Most of the time, cattle are loaded onto trailers and taken live to a processor, which is an enormous amount of stress on them after living such a stress-free life out on the lush pastures.

This picture is funny in that there are a number of children lined up there watching the harvest “show”. 😅 It’s a learning experience to see where their food comes from and there’s biology in it as we get to see the inside “workings” of the animal too. What a blessing!

Speaking of cattle, we had this retired dairy cow come live with us on the pastures this summer. It was a very interesting thing to see how a traditional dairy cow adjusted to living outside and eating only fresh forage.

Like for instance….the first few paddocks she was in, she had a very difficult time with the concept that she would have to take a nap in a different spot every couple days. Dairy cows are very habitual and often sleep in the same stall every single day.

It also took her weeks to figure out how to graze. Since this was a brand new food and living space to her, it was a challenge! Holsteins are also notoriously terrible grazers…they’ve been bred to be very good at producing milk but general grazing is usually left to other breeds…

…like these two! While the plan for the cow was to just be here for the summer (and become fall hamburger), these two beef cattle are here for awhile. Super excited for these two! 100% grassfed beef next summer and the heifer will hopefully have a calf next May too!

Although I moved them through the pasture myself for about a month and a half, the plan was that they would go live with my sister/brother-in-law’s cattle for the rest of the time. We really aren’t set up to keep cattle in the winter/spring months.

It was memorable the day we moved them in with their herd. It was about 92 degrees and very humid. Miserable weather. But it was perfect to put together two groups of animals since everyone was too hot to fight and set up/maintain their hierarchy.

Yes we have a school bus out in the pasture….the guys sleep in it and listen for unwanted wildlife. 😉

Did you see us at the Farmer’s Market this summer?

We decided to sign up for the New Ulm Farmer’s Market this summer. I brought pork and the kids had various handmade items.

Here are rings that our 14 year old made. Our 12 year old made slingshots (he sold one to someone who wanted to keep gophers out of her flowerbeds 🤣) and the 16 year old made earrings.

We also went to the county fair in New Ulm with our 8 flavors of meat sticks as well. 😊 Met lots of interesting people!

The advent of the temporary goat

A temporary goat?

This summer, we had some family friends who were leaving for a couple weeks on a vacation across the country and needed someone to milk their family milk goat twice a day while they were gone.

It was far easier to set up a pen for her at our place than it was to travel back and forth about an hour total everyday.

So we did! (Or rather Lindsey and the 9 year old did. 😉)

We have talked for several years about getting our own family milk goat since most of us have a hard time digesting cow’s milk so we thought this would be a good test run.

It was pretty fun, fairly to keep up with, and of course the milk was fabulous.

Getting ready to milk…the 20 month old liked to help.

Summer eats and treats

What’s summer without the fabulous food?

This is Blueberry Buckle I took to a church outdoor Bible Study. (Can easily be made at a non-blueberry season of the year with frozen blueberries…yum!)

Our extra fantastic and unique hamburgers featuring my sister’s ground 100% grassfed beef, lamb and our sunshine raised pigs. These right here are the reason for those two beef cattle mentioned above….*spoiler alert* we are planning to sell 100% grassfed hamburger starting summer 2025 so you too can enjoy this unique meat experience. 😋

Smoking 40lbs of pork roasts for pulled pork for a church youth group fundraiser. YUM!

Cowboy casserole! A new favorite. 😋

Due to popular demand, I made cinnamon rolls in August. 😅 No one wanted to wait until the winter months….can you blame us?

Misc summer beauty

The oldest and youngest sisters feeding the bunny and cats.

Kites!

Checking the barley…is it dry enough to harvest? We have a local farmer grow all our barley for us. Lindsey and the guys come at harvest to help truck. Sadly, this year this field produced about half of what it did last year…so we are on the look out for more barley, which is a very scare commodity in this part of MN…

There was a storm to the north of us early in the morning as the sun was coming up.