(A Chilly) Friday on the Farm

October 25, 2013

I feel so blessed to live in an area with all four beautiful seasons! With heavy frost the last two mornings, and snow spitting earlier this week I know that winter is just around the corner. We have accomplished most things we wanted to this fall. There is 1/2 of grass fed Angus beef in the freezer, 26 Freedom Ranger chickens raised mainly on grass, and 3 heritage breed turkeys. Yes, this was the last of the the turkey raising for us. Our dreams of continuing this breed and raising them to sell just didn't work out. So now I have two empty pens in the backyard to make plans for colony raising rabbits outdoors in the fresh air and not in cages. Hubby finished most of the new compost bin last night, I had said this before, but I am amazed at what you can do with a few free pallets and some labor. The apples and pears are off the trees, we had a bumper crop this year and are still trying to get them stored. We made our own apple cider this week, if you have a juicer machine try it for yourself. It is super easy and so yummy. The last count we had on canning was 292 quarts! Yes, you read that right! Minus the ones we had already eaten or given away, so I figure it was easily over 300 quarts this year. All from our 1 acre of land! I could have had even more, but I struggled with a serious virus that took me down for about 2 weeks so some garden stuff went to the chickens this year.

I walked outside one morning this week to "peeps" that sounded so much like baby chicks. After some investigating, sure enough one of our free ranging hens hatched out 9 chicks! So far they are all doing well. Hopefully that snow holds off a few more weeks though to give the little one some extra time before winter truly hits. I don't know what she was thinking.