Non-Stop Activity On The Homestead

What can I say? I've been slack about blogging but there is no slack happening on the farm. We have been busy busy busy. Cocoa and Mandy, our Nigerian Dwarf does, each had a set of twins in April. 3 boys and a girl. We have retained the female and named her Trixie. One of our boys went to a buyer in Charlotte, another went to a buyer just across the state line in South Carolina, and our third made a long trip to his new home in Florida. We are able to keep up with the two in South Carolina and Florida via Facebook and they are as happy as can be with their new families. Both will be herd sires when it is time to breed them. I'm so happy that we were able to find good homes for all three of these gorgeous boys! So since we moved 3 out, of course that means we had room to bring some in. :) We are happy to announce the additions of "Tillie" and "Opal".
Tillie is from FLG Farms in Taylorsville, NC. She was owned by my goat soap guru friend, Lee Ann Ferguson. She will be a year old in July and is the sweetest, most loving little girl.

Opal is from Past Ur Time Farm in Rutherford, NC. She is naturally polled and blue eyed so we are very excited to add those awesome genetics to our heard. Opal is still a baby, so we won't be breeding her until the Fall of 2015. She is a very vocal little girl and makes sure everyone around knows when she wants attention. We love her to death already!

It's pickin' time on Ellis Farms! So of course, evenings and weekends are spent in the field gathering what we are blessed to have sown this spring. We planted a total of 3500 veggies of various varieties and things are hoppin'.

I'm very proud of how beautiful our produce has turned out so far. We are set to make our first appearance at the Lincoln County Farmer's Market this coming weekend and we are also working with Devine Farms in Catawba County in a farm share opportunity to sell our produce at their farm stand. We also added four feeder piglets to the mix. We plan on raising them for meat for the family and possibly using one as a breed sow. Things are coming together and it is alot of work. We are still learning as we go, but we are enjoying it.

Til next time,
The Ellis'

Babies, Plants, and Everything In Between

It's been a crazy busy time at Ellis Farms in recent weeks (hence the reason I have not updated the blog in forever). Our new website has launched and we've had wonderful response. You can find it HERE. Plants in the greenhouse are popping everywhere and we are busy moving them to the ground. We can't wait to see what comes of the many varieties that we are adding to our lineup this year.

Last week, we also had some new additions come to the farm. Our goat babies are finally here! Mandy kidded with a gorgeous set of black and white twins (a doeling and a buckling) that we named Trixie and Domino. Trixie will be retained on the farm and Domino is available for sale after weaning the first week of June. Domino is naturally polled.

Cocoa, our registered dairy goat, also kidded with twin bucklings. We have named them Java and Butterscotch. They will also be available for sale the first week in June. Butterscotch is naturally polled and blue-eyed.

We have had the best time this past week watching these four navigate their new world. They are running, jumping, and playing all over the place!

Our next additions will be four piglets in May that we will be raising for meat for our own personal use. I'm doing lots of research and reading to plan. Pictures of the pig homestead will be posted soon.

Hopefully you all are planning and prepping your own gardens and enjoying what pleasures come from that. It's been a blessing to us for sure. We enjoy spending that time together as a family creating food that is healthy for our family.

Til next time,
The Ellis'

Planning for Spring

We're making our way through Winter and are slowly seeing those first signs of warmer weather, which means things are about to kick into gear here on the farm. It will be potato planting time in two weeks! One of our projects that we're almost finished with is a greenhouse. This will enable us to start our seeds and plants earlier to keep them healthy and ready to be put in the ground at planting time. The hubby has done a great job on it.

We have been in talks with a local restaurant, Farmer Baker Sausage Maker, that is set to open up in March here in Lincolnton. They have been using our molasses in their food hub and other places while their restaurant is being finished. They are discussing with the hubby about growing onions and potatoes, among other things, to use in the restaurant. We are very excited about this venture with them.
In addition to the veggies, we are anxiously awaiting the birth of new Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats. We are fairly positive our primary milker, Cocoa, is pregnant. You can take a guess by her picture. :) I'm crossing my fingers for a set of twins.

 And last but not least, we have a newcomer to the farm. We adopted Miss Emmee, a 5-year-old tortoiseshell cat, who will join Miss Sassy in the house. She's still getting acclimated to the house, the other pets, and us. We will keep you posted on how she's doing. Til next time, The Ellis'

Hectic Holidays

I have been extremely slack in updating the blog since my last post. Between Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and now gearing up for Christmas......honestly, there just hasn't been time. I'm hoping that, after the first of the year, I will do better and have lots of good and exciting things to talk about.

As far as the farm, we recently took our two dairy goats to FLG Farms in Taylorsville to have them bred. Hopefully, we will have some sweet furry little baby Nigies in the early Spring. We are crossing our fingers! Speaking of FLG Farms, if you're into natural health and beauty products, you should definitely check out their website. Ms. Lee Ann makes the most wonderful goats milk products I have ever used. My latest addiction is her Peppermint Lip Balm. It's LUSCIOUS!!!! You can learn all about Lee Ann, her products, and her awesome farm HERE.

These cooler months and less daylight hours have done a number on our chicken girlies. They have been through a pretty rough molt and are finally getting their pretty feathers back in and they have been protesting lately and our egg production had pretty much come to a stand still. The hubby was having conversations with them about visits to KFC or a hot tub stint in the stew pot. We refuse to buy store bought eggs anymore! Ha Ha. All jokes aside....we added a light to the coop to increase their daylight exposure and.....VOILA....egg production is slowly increasing. All is right with the world. :)

I also want to share with you all our most recent family pictures that we had done for our family Christmas card. We hope you enjoy them. They were alot of fun to make. As always, thank you all for your support to our family, our blog, and our beginning farm venture. We are still learning and have a ways to go but it's been a wonderful experience. We wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Rick, Audra, Drew, and Addi Ellis

Try and Try Again

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill

 “You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying. To the best you can do everyday.”
― Jason Mraz

Well.....what started off as a great vision to expand the farm and have an increase in produce for the Fall....failed miserably. 1600 plants....GONE...thanks to the deer, rabbits, and other critters who thought we had laid out a buffet for them. Rick worked so hard and we are very disappointed.

Looks like we will back up, regroup, and try again. Ya live and learn.

We are still determined to make a go of this family farm and eventually turn it into a full time business for Rick. It's what makes him happy. And I'm all for that.

Next up on the plan is breeding the dairy goats, which will be a first for us. Cocoa came to us already pregnant, which was a learning experience for us and that was a good thing. We have found a wonderful family in Taylorsville, NC who also raises Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats. We are sending Cocoa and Mandy away to "sleep away camp" for the weekend in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, fingers crossed, they will come back pregnant so that we can have some Spring babies on the farm.

The Ferguson family, specifically Lee Ann, has been very helpful to me in answering my thousands of questions, not only about breeding specifics and contract details but I found out through the world of Facebook, that Lee Ann makes soap and other beauty products from her goats milk. You can see her products here. She has inspired me! I want to try my hand at soap making. I have purchased a beginner soap making kit and frozen some of Cocoa's milk.

Can't wait to see if this may turn into a little side business for me! I've had lots of local folks asking if I will be making goats milk soap so, apparently there is a demand for it.

The chickens are doing well. We've been dealing with the change in seasons which means the birds are losing their feathers (molting) and preparing to grow back new ones. This also means a decrease in egg production but we are still getting 2-3 eggs a day. I'm always on the lookout for new birds. We recently added another "Easter egger" (colored egg layer) and got our first Polish who I fittingly call "Tina Turner". You can see why....HaHa

 Rick and I are also discussing fencing off another smaller area of our property on the backside and purchasing 2-3 piglets to raise for meat for our family. I'm quite excited about this. We love some bacon up in our house. LOL I just have to keep in mind they are pets and I can't name them. If you know me at all, this will be hard.

So that's about it as far as an update for what we are up to. Busy and always and never a dull moment with the Ellis'. But we're having fun and we're doing it together. And that's what's important.

Til next time......................

Livestock Production 101

This summer I've been doing something I swore was done and over with in 2003 when I finished my Masters degree. I went back to school. But this time it's much more fun! Early in the Spring, I discovered that Western Piedmont Community College in Morganton, NC was offering a short course on Livestock Production. The cost of the class was relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. The course consists of 4 Saturdays, spread throughout the Summer where they teach you all you need to know about the three common "small farm" livestock options and how to use these animals to live off the land. The last Saturday is dedicated to teaching you basic veterinary care. We decided that it would be good to invest $120 to take this class so that I could soak up as much info as possible. A friend of mine is taking the class also. I've had one class so far...SHEEP 101...which was pretty interesting. We don't have sheep on our farm, but I learned that sheep and goats are pretty similar in terms of their care.

Western Piedmont has its own small self-sustaining farm on campus, which I found to be very cool. They sheer the sheep and process the wool and sell it. The money goes back to the campus. The goats are Nubian dairy goats, which have beautiful faces and awesome floppy ears. The goats on the campus farm are very friendly and love to be petted. They have a wonderful set up and I am learning a great deal already. This coming Saturday is GOAT 101 followed by CHICKEN 101 in a couple of weeks. The vet care day is in August. I'm glad that I decided to go back to school for some learnin' that is actually fun and will benefit us on our family farm. Speaking of dairy goats, By this week, I had accumulated enough goat milk- a little over 5 quarts to be exact and I made my first run of goat cheese. We decided to start with an easy recipe for making chevre' which is a mild and creamy cheese, almost like what most know as cream cheese. Once the cheese is made, you can add flavors or spices to make it whatever you wish. It can be kept in the fridge for up to two weeks or, if left plain, you can freeze it for up to 6 months. When you decide to use it, you just thaw it out and add your spices then. Each batch makes about two lbs. of goat cheese.

I'm still learning, so this is a trial and error thing for me. This first batch I thought was too rubbery, but we salvaged it by running it through the blender and adding a little more milk to it, turning it into basically a spread. I split our batch into two 1 lb portions. I added spices and made a batch of garlic dill and a batch of spinach & herb.

Changes

Life at our house has been nothing short of crazed lately, which is why I haven't done much blogging. Our garden has exploded with veggies and I'm trying to can, pickle, or sell to make room for more.

Cocoa kidded on the 20th with a gorgeous buckling, who I think looks like a little cow.

In only a week, we have found a buyer for him. They specifically requested a bottle baby so at a week old, he is leaving us today to travel to his new home in the NC Mountains. We also sold all of the Silkie chicks that we hatched out for Miss Mudpie, brought in 3 more hens, one being a special needs crossbeaked Americauna. And tomorrow, we are adopting a special needs Manx kitty named Diamond, who will be our official farm cat. In the midst off all this, we managed to put in a new pool liner next door at my father-in-laws, just in time to help our youngest celebrate her 5th birthday. We are traveling to Black Mountain today to visit Round Mountain Creamery, NC's only Grade A Goat Dairy. I'm hoping to learn some tidbits of info to use with my dairy goats here. I'm off from my full time job all week and intend to relax a bit and spend time with my kiddos. Til next time.....

Trying To Catch My Breath

I'm trying to come up for air here but goodness it's hard!!! We've had so much going on at the farm and there is still so much to do. Some days I feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm hard-headed and determined. I refused to say that I can't do something. So....where to start? These past few weeks since my last post have been non-stop. On top of family and farm life, I've started a new part time job at a Crisis/Detox facility, which is very different from my world of working with juvenile delinquents. I'm still adjusting, learning, and finding my way. On the farm, we have continued tending to our garden, which has begun giving us gifts.I enjoy going out to the garden after work each day to see how things have changed in such a short amount of time.

We have cut and baled hay and gotten it loaded into the barn loft. We will have to do it again in the fall. This provides the main food source for the goats and the rabbit. Considering it's free, that's an awesome thing. The kids were a huge help in the process and our oldest learned to drive the tractor while we loaded up the trailer with the bales in the field. He's learning that getting older means more responsibilities on the farm.

Given the increased number of animals on our homestead, we've begun learning some basic veterinary care that we can do ourselves at home versus taking the animals somewhere or calling a vet out to the house. You Tube is a wonderful learning tool in that regard....ie. giving a goat a vaccine, The hubby did it like a pro. Last night was treating the rabbit for ear mites. A week ago, it was a chicken who got pecked in the eye by another chicken. It's a never ending saga when you have farm animals.

We are prepping for Cocoa to have her babies (I swear there has to be more than one in there as big as she is.) I am assembling a birthing/kidding kit based on what I've gathered reading online, books, and from other goat owners.

We are very excited to have our first dairy goats born on the farm. Yesterday I ordered a Cheesemaker's kit from Hoegger Supply Company. It has everything that I need to get started. I'm anxious to learn to make goat cheese in different ways.

Now...on top of everything else we have going on, we did manage to have a little fun on the farm these last few weeks. We hosted a local photographer who came out to do family photo sessions. We had hay bales, tractors, the barn, and a rustic bench that were used as backdrops for some really great shots. You can check these out here Family Photo Sessions At Ellis Farms. Here is one of my favorites of us. We are planning to do this again in the Fall. I'm hoping we can make it a regular event. Til next time!

What's Got Your Goat?

Wow! What an exciting weekend we have had at the farm! We welcomed Sophie and Ellie, three month old pygmy goats for our kiddos. And we started our dairy goat venture by bringing in Cocoa, a three year old Nigerian Dwarf. She is bred and due in July.
Within 30 minutes of being here, Sophie took off and busted right through the electric fence. She was so nervous and scared. Who could blame her since we took her from her Mama?! It took us almost an hour to get her contained and in the barn. Ellie is a little calmer. Our goal is to train them to be on leads. We are going to work with them every day so they can get used to us and not be afraid. Miss Cocoa has discovered all the green leafy goodies that she can handle. She does great on a lead but sure did take Drew for a ride when she first hit the pasture area. Hopefully, by the weekend, everyone can leave the barn for good and be comfortable in their new home.
We still have so much to learn, especially with Cocoa expecting her babies in July. I'm excited to milk her and learn to make different things with her milk. I'm nervous...but I gotta start somewhere and just get my feet wet.

Stopping To Take A Breath....Busy Times On The Farm

The past couple of weeks at Ellis Farms have been a whirlwind of activity. We are busy prepping our garden, bringing more chickens onto the farm, putting up cedar fencing and learning all about DAIRY GOATS! In about 3 weeks, we will be bringing a registered Nigerian Dwarf named Cocoa to the farm. She is pregnant, due in July. Our kids are super excited for these new additions. I'm self-educating myself and learning all I can about dairy goats before she gets here. Our goal is to milk her, help her raise her babies, and hopefully grow a dairy herd from there. I'd like to learn how to make cheese and soap once we get the hang of things.

 I have to brag on the hubby and my father-in-law. He has worked his rear off building the goat barn, putting up the fencing, and getting our garden ready. All that while working 40-50 hours a week at his full time job. He even built the most beautiful cedar gate leading to the chicken coop. I'm so proud of it. He did a wonderful job!

Our next goal, once the veggies get going is to sign up to be vendors at our local farmers market. I'm so excited about this!!! I think it will be fun dealing with the public in a very different want than I do during the "8-5". Stay tuned!