Discovering Life and Loss

Where do I begin? So much has happened over the past several months. I feel like we're going a thousand different directions. Sometimes you have to take a step back and realize that you can only do so much. You must prioritize and go from there. Another "live and learn" moment.

So where are we? Neck deep in pastured chicken and pork. THAT is for sure. The community has welcomed us with open arms as a local provider and meat is flying out of here faster than we can process it. We may have found our "nitch" in the world. We are so blessed that the reception has been good and we are working hard to continue improving on what we've built so far.

Dottie

Our two goat mamas gave us gorgeous babies. Cocoa, the pro, gave us a set of twin does, which we have named Dottie and Gidget. They are now 4 weeks old and doing very well.

Gidget

 Tillie, surprised us for sure on her first pregnancy. She gave us a gorgeous set of triplets, a doe and two bucklings. Our daughter named the little doe Chloe. We named the boys Oreo and Domino.

Domino and Chloe came into this world struggling from the get go. They ingested some of mom's birthing fluids and were treated for pneumonia and wore "sock sweaters" for over a week and slept under a heat lamp so that we could keep their temperatures up. They both seemed to be doing much better and then it appeared that Chloe wasn't getting as much to eat as her brothers. We began bottle feeding her but she never came out of it.

Chloe passed away this past Saturday. She was 3 weeks old. It is our first loss since we began raising Nigerian Dwarfs three years ago. My heart just broke and I felt like such a failure that I couldn't make her better. But I'm a realist. I know it comes with the territory when you decide to raise farm animals. Domino and Oreo continue to thrive and already have new homes waiting for them where they'll go in another 4 weeks. They are beautiful boys and will make wonderful herd sires.

Domino

Oreo

 We just brought 7 new piglets to the farm to add to our pastured pork program and we have 70 new Freedom Ranger chicks that were moved to the mobile chicken tractor in the field for the meat bird production.

Farmer's Market season has begun and we are busy every Saturday morning. I look forward to market every week and enjoy meeting new people and telling them about what we're doing at Ellis Farms. Things are going well and we continue to be blessed by our customers in our farming adventures. As always, thank you for supporting us. We couldn't do it without you.










Until next time,
Audra AKA Head Farm Mama at Ellis Farms.

Keeping The Family Tradition Alive

Wow! That's all I can say! We have had a whirlwind of a week at the farm (in addition to school starting back and the stress of having a middle schooler and a kindergartener in the mix). This week marked the start of molasses season at Ellis Farms. Harvest time came two weeks early due to all the rain we've had so by the end of last week, it was time to begin harvesting our sorghum cane. On Friday, we had the pleasure of a visit by a reporter and a photographer from The Lincoln Times News, our local newspaper. They wanted to do a story on our molasses and the history of the farm. They took some great pictures and wrote an absolutely wonderful story about the Ellis family farm. You can read it here. We aren't finished cooking yet. Our first batch yielded just over 16 gallons. We are cooking the second batch this coming Saturday and will likely have two more batches after that. We love visitors, so if you want to come see this process, feel free to come on by. You can have some molasses of your very own for $8 a quart. Just stop by the farm.

Another very cool thing that's happened is that we were contact yesterday by a Chef who currently operates a restaurant in Charlotte, NC. They are in the process of starting a new restaurant in Lincolnton that will feature locally grown goods on their menu. They want to purchase molasses from us! Check out their Facebook page Farmer Baker Sausage Maker. We are so excited about the possibility of our molasses being used in a local restaurant. Who knows where this could lead! I'm game for just about anything! Til next time.....

Rainy Days On The Homestead

I'd never have thought I'd ever say this...but I'm ready for a drought. This extremely rainy summer has caused a fiasco here on the farm and in my hometown in general. My goats are ticked because they hate the rain, which forces them into the barn most days....making a very stinky place in a quick way. The chickens tend to hang in there with them so the stink factor multiplies. All this means more frequent cleanouts of the shavings in the barn so that everyone stays healthy. Another result of this overabundance of rain is a decrease in egg production. I'm hearing from some of my chicken friends that they are seeing this as well. Sadly, our garden has also been affected by the rain and our output has been much less than we originally planned for. I guess you live and learn. But we are fortunate for what we've been able to do this first year.

This month has been nothing short of nuts. It's the only way to describe it. I performed my first surgery on an injured chicken. Ruby, one of our Red Cuckoo Orpingtons, developed Bumblefoot. All I can say is THANK GOD for the Livestock Production class I've been taking and this wonderful blog I follow The Chicken Chick. If it weren't for the step-by-step instructions, we'd never have been able to do this. My kitchen island looked like a murder scene but we did it. Miss Ruby is back to the coop with her buddies and healing well.

Sadly, we lost one of our favorites recently. I came home from work to find Big Bertha dead between the coop and the barn. We know she was an older bird. She had been in good health and we hadn't noticed anything odd with her. She was one of our favorites who loved to eat peanuts from your hand. We will will miss her dearly.

This past weekend, the western end of Lincoln County that I call home, suffered a major flash flood. Several roads were under water, livestock was washed away, and homes and basements were flooded. It was truly devastating to our small town. Thankfully, Ellis Farm was unscathed in the mess. We do have a creek that runs adjacent to the area where the chickens and goats are. I checked on them periodically all weekend. We were blessed to have no damages when so many others can't say that. They continue to be in our prayers.

On a brighter note, we are bringing a new chicken home this afternoon. She's a year old Dark Brahma. A "big 'ol girl" as we say. We have a juvenile Buff Brahma that we recently brought to the farm and I've fallen in love with the breed. We are excited to have her. Peace, Love, and Hugs......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.

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!

Rainwater Harvesting

Recently we began harvesting rainwater at Ellis Farms. Now....before you look into doing this at your own home or farm, make sure you are aware of what the law is in your particular area. In some states, it is illegal to harvest rainwater. In North Carolina, former Gov. Purdue signed a bill into law in 2009 which allowed residents here to be able to collect and use rainwater North Carolina To Allow Rainwater Harvesting (news article).
We were able to purchase five used 55-gallon barrels for $40 out of Rock Hill, SC from a posting on a farm sales site on Facebook. One barrel we re-purposed to hold feed for the goats and the rabbit and the rest we decided to use for a rainwater collection system. The system has now been installed at the back of the barn and we are using it as drinking water for the chickens, goats, and the rabbit. So far it's working well. We have had a huge amount of rain over the past several days, so we've been able to test it out and work out some of the kinks along the way.

The N.C. Cooperative Extension Service through N.C. State University has an good document with pictures, diagrams, and other helpful information if you are interested in doing something like this on your own homestead. Urban Waterways- Rainwater Harvesting: Guidance For Homeowners

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!

Gettin' Our Veggie On

The last couple of weekends at Ellis Farms have been pretty busy. Since we both have full time jobs, the weekends are when we get the biggest chunk of work done on the farm. We've begun our gardening for the new season and planted out "cold ground" veggies. So far, we've done potatoes, cabbage, spinach, brussel sprouts, broccoli, carrots, red onion, and sweet onion. We also planted 3 blueberry bushes of different varieties. Looking forward to the harvest!