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......................

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.....

It's Still Blazing Hot....But We're Planning For Fall!

Folks are still taking summer vacations and enjoying the warm weather, but at our place.....we are planning and planting....for our first Fall crop. We hope to have red cabbage, green cabbage, broccoli, kale, lettuce, spinach, and turnips.We are expanding into our upper field and hope to have 200-300 plants going of each variety. We have begun working on seed trays this week and we are crossing our fingers that all goes well to start these plants.

Our newest hen, a Dark Brahma that our daughter named Bootsie, has been at the farm almost two weeks. She is making herself at home and getting to know her new flock family.

The next "big" family project coming up at the end of the month is harvesting the sorghum cane and continuing on with the Ellis family tradition of making molasses. The family has made molasses in Lincoln County for over 75 years. Last year, they made over 60 gallons. The family tradition and ways of harvesting and cooking have been passed down from generation to generation. It's an interesting process to see in person. We will be cutting around the end of the month. If you're in for a road trip and want to see the molasses being made, we'd love to have you.

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.