Soul Farms Highlights

Highlights

• We recently lost 3 baby goats (kids) to stillbirth, but we are hopeful that our second doe (Sophia, named after the Disney princess, Sophia the First) is pregnant for the first time.
• We will get a second buck in about a month from a farm in Staunton that has a great reputation for producing strong milkers.
• We recently purchased 30 more chickens called Australorps. They are great foraging chickens, so we are venturing into that world and the piles of leaf compost behind the house are evidence of that.
• We still have about 15 older chickens that give us 10-12 eggs a day. We have 4 dozen eggs accounted for each week by paying customers, so that helps with their costs.
• We sent our first steer to the butcher about a week and a half ago. He was 100% grass-fed, so we are excited! Getting this cow in the trailer to get to the butcher was quite a process and a funny one at that!
• We have our seeds ordered for 2014, the seedlings shelf and lights set up, so that hopefully, we don't have to buy any plants this year, and part of the compost on the ground will be used for this garden venture.
• And we're trying bees again. Since I've been grinding wheat and making most of our bread products, we are going through some honey. My dad and Beth have been generous to share some of their own, but I'm afraid we're going to clean them out!

Building the new chicken coop/greenhouse.

The kids peeking at the cow in the middle of their bath. The steer broke through the fence, escaped into the woods and finally made his way into our backyard for his last supper. Please keep in mind this was our first steer we've ever taken to the butcher - we learned a few lessons...

Lollygagging in the yard.

I could not get the video to come up, but after calling 3 friends to come over and assist (one who was on a conference call for work the whole time), the guys managed to get him in the trailer. There was a lot of running, waving of arms, yelling and laughing from inside the house (from me). It was quite a morning!