Chicama Run Farm Blog

I swear some days that’s all we do.  One day I promise myself that the calander will be clear at least for awhile.

Of course we are getting ready for the big Loudoun County Fall Farm Tour in October and trying to make it fun for the kids to come and see the animals and visit the farm.  Joe picked up a great hay wagon this past Tuesday which will make the fall tour a lot of fun.  Next season (see already planning ahead) I think we will gear up the fall farm tours to run the hay wagon on certain days. 

I’m looking for a couple of goats – for some reason kids love goats.  Haven’t figured that one out yet – but I’m looking for a couple who are just about ready to be processed (yes that means butchered) so we don’t have to keep them for a long time.  We still have the little pigs which I think will be a hit as pigs = farm also.  At least for the tour we will still have the cows.  No lambs will be here, I was hoping that someone might give birth but it doesn’t look like it will happen.  I ordered some baby chicks <sigh>  But at least they are broilers and we will only have them for a couple of months.

Today Joe opened up the garden for the chickens.  That means they can go in and eat whatever they want.  Sad and exciting all at the same time.  Exciting because it means the season is officially over and sad because the season is officially over.  I know I know – I am tired of picking and doing all that work, but I have already canned as much as I was going to and I think I am just finished with it for the season.

I am enjoying going to the market and selling the pumpkins and meats right now!  It’s not a lot of extra work and I like to see the kids faces with the pumpkins. 

I’m picking up straw tomorrow so we can decorate with it and after the tour we can take it down and use it in the barn for bedding for the sheep.  I’m also picking up new ewe (female sheep) feed from a local farm.  I really wish the guy would do chicken feed because if he could and be cheaper than what I’m paying now, it would be nice.  But I guess chickens want cracked corn – and I need to verify that because if I can do it with ground corn and whole corn I’ll see what he can do for me.  It’d be nice to stick local and know everything about the feed.

The kids are doing alright now.  Learning and frustrating me at time – but that’s to be expected.  Alexis’s birthday is tomorrow and we’ll be heading to Chuck E Cheese on Tuesday to help celebrate.  Funny thing is that as much as I hate CEC, I am looking forward to going so that the kids can run and play and I don’t have to clean up after them!  I know – selfish, but true.

Oh well – off to collect eggs…..

Ever have one?  Just a week that barely got started and nothing is going the way you had planned.   First thing – friend sick in the hospital so today I have the extra kids – no big deal just didn’t plan on it so I have to rearrange stuff.  Good thing we started homeschooling, but we have work that we needed to get done and we are doing it no matter what.  I made the extra kids sit through some of the lessons and then gave up on it and said they can go elsewhere.  Not that my kids actually wanted to hang around at that point and do math, spelling & language arts – but tough poop – it needed to get done.

Then a pipe on top of the oil tank broke off – rusted through actually.  Another bill piling up.  And I feel quilty for buying stuff.  I joke about it a lot because I do like to buy stuff. Hate to shop – but love to buy!  I don’t buy a lot of extras – but I swear I don’t know where the money goes….  It’s Alexis’s birthday this week and she’s turning 8.  All she wanted to go was go to Chuck E Cheese (hell on earth if you ask me) and we are headed there next Tuesday as our plans needed to change to help our friends.  She wants everything she sees on TV but may get 1 or 2 things.  We’ll see what she gets….

A lot of people have been asking me how I do it…. as in (I guess) how I manage the farm, keep my house at least in decent condition – I dare not say it’s clean, but it’s ok, manage the kids, and somehow keep my sanity.

Well a new thing I have started paying attention to is preparing meals ahead of time.  I know there are all those places out there that can help you do that – but PLEASE how many of us have that much money to spend on those types of meals that we aren’t sure if our kids will eat?  So for me – I now make mac & cheese 2 uge batches thanks to my friend for teaching me how to do it so my kids actually like it…. and of course we canned a ton of spaghetti sauce which makes spaghetti easy to do at a moments notice and now I look and search for more recipes of healthier meals (hey I added ham cubes to one of the pans on mac & cheese!)…  if I hear of an interest, I’ll let you all know and try and share some of the recipes which help keep us going!

Well, after a tough season with lambs (we have lost 2 recently right before they are all supposed to be butchered) Joe and I have been discussing what to do differently next season.  Honestly, we are small and can’t afford to lose the number of lambs we lost this year – period.

So the question came up – and I will be honest with all of you, I seriously just want to feed them and move them through quicker – should we grass-feed or feed some grain etc.  Well I think our plan will be to raise them as we raise other animals that we do for butchering, mostly pasture but add grain to keep up their health. 

Plain and simple, this season our lambs are 100% grass-fed and are 30lbs+ less than what they should be.  This is because of the pasture and the drought.  No rain means that the nutrient content of the pasture went down significantly – usually at 15% protein and this season, probably 6-8%.   So to keep their health up, as much as I would LOVE to say 100% grass-fed I probably will have to adjust that to meet the health needs of growing lambs.

Pretty much the thing is that we need make SOME money with the lambs to pay for the original breeding stock and replacements we get.  2 years into this, and we haven’t made the money back from our 1st sheep purchase!!  Then on top of that I have added and replaced sheep and STILL haven’t made the money back – just added more debt.

So – back to the drawing board this winter to figure out what our plan is.

Well we made it through day 1.  That’s right…. concentrate 30 minutes on 1 subject and it’s amazing what gets done.  Alexis finished one of her units for Language Arts (1 out of 10) so we did a dance   Jacob finished I think 4 pages in his math workbook!  Both did great – though we had a few break downs from both sides, we managed and finished what I had on the schedule.

So today we did: 30 minutes of math, 30 minutes of language arts, intro to history, and spelling. 

Tomorrow we have homeschool PE at the local rec center and Alexis chose to swim.

Before we even started school, we moved the rams in with our wether and Paris the llama.  Moved the new little ram (white faced) to see if by chance he needs to be the “clean-up” and finish mating with whoever is not bred yet.  That took awhile – but we moved everyone.  Then after that, we had to move the girls and the new yearling ram into the new back fields.  This will give the main pasture a rest for a little over a month before we start moving them in to start the wonderful lambing season!

The 3 big pigs that are still here will go away next week!  That’s exciting because they eat a LOT of feed!  The 3rd batch of chickens goes next week also – whew!  It’s a wonderful time of the year when all the animals start going away.  I know that sounds bad, but it’s a lot easier just to go and feed 2 sets of animals than 5. 

OH – on top of all this, one of our dogs taught the new guard dog that you can eat the dang eggs from the nesting boxes… UGH!   So we have gathered 3+ times per day to hopefully stop this behavior.  We’ll see what happens… but it’s frustrating to go up and not see as many eggs as there should be with the number of chickens we have.  In some ways I can’t wait until we start over next season in a manner of speaking.  I can’t keep up with the number of eggs I need at the markets (which is a great thing but also annoying because I’d like to have extras).

So now, I need to go and wash and put the eggs in the cartons.

Tonight, we have a small family party to celebrate “1st day of offical homeschool” – I even bought a cake