Life on a Hobby Farm: Spring

Do you ever wonder what life on hobby farm is like? Let me take you on a tour around our farm and garden plans for this year.

Today I thought I’d share what we’re up to on the farm this spring. It’s been a while since I’ve done a farm update, and lots of things have changed around here. As always, it’s busy.

Life on a hobby farm: being friends with the cows.

Adventures with Cattle

We began the year with 11 cows. We’ve been wanting to downsize our herd (this number was a bit too many to carry on our property), so we loaded up 7 of our cows and took them to the cattle sale. It was an experience! We’ve never attempted to load and transfer that many cows at once, nor had we ever taken any to the sale. Loading them up went smoother than we ever could have hoped for, but the hours drive with a load of cattle moving in the trailer was a bit nerve wracking.

Part of life on a hobby farm is knowing where your meat comes from.

We also prepped the remaining heifers for AI since we no longer have a bull on the farm (thank heavens!). We’re hoping to get some improved beef with the next go-round of calves.

New Adventures: Raising Pigs

Last year we bought 5 kune-kune and mangalitsa breed pigs to raise for meat. Bill slaughtered our first pig at home in February. It was quite an experience and one we are grateful for. We packaged up lots of meat and I rendered lard from the leaf fat. He watched this video several times to learn how to butcher an entire pig. These are our favorite knives for butchering.

While we discovered that we didn’t love the process of doing all the meat cuts on our own (we need lots of practice!), we do love raising pigs and eating pastured pork. Since then we’ve slaughtered 2 more to take to the butcher, and brought home three new piglets to raise for future pork.

A mangalitsa/kune-kune sow with her piglets in the background.

Our sow had piglets in February and has been a great mom. We have 6 piglets running around the field.

Piglets that were born on our hobby farm.

Too Many Chickens

Last year I went overboard with chicks, and brought home some from Tractor Supply (Chick Days!), we bought hatching eggs and used a few of our own to incubate at home, AND I bought the rainbow layer mix from Cackle Hatchery. And this Spring, we’re reaping the rewards with lots of eggs! I am getting over a dozen eggs a day. Plenty for our family and friends. I’m giving away lots of eggs and it makes me so happy to be able to share. I bought these egg cartons to use for the abundance of eggs we’ve had. They’re adorable and well made. They’re also an small, family owned American company, based in Georgia. I love supporting locals and small businesses.

Eggs from chickens raised here on our little farm.

How does your Garden Grow?

We’re getting ready to start seeds for our garden. My favorite place to buy seeds is Burpee. They’re affordable and we have always had good germination from their products. Although I love growing vegetables, their flowers are what really has my heart. We love their zinnias and have grown them every year since 2016. One of the best things about zinnias is that although they are not perennial plants, they re-seed themselves and grow back year after year (if you leave them out of course, I always dead head a few and leave them to fall on the ground. I leave them there and they re-seed.)

This year I’m experimenting with starting sees in egg shells. With our abundance of eggs, I’ve been looking at ways to use all the shells. We’ve been crushing lots of them to feed back to the hens, but using them in seed starting is also a great way to make sure they don’t end up in the trash.

Sunflowers seedlings growing in eggshells.

Baby Goat News

We brought home a new baby buckling goat from a fellow farmer friend. His name is Harvey and he’s a bottle baby. I didn’t have a lot of intention with this purchase-I’m not planning to raise a lot of goats this year, but we missed having a baby goat on the farm.

Maybe later this year or next, I’d like to increase our herd and have a dairy goat again, but right now this is just for fun. We sold most of our goats a few years ago and kept only 2 of our former bottle babies-Nanny and Haley. Nanny was the first baby born on our farm back in 2016. It’s almost her 6th birthday!

The pasture in the evening with cows, goats, and pigs grazing.

Hopes for the Future Orchard

We’re planting lots and lots of fruit trees & bushes in hopes of having a wonderfully productive orchard in the future. Indoors, we’ve got a Meyer Lemon and Kumquat trees. For outdoors, we’ve been planting blackberries, kiwis, and strawberries. Our blueberry bushes are showing signs of life after being aggressively pruned back. We might have enough for more blueberry zucchini cake this summer.