All Blog Posts (13)

Pasture%20Raised%20Pork%20Presentation.ppt

 

I am doing a class at the Country Living Expo at Stanwood High School on January 29th.  The class is on raising pasture pork and above is the presentation that I am giving.  The keys to the pasture pork conversation is what breed to use (heritage…

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We weaned our last set up piglets this week.  We had 2 litters in November and then we bought a litter of large blacks over Thanksgiving so we had 3 litters going there for a while.  We keep the piglets with the sows for about 6-8 weeks and then I move them into a separate pen (the pit in the milk house where you use to stand to milk the cows) for a few weeks until they get use to being weaned and big enough to eat a pound or so of food in short order.  After 2-4 weeks I then move them out…

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I have not been great about blogging since May. The weather this summer was terrible and kind of took the wind out of my sails about blogging when nothing would grow. It is now the start of a new year so I thought I would update everyone on what is planned for the upcoming year. Before doing that, however, a quick review of 2010:



- Miserable weather lead to almost no vegetables

- We erected 2 permanent hoophouses

- We now have 5 sows (2 large blacks and 3 mulefoots) and 11… Continue

Here is the chicken tractor that I built. It is 4ft by 8th and right now houses our 20 Buckeye chickens.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been doing a lot of planting. Last weekend I got the potatoes and bush beans planted in the front, although we have some room for some more beans that I need to buy this week. This morning I got corn, pole beans, summer squash and winter squash started in our back pasture. We expanded the area back there this year and have about twice as much room and still have a bunch more room back there to plant some more corn. We also got some weeding done in our back… Continue

I am finally getting some pictures that I promised a number of weeks ago. We have a couple of hoop houses that built. One of them will be used for tomatoes and the other one will grow some french…

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The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic trying to get a couple of projects completed. I few weeks ago I started a chicken coop inside of our barn. We need a place for Kaden to keep his bantam chickens for the fair and wanted a winter home for some laying hens that we could then build an outdoor access area for them. It took a little while, but finally this evening we moved the chickens into their new home. Our Buckeye chicks are almost two weeks old and they are now occupying the big… Continue

Our first batch of Buckeye Chickens arrived on Wednesday. We ordered 25, they sent 26 and 4 did not survive the trip so we have 22 chicks on our make shift brooder. I am currently building a chicken coop in the barn and we will move them into that when it is done in a few days.

I mentioned previously that we got our first goose egg. I went out there the next day and it was gone. I could not figure out what had happened and exchanged emails with the person we got the geese from originally. They thought it might be a rat or something like that, but we do not really have any rats around here. They then did not lay any eggs until yesterday they built a nice nest, of course in a place where it should not have been. I moved the egg into their section of the barn where they… Continue

I spent considerable time over the last few weeks trying to get hoop houses up so we can get a head start on vegetables. To buy a production hoop house is a lot of money, which we do not have at the moment, so the exercise has been to try to create one that works for a minimal investment. Last summer we built 2 of them over the tomatoes for a couple of weeks to try to increase the heat available for them to grow. During August, however, the wind is not as big a factor and they did fine last… Continue

One of the lessons that we have learned is there is a lot of good days and maybe a few more bad days on the farm. This morning I went out to the barn to feed the animals only to find our first goose egg of the season. I was wondering when they would start laying eggs as nothing much had happened so far. She had built a nice nest in the feed tray that I was using to feed them grass. I then went to feed the goats, only to find our twin baby goats had died during the night. I am not sure exactly… Continue

Slow food was introduced in Italy in the 1980’s as a reaction to the trend toward fast food. The thought was that food has important societal values and the trend to fast food was negating the benefits, as well as being unhealthy. Here at Heritage Lane Farm we consider the slow food principles to be an important part of our efforts to educate people on the changes that have come to the food system…

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Over the past two weeks we have added two sets of twin lambs, the one

mentioned last week was born a week ago on Thursday and then we added

another set of twins yesterday morning. For some reason, Thursday

mornings are the days for twin lambs as all three of our sets of twins

were born in the middle of the night on a Thursday, my most busy day of

the week. I barely have time to get them situated in the morning before

leaving for school and not getting done until… Continue