Today our fact is about goat milk!
Goat milk is naturally homogenized. The cow milk that you buy at the grocery store is homogenized by the producers to keep the milk from separating. Because goat milk has smaller fat particles it is less prone to separating. This makes it much easier on your stomach, breaking down in 20 minutes as compared to the hour it takes for the fat particles of cows milk to break down.
We are gearing up to start our farmers market season. We’ve been making lots of soap, cleaning up and reconfiguring our display… and getting excited for a really busy market season! We have been at South of the James through the winter and will continue to be there every Saturday, but this weekend is also the start of the West End Market on Saturdays! Next week starts the Wednesday Aw Shucks market. Then the following week is the big kick off and all five of our 2015 markets will be open! We are so excited to see all of our regulars at the West End Market and bring our goat milk soap to a whole bunch of new people at all of the new markets that we will be vending at this year.
Tina, our doe who is due to kid in June, is starting to show. Normally she is quite slender but now she has a little stomach that pokes out. We didn’t ultrasound her for confirmation because if she didn’t get pregnant on the first try we weren’t going to breed her again this year. A June kidding is already going to be difficult (with the flies and everything) and I wasn’t willing to put her, or her kids, through a July kidding, so we figured that it would become obvious that she was pregnant and that would be confirmation enough for us. In the last week or so Tina has started to fill out, and considering she has never gone back into heat, we are positive at this point that she is pregnant.
The garden continues to grow at a rapid rate. We are barely keeping up and the garden doesn’t exactly look pretty at the moment, the pathways are over grown, and the weeds are catching up with us already, but beds are getting prepped and the plants are making it into the ground and are growing… so that is all that matters. I have been going out through out the day for 15 minutes increments to pull weeds, then we spend 3+ hours in the garden each afternoon. The cabbages are getting huge and the broccoli is chugging along. The potatoes are all over the place and the peas are getting quite tall. One of my big focuses recently has been working on building perennial beds throughout the garden to give the beneficial bugs a permanent home while giving us beds that will provide food year after year without us having to replant. Currently I have a bed (4×25 feet – 100 sq. ft.) half way filled with strawberry transfers from our other garden and from our friend Toni’s garden. We plan to put in a bed of artichokes in the next few weeks, and we will have many perennial flowers, like chamomile and echinacea, scattered everywhere. In the fall I hope to put in a bed of asparagus… my favorite vegetable.
Well, that’s all for this week! I hope to see all of you out at South of the James and West End Farmers Market this weekend!
Every year, when the temperatures start to climb, we shear our guard llamas Afton and Blue Ridge. This keeps them cool during the dog days of summer. Since we do not have the equipment required to do the shearing ourselves the owners of Westerham Farm, where we purchased our llamas, come out each year to do it for us. We always enjoy seeing them, and having them see the boys!
The pictures below are from our very first shearing in 2013!
It’s time to get back to the goats! Today’s Fun Farm Fact is goat related!
By nature goats are not grazers. They are foragers. If given a choice they would prefer to be eating their way through bushes, brambles, and trees, instead of eating grass. When goats are strictly grazing on grasses they are also more likely to pick up parasites. Our girls are currently working their way through a half acre of blackberry brambles… and having a wonderful time doing it!
The garden has exploded this week and we are doing everything we can to keep up! The cabbages are getting huge and the broccoli is moving along. The turnip, beet, and radish sprouts are poking through the ground and starting to get their second set of leaves. The potato plants are starting to surface here and there. I am trying to get the strawberries, which have been overgrown with clover because of neglect from a busy end of year last year, prepped and thinned out. I am hoping to have enough transplants to fill a bed in the big garden. I would love to have a whole 100 sqft bed of strawberries… you can never have enough strawberries! My plants that are still in our friend Toni’s greenhouse are getting huge and I am dreaming of fresh tomatoes and peppers! The farm is so beautiful this time of year. The trees are blooming everywhere, the grass is finally filling in, and the mud is finally going away! I love spring so much!
Last week we started a new afternoon routine where we now eat dinner at 2pm before going out for farm chores. Before this change we were going outside to do afternoon farm chores at 2pm and we weren’t getting inside until almost 7pm to start dinner. We were all starving by then and it was making the last 2 hours of farm chores miserable. Also, the kids were eating these large dinners then immediately going to bed… which is not exactly a healthy habit. Eating an early dinner allowed us to just focus on our chores and we didn’t feel rushed to get in at any certain time. So now we are eating dinner at 2pm, going out for farm chores by 2:30/3pm, we work in the garden until 5pm, then do all the actual farm chores with the animals, milk the does, and feed the babies, and then weed and work in the garden until it gets dark. When we finally come in we have a very light meal, like a salad and/or leftovers, and the kids go to bed. Our morning farm routine has stayed the same in all of this. It has been a huge and interesting adjustment, but so far so good! I might write a full post about the effects it is having on our schedule, and health after we have been in the schedule for a while.
Last week I introduced our Black Copper Maran chickens. When we purchased them last year we got the Easter Eggers at the same time. Easter Eggers are like the mutts of the chicken world. They are not seen as a pure bred chicken and are not recognized by the American Poultry Association. People often get them confused with Americanas. Easter eggers come in many different colors. So even chicks that are hatched from the same mom can look vastly different from their siblings. Although as a whole they generally have a fluffy collar and in most cases ornate markings. Easter Eggers also lay colorful eggs! They can be blue, green, brown, and sometimes pink. All three of our Easter Eggers lay green eggs.
It’s time for a fun farm fact from one of our other farm animals… Our llamas!
Llamas are in the same family with camels, so they share many similarities. One of these similarities is their tendency to spit when irritated. However it is rarely at their caretakers, more often than not it is at the other llamas around them. We have had them spit at us on occasion if we are messing with them, for vaccinations or hoof trimming, and they wanted to be left alone, but it doesn’t happen often. They generally give you plenty of warning before spitting, throwing their head back and making a gurgling sound as they pull up there cud, as if to say “back off!”
Everyday we post a picture on Instagram (@TheFreckledFarm) for our 365 project, but many times (especially this month with the babies being born) we post pictures in addition to our “picture of the day.” These images don’t make it to the month’s round-up, so to avoid them getting lost in the shuffle for those who do not have Instagram, we collect the “other” pictures together once a month. Here are the other pictures from the month of March:
We are in hyper drive around here. Making soap, making laundry detergent, caring for the farm, working in garden… It’s crazy!!
We are preparing for Spring Bada-Bing and South of the James this week. If you’ve never been to one of the Craft Mafia Craft shows I am here to tell you that they are fantastic. The quality of vendors is outstanding and they always end up being really big days for us. Then of course there is South of the James, where we are every Saturday. The market is really picking up (not that it was ever really slow) because of the warmer weather. More vendors are coming and a lot more people are showing up! That market is full of life and the vendors are amazing. We plan to sell a lot of goat milk soap this weekend!
The garden is quickly coming together. We are having to prep beds in the big garden as we are transplanting. We have things that need to go in the ground already and 24 4’x25′ beds that needed to be prepped. Each bed takes around 2-3 hours to do as we break up dirt clumps, pull weeds and even out the dirt. Since this is a new area that has never been gardened before clearing out the weeds and grass is a big chunk of that time. There was just no way we were going to get all the beds prepped and done before the plants needed to go in. So we are going bed by bed, prepping then planting. So far we have a ton of cabbages, potatoes, and broccoli in the ground in the new big garden and potatoes, cabbages, swish chard, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, strawberries, peas, and spinach in the smaller raised bed garden that we have been planting in for years. We still have hundreds upon hundreds of plants that need to go into the big garden, many that are still in our friend’s green house that we are using. It’s hard not to feel incredibly fortunate as you are putting nourishing, healthy foods into the ground. It’s a wonderful feeling.
When we first got chickens we purchased one of each breed that we found appealing. Each breed has different characteristics; how many eggs they tend to lay, temperament, how well they deal with heat and cold, etc. The idea was to figure out what breed we liked best and when we decided to order more we would get all of that breed. I was convinced that it was going to be the look and temperament of the bird that would attract me to a particular breed, but I was wrong! All the birds were funny and interesting to watch, regardless of what they looked like… It was the eggs that I was interested in. I love having a bunch of beautiful colorful eggs! I love the different shades of brown and green. So when it came time to add to our flock we ended up ordering a bunch of chickens of a breed that we hadn’t tried before… Black Copper Marans. Maran’s lay chocolate brown eggs! At the same time we ordered more Easter Eggers, who lay green eggs. Now we have a beautiful mixture of green and light, medium, and dark brown eggs!
The marans are funny birds. They all look so similar that I cannot tell them apart and because of this none of them have names… although once you have enough chickens naming them kinda goes out the window anyways. There are a few stand out though. We have “punk rock maran” who’s markings make her look like she has a mow hawk. We also have the “troublemaker,” who is always the one who is off somewhere and you have to search for her to get her in the coop at night. It’s been a fun breed to have and I absolutely love their eggs!
