The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Tag: Farm

  • Fun Farm Facts Friday – February 27th

    So far this year all of the fun farm facts have been goat related, so I thought it was time to do a fact about one of our other farm animals. Today’s fact is about chickens!

    Eggs

    Chickens are born with all of the eggs they will lay in their lifetime. The rate in which they lay eggs depend on the time of year. Chickens need a minimum of 14 hours of sunlight to lay an egg, so during the shorter, colder days chickens lay less eggs. Some farmers will light their hen houses in order to encourage chickens to lay more during the winter months, however this does not cause them to lay more eggs in their lifetime, it will only cause them to go through their egg supply quicker. While there is nothing wrong with this practice, it is not something we choose to do. We like our girls to have a break over the winter months.

     

  • What’s up Wednesday – February 25th

    We are in the final stretch before the start of kidding season! Sonia only has a week and a half left. She has received all of her vaccinations (CDT and BoSe) and we continue to increase her feed to prepare her for milk production. She is a first freshener and they tend to bag up (their udders grow) over the course of the last week or two but hers hasn’t started to grow yet, however that is not an indication of how close she is as she could potentially bag up right before she kids. One indication of how close she is to kidding are her ligaments. They are about the size and thickness of a pencil and are on either side of the doe’s tail, as they get closer to their due date the ligaments soften until they eventually disappear, at which point labor is imminent. Sonia’s ligaments are quite soft! She is most definitely going to keep us on our toes! Ruth is a little over two weeks away and will be getting her BoSe shot this Friday. Her ligaments are also softening. Hillary has a little bit longer to go with a little over 4 weeks left. She is already huge though! I have a feeling she will go at least a little before her due date. Then of course there is Tina… who isn’t due until June. Between the 3 girls who are due in March we will likely get 5-6 kids. My current guess is we will get 3 does and 2-3 bucks. I hope I am right!! We will soon find out!

    On Tuesday morning we put in the monitor in the barn. This monitor allows us to hear everything that is going on in there and helps us catch when the girls go into labor. It keeps us from having to constantly go out and check on them. It’s great during the day, and is helpful at night however it keeps me up most of the night since I am a really light sleeper.

    Yesterday our packaging for the laundry detergent came in! Isn’t it cute! This jar is the largest size. There will also be a refill size and a sample size. It won’t be long until we are able to debut it!

    Laundry Packaging - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

  • Gardening: Stage 1 – Planning

    Our garden is going to be quite an undertaking this year. In the past we have filled 12 raised beds with plants, but it has never been enough to last us much past fall. We would have things like green beans that we could get a year supply of, but when it came to everything else we would burn through it quite quickly. Few things made it to the freezer like planned. I would get enough tomatoes for all of my tomato sandwiches and salads throughout the summer and sauces for spaghetti and pizza for about two months. Everything else pretty much feeds us through spring and summer. That isn’t enough for me! I want to have enough canned and frozen to get us through the year. The biggest change this year, that will hopefully make this goal a reality, is the fact that we have a new quarter of an acre that will be additional garden space. Last year we added three acres of land to our farm from the property next to us. Most of that currently is or will be in the future, used for the goats, but I left a quarter acre opened for our new garden.

    Taking on a new garden of this size requires a lot of planning. The ground is hard red clay that is very common to this area of Goochland. I have been worried about growing anything in it. For the last six months or more I have been dumping the soiled straw and llama manure from the daily muckings, covering the entire quarter of an acre. We plan to plow (just this once) because the ground is so not at all workable.

    This is the time of year for garden planning. Ordering seeds, deciding on the number of plants that will be planted, mapping out where they will go, and figuring out planting times. I spent time with my lovely friend Toni from Bella Grove Farms in Goochland VA back in early February. She spent the better part of the day giving me advice and packing me up seeds that she had saved from previous years. Between those seeds, seeds I had leftover from the last two years, and the ones I purchased from Johnny’s Selected Seeds I’m ready! In the coming weeks things should start to come together. Now I am working on actually mapping out the garden space and planning of number of plants. I am beyond ready for Spring! It’s almost here!

    Seed Planning

     

     

     

  • Getting to Know… Elsie

    If you follow us at all you know that our female goats are named after powerful women, so you may be looking at the name Elsie and trying to remember a strong woman in history who has this name… Well, you won’t find one… or you might but it wouldn’t be who this goat is named after. Elsie is technically my mother’s goat and she got her name from a powerful woman in our family… My great grandmother. A woman who played a very large role in raising my mother. Who was there for my mom through extremely hard times… The true matriarch of my family. While I never had the pleasure of meeting this wonderful woman, it seemed only fitting that we have a goat named in her honor.

    Elsie has a very dramatic birth story. She was the kid involved in our traumatic kidding in 2014. Her dam is Tina and her sire is Davin of Chribrydon Farm in Lousia, VA. When we went out to check on the goats at 5am Tina was already in labor even though she had given us no warning that she was in labor at the last check. When we got to the barn Tina had already given birth to Eleanor, in a labor that seeming went smoothly, but when we checked Tina she was in the process for birthing another kid (Elsie), but the kid was in a terrible position. The optimal position for the kid to birth in is called the dive position, where both front hooves come out first followed by the nose of the goat. Elsie was coming out head first with her shoulders square (not angled as the dive position allows) and one hoof hooked under her neck. When we discovered her, her eyes were bulged and her tongue was turning blue. I thought we had already lost her and my concern turned to saving Tina. I had to “go in” to try to reposition her. When that didn’t work (she was stuck tight) I pulled her out. I passed Elsie off to Kevin and then took care of Tina. We cleaned her off, got colostrum in her and she seemed to be fine. Over the next few days she was slightly loopy, but has since totally recovered and you would never know now that she had such a traumatic birth.

    Elsie is our problem child. She came into the world in a dramatic away, and she is the most hard headed of the herd. She doesn’t follow instruction and hates to be lead… not that she would go where you needed her to go without you leading her! She is a sweet girl, but just wants to do things her way.

    Elsie from The Freckled Farm Elsie from The Freckled Farm

  • February Snow Storm

    It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the cold and snow, but even I can see the beauty around the farm after a snow storm. Everything looks so fresh and clean. A stark difference from the muddy mess we have been dealing with the last few months. This past Wednesday, the day after we received 8 inches of snow overnight, I trekked around the farm documenting some of the beautiful scenes the storms left behind.

    With the storm came frigid temperatures. Friday morning it was -6 degrees! It has been a struggle to keep the house warm and get things done around the farm. At this point I am beyond ready for spring to come!

    Snow Day on the Farm - The Freckled Farm

  • Fun Farm Facts Friday – February 20th

    Today’s Fun Farm Fact is my favorite so far! Have you ever gotten a good look at a goat’s eye?

    Warner from The Freckled FarmTheir pupil is rectangular! This is the case with many pray animals. I have had so many people comment about how “freaky” it looks, but there is actually a reason for this. Round pupils, like the ones that humans have, allow for a panorama view of 160-210 degrees. Rectangular pupils however allow for a panorama view of 320-340 degrees! Meaning that goats can see almost all the way behind themselves without having to turn their heads. This helps protect them from predators. It is also believed that the rectangular pupils allow them to have better, more heightened night vision.

     

  • What’s Up Wednesday – February 18th

    On Monday evening we got around 8 inches of snow. It was the biggest snow storm that we have gotten this winter. The farm looks beautiful. While I do enjoy one big snow, now that it has happened I am ready to move on and have spring move in. We are looking at extremely low temperatures the rest of the week, including a low of -8 Thursday night. I’ve said it a million times… I’m not built for cold.

    Monday we received word that we have been accepted to the Thursday evening Powhatan Farmers Market. I am loving watching our spring and summer schedule come together. We are in for an amazing year! In the next few weeks our schedule should be finalized and I will post everything on a blog. I’m waiting an “official” confirmation from two markets.

    The countdown to kidding season continues:

    • Sonia – 2 weeks and 2 days until due date
    • Ruth – 3 weeks and 2 days until due date
    • Hillary – 5 weeks and 3 days until due date
    • Tina – Due in June

     

     

  • Getting to Know… William

    Our little boy William was the first baby of 2014 and if you look at his baby picture you will see that he was born with a large one on his left side! We noticed this while cleaning him up after he was born and we knew at that moment that he was destined to stay on the farm. William has since been “wethered”… meaning he was castrated, and he keeps our herd sire (another addition to our farm in 2014) company so he doesn’t have to be alone. Goats are social animals and do not do well by themselves.

    William’s dam is Hillary and his sire is Milo of Chribrydon Farm in Louisa, VA. His full sister is Chelsea.

    William is extremely sweet. He immediately bonded with our son, Breckin. They spent the first couple months of William’s life endlessly playing in the baby goat pin, racing from one end to the other. William loved having someone to roll around with. As William got older and larger, they were able to play together less and less (something we warned Breckin would happen once William was bigger than him), but Breckin still loves to go and talk to him through the fence, or play with him while supervised.

    William from The Freckled FarmWilliam from The Freckled Farm

  • Fun Farm Facts Friday – February 13th

    Most people, including myself, when talking about a group of goats call them a herd, but the correct term is actually a tribe or trip. Even knowing this I’m not sure I could break the habit of calling them a herd!

  • What’s Up Wednesday – February 11th

    In the last week we have continued to work on our goat milk soap laundry detergent. We have worked hard perfecting the amount of essential oil for each scent. I think we finally reached an amount that we are happy with. We are hoping to be able to start offering the detergent sometime in March.

    In the past week we received our acceptance to the West End Farmers Market on Saturdays and the Mid-Week Farmers Market at Aw Shucks. Kevin will likely be the one manning the booth at both of these locations. Our spring and summer is starting to come together!

    This weekend we worked on getting the soap room together. We have been building it for almost a year at this point and haven’t had a chance with our busy schedule to put any real time into it in the last 6 months or so. The soap company has lived in several rooms in our house. A large portion of our home has been cut off to our family for far too long! This weekend we got the room painted and within the next few days the floor is going in and cabinets are going up. It won’t be long until we will be moving in and we can have our house back!

    The count down continues to the start of kidding season! Sonia now has a little over 3 weeks, Ruth has a little over 4, and Hillary has about 6 weeks. Tina is not due until June, so we are not considering her in this countdown. Hillary is already huge and is getting quite uncomfortable. I can’t wait to see how many she has!