The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Tag: My Courthouse Market

  • What’s up Wednesday – 4/9

    I’m sorry that I have been so bad with the farm updates lately. Things have been a little crazy around here. I am done edited in the pictures from Hillary’s labor, now comes the issue of finding time to write the blog post… But I promise it will be soon. The babies are doing wonderfully. They are about twice the size they were at birth. They are so much fun and the kids absolutely love spending time with them in the kid pasture. They all have such wonderful personalities and are going to make great additions to our herd.

    We are so behind in our gardening this year. Anything that needed to be started inside has been done, but anything that could have been planted outside already (peas, green onions, and such) have been put off. None of our new beds have even been filled with dirt yet… schedules and weather has delayed the delivery, but it is set to come tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully the yard will be dry enough for them to drive across it!

    The baby chicks are getting so big. One of the ones that we thought was a buff orpington, because it was identical to the other buff orpingtons the day they were delivered, turned out to be one of the easter eggers, and one of the ones that we thought was an easter egger we think might in fact be one of the marans. It does look like we may have gotten multiple maran roosters, but only time will tell on that one. It won’t be long and we will be moving the older chickens into the pasture so they can free range and the new chicks into the old coop. I can’t wait to see how the maran eggs turn out!

    Just when you think we have enough going on…. We have some exciting news! We will soon be adding salt scrubs, sugar scrubs, and bath teas to our line!! We are currently in the research and development phase, but I expect to debut them in the next month, just as soon as our testers give our recipes a thumbs up. So keep an eye out for those!

    The Wednesday market in Goochland Courthouse moved outside last week. It was so nice to be out in the sun and the children liked having the space to run, and playground to play on. We will be outside from now on so come and visit. We have some really great vendors! Today there should be a few veggies, eggs, sausage, brunswick stew, bread, goat cheese, mustard… and of course our soaps!

  • What’s up Wednesday – 2/19

    The countdown is on! Spring is a little over a month away, the girls only have 4 more weeks until their due dates, and we only have 3 more weeks until the baby chicks arrive in the mail. It wont be long before we have precious baby goats and chicks hopping around. I can’t wait!!

    We got around 10 inches of snow, sleet, and ice last week. There is still quite a bit of it on the ground, even after several days of mild temperatures. The bad weather has halted our construction projects, but I’m hoping to get the chicken coop started (and maybe finished… who knows) this weekend. The chicken coop is going in the pasture and I was hoping to have it done by this point in the girls’ pregnancies because I don’t want to cause them any sort of stress this close to their due dates… but there is only so much that you can do. We also apparently underestimated the amount of hay we needed when ordering last August and only have about a 2-3 week supply left. So, this weekend will also be spent searching out hay.

    Overall it’s been a pretty uneventful week. That’s what happens when you are trapped in your house for most of it!

    We will be at the My Courthouse Market today from 3-7pm! I am really looking forward to seeing everyone.

  • What’s up Wednesday – 2/12

    Another snow storm is headed our way. In fact, it is supposed to hit us early evening, go until afternoon Thursday, and bring between 8-12 inches of snow. I’m hoping for a lot less though. I’m over doing farm chores in the snow and I have a wedding to photograph on Saturday. The snow is just a nusance at this point. I’m so ready for spring!

    Last friday I scheduled to have UPS deliver our new chicken coop. I got a call from the freight service asking if a tractor trailer would be able to make it up our driveway. Anyone who has been to our farm knows that the answer is no way! I had no idea what to say, and was trying to imagine how big these boxes had to be that they needed to be delivered on a tractor trailer. After I practically worked myself into a panic, worrying that it wasn’t going to be delivered at all, the man asked if we had a pick up truck that could just meet the delivery man at the bottom of our driveway. We do, so I scheduled the delivery for Monday and had Kevin drive my SUV to work so I could use the truck. When the time came to meet the delivery man I put the kids in the truck, Breckin brought his measuring tape just in case we needed it, and waited at the bottom of the driveway. Breckin bounced up and down in the seat every time a truck drove by. I tried to explain to him that it was going to be a BIG truck and his jaw nearly hit the floor when he saw the huge UPS 18 wheeler pull up. I desperately wanted take a picture as our boxes were loaded off this huge truck into the back of our little F150, but I thought the delivery man would think I was crazy. I did  snap a few pictures once we got  back to the house though… I still don’t understand why it had to be delivered by such a huge truck. I can’t wait to start assembling it!

    Coop Delivery

    Coop Delivered

    The girls have 5 more weeks to go in their pregnancies. Now is the time that we start preparing them. They will have their CDT shots and dewormer in the next week and we will start to set up their birthing area soon. They should also really start to show before too long. Both have a little bit of a tummy and waddle, but 75% of the growth happens in the last 4 weeks of the pregnancy, so they should really start to “fill out” over the coming weeks. I promise to post pictures as they really start to get big.

    On a final note, the My Courthouse Market has been canceled for tonight due to the weather…. did I mention that I’m over winter yet?

     

  • What’s up Wednesday 1/5

    We had wonderful mild weather this past weekend. It’s amazing what a slightly warm, sunny day can do to your mood! Although the last couple of days haven’t been as nice as the weather we experienced over the weekend, it looks like the weather is going to hold up, meaning no snow, so we are able to attend the My Courthouse Market inside the Goochland Courthouse YMCA this evening. We will be there from 3-7. We will have our coffee goat milk soap with us!!

    We got quite a bit done in the last week. We ordered our newest chicken coop and it was shipped on Tuesday. It’s going to be nice to just assemble a coop this time rather than spending months building one from scratch. We are also putting together a huge lumber order for all of our other projects that will be happening over the next few months including a buck barn, buck pasture, building a few new mangers to accommodate the new animals, expanding our garden by adding 6 new beds, building a garden for Breckin, and fencing off a new pasture for the girls and llamas. We are also hoping to have the solar put up in the barn before too long as well. So much to do, so little time!

     

  • What’s up Wednesday – 1/29

    More snow… Can winter be over yet? We have really gotten good at managing the fire in our stove and have had a few days where I was able to keep the house at 70 degrees, even with it in the teens outside. I’m a person who loves heat, so the hotter the better!

    The animals are wishing for spring as well. The goats and llamas are spending most of their time in the barn, making the daily clean up fun, and the chickens only leave their coop for a few minutes during free range time.  On Monday we had a little warm spell and the animals ran and leapt through the pasture, acting crazy and having so much fun. I guess cabin fever is getting to all of us.

    Last night we ordered new chickens. They are scheduled to be shipped on March 10th! We are down to 5 laying hens and they are not enough to supply us with all of the eggs we need for our family of four. Our girls are getting up there in age and will start laying less and less, so we have decided to purchase a second coop (instead of building another one from scratch), put it in the pasture with the goats and llamas, and retire our current girls there so they can free range all day and live out the rest of their days happy and unrestricted… except my the pasture fence. We are hoping they will also keep the bug population down in the pasture. With this order we got two breeds of chickens; Easter Eggers and Black Copper Marans. We ordered 3 female and 1 male Easter Eggers, and 7 female and 1 male Black Copper Marans. The plan is to put the Easter Eggers in with the “retired” chickens. The Black Copper Marans will go together in the old coop that Kevin built. This will keep the roosters separate and allow us to have pure bred fertilized Easter Egger and Maran eggs if we want to expand our flock or sell the eggs.

    We also got 3 male Buff Orpingtons to meet the minimum shipment requirement for this time of year. We plan to use these guys as meat chickens since My Pet Chicken doesn’t offer actual meat chickens. We had to go through MPC because they offer the lowest shipping requirement (we do not have space for 25 chickens at the moment) and had the breeds we wanted. This will be our first experience with butchering and we are very nervous about the whole situation, but we have friends who have promised to help us. If all goes well we will do a full batch of actual meat chickens later in the spring. This is a subject I have struggled with quite a bit. It’s sad that I am so detached from our meat source that it is painful to think about butchering an animal to feed my family, but I have no qualms with purchasing meat from the store. I know I can offer our own meat chickens a much better life. I have been told that I have built it up in my head too much and that I will be fine after the first butchering. I know it will feel good feeding my children healthy meat that was humanely raise (spoiled, really).

    On another note, we are SO excited to announce that we have been accepted to the My Manakin Market Saturday market for this spring and summer. We have also been extended at the Wednesday My Courthouse Market in Goochland through the rest of the year. We have loved being apart of the market group!

  • What’s up Wednesday – 1/8

    It was a cold day on The Freckled Farm yesterday… as it was for most of the country. Monday and Tuesday night we closed the animals up in the barn and coop. Normally we leave the doors open to the pasture and run, but we wanted to prevent any wind from getting to the animals and to allow the deep bedding to do it’s job. The animals faired well through the cold weather, although there were points when I was working in the pasture that I could see the goats shivering. They ended up spending the entire day in the barn, only coming out when I was doing farm chores. We have one chicken though who decided that she wanted to molt late in the season and still hasn’t gotten all of her feathers back. I have worried about her quite a bit, but she seems to be doing fine.

    On Tuesday Kevin went out to feed the animals around 5:30am and the temperatures were in the negatives with the wind chill. He closed everyone back up after they were done eating and I went and let everyone out once the sun came up. I had to go out several times during the day to remove the ice from the water buckets. This is my least favorite winter chore. We thought about getting heated buckets, but the breeder of Tina and Hillary told us to avoid them because they lower the goat’s resistance to cold, and if the bucket should break or the electricity go out the cold water could end up hurting the goats. So I trek out the barn and coop every couple of hours to remove the layer of ice that has formed on the water and add warm water. Last year there were only a few days that we really had to fight ice in the water buckets. If we lived in an area that is as cold as what we are dealing with right now all the time I might have consider investing in something else to combat the problem!

    In other news, today is our first day at My Courthouse Market in Goochland, VA. This is an INDOOR farmers market located inside the YMCA in Goochland Courthouse. The market runs from 3pm-7pm. Come and visit us!

  • My Courthouse Market – Goochland, VA

    The Freckled Farm Soap Company has been added to the My Courthouse Market in Goochland, VA! This is an indoor farmer’s market through the winter and takes place on Wednesdays January – April. We will be there every Wednesday except March 19th, which is the week of the goats’ due dates. We will be offering our goat milk soap as well as other natural skin care products as they join our line! Hope to see you there!

    My Courthouse Market - The Freckled Farm Soap Company - All Natural Goat Milk Soap