Easter Goats for Sale

These really aren't any different than regular goats, it is just that it is close to easter. We have been seeing people trying to sell "Easter bunnies" so we thought it might work to sell our goats as "Easter goats". We have decided to change around our goat herd a little this year so we are selling three of our grown nannies at this time. I will have some of this years kids and our billy for sale coming up in a couple months as well. I am putting pictures and description with prices of the goats up on our website. On the for sale page, click on animals for sale . If you know anyone that might be interested send them our way.

New Birds

On Sunday we acquired some new chickens and ducks. We had been looking for additional ducks for a while. We were down to one lone duck because something had caught our other two. We didn't really want to have to get babies and raise them but we were about to that point because we could not find adult ones for sale anywhere. Finally last week someone on craigslist advertised grown ducks for sale. When Margo called her she said she also had chickens for sale. So we bought all the ducks and chickens they had because the price was so good. We got 5 ducks (3 males and 2 females) and 9 chickens (1 rooster, 8 hens). Now we have a total of 15 chickens and 6 ducks. We are going to get rid of three of the chickens soon, I have traded them in exchange for borrowing a wood splitter for a few weeks from a friend at work. I am not sure if we will keep the rooster or not, it just depends on how annoying he is. We are getting a lot more eggs now. And I really like having ducks around, I like the sounds that they make.

Here are the ducks


Here are some of the new chickens

Learn to Farm Day

Tomorrow (Saturday), we will be having another day for people to come out and learn on the farm. We are actually not doing anything that involves a lot of learning but it is more of a fun thing. At least to me it is a fun thing and I thought some other people might enjoy it as well. I have borrowed a hydraulic wood splitter from a friend and we are going to be splitting a lot of wood, weather permitting. So, if anyone has any interest in helping split a bunch wood with a wood splitter come on out Saturday morning. If it rains we will not be splitting but will be doing inside out of the rain type things.

First

We had the first fresh veggies of the year from the garden yesterday. And even more exciting is this is the first time we have had this vegetable from our garden. Any guesses? That's right....ASPARAGUS. I planted it last year in a special bed I built for it in the garden. It takes it at least a year to get established and produce pieces big enough to eat. We got three pieces and they were yummy. Hopefully we will much more in the weeks to come. We are looking forward to the months ahead of gardening and more fresh veggies.

Happy St. Patty's Day

I hope everyone has a good St. Patrick's Day. I wanted to post a St. Patrick's related video that a friend, Travis, had on his blog last year. This video is so funny to me and is one of my favorite videos of all time.

Springtime

We are very excited that spring is well on its way. Even though it snowed some today, it has been getting a lot warmer and some of the trees and flowers are starting to bud out and bloom. Another sign of spring that I really enjoy is the frogs are back at the pond calling. One big project we have been working on is planting grass seed the past week or so. I have cleared out some areas this past year in order to get more grass growing for the animals. I have been moving around the hay feeder all winter and throwing out grass seed around it whenever I move it to a new area which has worked well for me establishing grass. Some of the grass from doing that is already starting to come up. This past week or so Margo and I have been going around spreading grass seed on bare areas and then raking it in. Some of it that we raked in a week or so ago is already starting to come up. Hopefully a lot of it will do well so we will have more grass for the animals and maybe even be able to have more animals. Another exciting thing about this time of the year is it is garden time. I have been planning out the garden and deciding what I am going to plant and what is going to go where. I have already planted a few of the cool season veggies. I put in my onions and planted some lettuce seed last week. The lettuce I do is a mesclun mix. Last year I had problems with lots of grass and weeds getting in the bed with the lettuce. I decided to do it in containers this year in hopes of preventing that from happening so I thought I would try making some planters. I cut down a oak tree a while back that was hollow and I did not cut it up in case I wanted to use it for something. I cut a section out of it and split it in half with my froe. Then I cut some thin sections off a solid piece of wood and attached them as ends. It may not be pretty but I hope it works well for my lettuce. Here is a pic.

The Farm of Hale is Worldwide

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted anything. We have had lots of stuff going on here at the farm but nothing too exciting. I will try to do better at posting more often. I wanted to tell you all something I think is amazing and really cool. On my last post about learning to farm I got a comment from a lady that said she was excited about the learn to farm opportunity but sad because she would not be able to attend because she lives in the UK. That's right another country, across the Atlantic. And it is not like this is one of our friends that lives over there, like Walt and Annie who live in Germany and read our blog (at least I think they do). This is someone I don't know and have never met before. Her name is Danielle Gohin and she is a science technician (teacher type person maybe?) at a school. She has a blog, click here to see it. Our blog is on her list of blogs she follows. I think this is really awesome that somebody that does not know us in a different part of the world follows our blog. It makes me wonder if there are other people out there who don't know us that follow our blog and I wonder how they came across it. If there is anyone else out there who reads our blog, who we don't know, I would love for you to leave a comment so I can find out if there are others out there.