Here’s a quick video of the new chicken plucker that a friend of our built for & with us. We supplied some of the parts, he supplied other parts and know how! Thanks Dan!

ChickenPluckerbroadhigh

We raised Freedom Ranges from JM Hatchery. Over the past 2 weeks we have butchered around 60 birds. They were either 11 or 12 weeks old. The smallest was around 3.8 pounds and the largest was 6.42 pounds. We cooked up our first ones last Sunday and we all agreed it was some of the most tender and delicious chicken we have ever had.

Comparing Cornish X chicken with the Freedom Rangers. The Cornish are ready right around 7-8 weeks, and that is about the only plus to them. The Freedom Rangers have much less health problems, actually scratch around like chickens, roost and are just more active. They taste better and we will never do the Cornish X again.

Today we started plucking around 7:30 and we were finished with all 26 chickens by 10:30. We would have never been able to get through the chickens that fast but some friends from church wanted to come over and learn how to process chickens. They brought their kids and they all did a great job. The girls jumped right in and did everything. Thanks to the Miotkes for the help!

Today for my full-time job I got an iPad and I’ve been playing with it all afternoon. I have to say that I was skeptical when the first iPads came out, but they are pretty useful. I started thinking about how this could be a farm tool (and then maybe we could have one for farm use). Here are some ideas I’ve been thinking about.

1- we use alpaca ease to keep track of our alpaca expenses, and I found out today that there is an iPad companion for alpaca ease so no matter where I am at I would be able to get and update alpaca information.

2- financial information, I can keep track of farm sales, grower’s market sales, etc. right on the iPad.

3- update the blog. WordPress has an app that I am working on right now. This will allow me to maybe add more posts and not have so many long spells without a post.

4- I’m sure there are others, let me know other ways you can think of using an iPad for farm work.

Bil

e ordered some chicks a few weeks ago but we got more than we really need so we need to sell some. So, if you are looking for some completely adorable chicks (all of them should be female and start laying in 5 months or so) let us know! We are not 100% sure of their breeds but I’m guessing we have some Rhode Island Reds, Buff Opringtons, maybe a Barred Rock and a couple of others that we just cant tell yet.

We’re asking $4 each or if you would like 10 or more we’ll sell them for $3.50. They are just over a week old at this point so they’ll need heat lamps for at least 3 more weeks. If you would like them but don’t have heat lamps, we’ll raise them for you but we would need to raise the price to $8 each for you to pick them up in 3 weeks. Here are some pictures:

esterday I saw an ad on Craigslist for some Rhode Island Red chickens that are about 18 months old and then 14 chicks that are just about a month old.  It would come with a coop, a chicken tractor, feeders and waterers, and other stuff.  All she was asking in return was a dozen eggs weekly.  Well, we thought this was just what we were looking for.  We were wanting to add more chickens but didn’t have the money to purchase some more chickens.  With this, we are able to get some more chickens & the woman is able to get the eggs she wanted.  She lives fairly close to the University where I work and it’ll be easy to drop the eggs off to her weekly.

Julia, Lilian and I went up today to take a look at the chickens and they are beautiful!  The reds are big and healthy and fairly docile.  The chicks are just as cute as cute can be.  Here are some pictures of the chicks I took once I got home.

3 of them are Buff Orpingtons:

2 white ones I’m guessing maybe legorns or white rocks.

and then 8 more BEAUTIFULLY COLORED chicks.  I’m not sure what they are but I love them!

Yes I know there are not 8 pictures there, one of them jumped out of my hand before I could take a picture of her and then I couldn’t tell which one it was.

I didn’t get any pictures of the 2 Rhode Island Reds today.  They seemed a little bit more stressed so I just gave them some water and food and then let them get comfortable in their new home.  I’ll get some pictures over the next few days.

After I took care of the chickens today I went out to water our garden, and it’s doing great.  The corn is starting to grow, the tomatoes are looking good.  The beans are going to be huge and the carrots/radishes/something else is starting to grow.

Here’s a closeup of the corn.  Isn’t it cute!

And here’s all 4 boxes.

$2000 on the 20th! That is the name of this package. Here’s how it works.

The alpacas listed (Milkyway, Liberty Blaze, Jett, Zebedee, Oberon, Marin, Nola, Robinson Crusoe, Helena, & Opal) are $2000 on the 20th of June and then add $100 each day until June 30th. So the prices are as follows:

June 20 – $2000
June 21 – $2100
June 22 – $2200
June 23 – $2300
June 24 – $2400
June 25 – $2500
June 26 – $2600
June 27 – $2700
June 28 – $2800
June 29 – $2900
June 30 – $3000

To take advantage of this, you need to call us and put a $50 non-refundable deposit down on the day you would like to purchase the alpaca. We can then work out a contract and a purchase at a later date but the deposit must be received on the date you would like to purchase your alpaca.

If you purchase just one female alpaca, we will give you JoJo for free as a companion alpaca. If you purchase a male, you must already have alpacas or purchase two males.

Give us a call (541-942-3160) today and get going on this great deal. (If you call today, June 19th, we’ll sell them for $1900.)

ust over 2 weeks ago we had over 75 meat chickens delivered and on the same day we received 25 layer chickens. These chickens are bred for 2 different needs. The meat birds are bred to grow quickly and have larger breasts. The layers are bred to not grow as big so they don’t need as much feed and they produce more eggs.

Well, they are housed near each other but not together. Today I went out to take care of them and I could tell there was a size difference. So I grabbed an average size one from each brooder and took them out to take a picture of them. Here they are:

These 2 chickens are exactly the same age, 17 days old. The one on the left is the Freedom Ranger that is our meat bird and the one on the right is our Golden Buff Sexlink egg layer. Not only is there a size difference they are growing out feathers at the different rates.

But, they are both beautiful!

uctioning alpacas is something new that we have been thinking about getting in to.  We have thought about doing some of the larger shows that have alpaca auctions, but with travel and everything it just isn’t possible.

We use Openherd.com to list our alpacas and they even have a great resource where we can list our alpacas on our web page but use their system to organize the information.  So when you go to our Alpaca Sale Page, you are actually seeing our Openherd.com page just on our site.

Openherd.com now has online auctions.  From what I have seen since OpenHerd opened up, the auctions are going to be a great success.  We have thought about doing this, but once again there is a small charge to take part in the auctions and we just don’t have the funds right now to join.  They are having an “Auction Giveaway” right now.  I have entered and I hope we win, this would be a great way to get some of our alpacas out there right now.

So wish us luck!

arden boxes were our main task today, and we succeeded!  Last year we did a traditional garden with long rows lots of walking room, and lots of weeds.  We were at Barnes & Nobel one night and I was looking at the farming (unfortunately there are not many in the Eugene store) and gardening books.  I came across the book “Square Foot Gardening”.  As I was sitting there reading the book, it just all made sense to me.  Why do we need to space out our seeds 6″ apart in rows that are 20″+ apart?  Why can’t we do 6″ all around?  This is the thought behind square foot gardening, you don’t need rows, you don’t need walking space.  You don’t water a lot of empty walking space.  You don’t prepare the soil just to walk on it later. You don’t use old soil but prepare new better soil that never gets walked on, doesn’t need fertilizer or chemicals.  It’s a great book, you should check it out.

Well it’s been raining for the last 2 weeks so we haven’t been able to do anything in the garden.  Today was BEAUTIFUL, so time to get the garden going.  I had cut the 2×6′s to 4′ lengths a few months ago.  About a week ago I had painted some of them to make them look better out in the yard.

Today we put them together.  We then stapled some weed cloth to the bottom and put them in place.

In the background on the green tarp you can see us starting to mix the soil.  The soil is equal parts by volume of peat moss, compost and vermiculite.  In the picture above you can see the peat moss.  We then added the compost (mainly steer manure).

Here you can see Julia mixing the the manure.

We then pulled the tarp back and forth at the corners to mix in the compost.  After the compost we added the vermiculite.  Once it was all mixed together we then scooped it in to the boxes.

We had to do 2 batches of soil.  Each batch filled up 2 boxes so we had to put together one more box.  I hadn’t painted 4 boxes, so we have 3 painted boxes and 1 unpainted box.  We’re excited to get planting.  We have some starts going in the greenhouse and we’ll be planting tomatoes, carrots, squash, sunflowers, and many other veggies.  Here are all the boxes in their glory!

ur new Golden Buff layers arrived today along with 135 Freedom Ranger chicks. The golden buffs are a sexlink chicken meaning that when they are born the females are one color and the males are another.  This makes it very easy to sex the chicken.  So we are around 98% sure that all of them are females (that is good!).  They will grow up to be around 4 lbs (small for a chicken) but will give us a large brown egg about 6 days a week throughout the year.  They should start laying around October.  Here are some pictures:

All cozy in their box

Before & After

Also our Freedom Ranger broiler chickens arrived today.  We ordered 135 Rangers, 75 for us and 60 for a friend that lives here in Cottage Grove.  These are faster growing chickens than most, but they do not grow as fast as the CornishX (pronounced cornish cross) chickens we raised last year.  The CornishX chickens take about 7-8 weeks to get to 8 pounds.  They have a good number of health concerns and at times will die because they can’t hold themselves up or they just die.  Freedom Ranges will take about 11-12 weeks to get to butcher size.  They are much more active than the CornishX, and should be much healthier and forage in the grass better.

Here are some pictures of the Freedom Rangers:

Took 2 boxes to send all the chicks!

They are so cute!!

Julia said that when the post office was delivering the chicks she could hear the lady walking up the driveway since the chicks were so loud!  She called me, and it was soooo cool to hear all the chicks in the background.

About the post office, I have to give Cottage Grove Post Office a big gold star!!!  I have heard horror stories from across the nation of post offices letting the chicks sit on the docks in the cold, not calling, letting the sit all weekend.  All of which is not good for the chicks.  Everytime we have had chicks sent through the mail to us, the Cottage Grove Post Office has hand delivered them right to our door.  They call to make sure we are home and then bring them right out.  We don’t have to go down and pick them up.  What great service.

So eggs in October and wonderful pasture raised chicken in August.  If you are wanting to order some chicken go to our Pre-Order Chicken page.

he Cottage Grove Farmer’s Market starts today.  We have decided that we are going to join in with other local farmers and do the Wednesday Farmer’s Market.  It is held every Wednesday throughout the summer in Coiner Park near downtown Cottage Grove from 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm.  Once the weather is a little bit better they have live music each week (maybe the band that Bil is in will play this year!!).  It’s a great way to become part of the community, enjoy some great local music, have some fun, and hopefully sell some fiber, eggs, turkeys & chickens!

Come on down and say hi to Julia and Bil, get some eggs (quail & chicken), get some fiber, or just enjoy some good conversation and music!