Meet the Critters

Wow.  What a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day today.  Willow and I played outside a lot of the day.  While she was napping, I took the opportunity to plant 110 feet of red and Yukon gold potatoes and some more peas (since the chickens seem to have found a secret entrance to the upper garden and dug up 100 feet of the ones I had planted last week).  I love the warm feeling of a slight sunburn on my skin.  It still feels like the sun is shining on me.  

Spinach and arugula quiche is in the oven, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to introduce you to the animals of Feral Farm. 

Chickens

This old guy is a three year old Welsummer rooster.  They're a breed known for laying dark brown speckled eggs.  I also have two Welsummer hens. His tail feathers are a little beat up from him trying to keep the younger roosters in their places.  I'm sure this is where the term "pecking order" comes from.

 I have about 28 hens and 4 roosters, two of which are destined for a stockpot as soon as I have the time.  I'm expecting a shipment of 40 chicks any day now.  I order them online and they travel via USPS.  The local post office will call me early in the morning when they arrive.  It usually takes 2-3 days for the chicks to reach me.  They can survive this long without food and water because right before they hatch, the remaining yolk is absorbed into their bellies.  I choose the chicken breeds I have based on laying ability, cold hardiness, temperament, and of course, LOOKS!  I like to have a nice assortment of breeds and colors to look at, and I can tell individuals apart more easily.  Some of the chickens I have are called Easter Eggers, and lay a blue-green shelled egg.  Here are a few of the girls.

When an Easter Egger and brown egg laying chicken cross the resulting offspring will lay an olive green- grayish egg.  Here's a typical dozen.  The bottom left egg is from a Welsummer hen.

My chickens free range our property.  We let them out in the morning and they put themselves to bed before sundown. I find it interesting that animals have a concept of time, but they certainly do.  The goats stand and look impatiently towards the house if we are late getting them some grain. Speaking of goats.......

Goats

We currently have three does (female goats), one buck (male goat), and two goat kids.   The goats we have are Swiss dairy breeds.  They're lean and very athletic compared to a lot of other breeds.  People that use pack goats for hiking in the mountains usually use Swiss breeds because of this.  Yes, people really use pack goats!  My four adult goats are yearlings, and still growing themselves. 

They still have quite a bit of their winter coats in this picture, so they're looking a little scruffy still.  The brown and white kid up front is our doeling, who doesn't have a name yet.  Any suggestions??  The black and white doe behind her is her mother, Estella.  Estella is by far our most mischievous doe and is always getting into trouble, but she is a friendly goat. The cream and black doe in front is our sweetest, most gentle goat, Mildred.  She has an extra teat growing off of one of her normal teats, so if I ever milk her, it'll have to be on just her other side.  She does not appear to be a heavy milker anyways, so we may just keep her more as a pet.  I do not normally keep unproductive animals, but lucky for her she has such a great personality.  The kid with horns is Mildred's buckling.  We did not bother de-horning or naming him since he is destined for our freezer this fall. Estella and Mildred are half sisters and are both purebred Alpines.

Our third doe is not pictured.  She's a Saanen Alpine cross and is pure white.  She is not tame, so doesn't have a name and won't until I get to know her a little better.  We bought her last fall from an auction, and I don't think she had ever been handled.  I can touch her now (finally) when she is eating her grain, but she doesn't enjoy it.  She had a pure white buckling this spring, but we had a horse in with the goats that killed the kid.  Goats must feel loss also, because she adopted the buckling pictured above.  He is not only nursing his own mother, but "white goat" too, and is growing at a phenomenal rate! I separated them today and will attempt to start milking her tomorrow.  I did milk her once, and mostly succeeded in taking a Cleopatra milk bath!  Haha!  I am not new to having goats, but am new to actually milking them.  It should be interesting trying to milk a wild goat while I'm 35 weeks pregnant!

This is our buck, Buckley.  Real original name, huh? He is rude, mischievous, and unfortunately a necessity to make baby goats.  He's a purebred Toggenburg.  They're always brown with cream markings.  He can clear a four foot fence effortlessly.  Since we discovered this, we modified our 60' horse round-pen and turned it into an inescapable 6 foot tall goat prison, complete with barbed wire at the top.  He has not been able to escape this enclosure......yet. 

Rabbits

We also have two (now feral) rabbits.  My family and I love looking out our window and seeing the bunnies hopping around, doing cute bunny things.  :D  They were supposed to be the beginning of our meat rabbit breeding stock, but then they dug out of their enclosure perhaps sensing their fate.  We're pretty sure they're both males, so my meat rabbit venture has been postponed until another year.  Honestly, I don't have time for them this summer anyways.  I really think the world would be a better place if everybody had bunnies hopping around their homes.  It's impossible to not feel happy after a bunny sighting! 

Cats

We currently have four adult cats, and two strays living here outside.  There are three batches of kittens that we know about.  They're supposed to be "barn cats", but are really more like "deck cats".  We always keep more cats than we think we need, because we've had such bad luck with cats dying from different causes or disappearing.  They do a good job at keeping our mouse population down.

The Dog

We acquired a new puppy a couple of months ago, and appropriately named him Chaos.  He is a bizarre mix of Yorkshire terrier, Poodle, Red Heeler, and Border Collie.  He's about four months old now and about the size of a fully grown wiener dog.  He's also kind of shaped like one, with short legs and a long body.  Willow and Chaos are a pretty good team.  

Hope you enjoyed meeting the animals of Feral Farm.  Stay tuned for my attempt at milking a wild goat tomorrow!

How I Got Here

Some of you are probably assuming that I grew up on a farm doing all of this stuff, so it all comes naturally.  I didn't.  I grew up in Yakima, Washington.  An area most known for it's production of apples.  If you read the sticker on any apple, it will likely read that it was grown in Yakima, WA.  I did grow up in the country, but not on a farm.  We had the typical pets.  A Labrador, a couple of cats, and some fish.  I've always loved animals, and when I was about 12, I got my first horse, Cocoa.  My mom and I loved horses and always had a couple, but that was as far as my parents would let me venture into the world of farm animals.  I remember them saying that "When you have your own house, you can have as many animals as you want."  Probably a mistake telling me that!  :)

My mom had a small garden when she could, and ALWAYS had flowers.  I grew up helping in the garden a little bit, but we weren't ever serious food producers, it was more of a very small hobby.  Mom always canned a little bit of jam and usually some peaches too.  This knowledge didn't stick with me though.  I've had to relearn it from books and hands on experience. 

My parents divorced when I was 12.  My dad moved to Montana, and my brother and I followed.  I lived there for a year, in apartments, and actually loved it there.  The people were nicer, the scenery was beautiful, and many people lived a rural lifestyle that I so envied.  Visiting my mom that summer vacation was enough to entice me to move back.  I missed actually living in the country and having horses.  I kept various horses until I graduated, then sold my last horse to pay off my truck loan and become an "adult". Instead of going to college right after school, like I should've done, I moved out and worked crappy, minimum wage jobs for two years.  I realized that I deserved more out of life, and enrolled at Montana State University, in Bozeman, and returned to live with my dad and brother in 2007.  It was nice living with them once more, since I missed out on that as a teenager.

I met my husband, Curt, when I started working graveyard shift at Wal-Mart in Bozeman.  He was originally from a small town in north central North Dakota, called Rolette.  He brought me back for Thanksgiving to meet his family.  I loved it here, and couldn't get it out of my head that someday we'd move back and raise our kids on his family's vacant farmstead, and that's what we did.  So, my college experience only lasted one year, but by the end of it, I had a general idea of what I wanted to do.  Farm sustainably, on a small scale, in a way that worked with nature.  All of that, I decided, could be learned through reading on my own.  I didn't know it at that time, but a whole lot of trial and error hands on experience was also going to be involved.

Curt and I married on the farm near the lake, in the pasture after it was hayed, August 15, 2009.  We wasted no time, and Willow Ann Lunde was born on May 23, 2010.  Willow is now two and LOVES living on the farm.  She helps me gather eggs, feeds the goats and chickens their grain, and "helps" me in the garden.  We are expecting Lunde girl #2 near July 3.

I started my business, Feral Farm www.feralfarm.co  making (from scratch) natural lotion, lip balm, soap and more, Fall of 2010.  I desperately wanted a way to make a living on the farm, so I could stay home with Willow and raise more of our own food.  I was originally just going to make goats milk soap, since I already had the goats.  I ended up basing my business off of my body butters, and lip balms.  I have slowly been adding new products, like my lotion bars, soap, and VERY soon a line of natural baby products and natural insect repellent.  I love what I do.  It's the perfect mix of science and creativity to feed my soul.  I learned how to do all of this on the internet, but the recipes are all my own formulations.  I hope to use as many things grown here, on the farm, as I can in my soap, like goats milk, herbs, and even vegetables.  I currently use some of the lard that I rendered from the pigs I raised last year in my soap.  The pigs were raised humanely on pasture.  I also use the lard for cooking.

I need to add that Curt is NOT a country boy, and this is his first time living out of town.  Luckily, he puts up with me, my crazy ideas, and my rural ways, and is a pretty good sport about doing things on the farm like putting up fencing, and feeding the animals when I need him to.  We are learning to do this together. So, just because you've never done something before doesn't mean you can't start, or it's too late.  It's a lot of work living on the farm and growing our own food, and it sure as hell isn't all roses, but I believe with enough determination and a fair amount of luck, anybody's dreams can come true.

First Blog! Farm History - Present

My first blog post! Here it goes........

This blog will be about my life here on our family farm raising my children, animals, and food in rural Rolette, North Dakota.  I am a nurturer, and also love to create things.  I'm a twenty-five year old business owner of Feral Farm, my brand of hand-made soap, lotion, lip balm and other goodies. Today is the day I officially resigned at my job and start working solely for myself.  This is a bold move.  One that both frightens and excites me. I feel lucky to be where I'm at, at such a young age and hope to accomplish a lot in my lifetime.  In this blog I will be posting a lot about farm life, gardening, my love of good food, animals, values, child rearing, wildlife, sustainability, my business venture, creative ideas, and other ramblings. I'll also include a lot of pictures (one of my hobbies)! 

A bit about this farm's history

My children are the 5th generation of Lunde's to inhabit this farm.  The entire farm is around 186ish acres.  My husband and I own seven where the farmstead has always been, and his parents own the remainder of the farm.  A large portion of the land has turned into a lake.  Curt's dad recalls when he was a child growing up here, the lake was just a stock pond.  The first year we moved here there was a lake shore full of all kinds of neat treasures, like antique bottles. There's even the front end of a rusty old pick-up truck that the lake has since swallowed.  See pics below. The lake has swallowed it's shore completely and is eating away at new land now.  

When my husband's dad grew up here, his father raised sheep.  His mother never worked off of the farm and spent A LOT of her time gardening.  Some of her flowers are still alive and remind me of her every time I see them.  I never got the chance to meet her and only briefly met him before he passed away at the age of 90. I often wonder if they are looking down on us now and shaking their heads at what this farm is becoming, or smiling.  :)  

A bit about this farm now

My husband, Curt, and I have lived here for three years.  The original farmhouse was too far gone to live in, so we tore it down.  That was a sad day. We bought a stick built house from Deneschuck (sp?) homes in Minot and moved it here. 

We grow a lot of our own food and I'm constantly striving to grow more.  Currently, we have around 7,000 square feet of garden.  In the next couple of months we'll have a total of around 9,000 square feet of garden, 2,160 of which will be covered by a high tunnel greenhouse.  A high tunnel is a large hoop house structure that is covered in thick clear plastic.  The plants are grown in the ground.  With a high tunnel, we'll be able to extend our growing season by about two-four months per year.  This is a HUGE deal, since our growing season for vegetables is typically 90-120 days long. We're a zone 3 here, the harshest growing zone in the US, so we are very limited in what will grow well here.  The high tunnel will allow us to cheat a bit!  My in-laws are building one as well on their part of the farm and have even more garden space than we do.  Wow! We preserve a lot and eat a lot of our produce fresh, but also sell at the Rolette Farmers' Market in town during the summer. The Rolette Fermers' Market Facebook page is www.facebook.com/rolettefarmersmarket

We have three milk goats, their kids, and one nasty billy goat.  I am going to start milking them now that I am a work-from-home mom and will, hopefully, have time to do this.  I am hoping to make some delicious cheese and other dairy products.  We tried the whole milk cow thing, but I prefer an animal that I can MAKE do something and that cannot hurt me or my kids. Goats are much smaller and more manageable.  Our two year old daughter, Willow, loves the goats. So, for now, dairy goats it is!  We butcher our extra bucklings in the fall ourselves.  Last year was our first year doing this, and we were a little uneasy about the taste and killing large animals that we've raised.  My husband does the killing part while they're busy happily munching grain, so the don;t know what's coming.  It really is the best way for them to go, and not stressful at all.  I do the eviscerating and most of the processing. Once we tried the meat, our worries were set aside.  Turns out that goat meat is delicious!  We also butchered a lamb and can detect no difference in flavor.  It's a MAJOR improvement over venison! I also raised four pigs last year.  Not sure if that's something we'll do again, as pigs are a huge pain in the ass! I enjoy them much more in my freezer!  :)

We also raise our own hens for eggs and meat chickens (broilers) each year.  We have not bought chicken or eggs from a store in almost three years.  It's so much better for you and better tasting.  The yolks are bright yellow and are actually lower in bad cholesterol and higher in healthy omega-3 fats since our chickens free range the farm. The meat is a bit firmer though, not mushy like store bought.  Keeping them out of my gardens and flower beds is a challenge at times.  That's the only downside of free-ranging for me. 

More on all of these, and more topics later. I don't want to bore you to death and think that;s enough for now!  :)