Kinfolks Farms LLC

Springtime in the pasture, checking chickens with my baby. The happiest of times on the farm ♥️

We’re so thankful for Pop Pop for doing such a great job at the farm since little man arrived! We couldn’t do it without him! These two are besties and going to get into some mischief as little man grows, we know it! ♥️

Grateful ❤️

Today we started on our Egg Mobile 2.0. We bought this very used and very vintage RV for a very cheap price, barely got it back to the farm, and then let it sit there for 2 months until it got cooler because it was hotter than the surface of the sun this summer and we didn’t need any extra work other than caring for what we already had.

We planned a work day today to demo our trailer, and God blessed us with the coolest day we’ve had since April. I cried when I walked outside this morning because 1. I’m pregnant so tears happen more often now and 2. It was so wonderful to be free from the unending heat.

My wonderful husband, bff, and parents busted it out today and we completely demolished the trailer to the frame. We’ll use the frame to build the next egg mobile on since it’s in great shape with great tires. We’ll be able to fit all of our chickens in this one coop, eliminating the need to move 5 separate coops daily which we’re doing right now. We’re hoping to have this done by the time little man joins us in December so my dad has less work on the farm by himself while I’m birthing this baby.

I love a new project, and I love these people who always show up for us time and again, especially for the dirtiest, hardest projects.

Thankful today, and everyday that we get to do this life and do it together ❤️

A little honey is on the way 🍯

Baby Ivey is due to join the Kinfolk’s family December 2023 🐝

We can’t wait to share this new adventure as a family on the farm ❤️

We hope y’all all have a wonderful Christmas and a very blessed New Year!

We can’t tell y’all how grateful we are for your support of our family and farm this past year. Here’s to many more years, and more food regeneratively grown for our community.

Blessings,
Mali, Leon, Kamala, Tim, Shiner, Polka, and too many chickens to count

The goal of our farm is to connect you to your food.

Knowing where and how our food is produced has been one of the greatest privileges for our family.

We’re very thankful to be able to share this knowledge with y’all in this space and share the food we produce so that you can serve to your families too.

Make sure you get your preorders completed before our next batch of chickens is ready this week, just in time for Thanksgiving 💚

Message me to get in on some pasture raised chicken goodness!

We had such a great time at our very first farm tour yesterday!

We are so thankful for every person who came out to support us. It was so much fun showing how our farm works and getting to share more about regenerative agriculture!

We visited the brooder, broilers, layers, horses, and even the bees made a special appearance in our new viewing hive! Then we all shared a meal of Kinfolks Farms pasture raised chicken and even chicken cupcakes!

As always this wouldn’t have been possible without our Kinfolks showing up and making the day great. Thanks to mom and dad for cooking a great supper, auntie Kara for our super cute cupcakes, the best mother and sister-in-law Shane and Victoria for horse wrangling and setting up, Bebe for the tea, and Holly for pictures and more!

We can’t wait to do it again, but now we’re going to take a nap hehe 😉

It’s a busy time for us on the farm!

Our farm tour is this weekend (we’re so excited to have y’all out), our current batch of broilers goes to the butcher in a few weeks, 90 more chicks will be on the farm over the next couple of days, and we’re finally about to complete the egg mobile to move the layers into!

Whew!

But one thing we’re realizing in farming is that this is a season, and just like the weather shifts, tasks change and we’ll be entering into a season of rest as the days get shorter and the temps get cooler.

It’s so exciting to be coming up on the close of our first full year of farming. What an exciting ride it has been, and we can’t wait to see where it continues to take our family in years to come. One thing we know for sure is how thankful we are for your support and encouragement.

Don’t forget to let me know if you would like to be on the preorder list for our pasture raised chicken. This will be our last batch before Thanksgiving so make sure you have your Kinfolks Farms chicken in the freezer to serve to your family for the holidays 💚

Our t-shirts should be arriving soon! Make sure to let me know if you would like to grab one and support Kinfolks Farms!

$23/shirt, sizes S-3XL

Thank y’all for encouraging and supporting our small family farm 💚

EDIT: SOLD OUT 💚

Limited spots left for our first ever farm tour!

We will be having a tour of the farm including the bees, chickens, and horses, as well as serving our own pasture raised chicken for supper!

$10 per person which includes your meal!

The tour will begin at 4 pm and we will have time afterward to eat, visit, and answer questions afterward.

We hope y’all can join us! 💚

It’s technically “Fall,” but we’re still having 90°+ days here in Central Texas.

The chickens, horses, and us are all ready for some cooler weather to come through, but the layers are laying like crazy and we’re enjoying supplying our community with pasture raised egg goodness 🥰

We’re so thankful for everyone who has joined our egg subscription! Y’all are the reason we can do what we do, and we are constantly grateful for the support and encouragement we receive.

We are thinking about opening up a chicken subscription and preorder for our next batch of pasture raised chicken, to make it easier than ever for y’all to stock your freezers with the tastiest, freshest, and most local pasture raised chicken on the market.

Stay tuned for more info about this soon and make sure you’re following along to stay up to date this Fall! 🐣

Fluffy butts are back on the farm!

These chicks are our first in our new brooder and we’ve been figuring out the ins and outs of it since they arrived. It seems like it’s been working really well for our needs, and we’re happy and thankful since it was very experimental and we’ve been brooding in some strange places before this 🤪

These guys will move out to the pasture Monday and live on green grass and Texas sunshine for the rest of their days.

65 chicks are a lot of work, but it’s worth it.

We have been considering having a farm tour this Fall to have people out to see the farm and ask questions about regenerative agriculture, pasture raised poultry, bees, etc.

Would you be interested in a Kinfolks Farms Farm Tour? Let us know in the comments ⬇️

Here are some fun facts about bees we’ve been learning:

1. It takes about 4,000 bees to make 1 pound. There can be over 60,000 bees in 1 hive 🤯

2. Bees maintain a temperature of around 93°F in their central brood nest no matter if it’s 110 or -40 degrees outside.

3. The queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day over her 3-4 year lifespan.

Can you see our queen in this picture? (Hint, she’s quite a bit larger than her subjects 😉)

The Lord has created such amazing things, and bees are some of our absolute favorite! We’ve enjoyed learning so much about them and are excited to learn more as we enter our second year of beekeeping.

Have a blessed Sunday everyone! This is the day the Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it! 💛🐝

It’s Shiner’s 2nd birthday today!!!

We love this little horse so much. We never expected her to be ours, but sometimes those are the biggest blessings in life. She’s been through a lot in her first two years, but she has the best attitude and personality and loves with everything she’s got. We are so thankful she’s a part of our family and pray we get to love on her for many, many years to come.

Swipe to the end to see baby Shiner the day she was born 🥹

I would be roasted at my old ranch job for taking birthday pictures for a horse. Good thing I’m the boss of this here farm 😉😂

We love our Shiner Bob! ❤️

It’s our best farmhand’s birthday today! Happy birthday Daddy!

Without him our farm wouldn’t exist! He works so hard every single day and we couldn’t be more thankful!

We love you Dad, thanks for all that you do for your family and the farm! We hope you have the best birthday yet!

This season of life has been challenging, both on and off the farm, but one thing I know is that any hard day can be made a little better watching the sunset with my horses ❤️

We’re excited to be working on some new projects during this time off from raising meat birds. It’s been excessively hot for this early in our area of South Central Texas, with temps well over 100° for weeks at a time. This weather is not ideal for meat birds, so we decided to take the summer months to work on other projects that we don’t usually have time for while raising chickens.

We’re working on a new brooder area to hopefully make brooding the next batch of chicks easier and more efficient while still maintaining the maximum comfort and cleanliness for the chicks. We’re organizing our office, repairing chicken tractors, and also planning an area for a fall garden and compost pile.

Summer can be a long, hot time but it’s my favorite season on the farm and we’re living for these barefoot long days and summer nights!

We can’t thank y’all enough for selling us out of honey 🥹🍯

We didn’t expect to get any this year, as it was our first year and we figured we’d miss the honey flow. But we were blessed with a small amount and so excited to share it with y’all!

Our bees have been such a worthwhile investment for our farm, not only because of the honey we’ve been able to enjoy, but because they have taught us so much and have really shown us the depth and beauty in some of God’s smaller creations. We are in awe!

If you missed out on our honey, never fear, we’re hoping for a full honey flow next year so we can share in all the yumminess!
(And you may check with our bee mentor because he has great honey too! )

Until then we’ll be tending our hard little workers to make sure their hives are strong and they are happy 💛

Finally, our first egg

and it’s our Kinfolk’s green 💚

It’s our 3 year wedding anniversary today!

We’re celebrating by taking chickens to the butcher tomorrow 🤪 and then taking a short trip away from the farm this weekend!

Happy anniversary Leon! Thanks for being the most supportive, loving, and funny husband a gal could ask for. None of this would be possible without you.

I can’t wait for a thousand more years with you by my side ❤️

It is such a thrill to see our customers enjoying our food and cooking it to share with their family and friends!

What an honor it is to raise the food people feed their families with, and to know from beginning to end that is was was produced in the best way possible for both the animal and the consumer.

Our pasture raised chickens have been such an eye opening experience and such a huge blessing to connect us to the food we are eating and the people in our community who support us so much.

We were so thankful and couldn’t believe how fast y’all sold us out! We will have more chicken available the third week of June! If you would like to pre-order to make sure you get a few to stock your freezers just message us here and we will put your name down!

We are hoping to offer different cuts as well as whole birds this batch.

As always thank every single one of y’all for supporting our dream of producing food for our community.

📸:

Message us for chicken pre-orders! 💚

One year of beekeeping under our belts and my oh my what we have learned!

Lots of stings, sweat, some outfit upgrades (see naive excited Mali one year ago - swipe left haha!), stress, and excitement later and we love it even more than when we started!

We’re very excited for our first honey harvest and to learn and grow throughout this next year, and the one after that!

We couldn’t have done it without the best bee mentor Jesse's Bees and my Dad who literally jumped right in and never looked back ❤️

Do what you love and you’ll work harder than you’ve ever dreamed, but you’ll love every minute of it ❤️

“Supposed to” is a phrase that gets thrown around on the farm a lot:

“Supposed to be done by now”
“Supposed to rain soon”
“Supposed to be a girl (hello Mr. Rooster)”
“Supposed to be here with us longer”

But life never really works in the supposed to, especially on the farm. Things hardly ever work out the way you plan, and you have to learn to be ok with that, because if you aren’t you are going to be constantly unhappy and unfulfilled.

But it doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes you have to give yourself grace in that you are learning and changing every day, and that learning to be ok with the supposed to doesn’t happen as fast as you want it to. It takes time, effort, and growth.

We were supposed to have Strawberry for longer, but it’s God’s timing not ours. She was supposed to be in our lives for longer, but she lived the best part of her life with us being so loved and we find comfort in that.

We were supposed to have all hens (we paid for all hens, haha), and then suddenly we had two roosters crowing away 🤣🤦‍♀️ but that’s ok, maybe we’ll get some baby chicks one day!

I’m learning and growing, and this life is changing me to be more ok with everything not being in my control. God’s plan for us is always greater than we can ever imagine, and I’m working to open my eyes and see that.

I’m thankful for y’all being here and supporting us on this journey. I’m thankful for all of the love and support from y’all during the good times and the bad.

Farming isn’t easy, but nothing really is. But it is so worth it. 💚

It crushes my heart to tell y’all we had to lay our sweet Strawberry to rest yesterday.

It was completely unexpected, and completely heartbreaking.

What we initially thought was a simple foot abscess ended up stemming from an old and much more serious injury that we didn’t know existed and just decided to resurface. There was absolutely nothing we could do to heal her, and we hated knowing she was in pain. Our wonderful vet informed us the kindest thing we could do was end her suffering, so she painlessly went to the Lord as we loved on her.

Our whole family is devastated. She will be sorely missed. We didn’t have her for long, but she was our family.

It is one of the hardest things in this life to lose an animal you love, but the sorrow and pain is always outweighed by the millions of moments of happiness and joy that she brought in our lives.

Graze happily in heaven our sweet Strawberry, we love you. 🍓

Baby bees coming soon 😍

We checked our hives this morning after a long month of waiting after we made the splits. About a month ago, we were able to make 4 splits from our original 2 hives! We had enough queen cells (future queens) to have enough for each hive. But we had to wait a month for all of the queens to hatch, fly away and mate, and then hopefully return to populate our hives!

It was a long month of waiting but boy was it worth it! We had 5/6 hives have queens! Hooray! 🥳

On the hive that didn’t have a queen we can purchase one from a company who breeds queens and introduce her into the hive.

We did our routine checks and determined 2 of our hives are really popping so we will put 2 supers (honey production) out next week and hopefully get some honey going in the near future 😋🍯

I didn’t get a lot of pictures because 2 of our hives are 🌶 spicy 🌶 but I did snap a quick pic of a frame full of capped brood (baby bees about ready to be born)! I also got a picture of the OG bee team - Dad and Shane . I am am grateful for these men, without them there would be no bees!

Can’t wait to keep learning as we go on our beekeeping journey and maybe get a little honey this year if we’re lucky.

Bee cool this weekend y’all ✌️🐝

1 week old, 1 week till they’re in the pasture!

We’re so happy our sweet chicks are growing and going to live the life a chicken should live on fresh grass and Texas sunshine! 🐣

Our pretty little laying hens are enjoying the Texas sunshine and wildflowers out in the pasture!

Technically, they haven’t laid any eggs yet. 🤪 We bought these hens as day old chicks but they are expected to lay when they reach 18-20 weeks old, so we’re half way there!

Hopefully in a few short months we’ll have some wonderful eggs to share with y’all!

In other news our next batch of broilers are coming in the mail this week! We can’t wait to begin the process again, and really can’t wait for cute chicks again! Haha!

We hope everyone had a great Easter and has a great week!

What a wonderful day we had working bees yesterday!

Since this is our first year keeping bees we still have a ton to learn, but we are super blessed to have an awesome bee mentor Shane to help us split our hives!

Splitting hives is done for many reasons, but we split our hives because they were so healthy and strong we wanted to make sure that they have plenty of space to continue to grow so that they do not swarm. As an added bonus we get more bee hives!

Shane helped us examine our hives and split them so that there was plenty of brood (future baby bees), food (pollen and nectar), drones, and queen cells (the future queen 👑 ) in each hive to ensure a healthy and happy split! We were surprised and super thankful to be able to make 4 splits out of our 2 hives meaning that we now have a total of 6 hives in our bee yard! God is good y’all!

We kind of feel like real beekeepers now! 😎

It was such a fun learning experience and a very important step in making sure our bees continue to be as healthy and fruitful as they can bee (get it? 🤪).

We’ll let our hives continue to grow and hopefully this summer we will have our first honey harvest to share with y’all! 😋🍯 !