Heritage Glen Farm

Summer heat brings everyone to the creek to cool off. Look closely at the rocks…

Sunny is almost one year into her first lactation. She loves routine and that’s about all, except for her oral herbal tonic we give her for udder health. When she sees the syringe she tilts her mouth up and open so she doesn’t miss a drop.

Farmhouse cheddar out of the press to dry before heading to the cheese fridge for the next six months. Made from 4 gallons creamline Jersey milk.

Artichokes!

Happily took up our friends’ offer to glean their vines!

Planting cover crops begins…

Summer Oysters!

A sweet little bull calf was born on Saturday afternoon to our Jersey, Hosta, and Dexter bull, Fintan. He is the second Belfair to be born on the farm.

We have a nice harvest of red candy onions this year, with the help of the Speltz girls(our great nieces) planting them in April.

Busy morning in the pasture coop, however, the current heat wave has turned most of these hens broody. Not a lot of egg laying going on here.

Three little pigs are not so little anymore. They love being on pasture and eating lots of vegetation.

It is humbling to be a farmer…you can plan, calculate, set everything in motion but then..God laughs and Mother Nature takes over. We like to have a continual supply of fresh milk as our two dairy cows literally feed the entire farm. This week Sunny spent a day/night in the “honeymoon suite” with our bull Fintan. We hope she took and that we can plan for a late March calf. But calving doesn’t always go exactly to plan. The bottom picture is of Hosta. She is due to calve July 2nd and is pretty miserable with the heat and flies. We hoped to avoid a summer calf and exposed her to FIntan for a May calf. Well, she did not take right away.
So much to keep track of with just two Jerseys. In the days of old, I remember visiting my BIL’s milk house where the walls were painted white and filled with writing in pencil, every cow listed with all her gestational dates. He had a large herd of Holsteins. As we continue to learn/experience bovine natural cycles, I continue to grow more in awe of all those dairy farmers I grew up around. Wish I had paid more attention.

Scrambled eggs and fresh buttermilk - Breakfast of Champions

It’s the season!

The girls! Sunny and Hosta

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long. — You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long. — You come too.

Robert Frost

A friend asked where they would find us when they stopped by the farm. The answer is always check the pastures. The rich green grasses are the lifeblood of this farm. For three seasons of the year, the majority of our day is spent here.

The front pasture hums with activity as the dairy cows graze around the duck shelter, the laying hens’ coop, the meat bird shelters and the milking shed. Everyone moves to fresh grass daily in a coordinated dance.

The Dexter herd climb the hills and valleys of the farm in a synchronized rotation to the next pasture. They love it, we love it. Their coats go from fuzzy shedding to sleek and shiny, calves play and run as momma cows eat their fill, pasture rotation shifts from the first frenzied run to pasture to a slow happy trot to the next. The cows share these pastures with our potato patch and corn field, electric fencing helps to keeps them honest but really the grass keeps them distracted from the crops.

The pasture is such a happy place, why wouldn’t you find us there?

Harvested the winter garden as I prepare to set out the spring brassicas. Cabbages were shredded with some carrot and canned as pickled coleslaw. We had one extra jar from the full canner so we refrigerated it for the four week pickling. It has been too tempting to wait the full time so we have been sampling from this jar, it is so good! Reminds us of the cabbage in the German Gemischter Salat.

Lavender Maran hatchlings! Parents are pasture raised, fed organic feed no corn, no soy. Raised holistically. Info in comments

Here come the leeks! 😋

So quiet and beautiful this morning.

Another round of hay served up as we prepare for Arctic blast #2.

It was a busy weekend preparing for the upcoming storm! I said goodbye to our winter garden and harvested all cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Napa cabbage and Romanesco Italia Cauliflower that were of any size. Six hay rolls went out for feed and to serve as additional wind blocks for the herd. Chicken coops cleaned and along with dog houses were fluffed with mountains of straw. Today we are blanketed with at least a half foot of snow, it is beautiful outside. All critters are faring well, we check on them every couple of hours. So far only a few eggs frozen.

My Hero….fifth King snake this summer in nest boxes has been relocated down the road, across the creek and yonder.

How fun is this? Our eggs, sold at Herban Market, featured on a reel from the Justin Rhodes show. The hens will get extra treats (buttermilk) today.