Winter Update: New GVF Babies Arrive

 Things are pretty slow right now at the farm. We have our vegetable seeds ordered and are waiting their arrival. Some of the guys have been working on our sawmill but quickly came to realize that frozen logs do not cut well! We are also about to start tapping trees for this years maple syrup run. We are praying that it is a great year for sap so that we have enough syrup to sell in our farm stand all season.

 Most of the excitement right now is coming from our order of 100 Rhode Island Red chicks! We are trying to keep ahead of the demand for our pastured eggs come this summer. Right now we are just barely keeping up! We ordered them to arrive at the start of February so that they would be laying in June.

They are so cute and fun to watch at this age! They are living in a large box in the house for now but will be headed to a coop once a few more of their feathers come in. Then once the snow is gone and the grass is in we will move them to the chicken tractor.  The kids are loving having them inside the house!

 We will most likely add another 50 chicks in the summer so we will end up with a grand total of 200. We hope to be able to offer our eggs at a local natural food store! Stay tuned!

Our First Livestock Arrives

 Our newest additions arrived at the end of April, 50 Rhode Island Red chicks and 6 Cayuga ducklings! They came packed in this little box via the U.S. postal service, all of them were safe and sound. We are so excited about having them on the farm. The chicks will be in a movable "chicken tractor" once they are old enough to tolerate the lower temps. The "tractor" will be moved every day within a fenced area and then the whole fence will be moved every few days to ensure they always have fresh pasture and lots of new bugs to eat. They will be laying beautiful brown eggs starting this fall which we hope to offer in our farm stand. 

The ducks will be our garden helpers! The love to forage for slugs and other garden pests. This breed originated on Cayuga Lake New York and is therefore hearty for this area. They are a quite and docile breed which will lay approx. 150 eggs per year. We are not sure how many males and females we have yet since they came to us as a straight run (not sexed from the hatchery), but we hope to also offer duck eggs in our farm stand at some point. Duck eggs are slightly larger than chicken eggs and are sought after by bakers for the excellent results they produce. 

Here they are checking out their new home under the brooder lamp. They will stay here for the next 4 weeks or so until it is safe the put them on pasture.

So cute!

 And here, less than two weeks later are the ducklings on their first outing into the yard. They were so much fun! They pretty much think everyone is a duck and easily followed the kids where ever they went. They nibbled on grass and dandelions and had a blast in the little bucket of water we set out for them!

Sorry no updated chick photo's yet but they also are growing fast and already have wing and tail feathers growing in! We will try to post updated pics as they grow.