Farm Report #7: A House is Being Built

I haven’t given a farm report since February.  You can read all of the other six reports on this site to learn the whole story.  In this report, I want to simply update my readers on the status and progress of the farm.

  1. The big news is;  we started our house.  After much delay because of spring rains, busy workers, and hitting a buried hog barn where we first intended to put the house, we finally got footers dug on my birthday, June 15th. Building a house has been everything!  I mean it is frustrating, challenging, stressful, fun, exciting, and all-consuming.  There is so much that goes into building a house.  We have been doing most of the sub-contracting work with the help of a contractor who framed up the house and installed the windows.  We will be so glad when it is completed.  Currently we are having sheet-rock hung.  Siding should be going on the outside soon.  We plan on painting and flooring the house ourself.  We have been doing lots of clean-up, some minor construction tasks, and mainly trying to make decisions about the material and labor.
    Front of House

    Front of House

    Back of House

    Back of House

  2. The animals are all doing well.  We had three lambs born this Spring to our sheep.  One was a ram which we sold, so we currently have 7 Barbados Blackbelly sheep.  Our American Guinea Hogs had piglets in June.  We got five baby pigs.  We sold three of them, keeping two barrows.  Guess how they became barrows?  Yes, that is right, Amanda and I got our first experience of castrating piglets.  If you know me, you know I am not known for my strength of stomach.  But we made it just fine and it was really an easy process, at least for us, the piglets may not agree.  We had one of our AGH hogs slaughtered and are enjoying great meat from him.  We bought three Berkshire hogs, which is another heritage breed.  This brings the current total to 8 pigs, which tend to be the most expensive and most troublesome animal on the farm.
    Our pigs!

    Our pigs!

    We had our first Dexter calf in May.  A beautiful looking bull calf we named Uno.

    Uno

    Uno

    We added to our herd with a purchase of a steer which we plan on slaughtering next year, which makes our current herd of cattle at 6.  Red and Chick, our horse and pony, are doing well.  We haven’t been able to ride them much due to our work load with the house, but the kids enjoy spoiling them none-the-less.

    Red relaxing in the barn

    Red relaxing in the barn.

    Our Bantam chickens had six chicks this year.  We were blessed this year with abundant rain, until the Fall season.  The pastures did well and our rotational grazing is working out well overall.  We do get tired of moving the cows every week, as they can eat down a field pretty fast.

  3. We are learning and growing as a family through the farm.  It has been amazing how much we have learned in the first year of having animals.  We have learned much about them and lots about fencing!  We are excited about getting moved to the farm.  I wrote a blog post for Adam Faughn on 10 lessons on parenting from a small family farm.  Check it out.

    The kids playing in some boats mom found at a yard sale.

    The kids playing in some boats mom found at a yard sale.

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