It's That Time of Year

Time to start making fall breeding plans (for the goats) and spring breeding plans (for the horses). Interestingly enough, I have a solid spring plan before the fall one.. tssk on me!

So for the spring, I have the two lovely ladies lined up for a breeding to an up and coming star. This year (being as it is our first year to have our own foals and not someone else's), I decided to breed for half Andalusians. I am very excited as there are a number of registries that they qualify for including the Andalusian (IALHA) Registry - where they will receive a half bred number. Also, it is my ultimate goal to get into Andalusians and this is my starting point. As this develops more, I am sure I will have lots to discuss.

For the fall breeding plans, I had a solid plan that is not as solid as I assumed. We have a small herd of dairy goats (Saanens) and were planning on having them covered by a gentleman's buck about 20 minutes away. His buck is very nice with good proven lines and would cross with our lines beautifully. I was very excited. The problem is we keep  driving the girls back and forth and they are never in that perfect moment to allow him to breed. They show every sign of being in heat, but some how it's just not right on timing. We are now a solid month past when I wanted to get them bred and many gas miles into this - so we are trying to come up with a back up plan quickly. Our back up plan include using LH to get a more perfect timing of their heat, but this will cost almost as much as buying a decent buck as our vet won't prescribe it without coming out on a farm call or breaking down and buying a buck to cover our girls.  The other option I have was to buy a cheap buck and use him as more of a tease then take the girls over to the registered buck to get the job done...Of course, we are running out of time and I need to get this worked out yesterday. So, here's to getting this worked out!

If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know! I have a buck rag and I have been watching them for signs of heat (which they are showing) but somehow I am missing the sweet spot where she will let the buck do his job...

I Guess They Read The Blog

I would like to update everyone on the terrible chickens. They obviously were alerted to the blog and their lack of ability to pay rent, as shortly after the post about them we have started receiving four eggs a day (one from each) and even more recently we have received as many as five eggs a day (someone is making up for lost time)!

I am not sure of the change of heart, but I cannot be more happy!

The Chickens at Agrestic Farms

I absolutely fail!

I said I would become a better blogger, and I am trying desperately, but it seems that I cannot commit. I need to write the topics down that I stumble upon. I need to develop an evening ritual that includes writing just a short piece to keep this blog current. I need to have exciting things to discuss!

But, to put this all behind us, and maybe inspire what very few people who have come across this blog to continue to read, I am going to write about the happenings on our farm. Today, I am going to cover our chickens...

To my beloved boyfriend's surprise, at the beginning of the summer I got him five wonderful chickens. They are the sex linked kind and are suppose to be wonderful egg layers.

For weeks we kept them in the laundry room. They were too little for being outside as it was cold and our chicken coop does not inspire confidence in its ability to house babies of any sort, but maybe the stray cat variety. About the time they developed most of their adult plumage, we decided the weather was decent, they were starting to escape their box easily, and it was just plain time for them to go out.

So we put them out in the coop. For the first two weeks, we kept them locked to the inside of the coop. Than we opened their little coop door to the chicken run area and let them explore. To our dismay, they opted to avoid the big world for another week, only looking outside longingly. Than, one day they took to the outside like stars do to the sky! They flocked, they chased bugs, they dug up the ground! They turned into quite the most beautiful brown and black chickens I ever did see (my proximity to the situation should just be over looked...).

Well, now they are at least four months old, if not older. They still haven't graced us with any eggs. We lovingly feed and water them, put a roof over their heads, and talk to them when ever we are outside. Why haven't they bothered to leave us anything in return? I thought chickens laid eggs around 16 weeks. It seems like they are taking advantage of us!

Than, to make matters worse, one of the lovely ladies has developed the most beautiful tail and cone.... That's right! We have a roster in our hen house. I realize that sexing chickens is not exactly the easiest thing to do, but isn't that why they developed sex linked chickens - to take the guess work out of it? I feel absolutely horrible about this situation. He has started to crow in the last week and we never intended to have a boy. I am just not sure what to do. There are hundreds of roosters on craigslist to be given away and I am too much of an animal lover that if it doesn't come in a package (unrecognizable) and surely not doted on by me that I cannot eat it. I just do not know what to do. As of this minute,we are letting him "fatten up," but that is just code for letting us get more attached to the little booger. So what does everyone else do with their unintended boys? If there are too many to give him away, and I can not imagine eating him, what else can I do with him?

One Day At A Time

So, after running a lot of numbers, my original plan is not going to work. It was far to expensive to take that approach and I need to come up with a less straining one.

Currently, because it makes more sense to not jump in over our heads with the farm, we are taking each day as it comes and are waiting for the perfect solution to come around. I know, crossing my fingers here to add a little luck, that our farm-break is going to come. It will turn into something that can support us, but it is going to take time. I am still exploring other alternative ideas we keep coming up with, but until the one comes around, we are just taking it one day at a time.

Here's to our Lucky Farm-Break, someday it will come!

Where Does the Time Go?!?

It seems like I just posted yesterday and it has already been over a month! In the beginning of May, I got a new job - YAY! Of course, the ultimate goal is to turn this hobby farm into my job, but until then I got an amazing job with everything a person could want. Awesome hours, great benefits, and just the best people to work for and with; Oh, and the pay is very, very nice.

While it is awesome that I was able to get a great job in our economy, we were able to turn parts of the farm into full time work (both in hours and pay) for my boyfriend! I know that is what I wanted, but in our case if the farm can only support one income - it made sense for him to stay home with it. I can not physically provide all of the labor the farm needs in its current fix-me-upper state and he can. He, also, has the knowledge to do a lot of the construction around here that would take a learning curve on my side. And the part of the farm that is providing pay is something either of us (or in some cases both of us) can do, so again it made sense for him to be the one to provide the care, fixing up, and take care of the growth side of it.

So, that catches everyone up - the hobby farm is starting to turn into something more. In the next week we are looking at expanding our farm, so I will let you all know how that goes. Currently, as I am great with numbers, I am running those to try and figure out how to make it all work and generate more profit - so maybe by this time next year it could be both of ours income. Also, I am exploring different marketing ideas. Basically, once I get a better plan I will update everyone!

Check stalls off the list!

As you can tell from previous posts, we have a lot of things to fix up. Last night, we finally got one more step in the horse area completed.

When we moved in, the stalls were disgusting and needing a lot of small remodels to make them up to standards for safe horse keeping. Yesterday we were able to finish putting the broken stall back together and reinforce everything, then we got the panels moved and put together for runs. Lastly, I got the water troughs filled and feed buckets installed. It took most of the day, but I can happily say the girls slept in their own runs last night - out of the round pen!

Out newest horse, the one we got last summer, is fairly young. I know she came off a ranch that pasture keeps young horses. After spending most of her year with us out on pasture and the past month in a large round pen, I can say this is her first time being put into a stall. The stalls are not be any means small. They are 14x14 with 14x30 foot runs. But to see her in there is hysterical. She is fine in the run, but she snorts and jumps out of her skin while in the stall - like it is eating her up! I know in a day or two she will settle in just fine, but it always amuses me those first few days a horse learns to be stalled.

Our other horse, whom I have mentioned before, is an old hat at stalls and loves them. She hates not having a stall to bed down in. Also, she is always low mare on the totem pole, so she enjoys the secure space a stall setting offers her. When I put her in the stall last night she was so excited she ran right into her stall and rolled. Hopefully, the younger horse will learn her enthusiasm!

Coveting Someone Else's Farm

Well, as it turns out, I do not have as much time to blog as I thought I would or maybe I do not have enough things to talk about. It's more the latter as I try to only write about things I think people want to hear and not just stuff - which is the problem. I should be blogging about things I want to write about - not just what I think people want to read. So, I am going to work on that!

So for future blogs I am going to start covering how we are growing and what we are doing to make it happen - maybe someone will stumble upon this blog and have helpful hint to get to where I want to be (not just the hobby farm, but the full-time dream farm).

Speaking of that I am going to talk about someone I compare (in my head) a lot of my hobby farm too. She is a wonderful lady that I truly admire. I am not going to name names or anything like that because I am not sure she wants me to discuss her life online, but I feel I can give the basics and people will understand what I am getting at.

I am going to call this lady or rather her entire farm, NJB. NJB started out small - which is what I am doing. She started with one well bred mare and bred her to the top of the line stallion. The resulting colt she put into a lot of training and shows and started to market him as a stud.

Now, about ten years later she has the life I want. She has about 20 horses that are/were shown and well managed that she breeds to the now three studs she promotes. They are all well bred and beautiful horses that she now sells all over the US and world. On top of that she shows and breeds top of the line dogs and has a registered herd of goats that she keeps for personal use, but does sell the resulting offspring. And with all of these venues, she manages to work full time for the farm and come out ahead every year.

Now, it's not all sparkles and rainbows because she has told me in the beginning she was lucky to break even, but now it does not seem she has the same problems. She is well established and even though the economy is rough I have yet to hear her complain or say anything about how the economy is hitting her. She seems very much on top of it all and coming out ahead.

That is what I would like my farm to turn into. Something that can sustain me as a full-time dream farm. When I do the numbers, it seems near impossible - but somehow NJB manages to do this. I am inspired to be able to make this work like she did. She basically started off with the same things I have - so hopefully, like NJB, I will be able to figure out how to survive on my dream farm, full-time.

It's beginning to look a lot like.... A Farm!

Well, we have been here for a month... I know, I realize I haven't been blogging about our new hobby farm very often, but we have been here for a whole month now!

It has been one of the most busy months I have ever had, and its been pretty centered on getting this fix me upper, fixed. First, the property is a mess. The previous tenants decided it was acceptable to not use a trash receptacle, especially out by the horse area. Second, those same tenants thought it was acceptable to never clean a stall. Third, they also decided everywhere was a burn spot and they should try to burn everything-including glass, metal, and heavy plastics.

Early in the month, we started cleaning the trash off the grounds. After multiple trash bags full, I think we have most of the garbage picked up. While cleaning up the mess, we found even more stuff to fix up around the property. One thing we noticed is how messy the place becomes in the rain. The nice hard packed ground becomes a real slip-in-slide, knee deep mud mess with the tiniest amount of rain. With that in mind, it made the rest of our improvements slow going.

On the dry days, that we could get the truck back in the horse area, we had to shovel out a years worth of horse poop from the two stalls. This was the nastiest thing I have ever encountered. I feel so bad for the previous tenant's horses. How could they let them live in that filth? It was packed solid and about a foot deep, every shovel load was saturated in urine and had an overwhelming odor. I have been told that they trained horses here. Who would leave their horse with them? Did they not check the facilities their horses would be staying at? I would have ran for the hills the horse area was so uncared for. It took us four solid days of working on the stalls to get them cleaned up.

While the stall cleaning was underway, we had a wind storm. Much to our dismay, it blew one side of a stall off. I have never encountered such high winds and I am glad this happened before we had a horse in the stall. Knowing that this has happened and could happen again, our next project is to put the stall back together and tighten/add more screws to the stalls to make sure this does not happen while a horse is in the stall.

This week we have been working on prepping the acreage for turnout. While raking the burn piles up and removing the pieces that are nonflammable (mostly large pieces of glass) the irrigation manhole started to overflow. The irrigation is not suppose to be on till tomorrow, so we called our water guy. He immediately came out and fixed the overflow, but while he was there we started discussing our pasture. Turns out our water guy is a wealth of knowledge and informed us that our pasture has been nothing but white-top weed for awhile and if we want to put horses on it, it will need to be sprayed and probably re-seeded. Of course, we only have one acre's worth of water rights, so re-seeding is going to be a bit of a challenge. Our water guy gave us some numbers to people that could spray and who would be able to recommend a pasture grass that needs limited amounts of water.

It seems this property needs more attention than some elbow grease. While it has been a lot of cleaning up after someone else and not a lot of fun, we can finally see a difference. We have a very cute place. Now that all of the trash is gone and the horse area is starting to come together we can see the outline of our farm. Still not the dream, but definitely the beginning of our hobby farm.

The Beginning

I grew up boarding my horse at a local barn. They took care of my horse well enough, but never quite the way I wanted it done. I didn't like the traffic that came and went and felt they could handle anyones horse at will. I didn't like coming to find someone had rearranged my things to make room for something else. I didn't like having to track down the things that other people borrowed without asking. That is when I started dreaming of my own farm.

At first I thought it was just this barn that had these problems, so when I moved away to college and took my horse with me, I was sad to see that the new barn had similar problems and worse care. After changing barns to one that had better care, I was still at a loss to find even more similar problems of people getting into things that did not belong to them and moving horses around to accommodate other boarders.

Becoming more and more tired of the boarding drama, I started thinking more about owning my own farm and what I wanted it to be like. Well, as in all things that consume us, I got a BS in Animal and Veterinary Science. I went on to start a Master's in Animal Science, but decided I really did not want to preform research, I wanted a life that included my horse (she went out to pasture during my Master's program and took two years off).

Putting my dream into motion, I convinced the boyfriend to move to a larger town with an even larger outlying area that had plenty of farm country for rent. After much searching and debate, we found a three and a half acre property with a cutely remodeled home and a fix me upper horse area that happened to be the ideal price range.

Now to the present, we are living on our farm, trying to turn it into the dream.