Farm Video

little video I made of some of the animals here on the Farm.

Baby Girl

It's always fun to get a new baby on the farm. Brad bought me a female Great Pyrenees puppy for my birthday, We named her Bella. Our plans are to breed her to Sammy in a couple years. She is such a sweet girl, so calm and gentle. And is great with the chickens! She isn't in with the goats and sheep full time yet like Sammy. She is still to small. I tried putting her in with them for the day and they started head butting her pretty hard. So we will have to wait until she gets bigger. I don't want her getting hurt. She will follow me when I go out to feed the chickens and follows Sammy everywhere he goes...They are in Love lol. She is on the smaller side so she won't grow to be as big as Sam.
Her parents were smaller and from working stock, Sammy was from show/working stock. Pyrenees from pure working stock tend to be less hairy and don't have as much of a block build like Sammy does. She seems like she will be a great guardian dog, She is a watcher and will sit and just watch everything..Which is a good sign! She doesn't have that crazy wanna play puppy attitude.

Radish cover

I know I'm behind on this but I am trying to catch up LOL. If you haven't seen the July issue of radish magazine yet we were on the front cover! We are so excited about this. I was a nervous wreck before the photo shoot but it all went smoothly. Sarah Gardner (The new editor of Radish) was so great and we had a great time even though it rained a bit on us.We thought they did such a great job on the article and we were really impressed! I do have to add that we are only doing 2 markets a week now. In the article it states we do 4 markets but we cut it back to two. It was becoming so much work and we weren't able to get anything done with 4 markets. That's one of the reason's we were late getting our plants in this summer. We are learning as we go and have learned so much this year. Our mistakes will only make things better next year :0)

Potato Prep before planting...

Its time to plant the potatoes! Brad and I spent the day getting our potato bed ready, and cutting and prepping the potatoes for planting. We have never tried growing potatoes, so this will be our first year. We started out with 350 pounds to see how it goes. I was getting a little intimidated and overwhelmed by the amount of potatoes that other people plant and grow for the markets LOL. But if all goes well this year we will most likely expand the potato beds. I know in a couple day's when planting begins our backs are going to hurt at the end of the day!

Planting time..

Its finally been nice and dry enough out to start planting our early vegetables. We were also able to get out and test out our new Tiller. Which we are very happy with! We planted a lot of different lettuces (both head and loose leaf types, Carrots,a lot of radishes,turnips,and beets. We weren't able to get our Kohlrabi in and a few other veggies though because a storm was coming in. Guess we will have to wait a few day's for that. It will be nice to rest a little bit after planting is finished! My back is achy, And I have a bad sunburn. But I LOVE it! There is nothing like it in my opinion. Fresh air and dirt under my nails, Now that's living!

Making do...

Brad and I are really getting tired of all the plants in the house,So we figured it was time to start hardening them off. We don't have a greenhouse yet so we built this makeshift 50ft coldframe for around $5.00. We gathered some small willow branches from around the pond for the hoops. It works perfectly! We put a couple of trays of plants in for the whole day to make sure they would be ok before we put them all out. Someday I dream/hope to have a big greenhouse and hoophouses. That would make everything easier!

Nothing better than dried on the line...

Oh I was so excited to be able to wash and hang some of my bedding out on the line today! I had to make a makeshift clothesline on the cherry tree until I can get some posts put in to make a permanent one. There is nothing better than line dried sheets. There is something about them that makes me sleep so good and soundly. I love the crispness and the fresh air smell. I know I will get a really good nights sleep tonight!

Goodbye winter!

Its starting to warm up a little bit here (If you want to call it that). It's Supposed to be 40 degrees in a few days Hopefully! Time to say goodbye to winter! I'm so ready for it to be over with.
Can't wait for,

warm days and cool spring nights

The smell of spring rain on the warm cement

Spring storms and the sound of thunder

planting the garden

Being outside working all day,then comming in exhausted and with dirt under my nails and a sunburn ,Then taking a Shower and bed LOL

The sound of birds singing

Oh I can't wait seriously! Hopefully this was the last snowy sunset I will see this year.

A family eats together

It was so nice out today I thought I would go in the barn with my video camera while I fed Sammy. I thought this was so cute. I put some food in the bucket for Sam and then came a bunch of scavengers LOL. They all ate peacefully together though. Sammy a kitten,a rooster and chicken,and one of the pot belly piglets. They were munching on extra dog food. :0)

Time to start the seeds

The time has come to start some of our seeds! We are just starting the pepper plants right now. Tomatoes and all that in a few weeks. Here we are doing our hot peppers. We planted 900 hots. We are going to be starting our sweet peppers this weekend another 900! .Soon they will be popping there little heads out of the dirt. That is my favorite part.I don't like the anticipation of waiting for them to pop up. I worry they won't grow LOL.(I do this every year). I worry,Did we plant the seeds to deep,overwater them, is it warm enough for them to germinate? But once they do op up I love watching them grow. Just touching the potting soil and the smell of it has got me in the gardening mood!

Handy Man......

I'm so glad that Brad has become so handy these day's. We really needed some display boxes for our produce at the market.So after spending some time in the garage he made these! They are perfect for displaying.They are shallow so you can see what is inside of them and lightweight. I'm still trying to decided wether to stain them or keep them natural colored. He still has a few more winter projects he would like to get done before spring. Such as making a bunch of birdhouses for the market and home show.

Scientists in india create super tomatoes

What is this world comming to,and what is the price we will pay for an longer lasting tomato? Scientists are claiming they do not know the long term affects of these tomatoes and their nutritional value.So it would be like eating water nutritinally wise in the long run. What goes bad is what's good for you! You think genetically modified food will help starving people? Bio tech companies make GMO's so they can make more money pure and simple. Just look at the US. Monsanto makes Roundup ready corn--> farmers overproduce it--> the price drops so farmers can't support themselves-- they get welfare (of course they call it subsidies)
Meanwhile the American people are fatter than they've ever been, because cheap food is crappy food.

All the while Monsanto is making billions, and the billions of hungry people and the world is still hungry. If you would like to read the article for yourself here is the link.http://www.slashfood.com/2010/02/03/scientists-in-india-create-super-tomatoes/

Another good Documentary

Brad and I watched a Documentary called King corn! This is another one I think everyone should watch,Its an eye opener.It shows that almost everything we eat has some form of corn in it. Thats why american's are so obese and that Diabetes has risen in this country dramatically!! I'm really going to be watching what I buy at the grocery store from now on! Most people assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know that a McDonald's Chicken McNugget is 56% corn? If you want to know what’s in your food and how its grown, rent King Corn. This documentary exposes the Crop's Ubiquity and Potential Harm.

Americans need to start growing their own food if they can, or at least be buying if from farmers markets. They stated in this show that most iowa farmers can't feed themselves like they could back in the day.Why? because almost all the corn that is grown cannot be digested unless processed. Pretty scary! So basically if grain farmers had to feed themselves they couldnt Like they could 30 years ago where almost every farmers grew and raised everything they ate! I think people need to get back to that way of life.

Giant eggs!

Brad and I just bought 18 new hens to add to our flock. We bought Red Star hens and to our surprise they are the hens that lay the giant eggs! These hens are only 9 months old and lay some of the biggest brown eggs I have ever seen! They are like super Jumbo eggs! Some of them won't even fit into the egg cartons and have to be stored in bowls LOL.And the ones that will fit into the cartons fill it up and I can hardly close the carton as you can see. Some of them almost resemble duck eggs! Here is a picture of the ones that would fit into the cartons. Here is one of our large regular sized eggs compared to the super jumbo eggs lol. I kept an egg today that was the biggest egg I have ever seen! It measured 3 1/2'' long by 6'' around!!! I'm keeping it for as long as I can lol.

A sign of spring

First sign that spring is near! We have babies being born like crazy! Our barn is filled with the sounds of lambs and goat kids. We also have a bunch of little baby pot belly pigs running around. This is always a fun time of year! Its like Christmas because I can't wait to see what color goat will be born next. We have around 70 goats so there are alot of them! Now the lambs all look alike color wise. They do have different faces though. Most of them look the same but sometimes you get one like this little guy, with a cute little fuzzy face.
Oh by the way all these little pot belly pigs are for sale! They are also related to Gary mativier's pig Frankie!

Brazy Creek Soaps

We will be selling our all natural soaps this year! I'm so excited. All our soaps are made using the cold process soap method.Our soap is free of dyes and colorants and is scented using all natural 100% essential oils and fragrance oils.Right now we have Lavender and Oatmeal-milk-and honey available.
You can check out more on our website at, http://www.Brazycreekfarm.com. Check back often for more fragrances and prices. I'm going to try to get paypal up and going so It will be easy to buy of our site.

New Website now up and running.

We have finally gotten our website published online,Yay! Its took me awhile to design it,and I wanted it to match this blog.I'm still not finished but I'm happy it's finally online. So if you wan't to check it out here it is,

http://www.Brazycreekfarm.com

First shipment of seeds.

Our first shipment of seeds has arrived for the 2010 growing season! We ordered alot of green beans of different varieties! As well as many other vegetables. We are doing about a half acre of green beans this year.I'm sure my back will be in poor shape this year from picking them LOL.
We are ordering from several different seed companies this year. And still have alot more seeds comming. Its a little overwhelming! I think Brad has ordered a few thousand onion plants as well. Good thing we have a seeder this year so we don't have to do it all by hand as we did last! That was alot of backbreaking work!

A place to lay

So Brad has finally built a nesting box for the girls so they have a place to lay! We have been using milk crates which work great, But in order to get certified to sell eggs we had to have a real nesting box. He still has to mount it off the ground. He might also make more once we get some more hens.We still have a few more things to get done to the hen house before we get USDA inspected. We have to put plywood over the insulation,and build a roost. And I will be painting or staining the house this spring. So much to do,so little time. There is only so much I can do before they become man(Brad)jobs Ha!

Soft Silent and slow,descends the snow

Well I took these the other day,It was so pretty out! I love the way the snow softens everything. This is the house taken from out in the pasture. All the animals were in the barn staying warm exept for a few ducks. They were actually swimming in the creek right before I took this picture. I can't believe they dont freeze!
And Our Dog Sam was happy to be out playing in the snow as well! He reminds me of a big polar bear.