Barn, Breeding & Chicks

Barnyard and Breeding

Looking back at the last farm update I see there is much to report on! Firstly, the pig barn is here and the pigs are loving it. The building is 12'x16' with one human door, two pig doors and four windows. They get great light, excellent protection from the wind and the best conditions to keep their straw nice and dry. It's amazing.

Waking up from a min-morning nap.

Here is a view of the inside. We have it divided in half right now, since we only have five pigs at the moment, to encourage them to cuddle up for warmth (their tendency anyways).

January rolling in meant time for the next breeding cycle (and dreams of adorable piglets). Leading up to this we had many, many discussions and schedules drawn up to plan what we were going to do, how and when to do it. So, long story short, we had a very frustrating and disappointing attempt at artificial insemination (never thought I'd be buying pig semen!) and had to develop a new plan, and push farrowing and harvest back a month.

Currently Vera, Elsa and Suzy are away on a little vacation, visiting with Buddy. Hopefully he does right by our girls, they get along, have a nice time and come back bred!

Chicks and Cluckers

We will be welcoming 25 chicks to the farm in the next week! It will be fun to have those little peepers in the brooder in the basement (that is sure to help with cabin fever). We are adding more layers to the flock (currently 13 hens), so they will start laying by the beginning of summer. More bodies in the coop will be beneficial for warmth next winter as well.

Our first chicks, from 2014.

The hens have been laying great, with a total of 63 eggs last week, or an average of 8 per day for the 13 hens. If you are interested in eggs simply email us at alternativerootsfarm@yahoo.com or text/call Brooke @ 507.412.7605.

Netting around the chicken run, wind-whipped.

The beautiful, mild January weather has been giving us opportunity to  do some projects. It's nice to get some work out of the way to lessen the workload come spring. The prairie wind is strong out here, the netting around the chicken coop was beginning to showing it. I spent Saturday pulling it down and putting it back up. Hopefully it will hold now.

Chicken run netting nice and straight!

Veggies & Winter Planning

The field plan is finalized, seed orders done and some seeds have already arrived in the mail - oh the first signs of spring! I have two calendars - one for inside seeding, one for outside seeding and transplanting - they have both been updated, so I am ready for seeding on March 3rd.

The sheets are designed to contain all the information I need at hand during planting. Number of seeds to plant, spacings, dates, germination temps and days, specific notes and more. A well-planned spreadsheet is a beautiful thing ;) This is necessary for successful and efficient planning, for me, as well as for record-keeping for organic certification.

My planning efforts now are focused on finalizing our 2015 budget in the next couple days, research into the cultural needs of specific crops, and doing some prep work for this season's newsletters, among other items.

Member sign up for 2015 CSA Shares and Farm Shares continues at this time. We do have a few Full and Half CSA Shares yet available, as well as a handful of Farm Shares. We're excited!!

This weekend we had a wonderful meeting with orchard owners Marv and Jill. Each year about this time we get together to hang out, talk about the events of the last year, plans for the coming year and each of our goals and visions for the future. We feel continually blessed to work with them - for this opportunity to manage more land organically and their passion for healthy food and land stewardship!

Phenology Report

If you get a chance to sit outside on a nice quiet night in January you may hear the call of the great horned owl. These amazing creatures are courting and starting their nesting season in the dead of winter, January and February. The familiar hooting can be heard here at the farm, because there is a nesting pair about a half-mile down the road.

Odds and Ends

There have been some requests from folks to hear more about what we do in our own home, as far as sustainable and natural living. I have been musing for a while on sort of a "Know Your Farmer" type theme of blog posts that would address this, so stay tuned and please speak up! Ideas that come to mind include our composting practices, green cleaners and what's in our medicine cabinet. If there is something specific that you are interested in post a comment, shoot us an email or ask us on facebook - we are happy to share our experiences in this way!

40 days until daylight savings!

New Ulm Community Market and Co-op is continuing it's member drive! If every member recruited just one more they would meet their goal. Consider bringing a friend there shopping the next Saturday they are open - Jan. 31st, 9 am - 1 pm.

Pounds, Seeds and Eggs

Winter came on strong and I have to say I enjoy seeing the snow on the ground - a winter without white just doesn't seem right. The pigs don't mind the snow and the pullets are experiencing it for the first time - some walking right over it and some attempting to fly over it, or fly-running. The animals are endlessly entertaining.

We have finalized our annual report for the past season, and our crop review, which helps to inform business decisions for next season. 2015 CSA planning in near finalized and we'll be opening up shares to 2014 members shortly, then to the general public in January. The field plan and financial plan for 2015 is underway.

I am a super nerd and I love the planning process and paperwork - I am somewhat in my element with this. Thorough review and planning is important for a sustainable business model and very much so for a small farm.

Pounds

Part of our season review is updating all our harvest records, looking at yields and performances of different crops and varieties. Despite the conditions of spring, crop losses and challenges, we produced a bounty of produce this season!

I am proud to say that we harvested over 10,500 pounds this season. Our half acre of cropland produced over 7,100 pounds of veggies and fruits, and our orchard produced over 3,300 pounds of apples.

Seeds

One major item on the December agenda is picking out seeds for next season. Inventorying our stock we have on hand, pouring through beautiful and tantalizing seed catalogs and selecting varieties to trial, next to our proven standards.

We love Seed Savers Exchange, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Bakers Creek, Turtle Tree Seeds, as well as The Maine Potato Lady for seed potatoes (because there is more than just Yukon Gold).

Eggs

Last weekend the pullets (young chickens, generally under a year) started laying their first eggs! At 28 weeks old, to the day, I pulled the first blue-green Americauna egg from the nesting boxes and continue to get eggs each day now.

Pullet eggs are a little smaller than regular eggs. With the breeds we now have all the eggs will be brown or blue. We love our beautiful ladies and were happy to bring them chicken coop 3.0.

The coop has a new hanging feeder (wasting less feed and keeping the feeder cleaner), a new roost, new windows and the walls are now fully insulated against the cold.

Miscellaneous

Last Sunday John and I went our separate ways for farm happenings. John went up to the Good Earth Food Co-op (St. Cloud), to attend their Customer Appreciation day and offering sampling of ARF apples, which Good Earth had kept in stock on their shelves this fall :) My trip brought me to the Land Stewardship Projects Minneapolis office to gather with the group of farmers all taking the "Journeyperson" course through LSP. It was a day of conversation on farming topics, networking, updates and farm financial planning.

ARF apples...we keep turning them into apple butter. A nice stock is set aside for 2015 CSA and Farm Share members!

I adore this photo, so I had to share it. We continue to be so very happy with the members of our herd. Suzy is one of our gilts (unbred female) that we are looking at breeding - her disposition is wonderful and her physical traits are great.

The pig barn continues to come together at the high school and we can't wait to make this the shelter for our pigs!

Let us know if you are interested in stuffing a stocking with one of our 2014 ARF t-shirts! We still have a few in stock, email us for sizes, guys and gals fits $20.00 apiece. Cheers!

Articles of Interest

The Health Risks of Conventional Potatoes

Random Farmy Stuff

The work John and I are doing right now for the farm mirrors the title of this post--random farmy stuff. We have energy going in all sorts of directions at this time of year, much of it getting us ready for the season. As I finalize our planting schedule, we're readying our seed starting station, cleaning up work from the winter, and a dozen other things, and even today a new project starts with John out in the orchard beginning the pruning work. He was having fun sharpening all of his tools last night :) I

Given this it is a great comfort and blessing to have our CSA Shares all sold out for 2013. This allows me to get some other member-management work done pre-season.

*THANK YOU*

 We love being a part of this "agricultural revival"...

I just love these farmy stickers I got from the conference--they are right on. Don't buy food from strangers folks. Speaking of strangers...

Snapshot of Brooke promoting the River Valley Woman

...this gal isn't one! You may have seen your friendly farmer's mugshot in the Feb. 22nd edition of the River Valley Extra?! I recently went to a little photo shoot, which produced the above shot, for the cover of the upcoming River Valley Woman magazine--out May 3rd. It was a fun diversion from my usual activities :) I am super pumped about a new woman's mag and thrilled to be a part of the launch!

More randomness...one thing on my mind right now is getting some chores and projects done now that aren't so likely to get done during the growing season. I got one painting project out of the way and am ready to start another! And let's cap the post with a pig pic ;)

Piggies all nested up for the night! These creatures are amazing. Each night they are all huddled up like this and make themselves a nice nest to rest in, and most of the time you can only see a couple of them :)

Farming for Ideas

For myself as a young beginning organic farmer going to the annual MOSES Organic Farming Conference was something I had dreamed about for the last two years, so last weekend's trip to La Crosse for the event was very exciting. I was ready to get my learning on, see what this experience was all about and, I'm not going to lie, I was excited about the food too.

Keynote speaker Jeremy Siefert talking about his new film
GMO OMG. I'm looking forward to seeing this when it comes out!

There were so many people there! Talk about inspiring--organic yummy food loving farmers at every turn, my fellow heirloom lovers, GMO haters and earth loving folks--delightful. I spoke with experienced farmers with decades under their belts, potential farmers (that reminded me of myself two years ago), friends we attended our Farm Beginnings course with last year, and other partners in the food movement who were working on stuff such as farm-to-school.

Just one of the workshops I attended.

I attended three days of workshops on a variety of topics directly relevant to our farm. The opportunity to meet face-to-face with our organic certification service was great; I really wanted to know, plenty ahead of time that we are on the correct timeline for getting certified by October 2014. There were even courses or lunch time beginning farmer panels (below) focused on newer farmers.

Beginning farmers sharing their experiences--ups and downs.

All in all it was a great experience that allows me to bring some concrete knowledge back to use on the farm this year. Allowing us to improve the experience for our customers, as well as ourselves, be more efficient and have a great year!

Lastly, on the drive home, I picked up our pigs (here's where I make up for all the boring pictures)--Oliver, Yoda, Daisy, Jaymey and Lauren (named by our neice Lauren)!

Winter Planning

Well we have been busy farming ideas this winter! In December the catalogs started to arrive (which I always like to call the first sign of spring) and we get all nutty and excited about different veggie varieties. It's quite fun.

Our favorite catalogs & main companies we'll purchase from
this year. Primarily heirlooms, all natural--no GMOs. 

At this point we have all our varieties picked out, debated upon, and choices slimmed down. I have been working on a whole new bed layout for 2013, and with that a new crop rotation plan, which is somewhat complex. Once I'm done with the mapping then the next step is to order seed, tubers and sets!

A pic of the in-progress planting plan, which helps me to
determine how much seed stock I need and provides much
excitement of what's to come this summer!

A successful season is due much in part to thorough planning in the winter. My crop rotation serves to build healthy soil, aid in pest control and enhance efficiency; so a lot of thought has gone into alternating crop families, crop functions (soil building legumes, roots, vines), high/med/low nutrient needs of crops, placing everything next to beneficial/non-detrimental crops (companion planting).

My messy workspace :) You can't see the catalogs here
because they are all over the floor. Bonus points if you can
tell me what's missing from this picture!

Such an exciting time. All our previous year's CSA customers have been contacted about this season, and on January 17th we'll post all the new details for this year's CSA Shares & Farm Shares. Stay tuned, or shoot us an email at alternativerootsfarm@yahoo.com for any questions you may have.

Along with the planning we continue to build our knowledge over the winter (as always). This is a prime time of the year to watch webinars, read up on all those things I jotted down over the summer (i.e. why did the broccoli do that?), attend workshops, conferences and meetings. John headed up to the annual meeting for the Sustainable Farming Association's Crow River Chapter and presented on a panel of farmers, which gave him an opportunity to teach and learn at the same time--what a great opportunity. I am headed to Eau Claire on Thursday for the Midwest CSA Conference. Also, you can watch for me on the public access channel, as the Heart of New Ulm group has been helping to promote community supported agriculture farms with some little interviews--pretty cool.

May you have good food and good health in this wonderful new year!

Looking forward to 2012

Well, with New Year's looming tomorrow I am thinking about all the good things to happen in 2012.  Yesterday I placed our first order of seeds, and will be done in the next few days.  We are so looking forward to our first growing season, and the abundance of delectable vegetables, fruits, and herbs that we get to produce!

It was a very exciting year for us, making a move to establish a farm, and purchasing the farm in August.  We did so much in the fall to add to our little piece of the world, and I can't wait to see how our goals unfold over the years.  Our apple orchard has grown from one existing Honeycrisp tree, to include a Honey Gold (a delishious yellow apple).  We transplanted two Black Maples, which will be used for maple syrup down the road.  A gift from friends, we planted six raspberry plants.  We also started construction on our chicken coop, which will be finished in the spring.

Right now, during these cold months we are also doing much in regards to progress for the farm.  We are working on the interior of our packing shed, for vegetable processing and storage; working on seed orders and planting plans.  Also, right now we are attending the Farm Beginnings program (put on by the Land Stewardship Project), which is a program focused on beginning farmers, and the business end of running a farm--planning, goal-setting, decision-making, and so forth.  We are also reading so much different material!  It is all quite exciting.

I believe the New Year holds much promise and excitement!