Belle Rock Farm

The kids are successfully moved to their new home, and I’ve taken up milking twice a day. I now have enough milk to make cheese, and have discovered that I can have some pretty tasty mozzarella and ricotta out of this deal. The neufchatel turned out to tangy…or maybe goaty…to be good, but the others have been fine. I’ve got some cultures on orders so I can try making some cheddar curds.

I’ve got our whizbang chicken plucker up and running (with motor installation done by my husband!), and we’ve processed the first 10 birds from the flock. More roosters have taken up crowing, so I’m anxious to get more vacuum bags so we can continue whittling down their numbers.

Cheeky the Araucana chicken hatched three of her eight eggs exactly 21 days after I gave them to her. She ended up with two Welsummer chicks and one Java. I’m hoping for at least one pullet out of the deal!

Our pig experiment continues, with mixed results. Yesterday afternoon the smaller brown pig fell ill with apparent heat exhaustion, and I was worried he wasn’t going to make it (he wouldn’t eat or drink and acted like he was in a stupor). Why he fell ill this week and not last week when the heat index was over 100 practically all week, I have no idea. But with advice from the vet and the help of our dairy farmer neighbors I got him some fever reducer and he’s up and at it today…but I’m glad that they’ve only got four weeks left until they go to “freezer camp” for the rest of the summer!

This summer’s trial runs for “pastured” poultry, goat kids and milking, and even the pigs has been mostly good, and I’m looking forward to refining and expanding the process.