Garden view

Everything sure is looking nice! Check out that HUGE bell pepper at the top. 

Kittens

The month of May has brought us many new things including kittens. I woke up to one of our dogs frantically barking a few mornings back. He doesn't do this unless there is a real problem so I quickly got dressed and headed out the door. It only took a minute to discover what he though was a problem. 

There were four kittens placed right on the other side of the fence from him. 

It was driving him crazy that he could see and hear them but not get to them.
After I rounded them up I took a few pictures of the most playful ones. 

We have a totally of six new kittens; four are yellow and two are black. 

I would love to find a good home for all of them. Please let me know if you are interested. 

And yes they are even cuter in person!

Branch Family Memorial Day BBQ

Below is a picture of Farmer D in action. He is getting our water temperature just right to dip the chickens into. (140 degrees is the set temp to properly scaled a chicken, 

this helps remove all the feathers)

This Memorial Day we decided to have a family BBQ. Well why not have our very own home-grown all natural chicken we thought. So last night we had our very first chicken chopping event.
This was quite an event for us since we have dreamed and talked about it for years. 

Our Chicken pictured above; before BBQ of course. This is one of our cornish rock breeds that we free ranged in the yard at the house for the past 10 weeks. All three chickens we processed last night dressed out above 7 pounds. It took Farmer D about 30 mins per chicken start to finish. Pretty good for our first time. Farmer D did a wonderful job of processing our chickens. We are very thankful to him for all the dirty work.

Praise God for our Garden

More Squash and lots of it! 

Proverbs 3:9-11 "Honor the Lord with your possessions, And with the first fruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine.

This morning I; yes I picked two more bags of squash. Praise God our vats are overflowing with squash!

Our First Harvest of 2012!

Here are a few sample pictures of our squash harvest over the weekend. We picked (well I should be truthful and say that the Farmer picked it all; E and I were fixing breakfast at the time) an entire grocery store bag full. I am pleased to say that we were able to have several helping as well as freeze around four quarts for all of it. I always love the fresh taste of squash. It's one of my favorites from the garden. Little E seemed to love her first taste of it as well. We got a very loud "Mmmm" from her after each bite.

Me and Daddee

The following is a guest post by little miss E

I asked my mommy if I could share a picture of me and my daddee on the farm. Here it is! He's taking me to go ride the tractor, that's my favorite!

All natural organic farming

  Here is a picture of part of our garden this year. This is how we can farm organically and without the use of pesticides on our vegetables. The black plastic is also proven to yield a 40% higher crop harvest.

This is our first year using the Kennco bedder/layer to plant our vegetables in and we are very excited to see how well it is going to work for us. The plastic keeps the weeds out while holding water and heat for the plants. The garden looks so beautiful and neat with all the rows in it now. We almost look like professionals if I do say so myself. :) LOL.

Farm Fun

So I was down at the barn and trying to take some pictures today and this is all I was getting...

Billy Jean's head. Billy Jean is our herd Billy Goat; he is quite a goat. As you can see he is a polled goat, this means he doesn't have horns. Being new to this farm stuff means I am still getting used to all the farm animals so because of that I require no horned males of any kind on the property. I think it's mostly an intimidation factor with me but never the less I don't want anybody getting funny and coming after me with horns. All that being said if Billy Jean had horns I would still adore him. He is a goat but he thinks he's a dog and he has quite a reputation. He is known for getting in our cars and trucks and blowing the horn... not sure how or why this originally happened but it still makes me laugh to this day. He is also a really good pick pocketer. Don't dare come on the farm with food in your pockets because not only will he find it but he will be sure to take all of it and the crumbs. 

If you ever get to meet him you are in for a treat that's for sure. 

Mrs. Piggy

Here are some new additions to the family.

Our Ossabaw Island sow delivered today.
We have seven new baby piglets! 

It was very excited to go and see them in their first few hours.

They are about the size of a newborn puppy. All are doing well.
Praise God for more babies on the farm.
It's days like this that make all the late nights, early morning, and hot days seem worth while.