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.

A new look!

I'm not sure if Mona Lisa looks any different to you all from her last debut on the blog, but she's defiantly got a new look about her. On Tuesday evening this past week we picked up our "little dexter" from a near by Farm where we had taken her to be breed. Upon pick up I quickly noticed just how small our cow really was compared to the others in the field. Like I have mentioned before Mona Lisa is a Dexter which is a miniature dual purpose breed. I have not been around cows much so there for she was actually kind of large to me since I am always in the field with goats. When we first brought her home she made me quite nervous with her size and nervousness since all our goats are like pets. This time I couldn't get over how small she seemed to me when I got up close with the others in the field. I am sure thankful that we chose the Dexter's now cause those other BIG cows can stay in their own field!

Mona Lisa is expected to calf early next year. Her due date is actually my birthday and I can't think of a better present than to have a new little calf!

Cuties

Our ever growing family! Lucy Lue and her three new babies at one day old.

Drawing the line...

Well I think I said that I was no longer going to allow baby chickens in my house. Never say never... cause it came back to get me. Last weekend my husband called to inform me that I would be needed at the house by noon that Saturday. As I pondered what he said on the way home I could only imagine what was in store for me. Yes, you could probably guess it by now but he had more animals to add to our farm. He pulled up with a truck full of baby chickens. So here they are in my laundry room sink once again. We've got 12 new cornish rock meat chickens! Oh how I am looking forward to having these in the fridge soon.

The final Run

Our Chicken Tractor

With the help of some wonderful friends we got a chicken run added to the girl's new home this weekend. It was great having the help and we can't thank the Smith family enough. Especially the boys who fished the hens out form under the coop so I didn't have to do it! I sure appreciate that! Thankfully the chickens quickly learned how to use their ramp to get back into the coop and I don't have to do the chasing anymore. I can't decide who is happier about that the chickens or myself.

A new home... for the chickens that is

Everyone came together to help get the chicken's new home completed. Boy was I excited to move those little girlies out of my house! Above is our smallest but most passionate helper on the farm.

Even more babies

Yes, as you can see we have even more babies at the Branch Farm this week!

I went from pigs in my yard to chickens in my sink. Maybe I should begin to draw the line somewhere! (they are in my laundry room sink, not kitchen sink yuck that'd be gross). These little guys were given to us as a gift for my husband's birthday. What a perfect git it was! He couldn't have asked for anything better, we love new additions to the farm. Plus I love the fact that the chicken coop I purchased over a year ago finally got put together for these little guys; oops I mean girls. We have six rhode island red hens. They will be kept under a heat lamp for about another week then let out into our garden to do what they do best.... spread manure and pick the ground. We can't wait to get there help out there!

Feeding the new babies

The past two weeks have been busy at Branch farm. We have been blessed with four new baby goats. And we believe that at least two more are still to come. One of our favorite goats Lucy Lie is pregnant as well and will deliver any day now. We welcome two girls and two boys so far.

Below are Ellie May and Jethro.

Rotational grazing and Fencing

And no I don't mean the sport fencing. Although I sometimes wish I was. I mean the posting digging and wire stretching kind of fencing. Ah!
Early on we decide that we were going to run an all natural as close to nature operation on our farm. Oh boy, did we know what was in store for us.
Since we prefer not to feed our animals with any store bought products or feed we are having to section off areas of our farm for them to graze. We had no idea at first what this meant. But we do now. It means lots and lots of work. But hard work never hurt anyone right... I beg to differ!

Our farm started out completley fenced in. However we had fenced in the land with barb wire. This only works to keep goats in.... well I should say sometimes keeps the goats in. There were numerous occasions that we were called by a fellow neighbor or even the local police letting us know that once again our lovely goats had escaped. I remember the last call a little to well. Back about a year and a half ago we were leaving my parents house heading home after a wonderful meal prepared by my mother. I was about six months pregnant and stuffed to the gill with food and a baby. It was around 11:30 p.m. and my husband's phone rang. We have a 24 hour fire, water, and storm emergency service business so at that time of night it usually means a job. My husband answered the phone with excitement only to hear it was the local sheriff calling to let us know our famous goats were in someone's garden. AH!!! So at mid-night I had my big pregnant belly out in a field chasing our goats home yelling at them as loud as I could with my husband in the truck with the headlight shining on me leading the way. Before you say anything about my husband not being in the field running them down please understand something. He is a man's man and a country boy at heart. Country boys don't drive anything but big loud  diesel trucks that must be stick-sifts. And as you can guess I can't drive a stick shift. So there I was stuck chasing the goats home.
If questions I get when I tell this story is... How did they know they were your goats? Funny, it's not like they have collars or anything. Let's just say we have famous goats... famous for getting out of our fences.
So enough about the goats and on to the fencing again. In a nut shell we are re-fencing in the entire farm to house all of farm animals and proper rotate them to graze. This will give us happy health animals that do not need any additional food resources, saving us money as well as keeping the animals in a nature state instead of how commercial farms grow them.