Tuesday, November 3, 2009

October 2009 Farm Production

Ahhh, it's good to be back. I will say that as time away from the internet wore on (and on), I was getting more and more used to not having it around. But, I am glad to be able to check the bank account, look up a recipe, and keep up with others' blogs once again.

October was a busy month for us with all the building going on, but we still had quite a productive month farm-wise as well. Of course, as I said before, we welcomed our first, born-on-the-farm, calf to new-mom Caroline. She did splendidly, though I would've preferred a less bitter-cold night for calving! She is now producing milk jointly for us and for Norman.
Eggs collected: 220, or 18.3 dozen (about 7/day)
Eggs sold: none

Milk collected: 888 cups, or 55.5 gallons (about 1.8 gallons/day)
From that: 2 lbs mozzarella, 2 lbs ricotta, and lots of milk to the piggies
The pictures are from Norman's short time in our kitchen while we were trying to warm him up and get him started. The box is small, but it helped hold in the heat.

The garden is now put to bed for the winter, though I do have some cleaning up still to do there yet. We are still reaping the benefits of it, however, as we pulled in many, many bags full of green tomatoes to ripen inside. Every few days, we find more red tomatoes in the bags and are still, even past our first snow, enjoying fresh, ripe produce!

Produce preserved:
  • 8 lbs sunflower seeds
  • 8 cups of dehydrated tomato powder
  • 5 pts dehydrated tomato slices
  • 4 pts dehydrated hot peppers
  • 9 pts tomato sauce
In addition to the produce, we also harvested some meat for the freezers. We butchered some older hens, new, young roosters, and our 2 goat wethers. We will miss those boys, but we are grateful for the opportunity to know that our food was healthy and happy in life.

Meat put away:
  • 10 whole chickens
  • 75 lbs goat meat
Unfortunately, we lost one of our bee hives. We have no idea what happened, but they all died. The other hive is doing well and though we weren't able to collect honey from them, we hope that they'll be off and running in the spring. And that's all from the farm!

4 comments:

Marci said...

It is good to hear an update. I am glad that you are back up and running with the internet.

Red Gate said...

Glad your back online! I missed your posts!

At some point, can you post more pics and info on your garden? This is an area I really need to learn about, and you seem to be doing well with it!

Nancy M. said...

Glad you're back! Norman s so cute!

OurCrazyFarm said...

Welcome back! You were missed!
Cute calf pics! Sounds like you had a great month.