Progress

We are making progress. corn and the beans are starting to come up, and the vegitables are doing well.

We planted 5 plum, 6 apple, 4 peach, and 3 pear trees, along with 10 grape vines. So far, they are all alive. The trees are in their second season, and we expect some to yield next year. 2 of the plum trees are yielding right now!

We purchased a herd of dairy goats, 15 does, mostly nubian and alpine. We also bought 2 nubians bucks, so next years kids will be 1/2, 3/4, or full blood nubian. The goats are very low maintenance, living for the most part off of the land. We are not drinking their milk yet, as I am de-worming them. The milk is going to the pigs at the moment, but the goats produce far more milk than we require.

The chickens continue to lay about 6 eggs per day, and the chicks have feathered out. We also bought 3 roosters: 2 Rhode Island Reds, and 1 Jersey Giant. The Jersey Giant is truly a giant bird. We have one Jersey Giant Hen and she lays HUGE eggs, though not as often as the Reds. Although it sounds like we are self suffcient on eggs, we are not. To be truly self sufficient we need to grow our own feed, which we are in the process of doing - corn for this sumer and winter wheat for next spring. Each laying hen will eat about 100lbs of food per year, so we have to put up a lot of feed.

The chicks will not begin to lay until late August, right about the time that the hens will start to lay less due to lower light levels. We hope that they will make up the difference.