It’s been a loooong time since we’ve posted anything, but the winter months are slow for us with no garden and no animals to tend to. Most of the winter is spent dreaming up plans for the coming spring, and now that it’s spring, it’s time to put those plans into action!
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
- We made the broiler schedule and plan on raising 350 birds this year, up 50 from the 300 that we raised last year.
- We ordered the first two batches of broilers.
- We planned our vegetable garden and ordered all of the seeds that we’ll need. Steph is going to start a cut flower garden for bouquets this year, so we also ordered flower seeds.
- We’re working on finding a spot in our little house to start our seeds, so we can get an earlier harvest.
- Ryan is currently looking for a place to buy feeder pigs. We’re planning on at least 8 this year.
- He is also looking for a place to buy feeder lambs since we’re going to add lambs to our growing assortment of products.
- The layer hens that we keep year round have enjoyed their greenhouse throughout the winter, and as a result, we’ve had steady egg production. The greenhouse plastic didn’t hold up as well as we’d hoped (see picture below), so we’ll have to do something different next year. They’re excited about the sunshine and got to run around in the 50 degree weather today!
- Like many others, we lost all of our bees to varroa mites, so we’re starting our hive from scratch again this year. Ryan ordered new bees, so we’re hoping for the best this year. We’re going to plant a bee feed mix of wildflowers at the farm to supplement what there already is and give them lots of places to buzz.
As soon as the weather warms up a little bit more, we’ll be putting plastic on our greenhouse and transitioning the layers back out to the pasture to make room for all the little chicks coming in.
Happy spring!!!
Spiked M Ranch 