There are a few reasons that we chose Katahdin’s for our sheep on the farm. For starters we absolutely knew that we did not want to be shearing. I learned all about that in 4-H and really just did not want to mess with it. If we did not have plans for the wool, I just did not see the reason to mess with wool sheep.
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What is a hair sheep? A hair sheep is exactly what it sounds like! It grows hair instead of wool. And this hair actually sheds in the spring time, allowing the sheep to be cooler for the spring and summer months. The hair will grow back in the fall to keep them warm over the winter.

Katahdin’s traditionally used only for meat production as a mid sized breed but are also used for milk in some areas. Ewes typically have good maternal instincts, which is a good trait when you want to your farm to run itself. If you are constantly ending up with bottle babies and hand rearing animals, there is going to be a lot of time that is better spent.

A great trait of the Katahdin’s is they are great grazers. One of our goals when picking our ruminants was to make sure Stephen did not have to spend too much time mowing each week. We believe we have put together a great group of livestock that will keep our soil and grass healthy, while also keeping it trimmed to a manageable level.

Katahdin’s are adaptable to many climates and are proven to be resistant to parasites that usually plague other sheep breeds. This is highly dependent on the genetics of your given sheep, but is part of the breed as well.

We have enjoyed our Katahdin’s so far! And definitely enjoy their lean and mild flavored meat!  

Never had a duck egg? Wondering why some people love quail eggs? Let’s take a look at some fun facts of each and compare the nutritional values so you can make an educated choice on how to fuel yourself and your family!
Each egg offers different benefits and uses. Each has a slightly different texture. Where duck eggs are excellent for baking due to their creamy yolks, you may not want to crack 30 quail eggs to meet your recipe needs, right?

FUN FACTS:
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Quail:

1. Quail eggs are used as a natural remedy for a variety of health problems such as allergies, asthma, and digestive issues.
2. Considered a delicacy in many cuisines!
3. High yolk to white ratio, making a great use for high yolk needing recipes such as ice cream.

Duck:

1. Duck eggs can usually be stored longer due to their thicker shell than a chicken egg.
2. Chinese Egg Drop Soup is traditionally made with Duck Eggs!
3. Known to have a higher nutritional value than chicken eggs but much harder to find and more expensive!

Chicken:

1. One of the most commonly consumed foods in the WORLD!
2. Chicken eggs can come in various colors ranging from white to brown to pink to green to even purple!
3. The color of the shell does not affect the nutritional value of the egg, that is all in how the chicken is kept and what it consumes.

 
Now let’s take a look at the nutritional facts of the eggs. This is based off of 100g of each type of egg. These items will all vary on how the animal is raised and what it consumes for its diet, so these numbers are estimates. In order to choose the egg that is right for your family, you’ll need to look at what factors are most important for your nutritional goals. More protein? Less carbs? More vitamins? Just because duck eggs are what we eat, doesn’t mean that is what is best for you!

​I hope some of this information helps you determine if your family will be sticking with chicken eggs or looking for a local farmer or store that carries duck or quail eggs to help fuel you and your family the best way possible!

In our home, there is a time and place for all the eggs!

A question we often get is why did we go with only Rhode Island Red chickens?? Several reasons! The first and most important reason is NOSTALGIA!

My grandparents had Rhode Island Reds and ONLY Rhode Island Reds. So that’s what I wanted.

When we first started out we ended up with Golden Comets because I did not want to brood chicks in our neighborhood home. We wanted point of lay pullets. We found a farmer (Fresh Start Farm in Gloucester) who sold Golden Comets at 17 weeks, so that’s what we got!

Since buying our farm we jumped on getting from Rhode Island Reds and we will eventually transition our laying flock to mainly RIRs, at least for a while. I do not want to hatch mixed breed chicks (after the first summer) and we will need better infrastructure to ensure that mix breeds to not happen.
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Some awesome things about Rhode Islands!!!

1. They a great egg layers! We can expect anywhere between 250-300 egss per year from each of our hens. Now this is not the most from a breed (Golden Comets lay more for example) but it is still one of the top layers.
2. They are cold hardy. RIR do not mind the cold. Though those with large combs and wattles are more susceptible to frost bite, they fair well in snow and cold climates.
3. They are heat tolerate. We are in Virginia which is neither super-hot nor super cold. We need a good medium bird that can handle both the summers and the winters. RIRs are good for this.
4. Their temperament is generally very good. Though they are not the cuddliest breed, they are not typically aggressive.
5. RIRs are a great dual purpose breed as the roosters can grow up to 8.5 pounds, making a good size bird for your dinner table.

 
When choosing the breed for your family and farm it is important to take these things into consideration.

1. Egg needs for your family
2. Your location i.e. Summer/Winter Temps
3. Temperaments to consider for children or elderly
4. Dual Purpose or plan for roosters if you are hatching on your own

I am sure there are things that I have missed but hopefully these lists have gotten your minds rolling about what to consider before hitting the feed store this spring!!
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Histoplasmosis!!

You heard me. THINK TWICE. There is more than just buying chicks and getting all the things ready to bring those chicks home from the feed store. Did you know that you can get sick from breathing in the spores from their poop?! There is a reason why those of us who continuously raise chicks don’t do it in our homes!

We have brooder houses, barns, designated areas that are outside of our houses, for our chicks to live! One set of chicks in your house, the odds are probably in your favor, but if this is a hobby you think you are going to continue, you need to look into a real setup, outside.

The first summer hatching, we had a bunch of chicks in the master bathroom and my pops said, “you know I got real sick as a boy, those chickens in the house are dangerous.” I had no idea. I immediately looked it up. Instantly found out we were in fact putting everyone at risk for a lung infection caused by a fungus called histoplasma capsulatum. This fungus is spores found in bird poop. It is most often found in the soil that contains droppings from birds or bats. When these spores become airborne – as they often do with active and flighty chicks, they can be inhaled by their human caretakers and cause infection.

Histoplasmosis can cause flu-like symptoms such as fevers, coughs, and chest pain. This can be especially dangerous for people with compromised immune systems. If someone in your home is immunocompromised – maybe you shouldn’t bring those chicks home. Find a friend to raise chicks for you, and bring them home when they can be off heat. Or find a farmer that is selling pullets that are just about at point of lay. There are plenty of options for you, even if you still want some backyard chickens.
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Stay healthy out there, chicken lovers!

~A quick lesson on turning a negative into a positive~

How did we get here? And I don’t mean how we ended up on a farm with over a hundred animals. I mean how did we get here. Right now, right here, years before we intended. You see, we had bought a house and completely gutted it and designed it exactly how we wanted. Yes it was a little small but it was perfect for now. Until we were ready to go ahead and take the plunge on our homesteading dreams. Our plans got moved up.
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So we got some puppies! These puppies were supposed to stay small (Boston Terrier and King Charles Cavalier Spaniel mixes). They did not stay small. They very quickly realized they could jump the little chain link fence in the back yard. So, we had to move up our plans of replacing the fence in the back and adding a safety fence in the front. So we did this. Our neighbors knew of our plans to do this. A few days before we did this one of our neighbors became aware of a restriction document for the neighborhood that said no fences in front of the dwelling. So we took a ride around the neighborhood and discovered that a bunch of other homes had fences in front of their homes. With other homes having the same violations, it makes the document obsolete. (There was also sections saying no campers or trailers or businesses to be run out of the homes, and absurdly enough, NO CHICKENS).

Let’s step back for a second. This community had a Volunteer Community Association, of which I was a board member. I talked to no less than five of the other board members about this fence that we decided to put up, after we found out about this document. Each of these people told us to just go ahead and do it. So we did.

The fence goes up. We plant our front yard vegetable garden and the fence is acting as a trellis for our cucumbers and our squash. Being an active member of the board, I am getting ready to host my third fundraiser since we joined this volunteer association. Something that had not been done in a decade in this neighborhood. The playgrounds were rotted and unsafe for the children to use. So what do you do? You raise money. I put hundreds of dollars into this trying to get $3500 for the new playgrounds, and you know what? We got it.

So what happens directly after I run the third fundraiser? We get a letter in the mail from the president of the association, dated prior to the last fundraiser, telling us to take down the fence or else. We didn’t take the fence down. It was keeping our children in the yard instead of the road and our food was growing on it! The bylaws of the association didn’t mention the restrictions and so to us it was not a deal breaker on being a member. So they sent another letter, saying that we are dismissed from the association and our pool membership had been revoked. Our four-year-old was on the swim team. There were three weeks left of swim team. These people told a four-year-old he couldn’t go swimming anymore.

But you know what else they said? We were no longer allowed in the park! You know that one that I personally spent hundreds of dollars on and countless hours trying to raise money for new equipment. These people were so heartless and such bullies that they took that away from our children. The worst part was that you didn’t even have to be a member of the association to use the park! So had we never joined this association we wouldn’t even had an issue with the park and wouldn’t have been allowed in the pool anyways. They say it’s a thankless job and I never did it for the thanks. What they don’t tell you is that a bully will always be a bully and their children will also be bullies, and if you find one of these adults, you should stay far away because nothing they are a part of will ever be worth needing to associate with them.

Our family being kicked out of the association and mostly the park, caused a huge uproar in the neighborhood. People liked us. It was really just two bullies on the board that had an issue. I have the old emails to prove it. Lots of neighbors wanted us to sue them, which we could have, and bankrupted them. But that wasn’t fair to all the people who lived there who had nothing to do with this. We weren’t going to do that to all the other innocent children just because some nasty people did it to ours. What were we going to do? Move. And you know what moving does? It grandfather’s that fence into the property so no one can ever tell the owners they can’t have it, ever again. And that is how we started on a house hunt only one year after moving into our home.

It might all seem petty but I was seven months pregnant with our fourth child, this drama and overbearing uncomfortableness really took a toll on my body and my mental health. We did not buy into that neighborhood because it was the best thing since sliced bread. We bought there because it was cheap. Cheap cheap. We lost friends over this. We simply did not want to be there anymore, could not be there anymore, for our mental health, and for our children.

These bullies pushed us into our future that we thought was ten years away. Our future is now. We are living our dreams, our dreams are becoming our reality. We have our bullies to thank. 

 I’d love to report that everything is going swimmingly! It is not. So typically the GPS System is mounted to the roof of the customer’s house, but we have a metal roof so it is mounted to a 6x6 pole outside that we have electric on. Now this is not an issue EXCEPT.
The dogs reside underneath our garage when they are not out on the prowl. ALL of our buildings have metal roofs. The garage has a metal roof. Being underneath the metal roof for an extended period of time seems to be interacting with the signal their collars receive from the sattelites for the GPS systems. Whether or not this is actually making the system not work properly, we do not know for sure.

If this was the only issue we were dealing with I don’t think it would be a huge deal at this point. 4 of our 6 dogs are getting irritations from the contact points of the collars. They are now all on antibiotics prescribed from our veterinarian. We have them on a 2 dogs on, 2 dogs off, duty case right now, with no collars on at all, while their irritated skin heals. Our Boston mixes are not showing any signs of irritations from the new collars. We think this may be because their collars come off every night. Where the 4 LGDs collars were only coming off every 3-4 day (at night) until now. The Boston mixes are not working dogs, so they are up at night, every night, and have no reason to be out.

The third issue we are having with the system is the battery life! We were sold on a minimum of a 2 day battery life. We are barely getting 1 day out of the batteries. Our sales guys seem to think this is due to the constant search for the satellite signal while the dogs are under the metal roofs. 1 day battery isn’t what was advertised – but is still totally doable. Less than one day and we are going to have a problem.

I hope our next update has some more positives to share. We definitely have our fingers crossed that things start looking up as we were are banking on this system working on keeping our dogs safe from the road. Not mention keeping the motorists safe, as well. 

Look – We KNOW our property is super duper windy. BUT we once again tricked ourselves into thinking we could stake something down real good and it would be ok.
Last summer I bought one of those make it yourself green houses with the metal rods that you screw together and drape a plastic cloth over top to make a green house. We just got around to building it as its time to start sowing those first vegetable seeds for the garden. This thing did not have any pop in place rods. They were ALL screws. Took Stephen almost a whole day to build. That is a lot of time to designate to something here. It has to be worth the time to do that. Spoiler Alert. It wasn’t.

Not 3 days later did we have a torrential down pour and wind storm. I was on the phone with my sister telling her that Stephen built this greenhouse while peering out into the darkness trying to look for it. It wasn’t there. The darn thing was allllll the way down the field. Metal rods broken, plastic tarps caught on some of the t post fencing (that doesn’t yet have a fence on it). I get off the phone and go inside to get Stephen. Who is in fact pisssssed that he spent a whole dat building this now destroyed green house.

We tredge out in the rain and wind and carry this thing into the garage where it sat for a week while we tried to figure out what to do with it. Eventually we came up with a plan to hang some remaining rods from the tresses in the barn. We drape the now ripped plastic tarp over top of the salvaged metal rods. We find our old grow lights that we used to use. Find an unused space heater in the house. And now we have an in-barn green house. Not exactly the eco-friendly, outdoor, sun utilizing green house I wanted this year. But this is what we are going to be using. Probably for a couple years.
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Until we can afford an actual structure, this is what we will have to use. The fact that we have anything at all, we are grateful. Not everything works out the way you want it to. Some things come from something else that failed. 

We have A LOT of dogs! Our two Boston Terrier mixes came from our neighborhood days. When we first got them as puppies they did great in our little neighborhood backyard. Eventually they started jumping our little chain link fence and we had to upgrade to a 6ft privacy fence, no problem, we planned on doing that anyways. When they started digging under the 6ft fence we put some ground blockers in so they couldn’t dig. THEN they started JUMPING the 6ft fence. At that point we called Jarid with Loyalty Canine Services LLC and he trained our two Boston mixes (Marshall and Andre). He did a great job and we didn’t have to worry about them anymore.

Jarid trains with E-collars and we are totally cool with that. The boys learned some simple commands with him that we continued training with at home. We chose Jarid after reading some good reviews and that he was based in Gloucester, where we were planning on moving to. We knew he would be local to our new location.

After we moved and purchased some more chickens from our favorite chicken man (and mentor) Jeffrey Klaiss with Fresh Start Farm, he very easily convinced us that we needed some Livestock Guardian Dogs to take care of flock and ever-growing inventory(?) collection(?) of farm animals. At that time, we purchased two unrelated puppies from him, a male and female that we plan on breeding in the future. These two puppies are now almost a year old and are known as Curtis and Missy. Side note: is anyone following the theme in names of the dogs yet??

As Curtis and Missy grew through their first year they have become more and more adventurous. We never thought that they would get to the road, or think about crossing it. Marshall and Andre are a different story – they have no car sense; they were in the road from the get-go. Jarid came over a couple of times to help us work with them on the new property to help them learn their boundaries here. Curtis and Missy never got formal training from Jarid, but they do have the same E-collars that Marshall and Andre wear.

These collars barely phase them. Now before they started getting to the road is when we got the E-collars and had our first consultation with Invisible Fence out of the Newport News location. Charlie came up and met with us; talked about the in ground system and the GPS system that they offer. Neither Stephen nor I were ready to put out that kind of money for the system and went ahead and got the E-collars for Curtis and Missy.

As Curtis and Missy started approaching a year old, Curtis became super wandery. At first, he was going over to the elementary school and we’d get calls in the morning when children were about to come to school. So we started kenneling him in the morning.

Next, we were having people call Stephen’s number a couple times a week, saying they have Curtis. Now, to be fair, most the time Curtis was still on our property – but on the side of the road. So he was a tornado watch, not a tornado warning. Until one night. Or should I say morning? One morning at 3am there was some loud banging on the doors. It’s the po-lice. My kids are too young to be brought home by the police. It’s Curtis. Curtis was brought home by the police because he was crossing the road at 3am. Coming home (sober) at 3am. Curtis lost his roaming privileges. He was been kenneled unless we are outside with close eyes on him. That is not his job. That is not his purpose in life.

We now have two more puppies that need good guidance and training from the older members of the pack. We need Missy and Curtis to be able to train them, with free range of the farm. They cannot train them if they are kenneled most the time. Especially if they are kenneled at night. The two new pups are Kimberly (Kimmy) and Calvin. 

I called Charlie with Invisible Fence the next day to start the process of getting the GPS System installed on the property. (Appointments and install times, this is not an immediate thing). We wanted the GPS System so our LGDs are still able to roam and chase off and predation threats, but not get across the road. At this point they should be restricted to behind the fence but have free range of all our acres.

GPS Systems do fail. But I hope it doesn’t ever fail with Curtis (or anyone else) on the wrong side of the road. All we can do is our best, and this is the absolute best system on the market. We are glad that our pups that we have worked hard training to protect our livestock and poultry investments are going to be free to roam the property once again.
I hope to be able to report back in a couple months or a few weeks that all is well and sound with our system and our pack of dogs. 

Invisible Fence
Loyalty Canine Services
​Fresh Start Farm
**I receive no loyalties for the links shared here. 

Where did our slogan come from??

Growing up every time we went to our family vacation home, a lake house, we would ask my dad how his day was going and he would answer "just another day in paradise." He didn't say this at home. His life was stressful. Full of employees who didn't do their jobs, constantly stealing or complaining. Coming in late, making excuses. The lake house was his escape, his paradise. That's half the story. 

When deciding what direction Stephen and I wanted to take in our lives it came down to: are we going to stay in a home that is a little bit too small for our family and eventually have a vacation home on a lake or at the beach, or get a larger more comfortable home with some land and build a life that we love waking up to everyday? We chose the life we love waking up to. We didn't want to have an escape. We wanted our everyday life to be the escape. What we are building IS our paradise. We do not have to go to the beach to find paradise, we live it, everyday of our lives. And there our slogan was born. Just another day in agricultural paradise. Thanks, Pops.