Where are We Now

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It's hard to believe it's been nearly 2 years since I last posted. So much has changed.

We blew our homestead up into a busy farm producing over a 100 gallons of raw milk per week [both goat and cow]; 100 dozen pastured eggs per month [both duck and chicken]; tons of organic heirloom produce, berries, breads from fresh-ground organic flour; cheese, cream, and butter; over 50 loyal customers; many, many classes on homesteading, dairy goat management, fencing, rainwater harvesting, pastured poultry, wild edible plants . . . Taking a big role as educators on what we do here. PBS came out, newspapers, Animal Planet. We drew the line at a reality show. I took jobs on the side to make ends meet, and to keep expanding here on the farm, while Rachel drowned with everything going on here at home alone.

It's now quiet and empty, as we sold all our stock late last summer. We needed a break. And when you're dairying, milking twice a day, every day of the year, as well as gardening, making deliveries, and processing all that milk, there are no breaks.

With farm life, every day you are fighting Nature; weeds, bugs, rodents, predators, weather, ailments, etc.  That fight gets exhausting and discouraging.

We've also gotten a little bored, and tired, with the area here, and are not quite so content at home. Everywhere I look is work. The house is unfinished, the barn is unfinished, fencing needs redone, porches and decks need built. It's like living at a job-site.

We took the money from selling our animals and invested it in camping gear. We started backpacking in the Smokies, working full-time for one of our biggest dairy customers, and spent most of the winter camping and canoeing in Florida, on rivers such as the Wacissa, Suwannee, and Santa Fe.

All the kids have moved out of the house, so we reconfigured everything inside and now have indoor plumbing. We also started siding the outside:

This year we've got trips out to New Mexico and Oregon. We'll probably spend the winter again in Florida. Occasionally pop through home, and work a little, make back what we've spent, then move on to the next adventure.

I spent my twenties trying to become an Apache Indian. My thirties were dedicated to homesteading. Now here I am at 40 and ready to do something different.

There will soon be a link to our new website [so far untitled], which will cover what lies ahead for us.

It will have a ton of free content . . .  an in-depth gear review, and comprehensive guides to the various places we explore via bike, canoe, car, on foot, with pics, maps, and video. It's that dream I have of living Nowhere that still haunts me. It's the Nowheres that are actually livable that I find best.

Books and articles will be for sale cheap [$5]. My books JUNE, DRIFTERS, and RUNAWAY, covering the early years, before homesteading, are already available here with links on the left. These 3 are captivating and well-written works that I have had NYC agents for. But negotiating the world of orthodox publishing is a lot like Hollywood - I don't have the patience or persistence for it. These books all have the same theme of people trying to break out of society to live a greater, freer, richer life.

We will also have very detailed articles on homesteading based on our years of research and experience in making the small farm work. Topics such as dairy goat management, pastured poultry, making your own animal feed, electric fencing, sheet mulch organic gardening, running the small farm as a business, DIY farm construction, humanure composting, rainwater harvesting, etc. will all be covered in our revolutionary approach that I think is why we got so much attention. These articles will ultimately be organized into a book on modern homesteading.

Our new blog will have some discussion on the pros and cons of a settled vs. nomadic lifestyle. Of Ex-farmers taking Nature just as it is and embracing it.

Hopefully the books and articles will generate some small income so we can keep traveling, and finding places, and bringing you great stories, without me always falling back on construction. We're most happy living simply, and would love to keep moving in this direction.

Holdout Farm

Midsummer

Check us out on PBS:

Goat Kids

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The past 5 days have been unbelievably busy. All 6 of our does chose to deliver within a 3 day period. Two delivered through the middle of the night so we had to pull an all-nighter. We're still trying to catch up on sleep and nap whenever possible. But 6 does must be milked out twice a day, and the 13 babies must be bottle-fed 4 times a day. We just added it up last night and realized within a month these babies are going to require 5 gallons of milk a day. Some must be sold. We're going to do a photo shoot of all the kids this afternoon and put up ads.

Rachel and I have switched to a new system to handle the workload - she does the milking, and moves from doe to doe. I get them on the stand; groom them; filter, weigh, label, and put up the milk in the ice water bath, and write down the specific amount; keep her udder wash water hot; make sure the does finish their fodder, and put them up; fill the mangers with hay; wash the feed buckets, and top off and warm the does' water. This way we get the whole process of hand-milking 6 does done in under an hour. We nurse the babies by collar color, going from oldest to youngest, and get that done in under 20 minutes. We also work together on fodder, her washing grain and traying up, me washing trays and doing the rinsing.

Most of the deliveries went fine, with not too much assistance - though there were a few with malpresentation where Rachel had to straighten things out. The babies are all very healthy and have great vitality. They're all currently living up in the goat house. We've got the duck box, a bin on its side, lots of hay, and a large kennel draped with blankets inside the old coop for additional warmth. Though we've had day after day of snow and cold the babies are doing fine. I also took two old cold frames that were falling apart, cut the plexiglass, and made windows for the old coop so it's completely draft-free. It stays much warmer in there than outside in the attached stall:

Our first freshener Samanchas all had twins - one doeling, one buckling, except Pinkie - she had two doelings. We only expected twins from Pinkie, so twins from all of them is a great sign. And they've all nearly already made the first freshener cut of 1/2 a gallon of milk a day, just a few days into milking. We hope to get 3/4 a gallon of milk a day from each doe when they're at peak production.

Here is Pinkie and Shadow's mother, Marley, our top milker. This is a photo of her bagged up just before delivery - her udder is bigger than a basketball! And she coolly delivered triplet doelings. She's got a great pedigree:

She's looking a little ragged as she overproduces and we'll fight to keep her weight up all year. We've started this year milking her out 3 times a day to resolve her severely congested udder. Tomorrow we're switching her to 2 times a day as it's nearly cleared up. 4 days into milking, she's already producing a gallon a day. Last year she peaked at 5 quarts.

Cayenne and Sprite both had sets of large beautiful twins, one buckling, one doeling, in each set. Cayenne and Sprite are already over 3/4 a gallon a day and hopefully soon will make the gallon-a-day cut for a mature milker.

I've got the trailer working, and hauled back a last round of scrap boards for the garden:

The interior of the garden is now finally finished. I tore apart the old concrete block fireplace and used the blocks for retaining walls around the perimeter. This whole project only cost the price of the screws - maybe $30. But it did take 2 months of labor:

The beds along the perimeter where not taken up with perennials will be used for herbs.

The next project is clearing the fence line for the creek pasture, and putting in the electric fence. This next pasture should be easily over an acre, and it will be the lushest pasture in browse we've got.

20 degrees this morning, after 3 days of snow. Anybody sick of winter yet?
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Mid Winter

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So far 7 of the 9 garden beds are done. I've got enough scrap wood left for 1 more. Then I'll have to go to the mill and see what old stock he's got laying around that I can get cheap.

Great neighbors brought over an old utility trailer for us they don't have any use for. It looks to be in good shape, and rated for 2000 lbs. All it needs is a new tire. And of course a ball hitch for the Explorer. Once I've got it fixed up I can haul the wood from the mill myself.

It's been a very busy week. Tuesday was Rachel and I's anniversary. Yesterday we had people here all day. In the morning we had a fodder class for a fellow producer of raw goat milk. Through the afternoon RIVR Productions was here shooting hours of footage of the property and interviews with Rachel and I. They're putting together a preview for an Animal Planet show called "Living on the Edge", about people living off-grid. There are only 2 finalists for the pilot, but if the show is serialized they'll probably feature us. Then a family came to buy Josie, checked out the barn and fodder and we talked humanure. They also practice composting human waste, and may come back for a class or two.

This is Buffy, our new addition to the farm:

She's a toy rat terrier mutt a customer brought over since we've had so much vole trouble. He said she catches rodents daily over at their place. The girls decided to call her Buffy [a.k.a The Vole Slayer], but she hasn't gotten a vole yet. So far she's lazy as sin and will nap all day. But she's an absolute angel inside - the best mannered dog I've ever seen. Buffy's a little chubby and could lose a pound or two. We'll soon be switching her off kibble to a raw meat diet and we'll see if that picks up her energy a little. Rachel's been dropping little pieces of kibble down the vole holes and it does get her interested in the holes. She's a little nervous about digging though - worried she'll get in trouble. So far she hasn't seen or caught anything.

We know the voles are here. After eradicating them from the shed area we found babies wiping out the turnip crop. We managed to kill 3 while harvesting what was left of the turnips [not much]. Then they went after the mustards, and they had to be dug up and fed to the goats. The yard is now Swiss cheese - there are vole holes everywhere. They have no interest in bait, we can't find runs, so trapping is useless. If Buffy doesn't become the vole hunter we're hoping, we'll try some more rat terriers, raising them as pups, and exposing them to the rooster early so they learn a lifelong lesson to fear and dread chickens.

Harley's friend's dad brought over a cord of split oak he couldn't use as he has no stove. It'll need a month or two to season, but it's a nice gift:

Our seedlings are taking off under the shop lights in the loft nursery. It's our first year starting onions from seed, and the Brussels and Lettuce are doing really well - nearly big enough to transplant. Our Alpine strawberries we're trying from seed are also sprouting up:

We're about to plant our peas [trying Mr Big Pea this year]. It's so much easier putting in the poles and rope for vines with the new bed framework to tie into:

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Snow

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Snow yesterday. And snow again all day today:

Flurries tomorrow.

We've had to struggle through the weather lately.  We've got the ground floor of the barn reasonably cleaned out, and have started getting the goat house ready for kidding. I've put a run door back in, and made a door for the goat house addition out of a piece of utility panel. Once we get hinges, the old coop door will go back on, and then we just need to clean out the floor of the old coop and put in fresh bedding. We may run a line of extension cords from the barn up there so we have a plug-in light for the late-night bottle feedings.

Rachel's ordered all her kidding supplies. She's printed out an exhaustive list of delivery complications and how to cope with them - so that in the panic of the moment we know how to handle it if something goes wrong. Last year Mabel and Onyx did fine, and Rachel only assisted in pulling one of Josie's legs out when she noticed she was coming nose-first.

I've been working on putting up more orange mesh along the bottom of the fence line, so once we get another pasture gate in [with chicken door] we can expand the hens' range. We'll have over an acre for 12 birds . . . plenty of room to increase the flock.

The floor of the barn coop is cleaned out, and bedded deeply with sawdust [the old bedding went into the swales behind the upper blueberries]. The hens are laying very well with the increase in sprouted lentils. They're now sprouted up green into shoots - something that happened accidentally as we were overproducing to get caught up, and the fodder and lentils took off. The birds love them green. The lentils used to be the last thing they ate, now they're the first.

We're getting an average of over 7 eggs a day in the middle of winter from 11 pullets. We're pretty happy with that. They laid 10 the other day. 8 today. And finally all the Araucana hens are in production, as we got 5 eggs from 5 hens today. One of them still has a small blue starter egg. The few voles they had can't fully account for the increase, since they're long gone [and the hens may not have eaten the last few, as we discovered a rat tunneling in and out of the coop]. Our feed cost is now under 60 cents a day for the birds. A daily average of 7 eggs is worth $3.50. The birds are paying for their own feed, and easily covering one of our bills. There's also the benefit of their copious fertilizer, bug-eating, and their entertaining presence on the farm in general. Raised as day-olds they're very friendly, and mob me when I go out to feed, some flying up into the bucket I'm carrying to get the first bits. So far we have not lost a single bird since the electric fencing went in, 6 months ago.

The Araucana rooster has turned out great. He's a good guardian, but not aggressive. I found him in a nest box the other day making a nest, picking up straw with his beak, and softly calling to one of the Araucana pullets - maybe the one that hadn't laid yet. She climbed in and settled in. He then stood halfway out the box, blocking her from leaving, and kept a long soft cooing to her to encourage her to lay. She stayed in so long after he'd left I thought she went broody. I put fresh hay in the duck nest box on the floor since there's now so much traffic with our 3 nest boxes, and he was the first one in calling the hens to check it out. A few did . . . but weren't all that interested.

We've been aggressive with the rodent problem, and so far it seems our tactics have worked. Clearing out all brush around the garden got the voles mostly out of there - we'd found and killed 3 in the beds and haven't seen them since. The voles migrated over to the debris around the shed, and I began seeing them. I noticed one scurrying along one wall inside the shed, so we put out 11 rat traps that night [mouse traps are not nearly big enough for our voles, which are in size about halfway between a mouse and a rat]. We got one along that wall while setting up the traps. We got three more in the same spot that night. That was 4 days ago, and we haven't seen or heard them since. Voles definitely stick to their runs. The traps were baited with chunks of apple sewn to the bait pedal.

We'd noticed something getting into our pumpkin stash in the barn [about 150 pumpkins for the goats], and assumed it was mice. But we noticed some large holes in the ground beneath them, especially when cleaning out the last of the pumpkin rot. A few days ago something dug out a tunnel from outside the barn, underneath the foundation, and into the chicken coop. After some research, the most likely critter was a Norway rat. It was going in to the coop at night and cleaning up the last of the chickens' fodder. It hadn't noticed the eggs yet, or tried going after the birds - though I'm sure it startled them.

We stopped feeding the birds in the coop, cleaned it out, filled the tunnel under the foundation with gravel, packed and covered it. I put out two trays of D-CON bait, both in the barn and out of reach of the chickens - one by his pumpkin burrow, and one by his tunnel from inside the barn into the coop. I also put out 2 rat traps with peanut butter that were not set. The idea is to get him [them] comfortable with eating from the trap before you spring it.

The first night all the bait was gone. We either had a bigger rat problem than we thought, as we'd never actually seen them, or the rat[s] was hoarding it in his burrow. The next night only one tray of bait disappeared. The next night half of one tray. It never touched the peanut butter - maybe wary of traps. Last night no bait was missing. The mostly likely scenario is it's dead. We won't really notice a smell till it warms up.

Fodder is now caught up and overflowing. I think we'll stick to bucket-sprouting the chickens' feed to conserve shelf space for the goats. I tried a little of the birds' fodder on the way out to feed them - a lot like any sprouts at first, but then that wheatgrass flavor hit, and they're as sweet as candy. No wonder the birds love them.

We're moving to using only fresh-ground flour for our breads. The problem is we can't yet afford a grain mill. So Rachel's experimenting with making sprouted bread. The first two loaves were good, a little crunchy, but the third was phenomenal and she's got it down now. It is way better in flavor and texture than any bread I've ever had before. It does take a little sweetener though. The kids call it fodder bread . . . but it's actually not, as the fodder's made from seed wheat, and the wheat we use for sprouted bread is hard red winter. Rachel's tried mashing sprouts in both the food processor and the manual meat grinder, and we've found it turns out best with 2 passes through the meat grinder. So even without a grain mill, we've still got 100% fresh whole wheat bread. And no electricity required.

The goats have been stuck in their stalls over the snowstorm, getting very big, now within a few weeks of kidding. Unfortunately we're running out of hay. Nobody wants to deliver just 2 or 3 round bales all the way out to Sunbright. Square bales which we can haul ourselves are far more expensive - at least twice the price. There's an old trailer I may be able to fix up so we can haul our own hay. That's going to have to move up the priority list.

Here are the big girls, the Lamanchas, veteran milkers, left to right Marley, Cayenne and Sprite:

The Samanchas, soon to be first fresheners, left to right Shadow [the top doe], Lily and Pinkie. Josie's the mini Alpine/Nubian cross, Mabel's doeling, who will shortly go up for sale. Now that the doelings have gotten over 90 lbs, their horns trump the size and age of the Lamanchas [who weigh between 130 and 140], and they're the top goats. They're the first ones through the gate, every time:

We watched a video on some guy's big raw milk operation, with 15 cows . . . not all that great, the video . . . but it got me thinking - wouldn't it be nice to have a dairy parlor. I'd have to tear the shed down over the well, cut down that leaning oak, and build it there. It'd be a sort of all-in-one, full-service parlor with a milking area and stanchions, a dairy processing and storage area, and a room for growing all their fodder. We could handle 16 does in milk this way . . . but would probably have to acquire some adjacent property to expand the pasture. And a milk machine. Very, very, long-term idea . . .

We're constantly updating the HOLDOUT FARM website, and adding new pages. We'll do a marketing blitz once the does are about to kid.
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The Ice Storm

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The ice storm today shut the city down. It's an inside chore day. I'll have to wait till the weather clears to keep going on the garden:

The chickens are laying very well now that the 15% sprouted lentil ration has kicked in. It usually takes about a week before we see the results of a dietary change. Our 11 starter hens were laying an average of 3 to 3.5 eggs a day over the past month. The last 4 days they've laid 26 eggs! That's 6.5 per day. We got 8 today, a record for the new flock:

But they have eaten 2 voles over the last week, and that may be causing the spike. They've also been getting a little fish oil as well, as we're trying eating high-DHA fish twice a week, like herring, salmon, and mackerel, following the research of Weston Price on worldwide indigenous and traditional whole foods diets.

The bucket-sprouting we resorted to to pull the chickens off fodder till we're back on track has done surprisingly well. 2 pounds of grain are filling out into 7 pounds of sprouts quite rapidly, with good root growth. If we can get some green shoots going with a day in the light it may be something to continue with the birds, as we've got limited shelf space, and once the does go into milk they'll eat far more fodder.
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The Goat House

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16 degrees last night and tonight. With the cold wind, it feels like single digits. It never got above freezing today. But it was a record day for eggs, 6 from 11 hens. Which looking at small-scale chicken economics, this is a $2 profit in one day. Not bad for birds . . .

It's great they're increasing laying as the 15% lentil ration kicks in. We've got to fill a customer order for 2 dozen quick.

Fodder at the moment is a crisis. As we expanded production with the does going in to their 3rd trimester, we ran out of trays. We had to skip 2 days till we could get out to Walmart for more trays [fodder does best for us with a very specific tray]. And with fodder, it's like steering a huge ship. Subtle changes hit slowly and cumulatively over time till we started to get short. And once you get short, it can be a downward spiral from there, because the feed you're putting out is under-mature and of less weight so it takes more of it. A fully mature biscuit of fodder on one of our large trays weighs 10lbs. The stage we're feeding it at now it's 3.5lbs. Rachel's stressed, and feels like she's bleeding grain . . . but we keep soaking double batch after double batch and traying everything out till we get caught up. We've had to pull the birds off fodder temporarily, and put them on bucket-sprouted grains and lentils, till we get through the crisis.

Our seedlings are sprouting up, especially the lettuce and onions. The Brassicas are about half up. We'll direct sow the mache on the 1st of February.

I'm now working on framing out the 6th garden bed, bed #9. It's a long labor-intensive project using whatever scraps I can find . . . even some charred pieces from the old burned down double-wide.

So far I've whacked 3 voles with a shovel and fed them to the chickens. They're the only animals I've ever killed. We find them hiding in the garden in the morning under the blankets we're using to protect the last plants they've left us. Of course they've probably been pigging out all night. And whacking down with the shovel takes out a few plants. We've been doing a lot of garden cleanup and brush removal to cut down on vole habitat. I've mowed the area around the garden very short. Once we can find well-used pathways, we'll put out traps.

We've spent much of the long evenings working on the Holdout Farm website. The 'Classes' and 'History' pages are now done.

Rachel and I got a bad cold over the holidays, and mine turned into pink eye. We used fresh juice from our aloe vera plant and that cleared it up rapidly. Rachel and I wonder if there are some immunity benefits from our raw goat milk, because we didn't get sick all year drinking it and now that the does are dry we're out and not feeling as well as we did. Though giving up caffeine has helped.

I built the above addition on the old chicken coop over the summer, so the goats will have more space to run in out of the rain. We now call it the 'Goat House', though it resides in the pasture we still call the 'Coop Pasture'.

It's a 12'x12' addition, and modeled on photos of traditional goat houses on open ranges. It's got a gutter on the back, so we can harvest rain, and is deeply bedded with old tall grass mowed down in the pasture. Since the goats are either in their stalls or out in the wooded 'Marsh Pasture', they don't use it much. But all the does are about to kid soon, and this is where we'll raise the kids. It's a bit of a hassle walking all the way up there and back for bottle-feeding, but it's a nice warm secure shelter away from the older does. We'll probably sell all the kids from the Samancha triplets as they're first fresheners and not proven milkers. But the kids from our mature Lamanchas, who are all good milkers, may be candidates for raising up. We'll have to see how big the demand for our fodder-fed raw goat milk is. So far we've got our existing customer base, and a great deal of local attention from getting the word out on the internet. We may not be able to fill demand this year, and will have to purchase additional does.
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