Coyote Ridge FarmsWelcome To Our Rural Blog

I am more than happy to say that the farm’s [new] Farmhand Feedmaster Mixer/mill works.  We had some ground corn on the feed pallet (about 200 lbs) so it’s not like we had to mix feed, but we want to transition away from feeding corn by feeding more small grains.  And with the price of corn being nearly the same (sometimes higher, sometimes lower) as wheat, now is a good time.

Recently, a local farmer had his retirement sale.  The auction was an online auction.  These types of sales are becoming more and more popular in our area, but are still relatively new.  Unfortunately for us, Carol and I had a meeting to attend when the auction was due to end.  There were several pieces of machinery we were interested in, so we put in our maximum bids and hoped for the best.

A few years back, our local TV station did a 2 minute, human interest piece on us, regarding Easter and the giving of animals to children as Easter gifts.

The news gal’s name, who did the piece, was Kaylin Karsin, of KSAX-TV.  This particular piece was the first of two stories – the second was on 4-H.  You get to see many of the critters on the farm.  The interview featured Carol… with a few seconds of Madison, feeding a baby lamb.  Madison was very nervous.  As you can see, Carol did a great job.

I wanted to post the video to help celebrate the holiday.  I apologize to our Facebook users for having already seen the posting of the video earlier.

We were lucky enough to have a few visitors this weekend.  Carol was able to sell some poultry, a duck and a couple of bottle goat kids.

The first of our visitors were a delightful couple that came from Hawick, MN, yesterday… buying a good looking, Kentucky Bourbon turkey hen and a Harlequin drake for their little homestead.

Today, we had two more parties looking for some critters.  A gal from Lavern, MN came out and purchased a doeling.  And the other was a couple from the Danube area.  They had been here before when they purchased some Broad-breasted White turkey poults.  This time, they wanted a Kentucky Bourbon hen to go with the tom, that they had purchased from another farm.  Also, they bought one of Carol’s bottle babies – a Boer-cross buckling named Buster… a real cuddler.

Speedy Delivery just dropped-off a package from the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture.  It was the prize from their fall photo contest.  It seems we won 3rd place for the below photo of one of our Royal Palm heritage turkeys.

This is one of the farm's Royal Palm tom turkeys

The prize was a very nice baseball style cap from our friends at Minnesota Grown.

The hat we won from the MN Dept. of Agriculture

The hand-written Thank-You note stated that the Ag Dept. received many “raves” about how beautiful our Royal Palm turkey was.  We were also thanked for photographing a turkey that most folks have never seen before.  The note was a very nice surprise.

I was just informed that we won 3rd place in photo contest, sponsored by the Minnesota Dept. Of Agriculture.  It was for their fall photo contest.

This is one of the farm's Royal Palm tom turkeys

The above photo was chosen from pictures sent in by contestants from around the state and collected over a 4-6 week period.

The Royal Palm turkey is probably the most beautiful turkey of all the heritage breeds, with its striking contrast of colors.  This breed of turkey is better known for its decorative qualities than its taste.  Nonetheless, it has a very good flavor.  Our farm raises approx. 6-10 Royal Palms each year for the Thanksgiving/Christmas seasons.  Our best seller is the Kentucky Bourbon Red.

Here’s hoping everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving.  And may you continue to enjoy the Holiday weekend.

On Thanksgiving Eve, with a report of bad weather coming in, I decided to hang a little Evergreen garland on our post & rail fence.  I installed the fence a few weeks back to help dress-up the farm-site.  To add to that during the holiday season, Carol & I thought we should add the garland.  Lucky for us, Carol found some artificial garland at the local, 2nd-hand store.  It was cheap, cheap, cheap.  Even though the outside temp. was sub-freezing with snow,  it really wasn’t too bad.  On the flip-side, the forecast for Thanksgiving day sounded horrible – we had a winter storm advisory so it was hang the decorations on the fence tonight or wait.  I finished the task in the dark.

When I was driving out of the field this afternoon, with the rake behind the Farmall H, I noticed a small, old SUV driving very slowly on the highway.  I mean it was going between 5-10mph… very slow.  At first I thought it may have been someone I knew, thinking they would stop near the field approach and wait for me to get there.  But when the vehicle kept going I thought it to be unusually odd.

Are we truly a turkey rescue now? Well, no. But this is turkey country here in west-central Minnesota and some local folks who work at one of the area turkey hatcheries saved 2 poults (turkey chicks) from certain death. Now we have them.

This morning we had guests – a young couple.  When they drove into the yard, we were prepared to tell them we were sold out of eggs.  With the nationwide contaminated egg recall, small farm eggs are in high demand and selling out of eggs is now the common theme.  We were somewhat relieved they weren’t here for eggs.  When they walked to the rear of their vehicle, Carol thought they were here to drop-off an unwanted rabbit (we get that a lot).  That too was not the case.  Carol said that when she walked around to the back of the truck, there was a shoe box with two small turkey heads sticking out of the holes in it.  Cool!

Carol, the girls and I headed south to the Granite Falls, MN area.  Our mission was to look at a Scottish Highlander bull that we’re interested in leasing for the summer.  We heard of this bull (name Curly) from Farmer Mike, who called me last week.  He asked if we’d found a sire for our four cows.  When I regretfully told him no, he mentioned he had gotten a phone call from a fellow farmer and among other things, this farmer asked if we had gotten a bull for the summer.  It seems the guy’s aunt had a Highlander that she may be willing to lease… and that’s how we got to this point.