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.
A couple of weeks have gone by now and we have been noticing some positive results.
When I was a little kid, my grandmother raised chickens – egg layers. She had a real love for her birds and even though she would often come back to the house with bloodied hands, caused by some of the chickens that didn’t want to give up their eggs, she seemed content with the basket of eggs she would bring to back to the house, twice daily.
Since winter has hit, and hit hard, I spend a lot of time on the internet – doing research, watching DIY videos on YouTube or answering questions from folks who feel they know less about starting a farm than Carol and I. We hear all the time, “You guys are where we wish we were.” Carol and I usually look at each other and giggle to ourselves. We refer to ourselves as newbies/green-horns. It’s hard to think of ourselves as people others would like to learn from. We make so many mistakes or think about how we should have done things differently. We often wonder what the heck we were thinking when we did what we did… when we did it. “Hindsight is 20/20,” they say. They also say, “Hell is paved with good intentions.” Whatever the case, we are not experts. But I digress.
These Sunday morning goat babies seem to be more the rule than the exception. Shortly after Carol dropped Madison off at the church for Sunday School, she came running into the house telling me she needs towels because Crooked Horn has a new baby on the ground. She grabbed a towel and I followed with a couple more.
Mama giving new baby Celeste some love.
Crooked Horn’s baby was almost dry. She looked to be 20-30 minutes old already. Carol named the little doeling Celeste. Since the mother’s belly was pretty good sized yet, we thought she might have another kid, but nope. Celeste was the only one. So far, both mother and doeling are doing pretty good.
As some of you may have heard, yesterday was National Pancake Day. The thing is, when the Minnesota Vikings play football we have pizza… and yesterday the Vikes played [and won]. We decided to have pancakes tonight… in honor of yesterday’s declaration.
1 cup flour
1 tbs granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
½ tsp cinnamon
½ cup pumpkin puree (I used my own frozen pumpkin from my garden)
½ tsp vanilla
1 farm fresh egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbs butter. melted
INSTRUCTIONS:
Combine first 7 ingredients in a bowl. In another small bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Now, mix them together. The batter should be pourable thin. I fried mine on a greased griddle set at 375 F degrees.
Some of you know that Carol grew up as a ‘Townie‘. With that said, more folks know her as a farm gal. But being on the farm for only 2 years, there are many experiences left to explore.
The last 2 days, Carol has found herself outside the ring of a couple local-ish livestock auctions, looking for goats & chickens. It seems we are selling more livestock and poultry directly to our customers than we think we can replace sustainably. It’s a good position to be in [business-wise] but we want all of our customers (present and future) to be able to buy the meat they want and still have a good selection in which to do so. So, Carol has been looking primarily for more meat goats as well as a dairy goat or two… the last few weekends, we have been selling-out of raw goat milk too.
The day was cool and rainy, but that didn’t stop our visitors from coming out from St Cloud, MN. Visitors? I should say new farm customers. Three younger fellows searched the Internet for goat meat and our farm came up in the search engines. We were the closest.
Folks from WI are a fun, crazy bunch. When they want something, there is no stopping them.
Carol just had a car with Wisconsin plates stop out today. They came from 45 minutes east of Hudson, WI. The drive was 4 hours (one way). Why did they come all that way? For a rabbit… and two dozen eggs. Officially, these nice folks have traveled farther than anyone we have had in the past. Last summer, we a couple from California buy some eggs, but they were in the area on vacation.
The folks that came out today visited us specifically to buy a rabbit from Carol. The eggs purchased only because we happened to have them.
For our Palm Sunday brunch, Carol made this good tasting sausage and tator frittata. I believe Carol mentioned that except for the cheddar cheese, this is an all homegrown dish. Ingredients include: homemade lamb & pork sausage, frozen peppers, free-range eggs, potatoes, and onions.
Our blog is to inform and entertain you as we pursue our goal of starting a small, west-central, MN family farm.
Here we plan on recording thoughts, projects, farm additions and other note-worthy happenings. We are not fancy people… we never were… humorous maybe, but not fancy.
Our blog is to inform and entertain you as we pursue our goal of starting a small, west-central, MN family farm.
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