The new year is starting out cold and snowy for us here at Long Creek Farm. We just recently got about 7" of snow, and one night the temperature dropped to 10 degrees with negative wind chills! Not the most pleasant weather but we are very happy we don't have any baby animals to try and keep alive through the cold!
Goats
We should start having milk available for purchase mid-March. Our does should start kidding in the beginning of March and we start milking them in the morning when the kids are two weeks old. We plan to get a milking machine that can milk at least two goats at a time which should make milking a much easier chore!
Chickens
We will have 33 Whitening True Blue chicks (30 hens and three roosters) arriving the last week of this month to add to our own flock, and if all goes well, we will have another 150 arriving about mid-March that will be available for purchase.
This breed is supposed to be one of the best laying of all breeds, we have never had any ourselves but every year McMurray sells out almost right away so we figured we would try them out this year.
We keep receiving requests for eggs, so hopefully these will lay well enough that we could have that option. Right now, we are only just about getting enough eggs for ourselves!
We are working on building a chicken tractor of our own design that will hopefully allow us to pasture our laying hens and chicks with NO escapees and yet be fairly easy for us to move. We will keep you posted on how it is working.
The very unenjoyable experience we had last year of trying to raise a whole bunch of breeds of different ages in tractors that were a huge hassle to use has prompted us to do at the most, two big batches (all the same breed) and get the tractor design right BEFORE all the chicks arrive.
Garden
We will have to start our tomato transplants pretty soon, probably about the beginning of February.
Pets
We got two female guinea pigs, Antonella and Victoria, a few weeks ago. They are currently living in the garage, but once it warms up in the spring, we will start to pasture them outside in a rabbit tractor (which should work well for them since they don't really dig).
Events
Long Creek Farm will be a vendor this year at the Okie Homesteading Expo! For those of you who don't know, it is a two-day (March 21st - 22nd) homesteading event located in Pryor Oklahoma.
Some of the features of this event include
around 100 vendors offering everything from livestock and poultry equipment to greenhouses and aquaponics
an estimated 3,500 attendants
speakers from all over the USA who will be teaching on a wide variety of topics
master gardeners on site to answer all your gardening questions
demonstrations and hands on experiences
You can learn more as well as purchase tickets (or possibly become a vendor) by visiting the Okie Homesteading Expo website.
