Welcome to Hope Refuge Farm Manchester, KY

Mares at the big pond on a beautiful fall day.

Things have been a bit busy around here this fall.  Between everything going on & experiencing some writer’s block…well, you can see I took a little break from the blogging.  So now I have so many pictures I want to share that I hope this doesn’t get toooo long!  Here’s what things are looking like around the farm this fall.

The ditch along the driveway, fixed & with new culvert put in.

Drainage Work

We were finally able to get everything arranged with our friend Steve to do our drainage work in the cow barn pasture.  Dry weather, a week off & a rented backhoe and we were in business.  He put in a couple new drainage swales across the paddock, regraded it all, and fixed the ditch along the driveway, as well as some other things.  The first big rain after he was done, he showed up to inspect it all & see how it was working.  It appears to be working great…I think the swamp days are over! 

Isaac, Friday & Marker supervise Steve's work on the big swale behind the barn.

Now Jeff has started work on re-fencing the cow barn paddock with permanent “baby-proof” fence (remember Trixie?!).  In the meantime, we’ve been feeding the cows their hay in there to get some organic matter back on top of the clay.  In my opinion, there’s no such thing as the cows “wasting” hay.  What gets left behind & trampled with the manure will help build the soil.  It also acts as a mulch for the seeds that fall out…hay seeds…that will grow come spring & help reestablish the pasture. 

Sterling watches from his perch atop the hay stacked in the cow barn.

Once the fence is done though, we’ll have to keep them out of the paddock through winter’s mud so they don’t destroy Steve’s hard work.

Dates & Names

Jeff had a little "oops" while clearing some trees for the soon-to-be turkey pen.

Mace was home for a short visit, then off to see another girlfriend.  Once this cow is bred, then he’s got another date lined up for late winter…busy guy!  Three of the turkeys had a date they probably didn’t like too much.  We decided to go ahead and butcher the Narragansett boys a little early…they seemed the largest of the bunch.  All told, it went fairly well…just like doing chickens, but on a larger…and more challenging…scale.  The rest will wait until closer to Thanksgiving.  And most importantly, we had a date with the vet.  Sterling, the kitten we kept from Sierra’s litter this spring, got neutered and Isaac was gelded.  The heifers, Ebony & Trixie, got their first shots & another tattoo for their brucellosis vaccine…poor girls!  Then all the mommas got preg-checked to confirm their breeding dates.

The Bourbon Red tom, named after...Elijah Craig bourbon, what else?

BoPeep bred back in May, due for a February calf again.  I had kept her separated from Rousseau before that, because I’d rather have her calve in spring than fall or winter.  Keira, Eavie & Ladybell all bred back in June, Eavie due the beginning of April, the others earlier in March.  From what I had marked on the calendar & what the vet felt, it looks like Ladybell “took” a mere 4 weeks after calving…good ol’ cow!  Now I just have a few months to hope & pray for heifers.

Tommy, the White Holland, looking handsome.

Not all the turkeys have a date with a kill cone.  We’re keeping 2 males, Elijah Craig the Bourbon Red and Tommy the White Holland, and 3 hens, Martha, Polly & Pansy, for breeding.  So we soon need to make a date with a fencing company to put in 6′ chain link for a permanent turkey pen.  Right now they’re in the larger part of the orchard & the laying hens are restricted to the smaller section attached to their coop entrance…the turkeys weren’t sharing space very well anymore…poor henny-pennies.

The older hen on the left is molting fast & looks nearly bald compared to the pullet on the right.

Day to Day

Speaking of turkeys & chickens, they make up the majority of our daily chores right now.  The amount of poultry feed we’ve gone through this fall is mind boggling.  Turkeys sure eat  A LOT!  Plus I’ve got 37 hens in the laying flock and 75 “all heavy males” we ordered from the hatchery to raise for the freezer…and they eat a lot, too!  So feeders & waterers need filled up every morning.  13 of the layers are pullets who just started laying this fall…which is good because the older hens are taking breaks for molting.  I get nearly 2 dozen eggs each day, so that means an evening trip to the coop to collect each day.  Of course it takes the young girls a while to figure out that they’re just supposed to lay eggs in the nest boxes & NOT use the nests for roosting overnight…which also means that every morning I need to clean the poop out of the nests…UGH!

Occupied nest boxes in the chicken coop.

The meat birds are now living in the shelter & electric netting.  Jeff finally got wheels for the shelter & it is officially the chicken wagon!  He added a wire floor & doors so the birds can be “locked up” after they all go to bed, for moving first thing the next morning.  Their 3 feeders and 2 waterers need filled up twice a day, and they still come running expectantly anytime you get close to the pen, hoping for some treats from the kitchen.  They’re such a funny bunch & rather friendly for chickens.  There are a few accidental pullets in the group, so I’ll keep them…and probably a couple favorite roo’s, too.

The completed chicken wagon & an eager mob to greet me.

Fall also means we’ve come to the end of our pasture grass.  So we are feeding hay twice daily to the cows & horses.  Of course that hay had to first be picked up out of our neighbor David’s field & stacked in the barn.  My dear cows are in the habit of coming into the parlor every morning for a bit of grain for breakfast, and that’s when BoPeep gets milked as well.  Sadly, it’s time to dry her off so she has some time to put some weight back on before calving, so I just cut back to milking every other day. 

Mignon has breakfast with dad Rousseau.

Eavie’s little guy, Mignon, has not only decided he wants to be my friend, but that he REALLY likes his breakfast, too.  He makes sure he either gets in the parlor with his momma or in the stall, with or without his daddy, for his bucket of feed every day.  Well, OK, he’d do all three if I let him, little piggy!  He’s such a sweet little guy, it makes me feel bad…but his name is his destiny.

Bandit in her spot beside the woodstove.

And of course there are the farm cats & dogs to feed & love on every day.  Sterling often leaves me a surprise in the parlor…a grasshopper, frog, or mouse…to dispose of.  Bandit has recently decided the nights were cold enough to warrant becoming a house dog again, so we’re back to her daily ins & outs.  Firewood is stacked on the back porch again, the pantry shelves are full, the animals are getting woolly…yep, it’s fall on the farm.

BoPeep gave me a bit of a scare a couple weeks ago.  Her milk production dropped drastically one day, and I was worried that maybe she had just decided to dry herself off since Hershey left.  But after doing some investigating, I came to a different conclusion.  Here’s what happened.

Our "weed" growing along the orchard lane between paddocks.

We had previously moved the cows to the brand new paddock over on the “horse side” of the farm.  They had grazed the nice, tall grass in that paddock for a week, then I moved them through the other 2 paddocks next to it over the following 2 weeks.  At that point there was still a good bit of grazing left in the new paddock, so I decided to give them another week in there before moving them the whole way back over to the “cow side”.  Bo was with the herd & I was going out with the halter every morning to lead her in to the cow barn to milk, and then returning her when we were done.  About half-way through that second week on the new paddock, she gave me only 3 quarts at milking instead of her usual gallon and a half…and, yes, I was sure she let down nicely & gave me all of it.  I left her out in the corral behind the barn for a few minutes until I was ready to take her back to the pasture, puzzling whether she could really just be drying herself off suddenly.  Then I saw her poop….an unusually runny, squirty mess.  “Hmmm, what is going on?”  But she didn’t seem to be feeling sick or acting “off”, so I took her back to the herd. Read more »

An excellent, easy-to-follow book by Ricki Carroll.

So, since weaning Hershey, BoPeep has been giving me about one & a half gallons of milk every morning when I milk.  We use a good bit of milk for breakfast, drinking & cooking…but not THAT much.  So what do we do with all that extra milk?  Well, that’s cheesy…I mean…easy!  We make cheese…and butter…and yogurt…and sour cream…and ice cream.  All these delightful dairy products from our very own fresh, raw milk!  It’s been wonderful.  And, believe it or not, it’s not very difficult.  I found a great book by Ricki Carroll called Home Cheese Making that has been a huge help.  Here are a few things to whet your appetite.

A jar of cream with clabber added, to make sour cream. Clabber is started in the same manner.

Keeping It Clean

Before we talk about making things from raw milk, it’s important to know how to keep your equipment clean so you don’t inadvertantly spoil your dairy products.  Everything from your milking equipment to milk jugs, pots & cheese-making utensils needs to be properly washed & sanitized before coming in contact with raw milk.  After use, rinse milk equipment with cool water first, to prevent milk stone from forming.  Milk stone can be as simple as a thin film of milk residue (that you can’t even see!) left behind on items.  Next, add some vinegar to your warm, soapy wash water to help remove any remaining milk residue, and scrub items well.  Rinse, then dunk in a bleach solution to sanitize, and rinse again with fresh water.  A bleach residue left behind can ruin your cheese-making efforts as well.  Then leave items to air dry. Read more »

Chucky & Hershey have their last buckets of feed here Saturday morning.

Well, it’s been a noisy week on Hope Refuge Farm.  BoPeep did not like losing her young’un!  Not that I really enjoyed leaving mine behind either, but at least I didn’t scream my head off for 3 days after getting him settled in at college.  But all in all things went pretty smoothly with weaning, in spite of the bellowing.  Here’s how our week went.

Stephanie tries to make friends, but Hershey's not totally sold on the idea yet.

The cow herd had been moved to a newly fenced pasture paddock on the “horse side” of the farm before we left for Michigan.  So Friday (Sept. 2) evening I brought Bo, Hershey & Chuck (Eavie’s steer calf from last year) back to the cow barn.  I penned Bo in the barn corral like I normally had been for milking in the morning, and put the two boys in the front yard-turned-pasture paddock.  I knew things would go better if Hershey had a friend to keep him company, and even though Chucky is about 9 months older than Hershey they’re about the same size & get along great. Read more »

BoPeep inherited a nice udder from her Jersey momma.

There’s been a hold-up in my milking parlor & I’m sick of it! 

This is one of the difficulties that comes with share-milking (that’s when you leave the calf with momma part of the time, so you’re sharing the milk).  Momma decides that she would rather feed baby than give her milk to you, so she “holds up” when you try to milk.  Which means you get a piddlin’ little bit of thin milk and are wondering what happened, while baby guzzles down the bulk of the milk…and all the cream, which comes at the end.  If this is a frustration you’ve been dealing with, believe me….you are not alone!!  Here’s the story of my big hold-up. Read more »