It’s been almost a year since I left Corporate America for the dream of running the farm full-time. It’s been a very busy time but an amazing experience and has truly spoken to my heart.

The framework for the ecosystem of the farm is up and running as I had hoped and envisioned. I have been focusing on utilizing the animals for food and labor assistance. Everyone has a job (well, almost everyone…horses…cough..cough..) We get fresh milk from Annie and she feeds us, Abbie (her 5 month old heifer) and the pigs. The goats clear poison ivy. The chickens give us wonderful fresh eggs, egg drop soup and yummy chicken pot pie. They also clear brush with their little chicken talons. We’ll have bacon and fresh pork beginning this fall. The Great Pyrenees girls keep the foxes and other predator losses at a minimum and the horses…well they’re pretty much free loaders but we do love them. All the animals contribute to compost which feeds our soil and will improve the forage to feed the livestock over time making the farm more self sustaining. Our garden has provided vegetables for both us and the critters.

Having the dairy up is so amazing!!! So far this year I’ve made butter, yogurt, kefir, cream cheese, paneer cheese, sour cream, custard and ICE CREAM!!!! Yum!! The pigs think helping with the dairy leftovers is a great plan and love having a warm breakfast and dinner every day of organic grains mixed with two gallons of milk and a little molasses. They won’t be happy if my cheese making improves though since failed experiments end up in their trough.

I’ve learned quite a bit this year, primarily about cows and pigs. Lessons learned as we would say in project management. Speaking of lessons learned, I could have done a better job of risk analysis on purchasing a dairy cow from Wisconsin and shipping her here in the spring. The climate change was extremely hard on her and brought about additional time and money commitments. She is such a sweet cow though it reminds me that everything happens for a reason.

One surprise, I didn’t think pigs would be so much fun. They are quite the comedians of the farm and it’s fun to learn how smart they really are. They were jumping up on the fence when I feed them and I realized if they are smarter than dogs as rumored then I can certainly teach them not to jump. After just a few days of only pouring the feed when they get down as told, they are much better. We’re still working on it but it’s obvious they are learning and responding to commands.

Stay tuned as we learn and grow!!

Melanie