After quite a brown & dry beginning to winter, the region has been blanketed with snow. In the mornings, we’ve had relatively warm air currents leading to some spectacular hoar frosts. Don’t you just love it? 
Our animals are all doing fantastic in this new season- rabbits come with their own fur coat, and we are raising our youngsters outdoors so they can grow healthy and sound with lots of hay and room to romp about in the sun and fresh air. We’ll be offering fresh rabbit throughout the winter, email us to reserve yours. Rabbit is an incredibly nutrient dense meat, very healthy and lean- delicious marinated and grilled, or stewed with herbed dumplings on top.
Rabbit is the new local grass fed meat!
The ducks are insulated with not only a down jacket, but also a plump layer of fat. Our lady layers are blessing us with eggs MUCH later in the season than ever before….which can only mean they are very content and happy with their new duck barn, deep bedding, hay for snacking, constant fresh water and days spent sitting outside in the sun. We absolutely love our ducks! Look for the Holiday Special going on now until Christmas at several of the Twin City Co-ops. 
We did have a couple of episodes with a hawk scoping out our ducks, which is very scary for them and for us. The safety of our ladies is extremely important to us! And so- we got the ducks some guardians, a pair of French Toulouse Geese. They are drop dead gorgeous, very calm and are doing a great job patrolling the duck pasture and keeping an eye on the sky.
Still scratching your head over gift ideas? Please know we have set up a PayPal account in order to sell our handmade goatmilk soaps online, and shipped directly to your door! These soaps are the most moisturizing EVER, being made up of 50% goatmilk! There are 8 “flavors” to choose from, let us know if you have any questions about ordering. We can customize your mix of flavors and wrap up gift bundles with festive ribbon so they are ready to go. Our soap is sold by the pound, as the bar sizes vary (they have a rustic look from being handcut.) Thanks so much for your support!
The Cornish Cross is a hybrid (different than genetically modified) chicken of the F2 sort, meaning these little meat machines come from a unique and secret combination of 4 different breeds. 2 different parent breeds make up the rooster side, and 2 different breeds of chicken make up the hen side. Then THOSE 2 different offspring are mated to make the Cornish Cross, which is a remarkable fast growing, hearty and robust bird. There are a few things to know if you are about to try raising your own. Keep them warm for the first 2-3 weeks. They grow muscles, not lots of feathers, so they need to be kept cozy in this tender period of their lives. After they are 4 weeks old, stop feeding them before 8pm each night to prevent them from growing so fast that they have heart attacks. Give them things to climb on when they are in the first weeks of life so they can develop stronger leg muscles. A piece of 2×4 leaned up on a block works well. They don’t like to roost, but they will climb up and on and over and get stronger legs in the meantime. From day 1 when you bring them home, talk soothingly and use this tone everafter, we croon “oh Too-Toos” for some reason, and they love it, and respond to this sound, & coming running! Also from day 1 give them tiny snipped up greens. Feed them from your fingertips, sprinkle them in the feed dish, all over. These ARE chickens, and they LOVE variety, but like a mother hen, you need to teach them some of this stuff. Give them a bowl of plain old feed and they will just sit there chowing down, like a kid in a bag of potato chips.
We raise the broad breasted turkeys, and have found that all the stigmas against them are just not true. They are bright, inquisitive, friendly birds. Being so closely related to the native wild turkey, many of their wild instincts are there, just waiting to be tapped into. Again, feeding them greens as babies helps them learn what they already know deep inside. Treating all animals with kindness and respect makes a world of difference in your relationship with them & their quality of life. Our summer turkeys have just graduated to being able to be free outdoors during the day, at night they’ve been staying in a chicken “tractor” to stay safe. One thing to watch with all birds on your farm/homestead is arial predators during the day, and the host of others potentially coming to dine at night. As the turkey babies have grown to large chicken size, we feel confident they will be safe out during the day, but night time is still worrisome, so keeping them contained at night is just safer.
We kept 4 hens from last spring to try our own turkey breeding experiment. We never got the heritage tom we were hoping to, in time to produce offspring ready for the Thanksgiving crowd. The 4 hens have been laying eggs for the last 2 months, unfertile, but delicious eggs which Heartland Restaurant has excitedly put on their menu. Something different. We have a beautiful relationship with these hens and are excited to see how they do next spring when they have a boyfriend to make those gorgeous eggs fertile. Turkeys are just a joy to have around.
