A New Fergy Farm!!

[Jamie]

After much prayer, God is allowing us to buy another farm!!. We are leaving our little rental on 1 acre in Iowa to the Nebraska side and our 14 acre homestead. The kids are super excited and so are we!! Our plan is to raise pastured chickens, eggs, hogs, lamb and beef. Its kindof crazy getting ready to move just a month after having a baby but hopefully this will be the last time!! Please pray for God to bless our endeavors!

[Native87]

Congratulations and for sure..................... Prayers sent. :)

[Anon001]

Congrats. It will seem like heaven after being on 1 acre.

How far north of the Kansas/Nebraska state line will it be? I'm about 25 miles south of the state line and east of Hwy 75.

Be sure to take lots of pics for us...

Paul

[sssara]

Congrats to the new baby and the new farm. Good luck with the moving.

[Dave]

Great news Jamie! This is indeed exciting for you all!

Hmm pastured chickens? Are you looking at selling broilers? Pastured broilers should fetch quite a bit more per pound considering the way they are raised and are more the free ranging variety.

I look forward to hearing more!

Take care,

Dave

[cartershan]

That sounds wonderful Jamie. Good luck with everything. Have a great time and enjoy all you do. Shannon

[firegirl969]

Congrats, Jamie on the new baby and the new 14 acres. Tell us more about it. Does it have a house, barn, fencing? I look forward to hearing much more about it. Prayers being sent your way, firegirl

[Jamie]

Thank you for your kind words everyone!!

As far as how far I am from Kansas, Paul I have not a clue!! LOL. I can tell you I am NW of Omaha and about an hour from lincoln. Yes, it already seems like heaven and we aren't even there yet!!

Yes Dave, we are planning on doing pastured broilers as well as building up to pastured pork, beef and possibly adding flowers, and veggies to the mix. I have to figure out the best way to turn row crops( GE corn and soy) back into pasture. I have Dave from www.greenpasture.org coming to consult on how to do this. We buy his X-factor cod liver oil.

Firegirl,

Yes, it has a nice 110 yo farm house on it. Also, a shop, garage, chicken house, woodshed, and a couple of animal shelters on it.

I am not sure how to post pictures, can someone guide me? I have a great arial photo from the previous owners taken in the summer. It is beautiful!

We are so excited about this place. We have it so we can pay it off in 11 years. Maybe sooner if my husband can get some bonuses at work. We are really trying to get totally debt free as quickly as possible.

I will try and get some kind of photo up soon!

Also thank you for the congratulations on our newest baby. He is growing into a big boy already. We weighed him on his 1 month birthday and he was almost 16 lbs!!

God Bless,
jamie

[Sheila]

What wonderful news. God bless and keep you. Things will surely go well! Enlist the other little one's help. Between all of you, you'll make it happen.:sarcastic:

[Jamie]

Well, we've been super busy with packing, and moving things over to our new farm. We are so excited, only 1 week left and we take occupancy. We met one neighbor and he is very nice. I have been talking with a guy to buy some honey from and his son lives in this little town we bought in. It sounds like the people there are very helpful and kind.

Funny how "bad things" can happen when such a good thing is just over the horizon. We had our 5 yo stab himself in the mouth with a pencil... ( it was just a scrape thankfully) then our basement is flooding( come to find out the landlord told us there is a natural aquifer under this house... glad we didn't buy this!) the power is flickering ....can't find the camera to send pictures to the insurance for our binder... Somebody sure wants to rain on our parade!!

First thing we will do out on the farm is see about getting the property tilled, see about planting a cover crop and finish the fencing for the pigs and cows. We already got the hen house ready and planned where we will put the fruit trees. We will need to buy one of those long poles with a chainsaw on the end as there are alot of broken limbs on the trees too high to reach with a ladder alone.

Of course there is planting berries and the garden...and we will hopefully have enough planting with blooms and such that we can eventually get our own honey bees.


Will check back in a while!

Jamie

[NCLee]

Jamie, sounds like you're making the move at just the right time! LOL.

IMHO, this is the prefect time to move to a homestead. You get to see it wake up after a winter's sleep. Theres a poplar tree near the kitchen window. As I sit here, I can almost see the buds growning. (Well, they're bigger than they were yesterday morning!) Beyond that, the maples are waking up with their burst of red.

While I'm sure it's hectic with your move, do pause for a few minutes to watch your homestead wake up. If you're lucky, you spot good things growing that you didn't know were there. Hope you have a lot of luck with that!

Do, let us know how things are going, even if it's only to pop in for a minute to say you're too busy to have much to say. That, in itself, is a fine update on a homestead.

Lee

[Jamie]

Thank you Lee, I will be updating as much as I can. Thanks for the reminder to stop and enjoy it all!

[Jamie]

We have an arial photo over on our new website. Its www.thefergyfarm.com You can see in the picture that there has been row crops in and now we are trying to figure out the best way to: 1. till it up, or disk or ??? Not sure about this one
2. get most of it planted in a cover crop mix, clover, oat and brome
3. put the garden in(most likely over an acre)

If anyone has experience in this, I would love the knowledge.

We are really enjoying our new property. Already after a week in being here, we mowed, butchered some meat chickens, started some sourdough starter( this I couldn't do at the rental: bad yeast), celebrated a wonderful Easter with our kids... we even played family baseball.

Country livin is the best!

[NCLee]

What a beautiful place! Love all the trees that you have around your home. Looks like you have a good layout, too.

Since I'm on dial-up, it took a while to get to the photo. So, I've included the direct link here, to make it a little faster for others. http://www.thefergyfarm.com/our_farm.html

My 2-cents, for what ever they're worth.

I wouldn't do anything with the land, until you know where you're going to do what. Since you've just moved in, concentrate on getting your garden going first. Is that brown patch to the lower right, just before you get to the fields where you're going to put your garden? If so, can you get water that far, for watering, if needed? If that's a problem, you may want to decide if there's a better place for it.

As to the rest of the land, I'd talk with your local extension service, about what you're planning to do and get their advice on when/how to proceed. With fuel prices so high to run tractors, make every pass over you land count. While it might not look so great, letting weeds grow for a while, won't hurt anything. Before they start to seed out, you'll probably have your plans in place.

The extension service can tell you what cover crops work best in your area. They can give you the best times to plant. They can tell you whether burning the debris left from the old crops should/shouldn't be done for your area.

Again, just my 2-cents from afar.

Lee

[Jamie]

Thanks Lee, the area that you asked about is where we are planning on keeping in grass at least for now. I hope to put up some temp fencing and raise some lambs in there. The area with the longer outbuilding we need to finish the hog panels and we will raise a couple of pigs. The corn area next to that small pasture for the sheep is where we are thinking to put the garden. Yes, we can get water to it thankfully. We have talked to some local farmers and that initial mix is what they recommended. Our plan once we have the back pasture planted and fenced is to raise pastured poultry, cows and grass finished hogs. We will do it for our own consumtion first and hopefully we will begin selling it to others. We are really happy with the layout of the farm. Lots of possiblities and such beautiful views.

I look forward to sharing more.

Jamie

[Gracie]

Jamie, I have to chime in with Lee, your homestead is beautiful. So picturesque and well laid out, congratulations to you and your family! I'm sitting here smiling like an old possum, am so happy for y'all!!!

G

[steveandsandy]

Congrats Jamie, We're so happy for you! I don't know anyone more deserving than you guys! May God continue to bless your endeavors on your new homestead!

Sandy

[bjacobson]

I remember when we first bought our place too, I was so excited. one piece of advice that I would offer is to start slow. I wouldn't worry about the land the first year. I would rent it to a neighbor, even consider renting it to someone very cheap if they put hay on the land. Let them harvest the hay for 2 years to recoup their seed investment then turn it back to you. You can then just fence it in and let your animals out to graze. Maybe just start with the poultry meat and eggs to start with for selling. Raise a pig or calf for your family and give yourself time to get stuff set up right when you expand later. It is a lot of work when everything is set up perfect not to mention how much extra it is when your not (i.e. fencing, pens, water, water in winter, hay and feed storage, manure storage till you are ready to spread it, proper equipment)

And you need to make sure that you don't work yourself so hard that you are too tired to spend some time with your family just enjoying your wonderful property.

Good luck, and feel free to PM me if you have any questions, I have just about done it all on our little farm. And my body tells me I did a little too much with all the aches and pains I have now.

[CapeCMom]

So nice to have all of that beautiful land! I am very excited for you guys! Can't wait to see more pictures!

[Jamie]

Thanks so much for your good thoughts. We met a lady yesterday in the natural food section at the store who might be interested in being a part of a food co-op that I am starting. She also said there is a need in my area for local produce and such. We are so excited.

We have had cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and rabbits before on our last homestead. The thing that is so new to us is taking crop land(aka gmo corn and soybeans) and converting it to pasture. Since we are from Oregon this is all new to me.

Yesterday I planted more rubarb and today I will plant some more brambles.
I also bought 100 lbs of seed potatoes and am greatful I found some before they are all gone. I have some very over grown grapes on the property so we will be cutting them all back today.

I am loving being here. I will update again soon!

[steveandsandy]

Jamie,
Is Azure Standard the food co-op you are talking about? They expanded their area last year and now go into Nebraska! I love Azure!

[Jamie]

Yes Sandy, we have been ordering from them for a year now. Did you read the article from them in the sales catalog? They are really encouraging people to grow more of their own food. A telling sign of the times when they say "don't rely on us, but yourselves!"

Today we planted 3 apple trees and bought 3 more blueberry plants. Tomorrow we have a farmer coming to disc our land for only 10.00 an acre! God is good! I also bought some onion starts and some pea seed. Once I go through my inventory of seed I will plan out the garden. We are putting in a strawberry patch, grapes, berries and herbs( both edible and medicinal) Lots of excitement here!

[Jamie]

Well, he came and disced for us. He went over the garden area 3 times and Tues will bring out his cultivator. We are so happy here! The folks are super nice. We met another neighbor and they were even willing to hire our oldest boy next summer( he will be 15) for some farm work. That will be really good for him.

If you look on the picture of the property, at the bottom on the other side of the small pasture is field corn, that is our garden. Not sure how big it is but we are sure excited!

Now to plan just how much to plant for a family of 11.

[Jamie]

Its been a super buys month here at the Fergy farm. We now have 4 sheep, 4 geese, butchered 20 meat chickens, ( doing the last 10 on Friday) We've gotten the ground disked, cultivated and the garden tilled. We have about 100 strawberry plants in 7 blueberry bushes, 10 grapes planted, 10 brambles in and 14 fruit trees in. In the garden we have 100lbs of potatoes planted, 18 brussel sprout plants in, 72 cabbage plants, so far 2 rows of sweet corn in,plus peas and green beans, lima beans, and dragons blood beans too. Still have alot of planting to do but its been rather cold and wet here in Nebraska. So, planting is coming along inbetween it all. We also bred the meat rabbits, so far we have kindled 5 litters and I think there are 2 more coming. Unfortunately, we lost 2 batches to cold. So, that prompted us to re think where we should house the rabbits.

Oh, the most exciting part for me is since we don't have a root cellar, we were thinking on ways to either put one in or some way to get by this first year. My husband came up with a great solution! We have this machine shed that has blown in insulation. On one side there is a separate door and if you put a wall in to divide that area off from the rest of the shop you could have a cold storage room. there is also a window. We are planning on putting in some kind of vent I think, but not sure if you would need that since there is a window. It would be a really large cold room but with all the cabbage and potatoes I think it will be well utilized. We could even place another door in between the front and back so you could place fruit in the front, potatoes and cabbage in the back. I hope it works, if so we will just forgo the root cellar and keep the cold room.

Let's see... what else.. well the baby is now just about 4 mos old, and our next oldest just turned 2. We have company coming the next 3 weekends and may be getting an older small tractor. Does anyone have any recomendations for tractors? We need one basically to scrape the driveway in winter, move hay( square bales) move dirt, compost etc. Just a basic one really. We are thinking a 40 hp?

We are loving it here, the views, everything are so wonderful. We are so thankful to have this place. It really is a blessing!
Have a great night!
Jamie

[NCLee]

Jamie, sounds like things are going great for you! That's wonderful. I love to read success stories (even if there are some set-backs, along the way).

Sounds like, too, that you've really gotten a lot accomplished in a fairly short period of time. -- Contratulations!

Re: Cold Storage.. Get a copy of this book, if you don't already have one. Even though you aren't planning to dig a root cellar, there's a lot of info in it on ventilation and other aspects of storing fruits and vegetables that I believe that you'll find to be useful.

Bought my copy many years ago. Even though I don't have a cellar either, have found much useful into in it. http://www.amazon.com/Root-Cellaring-Natural-Storage-Vegetables/dp/0882667033

Another thought, if you don't mind....
Since you have a window, consider putting in a small window AC unit for the summer. Since the space is well insulated, a small one may be all you need to keep the temps well below 70, during the heat of summer. If memory serves you can buy them up to 11,000 BTU that'll still run on a 110v circuit.

Do keep letting us know what's happening on Fergy Farm. Since we can't prop on a fence rail and have a neighborly chat, propping on a virtual fence is the next best thing, IMHO. Prop on that fence, when ever you can. I'll share a virtual cup of coffee with ya!

Lee

[Jamie]

Lee,

Thanks for the book recomendation. I will get it! We had thought about the window and an a/c unit. It actually has a 220 plug just below the window for just that. We met a very nice lady today, she is hispanic and was working for the census. She was lost and was lookin for a certain address. We got to talking and it sounds like she would be interested in buying local produce from us. As well as milk, and possibly meat. YAY!

You are such a kind and supportive person here at Backwoods home. I truely enjoy reading all of your advice and kindness.


Jamie

[CountryGuy]

Jamie,

First congrats on your beautiful new homestead!! Sounds like you've done a load of work already.

I wanted to give you a link to this web site, it's called Polyfarm and this guy and his family took a worked out farm and have brought it back to be very productive. All through organic methodology and a strong belief in letting animals feed and act as God intended. So lots of free ranging, grass feeding, and constanly moving the animals around. I think he's written several books also. Hope it might help http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

On your tractor search I don't know how old your looking at and how much you'd be looking to use it in the winter. I might suggest something in 4WD and 40-60HP. Also maybe consider going with construction tires instead Ag tires as they won't dig in as bad and give more bouyency in soft ground. Also consider something new enough to have live PTO and ideally hydraulics for a front bucket loader and hydraulic power attachments. I'd suggest an older Kubota, New Holland or Masey Furgeson. these all seem to take a beating and last. My Dad has a 45hp NH with loader. also has a 7' brush hog and some other attachmants and it's been a champ. I'm no way an expert but I do watch what the pros use and try to keep up on some things

With the economy stinking so bad there are a lot of landscape and construction places selling equipment so if you look around you might find so excellent used equipment. check the web and a lot of gas stations or truck stops have equipment trader magazine in fact here is a link to one of them http://www.equipmenttraderonline.com/ Though also watch for gear that's been beat or not maintained.

Hope this helps in some way.

[Jamie]

Countryguy,

Thanks for the links. Yes, I am very familiar with Joel Salatin and I totally agree with his way of thinking. We have YOU CAN FARM. What an excellent book! I agree there must be some great deals to be had out there, you just have to be patient and look. It does help me alot to have your recomendations. Thank you so much!! I have to run for now but I will check that link for tractors out later tonight.

God Bless!
jamie

[Jamie]

Well, its been wonderfully busy here on the Fergy Farm. We now have most of the garden in. We've been planting in between all the rain and storms! Goodness, the weather does change! We have our strawberries sending out runners, our mulberries are now ripe for the picking. I have never had them before, any ideas on recipes you can use all these up with? I have heard there are alot of health benefits from mulberry cough syrup. Does anyone have a recipe? We are getting a mini donkey for a livestock guardian. The kids will enjoy that! We still have our bus forsale. When we sell it we will buy a tractor. It's be either a 460 Farmall or a John Deere 4020 or a Ford 861. We will see. Maybe I told you already but we also got 30 more laying chicks and 4 more geese. Our meat rabbits had babies so we will be butchering in a few weeks.

We've continued to hit the auctions and are getting some great deals on different homestead tools.

We still are working at the medium pasture fencing, then we will be getting 2 calves. Maybe a milk cow. We are putting up firewood and looking at the best deal for a good woodstove for the house. We are going to finish the cold room soon also. We know that things will likely get very bad before the end of the year so we are doing as much as possible to prepare for the worse.