When we’re not tending the farm or homeschooling the kids, we’ve got “real world” jobs.  My (Martha’s) passion is being a childbirth educator and a doula – Greek for “servant” – a woman who comes alongside families before, during, and after childbirth.  You can read more about what I do on my webpage for my business, “A Joyful Birth.” So today, I was a different kind of doula. I was much more involved with the wet, cuddly newborn side of birth than I usually am as we welcomed

We pasture bred our two older Boer does in October, so we don’t have a tight date on when they’re due but it’s going to be soon.  The girls are double-wide, their udders are filling out, and Jessie in particular has started to spend a lot of her time lying down, moaning softly.  Good thing I got some time today (after the 4-H activities this morning) to finish up the kidding stalls and warming huts. The girls were a bit nervous about the new digs, and squished into one stall

We took advantage of the long, though very cold, weekend to get a passel of projects done.  The biggest job was digging out the goat’s stable – like many goat folks, we let it build up relatively thick during the winter, allowing the hay to compost and produce warmth.  The disadvantage is that when the cleanup happens, it’s a lot of work.  If we could redesign the barn, we’d make it so we could push the tractor’s bucket right into the stalls! I actually got a reprieve from th

It’s been a long time since we posted, simply because this Fall has been pretty overwhelmingly busy!  To give you an idea of some of the things going on these past couple months at the Flying T… Fall was spectacular this year, and though we got a light dusting, we didn’t have a repeat of the Halloween snowstorm of 2011.  Here’s a pic of the Flying T in late fall from the air. The beginning of Fall also brought some new additions to the Flying T.  One is “Rocky,” our new black

When we bought the Flying T, we knew that one of our two pastures was “rough.” OK, it’s really rough.  Half-forested, largely with poisonous [to livestock] pin cherry trees.  Not much growing in it but rocks and  goldenrod.  Fence falling down.  Steep slopes on a good portion of it.  Rutted with holes to the point that it was unsafe to let the horses loose.  Rough. The book answer for a pasture that had been let go for that long would be to call in the bulldozer, then trucklo

Summer is arriving at the Flying T.  Here are some recent pics that tell a story about what that means on the farm. It’s been really rainy lately, but today we have a good bit of sun… just in time for our son’s baseball game! The ducklings are now a month old.  Just before the three week point, one of the other ducks (Mocha) adopted them as her own. Unfortunately, this meant that she stepped off her own nest a week early, so we lost a clutch of 20. However, she has been a gre

Yesterday, at our request, a representative from the Department of Agriculture came out to visit and test our chickens in conjunction with the National Poultry Improvement Program.  NPIP is a voluntary program that provides testing for common ailments in home and commercial flocks.  NPIP helps us to ensure a safe food supply and avoid the transfer of disease through other means (after all, taking care of chickens is not a hands-off activity here at the Flying T).  In addition

Spring is in the air here at the Flying T. Our resident Boer Goats, Jessie and Gracie, are off at another farm for a month or so in the hopes that they make very close friends with the buck there.  That would bring us kids in September.  In their place, we welcomed two more 4-month-old full-blood Boer does, Ruby and Samy (Samantha). The Muscovy ducks started laying a few weeks ago, but weren’t sitting, so we ended up collecting a lot of them.  They’re not bad eating and very

We can tell Spring is here because both the jobs that keep the bills paid and the jobs around the farm have really gotten busy! Almost a month since my last post tells that story. One of the things that we’ve been working on is getting our garden ready.  Though the weather has been unseasonably warm the past few weeks, we still have some frost in the forecast and we even woke up to a light dusting of snow this morning.  Last year, we got hit with a snowstorm on April Fools da

We’ve lived all over the United States and a bit of time outside the country as well, and we’ve met a lot of great people from all walks of life in the process.  However, one group of wonderful folks we really didn’t get to know before we moved out to our farm.  Boy, have we been missing out! These folks have been Godsends to us as we’ve muddled through small-scale farming, visiting us, training us, giving us advice, and even helping us teach our kids about agriculture. Who a

Traditionally, many folks make resolutions on New Year’s Day.  I can honestly say that I’ve never done that. It’s not that I don’t think resolutions are important – I’ve made them, just never specifically on New Year’s day.  I guess I’ve always figured if it’s important enough to make a formal resolution to do something, one ought not wait till a certain date to get started on it.  And, I’m not saying that I don’t have a problem with procrastination – the stack of projects I’

Though the winter is setting in reluctantly, we have had a few cold nights where the chicken’s water iced up.  A quick check at the feed store, Tractor Supply, and Amazon found chicken waterers like this: Unfortunately, the cost of one of these babies is between $40 and $50.  That’s a lot of chicken feed!  So, to the farm cycling pile I went for inspiration. Materials I discovered were already on hand: Old cookie tin, incandescent lightbulb, silicone sealer, electrical tape.

With the unseasonably warm days we had in the beginning of November, we put some of our other work (including some of the kids’ studies) aside and got to work improving our rear pasture. The rear pasture is about 1.25 acres and “rough” to say the least.  Based on the size of the poisonous pin cherries throughout the pasture, we figure the pasture has been let go for a good 5-10 years.  We’d previously cleared about a quarter to third of it, and then broadcast spread winter ry

Our son is responsible for the egg business, and just started selling them.  It’s wonderful to see him so excited to do the work, keep the records, and care for the chickens and eggs.  The text below is from the flyer that he puts into each carton (you can click here to see his webpage). Hi, I’m David, and I run the egg business at the Flying T Ranch! I feed the chickens and water them, and I take care of them.  Every morning, I check the chickens to see how much food and wat

I walked to the equipment shed a couple days ago and found that the Occupy movement had hit our farm. "Occupy Shed" Protest They weren’t as persistent as protesters in other parts of the country.  By the time I’d come back from occupying my tractor seat and evicting some more Pin Cherry trees from the pastures with my chainsaw, they’d moved on.  Even though it was nice and dry inside the shed, they knew I wasn’t going to feed them there and so they went on their way to forage

We went to a funeral this weekend for our neighbor’s Dad.  He was an amazing, godly man who grew up in the Northeast in the 1920s.  His bedroom was an outdoor covered porch, shared with his siblings.   His story isn’t unusual for that time. 1920s New England Homestead. Image by nps.gov These days (call it being soft if you will) we enjoy a bit more shelter during the winters, and our house at the Flying T has quite the mish-mash of fuel types to help give that shelter some h

Our past posts have dealt primarily with our animals and the work associated with them, but another blessing we’ve got here is what we’ve been provided with in the way of fruits and vegetables. Kids picking the first lettuces We had a late start to the garden itself as we were pretty busy with all the projects that came from moving in.  A combination of that late start and me mixing entirely too much compost into the garden led to a relatively low and late yield.  By mid-summ

If our assignment to New Hampshire broke down one of the last barriers to horse ownership, the house we found to live in sealed the deal. Nestled in the wooded hills of South Central New Hampshire on just under 15 acres, it included a four-stall pole barn with a large run-out, another older barn now serving as an equipment shed, and four other small buildings, the purpose of which wasn’t clear to us when we looked at the house online. About 3 acres was pasture in various stat