Eight* Eggs

2011 will be a little different for us at Rosemont Farm. My mom has cancer and while we work on getting her healthy again we have made the decision not to raise any pastured meats this year and possibly the next as well.

What hasn't changed is my love of gardening and growing my own food! So while my mom recovers I am going to focus on my 1/3 acre city lot, and much like the Dervaes family, I plan on seeing how much food I can grow in the city.

Right now we have 2 stands of Kale. One bed is a group of volunteers left over from a patch I planted 5 years ago. The other is a nice bed of Tuscan Kale that I planted last spring. Both are amazingly prolific.

I'm also pretty sure a few carrots and beets are hiding under the volunteer Kale bed if I look hard enough.

We also have various pots of herbs on the back porch and a few plants of spinach.
Other than that we just have the chickens...

Currently here in the city we have 16 Delaware chicks that are 4 months old. The hens we will keep (or sell if we have more than 8 total) and the roos are going to "college".

Last fall I gathered up all our chickens with the exception of one naughty Welsummer hen who was hiding and took them to the big farm so my parents would have eggs too.

In honor of solstice the lovely city Welsummer decided to provide us with an egg, and another and another (you get the idea!).

In 2011 I plan on tracking the amount of food that we produce from the city lot and providing updates as I can here on my blog.

2011 HARVEST TO DATE

8 eggs (*3 are missing from the photo, they're in waffles which are now in our bellies :))

Future plans for the city lot include an edible hedge in the front yard, a small walk in hoop greenhouse and a massive garden expansion including terraces and trellises.

Stay tuned!

Hurry up spring!

Spring is Springing!

Yesterday as I walked around our farm I noticed that the goat's favorite food was starting to bud. That's right, the blackberry vines had 1/2 inch leaf shoots on them. It was such a silly thing to have made me so divinely happy. But with all the snow and ice this year, winter has felt endless.

No new births to report, but the last 3 mamas who are pregnant are definitely getting round!

We've hired a new milk hand named Luis, who was the back-up milker at the farm we bought our dairy herd from. He's a very quiet guy, but I am sure after a few weeks of our gang he'll come around!


Juan who has been our "Juan of all trades" including milking, is now solely focused on the set up of the new milking parlor, snow damaged building tear down, fencing, garden preparation etc. He has his hands full with all the projects I threw his way yesterday.

We're currently planning the garden layout for our farmstand. So far we have heirloom tomatoes, swiss chard, cucumbers, zuchinni, winter squash, green peppers, misc. hot peppers, basil, cilantro and misc. other herbs and vegetables as space and time permit.

We are revitalizing a very old orchard so fruit will be in limited supply this year, but it should be of the very tasty antique variety! We have apples, plums, pears, 2 kinds of grapes plus black walnuts, hazelnuts, and 2 types of cherries if we can get to them before the birds. Our farm was blessed with an abundance of blackberries so we will offer those too.

No chemicals of any kind are used on the gardens and orchards of our farm. So the goodness of our produce really is from seed to skin and everything in between.

We are bringing in 8 piglets to live their brief happy lives in a grassy, blackberry filled pasture. They will never receive chemical wormers or antibiotics and will have free access to grass, sunshine and clean water. You've heard the saying as happy as a pig in mud? Well, ours will be as happy as a pig in grass. Their meat will be lean, tasty and good for you. Three pigs are spoken for so make sure to get on the list early. We expect to butcher in early November (after the dear oinkers clean up the fallen fruit from the orchard). Which means that you could have a fresh ham on Thanksgiving if you wanted to.

We will also begin to offer free range eggs at some point this summer. The care of the chickens will fall in line with everything else on the farm...no stress, lots of sunshine, fresh green grass and no chemicals of any sort.

Our farm email is rosemont century farm at g mail dot com.

Happy Spring.