Welcome to the picket fence farm that has everything but the fence.
In 2017 we purchased our little house on the prairie in Midwestern Minnesota. Complete with 13.88 acres of hope, grass, a home that needed lovin’, acres of weeds and nothing more. We moved in with anticipation of what we could become at this place.
I was 9 months pregnant, carrying boxes in on my hip. The timeline of our 2017 October went like this:
1st week: Closed on our house / started painting alllll the walls
2nd week: Refinished all hardwood floors
3rd week: Moved in
4th week: Cleaned the house / had baby #2
After a whirlwind of labor in the house and my body, we were pretty well hunkered down indoors and at a standing halt on the actual land outdoors as the Minnesota temperatures below 15 degrees became the norm.
2018
Spring of 2018 we got after some hefty yard cleanup- including: Landscaping flower beds.
Cutting down trees.
Trimming trees.
Moving in the cattle shelter.
And the chicken coop.
We had cattle at our old farm but sold them to use towards a deposit on our new farm. I brought the kids to the Sisseton, SD sale barn to find us some goats to tie our desire for livestock over until we had our cattle lot set up and the budget to buy them.
We came home with 4 Boer (meat) goats. Popcorn, Cookie, Pancake & Waffle.
What I learned from goats is…I don’t want them ever again.
Always escaping. Running. And leaping. In the opposite direction of where they are supposed to be.
Later that fall, we bought 2 Simmental cows.
2019
In March we calved a heifer calf and I started waitressing to save tips for my next addition to the herd. Our family milk cow Brie.
Along with her big saggy bag of milk, she came with a hand built stanchion and a little jersey calf.
And a farm is never complete without some of these…
R.I.P. to the 4 laying hens we raised in our mudroom until they were roosting on our shoe rack. They were then transported to our outdoor coop and swiped off the lawn by a hawk & dogs right before they started laying. Convenient.
Moving along. Time to bring home the bacon with the 3 little pigs.
Here’s a question for ya- who here has ever tried to catch a piglet?
We raised “Pasture Pork” in the designated spot we wanted our garden to be placed in 2020. We outlined the perimeter of the future garden with electric wire and released the little buggers. The philosophy is amazing once they get it..as you can see in the photo above, the dog is in the fence- the piglets, not so much. Within 1-2 times of escaping they already respected the wire and remained in there until they were butchered at 285 pounds 6 months later.
In the meantime, they foraged and tilled up the plot we have plans for planting. Not to mention the amazing fertilizer they gave us!
Thank you God for this. It doesn’t look like much from the road but it’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.