We have three confirmed pregnancies! 

J.J is due March 06, 2019

Mabel is due March 27, 2019

Gizmo is due April 03, 2019

Ginger is not confirmed but is looking like April 17, 2019

Cami has not been bred yet but hopefully soon!

Izzabella and Zoey will wait until next fall to be bred, we like our does over a year old before they are bred. 

​Harry is doing a great job and is also very sweet and gentle with the girls, couldn't be happier with our buck choice. 

Today, I found a little time between projects to catch up with all of you!

So, what's been up around here?

Writing
I have been writing like crazy to finish three up coming magazine articles. One for The New Pioneer and two for Chickens Magazine. I have fallen behind on the weekly blogs for Mother Earth News, Grit, Community Chickens, and Homestead Hustle, therefore I am working hard to catch back up. 

Around the farm
We are officially in breeding season for the Oberhasli girls. J.J has had 1 date with Harry and we should know in a week or so if he did his job. The rest of the girls are waiting until their next heat cycles to come in. Harry, Mikey, and Cami have all settled in well to their new home. Izzabella and Zoey are continuing to grow and thrive as we come into winter. Their winter fluffy coats have come in already making them super duper soft to pet! We are in the heart of wood season causing many sore muscles to say the least. The young chickens were introduced into the hen house with little to no aggression from the other girls. 

The skin care line
We lunched a few new fragrances and products recently with more on the way! Dragons Blood and Sweet Pea Vanilla fragrances were made into lotions. Irish Springs soap was cured and made available  last week and the lotion is soon to come. Orange Valencia essential oil has been made into a lotion and the soap is curing for a release date soon. New wax melts were also placed on the online store. We are getting ready to launch a few new lines Foaming hand soap, body wash, lip balm, and a secret product that we are still perfecting! Most will debut at the Sharpsville, Pa craft show. 

Personal 
Scott and I both celebrated our birthdays in October and happily became one year older together. We survived a very cold and rainy pumpkin festival in October as well. 

We had so much fun putting this amazing little coop together. It has to be one of the most well thought out manufactured coops I've ever seen. Amazing ventilation and easy cleaning is just the beginning! Our kitty Ollie has decided it should be a kitty condo instead...lol. We may be fighting with him over this for awhile. It took us 45 minutes to put the run and base together and 30 minutes to assemble the rest of the coop. The well thought out design includes a chicken door that can easily be transformed into a motorized door, removable nesting boxes, and an easy open top for access to the chickens or cleaning. The house easily lifts off the base for easy moving or simply taking it down to pressure wash out. We will update as we get a chance too use and experience all the features and design. 

want more information? Check out www.ultimatecoop.com by Hampel!

On 04.21.2018, we received an amazing gift from Gizmo. She blessed us with a gorgeous healthy doeling, Izzabella (Izzy for short).  Momma is doing great! Gizmo had an unassisted birth with no complication. Baby and Mama have bonded amazingly. 

On 04.22.2018 we received another gift, Mabel came to join our little heard. We also adopted Ginger from The Stover Homestead. This little girl is a first time freshener who is producing an amazing quality and quantity of milk. She had twins this year, both were retained by The Stovers. She is sure to give us some gorgeous babies next year. 
​

Meet Gizmo our newest member of the family. She comes to us from the amazing Pratt Family Farm in NW Pennsylvania. She is a four year old Oberhasli who is due to give birth around April 16,2018. We are so happy to have had the chance to meet the Pratt's, two more doelings will join us from their farm in the next few weeks. Gizmo is a very sweet natured girl, she is going to bring positive traits to our growing herd.  

This week started like so many others lately, I accepted yet another writing project. I'm beginning to feel a little overwhelmed. I never planned to be sitting at my desk eight hours a day writing, blogging, and answer oh so many emails. Yet somehow it has happened, spare time seems to be a thing of the past. I'm managing to keep my one promise to my husband when this writing adventure began, the weekends and evenings are off limits. It's so important to be able to set it all aside for quality family time. 

I find myself flooded with ideas and concepts during my down time and even while sleeping. A notebook seems to be attached to me at all times. In the notebook, I write my thoughts down so that I don't forget. The love for writing has totally taken me by surprise in life. It was never my intention to become a writer. To be bluntly honest,  other than being a mom and wife I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. 

There are so many benefits to working from home, my favorite being the ability to stay in PJ's all day. Unless I'm on a video conference, its pretty likely that I will be caught in my jammies all hours of the day at least in winter.  On occasion I will get spunky and actually get dressed. I take breaks for my brain throughout the day using the time to clean house, do animal chores, and accomplish the darn laundry. I so want a laundry fairy! I'm learning to sit back and enjoy the ride. Anyone who knows me, will tell you that's a huge step for me. I am extremely OCD, my life has always been very structured, schedules are in place for each day of week. I still have schedules but now sometimes things get pushed back a day or two. I'm learning to be ok with that.  

Growing Pains
We are growing and expanding rapidly, please bear with us through our growing pains.  As I'm sure many of you noticed our farm name has been changed.  As we have grown we find the need for legalizing our business and herd name.  We now do so much more on the farm unrelated to chickens, we thought it would be a good idea to take on a well rounded name.  

Website Changes 
Our new website will be going live next month!  If I have set everything up right this site should auto route to the new site automatically.  Our email will be changing to a true business email at the same time.  All these changes will hopefully go off without a hitch.  

New product Line?
Over the summer we will be introducing you to some of the great new products we have in the works.  All the products will be produced right here with only ingredients produced or grown right here on our farm.  Which means all the products will be 100% CLEAN

In Other News
I accepting a bloggers position with Community Chickens and a contributors/writers position with The New Pioneer.  I am so excited to be writing for such amazing publications companies.  We have taken on our first affiliate thank you Sloggers.  

Thank you,
To all our supporters

I am so excited to share with all of you about some amazing news.
 As some of you may have noticed a lot of change is happening over here.  Our farm name is getting a long over do update.  I have taken a writers position with Ogden Publications.  I was also contacted by another publication company about coming on board with them as well.  "More details once we iron out contracts"

 In farm news:
Ginger is only 6 weeks away from giving birth!  We have started raising micro greens and aquaponic lettuce.  We purchased some beehives to add to the one we have as soon as spring arrives.  Hopefully future bee products will be produced and sold here.  We will have some great homemade goat milk products available for sale soon to.  In the next few months we will be working on getting an online store up and running for the new products.  The orchard and berry patches are waiting to be expanded as soon as winter decides to vacate the area.

We are so excited about our newest members of the farm.  We have welcomed Ginger our registered bred Oberhasli goats.  She came to us from a very small breeder in Pennsylvania.  Oberhaslis came originally from Switzerland to the United States in the early 1900s.  They are most known for their gentle dispositions, unique coloring, and high butter fat content.  These amazing dairy goats produce roughly 1-1 1/2 gals of milk per day, with a butterfat content ranging from 3.5%-4%.   This Medium size goat comes in two colors chamois and rarely black.  Black females can be registered males cannot   Oberhaslis are still considered relatively rare, but are starting to pop up in goat shows around the US.  Our main goal in stepping into this breed is too produce great sweet milk and milk products.  We are also looking forward to holding a few contest for local 4-H kids, with the hope of donating 1 or 2 registered weathers each year.   

There is a lot of debate on the right way to introduce new chickens into your flock.  We have tried a few different methods over the years.  Here is what we have found to work the best.  We are lucky enough to have a few spare coops around the property.  We always start with complete confinment for a two week period, this allows us to monitor for illness.  The next step is allowing them into a closed safety run, where they can see and chat with the other birds, but no fights can commence. This stage takes a week or two normally,  Before they are ready to be let free to range with the flock. They continue to sleep in separate coops for another few weeks.  Then they are added into the large flock housing at night.  When we are dealing with babies the same steps apply just at a slower rate of time.  We have found this method to work nicely for us.  If you do not have extra housing available, you can always separate the coop into sections. We have even used children's playpens to segregate chicks of different ages.  Placing pens close to each other for safe interactions.