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Sometimes things get a little wild and crazy on the farm even when you think you have everything planned out. That has been the case on the farm for the past week or so (or actually the last six years if I’m completely honest with myself). We’ve had lots of rain and even some wind storms to go along with it. The storms caused some large branches and smaller trees to fall on the electric fence in the woods shorting everything out. The pigs that just joined the party in the woods last week found a small hole in the fencing that was exploited while the fence was shorted out. We have had some great publicity on the farm thanks to an article in the Des Moines Register. And, all sorts of other stuff has been popping up from 4-H projects to hard lessons learned.
I say all of that to say that this weeks episode is very unique for a couple of reasons. First of all it was recorded in the comfy (slightly breezy and cool) confines of the hoop building, and secondly I sat down to record with out any plan at all. You may notice both of those things come out in today’s show, but hopefully there are also some diamonds in the rough.
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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by Ethan
on June 24, 2014
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Click on the image to see all the yummy details!
Hosting any event on your farm is always stressful … hosting a farm cookout can be even more stressful … and hosting a full on seven course feast on your farm with five chefs, a crew of kitchen help, professional servers, and more might even cause enough stress to drive you a little batty! That is exactly what happened on our farm this past weekend, and although it was stressful at times (and caused me to be a little nervous) it was probably one of the most satisfying and humbling moments I’ve had as a farmer. The crew that came out to the farm was beyond professional and passionate about what they were doing. All of that made for a wonderful event that often left me speechless.
If you’re looking for a way to say thank you to your farm friends, connect with new customers, or build a relationship with the chefs and food movements in your area I cannot recommend a dinner such as this one highly enough. Just be prepared for a little stress …
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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by Ethan
on June 18, 2014
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The importance of believing in what you are doing on your farm, why you are doing it, and the value of what you are producing is central to your farming journey. At least that is the case with my farm! I’ve always been a person that want’s other people to like me, and when it comes to the farm sometimes I can doubt my farming plan or my products when people are turned off by the price, the way we raise our livestock, or any other sort of craziness. Over time though I have come to realize how valuable the customers (farm friends) we have are, and also to realize that we won’t have everyone as a customer … just the best ones 😉
Today’s show is a little bit on the disorganized side I’m sure as I was working with back-up recording equipment for the first time. Although … if the sound quality wasn’t too awful let me know because there are a lot of other things I could do with this set-up in the future.
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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by Ethan
on June 11, 2014
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There is a delicate balance when it comes to the relationship between water and farmers. If you’re in the midst of a drought with no rain in site you are praying for rain, but if all it does is rain when you are trying to put up dry hay you are cursing the rain! There is one thing for sure though, you can’t control when it will or will not rain so you’d better be prepared for both options. All of this is to say that this week I’m going to spend some time responding to a listener e-mail about water … or the lack there of. I don’t know if there is a silver bullet type of answer for the question, but I do know that I’ve learned a few things from the past two years of dry spells and there is one major thing I will do different if we are dry again for an extended time.
If you’ve been around the show for a while you know that I’m passionate about farming in general, but starting a farm and beginning farmers more specifically! A little while ago I received a great e-mail from a blog reader who shared what his plan for dipping his toes into the world of farming is. I thought he had some great plans so I wanted to share them … plus, that e-mail in conduction with the e-mail about water got me to thinking.
Thinking about starting farms, trying to be like other farms, the importance to collecting ideas and adapting them to your farm, and even having a farm that is an educational hub! If you have any ideas about farm classes you would enjoy I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
Here are some helpful links from today’s show …
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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Life at Crooked Gap Farm has been pretty rough over the past week. Not that life still wasn’t fun and enjoyable, but rather that it has been full of “Hard Lessons Learned”! Since the hard lessons are often the portion of the show that receives the most comments and feedback I thought it would be fun (or therapeutic) to spend some time sharing the happenings from the last week and the hard lessons learned from the ups and downs.
This week I have lessons from my desire to do everything all at once, updates on the hoop building (or lack thereof), news about fancy dinners, and the traveling life of a farmer. Most importantly though I take some time to talk about the lessons learned and some very important takeaways!
Here are some helpful links from today’s show …
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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Here is a shot of the semi-finished wagon. Notice my chicken door with-in the person door. That is one of the improvements I’m most excited about.
In just over five years of farming I have now built four variations of a chicken wagon and each one improved on the failures of the ones that came before. Of course it didn’t take much to improve on my first wagon which was built out of a great find from a machinery auction. On today’s episode I wanted to take some time to talk about the design for this chicken wagon and why I decided to build it the way that I did. Below you will find a series of pictures showing my chicken wagon build at various stages along the way.
Here are some helpful links from today’s show …
Here are all of the building supplies needed for building my 10×15 chicken wagon.
We laid out the floor with our 2×4 joists and then placed the 3/4″ treated plywood on for the floor.
The walls were built with studs 2′ on center. I actually attached my steel horizontal instead of vertical like it normally would be so I had less cutting to do.
One of the best things about this wagon was that I borrowed an air nailer from a friend. That made the framing process much faster!
An important thing to work on as you are framing the building is trying to keep everything square. That doesn’t happen often on my farm, but that’s why I always say “it’s good enough for who it’s for.”
Here my son is working on the frame of our hinged roost, this will be great for when he needs to clean it out 😉
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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First of all let me apologize … somehow I got a little long winded in this episode. The subject of financing the farm is one that I’m passionate about and care about deeply because I not only want to see my farm succeed, but other beginning farms as well. So, when I talk about grants, loans, and other funding options I have a tendency to go on and on and on! What I do hope that you can take away from this episode though is a quick overview of some helpful resources when it comes to “finding money” and my passion for boot-strapping and saving like crazy to get the farm off the ground! As a little aside … it seems to me that the farmers I interact with from day to day are the kings and queens of boot-strapping and getting by with less, so I would almost call it a required farming skill!
Here are some helpful links from today’s show …
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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Check out that picture on the left … that’s me … and that’s the huge tractor that I drove this past week pulling a big huge wide field cultivator. The good news is that I didn’t even hit anything, and I helped get the field ready for organic corn (but I’m more excited about not hitting anything)! On today’s episode I’ll talk about how I helped prep the soil for the Non-GMO corn I’ll be using later this fall and then I’ll dig into a “potpourri” of farming subjects. This week I’ll be discussing (not so much answering) questions from three different listeners that left comments on our Crooked Gap Farm Facebook page. The topics include: Pink-eye in Cattle, “Pasty Butt”, Livestock Guardian Dogs, and Dexter Cattle.
Here are some helpful links from today’s show …
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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Fair warning … this episode was recorded with minimal notes, no post production editing, and late at night (or early in the morning depending on how you look at it). I do believe though, that it will give you a good taste of what spring is like on Crooked Gap Farm these days. As you listen to the show you will hear about how I haven’t finished the hoop building yet, how the pastures are quite where I want them to be, how the woodlots still need some seeding and fencing, how the chicken wagons aren’t done, how the garden still needs work, and of course (as you can see from the picture above) how the sheep don’t seem to care about my electric fence!
What I’m hoping you’ll get out of this raw episode is a true picture of life on my beginning farm in the spring. This is a busy time of year on all farms and ours is no different, so we are just trying to keep our heads above water and accomplish as much as possible. And, if we can accomplish a little more than possible that would be nice too!
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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by Ethan
on April 30, 2014
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I am very excited to have “Part Two” of my interview with Wesley Hunter of Providence Farm on the show today. On todays show Wes and I talk about some of the most important steps in raising a heritage breed chicken … the eating and the marketing! There are challenges of course when it comes to raising meat chickens on pasture, but when it comes to your customers the most important challenge is the marketing and education. Wes has some great information about the results from his blind taste test and how some of the struggles associated with marketing a heritage breed (because they are different than most chickens found in the local grocery store … in a good way). If you have any questions for Wes leave them in the comments below and he’ll answer as best as possible.
Through the help of a SARE Grant Wes was able to do some great on-farm research comparing a variety of heritage meat chickens for things like feed efficiencies, dressed weight percentage, total feed consumption, and even an unscientific taste test. It would not be a stretch to say this is one of the best sets of episodes to date!
If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below and Wes or I will take time to answer them.
Helpful Links from Today’s Episode:
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
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Sometimes things get a little wild and crazy on the farm even when you think you have everything planned out. That has been the case on the farm for the past week or so (or actually the last six years if I’m completely honest with myself). We’ve had lots of rain and even some wind storms to go along with it. The storms caused some large branches and smaller trees to fall on the electric fence in the woods shorting everything out. The pigs that just joined the party in the woods last week found a small hole in the fencing that was exploited while the fence was shorted out. We have had some great publicity on the farm thanks to an article in the Des Moines Register. And, all sorts of other stuff has been popping up from 4-H projects to hard lessons learned.
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