Dropstone Farms

Hey look what we got!

These shy little guys (who won’t move out from behind the crate so I can take a good picture) are Soay sheep, a not-very-domesticated breed from Scotland. They are small, and their tails are short so they don’t need to be docked, and they don’t need to be sheared to gather their wool, as they rub it off or you can just pull it off with your fingers. And, they’ll eat scrub and weeds, including Scotch broom and blackberries, like goats will, but most domestic sheep won’t.

We brought them home from Puyallup last night in the dog crate in the back of truck. It was late and dark when we got home so we left them in the crate, on the front porch, for the night, then woke up early this morning to let them out to learn about the electric fence and get some delicious grass. They munched all day and spent a lot of time running and jumping when we opened the back door and startled them into touching the electric fence accidentally. (They don’t learn as fast as dogs!)

They come with the names Biscuit and Muskrat* (the one with horns, in front above). They are wethers, which means they are fixed males who have been removed from circulation, so to speak, for whatever genetic reason. In this case they will ultimately be removed into our freezer and thence to our tummies for the winter. If it goes well, we may see about a breeding and/or wool flock in the future.

All of a sudden, where I used to see overgrown grass and weeds, I now see delicious pasture. Who knew I’d have this side effect? So we’re trying to figure out how best to confine them to specific small parts of our yard so they can safely trim the lawn without eating the cabbage and kale and lettuce, or eat the Scotch broom and blackberry without getting into the street. Harness? Collar? More electric fence?

If you have experience with sheep, please do chime in! We are winging it here … so far they seem to want to eat some grass and not be near us. On Sunday we will pick up a couple of domestic-breed mutt-ish wethers (Romney and whatever), also for meat, who we will try to integrate with these guys. Any and all advice/ideas are welcome!

* Despite the America (orig. Captain and Tennille, I think) song, I keep thinking it’s Biscuit and Buckwheat. So Muskrat may become Buckwheat. Or else Buttermilk, for thematic-ness.)

2 Comments »

It’s our third year with poultry, and the raccoons have finally found us.

We are down to one laying duck (from four) — they took one on Sunday, one on Monday, and one on Tuesday. So the hens and remaining survivor duck are all staying inside the coop until we can figure out another solution. It’s a bummer; I like seeing them free-ranging around the yard and I definitely like the tasty rich orange yolks they lay because of eating so much grass and weeds.
Also, while the hens slow down their laying in the winter, the ducks are champs and keep laying an egg a day each, pretty much all winter. So we’re looking for some more Khaki Campbell ducks on Craigslist and such. Let us know if you know of any that are available.

Then on Monday night, the dogs woke us up at about 1:30 and we ran out to see a couple big raccoons around the brooders that hold the turkeys (4 weeks old), batch 2 of our broilers (also 4 weeks old), and batch 3 of the broilers (like 5 days old).
We think there should have been 23 turkeys; there are 15 left. There should have been about 58 broilers from batch 2; there are 45 now (though to be fair, we couldn’t count them before and they escaped a lot when they were small, and we might’ve lost some before). The small broilers seem to have been undisturbed.

Raccoon carnage is particularly icky to clean up after, as they often don’t eat the whole bird or carry it away, and in fact if they can reach through the chicken wire and grab a bird, they’ll just gnaw on it through the wire and leave the rest of the body inside the brooder for you to find in the morning.

We have put up electric fence around the brooders and the greenhouse too, where the 30 turkey poults that arrived today are brooding.

Tuesday night we were woken up at about the same time, and the dogs barked a bit then quieted down and seemed confused. The brooders were untouched. I hopefully infer that the dogs were barking at the sound of raccoons learning about electric fence, and subsequently taking off in the other direction.

This affects our turkey availability, obviously, though I’m not quite sure yet how we’ll work it out. Due to some procrastination on our part combined with a really bad experience with Privett Hatchery, we are taking a gamble that the poults that arrived today will be big enough in time for Thanksgiving. We may have only smallish (8-10 pounds) turkeys. If they are really small, we may only sell the fifteen that are left from the first batch for Thanksgiving — they will be a month older — and do today’s 30 for Christmas. Or I guess we could do whoever’s big at Thanksgiving, and give the rest another month to keep growing.

In any case, I’m not sure yet how to take orders for turkeys. I know people will want to secure their turkeys early, so I hope we don’t have to wait too late; I’d be sad if folks waited for us and didn’t order from others, and then we couldn’t deliver and they had to use a storebought bird.

To that end, please put your name and email address if you want to be on the non-binding list of interested people: http://tinyurl.com/turkeyinterestlist. We’ll go down the list first-come first-served, and contact folks as we have birds, and if you have found another source, we’ll just move on to the next person.

5 Comments »

We’ve been reviewing our successes and not-so-much-successes from last year, and our resources for this year (including personal levels of energy and time available, as well as space), and making some decisions about when and what and how.

One thing we know: we’re not going to grow produce for sale this year. We’ll grow to feed ourselves, as usual, but not worry about selling. This turns out to be very liberating! We can choose the varieties we want, rather than trying to make decisions based on what might be interesting and do well at market.

One thing we are pretty sure about (dependent on some decisions about pastures): we’ll be raising several batches of chickens and one batch of turkeys for sale. Keep an eye out here to hear more when we are ready to take orders.

No Comments »

We just got home from the farmers’ market, where we sold out of chickens — hooray! So, no more reservations. I’ll be taking down the signup form.

However, we have left ourselves a buffer of 25 chickens for which we are *not* taking reservations, in case something happens (illness, predators, they get banged up in processing, etc). So it is quite likely that we will have approximately 25 more chickens unclaimed, so I’ll start a waiting list. Comment here or email us at farmers @ dropstonefarms . com to get on the waiting list. We also might have what basically amounts to factory seconds, if there are broken wings or legs as a result of processing, so we may have a few available at a lower price.

Let us know if you’re interested and we’ll give you a call when the time comes!

Thanks to everyone who ordered. We’re really excited about these birds and are glad to be able to provide them for you all.

No Comments »

The chicks that were imminent in the last post are now here and huge and out on pasture and more than half of them are claimed already. Yay! So — if you want organic pastured chickens and you’re in the Seattle area and can come pick them up during the first week of November, learn more here, and order here.

No Comments »

Every day I think “Oh I’ll blog about this interesting thing tonight,” or I take a picture and fully intend to post it, and every day I do not manage to do so. Tons is going on here and even though I am now taking vacation from work on Fridays to stay home and work on the farm, we’re still going nonstop. We are fully deployed at the Old New Farm and the New New Farm and are hoping to be at market for the first time this weekend with some plums we happened to find on a spare tree at the Old New Farm.

Tired.

1 Comment »

… but we got to stretch two days’ worth of work out over three days, and a good thing too — it was too hot to work outside between 12 and 4ish every day this weekend, so we got to take breaks and drink gins and tonic and read our books. But all the same, we got a lot done and of course there is a lot left to do. We are at least six weeks behind the season, I feel like, which is especially sad since it has been super sunny and warm here for about that long.

The various (50+) squashes and pumpkins just got in the ground at Johnson Farm on Friday and Saturday. They have been living in the greenhouse in gallon pots. Many of them have several blossoms. I don’t know if that’s good (yay fruits) or bad (plant growth is now stunted?).

Today we cleared out our bolted radishes, chicken-pecked and side-shoot-producing broccoli, and crowded lettuces (destined for lettuce kraut) finally, and fertilized, composted, and got 21 tomatoes, also in gallon pots, into the ground at home. There are probably 80+ plants waiting to go in at Johnson Farm and at our New New Farm (which Garth has referenced but we haven’t yet introduced properly — that’s on my list). Tomatillos and eggplants and peppers are in the same boat.

I shall stop now lest I fall asleep at the keyboard, but suffice it to say, we are feeling pleased and optimistic with FINALLY making progress … and there is more to come.

3 Comments »

So the sun has been shining here, which means we’ve barely sat down at all as we scramble to get things done. This weekend was full of socializing and meeting new people as well as much farm work. In the past few days we have:

• planned irrigation for the New Farm (nothing in the ground yet there since there is no water nor fence yet);
• had our farm inspection, required to sell at our Farmers’ Market — they just want to make sure we are growing and not importing;
• met a new friend and toured his chicken tractor setup, meat chick brooding facility, and brewing/drinking space, as well as meeting the soon-to-be-mutton sheep;
• introduced the Wyandottes, who are now 4 months old, to the big wide world;
• shuffled some things around in the greenhouse to make room for the tomatoes;
• moved the tomatoes back into the greenhouse so they can grow big and strong (we will not be having nearly as many tomatoes as we had hoped);
• watered everything, and then watered again;
• fixed the hanging auto-refilling chicken/duck waterers so that they actually auto-refill;
• watered again;
• hauled much dirt all morning to fill up the flower bed;
• mucked out the chicken coop;
• permanently moved the Wyandottes into the big girls’ section of the coop;
• moved the Ameraucanas, who will be 7 weeks old this week, out into the subdivision of the coop — hooray for no more poultry in the house!!;
• showed off our chicken tractor technology to some folks who want to build one;
• drank iced tea on the porch with Garth’s folks;
• made a list of everything in the greenhouse that needs to be potted up, planted, or otherwise dealt with — it’s a big list;
• potted up some squash we got at the Tilth plant sale, which are still in the greenhouse;
• planted out a few rows of Shimonita bunching onions;
• did two loads of laundry and ran the dishwasher;
• drank a beer.

But it’s just the calm before the storm. This week is OK — some basic things need accomplished like planting out the flower bed, mulching paths and around some of the larger starts, and addressing the greenhouse inventory list, but the next week, we have 6 turkey poults (babies) arriving on Tuesday, and 25 meat chickens arriving on Thursday, and a show to go to in Seattle that same day, Thursday, and then also a chicken slaughter party to go to on Saturday. Need to prepare homes for both these batches of poultry before they arrive! And then there are plans to make about doing chickens for sale … more to come on that soon!

2 Comments »

It’s April, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

1. Tomato seedlings (we’re behind), 2. Swirly egg and speckly egg, 3. QUACK, 4. Garlic and mustard greens, 5. Impending artichoke, 6. When we pulled back the sheet on this hoophouse, it was like opening a present

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

No Comments »

Lots done this weekend, despite a super-busy week for me with both work and socializing. Followed it up with a busy weekend full of farm chores and seedlings! Yay.

The greenhouse is not yet done, but it is serviceable, so we moved four seed trays out into it. They are under lights but not on heat mats. We rigged up a rack to hold four 48-inch light fixtures, and each end can be raised and lowered independently, so we can have older, taller plants at one end and younger at the other end. I moved the two Meyer lemon trees and one fig tree from the laundry room, where they overwintered, to the greenhouse, and also brought the two blueberry bushes in. All the above are in buckets. Then with the new space on the inside seedling shelves, we started one whole tray of onions, one with lots of leeks and lots of parsnips, and one with a whole bunch of random things, including cabbages, sunflowers, Imperial Star artichokes, and more. I also stuck a row of Mexican Strain tomatillos in the tray that got tomatoes last week, since that tray is on a heat mat and the others aren’t.

Inside the greenhouse!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Meanwhile, Garth prepped the beds that were tomatoland last year and got ready to put hoophouses on them. Four rows mixed radish seed, four rows Olympia Hybrid spinach, three rows red carrots (Red Samurai), three rows purple carrots (Purple Haze), four rows orange carrots (Mokum). And then we set out the last of the Feb 21 greens, mostly chard and some kale, and also some of the bigger lettuces from the same date.

Upcoming this week is planting potatoes, more peas, getting another table and bank of lights in the greenhouse, and starting to prepare for ducklings (April 15) and turkey poults (early May).

2 Comments »

Mundane news

• Neighbor Claire brought over some rhubarb roots today; she was dividing and moving her patch, growing mostly unattended in the middle of the yard, to her new garden area. The rhubarb we transplanted last year didn’t take, sadly, so we were happy to have some new.
• Started some herb seeds today — seven cells each of sweet basil, Genovese basil, cilantro, dill, oregano, and scallions (I know, not an herb, but my last cells didn’t germinate yet so I tossed some more in this batch).
• I made pasta from scratch for the very first time today. Proof-of-concept pasta, we are calling it, because it wasn’t super wonderfully delicious, but it was good, and we both decided it’s worth learning to do better. We tossed it with homegrown leeks, homegrown Brussels sprouts, and homemade sausage, and garnished with imported parmigiano reggiano and the zest and and juice of an organic, non-local meyer lemon. (I can’t wait for my lemon trees to start doing things and making lemons for me.)

Proof-of-concept pasta, with homegrown leek and Brussels sprouts, and homemade sausage, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Fantastic news

• When we were considering moving here, a friend told us about the Trust for Working Landscapes, which manages some city-owned designated farmland that has been waiting for people to farm it; that possible opportunity was part of our decision to move here. So, a few weeks ago we met with some of the board members from the trust, and last Monday we finally turned in our application. Wednesday we met some board members out at the proposed site. Apparently, the whole process seems to be more informal than I thought, because instead of having a several-week process to review and approve our application, we spent an hour putting stakes in the ground where we wanted the corners of our plot to be. We also got the go-ahead to start buying equipment and seeds, so I guess it’s a go? I guess. Yay! If all goes well we will be selling veggies, maybe eggs, and maybe chickens at our farmers’ market and maybe at an unstaffed farm stand.
• As part of the aforementioned equipment-buying, Garth promptly went out and bought a BCS 720 walking tractor. I don’t really understand it completely, but as far as I can tell it is pretty awesome.
• Araucanas are coming in at our feed store this Friday, so we’ll be getting two more chickens, for an even twelve total, ten laying brown and two laying blue/green.

8 Comments »

Sorry, as always, about the radio silence. Stuff has been remarkably busy for it being only January, er, February … oof.

We are in the process of applying for a spot to farm on some public land that’s managed by the Trust for Working Landscapes. That, plus the construction of our greenhouse, plus making up for the family-visit travel that we skipped at holiday time, has been keeping us plenty busy. I’m already tired and we haven’t even started any seeds yet (so behind already!).

Happy February. Don’t be like us — get your seeds started soon! I have a roundup of other folks’ seed starting info in the works … really.

1 Comment »