We are gearing up to move our entire farm operation which gets more and more daunting the longer you think about it… We will be moving our dairy goats, sheep, dairy cattle, chickens, turkeys, ducks, cats, dogs, our bees, a goat barn, a chicken house, pasture fencing plus all our personal belongings and ourselves. 

We have rented land from farm friends so that we can still offer our summer CSA program during this transition. The seeds for our CSA crops are already growing and CSA memberships are filling up nicely. As you can imagine, It’s important for us to continue growing our CSA and selling our eggs and soap during the transition… because Nathan is no longer making a wage working for someone else…

*panic*

But honestly, there are so many things that Nathan hasn’t had the time or the land to make happen. He has dreams of specialty fall crops, berries, specialty greens, orchard fruits, honey and the list just goes on and on. He has the skills and knowledge, the connections, ambitions, direction and he’s about to have 10 acres to get ‘er done. So, while it’s a scare to have him not working for someone else it is also a pretty great opportunity!

Also, you probably don’t know that before becoming a mother I had a good hospitality career working special events at a number of prestigious event venues in Scottsdale AZ. I was also the catering manager for a luxurious private golf community before we left the west coast. I absolutely love bringing special events to life and didn’t realized how much I’d missed it.

The Farm to Fork Dinner work I’ve been doing has totally renewed my passion for special event work and has prompted me to get back in the catering business here in the area.  I’m now on staff at a number of specialty event venues plus I’m also available for hire if you need special event planning help. Yep, I’m going freelance with my event planning!

So there you have it, we have all sorts of things in the works currently. It’s true, we are no longer affiliated with Tanglefoot Ranch… but we have exciting things in the works for The Ryder Family Farm in Pope county! Be sure to follow us on Facebook and add yourself to our newsletter so we can keep you in the loop.

We are humbled by all the offers for help and support during this crazy unexpected transition of ours. Thank you to everyone that has reached out to us! When the time comes we will welcome your moving and fencing help but in the meantime help us prove to our bankers that we already have a solid customer base by buying some soap, eggs or perhaps a CSA share. We will see you at the Golconda Farmer’s Market Saturday!

The post The Farm is Moving to Golconda, IL! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We realized just before getting the prized pumpkin home that we’ve exhausted our frozen abundance of pumpkiny goodness from last year and *gasp* in our blur of activity this growing season I’ve overlooked planting pie pumpkin! Actually we didn’t even plant the huge field of pumpkin & squash at all this year. No time. 

Plus, we had truckloads of pumpkin last year, more than we could sell or eat so the livestock ate fall pumpkiny goodness through much of the winter!

Our basement is quite ideal for pumpkin and squash storage so we put up lots of spaghetti squash, butternut, sweet meat squash, pie pumpkin and of course fairytale pumpkin. Our last years harvests are still keeping great down there almost a year later but the supply is quite low. All we have left is spaghetti squash, one sweat meat squash and the fairytale pumpkin we just got back from the fair.

We have several pumpkin and squash plants slowly growing around the house this year but they are first for our CSA families shares, if we have extra we’ll put some up in the basement for ourselves… And suddenly I’m in a fall pumpkin panic! I actually blame the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte I had last monday (I know, I get crunchy shame for drinking it. I’m fine with that, it was soooo good).

In the fall we do basically everything pumpkin. The first scents and tastes of pumpkin send me straight into an excited holiday prep countdown. I love fall. We eat pumpkin donuts, drink pumpkin coffee, make pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie of course- so not having an abundance of pumpkin kind of worries me!

Just to be sure we had pumpkin on hand for the future I set out to preserve our fairytale pumpkin and sweet meat squash. FYI: Sweet meat has “squash” in the name but it’s actually interchangeable as a pumpkin in all pumpkin baking recipes, read more about it here. It’s sweet and just as good as a pie pumpkin. 

So far I’ve gotten halfway through doing the sweet meat and I’m beat! It is a whopping 16 pounds and did I mention it’s almost a year old? I peeled and chopped 8 pounds of it so far and got 7 quart sized jars full of pumpkin cubes.

I think I’ll hold off a bit on doing the fairytale pumpkin because it weighs about 55 pounds… I don’t have that many canning jars or that much time currently. I’m secretly hoping the fairytale pumpkin just keeps until November when we can eat from it all month, I’m sure it will

For those of you interested in preserving your own pumpkin I used the following pumpkin canning procedure from http://www.sbcanning.com/2011/10/canning-for-fall-squash-pumpkin-and.html

Pie Pumpkins & Winter Squash Canning
These are from the National Center for Home Preserving website. 

Quality: Pumpkins and squash should have a hard rind and stringless, mature pulp of ideal quality for cooking fresh. Small size pumpkins (sugar or pie varieties) make better products. For why we say not to mash or puree the squash, read more about the caution.

Procedure: Wash, remove seeds, cut into 1-inch- wide slices, and peel. Cut flesh into 1-inch cubes. Boil 2 minutes in water. Caution: Do not mash or puree. Fill jars with cubes and cooking liquid, leaving 1-inch headspace.  For making pies, drain jars and strain or sieve cubes.

Process in pressure canner – 55 minutes for pints 90 mins for quarts at 10lbs pressure.
Process in pressure canner – 55 minutes for pints 90 mins for quarts at 11bs pressure.
 

What is your favorite sight, smell or fall tradition, is it pumpkin?

The post Canning Fairytale Pumpkin and Sweet Meat Squash appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

You see we were pointed in the direction of a homeless livestock guardian dog. We’ve known we needed one since our beloved family dog lost her life last fall.

Luckily we’ve only had one farm predator issue since losing our farm guard dog, Dixie. You might remember my post about the mink killing my birds just before Easter.

We still have our herding dog that we are trying to train (she might be pregnant!) but we know she’ll never be a dog we can trust with our baby poultry… and she’s not a guard dog.

Anyway, over the weekend we just became more farm legit! We picked up Winnie, a 4 year old Great Pyrenees from a shelter. We knew she could have past life issues that could make her unsuitable for our farm setting but the shelter offered to let us foster her while we test the waters and after four days I’m pretty confident she’s a keeper (so is Adalyn!).

She’s huge but so gentle and submissive. She’s not shown any aggression to any of our family farm residents and she’s been introduced to everyone, cats, ducklings, ruminates, chickens, kids, herding dog, the neighbor’s Great Pyrenees…

Also, we put up an electric fence to attempt containing our barnyard creatures. The grass is always greener on the other side of the road, according to our goats, and we’d really like to avoid having one hit by a car…

Speaking of running over ruminates- I ran over a lamb last week! It was horrible but lucky. Little Sam the lamb was asleep under the back of our Prius Friday afternoon as we piled in the car to get to the girls first softball practice. My rear view mirror and backup camera were clear so I backed up… Heard this knocking sound under the car. Immediately stopped to investigate and found my lamb underneath the center of the car, pinned, bloody nosed and freaking out.

OMG I ran over my lamb!!

I was having a heart attack, the kids in the car were very concerned and needy, the lamb was being squished by the car… but somehow I managed to successfully drive the two front tires up on a couple split logs of wood, to raise the car up enough so that I could free Sam the lamb. Had to pull him out sideways by his fur.

While I freed Sam Everly was tasked with calling her dad home to help out…

“Dad, come home now a lamb has been run over!”

We had to leave for softball right away and someone needed to stay with Sam and assess the damage… Luckily Sam didn’t get run over with the tires of the car, just grated a bit beneath the middle of the car and the gravel drive. He knocked his nose hard in the freak out.

After he was freed he was up and walking fine, bloody nose stopped after applying some pressure and an hour later he was out munching grass with his lamb you girlfriend Holly.

Lambs sleeping under the car is another reason we ran our electric fencing… and I’ll always look under the car before getting in and driving. OMG!

The post Meeting Winnie, running over a lamb and shock fencing… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Death

Take today for example, we awoke to a gruesome/ fascinating discovery: The back legs, tail and uterus of a dead mouse on the floor. The mouse was pregnant, like 4 babies were identifiable. We could have cleaned it up and tossed it out before the kids noticed but we have a very science minded child- so we picked it up and put it aside for looking at.

“Aw…” Everly remarked at the babies “but it’s good they aren’t taking over our house!” she added. She’s right, baby animals are cute and it’s sad when they die but a house full of rodents is NOT a good thing. Our cats live in the house with a job to do. They earned their keep on this kill.  If you want to see it you can here- most of my facebook friends seemed disturbed so I opted NOT to show it here.

Later, when we went out to feed the livestock the girls spotted a dead cardinal in the grass near a waterway. “Can we take this inside to study mom?” they asked me. They know not to touch without asking first. This dead bird had some decay and possibly disease by the looks of it, so we opt to look at it where it was, without touching.

Back when the below freezing temperatures and snow were here their daddy brought home a few dead birds that likely froze to death over at the farm shop. One was a woodpecker two were common grackles that we studied and identified using our bird books.

The girls drew diagrams of their birds and labeled them. They even plucked a few interesting feathers to glue to their observations page.

They love to get to see birds up close.

New life

A “peep” sang out from our poultry incubator in the living room this morning, we have eggs that are due to hatch. The girls ran over and really looked at the eggs. One had a small crack and the longer we looked the more we noticed!

Turns out three eggs are in the process of hatching early. I keep hatch records so I was jotting notes down and the girls decided to join in. Adalyn drew pictures of the eggs and colored them in accordingly (we have some easter egger chickens). Everly documented the date, time, titled her journal entry and labeled/ colored the eggs on her observation page. I smiled at the sight of their self driven activity.

Being mindful of teaching moments and really letting them become immersed in both the good and bad of farm life has really been working out.

Of course, we didn’t just expose them to gruesome death right away. We eased in with the topic, first when our pet bunny died, then as we saw death around us (an elderly neighbor died, we saw a dead squirrel in the road, our dog was run over, chickens died, turkeys needed slaughtering, we tried to save orphaned lambs, newborn calves needed warming and bottle feeding, etc).

I think being so sheltered from death makes it seem more devastating (for kids and adults). What do you think?

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Buttercup, our new goat, found her way to our home a week ago. Her two newborn kids also came along! I happened to see a craigslist post for a bred dual purpose goat who was about to kid… Just as I contacted the seller she was having her babies!

Anyway, we said we could take the doe and her kids for pickup over the weekend, if available. We were able to work out an even better arrangement with the seller, he even delivered the goats to us so that they would be moved in before the big winter storm.

Immediately after birth the breeder separated the kids (goat babies) from mom so they could be taken inside and they became bottle babies like many goats do. The winter weather was wicked during this time. We knew it was uncertain if the kids and their mom would reunite and take to nursing as opposed to being bottle fed upon arrival at our farm.

I’m happy to say, Buttercup and her twins are now stashed away in the garage, bonding, nursing and adjusting to us. Everly and Adalyn named Buttercup’s doeling Rose Petal and we think we’ll name the buckling Diablo.

So now our goat herd has grown from two to five and we have fresh goats milk again!

Anyone in Southern Illinois want to barter for some cattle panels or goat fencing?!

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