2013 Buy Local Challenge

John got me the movie "Fresh" for Christmas and we just watched it and it has inspired me to inspire YOU! There is so much that most of us don't understand about how our food is produced and how that affects our health and our environment.  I think that most people get that it is better to buy organic but many feel they just don't have the money. Well I am here to issue a challenge! Take $10 worth of food in your budget each month and switch it to a local product like beef, chicken, eggs, milk, honey, fruit, lettuce, etc. If you are already buying some local, can you push yourself to switch one more thing?

Expect to pay more for the item(s) that you switch.  If you just change a few items to local, it certainly won't break the bank and you will be supporting your local economy. Not to mention all of the awesome health benefits from eating local foods.  We have got to stop pretending that it is ok to support these big corporations and how they abuse animals and fill our food with toxins and anti-biotics. To make the switch less overwhelming, just start with one or two items. Find a farmer that grows and sells it locally and buy it from them! You may have to call them and even visit their farm. It may be uncomfortable at first, but push through it! You will be blessed and be a blessing. Or if you are lucky to live in areas like Shipshewana or Ann Arbor or Flint, etc, there are many food stores that carry local, healthy foods. www.eatwild.com is a great website to find out who sells what that is local to you! Trader Joes is a favorite of mine. Let me know what you are buying that is local! Let's start a movement!

2012 Year in Review

 

Well it has been a FULL year for our family! We had Paul join us at the end of last year and so we have been watching him grow this year. He is a very fun-loving baby that smiles as big as his daddy.  He is a sweet baby and has greatly blessed our lives! 

Hope and Grace are also growing! They are getting taller and more hair (even Grace!). They are very good at playing together and love each other very much.  Their current favorite thing to do is to check eggs from the chickens. It is fun!

John got a job at the Mt. Pleasant Housing Commission and has fit in very well. They are all jokers and it didn't take John long to start playing pranks on the office people from post-it notes all over a desk to Christmas lights tying up a chair and phone.  As long as there is opportunity, I am sure that he will find some joke to play! He has been getting to know the 99 different residents in the building and trying to love on them as many are old and lonely. He gets along very well with his maintenance co-workers and we are so thankful for this blessing!

I, Kristin, have been enjoying living so close to family again (my mom and dad are right next door!).  We moved into our house in May and so the housework has grown! It is fun living in my great-grandparents and my grandparents house.  We are still trying to figure out exactly what we are going to do but I have been enjoying taking care of 12 hens and collecting eggs. I lost one when I first got them to a fox or coyote which was a bummer.

We are adjusting to a new life here and making some friends.  We love being in our house. There are still finishes that we need to do like window trim, mirrors etc. We are now saving for a kitchen. Our current kitchen is the old cabinets painted and I am hoping that within the year we will be ready for a new kitchen! We have been very blessed and are thankful for all that we have been given.  We still miss our friends from the Three Rivers area but we have enjoyed a few visits back.

We hope that this Christmas season, you will know how God loves you as He sent His Son to earth to take away YOUR sins and unite you to the one true Almighty God. Merry Christmas!

Love,
John, Kristin, Hope, Grace & Paul

The world of chicken

Well we have successfully brought up our first batch of chickens! We started with 104 little babies! We lost 11 along the way to smothering, coons and an accidental death.  We butchered on two different days. First we butchered 20 and it was quite a bit of work. The next time we butchered 58 and had lots of great help, a little better system and we cut our time in half! Well if you are doing your math, you would think that left us 15 birds. We have 10. I am not sure if we  mis-counted in the butchering process or if some were snatched away unnoticed. Of those 10 left, I am confident of 1 hen. There may be 2 or more. "One hen out of 104 birds?!" you might say...we said that too. I guess hind sight would tell us that free chick day is giving away the males that nobody else would buy! I am hoping to be able get about 10 more hens soon. Here are some pictures of our chicken adventures. (See our previous blog on chickens "Our Family Has Grown By 104," to see how little they were!)

The chickens would come to greet you when it was feeding time.

Since they were almost all roosters, they fought over everything! Especially at mealtime.

The kids have enjoyed having the birds around to play with.

They are lucky they didn't get close enough for Paul to grab a handful of feathers out!

Grace is by far the best with the chickens. She can catch a chicken as well as John or I! She  loves to catch them and hold them. No fear in that girl!

We were leading them from their pen by the barn to the garden to eat some bugs!

This is what happens when they don't like the GMO (Genetically Modified Organism)corn we had to buy once in a pinch. They practically refused to eat it (They've been eating all fresh organic grains) and went for my pumpkins and squash instead! (The day before I was going to sell them at market...grr)

 The Butchering Process

 We believe in raising animals with the greatest of dignity and we believe the same is true of their death. NO, we did not just cut their heads off and let them run around. That causes the birds to be in shock. We put them in a killing cone upside down (I didn't take a picture of this part) and cut the main artery in their neck. They die peacefully and quickly. That being said, here is the process after that.

First you must scald the bird is 140 degree water to loosen their feathers. Aaron, a friend who has worked with Joel Salatin, a pioneer in raising healthy animals, came to help us. It was mainly my job to make sure that the water was at the right temp. Too hot can tear the skin, too cold can make it hard to pull the feathers out.

After scalding, the bird goes onto the clothesline for plucking. Mom Derby, Grandma and Grandpa and a few siblings helped pluck those feathers off.

The birds get washed in some water before heading to the eviscerating table.

John always loves what he does, even when that includes pulling out the innards of a chicken. He has gotten pretty good at cleaning them out. John's sister, Joy, did a great job as well. Aaron showed them a few tricks to help. After they are cleaned out, they get another washing and sit in a chill tank (or a cooler with cold water in our case) for 20 min or so to cool the bird down.

The final step is quality control in the house which Rebekah is awesome at. This is when you look the bird over and pull out any extra pin feathers (tiny new feathers forming) and bag and freeze them.

We have certainly learned a great amount about chickens this year! It was hard to butcher the birds we were raising but we knew that was the purpose. After you do one, it is not so hard. They aren't like having a dog or cat, you do not get attached, but killing things is never fun (for most). We will be raising meat birds next year so be thinking if you want any and how many you would want.  Chicks will be ordered in the spring. We will let you know. We are working on a website this winter, so be looking for that!

Chick ya later!

What a busy summer it has been!

Well it has been a busy summer, hence the lack of posts! May and June brought on moving and planting our garden. John decided to plant one the size of Texas ;) and it has been growing like crazy! Our soil is very fertile and so it grows plants very well and weeds too unfortunately. Somehow we have managed to have a great harvest though! John power washed and painted the barn, along with a little help. We even managed to squeeze in a vacation to my aunts cottage on Schoolsection lake with the Derby family. We have been busy weeding, harvesting, canning, freezing and keeping three kids alive :) Here are some pictures of our adventurous summer!

We were blessed to have a neighbor let us borrow his lift

Esther painted the O & E FIRST & SON which was my great grandparents, Orrin and Eloida and their son, Duval, my grandfather

John did some fancy work painting the top part of the barn as the lift only went so high. I believe the top of the peak is around 40ft! Notice the bright orange harness around his waist.

Here is a great view of before and after the paint, what a difference! We haven't been out to take all the after pictures yet.

Here the girls are fishing with their aunties at the cottage

This was one day of picking, I think the carrots were my favorite!

Garden produce!

John processing our first chicken. I may have accidentally ran over it with the dolly as we moved their pen :( We are now down to 91 (started with 104). We have one in the freezer ready to be processed as well (he got smothered when they all got scared because of hawks in the area and ran in the pen). We lost 7 to coons, 5 to smothering and 1 to the dolly.

School has begun! We are doing some preschool with Hope this year. Mainly learning skills like cutting, tracing and painting. She loves it and we have a good time.

Grace is our little worker. Here she is helping me wash tomatoes so that we can can them.  She has been a great help!

We do manage to have a little fun amidst all the work. Here the girls have made smoothie mustaches :)

Paul has been growing! He is standing everywhere and longing to walk. As much as he would like to help can, he mainly grabs the big pots and bangs them on the floor. He is such a joy though!

So that has been our summer in a nutshell. We are working on getting all the squash processed and the last of the corn and tomatoes. We are just about to butcher all of the male chickens for meat and then build a hen house for the females. They are about 13 weeks old and will start laying eggs in about 6-7 weeks (hens do not need roosters to lay eggs). I can't wait! We are excited for fall so we can settle things down and make a plan for spring. We are slowly getting used to the farm life. We didn't realize how slow the process would be but we also feel that when you go into everything slowly, you don't have debt and you are able to adjust your life slowly so you are not so overwhelmed. This is the best way to be profitable and to enjoy what you are doing so we are choosing to be the tortoise and not the hare :) May your fall be a blessed one!

John, Kristin and the kids

The tale of a farmgirl...

This is what a tomato plant is supposed to look like

This is a tomato gardeners arch nemesis...the hornworm

This is what a hornworm will make a tomato plant look like if you don't realize that they are there

These are a hornworms arch nemesis...the chicken

This guy was the size of my finger! He was huge!

Did you know that hornworms have a lot of protein to them?

Oh yes I did! (feed the worm to the chickens)

And the chickens fought and fought over him! What fun we have...

Well we have had quite the time of it lately! We put our chicks out to pasture in a pen and lost 7 chicks over 4 nights to coons. Every time we thought we had them protected those coons would find a way to get one. We hardly got any sleep that week because we would wake up at all hours and find the chicks in distress and run outside and shoot some coons.  It must have been quite the site seeing me run around in a nightgown coon hunting! Luckily, it was dark out... Lately we have been hunting at night and killing them before they get any chicks. So far our total is 15 coons, 2 possums and 1 skunk all in two weeks! It has been a learning experience for sure.  Today I discovered hornworms on my tomato plants. I thought that deer had been eating them...oye! We've been working on painting the barn and trying to keep the garden under control. It is almost an acre big so it has not been easy. Hopefully the harvest will pay off in the end.  I am currently working on writing a grant to the state of Michigan to get our farm turned into a milking operation with a creamery. I am not expecting to get it this year but it is good practice. We are thinking that this is the direction that we will take in our farming adventure but we are still praying through it and seeking wise counsel. I am realizing now why the settlers didn't have to do P90X or Insanity or Jane Fonda to stay fit. Pulling weeds is a great arm workout and you do squats for hours. We are tired...but in a good way I guess. Blessings to you all!!

The Derbys

Our family has grown...by 104!!

Our first batch of chickens arrived one day old! And we named everyone of them!

Meet chick and his brother chick and their sister chick :)

They are very hearty birds though we are still trying to figure out the breeds

They are definitely going to be egg layers for us (the females anyway)

The kids LOVE the baby chicks. Grace is often reaching in to grab one :)

Aunt Sue got to visit and work in the garden

Grace loves to help in the garden

Well, on the spur of a moment we saw that the local elevator had a free chick day! (Well you had to buy their feed but it was still way cheaper than just buying chicks). So we decided to get some! We have 104 and they have doubled in size in just a week! They are very aggressive (they dig and scratch a lot) so that means that they will make great eggs! Chickens eat bugs which cuts down on our bug/pest population and it adds great protein to the egg! They also eat grass which makes their eggs high in vitamins (you will not find this in confinement chickens-their eggs are high in cholesterol and low in vitamins because all they eat is grain). We will be butchering the males in about 10 weeks. We have not quite figured out how many males and females that we have.  Females will start laying eggs on their own at about 5 months (So ours will start around October). We are excited for this new adventure! Our garden is huge so we are working at weeding it. :( We have been not-so-blessed with thousands of thistles (aka pricker bushes). Needless to say, our hands are FULL!

Well it is official! We named our farm! We were debating between a few names but there was one that won out in the end.  We are officially Poimaino Farm LLC. It is pronounced POY-MY-NO and it means "to feed." IN John 21 Jesus is having a conversation with Peter in which He asks Peter 3 times, "Do you love me?" and then commands him, "Feed my sheep."  The Greek word for "feed" is poimaino.  We realized that our true purpose in what we are doing is to feed God's sheep-body, mind and soul.  We will be feeding people with the food that we grow (body), with educational programs about health (mind) and with witnessing to people (soul). The word means to feed and to shepherd and so we were excited about it.  We were a little worried about the oddness of the word but we are convinced that with a solid purpose, we can market the name just fine.  The name itself is a witnessing tool while we are out marketing because when you hear it your first thought is, "What is poimaino?" This is a great way to witness because it leads right into a conversation on how Jesus calls us to feed the sheep.  So we are in the process of getting all things setup for being a legal business and we are gearing up for the farmers market which starts in June.

Also, we are moving! This Friday is our official move-in day.  We have most of our stuff in the house already and are working on moving stuff down from the attic.  On Friday, we will move our beds and clothes.  It has been quite a journey working on the house and we are excited to see it come to an end (or just return to a normal level of upkeep) and focus more of our time on the farm.  Feel free to stop by and see the house!

To God alone be the glory!

John and Kristin

p.s. The kids are doing great. Paul is almost rolling and has recently found his voice so he is chattering all the time.  The girls love their new room and house.  We will see how the transition goes!

A flooring sneak peak!

This is a BEFORE picture of the dining room and kitchen

This is AFTER it was sanded! WOW!

We rented a sander and it did an awesome job (The operators didn't do too bad too ;) )

My dad is using the edger sander. It sure is a good workout!

It took John, my dad, and myself about 2 hours to stain the living room.

Grandpa has been sanding and staining the stairway.

Yes, John does have stain on his sock :) OOPS! The floor looks great though!

Well there is your sneak peak! Everything is officially stained and currently drying.  In the next few days we will be coating it all with polyurethane to give it the seal and shine it needs. After the smell of all this fades out, we will be on our way to carpet! We also have final inspections on the horizon. We failed our first final for electrical (are we surprised?). I guess he fails everyone though and it was a small list that is easy to fix (closet light fixtures and such). The inspector had high praises (thanks much to dad Derby who installed most of the plugs and ran most of the wire!). A move in date hasn't quite been set but it is very soon! Probably within the next month depending on how the inspections go and that pesky refund check :) We hope that your Easter was filled with all the joy and blessing of what the Lord has done for us!