40 Days

Hi again! I know, two posts in the same month, even the same week! Amazing! We have decided to dedicate the next 40 days to prayer for the creamery. We are going to run very hard at doing all we can that we feel we should to make sure this is right for us. We are going to be praying for wisdom and direction. We are going to be selling all these "extras" we've collected over the past few years. We are going to brainstorm and fundraise and work hard, focusing our time, talents and treaures on this new business venture. We feel strongly that if we run hard for 40 days, God will reveal to us if we should do this, how we should do this and all the other little details. Will you join us during this 40 days? We would love to rally together. We will need time, talent and treasures.

 

TIME-pray for us!! The more prayers, the better!

TALENTS-We will be remodeling our garage into a grade-A creamery and if anyone has time to help, let us know! Any knowledge of creamery, laws, fundraising ideas etc are all appreciated!

TREASURES-This endeavor requires us to purchase creamery equipment. This can be expensive. We are looking into all ways to get the costs down to an affordable place. We know that there is a complete creamery set-up for sale for about $85,000. We are seriously looking into it but also other avenues to maybe do this cheaper. Any contributions are greatly appreciated! www.gofundme.com/DerbyCreamery

We are excited to see what the next 40 days will bring!

Creamery!

Well we are surviving all of this very cold weather! Luckily it snowed before all of this so we think our newly seeded hay field will survive just fine. We are using this winter to try and figure out the future of our farm. We are going to produce maple syrup this year for the first time. Our friends are joining in and we are going to do a community effort, which is so helpful because we have never done this before. We will let you know how it goes! The sap should be flowing in the next several weeks so we are ready!

The other big item on our plate is the option of opening our own creamery! A few of John's siblings used to work for a grass-fed organic creamery and we have greatly enjoyed their products. They have sold their cows and their farm and they are selling all their creamery equipment. We know that this would launch us into full-time farming, which is our end goal but it is a little scarey. John's siblings would help us run it and the market is still wide open from the previous owners. We have a place to put it down the road from us but we are trying to figure out financing. Having capital is by far the hardest part of farming! We could do so much if only we had some extra money! We have started a fund for anyone that would like to help us pay for this equipment. Go to http://www.gofundme.com/DerbyCreamery to support us. Thanks!!! Maybe you'll see OUR milk  in stores near you! We plan to do deliveries around the state. :)

www.gofundme.com/DerbyCreamery

We are still alive!

I'm sorry we have not been posting lately! We have had such a busy schedule lately! We have raised 250 broilers (meat chickens), 30 hens, 4 piglets, 3 steers and 25 turkeys, many of which are still on our grounds! We were blessed to take a weekend and visit Polyface Farms in Virginia. Joel Salatin is the chief farmer there and has written several books on farming that we have read and follow. He was also featured in the movie, "Food Inc." It was a great time of learning and we have already learned how to make our farm better and more efficient. I'll try and update again later with more about what we are doing here on the farm but until then, I'll give you a few pictures!

Joel Salatin in the cowboy hat

Fun at the county fair!

There were over 1700 people in attendance at the farm day at Polyface Farms

John helping out a neighbor put up their hay

Noah is now 8 months!! Such a sweet boy!

One load of our hay

Paul loves the chickens! (Not sure they love him though!)

John cutting our first round of hay. (This is borrowed equipment from our neighbor)

Downsizing

What a cold, hard winter we have had and it is only the first part of January. Luckily, before the winter hit, we decided to downsize. We've tried out different animals and if they didn't work out for us, we passed them on to someone better. So far we have had to move out our first dog ever, Max. We got him for Grace on her birthday. Unfortunately, he liked the taste of chicken and killed at least 6 of my laying hens. This was unacceptable and he found a better farm without any chickens. Our turkeys met their fate in November. They were actually fun to raise and we look forward to getting more next year. We decided to sell our goats. They were just too much trouble, always getting out and being naughty. The hardest one for me was that we recently sold our laying hens (or John might call them our non-laying hens). They were becoming a waste of money as they were eating expensive organic grain and not producing any eggs. They were getting old too and their laying was slowing down. Now we are left with 3 growing calves and two dogs. The farm is feeling a bit empty but we have learned so much from all of the animals that we've had and we are making many plans for the spring. John keeps dreaming about a milk cow so we shall see! We are busy making many changes to how we are functioning with the farm so we are excited to finally start moving forward with products we will have to offer people. Stay warm!

One Penny

Noah Andrew Derby has arrived!

We have been blessed with another boy! He was three days early too! His labor was very easy with only a few contractions! God spoiled me this time! We are excited to get to know this little guy. Noah means "Child of Peace" as he was a very peaceful baby in the womb. Andrew is John's middle name and means "Strong One." Here are some pictures of our newest addition!

NOAH ANDREW DERBY 11-17-2013  9LB 6OZ  20.5 IN

Noah at 5 days

Hope loves her brother.

The girls love holding him.

Paul has done very well with being gentle with Noah.

Proud daddy.
 

Well our lives are FINALLY slowing down with the arrival of little Noah. All of our meat chickens have been butchered and are in the freezer. Our goats are penned up for the winter! This is huge as they don't get out everyday anymore! Our laying hens have been moved into the barn and aren't laying well (this is normal for the winter).  We have three calves and they are weaned off milk and just wander out to pasture and eat. We have 5 turkeys but they are on the chopping block for Thursday. I must say, even though it is cold, I am really enjoying the down time! God has blessed us with lots of family lately, so it has been fun. Enjoy the holiday season!

John, Kristin, Hope, Grace, Paul and Noah

ROLL CALL!

Well we have been busy (sorry for the lack of posts!)!  We have been adding to our farm and we are surely growing! Of course with the onset of Spring/Summer comes farm babies (which I am surrounded by!) Being a mother to so many is challenging, especially when I have my own kids! I am managing for now :) Here is a roll call of our latest members.

Zoe and her two kids Annabelle and Felix joined us at the end of May. John milks her every morning but we are still preparing everything to be able to utilize the milk.

These are our laying hens that survived the winter. We currently have 20 hens and 1 rooster (he is the white one). We usually average about a dozen eggs a day from them.  I have been fighting an infestation of chicken mites which made the chickens stop laying eggs but I think I have finally rid the birds of them and our egg count is back up. 

Max came to us on Grace's 3rd birthday. He is a redbone coonhound/Austrailian shepherd mix. He is fairly wild and likes to jump (this also may be the puppy in him) He is 5 months old and I have been learning from Cesar Milan on how to manage this pup. He's been much better so I guess he can stay :)

Clifford is a 3 month old purebred Australian Shepherd. He is a very sweet dog and has been a good sidekick to Max. He came to us about the end of May.

These are our meat chicks and turkeys.  We have 7 turkeys that we are raising as well that will be ready for butcher around Thanksgiving. We started with 62 meat birds, half of which were from a local grower.

This is our second batch of chicks about 2 weeks behind the other chicks. We will be butchering the end of July and the beginning of August-the coolest times of the year...not really!  Hopefully it won't be too hot! We do have some birds still available if anyone wants one call or email me! They will be about $8-$10 per bird.  Once I get a good idea of how much cost has gone into each, we will set an exact price. They are being fed all organic grain grown right in Rosebush!  I must say that they are significantly more tasty than conventional birds. I really only noticed when I tried to eat conventional chicken and could taste the chemicals in it (I've never been able to do that before!) We are working on becoming MDA(Mich Dept of Ag) approved for our butchering and once that happens, we will be able to sell birds more freely.  Being MDA approved doesn't mean our birds are any more clean but that we meet all of the butchering guidelines with walls, ceilings, water going to the "right" places, etc. Gotta love government regulations! Always so practical.

Our first fruits of our hay field! We are currently farming about 12 acres and are in the process of having our first cutting taken off. It should be a pretty good harvest as long as the rain can hold off a little!

 So now you are caught up on our farm happenings. We are working towards getting cattle on the property and so we are almost there.  We need more fencing which we are on the lookout for at auctions and such.  We are hoping by next spring to get some cattle to start building our herd for clean, grass-fed beef.  It will probably be at least 2 years until we can offer it ourselves but we know that it is better to build slow and grow into your farm.  Each step or animal is fairly stressful at first as we are trying to learn the best way to care for it or them and deal with the bad traits. Once we get the hang of it, it gets much easier and we are ready for another new thing. It certainly hasn't been an easy road we have walked.  It has required a LOT of patience, especially from me, but God is teaching me to relax and enjoy it and to not get caught up in the negatives. We are enjoying our summer season and we hope that you are too!

John & Kristin, Hope, Grace, Paul and baby

New Additions!

Well we took the plunge and got a puppy for Grace for her birthday. She named him Max. He is a Red-bone coonhound/Australian Shepherd mix so we are hoping he will be a good farm dog. So far he is just acting like a puppy and is a bit nippy and jumpy. We are looking into some obedience training soon, so hopefully that will help us be able to handle him a little better. 

 As if that weren't an addition enough, we are also going to add a 4th Derby child this coming November!  We are very excited as our family and farm keep growing!

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