Farmlife is a busy life!

Yes yes, I realize that it’s been forever since we’ve posted an update. So I’ll do a top 10 list of things that we’ve done since I last checked in.

TOP 10 THINGS WE’VE DONE ON THE FARM…

1. Those blue egg layer Cream Crested Legbar and Whiting True Blue eggs finally hatched! We have 7 beautiful new chicken babies! I’ve been actively humanizing them by relentlessly picking them up, so they’re a friendly little crew.

2. Our windbreak has been massively added to on the West and North sides of the farm by planting 25 arborvitae trees, 10 plum bushes, 10 serviceberry bushes and 10 nannyberry bushes. They’re all only about 2 feet tall, but seem to be doing well. Now we just have to wait 5 years…

3. We tilled our entire 150′ by 35′ garden. Since we don’t own a tiller yet, so we borrowed our neighbors. Geez, tilling is hard work!

4. We planted over 150 potatoes. Many many radishes, onions, peas, carrots and Brussels sprouts seeds went in the ground too….

5. We re-potted over 150 tomato, pepper, cauliflower, flower and broccoli seedlings. Some of the rarer tomato and peppers seedlings will be sold at the Rockford Green City Farmer’s Market this summer for the first few markets anyway. We’ll be there every 2nd and 4th Friday until the end of September.

Here’s the link to find out more about the market:

http://www.rockfordcitymarket.com/

6. We built a deer and rabbit fence around the entire garden. The rabbit and deer population is impressive out here. When we come home in the evening, there are always at least 8 baby rabbits running across the driveway. And we learned last year that they are ferocious eaters!

7. We weeded, re-roped and trimmed back our Centennial and Chinook hops plants to get them ready for Spring.  This is the 2nd year for these hops so we should get an even better crop this summer! Last year we only got enough to do 2 batches of beer. So this year we’re hoping for at least 4 brewing sessions with our own hops.

8. We just started hatching quail eggs! Last night, in fact. We have 20+ cortunix quail eggs in our incubator. So far 3 have hatched. They are so cute! And surprisingly loud. We plan to sell quail eggs this summer. Quail develop surprisingly fast, they’ll be fully grown and laying in only 2 months!

9. We have moved all of our Iowa hatchery chicks out to a pen across from the chicken coop to get them acclimated to life outside. They’re all over 7 weeks now so they have all of their feathers and can survive the elements. Happy to report that all are doing well!

10. We have finalized our farmer’s market paperwork with the Rockford Farmer’s Market. We’ve bought all of the licenses that Illinois requires for every single thing they can think of. And it’s a lot. We have an egg license, I have my ServSafe food handling certification, a food handling permit and our individual licenses to sell in each county where we plan to sell. Plus our LLC insurance, FEIN and sales tax ID requirements are all squared away. We have all the required packaging and labeling materials to sell in Illinois, it was tedious and over-the-top, but that’s finally done. Phew.

Life is good here at Archie’s Acres. Spring has the trees and flowers blooming, the grass is green and the woods are coming back to life! It’s so fun to watch nature do its thing every spring.

For daily picture updates about Archie’s Acres, follow us on Instagram! @archiesacres

https://www.instagram.com/archiesacres/