farmlife Archives - Archie's Acres

February 15, 2020February 15, 2020

2019, It’s A Wrap!

Hello friends! Yes, it’s been a long time since our last post, and we apologize, it’s been a crazy busy time for us. But with a new year comes new goals and brand new opportunities! One goal is to be better about blog posting! So here goes…

Here’s a quick wrap-up of 2019…

2019 was a bit of a tough weather year for our farm. It was a rainy mess of a growing season in our gardens. And it was a tough season weather-wise for our farm pets.

The rain totals during the Spring and Fall months were outrageous! The Spring season started with a freak snowstorm on April 28th that left 7 inches of snow on all of our budding trees, right before a rainy week in May that brought us 9 inches of rain. This late snowstorm killed all the buds on our magnolia, cherry and pear trees. We didn’t have a single pear or cherry in 2019 and we had 4 magnolia flowers bloom all year. FOUR!

The beginning of the April 28th snowstorm.

It would rain for 3 or 4 days then stop for 1 or 2, then it would rain for 3 or 4 more days throughout the entire month of May and well into June. The ground was so muddy and saturated that trekking to the gardens was a chore, let alone planting anything. Most of the local farmers in our area couldn’t plant their fields until mid-June, so many that the USDA gave them an extra month, until July 15th, to get their seeds in the ground without being required to claim a total loss on the season. We waited as long as we could but by the end of June we had to try to make it work in the mud, and none of our eggplant plants survived, only a third of our cucumbers survived, we got one crop of lettuce out of the entire Spring, many of our potatoes were underdeveloped and our tomato plants battled blight and root-rot all season long. Oh, let’s not forget that half of our onions rotted in the ground and more than half of our garlic was so water-logged that we couldn’t, in good conscience, include it in our CSA shares.

The rains finally calmed down by the 3rd week of June and then we had 2 or 3 weeks of zero rain, which is extreme, but it actually helped dry out the oversaturated earth, until an intense heatwave arrived during the 2nd week of July. The heat index was in the 100s and still, no rain. It was around this time that our son was born. So we lucked out, being that we live in a farmhouse built in 1852, we don’t have central air, so to spend several days in the A/C of a shiny new hospital in Rockford was a blessing for us. But not for our plants and animals back home. In the heat. We came home to a very sad garden and some very stressed out animals.

The drought conditions lasted into early August. Then the gardens were back up and running again, everything was happy and everything was started to look pretty.

A little morning harvest session with Archie.

But then by September, the torrential rains were back again. Many towns in our area had declared a state of emergency because of flooding. And our garden was back to drowning. In total, we had 3 floods in our gardens in 2019, 2 in the Spring and another in the Fall. To be honest, if we weren’t so completely smitten with our newborn son, I think we would have felt completely demoralized by the results from this past year’s weather. But we are hopeful and optimistic for 2020. We spent the beginning of the winter months plotting and planning our comeback! And we’re excited!

We’ve made some improvements to our farm because of the weather. And we have also made a plan to remodel our gardens! But more on that in the coming days…

August 28, 2017August 28, 2017

Exciting Times at Archie’s Acres

Life has been great lately at Archie’s Acres and we have some fun updates from the farm.

Weather is slightly more cooperative

We’re happy to report that the rains have finally given us some time to dry out. That said, we still get a little rain almost daily, but the 1-4 inch torrential rainstorms have slowed and the plants are finally looking and feeling healthy. Aaaaaand because of that it’s been a real tomato and pepper party over here!

We love having so many different varieties!

Which leads me to happily announce that we have begun selling produce to The Log Cabin Restaurant in Galena, IL! How exciting is that?! It’s such an honor! We’re over the moon about it!

Farmer’s markets are fun!

Farmers market life has been great. We’re enjoying our time at the Rockford City Market every 2nd and 4th Friday and we’re loving our guest vendor spots at the Glenwood Sunday Market in Chicago! The next time we’ll be at the Glenwood Sunday Market is September 24th. We meet so many amazing people at these events and we love being able to learn from the vendors and local farmers around us.

It’s great when friends stop by to see us at the market! Bernie and Nancy it was so good to see you!

Exciting development for next year

We’ve also decided to begin a CSA program starting next Spring! For anyone unfamiliar, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Members sign up to receive a box containing fresh, organic, seasonal goodies from our farm. Once or twice a month (depending on your preference), we will deliver it to a convenient pick-up location.

We’ve created a form in the “Shop” section of our website where you can add your information and we’ll email you when we finalize plans. In the meantime, we’d still like to share our chicken and quail eggs with people after the Farmers Market season is over. But that’s all a work-in-progress.

Critters everywhere

Our farm pets are doing well. Moose is growing by the literal second! He’s as big as Archie right now and he’s not even 4 months old! He’s fitting in with the goats and Tilly very well.

On that note, Tilly is a diva. She demands treats and pets and she regularly steals Moose’s dog bed. She shouts at us from the pasture every time she sees us. It’s hard to believe that she’s only 4 months old (born April 21st) because she’s such a presence on the farm already that we can’t imagine life without her!

Another hen has hatched a couple of babies in the last week. She has 2 beautiful little chicks and she’s momming like a champ! Just today I watched her teach her babies about the automatic waterer that we have setup in front of their coop. It was really sweet to watch.

Nelly teaching her baby how to be a chicken

Well that’s it for now! Keep following us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/archiesacres/

August 14, 2017August 28, 2017

Farm life: a month at Archie’s Acres

How is it August already?!! This summer has flown by and farm life has been hectic for us lately! Not surprisingly, so much has happened since the last time we blogged that I need to do a top 10 list to catch up.

1. Chickens

Two of our hens successfully hatched 8 chicks of their own. They were both 1st time moms so for the first week they actually hung out together and co-parented the babies together. We weren’t sure how the new moms were going to keep the other chickens from pecking the babies to death, but after seeing what they did to Archie when he accidentally walked to close to the babies, it became very clear that these are hardcore, protective mammas. It. Was. Awesome!! The babies are over a month old now, they are traveling in their little pack of 8 and are free ranging and roosting together. It’s very cute and we’re proud of their moms.

5 of the babies venturing to the garden for treats (aka split/damaged tomatoes)

2. Quail

Our quail have finally started laying! These little birds are laying machines! We have 14 girls and although it took longer than the usual 2 months for them to get going, they are now finally getting around to providing us some sell-able farmers market eggs.

3. Swimming pool

The giant black walnut tree fell on our pool. We spent hours and hours digging up a spot for the pool, had our neighbor bring his skid loader over to help move earth and sand around, and set up the pool (it was NOT an hour long process as advertised). We used it every hot day for about 3 weeks, and then the first of many nasty storms came through and blew the tree onto our pool and our upper garden. Fun times.

Well it was fun while it lasted – at least the tiki torches survived

4. Stormy weather

On that note… the storms throughout the month of July really hurt our town, our garden and our driveway. Our town declared a state of emergency after half of it was under 3+ feet of water; many homes were damaged and destroyed. Many farmers around us had to claim total losses of their corn and soybean crops because of it. It wouldn’t stop raining. We got 11 inches of rain in one weekend! Our gravel driveway was badly damaged; we would cart rocks and gravel to fill in the deep ditches channeled out by the constant running water from the top of the hill, but then it would rain again and the rocks and gravel would wash away and we would have to start over. Our tomato and pepper plants are strained from the all the rain as well.

Pearl City, IL – yes, that’s the main street

5. New goats

We have 3 new goats to the herd! Their names are Lefty, Willie and Bobby. They are siblings of Pancho. We invited Pancho’s parents to our pig roast back in June and they saw Pancho’s new home and asked if we’d take the other 3. How great is that?! The 4 goats and Tilly are now one solid, happy herd.

6. Another new addition

And since we now have a little herd, we had to get a little herd protector! Meet Moose, our new livestock guard pup!

He’s a Karakachan; we got him at 11 weeks and he’s the biggest sweetheart. Neither of us had ever heard of this breed before, but after doing a little research, it turns out this breed is amazing. They are massive, Bulgarian shepherds. Bred to stay up all night, they are loyal and protective. Moose will be well over 100lbs.

7. Kittens are the cutest

The kittens are now 5 months old. They are the sweetest, nicest, cuddliest little fur balls and they run this place. They hang out and mouse in the chicken coop, a couple of them sleep on the front porch at night, sometimes they sleep in the garage. I’ve never felt better about the mouse population around here than I do right now. We’re so happy to have such a productive little crew!

8. Scourge of the garden and orchard

Ugh, the Japanese beetles are here! We lucked out last summer, clearly. This summer they are here in swarms. They’ve eaten all of our sweet corn and have devastated our cherry and plum trees in the orchard. I hate them!! We were not anticipating they would be this bad, so next year we’ll be better prepared and ready to pounce. Just another farm life lesson for us.

9. Rooster separation

We had to build a bachelor pad for the surplus of roosters we had running around the farm. At one point we had 10 roosters and 40 hens, and it was horrible. As soon as the young ones hit chicken puberty it was a stressful free for all. The hens were looking beat up and they weren’t laying as much; we were down to getting 6 eggs a day! It was a mess. So we built the boys their own little coop and run, because without females around, boys will actually happily coexist with each other. Otherwise a few of them would fight to the death and we love them too much to have that happen. Eventually we’ll set up a separate breeding coop so we can pair one rooster with a few hens to get all sorts of fun egg colors.

10. Farmer’s markets

And finally, to wrap up this last month+, our farmer’s market game is pretty solid. We are figuring things out slowly but surely and are able to fill a booth with veggies, herbs, eggs and other things from our garden! How cool is that?! Hanna and I have been able to keep our giant garden alive and thriving, even though we seem to make every mistake possible and kinda have the worst luck. But we’re doing it and it’s awesome! And I’m already looking forward to being even better next year!

11. Bonus update

And yeah, and Archie is still an awesome little bear.

April 20, 2017April 21, 2017

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/

Tag: farmlife