Tag: update

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Happy Snow Day!

Hello from snow drifty Pearl City! It’s been a while since we’ve last checked in. So let’s see, since I last wrote on Jan 15, we took a week long vacation to Mexico to celebrate our anniversary, took 4 cats to the vet for a mini-cold/flu outbreak, started seeds for early spring planting and added a few new products to our Etsy store! Most importantly, we’ve been busy enjoying the last weeks of a life with not THAT much to do.

Vacation sights!

We got a sizable snowfall last night, so the chickens are miserable, the dogs are happy, the humans have sore backs and the goats/sheep are busy making little walkways around the pasture, which is very cute. Archie, per usual, is the happiest dog ever!

Snow Floof!

He’s been running laps around the property all morning. And if we didn’t have 2+ foot high snow drifts all over the place, I’d run around more with him!

Our Etsy store is doing pretty well. We added a hops candle, some organic paw          wax and a couple new bath salts.

Hops-Infused Candles!
Click here to visit our paw wax Etsy listing.

Yesterday, I toyed around with making our own lotion bars, which worked out really well. I used a teakwood scent and they not only work well, but they smell great! Now I just have to find a better mold than the ice cube tray I made them in. Ha. Lotion bars are pretty cool little things though. They’re basically a bar of lotion. And the Shea butter dissolved quickly into the skin and isn’t messy. How am I just hearing about these?! We’ll list them soon. Because you’re going to want to try these out.

The seeds we started are all plants that need some extra TLC in pots indoors for a few months, like grapes, pear and apple trees, small pepper plants that we plan to keep exclusively in pots on our porch all summer, and onions, which will need several weeks to grow before transplanting in the garden. We have basically converted our laundry room into a germination room. It’s a teeny tiny jungle in there! But so far so good!

All in all, no complaints here. We plan to finalize our CSA sign-up by March 1st, so expect to receive more materials soon.

Also, don’t forget to follow us on Instagram! —-> Archie’s Acres on Instagram

And check out our Etsy store. Click here —>  Archie’s Acres Etsy Store!

We hope you’re all having a great day!!!

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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!
Baby quail are so cute and tiny!
    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!
The teenagers are loving life outside.
    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/

 

A beautiful Spring day at Archie’s Acres.
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