Newsletter #12

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a
comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
– Abraham Lincoln

Happy Friday Everyone! 

Thank y'all for being so considerate and allowing us to switch up the schedule last week. We enjoyed our trip to Central Oregon to visit family and to take Juniper to the Deschutes County Fair. We also got an opportunity to go camping and relax along the Metolius River for a night. Even when we're away from the farm we always seem to take pieces of the "farm life" with us. For example, Juniper spent her night camping playing with her farm animals and eating the peppers we packed from the greenhouse. We also got to spend an entire afternoon playing with the sheep and goats in the 4-H barns at the fairgrounds. Juniper really enjoyed herself and even got to snuggle with a few goats!  Shoutout to the awesome 4-H kids in Central Oregon! We also happened to be at the fair on sheering day and had the opportunity to learn about Sheep and Goat fiber production and the process of spinning fiber into yarn. What a totally cool skill that I would love to learn! Maybe someday we will have a large enough farm to keep animals for fiber- I want some Alpacas y'all!

This week we harvested all the potatoes and onions and replanted those spots in the garden with winter squash and winter greens. Juniper was a big helper with the potatoes harvest and added some much appreciated comedic entertainment. She became attached to one particular potato that had a "head" which she gently carried around, kissed, and affectionately called "baby." Proud farm mama moment! We've also continued our work on the chicken pen enclosure. They've discovered that they can still get out of the gate so they've been wandering all around the farm this week. We would have had way more summer squash to include in the shares this week if it wasn't for the hens eating them straight off the plants. We'll be spending this afternoon trying to finalize the chicken coop so it's not longer a worry. However, the projects never end around here. Next up we're planning to build a much larger run for our rabbits. Their current setup doesn't give us access to their run space and we miss cuddling with them. After that we're going to be cutting the chainlink fence that separates our current space and our new leased area. We get to start working that soil starting in September which means we'll need to have easy access to the space. The current plan is to run another batch of meat chickens and the rabbits through that space to prepare the soil for planting. Many chickens make light work, at least that's what I'm telling Taylor. Maybe that will convince him to get more chicks ;) 

Enjoy all this mild and lovely August weather! 

Your Farmers, 
Shannon, Taylor and Juniper Kane
Wild Grown Farm