that guy... married to that girl... on a farm...

Greetings All,
I am Jamie's husband, Jon. Since we do so in all other aspects of our lives, we've decided to work together on the blog as well. When Jamie doesn't have time to post a blog (usually due to the time needed to upload pictures with the internet we have), I will try to fill in the gaps with updates from the farm. I will leave the pretty pictures and smart commentary to "a Girl on a Farm", because she is VERY good at it. Instead, I will offer a slightly different perspective with more general updates on the farm progress and happenings.

While I'm at it, I might as well start now -
We've been working tirelessly for a while now and this week was no different. What was different was we were able to see more of the fruits of our labor.

• Our house is finally starting to get a bit more organized. Which is very important because it is hard to not be stressed if you come home to a house in disarray.
• We cleaned up the chicken coop and have started making notes of the things we would like to differently when we brood poultry the next time. (e.g., put the water for the ducklings over a wire floor to prevent constant messing of the bedding; use a hover brooder instead of just the lamps; don't use cardboard as liners/dividers for ducks)
• We have had tremendous support from our family and Easter weekend was no different. We were able to put up more interior fencing for the cows and we went ahead and separated the bulls from the cows and combined the heifers with the cows, in preparation of calving. Which should be any day.
• We finally found a great source for our organic pig and poultry feed. Mike Ostry out of Bruno does a great job and is very reasonable. I'd be happy to pass his contact info along to anyone who's interested.
• We swapped generators this week (used to charge the batteries when we are low on power). The other one we were using was very nice but we weren't able to take advantage of all it's power because a circuit breaker kept tripping. So we went to a smaller one that will use less fuel and actually produces a bit more power. We are still looking into ways to get all the power out of it that it's rated for.
  
• We have also asked Dixon Power Systems to give us a quote for adding solar. Mr. Dixon installed the wind turbine so he is very familiar with our situation and has been extremely helpful with us learning the system. We hope to have somewhere between .5 - 2 kW's of PV Solar installed in the next few months.

We look forward to seeing your questions and comments on our posts. Please don't be shy, we really enjoy the feedback. If you're not sure how to comment, send us an email and we can help you.

That's All Folks!

Have a great weekend everyone!
Farmer Jon (I had my name as "a Guy on a farm" but thought it might be too easy to get the two of us confused.)