Stillhaven Farms

Making Neufchatel

Jim — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:10:49 +0000

This morning I finished up my very first batch of Neufchatel cheese, a very soft goat cheese that you can put on bread and crackers like cream cheese.

Trixie’s Kids

Jim — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:56:44 +0000

We received a nice “surprise” this morning when going out to feed the animals to find that Trixie had given birth overnight. I put “surprise” in quotes because we’ve been expecting her drop for some time now. It was good to find that both kids — one is male, the other is female — were up on their feet and looking a little surprised to be in the world. We spent some time with them this morning, making sure they were nursing and that Trixie was doing well, too, and doing a little post-birth cleanup in the stall. We left after the kids settled down into a corner for a nap. They had a busy morning!

Early March

Jim — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:59:57 +0000

These are some pictures taken a week or so ago as things were starting to really warm up! These warm temperatures are very unusual for March, and we haven’t been about to let them go by without taking full advantage to get crops in the ground! Our animals have also been enjoying the warmer weather.

Spring Planting

Jim — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:43:53 +0000

Spring planting is well underway, both inside the hoop house and out. We’re experimenting with planting potatoes in boxes this year, hence the wooden construction that appears in several photos. Our daughter Cadence is also ‘helping’ with planting this year by hanging out with her mommy and daddy while we get seeds in the ground. The orchard is in full bloom, as well, and we are hoping that spring storms don’t knock the blossoms off this year before the trees can fruit.

T-Shirts

Jim — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:13:28 +0000

We have been actively preparing for the 2012 market season, and one of the changes we want to make to our booth space this year is custom t-shirts with our farm logo that we can wear at the market. But, rather than spend a small fortune to have the few shirts we need printed professionally, we’ve decided to print them ourselves. Granted, we’re not doing a ‘true’ screen printing process (not yet) — we’re using an Exacto knife and freezer paper to make stencils — but I think you’ll agree that the final outcome is pretty good, just the same.

There’s a possibility that we may even have some official Stillhaven Farms canvas shopping totes later in the season and, if there’s enough demand, maybe even some other merchandise, as well.

Cheese

Jim — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:03:07 +0000

Image by acme under a Creative Commons license

One of the things I’m looking forward to this year with having two Saanen does who are (hopefully) going to kid sometime in April is having an ample supply of goat’s milk to try my hand at, among other things, making goat cheese. I love cheese, especially aged cheeses, and I freely admit that I’m one of those people who even likes smelly cheeses. I’m curious to see what the process is like for making cheese and to see just what kinds of cheese can be made from goat’s milk. It should be a fun and interesting experiment. I’m also looking forward to attempting to make goat butter, which I understand is really quite easy, yogurt, cottage cheese, and other goat milk-based dairy products. With any luck we’ll have a couple of gallons of goat milk every day, so we’ll have plenty of supply with which to experiment with our dairy-making activities.

We’re also currently investigating what it will take to certify our farm as a dairy with the state of Indiana so that, if we’re successful making dairy products, we’ll also be able to sell those products to interested customers. There is a fair bit of paperwork involved, most of which is written for large dairy cattle operations, so trying to figure it out for an operation like our that has just a couple of milking goats has been a bit of a challenge. We’ll update again later on as we find out more, so stay tuned!

Hoop House

Jim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:45:53 +0000

As promised here are the pictures of the 12×32 hoop house we erected over the Christmas holidays. We are looking forward to seeing what crops we can grow between now and the start of the regular growing season.

Goat Milking Stands

Jim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:46:59 +0000

Over Christmas break, I began building a pair of milking stands for our (hopefully) newly bred goats. Due to weather and general busyness of the holiday season, I was able to get only one stand completed. Over the extended MLK weekend, I was able to finish up the second one. This was a fun DIY project — I always enjoy building things with my own hands — and I used these excellent plans from Fias Co Farm. I apologize that the pictures are a bit blurry, but the combination of a 5 mega-pixel camera, cold air, and backlighting make for somewhat sub-optimal photos. We haven’t had a chance to test the stands out with actual goats yet, but we’re hoping they’ll work well once kidding season gets here.

First Winter Planting

Jim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:19:36 +0000

Over the weekend, Liz and I put our first winter planting in. We erected our new hoop house over the Christmas holidays (pictures to come soon), and we put our first seeds into the ground over MLK weekend. This first planting is something of an experiment to see what will come up, and we plan to put another crop into the ground in about two weeks. And as you can see from the pictures below, it was warm enough inside the hoop house that I actually ended up taking my coat off and working in short sleeves — a very surreal feeling for the middle of January.

Garden 2011

Jim — Mon, 16 May 2011 11:31:14 +0000

Yesterday, I took the opportunity — in between raindrops — to snag a few pictures of our garden for this year. Our starts are doing pretty well, and most of the seeds we’ve planted have started to germinate and sprout. The rain, cold as it was, has been greatly needed, so we’re hoping to see more little green leaves poking up through the soil very soon.