Urbana farm trip - Rush Creek Farms
So actually a lot has been going on in our ongoing research of all things farming, organic and gardening. We are learning a lot, but there is still a lot to process and I don't want to do too much thinking in public. But I can at least talk about what we've been up to and what we have learned so far. I'll have to do a bit of catching up.
A few weeks ago we took a trip down to Urbana to visit a couple of farms. We drove down on a Saturday morning and spent the day with the Millers on Rush Creek Farm. We met the Millers at a slow food event on the farm where the heritage turkeys are raised that we have purchased for the last couple of Thanksgiving dinners. They both work pretty much full time, but also raise Kiko meat goats on about 10 acres of pasture. They also have some pastured poultry and a horse.
Some more pictures are here.
I've been talking to Kristin about chickens a bit on and off because I really want to have some fresh eggs even if we just do a small hobby farm. And maybe some fresh pastured chicken to eat as well. I grew up on a commercial chicken farm and I have no desire to do that, but heritage or specialty breeds on pasture does interest me. Kristin has never been around chickens and doesn't particularly like birds as a species, so she was skeptical. When we got to the Millers, we found out they had about 60-80 chicks about 8 weeks old in their garage. They were planning to move them out to a pen to get them ready to go on pasture, so we got to jump in and help them catch and move chickens. Kind of a trial by fire for Kristin, but she gamely stepped up and did it and it wasn't as scary as she thought it might be. It was really cool that she got a chance to hold some chicks and also just watch their behavior, which is fascinating. They are such funny creatures. Within about 5-10 minutes of being out of the garage, they were foraging around the small pen, scratching and pecking around and having a good old time. It's pretty obvious when watching chickens that they are really made to be wandering around plenty of pasture, finding worms and grubs and eating vegetation rather than being stuffed in a pen (or even worse a cage) hardly able to move.
As far as the meat goats, they aren't bottle fed and so they are tolerant of human contact, but don't exactly seek it out. The kids were playing up a storm though and reminded us of some extreme sports show as they played around on an old set of concrete steps. Meat goats are certainly not as loveable in general as dairy goats, but they are also quite a bit less work as we were to find out when we visited Prairie Fruits the following day. So the jury is still out for us whether we would ever go that route, but it was good to see what was involved even from just a practical standpoint, such as fencing, cost and type of feed, how they are pastured and so forth.
