Can’t wait to get your first taste of DRF pork? Well, you’re in luck! You won’t have to wait until our first market dates in January; you can get your fix THIS SUNDAY at our first dinner featuring Dry Ridge Farm meat!
There are still seats left for this deliciousness. Yesterday, Wendy delivered almost half a hog to Adam Hayes of Red Stag Grille at the Grand Bohemian Hotel… and to wet your appetite, look below for the menu and wine pairings! That’s right… there’s even pork in the dessert. We’ll be there too, so come join us!
Reserve you spot today by calling Maggie B’s 828 645-1111.
2nd Annual Swine & Wine Dinner at Maggie B’s
Sunday, December 16th
Welcome Reception 6:00
Dinner 6:30
$75 per person
Maggie B’s Wine & Specialty Store
10 C South Main Street
Weaverville
Featuring:
Pork from Dry Ridge Farm
Wine Pairings: Elspeth Brown
Menu Curator: Adam Hayes
Welcome Reception:
Grilled Rappahannock Oysters, smoked cocktail sauce, mountain apple mignonette, chef’s hot sauce
Since some of you have asked about specific products for holiday gift giving, we’ve decided to add a few potential gift ideas to your list of possibilities.
What better gift is there for your omnivorous friends than food they can enjoy with company, knowing that it was raised humanely and healthily?!
Local deliveries will be scheduled as orders come in and we will make one delivery the week before Christmas to the Raleigh/Durham area, and anywhere on the way.
You’re obviously welcome to buy any products we carry, but here are a few specific ideas.
Mild (or Hot) Breakfast Sausage – Perfect for vacation brunches, and a great gift for all the folks on your list for whom you’d like to get a “little something.” $6 per pound. $50 for 10 pounds (in 10 one-pound packs). This is our most popular sausage and sure to please everyone!
Other Sausage Varieties – A bit fancier than breakfast sausage because they’re linked, these are great for the pork lovers you know who just LOVE a particular sausage. We have bratwurst, polish, chorizo, and sweet or hot italian sausages. $8 per pound or $70 for 10 pounds (each 1 pound pack contains four sausages).
A selection of our sausage varieties.Our assorted color eggs. A beautiful and delicious gift!
Sausage Variety Pack – Feeling indecisive? Why not get one of each! Your choice of five packs of sausage. $35.
Eggs – What better way to spread some holiday cheer in the office than by getting a dozen eggs for each of your co-workers? Everyone loves fresh farm eggs, and we’ll make sure each dozen has a blue egg as a delightful surprise! $4/dozen – limited supply; order early.
The Export Rack – Feeling generous? There’s nothing that shows some love like the gift of an export rack. Also called a bone-in rib roast, it’s the highest end cut you can get. It’s the tenderloin with the ribs still attached, so you end up with the juiciest, savory-est rib, chop, tenderloin feast of your life. As I said, there’s nothing that says love like an export rack. A hefty 7 pounds (yes, your gift will have to be shared with a large party) – $60. Very limited supply so order now!
Meat Donations in the name of your loved one – Looking to give the gift of giving? We’ve organized with Manna Food Bank to deliver meat donations in December. If you would like to give the gift of food to those who lack it, and honor a loved one by donating in their name, just let us know the value you would like to donate, and we’ll send that value of product to Manna. We’ll also send a card to your loved one to let them know you’ve contributed on their behalf. AND we’ll donate an additional 5% of your donations ourselves! That means if you buy $20 worth of product, we’ll donate $21 dollars worth!
Looking for a gift basket? We’re not there yet, but we highly recommend Goodwill, which always has very nice wicker baskets for an affordable price.
Please place your orders by December 10th, by emailing Wendy at wendy@dryridgefarm.org! We’re bringing hogs in on the 11th, so you can’t get anything fresher, and we’ll deliver to specified locations around town on the 15th-17th. (If you want to order after December 10th, let us know anyway and we’ll tell you if your request is still available!)
It’s been a busy few weeks here at the farm, and for once, I’m writing two posts in one month. Goodness!
As you might be able to guess from the title of this post, the most exciting new developments here are that we got a donkey, have started renovating a barn for our January lambing, AND (drumroll please) we’ve got pork!!
Our donkey is the last animal we expect to buy for the farm. She’ll have the all important task of protecting our flock of sheep from any predators. While we haven’t had any predator issues yet (knock on wood), it’s only a matter of time and having a guard animal for defenseless sheep is simply a good idea. We chose to get a donkey rather than a guard dog, because they’re just as effective and we’re not as comfortable having a dog that has to be more socialized with our sheep than it is with humans. We like having farm animals for the farm and dogs as companions. We may very well get a dog to work our sheep in the future, but that one would live with us, not with the sheep. Our donkey is also one of the most creative wedding presents we’ve received! We got her from friends who have a donkey they breed. Our little Donkey Hotey is our friends’ donkey’s baby. And man, is she CUTE!! (despite having a little briar problem) See for yourself!
Look at them ears!
Best Friends
For now, we’re keeping her close so she can get used to her new home and to us. She’s keeping our ram company, while he waits for his next foray with his flock of ladies, and they seem to be fast friends. They rarely leave one another’s side!
We separated our ram from the flock a few weeks ago, and our ewes are about 6 weeks from giving birth to our next round of lambs! A winter lambing means that we need to have a good plan for the little ones, so Graham’s been working on rehabing the barn above our garden. The field around the barn will be split in half, with one half for pregnant ewes and the other for the ones that have given birth and their lambs.
Right after giving birth, moms and babies will move into jugs to make sure momma knows what to do with the little one and is okay with having it around!
First part of construction. Knock down half a wall. Wendy tends to forget about those important “before” pictures, but the wall on the right used to be six feet high like the one in the back on the right.This is that last wall after Graham’s cut it off.And then he stabilized it. Notice how much help Wendy is… taking pictures while Graham works!Completed “jugs”, where mommas and babies bond. Note: Wendy did help here, and got very comfortable with a grinder, cutting all the hog panel!
After a day or two in a jug, the ewe and lamb move out to socialize with other new mothers and their lambs in a mixing pen, and after a few days, they’ll go out to the ewe/lamb pair field, where the lambs will also have access to a creep feeder, made just for them so they grow big and strong despite the cold! We still have a couple large sliding doors to make and the fencing to complete, but as you can see from the photos, we’re well on our way to a lambing barn! I did learn one thing: Building things with hog panel is a LOT cheaper and faster than using wood panels. Graham and I did all of this, besides the creep feeder, in a day.
The mixing penWhere the ewes will eat a bit of grain to keep them strong and fit through the stressful lambing time.The lambs’ creep feeder (notice the lamb sized holes in the wall that their moms can’t fit through.
On a completely different note, we also have our first pork!! And in related news, we’ll be selling it at ASAP’s new Asheville City Winter Market, in the lobby of the Haywood Park Hotel downtown, so you’ll get to try both our pork AND our lamb (and we’ll still have chicken, eggs, and rabbit available) starting in January! The event we’ve all been waiting for (or at least what I’ve been waiting for!). Our first pork is, however, a mixed blessing. While we’re excited to have product, it isn’t from one of our first piglets; it’s from one of our sows. I think I wrote about the fact that our second round of piglets was dismal. One of our sows had a nice litter of 8, but the other dropped hers early, and none of the five she had survived. We gave her another chance, only because we didn’t have any replacement gilts (young female pig) at breeding age, but she miscarried her second litter a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, when you’re raising animals for meat, a sow that doesn’t produce becomes only good for sausage. So, that’s what we’ve got! We sold our first pork shoulder and some fatback to Red Stag Grille to make their own sausages and charcuterie, and the rest of the pork is all wrapped up in sausage. Breakfast, Italian, and Brats galore. It’ll be waiting for you in January! A small note on our sausage links… they look a little funny, as you can see in the picture below. They’re straight, and aren’t tied up on the ends, which is a little frustrating in that the casing doesn’t hold up as well to the heat of a pan, BUT they taste delicious AND no other sausage will ever fit quite as perfectly inside a sausage or hot dog bun!
Bratwurst!
We plan to work with our processor and see if there’s a better casing alternative that they can provide, but for the time being, trust us on this: Our sausages might look a little funny, but they certainly taste delightful!
For fear of being too long winded, I’ll leave it at that. Thanks to everyone for your support through our first year. We’re lucky to have such wonderful customers, family, and friends! When you’re done reading this post, go to our products and markets pages to check out our pork and lamb pricing and our winter markets and customers!
I almost forgot! We have a termite question, unfortunately. If anyone out there knows the answer, please help! We need to treat termites, but I’ve read that the product that’s been suggested to us, Termidor, with Fipronil, is highly toxic to bees. So, here’s the question: Is it toxic to bees if you treat the termites by trenching around the structure and injecting Fipronil in that trench? Is there a less toxic way to treat termites? Is borate an effective treatment? We have some serious damage to one of our small structures, so the sooner we get an answer from someone, the better!
Looks reasonably in shape…Until you look more closely. Argh! Termites!
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Graham and I have so much to be thankful for this year. We look forward to nurturing those blessings in the years to come!
We got a couple big events checked off our to-do list in September and October. Get married – check! Honeymoon – check! And now, we’re home, relaxed and ready to tackle our next steps, and excited that our lamb and pork are just about a month away from going to market! Below are a few of our favorite wedding and honeymoon pictures. Maybe not the typical farm website post, but hey, we hear some of you would like to see some pictures, and it is the biggest happening on the farm of late!
First things first though. Keep an eye on the Markets and Products sections of our website as they transition from summer markets to winter and as we transition to our full line of products, adding pork, lamb, and rabbit to our product availability! This Wednesday will be our last farmers’ market day at Asheville City Market – South in Arden. SO, come see us from 2-6 to stock up your freezer with chicken and buy a few dozen eggs (they really do last 4-6 weeks!). Get ready for football season with a freezer full of chicken wings! Supplies of all cuts are limited so come early! We’ll have plenty of fresh whole chickens as well. We might very well have some chicken recipes for you to take home. Graham and I cooked a large whole bird last Wednesday, and have four recipes we made with leftovers to pass along: whole roasted bird, chicken burritos, chicken salad, and chicken soup (then broth!).
Also, we’re in dire need of egg cartons, so if you remember to bring them along, it’ll make Wendy’s day to get stacks of cartons!!
Last week and this weekend at the farm were all about preparing our animals for winter’s sudden onslaught. It was 70 degrees last week, and now as I’m writing, the view from our window is gray and dreary, with trees bending in the wind, shedding the last of their leaves and just starting to show the white dusting of snow. By tomorrow morning, our farm will be under its first blanket of snow since becoming “our farm”, so we spent the past couple days making sure our ewes can sit out the storm in their shed, out of the wind, that our hogs have plenty of dry straw to bed down in, and that our hoses and water troughs are set up to handle a hard freeze. As for Graham and I, the next couple days are office days, and when the snow clears, this week’s big project is working our ewes: checking for parasites and the twice yearly task of trimming hooves. I, for one, am very happy we have a headgate and tilt table now, so I don’t end up sore for days from plopping each ewe back on her rump to trim hooves, like we did last time. I didn’t need any convincing that a tilt table was a good investment after that experience!
And now, picture time: Wedding and Honeymoon. Our wedding was a wonderful celebration, full of friends, family, love, laughter, tears, sunshine, a downpour, pig wrangling (yes, the piglets got out on the wedding day), and rainbows. It was truly perfect. All but two of the wedding photos below are from one of our photographer, Jaclyn Morgan. Find more of our wedding photos and more of her photos at http://www.jaclynmorganphotography.com. We highly recommend her! Also, our cake was made by Holly from Sweet Monkey Bakery. Best wedding cake imaginable! Seriously, who’s ever heard of a delicious wedding cake? This was was as delicious as it was beautiful! Alright, that’s it for the wedding plugs. Actually, anyone looking for a caterer should consider Black-Eyed Susan Catering in Black Mountain. Stress free and absolutely delicious. Ok, now that’s it for the plugs 🙂
We spent a week afterwards in the British Virgin Islands, spending the first four days on our own rented sailboat (with Captain Graham Brugh at the helm), and the last couple days lounging on the beach. It was great to get away and to realize that we CAN go on vacation and that typically, nothing too drastic will happen while we’re away (there were a few small things that didn’t go perfectly). A relief to know that vacations are still an option (as long as we find good farmsitters!). Here you go: pictures.
I particularly like the rain droplets on this one.
It’s been a fast and busy summer, and we’ve been blessed with a lot of good, a little bit of bad, and several beautiful additions to the farm as well as reminders of what a beautiful place we live and how lucky we are to be doing our work. Wendy’s still trying to learn to set aside time to write things up and keep our friends posted about farm life. It’s been a long time since the last post, so long that this update will include the fact that we’ve had our next batch of piglets (sadly, a very small one)! Our first farrowing back in June brought us a total of 18 piglets (9 per sow), who are now happily out on pasture, separate from their parents and growing like weeds!
For those of you who don’t have time to read a whole post and want some pictures, scroll down to the bottom!
I’ll start with the good and the exciting. Front and center in our lives right now are the Farm Tour, coming up this weekend, and our wedding in 11 days! Dry Ridge Farm got its first press this week in a feature about the upcoming Farm Tour. You can check that out here (though the fantastic picture of Graham with one of our sows is not in the online version): http://www.mountainx.com/article/45346/Come-out-for-Buff-Orpingtons-and (we’re near the end). As promised in that article, Farm Tour visitors will get to see week-old piglets. Clementine had her first litter on Friday, and she, like her two sisters who gave birth in June, is an excellent mother; she’s extremely calm and non-aggressive toward us, which is a wonderful genetic trait to have on our farm! Unfortunately, we made a mistake that led to three piglets “disappearing” (we didn’t notice a hole in the farrowing stall… that’s a seriously dumb mistake we won’t make again!). So we have five tiny little piglets now. Exciting, but far fewer than we’d hoped.
Our lambs and piglets from our June group have set out on their own and are rotating through separate pastures and getting ready for market (can’t wait til late November to taste our first pork and lamb!); we also moved our last batch of meat chickens for the season out of the brooder and onto pasture. No more brooder until February, and while it’s been great to have chicken for market this summer, it’s also very exciting to think that we won’t have to work with them for several months! They just not as rewarding as our other animals. Hogs and lambs and laying hens all have personality; meat chicken… Not so much.
Finally, we decided to grow our lamb production more quickly and added 16 ewes to our flock of 22 back in July. We bought a ram at a Dorpor auction in late July and we put him to work about 6 weeks ago. He seems very happy surrounded by his 38 ladies, and we’re very happy at the prospect of having more lambs in late January!
Life at Dry Ridge has truly been wonderful. About once a week, I (Wendy) will be driving around doing chores and get hit by how lucky I am to be doing the work I do and spending my days surrounded by animals and beautiful land. That doesn’t mean we don’t have bad days though; they come with the territory. Most of those bad days have been due to the fact that where there is a lot of life, there is necessarily death. Ideally, we’d like for that to come only when we plan for it, but life doesn’t always let us control it to that extent. We lost one of our ewe lambs to a virus shortly after weaning in early July; there was little we could have done, and so we could accept it as an occasional and natural part of our business. Our tougher loss to swallow was a little ram lamb two weeks ago, whose parasite we didn’t catch early enough to treat. It reminded us of how much we still need to learn and the habits we still need to form, but we also keep in mind that we have 23 other lambs who are doing wonderfully.
Our worst day to date, was August 27th, the day our third sow had her litter. We’re not sure exactly why, but she had her litter over a week early, she only had five, and all were more or less stillborn (there was one that survived a few hours but wasn’t really viable). We contemplated the idea of having sausage for market earlier than planned, but have decided to give this sow a second chance; she seems to be eager to breed again, and we figure we might as well try again while we wait for our female piglets to grow to breeding age. It was a seriously sad day, and puts a hitch in our pork plan six months from now, but again, it goes with the territory.
Our only other bad news was that our tomato plants all got late blight… but so did every other tomato in Western NC, and we had hundreds of tomatoes for two months, so we’re certainly not complaining much about this year’s tomato crop!
Finally, our beautiful news: Most exciting are the “treasures” we get to collect every morning as part of our chores. We have eggs galore these days!! We’re getting about 8 dozen eggs a day, so come by market soon to buy them up! They’re delicious, with bright orange yolks, and our hens are still young and getting used to laying consistently, so you can rest assured that you’ll probably get a double yolk in each dozen of eggs!
A bit of size variation and deformed eggs at first!Three days worth of eggs!
The current pride of our farm is our ram, a seriously gorgeous Dorpor we purchased at auction, who was born at Locust Creek Dorpors and sent to auction by Windy Acres Farm in Tennessee. I find it funny that I started saying things like “wow, look at those wrinkles” in a completely serious voice, referring rams’ face wrinkles (a sign of high testosterone), and it was fun learning about ram length and things like wrinkles. The sheep at this auction were seriously beautiful creatures.
His harness has chalk on the chest, to mark our ladies’ rumps. He wriggled out of it on ewe number four and on day 2 with them. We didn’t find the harness but figure that 4 ewes in 24 hours means he’s doing his job! Look at those wrinkles! (I call him Worf, after the Lieutenant).
Finally, I’ll leave you with a few other beautiful images from this time of year, when rain and sun mix and when days start cooling and the time comes to save a bit of summer for January.
Who wants to guess what’s going on here? (Carleton Biology majors should be intimately familiar with this image).The most obviously evil spider ever!
Can anyone enlighten us on this one? What’s this plant? It’s awesome!
A typical afternoon
Thanks to you all for your support through the summer, and I’ll try to keep future updates frequent and shorter.
They have arrived!! We had our first gilt become a sow this morning, with her first litter! Graham even had his first experience watching momma in action, since she’d had four when he went to feed her this morning, and now seems to be done with a grand total of ten piglets born (for the majority of you who have no idea about such things, ten is excellent for a first time momma). Two of the wee ones were born in bad shape, and didn’t make it, but we’ve got 8 right now, and Mom is doing an amazing job caring for them… responding to squeals, easing herself slowly down as she readjusts to feed them.
Enough chatter… here are pictures. Hands down the most exciting day on the farm yet! (Lambs were exciting too, but man, these little guys are adorable). Meet our five new boys and three new girl piglets.
Piggies have their ears all slicked back when they’re born!
Eating like champs!
A bit more spread out after we returned the male piglets to their momma. It’s easier on everyone to get some things done as soon as possible, and we don’t want five boars in our herd! Momma accounted for everyone, then eased herself down where she knew her babies weren’t under her. We’re excited she’s a good mom so far!
Another great day at Dry Ridge Farm, with an ever expanding family!
June’s started off splendidly, with the perfect combination of rain, sunshine, and heat, for our new lambs to frolick in bright green pastures, our garden to pump out vegetables for market, and our chickens to eat up all the insects and flies (and ticks!) they could wish for! Amid the Spring thunderstorms and increasing heat as we ease into summertime, we’ve been busily building infrastructure, welcoming new members of our animal families, and hocking our products to chefs and customers at market!
Our last post to the website left us in the midst of lambing season. Now, we have 26 new lambs, split exactly in half with little rams and ewes. Our first lambing brought with it our first two bottle babies and our first black sheep to the farm! Both of our bottle babies were one of a set of twins. The white one in the picture below was born to a sick ewe who ended up, despite treatment for pregnancy toxemia and a retained placenta, being our first loss to illness on the farm. Our ewe didn’t form a bag and so “Micro,” as Graham’s taken to calling her, simply couldn’t feed off her momma. Her twin didn’t make it through birth, and we figured that our little 2 pound lamb probably wouldn’t make it long. Despite her shaky start, she’s now thriving, and I have to admit that I’m happy she has another rejected lamb to hang out with! Our dark brown bottle baby’s mom simply decided she had enough with one lamb and refused to entertain the idea of two babies nursing at the same time, so he joined Micro in a stall of our barn for three-times-a-day formula feedings.
Micro on Day 2, standing next to her 16 oz bottle, which is not much smaller than her.
Laying down, Micro was about the size of the 16 oz. bottle with which we fed her (no, she wasn’t drinking Fanta; they just make lamb nipples fit conveniently on standard bottles). The brown lamb, #205R, was in far better health and at least twice her size at birth, when she was already two weeks old. Since then, they’ve balanced out a bit, in part due to our first serious medical issue on the farm with #205, who came out of the stall at feeding time looking about as wide as he was long, round as a balloon and looking about ready to pop. Bloat is a serious concern with sheep, who can die of the issue (yes, cause of death: being gassy). He didn’t respond well to attempts to get him to burp (with the help of oil, water, and baking soda) or to intubation, so with our first case of bloat, we had to go to the last resort. Luckily, Graham had read about poking a needle with an empty syringe into the rumen instead of cutting it, which would leave a far bigger wound, so we went the needle route. I held him, Graham got the needle in the rumen, and he literally deflated like an inflatable toy with a hole poked in it. Air came out of him for a good two minutes and you could see him gradually deflate to normal size! He’s doing fine now, but his set back means that Micro isn’t quite as small in comparison as she used to be. Because everyone should have a chance to watch lambs bouncily run around, here’s a super quick video for your viewing pleasure.
frolicking video
I’ll keep the rest of this update short and sweet. Below is our first black sheep, unfortunately a ram, so will not remain on the farm as part of our breeding stock.
Graham built a new broiler hut and our sows’ farrowing stalls…
And our two pregnant girls moved in (we’re still waiting impatiently for the piglets that should arrive any day now!)
Two of our rabbits had great new litters, our buck’s first babies, to which he contributed the gray speckles.
We’ve got our second batch of chickens at market now, along with a whole lot of yellow squash, zucchini, Red Russian kale, rainbow chard, cucumbers, basil, and lettuce mix. We’re processing again next Monday, and we received our first restaurant order today, from Red Stag Grille at the Grand Bohemian Hotel. They’re trying a new recipe featuring our chicken for the week, starting on Wednesday, so go on and get gussied up and treat yourself to a fancy dinner at Red Stag!
We’ve also added a new well near our office apartment. We were able to live with having to get potable water for ourselves elsewhere, but when Graham was installing our shower, he had 6-year-old metal peks joints breaking off in his fingers, because the water from the hand-dug well we had was so hard.
And our biggest infrastructure project so far is underway as I write. A wedding present and farm investment from Wendy’s parents (Thanks Mom & Dad!), improving the road on our property. I’ll leave you with a video of an awesome excavator tree take down, and an after-shot of the exact same spot only a day later! Keep an eye out for a couple posts coming out… on Wednesday, I’ll be posting the first of our Meet your Meat series about our Freedom Ranger chickens, and as soon as it happens, I’ll post pictures of the piglets we’re anxiously awaiting! Also, keep an eye out for our “advertorial” in this week’s edition of the Mountain Xpress!
We’ve had a lot of moves on the farm this month. And since photos have been in demand, that’s the bulk of this post! I’ve saved the best for last, so if you’re short on time, scroll straight to the bottom to see the cutest pictures in the world.
In addition to Graham and Wendy now being settled in on the land…
Our broilers have gone from here…
To now being cozy in their moveable hut.
…and getting to scratch on a new patch of grass daily.
The layers replaced them in the brooder while eggmobile construction started…
… first by deconstructing a hay wagon deck.
Then framing…
Roofing and nest box construction…
A bit of wire stapling, plywood, and paint later, it was move in day!
Things got even more exciting, when in mid-March, we had our first baby farm animals arrive on the scene!
Our five young rabbits are now about a month old (I’ll take pictures earlier next time!)
And then, this weekend! Lambs! Giggling and cooing have abounded this weekend.
Our first lamb was born on Friday.
A little speckled female.
Our first ram lamb on Saturday. He’ll likely be our first lamb to market.
Ram lamb #2 was born this morning, while it was snowing (I kid you not. March was like summer, April’s been a bit wintery). He was still cold and wet when we tagged him but is now up and about and eating like a champ!
And just a few hours ago, a darling light brown ewe, with a white-tipped tail and white back feet.
It’s probably needless to say… it’s been a really fun few days! Having our first farm-born baby animals is a thrill, and we’re delighted that they’re all doing well so far.
All mothers are being protective and attentive, had no problems birthing, and the lambs are eating and walking well. Our second ram’s mother is particularly impressive and our brown female lamb is impressively strong and milks aggressively.
It might be obvious that I have my favorites. I’m hoping our female lambs will continue to impress us and stay on the farm as breeders, but I’m not going so far as naming them!
More photos and news to come. I’ll be posting much more frequently in the future, and I’ve learned to carry my camera with me at all times… we’re expecting another 21 to 42 lambs (depending on how many are carrying twins) in the next three weeks, so get ready for a deluge of cute!
While I’m home working on the website and our first marketing materials, Graham’s currently at the farm installing a shower and washing machine drain, with our buddy Jason… the final step before we can move in to our barn apartment! Well, my mother would say that the final step will be a serious cleaning, what with the broilers spending their first two weeks living in our future bedroom… but this is the last big step.
As sad as we are to be leaving our little blue house in Marshall, we’re thrilled that we’ll finally be on site! It’s nerve-wracking being 20 minutes away at night, with all that can happen in our absence: fences losing power, animals finding their way out of fencing, predators following those roaming animals around, water leaks, lightning, tornadoes. There’s a chance I worry a bit much, since none of these have actually happened; it’ll just be nice being on-site in case they ever do!
Things I’m looking forward to about the move:
– being able to walk out of my house and do chores before breakfast.
– working in my office, but being able to walk outside and take all the pictures I need, or just to go for a walk or say hi to our animals, whenever I please.
– not worrying about forgetting notebooks or cameras or files or lunch at home when I leave for the farm.
Those are the main ones. Working on office-y things this week, like accounting, website updates, brochures, this and thats, I’ve felt a bit disconnected from the farm and yearning to just be on the property. I did chores last night and loved closing up the chickens as dusk settled in and making sure everyone else was fed and watered and settling down for the night. It’s part of the lifestyle I’ve been looking forward to, and by moving to our land, that lifestyle will finally be my reality! (I’ll have to read this post again in several months when I’m bound to be tired of all the chores that need doing every day!)
Now, I’m off to go fill out an application for the electric company to install some power going up to our well, and then down to Asheville for a meeting with a potential wedding caterer! I wanted to add a little post before that.
As soon as we’re moved, you can expect a new post each week. Upcoming topics: Meet our animals – an introduction to Clementine, Celeste, Gertrude, unnamed sow and unnamed boar (guess who named the first ones), plus an intro to all the other beasts at Dry Ridge Farm; Logo Feedback – we’re getting close with our logo, and need will need your thoughts!; our Invasive Grass Prairie Burn; Eggmobile Construction and…
Many more pictures!! I hear you that we need more. I’ll be snapping away and posting plenty of pictures over the next few weeks. I hope all y’all are doing well!
It’s not quite March yet, but with crocuses and daffodils already starting to come up, it sure feels like Spring’s right around the corner. And in true Spring fashion, Dry Ridge Farm is coming “in like a lion.”
It’s been a busy few weeks here at Dry Ridge Farm. Since February 7th, we have… gotten engaged, received a surprise phone call letting us know our first batch of meat birds had arrived three weeks early… just in time for our only winter weather of the season, Graham brought four beautiful sows and a very eager boar to their new home, we got our first layers (more to arrive on March 1st!), we had our first leak in the roof (above our soon-to-be office), had our first water pipe burst, got six rabbits, five bred (one’s a buck), launched our website (yippee!), got a tractor and flatbed trailer, and set up our first meetings with buyers.
Now, our boar is delighted to be gallivanting with two of his lovely ladies, and he’s making sure all the neighbors know it, our rabbits are busy getting their nest boxes situated, and our first broiler batch seem to get visibly larger and feathered between the time we start our day in the morning to when we leave in the evening. We’re in production folks; start your mouths a’waterin cause come May, you can get your first samples of chicken and rabbit! We’re delighted to be hitting the ground running on our new path toward the finest meat producing farm in Western North Carolina.
…and getting to scratch on a new patch of grass daily.
Our first lamb was born on Friday.
A little speckled female.
dryridgefarm.org 