The rooster has learned to crow

So we are sitting outside having fun with the kids when all of the sudden we here Cock-a-doodle-do. Just at that moment we look over to see our proud rooster with his head cocked sidways like wow did I just do that. Then I look back at my wife with eyes the size of saucers thinking wow did he just do that. So now we have a country alarm clock. Oh boy this will be fun!

Rotation 1 down

The Self Sufficient Life

The mission is changing. Well the mission is being slightly altered would be a more accurate statement. When we originally moved onto our five acres I wanted a place where I could create a business plan for profitable small acreage farm. While that goal is still at the forefront of the decisions we have made from a livestock perspective I have discovered a second and equally challenging goal. After stumbling across the book by John Seymour The self-sufficient life and how to live it I have been challenged and inspired to have this simple five acre plot be a place where we as a family can grow and produce all of the food we would need to eat year round. While this may not be an easy goal it is one that I hope to be able to bring to fruition in the next five years.

My wife and I have started a journey to get out of the rat race of life. i truly enjoy going to work and am blessed to be working for a great company that is stable and safe. If there is one thing I have learned for the great recession it is that depending on the safety of a paycheck is no way to live life. We have sought the council of many people including the teachings of Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Donald Trump, ect... and have come to the conclusion that living life free from the chains of debt is the best way for us to raise our family and allow our children to live a life better than ours. Isn't that the goal of any parent to have their child live in a way better than they were able to. I am blessed in that both of my parents allowed me to have a wonderful childhood and I feel that to do the same for my family we need to be debt free and live a life closer to the land. I am by no means going to quit my job. In fact I look to do the opposite. I look to work in a way where I make decisions that I know are best for the company and can have the freedom of knowing even if a boss disapproves to the point of me loosing my job that I will be bale to live without the worry of where my next meal will come from. Take time right now and add up all the things we pay each month, (car note, credit card bills, house note, phone bill, student loan perhaps, cable bill, ect ect). Now imagine if all of that money stayed in your bank account each month instead of going to the banks and fattening their bottom line. We began a journey about a year ago to be debt free minus the house by the end of 2012. I am happy to report that we should not only hit that goal but possible get there a year early. At that point we will look to pay off this homestead.

This rant on debt brings me back to the original intent of the blog. We will be starting a venture next spring to propagate an acre garden that will allow us to produce all of the vegetables we need to eat on. We will also be getting strawberry plants, blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry bushes, and maybe even a few grape vines. With the cows and pigs already here and chickens for laying eggs the only other meat we will need is chicken to eat. I will be building a Salatin style pen next spring to try out and hopefully it will prove successful enough t where we can produce all the meat we eat at the Jones household. Imagine you grocery bill cut by 90%!! that is the journey we are on. So come along and enjoy the ride and feel free to stop in for some help along the way!!

First Harvests, Losses, and additions

Well we just got in from the garden and much to our surprise we were able to harvest 5 pods of Okra today. We also noted 3 cantaloupe developing and a watermelon had popped up. We have been pleasantly surprised with how easy the garden has grown this year. We really rushed to get it in and in doing so we did not get it tilled as well as we would have liked. The tomatoes are coming in well and we should have some in a few week. Squash is starting to form and the pole beans are beginning to sprout! We also have 2 pumpkin sprouts that we need to get in the ground.

Now for the fun news we are getting 3 pigs. They will all be female and hopefully will provide us with some free labor. While Logan and I both enjoy and occasional ham and eat bacon weekly these girls will probably not see the butchers knife for a few years. They are going to be put to work instead plowing up and fertilizing our strawberry patch and then the location of next years garden. I will be purchasing these three next weekend from a animal science professor at UT. They were involved in a fertility study but are no longer needed. Below is a picture of the house they will be getting. As with all things here on Little Feet farm we want to do what is best for the animal, us, and the earth. We believe that having these pigs out on pasture is a healthy alternative to the way most pigs are raised in confinement barns.

Little Feet Farm: The Name

So, why is our farm called Little Feet Farm? When we first moved to Tennessee I use to baby-sit a little four-year-old girl and her baby sister. One day the four-year-old spent all day talking about going to the “Little Feet Café.” Being new to town I figured that it was some sort of restaurant. However, when her mother arrived I learned the story behind the, “Little Feet Café.” Apparently the little girl’s grandmother, who had four or five other grandchildren, lived on the other side of town and was within driving distance from all of her grandchildren.

In an attempt to spend quality time with the grandkids and give the parents a break, this grandmother kept all the children at her house on Thursdays or would pick them up from school. After school let out for the older ones, this grandmother would bring all of the kids in her kitchen, which she called, “Little Feet Café” (In honor of all her little grandchildren) and would teach them how to prepare a dinner. They all got to help, learn, share and eat together. It was quality time spent together and I’m sure all of her grandchildren will be able to look back on all those Thursday evenings in the “Little Feet Café” with fond memories and valuable lessons that they can carry with them.

Just like that little girl’s grandmother, Brian and I want our farm to be about quality time spent with our children. Quality time spent laughing, playing, learning, reading, farming, cooking, and praying. We want our children to grow up and be able to look back on their childhood with fond memories and valuable lessons that they can carry with them. I wanted the name of our farm to represent what we were about, which is why no other name seemed to fit except for “Little Feet Farm.” I also hope to get a sign for my kitchen one day that says, “Little Feet Café.”

Our kids are too young to understand why we do things the way we do them, but hopefully one day we can explain it to them. Hopefully, one day they will appreciate the life that we are trying to create for them. Hopefully, one day our ventures will give them the courage to set out on their our journey and create their own “Little Feet Cafes.”

Logan

What a difference a year makes!

It still amazes me sometimes, how did we end up here? This time last year I was packing up all our belongings, unsure were we would be moving to, and nine months pregnant with Colin. Let me back up a little, to two months before. Everything was going well. We lived in a beautiful home, that we custom built, in a great neighborhood, filled with great neighbors and lots of kids. Brian had a great job with a top Lumber Company and I, a stay-at-home mom, had a growing childcare business, which I ran out of my home. Hannah (our daughter) loved playing with the other kids, and with my new before/after school kids joining the mix, I was on track to be making an extra $1,500/month or more when the following school year started back. Things were going great and we had No intentions of leaving our home or Texas for another 5-7 years.

That all changed one night when Brian came home from work, my mom was in town, so we went out for a very rare date night. Rather than dinner and a movie, we went to a park. Sitting on a bench, overlooking the lake, Brian told me that he was ready to go back home to the southeast. He had no idea how we were going to do this, no job transfer was lined up, no houses in our neighborhood were selling, no clue how to make this happen. We figured this was more of a long-term goal. We prayed and decided that we would just leave it up to God. His timing, his location, whatever was meant to be will happen, when the time was right. So that is how we left it.
We got the ball rolling, but realized that it would take a miracle to actually make this happen. Every card was stacked against us. Two realtors told us we would have to pay a Lot of money at closing to sell our house, no job transfers were available, three houses, all next door to us, have been on the market for over a year with no offers, oh and I was pregnant with Colin.

We just prayed, honestly that’s about all we could do. One by one things started to happen. We found a realtor, a great realtor, who said that she Could sell our house and she could do it without us paying anything at closing. We got an offer, but with a very heavy heart we had to decline it because we still had no job transfer. Would we get another offer? Yes! We got another offer, but it was for less than we needed. This went on and on, each time we wanted to accept the offer, but something just didn’t work. Four different couples made offers and counter-offers and after only five weeks on the market, we sold our house for Full asking price! Our neighbors were shocked, to say the least! (we lived in a cookie-cutter neighborhood, so it didn’t make sense to us either). We sold our house, but with only four weeks until Colin was due we still had no where to move to. Brian’s company had agreed to help him get a transfer back to the southeast, we just didn’t have a location yet. So we started packing.

One week before Colin was due Brian got a call to come to Morristown, TN for a job interview within the company. He flew out on Friday morning (Colin was due on Sunday) and flew back that night with a job! What a relief! Four weeks after Colin was born we packed up the U-haul (which Brian’s Uncle Jerry thankfully drove), our dog, a one-month old (Colin), and our 22-month old (Hannah) and headed to Tennessee!
We loved living in Tennessee, but after only six months in a rental house we decided we wanted to move to the country and start a farm. Which brings us here. So, now we live in the middle of nowhere, with no T.V.. We spend our nights moving cows and chickens or just talking.

The no T.V. thing started as an attempt to have one free summer on the farm enjoying nature, rather than just watching T.V., but much to our surprise we found that we LOVE not having the T.V.! The kids don’t miss it and honestly Brian and I don’t either. It is definitely going to be a permanent change in our house, so sorry for any people who come to visit who may have an issue with that.

It fun to see life as an adventure! I think when you follow your heart and really listen to where God is leading you it’s amazing the places you will go! Brian and I love Tennessee, we love farming and we both feel very strongly that this is exactly where God wants us to be right now. I have a very strong feeling that this is the beginning of something bigger than I can imagine right now, bigger than our little five acre mini-farm. I don’t know what the future holds for us and our farming venture, but it is a very exciting time in our family. If things can change so drastically in one year, I wonder what next year will be like? I guess we will have to wait and see.

My cows go to the beach every day

Now that is just crazy talk right? The nearest beach is a good 6 hour drive from here. So in the physical sense this statement is crazy talk but what my cows do get is that miracle vitamin called Kelp meal. What the heck is kelp meal?



Kelp is the green stuff in the picture above. It hangs out in the oceans of the world and grabs nutrients out of the sea. Those nutrients are stored into these wonderful plants until they are harvested by kelp farmers!! They then air dry the kelp and grind it up. That leaves the kelp meal that the cows can gobble up. on average they will eat about 1 oz of kelp meal per animal. Why not just give them grass you ask? Well the simple answer is kelp meal is like the cattle version on Veema (a multivitamin). Just like us cows are picky eaters and left to their own accord they would only eat the junk food grass on pasture. So what we are able to do is supplement their diet with this kelp meal that is kept out on pasture with them. They can eat as much or as little as they need b/c it is fed buffet style. The nice thing about kelp is that is is super high in iodine so it helps the animals avoid getting pinkeye disease. When you pour it out it smells just like the ocean so it makes me think of the beach every time I am in the field near the mineral feeder.