Our little farm...

We had snow this week! No rain since May and straight into winter!

We’ve been working on a new sow barn. Winter is coming!

I haven't posted in such a long time! We are still at it! Here are some numbers. In 2020 we raised 90 red wattle hogs butchered them and sold them direct to customers at farmers markets in Northern California. We are raising our own piglets from our breeding stock that we've been selectively breeding for 6 years. The pigs are trained to electric fences when they are young and ranged under oak trees. We ferment corn and sprout grains that we source locally from a small community of farmers. We keep about 200 laying hens that free range the farm. We also have ducks, turkeys, Nigerian Dwarf goats, meat rabbits and large worm bins. We take in appx 1000 yards of tree waste from the forest a year in the form of wood chips and brush that we compost and add to all of our KNF pens. We sourced about 3 tons of biochar from Pacific Biochar last year that we use just about everywhere on the farm. I could go on and on...

I enjoyed reading your thread and am amazed by how much you do!  I'm glad you had a good year last year, I wondered how you had got on, with Covid making life difficult.
Your pigs are gorgeous, like giant Kune Kune pigs!

So nice to have you back, Jeff. I hope you have time to share some updated photos!

These pictures are from Spring 2020...

Jeff Campbell wrote: I haven't posted in such a long time! We are still at it! Here are some numbers. In 2020 we raised 90 red wattle hogs butchered them and sold them direct to customers at farmers markets in Northern California. We are raising our own piglets from our breeding stock that we've been selectively breeding for 6 years. The pigs are trained to electric fences when they are young and ranged under oak trees. We ferment corn and sprout grains that we source locally from a small community of farmers. We keep about 200 laying hens that free range the farm. We also have ducks, turkeys, Nigerian Dwarf goats, meat rabbits and large worm bins. We take in appx 1000 yards of tree waste from the forest a year in the form of wood chips and brush that we compost and add to all of our KNF pens. We sourced about 3 tons of biochar from Pacific Biochar last year that we use just about everywhere on the farm. I could go on and on...

I want to let you know why I gave you an apple! A lot of pictured posts get apples, but sometimes succinct explanations are worth a 100 pictures! Thanks and good work. Keep up the biodiverse work!

Thank you, Lew. We have so many things that are intertwined and going on at the same time. Pictures alone definitely don't tell the whole story.  

 So, we did a thing. We have been working with the USDA for the last year trying to get a Farm Ownership Loan. Well, we meet our realtor to pick up the keys at three o'clock today. We found fifty acres of mature oak trees on a south facing slope. It is raw land, the only thing it has on it is a 20 gpm water well. It's off grid. We have paved road access that is at 2800' elevation, the back of the property drops to about 2300'.  It borders BLM land on two sides. One slope faces Southeast with views of the Stockton valley, one faces Southwest with views of Sacramento. It has two intermittent creeks, and a spring. We are one hour and fifteen minutes from our farmers markets and most of our delivery customers. The plan is to add some interns and a full time worker, create a new market garden and expand our sounder of hogs. We have twenty five pregnant sows now, and have about ten more to breed. I will post a lot more on here, as we go.

Your land is beautiful