Exciting news coming

We are growing and expanding!   Very exciting things are happening. 

Milk processing room is going up and applications are being filed.  Hoping to have our raw for retail milk license soon! Stay tuned for progress. Oh and the farm store should be here before long too!  Many fun changes on the farm. 

Mean while we have the fall garden producing amazing veggies and the winter garden going in.  Strawberries are being planted and cared for, hopefully this year we will be able to have fresh strawberries in our baskets next spring! 

When the store opens remembet to check out Christmas gifts, hand woven towels, scarfs, and hats! You might even find American Doll clothes, handmade of course.

Glad to share a little excitement and will be posting pictures soon.  Thanks

Living on a Farm!

One great thing about living on a farm is taking a walk and seeing what's new on the property! Country living is dynamic...nothing is ever the same from day to day. Not only that, but you never know what you might find on one of your walks!

We recently stumbled across this empty turtle shell and just had to take a picture to show everyone how cool it is!

Speaking of new things...we have several new babies here at Cox Family Farm!

We recently welcomed our first registered Jersey calf born on the farm. Everyone, please say hello to "Alice's Happy Rosa!"

But this girl's not alone, because we also now have Andrew. Andrew is his name, following mom is his game! And boy, we all know what that means...!

But calves aren't the only thing "popping up" here on the farm! Strawberries are coming soon to a basket near you...hopefully we will have enough to make jam, too. Yum!! Just thinking about those ripe, red berries makes my mouth water!

With all these babies being born and new plants growing and blooming, you know what must be just around the corner...SPRING!!! We can't wait for spring, but along with all the warmer weather comes planting time! Our greenhouse is really SPROUTING and soon we'll be moving out of the greenhouse and into freshly turned rows.

Green house is growing,

Spring is near...

If you feel like planting,

Give a cheer!!

We can always use the help!!! And there's nothing quite like getting your hands into warm, fragrant dirt as a way of welcoming the spring!

Last, but not least our hens are doing their part here at Cox Family Farm!! We are now getting about 14 dozen eggs a week!!! Who has been enjoying them? Do you eat them just for breakfast, or do you have a favorite quiche recipe you might like to share??

"Green eggs and ham, Sam I am...!!"

As you can see in the picture, most of our hens lay eggs with brown shells. But some of our hens lay green eggs, which is very cool!

As always, Cox Family Farm is a busy place!! We've always got something new and exciting going on. We'll share more with you soon!!!

Update for the New Year 2013

Wow, it is hard to believe that it has been nearly a year already since the last time I updated the blog! We've been so busy since last February with all our garden and livestock plans, that I have had precious little time to write.

Here's an update on what has been happening the past few months at the farm:

In April last year, we finally got our bull. He is a registered Jersey named Happy Painter. Happy is a good name for him as he is a good-natured animal! In a previous post, I mentioned that we were using AI for our girls. Unfortunately, two different attempts failed. So, we got Happy Painter and now all the girls are pregnant and everyone is happy! We are expecting new calves between now (January) and March. We had one calf born early, but we think the neighbor's Hereford bull helped with that one!

Remember, with our herd of Jerseys, we only use antibiotics if one of the girls (or guys) is ill! No regular rounds of antibiotics for us!

In spite of this year's drought, our garden is doing well! Yea!! Some months are lighter than others, but our overall production is up to 30 baskets a week. Which includes 3 donation baskets that we have been able to bless others with, which has be an educational experience for us and them learning to cook what is in harvest is no easy task!  We are now celebrating two years of continuous production! That big Christmas storm destroyed our greenhouse, but we were able to get it back up within a couple weeks! We are now in the process of planting our spring crop!

From last season's harvest, I canned 54 jars of spaghetti sauce and 78 jars of pear sauce. Whew! When the veggie production gets a little light, I may just throw in some of our products as a bit extra for our customers.

This is our first year for pickles. I am very excited about trying new products! We also can jam when we can get a hold of fresh naturally grown fruit!  We are trying to build up fruit available on the farm, so look for strawberries in your baskets soon!  The first one is changing colors now.

We struggled a bit with our egg production this last year...mostly because of the raccoons. But we finally got a "chicken tractor" that we can move around the farm and the hens are now laying up to a dozen eggs a day! Our turkeys are beginning to hatch chicks. We currently have two chicks and we hope to have enough new ones we can grow and process them for later sale around Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!

We've also been working very hard with our bee hives for the past two years. This spring we got our second batch of bees and soon we hope to "split" the hives and start more growing! We also harvested our first batch of honey this fall!  It is an exciting process for us to see our hives coming along and producing honey!

I plan to write more this year and keep our customers updated on the progress and all the new projects here at Cox Family Farm! With all the "Firsts" last year will hope to have more this year and for the farm to keep growing.  I hope you'll check back often to see how our garden is growing and what new products we have to offer!