Itty Bitty Farm

FARM FRESH EGGS - $4.50 DOZEN🥚🙂
DRY/SEASONED CAMPWOOD - $6 BUNDLE
FIRE STARTER CUPCAKES - 2/$1

We've got fresh eggs out in the farm stand fridge every day and large bundles of seasoned firewood in reusable mesh bags on the porch. Plus, there are fire starter cupcakes to make getting that campfire going easy!

Our farm stand is self-serve, on the honor system, there is a money box inside the fridge.

***Itty Bitty Farm's eggs are cleaned and packaged in accordance with Maine Dept of Agriculture regulations. You can read more about that here-
https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2218e/#:~:text=When%20selling%20eggs%20in%20Maine%201%20the%20size,state%20that%20refrigeration%20is%20required%2C%20More%20items...%20

An opportunity has presented itself and we're pretty excited about it. Some farm friends have started a distillery and we'll be getting the spent corn mash from the whiskey distilling. This is the left-over corn after it has been through the fermentation process, which depletes it of most of the natural sugars while leaving the majority of the proteins and nutrients. The rehydration and fermentation of the dried cracked corn make it easier to digest and the nutrients more bioavailable.

We picked up the first load today and gave some to the pigs and chickens and they loved it. This won't completely replace their normal feed ration of fermented alfalfa and pig feed but will allow us to reduce the amounts of other feeds while still providing the calories and nutrition the animals need. It will be interesting to watch the pig's physical condition and track the hens egg production to see if there are any changes. With luck this collaboration will result in decreased feed costs for us and a savings to the distillery, who would otherwise have to deal with the disposal of the mash.

I'll be revisiting this subject from time to time here on the farm page to keep you all informed on how things are going.

I love this time of year when blossoms first start peeking out around the farm. Our Asian pear trees bloom early, so do the wild strawberries that are all through the lawn, but the apple trees and high bush blueberries are just starting. The peaches come in last, their leaves are barely showing right now.

Camping and fire pit season is here!!⛺🔥

We'll have dry/seasoned firewood out on the farm stand again starting this week.
$6.00 a bundle packed in reusable mesh bags.

Busy week around the farm. Took a few days off from work to get things done here as we get ready for the season. Lots of spring cleaning, repairs, and building, plus getting the gardens ready. Most of today was spent spreading our own compost and rabbit poop and getting it tilled in. One of these days I'd like to get a small manure spreader, which would save tons of time! I'll do one more pass with the tiller tomorrow and then I'll make the raised rows and lay down the plastic mulch and drip tape so we'll be ready to plant!

I do my best to believe that people are inherently good but more often than I like I am sorely disappointed by their behavior.

There has been a pair of Canada geese that have nested on our property for 4 or 5 years. They walk their goslings through the yard and we take pictures of them. Just 20 minutes ago we saw them for the first time this year and I took some pictures to post. They walked through our yard to the neighbors and after a few minutes I went out on the porch to try and see where they were. They were coming up out of the ditch between the neighbor's house and Pleasant River Drive-In and started to cross Rt1. Certainly a dangerous thing to do with 4 little goslings in tow but it isn't hard to see a pair of fully grown geese in the road if you're paying attention. But that didn't stop some ignorant woman in a dark blue Subaru wagon from barreling down on them, never even slowing down when she ran over the gander, killing him.🥺 Thankfully the mother goose was able to run back to the side of the road with her goslings. But, since geese mate for life she will be alone now.😢

It was completely unnecessary. There is no possible way the woman in the car could not see the geese in the road. She did not brake, she did not veer, she just ran it over. 🤬

WTF is wrong with people?

Pictures of baby chicks and rabbit kits and piglets are sweet and cute and fun to look at but we're a working farm and our animals are not pets. When we hatch chicken and quail the hens are kept for egg production, but most of the roosters end up in the freezer. The rabbits are raised for meat, though a lot of them get sold to folks who want to raise their own and occasionally for pets. Almost all of our piglets are raised buy us, or the folks that buy them, to eventually be butchered. And even the animals chosen to be breeders end up going to freezer camp eventually.

This morning I killed one of our pigs and took it to the butcher to be processed. Late this afternoon I picked up the meat, cut and packaged. This pig lived a good life, it never went hungry, it was fed quality feed, it had a warm dry shelter, fresh water, and was petted and talked to and treated well every day of its life. And it never felt a thing at the end - it was eating some grain and then it was over. A quick, clean death, as painless as possible, is the most respectful thing I can give our animals in the end. It isn't easy, and I don't enjoy it. After all, I took care of this animal it's entire life. But it is necessary, because we have to eat, too.
My farm, my animals, my responsibility.

They grow up so fast! Just 39 days old and one of the new quail has laid her first egg.😲

Our happy boar got his picture in the local paper this week!😁🐷

The second batch of quail eggs have finished hatching, had a very good ratio - 37 chicks out of 45 eggs.👍 They've been moved to the brooder and, as you can see the majority will be white, as ordered, but there are 6 that are of questionable origin.🤔 Like the others, these chicks will spend 2-3 weeks in the brooder then they'll be moved to cages, the hens in last bunch will all be laying by then, and the next batch of eggs should be arriving at the same time. Whew.😬

So, it seems that ordering hatching eggs off ebay is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. I ordered JMF Jumbo White hatching eggs, the chicks should be all yellow when they hatch, so far more than half of them are striped!😲 Somebody's got some 'splaining to do!😬

Lazy Sunday afternoon

The height of Sunday afternoon laziness...😆
https://youtu.be/r3cq9qCO0ww

Lazy Sunday afternoon

It's almost time to prep the gardens. I was concerned that the ground would be to wet to till but I made a couple of test passes Monday and it's fine. Now I'll spread the compost over them and do a shallow till to mix it into the soil, then make the rows and lay down the drip tape and plastic mulch. Another month and we'll be planting!! Hard to believe it's getting to be that time again already.🧑‍🌾🚜🙂

I was checking the fruit trees and it looks like this winter's deer deterrent efforts worked, all the new growth on the fruit trees is still intact!

We've been using metallic ribbon that's made for scaring birds away from stuff around our gardens for years to keep the deer out and it works pretty good. It moves and makes crinkly noises in the slightest breeze and even the slightest amount of light reflects off it, flashing as it moves. Last winter we had an issue with deer nibbling the ends off the branches of the apple trees in the itty bitty orchard. We tied ribbon to the trees after noticing it but the damage was done.
This winter we got out ahead of it and tied sections of ribbon to the trees early. It's hard to see in the pictures but I tried to show the old damage where the ends had been chewed off and the new growth coming out around the same areas.

If you have problems with deer getting into your garden or at your trees the ribbon is inexpensive and certainly worth a try. We order it from Amazon, it's less than $12 for a roll that is a couple of inches wide and 350ft long.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XXPF32J?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

We have fertile Icelandic chicken eggs available for hatching. $15/dozen
Call 207-266-9134 or message us if interested.

Icelandics are beautiful birds, they are a landrace heritage breed. They're medium sized dual-purpose birds, good layers (medium to large eggs), feed efficient, and very cold hardy. They do very well fending for themselves if you choose to free range them. These are terrific chickens for a small homestead flock.
https://livestockconservancy.org/heritage-breeds/heritage-breeds-list/icelandic-chicken/

FARM FRESH EGGS - $4.50 DOZEN🥚🙂
DRY/SEASONED CAMPWOOD - $6 BUNDLE
FIRE STARTER CUPCAKES - 2/$1

We've got fresh eggs out in the farm stand fridge every day and large bundles of seasoned firewood in reusable mesh bags on the porch. Plus, there are fire starter cupcakes to make getting that campfire going easy!

Our farm stand is self-serve, on the honor system, there is a money box inside the fridge.

***Itty Bitty Farm's eggs are cleaned and packaged in accordance with Maine Dept of Agriculture regulations. You can read more about that here-
https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2218e/#:~:text=When%20selling%20eggs%20in%20Maine%201%20the%20size,state%20that%20refrigeration%20is%20required%2C%20More%20items...%20

"Spring" in Maine, from snowin' to mowin' almost overnight.😄

Had some friends stop by this weekend to visit the farm and meet the animals!🙂

It's a beautiful day in a down east Maine, perfect for that most beloved of spring rituals - The Raking of the Winter Poop!😆

Judging by the quickly sprouting grass, this is going to be the last week to get it done before the turds will be covered in a sea of green, only to be discovered later by unsuspecting flip flops and lawn mower tires.😬

It's not as romantic or farm-ish sounding as "composting manure into natural fertilizer", but, if you've got pets that do their business outside, Raking the Poop and disposing of it is a job that must be done after the layers of winter snow and ice melt away leaving your yard littered with butt bombs waiting to stink up the place, attract flies, and get squished by innocent little feet.🤢


It's times like these I most miss having kids at home. . . . 😉

Spring is that time of year when we're getting everything in shape for the season. That includes the usual spring cleaning, fixing fences and winter damage, and prepping the gardens. Plus, machinery and equipment need checking and servicing, too. Turns out the farm truck needs a radiator, so I ordered up a fancy new aluminum job for it. It is a work of art, the welds are beautiful, the mounts are straight, and, of course, it doesn't quite fit like the original.🙄 Luckily it won't be too hard to sort that out - a drill, a bigger hammer, and a longer radiator hose and it'll drop right in!😬😁

The quail chicks are 4 weeks old today and have graduated from the brooder in the house (which Susie hates) to cages in the barn. We'll keep a heat lamp on them for a week or so, depending on nighttime temps. Around 5 weeks the roosters start crowing and we'll separate them from the hens. We normally see the first eggs from the hens between 6 and 7 weeks. By 8 weeks all the hens should be laying.

And, in two weeks the new batch of eggs will hatch and we'll start it all over again.🙂

Baby bunny pics, because they're so stinkin' cute!🐰🥰

How to turn your livestock’s poop into an amazing natural plant fertilizer

The Bangor Daily News just ran an article on farm poop and composting in the Homestead section and used our farm page post on the same subject from Feb 21st for quotes and pictures!
https://bangordailynews.com/2022/04/12/homestead/poop-natural-fertilizer-joam40zk0w/

How to turn your livestock’s poop into an amazing natural plant fertilizer When it comes to fertilizing your plants, not all poop is created equal.

LET'S TALK FEED AND FREIGHT AND WORLD MARKETS... OH MY!

As I've mentioned many times, a feed staple on our farm is fermented alfalfa that we buy direct from the producer, they call it Chaffhaye and their farm is in Texas. It is the pig's primary ration, we mix it in the chicken's feed, and also feed it to the rabbits. It comes in 50lb bags and we buy it by the ton to get wholesale pricing and direct shipping to our farm via freight carrier. Normally, we buy one ton about every 6 months. This time, because of the increases in freight costs, we had to buy 3 tons(!), yes, 6000 pounds🤯, in order to get a volume freight discount to get the price within 12% of what we paid last July for 1/3 as much product.

Feed prices in general have skyrocketed over the last couple of years and Chaffhaye is just one that we buy. This amount should last us about 18 months and having it on hand will be a hedge against transportation price increases in the near future. Hopefully oil prices will come down instead, and stabilize to help reduce costs across the board. But, even if oil does come down, we're all going to feel the result of the war in Ukraine because some 53% of the world's wheat comes from that area. That means the cost of breads, cereal, pizzas, pastas, and so on, in addition to animal feed, are probably going to go up even more. All we can do is wait and see what happens and do what we can to reduce our dependence on commercial grain based feeds. The last couple of years we planted experimental gardens to see if growing some of our own feed would be feasible and this year we'll do it again, making changes to what we plant based on what we've learned, and probably not relying on Mother Nature to see that they get enough water.

I don't know how interested you all are in this sort of thing but we use this page to try to show what we contend with running our small farm and trying to make it work. Like it or not, it's not all bunnies and chicks, and this is us dealing with the effects of the global oil market and economy on our itty bitty farm in Columbia Falls, Maine.😕