Happy Chaos At Stony Brook Pastures: The Beginning of Stony Brook Pastures

I am using my old blog address, but I am going to change the makeup of the content a bit. I am going to use this to document the comings and goings of our farm adventure. I will do my best to keep up with it. I think it will be a good resource to us as we move forward to look back at everything we have done--mistakes and all.

So where did Stony Brook Pastures begin??? Well as many of you know Shane and I are both city kids. Farming was never something I ever in a million years thought we would do, and yet, here we are. About 4-5 years ago, Shane and I started researching where our food was coming from. We started slowly taking steps toward eating organic, whole food. Two years ago, just before moving to Korea, we decided to buy a hobby farm to take this a bit further. And when I say before moving to Korea, I mean 9 days before moving to Korea--because that makes sense right?!?!?!

The entire time we were over there, we were plotting and planning and deciding what we were going to do. Fast forward to March 2015.

Shane joined us back in the states and we were ready to take the plunge to get this farm started. We bought a ton of seed--I will let you know all those details in another post--and started planting in our house. Then I came home one day to chickens and ducks in my shower :)

We continued and bought 6 pigs--2 sows and 4 feeders, a goat (just a couple of months old), and a cow who has now had a calf. We also have a Great Pyrenees dog who will eventually be a guardian dog--she's still a pup right now and isn't quite ready. Oh and just this past weekend we got 10,000 bees!

We have been busy building fences, learning how to feed and care for the animals, milking, milking, and milking, and fixing many things that break. Right now Shane is trying to get his tractor fixed. We have a 1948 tractor that he is having to rebuild the engine on. All of these setbacks are changing our plan for this year a bit, but that is ok.

So what was our plan? And what is it now? Well, we began with wanting to just be self sustaining. Then we decided to go full scale and do Farmer's Markets. Now we are back again to the self sustaining idea for this year. We need more time and farming is something that doesn't necessarily allow for that. We are already behind on planting the wheat we wanted to be able to feed our animals over the winter, but without a tractor no wheat can be planted. Shane is hopeful that he will have it up and running tomorrow and then he will be able to plant--except it is supposed to rain the next few days. Ugh! I just hope he doesn't have to wait too much longer or it will be to late to get the wheat going....these are things I never thought I would worry about!!

Well that is the intro to our farm. I'll see if I can post a few pictures and in the coming days I will let you know about my kitchen adventures as I learn to use our raw milk.