Our journey begins....

My name is Kate Garner. I am a Stay at Home Mom of two boys (4&5). I also run our very small family farm located in rural Western NY. Running a farm in New York has its challenges. Weather, taxes, new laws and encroaching buildings, can make farming difficult in this time. In this blog, I will talk about all the aspects of farming and family life that I encounter on a daily basis. Whether its escaping animals, death, feeding, butchering, children or just to talk about an interesting experience. I hope that I can help more stay at home mom/small farm owners stay sane!
Our journey began in 2017 when we purchased my husbands family farm. The farm has been in his family since 1932, we are now the 5th generation to own the farm.
We started out with a couple chickens. Friends of ours started 12 chicks for us and then gave us 4 hens that were already laying. The first day our four new hens gave us our first fresh eggs and we were hooked! Then chicken math took over... and we may now have a serious addiction to raising chickens and other animals. Now I had heard from multiple people in our FaceBook chicken pages that chickens are the gateway animal. Man, were they right. Our farm has exploded with goats, more chickens, ducks, pigs, and turkeys.
In February 2019, we decided to take the plunge and received our DBA. We have ventured in to raising Cornish Crosses and Turkeys last year. We have had a pretty steep learning curve with raising the Cornish Cross. I will cover that more in another blog. This year we are trying our hand at raising pigs as well. We have found an amazing local butcher and we can't wait to see the end result.
We are so lucky to have the acreage we do. This year upon a visit to Lollipop Farm (a local humane society) we fell in love with some of the sweetest farm animals and ended up adopting three goats and four potbellied pigs. One particular goat C.C., our special needs boar goat. C.C. came to Lollipop with horribly over grown hooves, and because her hooves were so overgrown she had begun to walk on her elbows. Though we have been working on trimming back her hooves, she will never walk normally. They have been an amazing addition to our farm. The staff at Lollipop Farms is incredible! I will talk more about our experience in a later. C.C and more of our crazy goats will be a focus of many blogs in the future I am sure!
I want to thank you for reading this and I hope you continue to come back!
Kate!

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