R Farm of Northwest Ohio, LLC

It is March 4 and the snow if flying.  If you don't like the weather in Northwest Ohio, just wait 24 hours and it will likely change!  So true for the entire last month.  We are adding a north addition onto our older original barn.  We were able to pour the concrete foundation in 40 degree weather.  This past week the walls were studded in and hopefully tomorrow will bring the trusses.  The addition is not to add more animals to our farm, but to allow for better care for our animals during all phases of Ohio weather. 

In December we added a border collie to the menagerie we call R Farm.  He is a lively addition and loves to herd anything that moves!  As new Border collie owners, this has taken some adjustment to understand.  The ducks rightfully ignore him and he ignores them.  The pony has not learned this lesson. :)  However, the dog has quickly learned the paces around the farm and is starting to respect our verbal commands.  This brings more harmony to the daily chore time! 

We are all yearning for true spring and the start of preparing the land for planting.  A little sunshine would be welcome too.  We will keep you posted on the barn progress! 

Greetings from a wet and rainy northwest Ohio farm.  This is the time of year when we usually start thinking of snow, Christmas lights and basketball games.  But it seems, the "showers" of blessings just won't quit.  It is Sunday afternoon and it is again raining.  Our lower pasture is flooded and the upper pasture and riding arena are covered in water.  Makes for a miserable choring experience.  We joke that the only happy animals on our farm right now are the ducks, and that remainse to be true!

This is not a typical December, many times we are reminiscing about the harvest and finalizing year end paperwork.  But this year, the harvest might not be finalized by year end.  It will take a hard freeze before the combine can hit the fields again.  There are 2.5 fields of corn to go before we can put harvest 2011 in the books. 

The standing corn is not unusual for many of the farmers in Ohio, this puts a small quandry on the other December tradition in Ohio, deer hunting.  The deer have a lot more "cover" to hide in with all of the fields still in tact. We had numerous hunters within earshot this past week as we heard the echo of shot guns firing.  Not all hunters went home with meat for their freezers as we saw 3 deer run from the creek on the north of our farm to the woods at the south of the farm. Those three had cleverly averted every attempt.

Well, it's off to church on this cold rainy night.  Good fellowship and Biblical learning is just the remedy for this dreary day. 

We love fall in Ohio and on our farm.  The weather today was absolutely beautiful in the 70's with a gentle breeze. September is our County Fair and we participate through the 4-H program and in some open classes as well.  Our older daughter showed a feeder calf, a dairy steer, a meat goat and two pygmy goats.  It made for a full week!  We were very proud of her as she won a showmanship class, placed second in another and did well overall with all of her projects.  Her feeder calf was in the market class finals, which made her very happy.

Now that the Fair is behind us we look ahead to fall harvest.  The soybeans are losing all color and turning brown/gray.  What was full bushy plants a month ago are now stems with pods of beans waiting for the combine. The field corn is still showing more green than brown in the stalk and leaves, but it too will be turning in the coming weeks.  Here in Ohio we have had plenty of fall rain, more than 3 inches in less than a week.  Once the fields dry up, we will begin the harvest.

The farm animals seem happier with the nicer temperatures too. Our farm ducks, all 6 of them, have enjoyed the many water puddles left by the last rain storm.  The two angus heifers in the lower pasture seem content to lay in the sunshine too. Last week we added 4 feeder calves to our beef herd and we have 5 almost ready for processing. 

We would love to hear from our customers and those interested in our family farm.  We are blessed to be working this land and to be stewards of our animals.  God bless!

It is almost 8:00 p.m. on the 31st of December!  We finished chores in between rain showers.  The weather is so untypical for this time of year.  It is 57 degrees when the normal evening temp is in the teens.  Although it makes for easy choring with no frozen waters and frozen fingers, the general atmosphere is dreary and damp. 

A hungry fox came looking for an easy dinner and helped himself to 2 of our beautiful ducks.  He won't be coming back for another duck dinner.  His presence in the barn clearly frightened our daughter when she was doing morning chores.  That was her first up close and personal encounter with a red fox.

The girls, aka the laying hens, are picking up on production.  Our new white egg layers are finally coming out of molt and are laying a few more eggs. Today we gathered 201 eggs from all the hens.

We are all looking forward to 2011 and all that it has in store for us.  May you all have a healthy, blessed New Year and thank you to all those that have done business with us in 2010!

God Bless!

Doug and Melissa

It's cold on R Farm as the frost is covering the ground.  Our 4 pet ducks were sprinting...well, waddling with passion across the yard this morning.  They are so fun to watch.  Our youngest pygmy goat is enjoying the last remnant of fall leaves and corn husks as she "escapes" her pen and roams like a renegade around the farm.   We added 27 hens to our flock of over 300 laying hens due to a neighbors unfortunate barn fire.  They are white egg layers.  We joke that now we have white and wheat eggs!

Eight young bull calves came to join us earlier this week. They look extra beefy with their young winter coats.  They frolick and play with great enthusiasm. 

Looking forward to a quiet weekend on the farm!