Featured Archives - Summers Acres

8 Things to Know Before Owning a Buck Goat

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What are the options for owning a male goat? First, let’s clarify some goat terminology. A buck is an intact male goat over one year old. You may have heard them referred to in laymen’s terms as a billy goat. A buckling is an intact young male goat less than a year old. And a wether is a castrated male goat.

Owning a Male Goat For Breeding

If you want your does in milk, first they need to have baby goats. Does must be bred first to have baby goats. A buck sire is needed to breed. Sounds simple, right? The options to impregnate a doe are artificial insemination, rent or borrow a buck, or own a buck to use for breeding.

Before buying a buck goat there are a few things you should know.

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Mint to Repel Insects and Rodents Around the Chicken Coop

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Mint is one of my favorite scents and plants. It has such a crisp, clean, fresh aroma. We have a nice mint patch growing at our old house. Mint self propagates rapidly. This is a blessing as it is so easy to grow. However, you do want to give considerable thought to where you plant mint as it will spread and could become a nuisance if planted in the wrong location. Two months ago I dug up several of our spearmint and orange mint plants at the old house and put them in temporary pots. Those mint plants set for two months before I finally got around to transplanting them at our new home.

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Our 1940 Farmhouse – Upstairs Bedroom Makeover

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The upstairs of our 1940’s farmhouse has not seen many (if any) updates to it. The upstairs has three small bedrooms. Two bedrooms are rectangular and have closets that are built into the attic space. The third bedroom in the middle has no attic space to utilize for closets and is square. We only have our youngest who is 14 that still lives with us. We let her choose which bedroom she wanted. Not surprising, she chose one of the rectangular bedrooms that had a closet and had the best window view overlooking one of the hay fields. The bedrooms are a little small. Adding to the challenge, she currently has an excessively large bedroom at our current house. To compensate for the space, her bedroom will be the one she chose and the square middle room with no closets will be a game room. Today, we will discuss the updates to the bedroom so that it functions well and suits a 14 year old teenage girl.

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DIY: Building a Bigger Better Chicken Run

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We are just weeks (maybe a month) away from our move to our “new to us” farmhouse. We have been quite busy and we have failed miserably at keeping the progress updates flowing. We took a week off from work after Christmas with plans to get a lot accomplished at the new house. Although, we did stay very busy, the excessive rain we received delayed much of our moving and work outside. Although it was still wet Friday, it had dried up enough that we Jon was finally able to make some progress on the outside tasks. A big part of our move is of course moving our chickens which requires constructing a new chicken run.

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Easter Egger Mama Hen With New Baby Chicks 1 Day Old

Bertha Our Broody Hen with Her New Baby Chicks

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There has been so much going on that we have been giving many updates these days. Things are all good, but there has jut not been any time to “blog” about what we have been up to. Even this post is a little late, but better late than never. Since we started keeping chickens we had longed for the day that one of our hens would go broody and hatch out her own baby chicks. Several times we even left some eggs to encourage this to take place. It seemed our girls refused to brood just to spite us. So we’ve tried our hand at incubating a few times as well as continuing to buy baby chicks. But alas, Bertha, one of our Easter Egger hens, decided to brood. Continue reading “Bertha Our Broody Hen with Her New Baby Chicks” →

Oils of the Bible

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Essential oils are known to be some of the oldest and most powerful substances on earth. The Bible contains over 200 references to oils, incense, ointments, and other aromatics. They were used for the healing of the sick, anointing, and religious rituals. Oils were used to treat ailments of all kinds and were highly treasured. The Egyptians used many different oils for rituals, including cleaning their bodies and embalming their dead. Hippocrates (the Father of Medicine), the Greeks, the Romans, Napoleon, European Crusaders, the Arabians (developers of distillation), and even early American colonists have used essential oils.
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Beginner’s Guide to Essential Oils

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Are you wondering what all the hype is about these hippie oils? Do you have questions but don’t know who to ask? Are you wanting to take control of your own health but don’t know where to start? Then you’ve come to the right place to learn about essential oils and natural solutions that are safer, cheaper and more effective than traditional remedies!

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Getting Baby Chicks - Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs

Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs. Part 1 – Getting Baby Chicks

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Raising backyard chickens to gather your own healthy eggs is rewarding and rather easy. As long as you have a few basics taken care of, the chickens will do the rest. You don’t need to be an expert, and there’s no reason to be afraid. Take care of these basics and you will be gathering healthy, antibiotic and growth hormone free, pastured chicken eggs in no time. Continue reading “Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs. Part 1 – Getting Baby Chicks” →

Pallet Chicken Coop | DIY Chicken Coop

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Our first chicken coop was functional, but left a lot to be desired. We learned a lot from our first little coop, and we put what we learned into our second, bigger pallet chicken coop. Things we learned from the first coop, make a coop big enough to walk in, roosters are big, need a bigger door, and always plan you coop to get even more chickens. Chickens are addictive, and you will always want more. With these things in mind, we worked on designing our next chicken coop.

The first step was to acquire some wooden pallets. Wood is getting more and more expensive. We wanted to do this as inexpensively as possible, as we are cheap. I got a truck load of free wooden pallets for our chicken coop by asking around. Continue reading “Pallet Chicken Coop | DIY Chicken Coop” →

Why You Should Choose Grass Fed Beef

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A year ago, we started buying our beef from a local farm/dealer, Grassfed Greensboro, that we could buy direct from. Over the last year, we have been very pleased with our switch to grass fed beef. We typically order 1/16 of a cow for $150 about every other month and have found out for our family of four (and sometimes 5) that works nicely. We are unable to place orders through the winter months because the cows are too lean so our last order before the cold weather set in we purchased 1/8 of a cow.

Each farm/dealer will quote the sizes and prices differently. Some will quote a price per pound based on the hanging weight. This is the weight before processing. Our dealer quotes the price per portion of cow (1/16, 1/8, 1/4, etc) based on the weight after processing. This makes it much easier to gauge how many pounds you’ll actually get. Typically a grass fed cow will also weigh less than a grain fed cow because the grain in a cow’s diet will “fatten” them. Therefore, 1/16 of a grass fed cow will typically render less pounds of meat than a 1/16 of a grain fed cow.

1/16 of Grass Fed Cow (After Processing) 25 Pounds

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