Our Name

People always say they like our farm’s name. My hope is that you feel welcome in our community, even if just passing through, and that we make you feel like you have a home here in Forest Grove. Our name is fun because I sometimes wonder if people ask, “Where did you get these green eggs?” Then I wonder if the response is, “my little sister’s farm.” Not as if it were the name of our farm, but that our customers felt they were a part of something. I want you to feel you are a part of our farm, because you are. If it weren’t for our customers we wouldn’t get to enjoy the gift of life every time we open up the incubator, we wouldn’t have so many chickens (who needs that many eggs for themselves?), and we certainly wouldn’t be taking on a really awesome project of raising 40-60 turkeys this summer! I am also the little sister in my family. I am the younger of the 2 sisters and although I have a younger brother, I am the shortest in my family.

Through this blog I hope to communicate with our customers and other what is going on down on the farm. I will share with you our new hatches of chicks, projects we’re working on, where we are selling, and so much more.

Stay tune for more details regarding our farm, facilities, and most importantly our animals!

Your little sis,

Natalie

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Where to Buy Our Eggs!

I probably should have mentioned this already!

We sell our eggs year round at the L-Bar-T Bison Ranch Gift Shoppe located at 43465 SW Hiatt Road, Forest Grove, Oregon 97116. Open Monday - Saturday 10-5pm. Our chickens are laying up a storm right now so we have both Large and Jumbo eggs in the shop.

Come check it out. Visit www.lbartbisonranch.com for a buffalo meat price list and information about them.

We will also sell our eggs at the Forest Grove Farmer's Market on Wednesday from May to October too. Look for us this spring!

Our Chicky Start

I didn’t start raising chickens until college. From 5th grade through high school I raised rabbits and cavies in 4-H and open, and then in high school we got goats and showed them in FFA. When I got to Oregon State University to start my Animal Science minor I discovered rabbits were not very important to the agriculture community, so they didn’t have any classes on small animals. I could have taken any class I could think of regarding cows. So I compromised and my older sister and I popped into our first poultry class. We loved it! I didn’t know chickens were so cool.

My sister is 2.5 years older than me and we started our animal science minors together so we had to stuff a lot of classes into that last 2 years for her. Our second poultry class was a 400 level embryology class. I discovered with this class that a passion for something will get you everywhere. We had no background in poultry like most of the student, and we certainly didn’t have the biology background. Yet we set the curve.

That summer we took home 5 hens from the OSU Poultry Farm. They were 5 Rhode Island Reds (Lucy, Ethel, Gertrude, Maggie, and Hannah). We built a great pen for them and they were able to free range all day long, only penned up at night for predator prevention. The following spring I fell hard for the chicks at the feed store, we brought home 2 Leghorns, 1 Buff Orpington, 1 Black Australorp, and 1 Ameraucana green egg layer. And I was hooked!

Since then we have hatched numerous batches of chicks most of which were in my mother’s classroom for her 3rd and 4th grade classes to watch and learn about. We started with a Styrofoam incubator and can happily say it worked well for us. We upgraded to a GQF as soon as we found a good affordable one. We have had 100% hatches several times with this incubator.

I now have 2 incubators and a hatcher for our hatching purposes. Someday I hope to be hatching my own turkey eggs but right now we just do ducks, chickens, and (starting 1/26/2010) quail.

Keep watching for information and pictures about the quail. They should hatch in about 15 days

Gotta go feed the chooks,

Natalie

We’re Hatching Quail!

We set 36 beautiful coturnix quail eggs 1/26/2010. 16 days or so later the slippery little suckers should be springing out to take on the world. Quail are crazy little birds, they bound off walls, flutter as if they can fly high, and lay rich and cream little eggs. They will start laying eggs at about 6 weeks of age, from then on they will lay about 6 a week. If we aren’t careful we could have a quail takeover of the farm. Not really, they won’t be hatching their own chicks so we can have a bit of population control. However, if I have anything to do with it we won’t stop at these 36 eggs.

You’re probably wondering what we plan to do with our quail. Well, I love their personalities, so for me it is largely about the entertainment, such as with the chickens. We will eat and sell the eggs though. They are a delicacy all around the world, essential in Japanese cuisine. I will try to post some recipes as we experiment ourselves. The first we will try is an appetizer. You line a mini-cupcake/muffin tin with prosciutto then crack a quail egg into the whole, add some fresh Parmesan and chives. Bake & serve. When we finally get to try it with quail eggs I will post the results! I love the idea of single-bit deviled eggs for Easter, how fun will that be. It takes about 4-6 quail eggs to equal a large egg, but they are very rich in flavor.


Here are some pictures of the incubator and the eggs. They will pretty much look like this until day 13 when we will place them in the hatcher. When they hatch they will be wet, hopefully I will be home to capture some of the early moments of their lives, if not, the first pictures will be of when they dry out to look like little balls of fluff. They are cuter then anyway. Regardless, I intend to keep you informed about their progress. They grow up so quick it will be no time before they are ready to start laying eggs and we get to start the cycle all over again!

Gotta go check on the 'bator,

Natalie

Greetings from My Little Sister’s Farm

Welcome to my new blog! I have wanted to start this for a long time, but never had the time to sit down and figure out how to set it up. My Little Sister’s Farm is going on 3 years old now, we have so much going on all the time that I have to get this going. I hope you find our blog as fun and entertaining as we find our farm to be. We hope to keep our visitors up to date on the farm comings and goings as well as invite you to taste of our farm’s bounty. Please look around, our website www.mylittlesistersfarm.com is a work in progress and we hope to be announcing its launch soon.

From our family to yours,

Natalie