English River Farms -Our New Adventure!!

Ever since purchasing our piece of heaven on earth, we have been brainstorming ways that we could possibly make a living with our farm or at least the farm could sustain itself.  It is very difficult to revamp a farm, acquire animals and feed them all if you are on a limited budget.  We finally have built our animal herd into something potentially profitable.  Time to start thinking seriously!

We do all we can to save money such as:

1.  Raise grass-fed livestock (except the animals the kids show in 4H) -This allows us to only have to buy feed (hay) in the winter.  Since we don't crop-farm it would never be profitable to feed our livestock grain as it is expensive to purchase.

2. We do 99.9% of the work ourselves.  From fencing to chores to cutting trees and maintaining everything  --WE do it!

3.  We have mostly been able to grow our herd by retaining the young --except last year we did buy quite a few Boer does for our goat herd.  We only did this after deciding our budget could afford it since goats don't cost an arm and a leg.

Recently, we have been thinking more intensely on the profit side of things and how could we possibly make a decent profit.  That is the point in keeping livestock in the first place! (Also, I love them all)  We are truly blessed to have our 40 acres and maybe someday will be able to sustain our living from it.

We have started the process of obtaining a meat sales license from our state which will allow us to sell frozen meat from our home after being processed and inspected at a licensed facility.  This may sound a little sad, but that is in fact what livestock is intended for. (I just keep telling myself that when it's time to refill the freezer.)

The meat we will be selling is goat, beef and possibly lamb.  The animals are grass-fed.  This takes longer, but the meat is tender, flavorful and leaner than grain-fed meat.  We don't use antibiotics but we do vaccinate.  

I am very excited to get this adventure started and start to market our farm, English River Farms.  I have started planning our marketing strategies, also.  I will be putting up a website featuring our herd, our farm and life on the farm.  We will also sell produce this summer at a local farmer's market.  This is also very exciting as we always have extra produce from our huge garden and will be planting some extras this year for this purpose. 

It's always exciting to begin a new adventure and while it is not exactly "new", it will be different.  I do have high hopes for our adventure.  It will take hard work, but that is something we would never shy away from. 

This farm really is our little piece of heaven on earth!