Time has flown and it’s mid-summer already, although you wouldn’t know it by the weather: 60’s and 1.5 inches of rain yesterday and last night. In July!

Things are still busy on the farm, although the pace has slowed significantly since our last chicken processing day two weeks ago. The freezer is full and there are no more broilers until mid-August when our first batch of chicks for the fall will arrive. 

The steers and heifers have settled into their routine of moving every morning to fresh grass. They are all lined up at the fence eager to be moved when I go out. The pastures are looking wonderful with all the rain we’ve been having, especially after the “fertilizing” they received this spring from the chickens!

The 150 laying hens are keeping us in shape for when the fall batch of broilers arrives. Moving pens and netting, feeding, watering, and collecting eggs. We will hopefully have a much bigger job with the eggs soon, as our 125 young hens are growing quickly and should be laying within the month! One of our recent projects has been designing and building a mobile hen house with nest-boxes and perches for the ladies so they can keep up with the cows better (right now we can’t move the pens fast or far enough). They will enjoy having more manure to scratch around in. Hopefully the “egg-mobile” will be finished this week and they can move into their new accommodations. 

The turkeys are also keeping us busy. 150 Standard Bronze and 50 Bourbon Reds arrived about four weeks ago. They have been in the brooder but will be moving out onto pasture today as they are getting too big and energetic for the brooder. It will be fun to see them get out on the grass and have more room to roam and eat greens!

Cody’s latest projects have included repairing and reinforcing chicken tractors that were damaged in some of the recent storms we’ve had, and really focusing on marketing, particularly on the Conway Locally Grown market which appears to be working out really well, for farmers and customers. It is still young and we’re still working out the kinks, but attendance has grown and we’ve been getting good feedback! It has been really exciting to have so much enthusiasm and response; it helps us keep at it through the more challenging times. The program even made the Conway paper two weeks ago!

In addition to Conway Locally Grown, our restaurant deliveries, and buying clubs,  we have also begun attending farmer’s markets. Argenta in North Little Rock and the Hot Springs Farmer’s Market. We are planning on being at Argenta every other week through the summer, and doing the Hot Springs market once a month. The long drives and early mornings are challenging, but getting a chance to interact with our customers and with other farmers is a lot of fun. There is so much good food out there and amazing and dedicated people who grow it, and buy it!

We have also started a Frequent Buyer Club for those customers who want chicken, turkey and duck year-round, and at a discounted price. By joining customers ensure that they receive chicken, turkey and duck all year and help us plan for the fall so we’ll have a better idea of how many chickens to raise to get us through to the spring season. If you are interested we will have information at the farmers markets or you can contact us by phone or email and I will have more details posted soon. 

I have been busy with the horses, training and lessons, as well as finishing the perimeter electric fence around the front pasture and learning how to operate the scary, noisy, fumey, ancient Ford tractor that my dad has loaned us to do our feed grinding and mixing. The brakes don’t work very well, and it’s kind of difficult to start, oh and the throttle control is broken so you have to use a pair of vice grips to work it instead, but it’s  pretty fuel efficient and it runs (mostly)! Never a dull moment. 

Apologies for the lack of pictures this post, our internet connection is being dif-

ficult, but I’ll try to get some up soon.

We hope you are all having a good summer. Happy, healthy eating!    ~ Andrea

Welcome to Falling Sky Farm’s webpage! It is still under construction so appologies for the messyness, and I am still figuring out how it works. But, at least I can put up some updates about progress and activities on the farm. Pictures will be coming soon. Here’s the first entry written the end of April. With all the rain over the past few weeks things have rapidly gone from brown and grey to green! The pastures are looking beautiful and there are chicks in the brooder and several batches out on pasture. The rain has brought it’s challenges too, keeping approximately 1500 chickens dry and warm in such weather has kept us on our toes, and the sun over the past few days has been very welcome.In addition to the chickens, which are growing well and seem to be enjoying their time on pasture, and the laying hens who are laying regularly again, we have had several major projects going on this winter and spring.The first began in January with the purchase of a used three ton mixer-grinder and two grain silos. We are now able to grind and mix our own feed as we need it, which is wonderful. It is fresher and we can get the grind that we want. However, true to form, there were challenges. On the first mixing it broke down. So, we learned how to disassemble, repair, and reassemble a mixer-grinder with the assistance and guidance of Dale, my handy father. The good part was that the second time it broke down, a few days later, we knew what we were doing. Still, we had to take it all apart, get the correct parts ordered, and put it back together, but it was easier. So far (please keep your fingers crossed) it is working better than ever!Another project has been building forms and pouring concrete for the grain silos and the walk-in freezer we purchased. The freezer arrived about a week ago and awaits the visit by the refrigeration man to hook it all up. It will allow us to hold much more volume, and hopefully more efficiently.More tasks have included constructing a pole barn to house the mixer-grinder and the extra shavings we use in the brooder. We relocated brooder to the old milk barn on our leased property and expanded it to house 600 chicks at a time. Cody learned about running and hooking up the electrical lines and outlets, and he and I both worked on patching the floor, building a wall, and sealing the entire room from drafts and unwanted critters.  A new addition this year for the chickens is we are experimenting with day ranging. Using electrified poultry netting around the tractors we are able to let the chickens out during the day to have more space to move about and then shut them in at night. The netting also provides an additional deterrent to predators as well as being nicer for the chickens and looking better to us! So far it is going very well. It is really neat to watch when you let them out in the morning as they go running around flapping their wings and chasing the lucky ones who get the worms and bugs. So far we have not had any predator problems this year.In the near future we are hoping to welcome pigs and several heifers and steers to the farm. We’ll keep you updated, and do let us know if you are interested, early orders are appreciated! The hogs will be ready to process in the fall and the steers and heifers will not be ready until next spring/summer. We are also looking into raising turkeys for the holiday season, more information on that at a later date.We have expanded our marketing venues this year. In addition to the buying club in Hot Springs/Hot Springs Village, Arkansas Sustainability Network in Little Rock, and purchasing right here on-farm you can now order our chickens, eggs (and soon pork, beef and turkey) at Conway Locally Grown. Conway Locally Grown is an online farmers market that Cody is heading up that will serve the Conway area. Please visit www.conway.locallygrown.net for more information on this exciting new market.We hope everyone is enjoying a beautiful spring and we look forward to serving you. Our first chickens will be available after the 7^th of May. Eggs are available as we have them. We have 100 more laying hen chicks who are growing fast and will hopefully begin producing in July, greatly increasing the number of eggs we have for sale.Till next time.Andrea