When it rains, it pours. Yes here on the Oregon coast we often experience a deluge of precipitation, but as our small family farm operation  Melville Farms stretched to grow meat and egg production for 2016, it now seems like I bring home a new farm animal daily.
As if offering direct to consumer sales of pork, lamb, chicken, beef and eggs wasn’t enough, I decided that this was the time to expand into restaurant and pre-packaged meat sales. New licensing has enabled us to work with local restaurant Street 14 Café which is thrilling. Needless to say that when I saw our tiny little farm mentioned in the restaurant’s newsletter I was over the moon, when I saw our chicken featured on their social media I fell over, and when they ordered MORE chicken I was knee-slapping happy!
Then it began to pour. I brought home the largest round of piglets we’ve ever raised, we secured 2 new pastures to lease, and are expecting 4 more heritage Irish Dexter cattle delivered tonight! We get our next round of 50 meat chicks in a week and will have over 100 chickens on the farm at once. Hubby Dearest may think I’m out of control and he might be right. Poor Hubby been building me new fence line and new pens for weeks to accomodate our expanding endeavors.
All together it is an exciting, busy, and joy – filled beginning to summer. However as I glance at my dwindling funds and growing pregnant belly I am sincerely hoping that Hubby Dearest is excited as I am about our little farm’s growth and that I’m not in labor on butcher day this fall!!

(Sharing a little bit of PNW farm magic with our mid-western family)

(A few blue eyed piglets that are part of our pork peoject this year)

(One of the many, many chicks for the next round of meat birds)

Spring seems to be turning into summer faster than I can keep up with.  Life is changing even faster as my pregnant belly bumps into chicken coop doorways and attracts unwanted attention from elderly strangers at the grocery store. But what has remained constant over the past few extremely busy months is that it seems that at least once a week I find myself thinking, ‘this has been the happiest day of my life.’
More than a fortnight ago Hubby Dearest built me a cross fence for our little homestead by the house.  True to form we waited until the weekend that we were getting the lambs to start putting posts in the ground.  Family came out for days of beer, laughter, sweat and fence building as they put together the sexiest fence I have ever seen.  Minutes after the gate was hung I rounded up the husband loaded the kid and we were off to pick up the lambs.  Hubby unloaded the lambs into the field and as I brought dinner into the lawn I found my sweet toddler Q hugging Hubby so tightly and talking to him about the sheep.  The heat of the day started to wane, our bellies were full, and as we watched tiny lambs frolic I couldn’t help but think that it was the happiest day of my life.

A week ago I had a surge of pure happiness as we welcomed the long-awaited first calf born at Melville Farms.  I watched in a hushed awe as she labored, toddler Q even spoke in whispers as she perched on my hip. Hubby Dearest kept bringing out the heifer Molly so she’d settle down and stop trying to mount poor Mable during contractions. I scuttled off to get more grain to distract the excited heifer and in the 5 minutes I was away the calf dropped as a healthy baby bull.
We watched the first wobbly steps, the bonding between cow and calf, and welcomed friends and neighbors as they took peeks at the new addition to the neighborhood.  Eventually the calf worked it’s way onto the fence by the road so even those who weren’t gathered to welcome the calf were able to take a good look.  The sun set as our little bull Norman nursed for the first time and I had never felt more thrilled or happy with our family farm. 

Yesterday the toddler refused to sleep, Hubby had a miserable day at work, a dozen meat birds escaped their chicken tractor and were meandering around in sticker bushes.  I was alerted by excited squawks and thundering paws as helpful dog Ted attempted to play with them, chasing them deeper into 8 ft high blackberries.  I brought a screaming crying Q out to watch as I gently removed the chickens and brought them back into the tractor to find that our laying hen Hotlips was INSIDE the meat chicken tractor gorging herself on the meat birds high-protein grain. It started to rain, my cuts from the blackberries started to bleed, Q began throwing herself to the ground in a tantrum into many piles of poultry, livestock, and dog poop. But later that night when the family sat around the table and laughed at the adventures of the day and we all could see and feel the baby boy growing in my belly roll around in around attempt to join the moment I felt my heart swell, tears pop unbidden into my eyes and I swore it was the happiest day of my life.

So many days are hard, stressful, seemingly impossible. Kids scream, laundry doesn’t get done, clutter becomes part of household decor, animals escape, budgets get tight, toddlers rub horrifying mixtures of poop and mud on their face while you’re not looking. I consider myself incredibly lucky for the brief pauses between the hullabaloo that I can slow down and notice my healthy, happy growing family in those moments of simple joy.

It was easy to forget the summer drought as our Melville neighbors experienced flooding, landslides, and vibrant pastures as a result of the fall rain. But as our family purchased our first cow/calf pair and tried to source local hay, it became apparent how the weather had affected our normally extremely productive hay crops.
Though we were not able to source Melville grown hay, we were able to secure local bales from a family farm on the other side of the county -for a premium price of course.  Once delivered those hay bales were unloaded and tightly stacked quickly with help from 3 strapping men and we waved a thankful farewell to the friendly farmer who delivered. 

As we began moving on with our day, Hubby Dearest began looking for his cell phone.  As luck would have it, it was NOT in the pickup, the shop, or the barn, but vibrating innocently from within our haystack. 
We stared in horror at the perfectly stacked bales and feared that the slender smartphone had slid through the stack into the pallets at the very bottom.  With a sigh Hubby Dearest and my Father Dear began disassembling bales attempting to find a cell phone in a haystack. 3 layers of 70 pound bales later, they found that dang phone and began restacking.  Even Hubby’s exasperated look and intentional irritated sighs (directed my way) weren’t enough to dampen my excitement for the arrival of our first cow/calf pair the next day!
It felt like Christmas when Mable and her calf Molly arrived at dusk and were ushered into their pasture corral that a neighbor let us borrow.  Even after 10 hours of trailered travel they were calm, approachable, and responsive to a bucket of oats. These well-bred heritage Dexter girls were healthy, happy, and loved by their previous owner and I was so excited to have my first breeding stock I was practically skipping! 

A few days later Mable and Molly have eaten from my hand, let me pet them, and have officially become part of the Melville Farms family!

My sweet husband works incredibly hard.  Long hours, stressful situations, on call 24-7, all part of the territory when one is in management.  Yet, he continues to support my scheming and dreaming for our family farm: Melville Farms.
Hubby Dearest is a reluctant farmer to say the least, but luckily he volunteers for a “honey-do” list of sorts. 
As summer turns to fall, days become  shorter, rain falls harder and my toddler is less willing to cooperate, I have quite the list for him:
1)Drainage: we want use of our small field in the winter, even if it’s only for poultry.  I discussed renting equipment to ease the task, but of course Mr. Do-it-himself went out there and dug a drainage ditch BY HAND.  It is well done, but a failed culvert has turned his hardwork and our access road into a lake complete with miniature waterfall.

(Faithful dog Ted testing out his new swimming hole)

(Our new water feauture: Waterfall de Melville)

2)Help winterize the coop: for some reason I feel like it’s a bad parenting decision to work on electrical with your toddler helping.. so the Hubs will be hooking up a light timer to keep those ladies laying!
3) New chicken housing- our multiple chicken tractors have served us well, but the ladies need some new digs and we are trying to improve production here on the farm by raising meat birds through the monsoon months as well as the happy-go-lucky summer months

(The Hubbity-hubs helping move one of the tractors around)

4) Contain the madness- I do not want chicken juices on my front porch as I have been there, done that, over that.  So imagine my suprise when I brought home 14 new chickens and over half of the newbies REFUSE to be contained.  The cozy coop, spacious winter run, treats and fun roosting options were not good enough for them apparently and dag nab it they flew the coop to then roam the world, coming in and out of the fenced area with ease and roosting 20 feet into the trees around the chicken house only mocking my attempts to lure them back to the rest of the flock. 
My Little Miss Q is only so helpful while I do daily chores or chase animals as she often tries to sample miscellaneous livestock poop like they are rare delicacies, attempts to jump in the impromptu lake, or break into the chicken coop and dig in their food. She is being an adventurous  kiddo, but as it can cut into my productivity I’m glad Sir Hubby Dearest is willing to help out on the farm!!!

(Q helping with her wheel barrow)

Just a few short weeks ago the Pacific Northwest was on fire.  The temperate rainforest region was warned of EXTREME fire danger as smoke blew in from neighboring counties in grey swirls and particulates.  The evening sun was red as it attempted to shine through smoke and clouds before it settled into the hills.

Little Miss Q was bundled in her footie pajamas as we traversed the back roads of the Coast Range to keep our processing date for our meat chickens in the Willamette Valley.  The main through fare had been closed for nearly 3 days and I could not afford missing our appointment.  I put my mom – car to use by bringing the dozing babe and a trailer full of birds to a sleeping suburban community outside of Portland at 11:30pm so I could be sure to get that poultry plucked the next morning.
The next day all was going according to plan as I left for the processor with the rise of the morning sun.  The birds were clucking, the forest fires had not closed any new roads and the drive was smooth.  Nearly there my eye contact lens decided to rebel against my body. It felt like glass was in my eye and no amount of blinking, rubbing, cursing, or squinting was going to fix it. 
My eyesight is extremely poor and going without that contact not an option so I tried every trick I could think of to keep that lens on my darn eyeball. So a few minutes later when I arrived for my chicken appointment with tears and mascara running down half my face I really regretted my choice to wear makeup for once.  As I started to unload the birds I was met by a teenaged boy who looked terrified to talk to me. I went to wipe my face only to remember that my hands were covered in bird excrement just in time, but I tried to smile at him.  Pretty sure I looked like a mess and came across as a creep as my right eye kept winking in response to the evil contact lens slowly but surely killing me.
After the birds were unloaded I cleaned up and began tearing apart my car.  I looked in every cup holder, pocket, bag, and storage compartment searching for a new contact lens. Frustrated I opened the glove box for the 3rd time only to find: the entire order of contact lenses from my last eye doctor appointment  (that I had lost nearly 9 months ago)!!! I heard a chorus of angels singing that my stars had aligned and I was willing to risk getting conjunctivitis by putting a new lens into my aching eye with my less than sanitary hands.  The relief caused an impromptu dance party in my car which resulted in me spilling hot coffee everywhere, but I was too happy to care.
Returning for my now beautifully processed chickens I had coffee stains down my tshirt and capris, make up streaks down my face, and was wearing romeos without socks. Beyond caring I weighed my birds only to find that these full-figured ladies were huge. Ranging from 5 to 8 pounds these chickens were the size of small turkeys.  Hoping folks would be able to fit them in their crock pots I packed up and headed back to my toddler.
Only in the Pacific Northwest can you have raging wildfires one day and the first rains of the season with rolling fog the next.  When Little Miss Q and I returned home from the sweltering 90 degree heat of the valley, our beautiful farm was bathed in mist and clouds. With our last crop of birds in the freezer, sheep grazing, and Q in her favorite swing it felt so good to be back in Melville

(Ted trying to look like he was guarding the laying flock)