January Update

It’s January here on the farm. In Northern Virginia it is wet, cold, sloppy and grey. We are keeping the animals fed and warm, but not much is really happening. Soon we will plan the garden, start the seeds, greet the new baby goats, split the beehives, gather eggs for hatching, and do all the things that need to be done on a small farm after months of gross weather gives way to warm sunny spring days. There are still several weeks of dark and dreary days before then so what are we doing at Heritage Springs in the meantime?

Neil is braving the crummy weather and spending his Saturdays building a new structure for our miniature Nubian goats. We have five goats now. With the addition of our sweet little buck in October that number will be increasing this spring. We are expecting Primrose, Silver Leaf (Silvie), and Sweet Pea to welcome babies starting at the end of March. Neil is building a shed for them so they can each have their own space to mother their babies. It has been a long process. If you follow our Instagram or Facebook pages, you probably saw the girls testing the structural integrity of the floor dancing to Cotton Eyed Joe in early summer. Walls were added after that, but there are so many competing priorities in the spring and summer that progress was slow and eventually halted until now. I’ll post photos of the finished project soon!

The girls testing the integrity of the goat shed floor by dancing to Cotton Eyed Joe

I am happiest when I’m playing in the dirt. It’s too cold to be outside so lately I have been giving my house plants some seriously overdue TLC. I’m cleaning leaves, feeding, untangling, and pruning. It is still a bit too early for the optimal time to propagate, but I am amassing a collection of clippings and pieces I’ve accidentally broken off plants that I need to do something with. My orchids need their roots clipped and fresh bark too. Since I get a lot of questions on these topics. I am going to post some videos showing you how I do it. Stay tuned for the debut of Plant TV! Just kidding- it’s not going to be called Plant TV. Although it does have a nice ring to it…

Latest project: taming the philodendron and scindapsus!

In other news, our family is kombucha crazy right now. I have two gallons of kombucha on the counter in the first fermentation, and I have two more gallon-sized jars coming from Amazon so I can start more. The bottles in the fridge will be gone before I can get the batch that’s furthest along into its second fermentation. We are drinking it faster than I can make it. This is so weird because the first time I tasted kombucha I immediately decided it would be my last.

Kombucha is brewing!

Quick story: Last year while I was deployed, I met Linn. Linn and I shared an office and a car. Our dorm rooms were connected too so we also shared a kitchen and a bathroom. We spent almost every waking moment together starting at 5:30am when we went to the gym until 9:30pm when we left work. Luckily, Linn and I became good friends. We passed the time when we weren’t working talking about the hobbies and interests we had at home. One of Linn’s hobbies is making kombucha. Linn said homemade kombucha is delicious, and not at all like the vinegary store-bought kind. She described her SCOBY Hotel, what flavors she liked to make (apple-mint is her favorite), the process for making kombucha, and how healthy it is. Six months of listening to Linn extol the virtues of kombucha finally convinced me to give it another chance. I got home from deployment and ordered a kombucha kit. Post-deployment is a busy time, and the kit sat on my counter untouched. Linn came to visit during the honey harvest last summer and after all the honey was spun, I asked the Kombucha Queen for a lesson. I’ve been making kombucha ever since.

Naturally there are other things going on besides building a goat shed, playing with plants, and making kombucha. I’m on a never-ending quest to make the perfect kefir milk, Neil and I are about to start building and painting beehives, and our family is preparing to welcome two more Maine Coons into our home. Subscribe if you want to make sure you don’t miss anything. There’s always something going on around here!

Heritage Springs- How it all Started

My husband Neil and I bought our northern Virginia farm in Feb 2022. Our single goal was to move our family of 5 (along with our 3 big mutts) out of our cramped town house and into a larger home so we could breathe again. It just so happened that the house we found has a barn and I quickly learned something new about myself- I do not like owning an empty barn.

About eight weeks later, a tick crawled across my daughter’s cheek at dinner. I snatched it, killed it, and announced we were getting guinea fowl. A little research later, I found out that guinea fowl do better with chickens, so I added chickens to the list. On the way into the farm store to purchase our new feathered babies, a man in the parking lot let my daughters hold the baby bunnies he was selling. Add two bunnies. That’s pretty much how it started.

Olivia holding one of her favorite hens

In July that year, I deployed to the Middle East for 6 months. In my downtime, I read about farming and animals, listened to homesteading podcasts, and took a second beekeeping course. It didn’t take me long to decide it only made sense to get some cows for pasture management. If we were getting cows anyway, they might as well be adorable, so I put two mini cows on my list. Goats seem so obvious to me that I can’t remember exactly why I added them to the list. Maybe for their nutritious and digestible milk, the possibility of making goat milk soap, or knowing me, it could have just been their floppy ears. Add 5 mini-Nubians. We had already started beekeeping, but I did some quick calculations and decided in the next four years we could easily multiply our initial investment for a total of 50 hives.

My husband and I don’t have much farming experience. Neil’s dad kept sheep and bees in Maine for a brief period and Neil helped him when he was a kid. That experience amounts to the entirety of our knowledge base. I grew up in the city and the closest I came to livestock was the guinea pig I had in third grade. I had to google the difference between straw and hay. If you’re wondering, straw is the stalk after the good stuff has been removed (like wheat) and is normally used for animal bedding. Hay is alfalfa or grass and is used to feed animals. Even with no background in agriculture, I was drawn to this new adventure with inexplicable confidence that we would figure it out.

We have lived on the farm for almost two years now, and we have zero regrets. It grounds me to be out in the early mornings feeding the animals. We feel proud when we eat a meal we produced on the farm. I love talking to people about our animals and seeing them light up when one of our tiny cows eats grain from their hand.

Neil holding Sweat Pea- one of our mini nubian doelings

We get asked about our farm often and people are almost always surprised by my answer when they ask something like, “Aren’t chickens a lot of work?”.  I’ve learned there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the small farm lifestyle. Misconceptions that might scare people away from getting a few backyard chickens or a flock of tick-eating guinea fowl or even starting a garden. This blog is to share our real experiences in an honest way. Has there been a learning curve? Absolutely! I invite you to cozy up and get comfortable- I am going to tell you everything.