Purpose Driven Homestead

Do you have a local farmer like us who have old school freezers and fridges that aren't connected to the net? This is the second time mass hackers have raised temps and ruined foods in supermarkets. If you're wondering how a freezer can get that hot... the hackers force the defrost heaters to run constantly while turning off the compressor. https://www.oann.com/tech/european-supermarket-fridges-got-hacked-again-heres-what-to-know/

Do you have a local farmer like us who have old school freezers and fridges that aren't connected to the net? This is the second time mass hackers have raised temps and ruined foods in supermarkets. If you're wondering how a freezer can get that hot... the hackers force the defrost heaters to run constantly while turning off the compressor. https://www.oann.com/tech/european-supermarket-fridges-got-hacked-again-heres-what-to-know/

Big day this morning! We woke up early and started processing pasture raised turkeys for the holidays! Its hard to believe but Thanksgiving is right around the corner and we only have a few Saturday drop offs for our customers to pick up their birds. We had considered not raising turkeys this year because the cost and time commitment is so large compared to chickens. However, we had so many of last year's customers tell us that they had never had turkey that tasted as good as ours and ask us about doing them again...that we decided to do it again this year. Our turkeys are grazing on fresh pasture every day, never get any vaxxines or antibiotics, are hormone free, and are fed non-GMO feed thats fermented with raw milk from our jersey cows. (That last part makes a difference) If you live in Eastern NC and want a local turkey from a patriot family, check us out at: Https://www.raisedrightfarmstead.com

I posted about a week ago about what will probably be our last calf born in 2026. He was a full blooded Jersey bull that I've banded and will now be a beef steer. For those who asked how he was doing and wanted a check in... here he is a week later looking great and growing like a weed!

A buddy of mine was kind enough to let me borrow his seeder for a few days. He hasn't used it in a while, so I'm going to clean it it up and then after I use it, im going to try to do some maintenance and repair. It's a no till seed drill planter that I can put some cover crop down with for winter and spring grazing. The small hopper will have a mix of seeds like clover and turnips. The big hopper will have fescue and things like winter rye and winter peas. First I have to clean the LITERAL mouse nest out of it that you see in one of the pictures below. Lol. Clearly its been a while since he used it. 😆 🤣

Started putting out pelletized lime in the pastures the other day. Couple of bags had tears in them and the lime had gotten a little damp. What I did NOT know is that there were a couple bags with a lot more wet lime than I thought. The dry lime had covered it up as my sons and I were dumping 4-5 bags at a time. It was like trying to push play dough through an extruder at the end. The agitatator at the bottom just couldn't move it by the end. Took me 45 minutes to wash out the spreader with enough water to clean it. I will make sure we are MUCH more careful next time.

Tomatoes, bell peppers, and string beans are still going strong. No frosts yet for the year. I kind of let the garden go at this point, sonthe grass has kind of taken over. Lol. We also have a couple of figs that are ready as well. Crazy how much longer the growing season is here compared to the Midwest where we started our homesteading journey.

We just had another calf born before winter!! This was from a bred cow we bought, so while it's a purebred Jersey, we don't need a Jersey bull (they are incredibly mean tempered) so he's already been banded. You can see the "tools of the trade" so to speak in the second picture below. First picture you can see he doesn't have an ear tag but in the last couple he's been banded and ear tagged. He will be a beef steer for our customers. Just a little glimpse of what goes into providing clean food for our family and our customers.

This was what one wall of our walk-in freezer looked like after processing day. One whole side was full of shrink wrapped whole chickens while we broke down other chickens on the other side for customers who just want cuts like wings, or breasts, etc. We sold out again in less than 2 hours of putting chicken up on our website, so we had to do another processing to stock back up. If you live in Eastern NC and want clean, chemical free chickens raised on pasture, check us out at: Https://www.raisedrightfarmstead.com We only have 2 more batches of chickens and one round of turkeys for the holidays if youre interested and then the season is over for this year!

You can see that the kiddos were ready for some love time with one of our livestock guardian dogs after processing was over. That's what you want from you LGD... protective when the time calls for it... and good around the kids. She actually fell asleep with the kids all laying on her. Good dog!

While we haven't started feeding hay to the beef cattle yet, we have started supplementing the dairy cows some. I've found that I can run a bale out with my bike faster than I can even get the UTV going. The hay balances perfectly on the back rack and any excess blows off. This bike has turned out to be way more practical and useful than I ever thought it would!

This time of the year produces tons of free food for our pigs. Acorns falling from oak trees are a huge treat for our pigs and they look for them in the pastures. Where we can collect them, we do. If you havent seen our prior videos on how we do this, check them out below. https://youtube.com/shorts/6t_OFnIj0hU?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/4C9nf2lAG3s?feature=share

Last raspberries of the season. I love fall but winter is a little less exciting. As much as I love snow, I also like grass for cattle and food for our family from the garden or fruit trees and bushes. Time to start prepping for winter even though its almost 80°F here today. They are saying that because of the "Super El Nino" that here in the Southeast, we're supposed to have a colder and wetter winter, which means more snow events. We'll see...

When I talk to people about our regenerative agriculture success, I regularly have people say things like "Yeah.. but I'm sure you had good soil to start off with." To those people, I love showing pictures like this to them. These are holes from where our chickens give themselves "dirt baths". Because the clay is so hard from the traditional agriculture that was done on this farm for years, it's essentially hard pan now. You can see that they form nearly perfect circles in the hard pan clay as they claw at it. That's clearly not great soil that we started with. We're making progress though, and it's NOT through tillage. By not using herbicides or commercial fertilizers, the earthworms and dung beetles have returned to our pastures and they create tunnels and space in the soil. When combined with the manure from our AMP (Adaptive Multi-paddock Grazing) and by using our manure spreader to add in composted manure that we've brought in from a local horse farm we're making progress.

I was out in the pasture and saw the last watermelons of the season hiding under some tall grass. I didnt think these seeds had even germinated in the front field. I got down out of the tractor and there are 4 decent sized watermelons still growing. We are still running in the 80's or high 70's during the day with no frosts in sight yet. So things are still growing, albeit more slowly now.

We just finished a processing event and broke down over 50 chickens into vacuum sealed packaging for our customers. These chickens only receive non-GMO feed, never any antibiotics or hormones and theres no soybean oil in our feed. They are the cleanest chicken we can raise. Our best sellers are wings and thighs. I always thought it would be chicken breasts, but surprisingly, its not. We used to offer only whole chickens but we found that customers would rather pay us the extra labor to break down the chickens for them. We still offer whole chickens but break most down due to demand. Our children help us get it done, learn valuable life skills, and make a little money along the way. We still have several hundred more chickens to process before the season is over, as well as about 30 turkeys.

We had another calf arrive on the farm this week! If you guys remember, I had to deliver a calf while my wife and kids were on vacation visiting her family back at the end of August. That heifer calf is now 1.5 months old and is the bigger of the two in the picture. The new one is a bull (actually a steer now) and is the small one. Both of these are cross breeds. The heifer is a Jersey Gray (half Jersey and half Murray Grey) the steer is a Belfair (half Jersey and half Dexter). We may sell the heifer as a potential milk cow for a smaller family but the steer will definitely be for beef. I think we have one more Jersey that may calve before winter... so we'll see. She's a huge cow, so its hard to tell if shes pregnant or not compared to our others. I refuse to test for pregnancy when nothing will change either way, so we all find out together! Lol.

The cattle were lined up yesterday to move to the next pasture. They have to cross a bridge through two gates to get there, but they were ready. They may get another grazing of these paddocks before winter, but I'm not sure. Ive already gotten so much more grazing this year out of the land than ever before. Its kind of crazy how much more. I plan on doing a video on the difference. You can see how much they have mowed down the paddock they left and how tall the grass is in the new pasture they entered. Happy cows right now. We havent started feeding hay yet to our beef herd this year but had in prior years before now. For those who follow us regularly drop a comment on what month you think we started feeding hay the prior two years while we were shifting the farm to regenerative agriculture. The answer night surprise you.

Not a bad sunset yesterday. Fall will be here before we know it, so just enjoying the last few warm days before we have a cool down. The grass is still growing strong and I dont think weve had the opportunity to graze this late in the season before without feeding hay. However, it won't be long before all the warm season grasses are done for the year and the fescue pasture is the only one thriving. Then it too will cease for the winter. The cattle are going into this winter in the best shape ive ever seen them. Its pretty amazing the difference a year can make on a regenerative farm.