We are beyond excited to announce the arrival of Swedish Flower chickens to Sweet Meadows Farm! We knew we wanted to bring chickens back to the farm, after not having them for a bit, and after doing some research, we decided to focus on one very special endangered breed....the Swedish Flower! We brought in six hens and two roos from a wonderful SFH breeder in Indiana (thank you, Maria!), and are planning on hatching out chicks come spring 2022!
A little history on the Swedish Flower Hen. Originally from Sweden, there were very few left by the 1970's and so the government found a few isolated flocks and established the Swedish Genetic Project to help bring the breed back and also to raise awareness about other endangered heritage breeds. The SFH, or Skånsk Blommehöna, has only been in America since 2010 with the first importing of a few birds. They are named for the various beautiful and unusual "flowering" they have in patterns, producing many different colors and patterns. They are a landrace, which means that they were not engineered by man, but rather evolved and adapted naturally to their environment over the centuries. They are super hardy and healthy, lay really large eggs regularly, do very well in super cold climates and have amazing funny personalities. They are known as the "compost" chicken, foraging with such tenacity that they are always busy looking for things to eat! The perfect permaculture and homesteading chicken! What a special breed of chicken, and we can't wait to share them with others! **Photo 1 features Noelle - she has bright blue/hazel eyes which is very rare for a chicken. Never seen anything like it before! She is a stunner. We will be getting a page up on our website for the flock soon, and more photos to follow!
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Our 2022 Proposed Breeding Schedule is up! Go take a look! We are very excited about all these pairings, and can't wait to see the kids starting May 1st! Polled, blue eyes, moonspots & silver are possible from quite a few pairings. These are all great lines as well with lovely udders behind them. Three of the eight does we are breeding have been bred so far. This post features one of the recent breedings - R Serenity NHF Sparkling Cider (*M Pending) + Mountain Ridge BEB Rock Hudson. Polled, moonspots & blue eyes are possible. If you would like to be added to our waitlist, (no deposit required) please fill out the waiting list application on our website so we can learn more about your farm and goals. If you have any questions, just shoot us a PM via FB or email us through our website contact form. Please be patient with us as it has been a crazy past few weeks - we have some new additions to the farm that have been keeping us quite busy! Thanks everyone, and many blessings!
They've finally arrived!! Please welcome the newest goat members of the family! They arrived tonight on transport via Nigerian Dwarf Goat Express (thank you, Dave!! Praying for safe travels home!) and everyone is settling in wonderfully.
First, meet our sweet crew from Monkey Hill Farm in OR. A big thank you to Michelle for these wonderful girls. Everyone is just so sweet and we are so grateful to have these lovely ladies in our herd! - Old Mountain Farm Tumeric "Penny" - Monkey Hill Farm Silver Lark "Hazel" - R Serenity NHF Sparkling Cider "Liberty" Also, Penny is actually pregnant due to an accidental breeding and is due first of February. She's only a couple months along and she's already that big! LOL. (See last photo) She does carry wide though! So, we'll have a winter kidding which is a first for us! LOL. And... Our beautiful polled silver buckling from Southern Grace Nigerians in OK - Ricketts 4 Emmanuel. Thank you so much Jessica!! We just love him and he is a very friendly little guy. He is a lap sitter for sure! We will do formal introductions with better photos soon! Some of you may have noticed that we've been quiet on our page for the past couple weeks. We have been keeping a secret from you all! This past weekend we moved our farm down to the beautiful rolling hills of Tennessee. It has been quite hectic unpacking, dealing with renovations and getting the animals all settled but we are happy to say that everything is going relatively well so far. The goats are getting used to their new space, and everyone seems to be adjusting. The goat barn is a garage that we renovated into a barn - but we plan on building a real barn in the future! Their current space is pretty good for now though as a temporary setup.
And of course a HUGE thank you to Brian at Blarney Heights for transporting them safely all the way down to our new home!!! You guys are just wonderful and we're so thankful! :) In other news, we have some more surprises coming up over the coming weeks so stay tuned!!! Some photos taken in the girl's back pasture from this morning! Vermont is always gorgeous in the fall, and October is certainly when everything is in full color! All the goats are enjoying the crisp weather and love searching for leaves to eat.
Due to no fault of his own Glory came back to us recently. We are happy to have him back here and the two boys, Rock and Storm, are as well! He has been glued to the fence all day every day staring at the girls - quite a few of them have been in heat this past week and he doesn't know what to do with himself! LOL. Isn't he so handsome?! His color has changed drastically in just several months - so interesting!
We made chèvre for the first time yesterday! Ever since the last of the goat kids left, Hannah has been milking Capella, Faith and Pie morning and night and has been getting a lot of milk from them - almost 1 gallon per day which is impressive considering Pie and Faith are FFs! These three girls have lovely udders with large orifices - a dream to milk. They are also perfect on the milking stand. Yesterday we made three chèvre flavors - Maple bacon cranberry, thai basil & garlic, and thyme & rosemary. The consistency needs some work but the flavor is amazing!
It's been a while since we posted on here, but things have been hectic on the farm! LOL. Over the past couple weeks, we have received a lot of interest in our goats, and our last available kids, Peepers, Cricket & Owl were just reserved and will be going to live with a wonderful family come September. We are so excited for them!! Such a sweet trio. At this time we do not have any goats available.
The photos below are of Gooseberry (left) and Owl (right). :) |
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May 2023
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