Blog – Willow Brook Farm & Art Center

some places we buy seeds & plants

http://www.fedcoseeds.com http://www.highmowingseeds.com http://www.johnnyseeds.com http://www.woodprairie.com http://www.sln.potsdam.ny.us http://www.nhnursery.com http://www.territorialseed.com http://www.edibleacres.org

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Books

Here are a few invaluable books: Anything by Eliot Coleman, but in particular, Four Season Harvest The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm, Josh Trought The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Ben Falk Restoration Agriculture, Mark Shepard The Holistic Orchard, Michael Philips

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Pigs!

Our two young tamworth/old spot pigs arrived at the farm today! Three days after our move in date we spent a lot of energy getting prepared for a safe landing for them both. We fenced off the whole perimeter of the 10,000 sq ft soon to be garden area and built a simple pallet shelter […]

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oh oh

Our little Chevy s10 broke down on the crazy back road of 107 in Pittsfield while we were exploring the area that’s so brand new to us. Unfortunately now we have to focus our energies on finding a new vehicle since we only have one car between us both. With all of the other projects […]

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Starting our seedlings

The garden season has begun, with the first seed planted. Indoors of course, since outdoors is still very cold for weeks to come. With equal amounts of care and luck, this little seedling will be planted outside in April, harvested in august, and still will be good to eat in June of next year. Thank […]

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Settling in

We have been spending time enjoying getting to know this beautiful piece of land. We have been acknowledging the former uses of different parts of the house and land that the previous family lived and worked their hearts out for. We have been in awe of the barn construction, with the massive chestnut beams (we […]

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Hay there!

Building shelters are so valuable, we are so thankful that Tim kindly let us use a former garden shed close to the house for shelter for our future animals. We get to use space in the barn as well for storage of our garden tools and supplies. In a few days we are also getting […]

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Getting ducks

We got ducks! We picked up 20 beautiful baby Khaki Campbell ducklings from tractor supply today and 15 one year old white layer ducks we scoped off of craigslist from a farm in Maine. We were inspired by Ben Falk’s homestead — he raises a few different breeds of ducks and his experiences suggests that […]

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The farm is growing

Today we added some more friends to the farm! We are really enthusiastic about raising animals this year since it’s the first time we are doing it ourselves, with methods that we have learned from other farmers and homesteaders. I’m so grateful for this experience, how we are able to try new farm endeavours and […]

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More goats

The goats have been doing amazing! The Oberhasli breed is very quiet, almost making no noise, which is a huge plus. We are really happy we decided to go with goats for dairy than with a cow on this farm. After walking in the woods today we realized how much browse the goats could eat […]

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