Everyone should be able to have their own flock, so we gave our neighbors this starter kit, complete with cookie cutter.


We wish you a warm and wonderful new year.

Marc and Judy
Continue reading ...

Check out the American Lamb Board personality test.  It’s simpler than those ink blots and you get a chance to win $200 from Williams Sonoma! (I am, by the way, a “game-day partier” – woohoo!)

Here's the link to the test: http://woobox.com/8cof6b
Continue reading ...

Summer around here ends with the Fonda Fair, our local county fair which closes on Labor day. When the fair is over, summer is over.  Kids go back to school and we begin in earnest selling our lambs.


Plate of deep fried vegetables


Go Swifty, Go!

There have been County fairs in the US since before it was the US.  There’s some dispute whether the first county fair was held in Fredericksburg, VA (1738) or York, PA (1765) but the first state fair was held in Syracuse, NY in 1841. Then, as in now, ...

Continue reading ...

It’s been a very busy year. So busy, that the blog has sat silent. But today we have something we have to share.  We have a champion!

 

 

MacKenzie Hart did an awesome job at the Fonda Fair with her Texel ewe lamb “Annie Marie”.   Here they are all pretty with ribbons (Annie Marie is the one on the left). Kenzie worked hard with Annie Marie to make sure that she looked her best. Our lambs are born later than a lot of fair animals because we focus on grass-feeding as our prime objective. ...

Continue reading ...

Spring means lambs, and both are now well and truly here.  Our last lamb was born today, bringing the total up to 98 and the pasture across the road is lush enough to graze.



Everybody loves a lamb.  Family and friends have been dropping in for weeks to see the cute, cuddly creatures.  This lovely photo was taken by Frank St Leger.

Now it is the turn of passers by to watch them play in the field.  We have become used to cars stopping at the side of the road.  Quite a few get out and take picture...
Continue reading ...

Food columnist Mark Bittman has a terrific article in this week’s NY Times Magazine with twelve recipes for what he contends may be the best major cut of lamb – the shoulder. Mark describes this cut as “explosively delicious and juicy”.  

Here is a link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/01/magazine/bittman-lamb.html?_r=0 ("Better Than A Meat Lollipop" in The New York Times Magazine, December 1, 2013)

 

His recipes include braised, roasted, stir-fried, and g...

Continue reading ...

To cut groundskeeping costs during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson brought a flock of 18 sheep to trim the White House grounds – specifically the south lawn. The war ended in 1918 but the sheep were on the grounds at least until 1919. Included in the flock was Old Ike, a tobacco-chewing ram. They were shorn and nearly 100 pounds of  wool was auctioned off to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I. The wool sales brought more than $50,000 to the Red Cross.

Read more here ht...

Continue reading ...

Every now and then we move a flock of sheep across Stone Arabia Road, also known as County Route 34, which divides our farm in half.   There isn’t a high volume of traffic on the road but people do drive fast, so we don’t take crossing the road lightly.  We prepare by putting up fences on both sides to contain the sheep before and after the crossing, and we recruit a couple of neighbors to act as sheep crossing guards.  It always goes well, but we always wish that we had a Sheep Crossing ...

Continue reading ...

The best thing about growing hops is the people.  Working 18 feet off the ground in high winds also has its moments, but the best thing is definitely meeting the community of people interested in beer and brewing. 

Most brew beer; some are interested in the social or architectural history of brewing or hop farming.  The Albany Ale Project combines both interests.  And is now brewing beer with heritage hops from Dutch Barn Farm. We are proud to be a small part of this very cool project.

...

Continue reading ...

We are committed to eating locally and this year we are making that a financial commitment.
 
2013 lamb sales are in full swing. We are taking orders for whole, half, and select cuts of lamb. The 2013 lamb crop will be ready by mid-October, although we have already delivered some. This year we have been thinking about eating locally.  As our web site points out, our lamb is at least 10,000 miles more local than meat from Australia or New Zealand. We want to reward folks who are committed to eat...

Continue reading ...

Farming involves a lot of looking forward and hoping.  All through June we were hoping the rains would stop – and worried that they wouldn’t.  On the 28^th of June the Otsquago Creek swelled,  jumped its banks, and flooded the village of Fort Plain.  In those days hope was hard to find amid the sadness.  Here are some pictures of the devastation.

It was heartwarming to see the efforts of the neighbors going into the affected area to clean-up, but shocking to see how much damage there was.  ...

Continue reading ...

 

Well, summer’s moving on. It has been raining (a lot). The hops are growing like crazy, the fields are wet, wet, wet. Farm stress has been worrying about the Dutch Barn restoration and when to bring the hay in.  But last week, we got a big ray of sunshine which just keeps shining.

In December 2012, we got a ram named Max from one of our neighbors, the Subiks at Hilltop Acres Farm. Max is a registered Texel ram. His lambs are calm, friendly, fast growing, and darn-right "meaty". We lo...

Continue reading ...

Here's a really good idea from those darn Californians!  A recent item on "California Report" talks about a way to use social media to help reduce vegetable waste.  After our recent frost the asparagus production came to a bit of a  halt. But things are back up and running.  I don’t think we have a pallet yet– but we sure do have asparagus.

Here's the link to California Report

Continue reading ...

The Dutch barn dominates the profile of our farm from across the road.  You can’t really tell from that angle but from the side you can see that the barn is undergoing major repairs.  The work is even more impressive when one steps over one of the new sills.  This is our biggest project yet.



In 2009 we bought “the old Getman farm” from Florence and Eleanor Getman.  The farm, 95 acres in the hamlet of East Stone Arabia in Montgomery County, New York, had been in the Getman family since th...
Continue reading ...

The photo of our lovely and really, really busy new sheep shed is a red herring.  The real purpose of this post is to test the blog's plumbing.  We (ok Marc) changed the name of the blog web site, which we think means that nobody receives it by email anymore.

If you did not receive this by email, please go to the blog web page and enter your email address again:
http://www.dutchbarnfarm.com/judys-dutch-barn-farm-blog



Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

Well, if we had a sheep named Mary, there would be a very good chance that she would have a little lamb – or  two - by now.  We are in the thick of lambing for 2013.  Over 25 lambs have been born during the past five days.  Almost every ewe has had twins. So far, so good!

The sheep go outside every day now. It is pure joy to see the lambs gambolling in the grass. Come on by if you need to know that all is right with the world.

Continue reading ...

It’s said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.  But we’re not focused on lions or lambs right now. We’re wildly finishing up seed and tree orders for the year. We’re late (as usual) but one feature still makes it fun – seed catalogs.  These magazines are to gardeners what cooking shows are to eaters.  They are visual gold.  Their pages promise a perfect garden, big enough to feed twenty with dead straight rows, no weeds and unfailing light rains every three or f...

Continue reading ...

As we scramble to get ready for winter it is a bit of a shock to realize that summer is over.  We got a lot done but many things, including writing regular blogs, were left undone.  Autumnal signs like spectacular foliage, the cold and the need to sell lambs all snuck up, and it took this summer photo of Judy's nephew running after our goat to jolt us into realizing that summer is over, and into taking a moment to remember it.


Continue reading ...

Last year we had our first, small hop harvest.  The hops we planted in spring yielded about the same as the hops growing wild in the hedgerows, and we got about the same again from our friend Skip, who planted hops at the Kilts Farm that he has been restoring for years.


 
That gave us enough to learn some lessons about picking, drying and packaging.  There wasn't really enough to sell, but plenty to give to friends who brew beer at home.  This paid off handsomely in good will and in beer.  


 
We ...
Continue reading ...

The parlor walls were bare when we bought the farm.  The old Fritz Vogt picture was missing from its place of pride for the first time since it was commissioned by George Getman in 1894.    At that time the farm had already been in Getman hands for seventy years and was thriving.    Vogt was an itinerant German artist who spent a few years travelling around the Mohawk Valley drawing sketches of prosperous local farmsteads in return for room, board, and, at least from wealthier patrons, actual...
Continue reading ...

I learned something interesting about farming in 2011. Millions of Americans got small farms, planted, crops, and milked cows every day – all on their cell phones or computers while playing  the game Farmville. I see the allure. You get to think about farming, personal responsibility, care of the land, and all while wearing slippers and sipping lattes. A really smooth idea. I have never played the game, but I am told that inattention results in poor farm production and even animal losses. S...
Continue reading ...

Photo by Paul Barry

Our friend here is “Maximus”. He’s a registered Texel ram. He’s 10 months old and cute as a button. Beyond that, he’s trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent (OK, he may sometimes be irreverent but those events are his job).  He has been seen helping little old ewes cross the road – but we managed to head them off. Basically, he’s our man.
 
He joined the flock on December 20th and we hope ...
Continue reading ...

What has 48 legs, a wooly face, and baas in the morning? Our new lawn mower. It’s hard being a beginning farmer. You never know what you can do. Will the garden grow? When will it grow? Did I plant the right mix of veggies? The answer to that last one is a decided no, but I’ll deal with that later.

We have a couple of acres of field around the house.  Scott, a neighbor, brush hogged them short earlier this year when they were waist high. But the grass pretty much never stops growing i...

Continue reading ...

First it was the cress. Lovely little bitter leaves to spice up salads. They were such delicate little leaves. Then salad greens. They were wonderful mixed green and red ruffles of lettuce that showed that we could raise our own food.



Then the bok choy ripened. It was all going so well. Those were the good old days.



NOW, it’s squash, and beets, and collard greens. The tomato plants are weighed down with green fruit that threaten to ripen any day now. The other tomato plants we started as se...
Continue reading ...

You can’t be a small farmer without a garden. So we put one in. And, we are in this for the long haul, so the first priority was to get our asparagus started. Asparagus is an interesting plant. Like the hops, it’s a rhizome – the root system goes down deep and evades any damage from winter for many years. A well established asparagus patch will be productive for 20 years or more. We’re hoping for the “or more” but I figure we have time to see what happens.

Asparagus is planted i...

Continue reading ...

That’s right. Chicks, not checks.

Today, at 6:30 in the morning we got a phone call from the post-office. “Your chicks have arrived” said the postmistress. We were at the back door to the Fort Plain post office by 7:00am and driving home a box of chicks by 7:15. The US postal service has always had a policy of shipping day old chicks. When the chicks are first hatched, they have a small yolk sac in their bellies. During the shipment from Lancaster, PA to upstate NY, they absorb this yo...

Continue reading ...

Everyone should be able to have their own flock, so we gave our neighbors this starter kit, complete with cookie cutter.


We wish you a warm and wonderful new year.

Marc and Judy
Continue reading ...

Check out the American Lamb Board personality test.  It’s simpler than those ink blots and you get a chance to win $200 from Williams Sonoma! (I am, by the way, a “game-day partier” – woohoo!)

Here's the link to the test: http://woobox.com/8cof6b
Continue reading ...

Summer around here ends with the Fonda Fair, our local county fair which closes on Labor day. When the fair is over, summer is over.  Kids go back to school and we begin in earnest selling our lambs.


Plate of deep fried vegetables


Go Swifty, Go!

There have been County fairs in the US since before it was the US.  There’s some dispute whether the first county fair was held in Fredericksburg, VA (1738) or York, PA (1765) but the first state fair was held in Syracuse, NY in 1841. Then, as in now, ...

Continue reading ...

It’s been a very busy year. So busy, that the blog has sat silent. But today we have something we have to share.  We have a champion!

 

 

MacKenzie Hart did an awesome job at the Fonda Fair with her Texel ewe lamb “Annie Marie”.   Here they are all pretty with ribbons (Annie Marie is the one on the left). Kenzie worked hard with Annie Marie to make sure that she looked her best. Our lambs are born later than a lot of fair animals because we focus on grass-feeding as our prime objective. ...

Continue reading ...

Spring means lambs, and both are now well and truly here.  Our last lamb was born today, bringing the total up to 98 and the pasture across the road is lush enough to graze.



Everybody loves a lamb.  Family and friends have been dropping in for weeks to see the cute, cuddly creatures.  This lovely photo was taken by Frank St Leger.

Now it is the turn of passers by to watch them play in the field.  We have become used to cars stopping at the side of the road.  Quite a few get out and take picture...
Continue reading ...

Food columnist Mark Bittman has a terrific article in this week’s NY Times Magazine with twelve recipes for what he contends may be the best major cut of lamb – the shoulder. Mark describes this cut as “explosively delicious and juicy”.  

Here is a link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/01/magazine/bittman-lamb.html?_r=0 ("Better Than A Meat Lollipop" in The New York Times Magazine, December 1, 2013)

 

His recipes include braised, roasted, stir-fried, and g...

Continue reading ...

To cut groundskeeping costs during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson brought a flock of 18 sheep to trim the White House grounds – specifically the south lawn. The war ended in 1918 but the sheep were on the grounds at least until 1919. Included in the flock was Old Ike, a tobacco-chewing ram. They were shorn and nearly 100 pounds of  wool was auctioned off to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I. The wool sales brought more than $50,000 to the Red Cross.

Read more here ht...

Continue reading ...

Every now and then we move a flock of sheep across Stone Arabia Road, also known as County Route 34, which divides our farm in half.   There isn’t a high volume of traffic on the road but people do drive fast, so we don’t take crossing the road lightly.  We prepare by putting up fences on both sides to contain the sheep before and after the crossing, and we recruit a couple of neighbors to act as sheep crossing guards.  It always goes well, but we always wish that we had a Sheep Crossing ...

Continue reading ...

The best thing about growing hops is the people.  Working 18 feet off the ground in high winds also has its moments, but the best thing is definitely meeting the community of people interested in beer and brewing. 

Most brew beer; some are interested in the social or architectural history of brewing or hop farming.  The Albany Ale Project combines both interests.  And is now brewing beer with heritage hops from Dutch Barn Farm. We are proud to be a small part of this very cool project.

...

Continue reading ...

We are committed to eating locally and this year we are making that a financial commitment.
 
2013 lamb sales are in full swing. We are taking orders for whole, half, and select cuts of lamb. The 2013 lamb crop will be ready by mid-October, although we have already delivered some. This year we have been thinking about eating locally.  As our web site points out, our lamb is at least 10,000 miles more local than meat from Australia or New Zealand. We want to reward folks who are committed to eat...

Continue reading ...

Farming involves a lot of looking forward and hoping.  All through June we were hoping the rains would stop – and worried that they wouldn’t.  On the 28^th of June the Otsquago Creek swelled,  jumped its banks, and flooded the village of Fort Plain.  In those days hope was hard to find amid the sadness.  Here are some pictures of the devastation.

It was heartwarming to see the efforts of the neighbors going into the affected area to clean-up, but shocking to see how much damage there was.  ...

Continue reading ...

 

Well, summer’s moving on. It has been raining (a lot). The hops are growing like crazy, the fields are wet, wet, wet. Farm stress has been worrying about the Dutch Barn restoration and when to bring the hay in.  But last week, we got a big ray of sunshine which just keeps shining.

In December 2012, we got a ram named Max from one of our neighbors, the Subiks at Hilltop Acres Farm. Max is a registered Texel ram. His lambs are calm, friendly, fast growing, and darn-right "meaty". We lo...

Continue reading ...

Here's a really good idea from those darn Californians!  A recent item on "California Report" talks about a way to use social media to help reduce vegetable waste.  After our recent frost the asparagus production came to a bit of a  halt. But things are back up and running.  I don’t think we have a pallet yet– but we sure do have asparagus.

Here's the link to California Report

Continue reading ...

The Dutch barn dominates the profile of our farm from across the road.  You can’t really tell from that angle but from the side you can see that the barn is undergoing major repairs.  The work is even more impressive when one steps over one of the new sills.  This is our biggest project yet.



In 2009 we bought “the old Getman farm” from Florence and Eleanor Getman.  The farm, 95 acres in the hamlet of East Stone Arabia in Montgomery County, New York, had been in the Getman family since th...
Continue reading ...

The photo of our lovely and really, really busy new sheep shed is a red herring.  The real purpose of this post is to test the blog's plumbing.  We (ok Marc) changed the name of the blog web site, which we think means that nobody receives it by email anymore.

If you did not receive this by email, please go to the blog web page and enter your email address again:
http://www.dutchbarnfarm.com/judys-dutch-barn-farm-blog



Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

Well, if we had a sheep named Mary, there would be a very good chance that she would have a little lamb – or  two - by now.  We are in the thick of lambing for 2013.  Over 25 lambs have been born during the past five days.  Almost every ewe has had twins. So far, so good!

The sheep go outside every day now. It is pure joy to see the lambs gambolling in the grass. Come on by if you need to know that all is right with the world.

Continue reading ...

It’s said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.  But we’re not focused on lions or lambs right now. We’re wildly finishing up seed and tree orders for the year. We’re late (as usual) but one feature still makes it fun – seed catalogs.  These magazines are to gardeners what cooking shows are to eaters.  They are visual gold.  Their pages promise a perfect garden, big enough to feed twenty with dead straight rows, no weeds and unfailing light rains every three or f...

Continue reading ...

As we scramble to get ready for winter it is a bit of a shock to realize that summer is over.  We got a lot done but many things, including writing regular blogs, were left undone.  Autumnal signs like spectacular foliage, the cold and the need to sell lambs all snuck up, and it took this summer photo of Judy's nephew running after our goat to jolt us into realizing that summer is over, and into taking a moment to remember it.


Continue reading ...

Last year we had our first, small hop harvest.  The hops we planted in spring yielded about the same as the hops growing wild in the hedgerows, and we got about the same again from our friend Skip, who planted hops at the Kilts Farm that he has been restoring for years.


 
That gave us enough to learn some lessons about picking, drying and packaging.  There wasn't really enough to sell, but plenty to give to friends who brew beer at home.  This paid off handsomely in good will and in beer.  


 
We ...
Continue reading ...

The parlor walls were bare when we bought the farm.  The old Fritz Vogt picture was missing from its place of pride for the first time since it was commissioned by George Getman in 1894.    At that time the farm had already been in Getman hands for seventy years and was thriving.    Vogt was an itinerant German artist who spent a few years travelling around the Mohawk Valley drawing sketches of prosperous local farmsteads in return for room, board, and, at least from wealthier patrons, actual...
Continue reading ...

I learned something interesting about farming in 2011. Millions of Americans got small farms, planted, crops, and milked cows every day – all on their cell phones or computers while playing  the game Farmville. I see the allure. You get to think about farming, personal responsibility, care of the land, and all while wearing slippers and sipping lattes. A really smooth idea. I have never played the game, but I am told that inattention results in poor farm production and even animal losses. S...
Continue reading ...

Photo by Paul Barry

Our friend here is “Maximus”. He’s a registered Texel ram. He’s 10 months old and cute as a button. Beyond that, he’s trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent (OK, he may sometimes be irreverent but those events are his job).  He has been seen helping little old ewes cross the road – but we managed to head them off. Basically, he’s our man.
 
He joined the flock on December 20th and we hope ...
Continue reading ...

What has 48 legs, a wooly face, and baas in the morning? Our new lawn mower. It’s hard being a beginning farmer. You never know what you can do. Will the garden grow? When will it grow? Did I plant the right mix of veggies? The answer to that last one is a decided no, but I’ll deal with that later.

We have a couple of acres of field around the house.  Scott, a neighbor, brush hogged them short earlier this year when they were waist high. But the grass pretty much never stops growing i...

Continue reading ...

First it was the cress. Lovely little bitter leaves to spice up salads. They were such delicate little leaves. Then salad greens. They were wonderful mixed green and red ruffles of lettuce that showed that we could raise our own food.



Then the bok choy ripened. It was all going so well. Those were the good old days.



NOW, it’s squash, and beets, and collard greens. The tomato plants are weighed down with green fruit that threaten to ripen any day now. The other tomato plants we started as se...
Continue reading ...

You can’t be a small farmer without a garden. So we put one in. And, we are in this for the long haul, so the first priority was to get our asparagus started. Asparagus is an interesting plant. Like the hops, it’s a rhizome – the root system goes down deep and evades any damage from winter for many years. A well established asparagus patch will be productive for 20 years or more. We’re hoping for the “or more” but I figure we have time to see what happens.

Asparagus is planted i...

Continue reading ...

That’s right. Chicks, not checks.

Today, at 6:30 in the morning we got a phone call from the post-office. “Your chicks have arrived” said the postmistress. We were at the back door to the Fort Plain post office by 7:00am and driving home a box of chicks by 7:15. The US postal service has always had a policy of shipping day old chicks. When the chicks are first hatched, they have a small yolk sac in their bellies. During the shipment from Lancaster, PA to upstate NY, they absorb this yo...

Continue reading ...