08/23/2026
It’s 5 a.m.
I’ve been awake since roughly 2:30, so I’m sitting here with some unexpected extra time, sipping coffee after feeding Ranger and enjoying that peaceful quiet only the wee hours of the morning can give you. That little window before the day begins and life and noise start to stir.
I know I’ve been neglecting my posting here lately, but life has been incredibly busy.
As it always is.
The hay barn shell is nearly complete! Rain and schedules have hampered progress, but Jake is a one-man powerhouse that I’ve come to appreciate more than I realized. He has done an amazing job. Later today, the shell should finally be completed, minus the doors.
Then we wait for a couple consecutive sunny days so we can stain/paint and seal the roof.
This project went over budget. Honestly, what project doesn’t?
And yes, it’s a strain. But this 48x12x16 building will give us plenty of hay storage for years to come, and that is incredibly important as the herds continue to grow between births and donations.
October will be harvest month for the goats. Right now, we’re sitting at roughly six that will be going toward our fall meat donation. In the spring, I hope to harvest lamb and more goat for that donation cycle as well.
At the beginning of September, we’ll also have three young donation wethers joining us to raise up. We’ll see how fast those little guys grow! A HUGE thank you to Deanna for them.
The baby chicks, pheasants, ducklings and turkeys are all doing incredibly well. There weren’t as many out of the incubators as I would have liked, but that happens.
Thanks to a wonderful neighbor, I have two more incubators loaded and running now. These will be the last hatches for the season. Then we’ll begin again early in the spring for next fall’s harvest.
And if the Pekins do well...
We may start seeing poultry donations happening on a much more regular basis.
Right now, the price of hay is absolutely killing us financially. But in a strange way, it’s a good kind of pain to experience because it means we’re growing.
I’m working on a few possibilities to bring that cost down, but in the meantime hay is costing us roughly $225 a week.
I swear the goats and sheep know “winter is coming” and have collectively decided they need to pack it all in NOW.
Because apparently my bank account offended them personally.
And while Jake was monkeying around on the hay barn roof in the rain yesterday, I was going back and forth bringing in my various AeroGardens and hydroponic systems, cleaning them up and getting them ready for winter growing.
I already started one with arugula and baby bok choy.
Today I’ll fire up a few more with fast-growing greens to complement the lettuce and other produce still growing outside. Hopefully, all of it will find its way into our October food boxes.
Through the winter, I’m going to try to keep the systems producing extra greens, produce and herbs for donation whenever possible.
An indoor grow room is also in the works for early spring planting.
And with the Nikiski Farmers Market having a pretty darn good first year AND now having its nonprofit status, the ladies and I are already full of plans for next year.
Plans for the market itself.
Plans for our own booths.
Plans upon plans upon plans.
So yes, we’re still here.
Still kicking.
Still working on what feels like a million projects at once.
Time. There is never enough of it.
And there never seem to be enough hands.
But somewhere between the 2:30 a.m. wake-ups, bottle babies, hay bills, incubators humming, vegetables growing, construction projects, muddy boots and an ever-growing list of things that need doing...
It’s an incredible journey.
And somehow, little by little, we’re building exactly what we set out to build.
A farm that feeds people for free. Even if the cost is great.
