Down on the Farm

Last Thursday our homeschool group went to the Fountain of Life farm in the Pecatonica Illinois area. It is owned by a Christian family who also homeschools their 6 children. They had this dream for 10 years before it became a reality 5 years ago. They do their best to live off the land when possible by selling their cow/goat milk, eggs, honey, and lamb meat.
I thought it was a real eye opening experience. We started out with the dairy cows. They try to keep a calf nursing all the time so the cows produce milk. I did not realize that cows stopped producing milk as I figured that since they were dairy cows, they produced milk 24/7 365. Oh well, I'm just a city slicker, what do I know?!
There have over a hundred chickens wandering all over the farm. They believe in free range chickens and get their eggs daily that way. They walk all over the acreage looking for eggs once a day. The chickens usually use the same nest daily, so the eggs really aren't that hard to find most days.
I also learned that we have cougars around here. I thought I left that threat way behind in the mountains of Washington and Idaho. They keep two large dogs around to chase the cougars and coyotes away from the animals.
Then we went to the goat pen. They have an orphan goat, and the children got to see the baby nurse on the foster mom. I think they enjoyed that. The mama goat does not take other babies usually, but if they distract her with food and tie her down, she will feed the orphan baby. Because of this situation, though, they did not have any goat milk to sell.
On to the bee hives. My dad had bees and I had my own set of bee keeper garb and would help him on several occasions. It was interesting listening to how she takes care of her bees and the fond memories it brought back. Yes, I have been stung a few times, but if you care for them correctly and wear the proper garb, the stings are at a minimum.
Then we went to the sheep pasture. They had several lambs that they will eventually sell for meat. I love the lambs. They are so cute. It was amazing though when you watch them how the scriptures describe sheep so vividly. They truly are dumb follower animals and obviously need a Shepherd to watch them.
The last animals we saw were a pair of pea fowl. She had been given the set from a friend and was later given pea fowl babies.
Finally the kids were all given turns on the butter churn and made their own butter and butter milk. I think the kids all enjoyed that. To end the day they each had a piece of sour dough bread with the butter they had made and some of us sampled some of the fresh milk. I don't think the kids really enjoyed the sour dough bread though as it was really sour. I know my bread is not as sour as hers was.
We ended the day with a "healthy" lunch at Burger King. yummy.