PJ Jonas

Category: Farm Life

  • Picking Clover

    Picking Clover

    We are a very frugal family and love to save money wherever possible.  That often means making use of the resources that are available to us.  And one of those happens to be – clover! Jade is often responsible for picking the clover… And feeding it to the rabbits. It is a free food that…

  • Baby Rabbits

    Baby Rabbits

    Not only do we have goats and chickens, but we also have rabbits.  We keep the rabbits because we use their manure in our vegetable garden.  Periodically we let them breed and we get a litter of kits.  We do this purely for the joy of playing with baby rabbits.    They grow so quickly,…

  • Chicken Eggs

    Chicken Eggs

    When people come to our house and see our eggs, they are generally very surprised by the variety.  We have different colors and very different sizes. Most of our chickens lay brown eggs.  Some of the brown egg laying breeds we have are buff orpingtons, barred rocks, black stars, and rhode island reds. White eggs…

  • Cold Weather Seeds

    Cold Weather Seeds

    With this insanely cold winter we’re having, I’ve been even more excited than usual to get back to gardening.  Gardening around here (zone 6) usually starts with my birthday.  My birthday is St. Patrick’s Day, so March 17th is when I always try to get my cold weather seeds planted.  It’s colder than normal this…

  • Chickens and Winter

    Chickens and Winter

    Raising animals (just like raising children) is a lot of work.  Most of the time we really enjoy it, but it does become more challenging in winter. We’ve made things as easy on ourselves as possible by setting up the chicken coop to work well year round. One of the first things we knew we…

  • Why To Be Concerned About GMO Food

    Why To Be Concerned About GMO Food

    GMO is short for any “genetically modified organisms.”  Currently genetically modified plants and genetically modified animals both exist.  GMOs are created by using the DNA from different species of plants, animals, bacterias, and viruses and merging them together with gene splicing techniques.  These GMOs can not be created naturally which means you can not achieve…

  • Backyard Chickens for Healthy Eggs

    Backyard Chickens for Healthy Eggs

    In my quest to feed my family healthier food, one of the hardest things to consistently source is healthy protein.  Organic vegetables have been easy to grow in the garden and are fairly easy to purchase throughout the winter.  Grass-fed organic meat, however, is a lot harder.  And when I have found it, it is…

  • Planting Fruit Trees On The Farm

    Planting Fruit Trees On The Farm

    I am a big believer in eating healthy foods.  Whenever possible we grow our own food and we do it without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.  One of the hardest parts of leaving our old home was leaving our orchard and brambles.  We loved harvesting our own pears, apples, peaches, cherries, elderberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and…

  • Hewitt’s Job on the Farm

    Hewitt’s Job on the Farm

    Hewitt is getting so big and capable! He has a lot of responsibilities around the house, barn, and soaproom, but I think his favorite chore is to take care of the chickens and the rabbits. He is super cute in this video (but don’t tell him I called him cute LOL). Pretty impressive, huh?

  • Preparing the Garden for Winter

    Preparing the Garden for Winter

    It’s that time of the year when frost is coming and it is time to put the garden to bed for the winter.  We keep a close eye on the weather reports and about three days before the first frost is expected, we put the boys to work.  Last week Greyden and Colter picked the remaining produce…

  • How to Recycle Paper

    How to Recycle Paper

    Because we have a business, we’re very careful with our paperwork.  We don’t store customer credit card information or share it with anyone.  If we don’t need to keep paperwork for our records, Jade is in charge of shredding it. So what do we do with all the paper shreds?  We put them in the…

  • Take a Tour of the Farm

    Take a Tour of the Farm

    Now that the construction is complete, we are able to offer tours of the Goat Milk Stuff farm. Since many of you are too far away to come and visit us in person, we created a “Tour the Farm” video with Fletcher as your guide. If you’re able to visit us personally in Scottsburg, you…

  • Benefits of Sunflower Seeds

    Benefits of Sunflower Seeds

    We’re a little sad around here because frost is coming, and it doesn’t look like our sunflower seeds are going to completely ripen in time. We planted the sunflower seeds late in the season because it took longer than anticipated to complete the construction of the garden beds. So we knew it was a long…

  • 10 Reasons to Eat More Sweet Potatoes

    10 Reasons to Eat More Sweet Potatoes

    I never had sweet potatoes growing up.  I don’t think my mom liked them, so she never cooked them. I suppose I saw them at Thanksgiving time, but as a kid I thought they looked nasty even with marshmallows on them (I was never a big marshmallow fan either).  It wasn’t until I got heavily…

  • Growing Oats

    We love our new milking room.  We have room for 5 milk stands and have set it up really well. The goats come in. The boys milk. When they are done, they sweep up the floor. And feed the spilled oats to the chickens. Then they hose down the milk stands and floor. Everything has…