Heartbreak Acres

06/01/2026

I still have 65 cornish cross chicks available for the July 28th delivery. These are day old chicks, delivered straight to me from the hatchery never in the mail. Very healthy ready to grow chicks. $2.50 each 50% deposit to hold.

05/31/2026

Anybody need a meal planner before they retire from my craft fair inventory?!

Even though I have lived by my meal planner for over a decade. Sadly I will not be making anymore. I will continue to sell what I have left for inventory online and in our farm store but I will no longer be offering them at craft fairs. I will be filling the space with even more of the great products I already offer.

https://sassyseaming.etsy.com/listing/1658723268

05/31/2026

Next level pizza! Chorizo from High Low Farm in Woodstock Vermont. I met this fellow pig farmer at the New England Craft Festival fairs at Mohegan Sun casino when I was there with my sewing business. Now everytime we see each other we chat it up about pig breeding highs and lows, maple syrup and business in general. They make a variety of cured sausages with their pork that are all phenomenal. He advised me to get one of these mini mandolin slicers to get the most out of it. Yup it worked slick. The only problem is that now I want to learn how to make all our own from our pigs and do you think I have time for that?!

05/30/2026

Busy day. Started out cold and wet. Ended breezy and sunny. We got alot done today. It's amazing when we all work together how fast and easy it is. Hubby is stoked to have a good chunk of this winters firewood already cut and split. We have a few more big trees to cut in this plot. Then we can run fence in the woods, chip all that brush, seed down the whole area, move the piggies down then watch them and the new grass grow! Building pasture has been an ongoing job for the 9 years we've been here. Not sure we will ever be done. I'd say we've tackled 1/3 of the 15 acre property we own.

05/29/2026

One of the people offended by my list of animals I don't ever want on my farm commented.... "So it sounds like you don't like animal husbandry. Shocker."

What I don't like is...
- People who assume they know me by one post. At least fb stalk me first before you make assumptions.
- People who are a fellow mother, farmer, crafter, believer of god, who choose to not support each other because all your beliefs don't line up exactly.
- People who weren't taught if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all.

So here's just a smidgen of my animal husbandry. And just a smidgen of why our farm name is Heartbreak Acres.
This is Jolene. I went to the auction to just drop off some rabbits and chickens. I wasn't going to buy anything. As I turned to leave after dropping off my boxes and getting my slip, we met. A load of jersey calves was walking off a trailer. She came right up to me and we locked eyes. She was only a few days old and was in a group with a bunch of jersey bull calves. I was screwed right then and there and I couldn't do anything about it. Me and my 2 young boys stayed and I bid. Knowing full well she was most likely a twin to one of the bull calves in the group. Meaning she was a free martin and most likely sterile and would never have a calf or be a milk cow. But I couldn't stop myself. I was an adult with a farm of my own now, I could do what ever the hell I wanted! For a whopping $7 I had the winning bid and we put her in the back seat and home we went. She lived in my garage for weeks because of course she would come down sick with pneumonia and bad. I did everything in my power to get her through and we did. By the time she was about 3 months old most of her hair fell out from being so sick. So I made her a coat of many colors. We waited and watched and loved her dearly. She was exposed to a bull at 2 years old and never showed any signs. We waited 3 years and nothing. As I have said before we do not keep farm pets that aren't serving a purpose. The decision was made and the butcher date set. I loaded her on the trailer and it was the one and only time I didn't go along and drop her off. My heart has been broken many many times by the animals I have saved and raised and loved. And with every break a callus forms and I become a harder person. That's farming. That's animal husbandry. So now I choose my battles and even then I still often lose.

05/29/2026

Safety first! We use pool noodles for all kinds of stuff around the farm.

05/28/2026

I'm slowly working on the...
FREE RECIPE CARD WALL!
A few days a week while I'm eating my breakfast I hope to type up some of my favorite recipes. These will be available for FREE in our self serve farm store. Today's recipe is pumpkin cream cheese swirl muffins. I hope to have the whole organizer (42 recipes) full by the end of June.

05/28/2026

High speed chicken tractor tour.
I wouldn't raise meat birds if we couldn't raise them in these tractors out on the pasture. We have made changes one way or another every year for the last 6 years. This year it was adding the predator panels/wings. Really hoping it works because 12 hog panels for all the chicken tractors wasn't a cheap addition. But losing a bunch of almost ready to butcher birds last year to a fox was about the same price.

05/27/2026

🐑 🐏 Sheep...
My never ever will we have on this farm list really provoked some people. So I'm going to make a few posts explaining our choices.
When I was probably 12 I farm sat for people down the road from us. They had sheep, a horse and a couple dogs. It was early spring and one of the ewes decided to have twin lambs unannounced. She of course rejected one of them. The only stall they had was where the horse was kept. So I turned the horse out who was of course kinda lame. I put the ewe in the stall and tried my hardest to get her to take both lambs. She wouldn't. I ended up pushing the lamb home in a doll carriage and was bringing it back and forth to nurse. This was for at least a few days. The people came home shocked and said they never had twins survive before and paid me $20 for all my efforts. I never farm sat for them again.
A few years later I won overall dairy showmanship at our 4H show. That meant I had to go on to supreme showmanship class where you show every species they had available at the fair. Dairy cows, beef cows, goats, oxen, rabbits, chickens and.... sheep! I was given the biggest ram sheep with no collar or halter and that SOB gave me a good run for my money making me look like an ass in the show ring.
We also swap back and forth farm sitting for our neighbors who used to have sheep. We called it even though because I hate sheep and she hates goats which we used to have.
So not only do I have a not good past relationship with sheep. We just have no interest in them. I do not want to shear sheep for the wool. We do not like to eat lamb or mutton. We do not need them for pasture maintenance. There really isn't a huge market for lamb in our area. They also like to get sick and die at the drop of a hat. We already don't have enough vets in our area and I sure as heck don't know enough about them or want to, to make it worth the effort. We do not raise animals to be cute pets in the pasture. This is a working, trying to be profitable farm. So if you raise sheep and love them dearly that's awesome for you, I will slow down when I drive by and say OMG everybody look at all the cute wittle shneeps. They are just not for me.

05/27/2026

🌞 Early morning feeder pig chores....
Feed scraps with day 2 of dewormer ✅️
Clean their p**p corner ✅️ 💩
Move water barrel over ✅️
Install electric fence to training pen ✅️
Warn piglets about their first zaps ✅️
Learning the hard way ✅️

This weekend hopefully we can get their area down in the woods cleaned up after a long winter and trees falling on the fence. Get huts moved and forage planted. The following weekend they should be trained to the electric enough that we can put them in the woods and they should stay.