It's a brand new year, and the week between Christmas and New Years Eve is a time I like to reflect on the wins and failures of the passing year, and plan for the new one.
Here is a quick recap of what happened at JulBud Ranch in 2023:
We started the year with a crazy amount of snow that stuck around until the end of April and caused quite a bit of flooding in our little valley. Thankfully, we didn't have any issues with flooding.
The snow affected our planting times and most of our root crops failed.
We attempted to hatch two sets of eggs in an incubator that was given to us. The first we got two chicks out of 20+ eggs. The second we got 5 chicks out of 8 or 9 eggs. Most of them were roosters that ended up being not very nice so they went off to freezer camp.
We started our 15 member CSA in June and had a good season, despite the crop failures we had, with a lot of good feedback on how to improve.
Our goat, Honey, had three babies on July 12th. 2 girls and 1 boy. We kept the boy, Finnick, as a wether and sold the girls.
I held 2 different workshops in the early part of the year, a product testing/chocolate tasting party and a seed starting workshop. Both were a ton of fun.
We set up a small green house this year which helped us extend the growing season for some of our tomatoes.
I took the year off from doing markets, with the exception of the fall market at the Historic Monastery grounds, which was a great success.
We were able to put a little free library in front of our house, which had been a desire of mine for a few years.
We lot three of our hens to different illnesses. The most we've ever lost in a short amount of time, which had us reevaluate our setup and made us decide to keep our younger chickens separate from the older ones.
Craig built 3 structures for the ranch this year: a chicken tractor, a new hay shed/goat shelter, and a carport.
We built two new fenced in areas for the goats so we can rotate them through different pastures and have an area for our future buck.
I transitioned all my tallow soaps to goat milk soaps.
I added several new products to our store including: new lotion bar scents, mini bath bombs, gift baskets, and new sample soap boxes.
We added 2 mouser kittens to our collection of animals and named them Tango & Cash.
We became members of Utah's Own, which connects consumers with local farmers, ranchers, food artisans, and other agriculture producers.
And probably the best thing of all, we were able to make one extra house payment this year from the income we made on our ranch.
As for 2024, here is what we have on the agenda so far:
Finish the irrigation line in our field that extends beyond the pond where the rock piles used to be.
Seed the field that had been disturbed by the pond build, the moving of dirt/rock piles, and other construction.
Build a second chicken tractor and use the chickens in the field to improve soil quality.
Get more chickens. (or hope a chicken or two goes broody)
Have an excellent CSA season.
Release my super secret project I've been working on.
Increase our goat herd. (Fingers crossed Reba is pregnant!)
We are currently working with Eden Coffee & Cocoa to sell our lotions, lip balms, and salve in their shop.
2024 is the first year where we haven't started off with a ton of projects on the list, so it will be interesting to see how many more we come up with as the year progresses. I'm hoping we won't add too many, and we can simply enjoy what we've built thus far.
In CSA News... I am going to be opening registration gradually. First I will give 2023 members a chance to sign up again. Their renewal period will be open exclusively to them until January 7th. After that I will open registration to those who were on our wait-list in 2023 until January 21st. If I still have space after that, I will open registration to everyone.
In goat news... If you've been following our journey for awhile, you might remember the ordeal we had with breeding the goats last year, how I was going to breed both Reba and Honey, but the buck we used didn't succeed with either of them. Then I discovered Honey's extra teat was a negative trait and wasn't going to breed her, but she happened to be in heat the day we brought the second buck the ranch (who was Badger), and he jumped the fence in order to be with her and was successful. And Reba did not get pregnant.
I worked hard getting Reba's hormone issues resolved over the summer and fall and gave her some synesthetic hormones before attempting to breed her again. She was with Badger about 2.5 weeks ago and I witnessed a successful breeding. We're keeping Badger for the next week or so to make sure Reba doesn't go into heat again. If she does, she'll go back in with Badger for one last attempt. If she doesn't get pregnant this year, she is officially going to be retired from breeding.
In chicken news: Our broody chicken hatched out 3 chicks and has been a pretty good mama. Unfortunately we lost two of the chicks when the little chicken family ventured outside and mama couldn't get the littles to come back inside and the succumbed to the cold. I found them after dark and was only able to save one.
In soap news: I don't really have any new soap news. Our signature and novel line of soaps are fully stocked and the new soaps have had a good reception so far.
I'm currently considering what markets, if any, I want to be part of in 2024. They are a lot of work and rather exhausting and I've learned to be picky about which markets I attend. But I will update you all with that information once I decide what to do.
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