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The Chicks Have Arrived

This week our shipment of Cornish Cross chicks arrived, marking the start of another meat bird season here on the farm. It is always a little loud, a little chaotic, and a clear reminder that spring work is officially underway.

We have been purchasing our birds from Schlect Hatchery for several years now. They are a small hatchery, and we have always had consistently good experiences with their birds and their reliability. This shipment arrived healthy, alert, and ready to get to work growing.

Unlike many setups, we brood our birds on pasture from day one. They start their lives outdoors with fresh air under a covered brooder, heat for warmth, and grass underfoot as soon as they are strong enough to explore it. It takes more attention and more daily checks, but we believe it gives them a better start and keeps us more connected to their care from the very beginning.

Over the next several weeks, these small chicks will do what Cornish Cross do best and grow quickly. In just over two months, they will be ready to be processed and will provide meat for our family. The timeline is short and the routine settles in fast.

Right now, they are finding the heat, learning where the feed and water are, and adjusting to their first nights outdoors. In a few weeks they will be rotated regularly across fresh grass as the season fully opens up.

It always starts the same way. A small group of fragile birds becomes one of the most tangible expressions of food security we have here. The work begins again.

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Two More Mouths to Feed

The past week has brought two new additions to the farm. We have had two lambs born just days apart, right in the middle of what is usually the coldest stretch of the season.

Both births went smoothly, and the ewes handled everything with quiet confidence. Each time, we walked out expecting routine chores and came back with that familiar mix of surprise, relief, and gratitude that comes with finding new life on the farm.

It is always striking how steady nature can be. The temperatures may still dip at night, the hills may look bare and quiet, but life continues on its own schedule. The lambs are small, alert, and already keeping close to their mothers as they figure out the world around them.

Moments like this remind us why winter is not just a season of waiting. It is also a season of beginnings. Two small lambs now move through the pasture, quiet evidence that the cycle keeps turning even when the landscape looks still.

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Our first snow of the season

Our first snow of the season arrived this morning and stayed with us for most of the day. It started as light flakes and slowly built into a steady snowfall that softened the pasture, the trees, and everything in between. It was not a heavy storm, just enough snow to change the feel of the land for the first time this year.

Inside, we kept a fire going in the fireplace while the snow came down outside. The contrast was simple and perfect. Cold moving across the hills and warmth settling into the living room. It felt like the season officially turned sometime between adding another log and watching the pasture fade into white.

The animals handled it just fine. The equipment stayed parked under cover. The hills looked quieter by the hour as the snow wrapped everything in a thin blanket.

First snow always feels like a small reset. The pace changes. The work looks a little different. For a few hours today, everything slowed down just enough for us to notice it.

— The Langley Family

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The Carport Is Finally Done

After months of planning, dirt work, delays, concrete, more delays, then finally some steady progress, the carport portion of the shop expansion is finally complete. This project took far longer than we expected, but it feels good to see it standing and in use.

The tractor and mower are now parked under cover instead of sitting out in the weather. That alone makes a big difference. Keeping equipment dry and protected saves wear and tear and makes daily work easier when we are not fighting mud, rain, or ice.

While the carport is finished, the workshop itself still has tons of work ahead of us. The space is there and the foundation is set, but the interior build out will come next as time and budget allow. We still need to wire receptacles and lights, and sheath the interior walls with plywood. For now, having the covered equipment space is a big win.

This project has been a reminder that nothing on this land seems to move fast, but progress still adds up. One section at a time, the infrastructure is taking shape.

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A Front Row Seat to Autumn

Over the past couple of weeks, the mountains around us have begun to change. What was solid green through summer is now breaking into layers of yellow, orange, and red. Every day looks a little different from the last. Some trees turn quietly, others all at once, as if the hillside decided to paint itself overnight.

From the pasture, the view feels bigger this time of year. The colors stretch across the ridgelines and settle into the valleys in a way that makes it hard not to stop what you are doing and look. Even the simplest chores take longer when the view keeps pulling your attention uphill.

Fall in Tennessee carries a different kind of energy. The air is cooler, the light is softer, and everything feels like it is preparing for what comes next. The land is not asleep yet, but it is starting to slow its pace.

We knew the fall colors would be beautiful when we moved here, but seeing them from our own front yard makes it something else entirely. It feels like another reminder of why this place matters to us and why we chose to build our life on this hillside.

For now, we are just taking it in. One ridge at a time.

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Indoor Growing Season Begins

As the outdoor growing season starts to slow down, we decided it was time to bring a little food production back inside. While we are not full into winter yet, the nights are cooler, the garden is winding down, and fresh greens will soon be harder to come by outdoors.

We picked up two small indoor hydroponic garden systems and set them up with lettuce and a mix of herbs. Hydroponics itself is not new to us. We ran a large aquaponics system back in Florida and learned a lot from it. This setup is much smaller and simpler, but the goal is similar. Keep fresh food growing year round in whatever way makes sense for the season.

The systems are already doing well. The lettuce is taking off and the herbs are settling in. It is been nice to watch steady growth again after the outdoor beds started to slow. Even small harvests feel meaningful when they are fresh and close at hand.

While these will never replace the garden or orchard, they fill an important gap. They give us fresh greens through the colder months and keep us connected to growing food even when the land outside is resting.

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Goodbye Orange Extension Cord of Doom

This month we tackled an important infrastructure upgrade for both the house and the shop. I installed a new electrical sub panel along with a generator interlock breaker to give us safer and more reliable power across the property.

The generator interlock gives us the ability to run the entire house on generator power when needed. We brought several generators with us from Florida and used them regularly during hurricane season. Having that same backup capability here in Tennessee gives us peace of mind. If the power goes out, we can still keep the essentials running and stay comfortable while we wait for service to be restored.

The new sub panel is dedicated to the shop. Until now, the shop had been powered by a long extension cord run from the house. It worked, but it was far from ideal and definitely not how things should be long term. With the sub panel in place, the shop now has proper, stable power with plenty of capacity for tools and future projects.

It feels good to replace temporary solutions with permanent ones. These upgrades may not be exciting to look at, but they make daily work safer, smoother, and more reliable. Little by little, the property is becoming more functional and better equipped for the kind of work we plan to do here.

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Protecting the orchard

It did not take long for us to learn that we are not the only ones excited about our new orchard. As the weeks passed, we started to notice signs that the deer had discovered the young fruit trees. A few nibbled leaves here and there quickly turned into a clear pattern of nightly visits.

After all the work that went into planting those trees in July, we knew we had to act fast. So this month we installed electric fencing around the entire orchard to give it the protection it needs to get established.

The setup was a learning process, from laying out the posts to setting the proper height and making sure the charger was strong enough to do the job. Once everything was in place, it finally felt like the trees had a fighting chance.

The goal is simple. Give the orchard time to grow without constant pressure from wildlife. The deer will always be part of this land, and we respect that. But for now, the trees need a little help if they are going to survive and thrive.

With the fence up and running, we feel much better about the future of the orchard. It is one more small step toward protecting what we are building here.

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A First Garden Season

Earlier this year, we installed six raised garden beds with no real expectations beyond learning as we went. This was our first true attempt at gardening on this land, and we knew there would be a learning curve.

As summer has rolled on, those beds have surprised us. The plants are thriving and the garden is producing better than we expected for a first year. Strawberries have taken off, ginger is growing strong, squash vines are stretching in every direction, and the tomato plants are loaded. Asparagus has produced steadily all season. A mix of herbs fills in the rest of the space, adding color and scent every time we walk past.

There have been mistakes along the way. Some things did better than others, and a few lessons came the hard way. But overall, the garden has been generous. Harvesting food that came straight from the soil we work every day never gets old.

These six raised beds are already teaching us what grows well here and what needs more attention. More than that, they are reminding us that steady effort adds up. For a first year, we are grateful for what they have given us.

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Planting the orchard

Today was a big day for the farm. We brought home eighteen fruit trees and planted the start of what we hope will become a thriving orchard over the years ahead.

We chose a mix of varieties so that the harvest will be spread across the season and the land will have some built in diversity. Several types of apple trees went into the ground, along with peaches, plums, and pears. Right now they are small and quiet, easy to overlook if you do not know what is coming.

Planting trees is a different kind of work than most of what we do here. It is slow. It asks for patience. The real reward is not months away, but years out. Yet there is something grounding about setting roots into the soil and imagining what those branches will hold one day.

The orchard does not look like much yet, just neat rows of stakes and leaves. But it already represents long term thinking, steady care, and a belief that this land will provide if we are willing to invest the time.

Eighteen little trees are now part of this place. We look forward to watching them grow.